YOLO720NOSCOPE: Unlimited Saga is now ponies.
ScionOfTorgue: MISTER TORGUE FULLY APPROVES THE F[Censored] OUT OF THIS S[Censored]!!!
X-Treme-inator: Oh man, this is even funnier than the tutus! I'm laughing my @$$ off here.
RiderOnTheStorm: Best April Fools Ever, Forever.
Shadowfax: I'm having Diablo 3 flashbacks here.
YOLO720NOSCOPE: GUILDMASTER!!!
ScionOfTorgue: GUILDMASTER!!!
X-Treme-inator: GUILDMASTER!!!
RiderOnTheStorm: GUILDMASTER!!!
Shadowfax: You guys need to stop calling me that. Rider will be your guildmaster, starting next week.
ScionOfTorgue: T-T *Cries tears so manly that they turn into bikini models made of bacon and deep-fried beer cans when they hit the ground*
X-Treme-inator: D: WHY MUST BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE!?!?!?
RiderOnTheStorm: You'll always be our Guildmaster, no matter what happens.
YOLO720NOSCOPE: Ummm, I hate to ask, but nobody's told me so I gotta. Why are you leaving?
Shadowfax: Medical reasons.
YOLO720NOSCOPE: What kind?
Shadowfax: The kind you don't usually come back from.
YOLO720NOSCOPE: ...Oh.
RiderOnTheStorm: The guild won't be the same without you.
Shadowfax: The Riders Of Rohan are far greater than any one person. All I did was start something beautiful. It was you guys, and everyone else in the guild, that made it what it is today, and will keep it going in my memory. Whatever happens, I can go with absolute certainty the the Riders are in good hands.
Shadowfax: On a lighter note, the admins made good on their promise. There's an alchemy recipe for the Exp Booster potions.
ScionOfTorgue: Sweet! I always wanted one of those, but they were only available through the cash shop before, and I never really had the money to spare.
Shadowfax: Yeah. These won't stack like the cash shop version does, so you won't be able to just use a bunch of them and gain ridiculous exp boosts like some guys did. They have to keep a demand going for the cash shop version, I guess.
YOLO720NOSCOPE: Che, yeah, there's always some munchkin out there who wants to level up without working for it...
Shadowfax: As we speak, I'm planting the seeds so I can harvest the ingredients. The components are pretty rare, so before I go, remind me to drop my items off in the guild warchest before I log off today, or you may have to do some farming before you can make more than today's supply. I should have the first batch of them within the hour. I'll meet you guys in the town square of 'Ponyville'. Have a dance party or something while you wait.
RiderOnTheStorm: Gotta love how in-depth this prank is, they even renamed the towns!
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The first Applejack knew of the blank eyed, blank flanked ponies was when she spotted one from her bedroom window. It was planting a seed in the ground, and shortly after began watering it with a small watering can.
Now, Applejack didn't have any problems with an earth pony planting a seed and trying to make it grow, but he was doing so on her property. It was on a patch that her family wasn't using, yes, and she'd have no problems with someone using it, since it wasn't good for growing apples, but it was still her land, and her family's land. The least the feller could do was ask first. She'd hardly charge anything for the use of it. Heck, she'd sell it to him for a song (Well, not a song song, unless it was a really impressive musical number, but a lot less than he'd find elsewhere), if he showed any interest. After all, the Apple family had never managed to get anything to grow on that particular patch, and with it being too close to the Everfree Forest, it was a bit of a risk, trying to plant anything.
However, after getting her hat on and heading down to see this stranger who had decided to take up gardening on her property, she quickly realized something was wrong: His movements were too... mechanical, to be those of an ordinary pony, and his absence of a cutie mark was surprising. And then there was the eyes...
They were just a blank, white void. The lights might have been on, given that the stallion was moving around with clear intent, but it seemed that nopony was home.
She was so surprised by the pony's appearance that it took her a minute to see that there were words floating in the air, above the pony's head.
They read:
Shadowfax, Lvl: 99
Guild: The Riders Of Rohan
They just hovered there like some kind of magical bulletin board, proclaiming, presumably, the pony's identity for all the world to see...
Upon realizing that what she was seeing was no ordinary pony, she decided the best thing to do was to see if she could get Twilight Sparkle to take a look. After all, this smelled of magic, and strong magic at that, and magic was her lavender friend's specialty.
After letting her brother know what was going on, and asking him to make sure that neither he, nor Granny Smith or Applebloom got anywhere near the strange stallion, before she got back.
And with that, she took off for Ponyville at a run.
Little did she know that she wasn't the first pony in town to see such strange ponies, but the last.
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...Two hours later
There was a changeling, in the Everfree Forest. She was not remarkable as changelings go, save for one characteristic: She really hated timberwolves.
This was a rather new trait she had developed, one that had only appeared within the last few weeks. In truth, she was rather new to the entire concept of hatred, having never really encountered a creature that she could honestly say that she disliked. Changelings, it may surprise you to learn, are pretty mellow, emotion-wise. They tend to just go with the flow, most of the time. However, as new as she was to hatred, she was doing a masterful job of hating timberwolves in general, and the seventeen that had been hounding her for the last two weeks in specific.
In Japanese folklore, the wolves of that island nation were said to be able to pursue their prey for days on end, exhausting their quarry until it could be taken down. This would imply a level of stamina that would be considered almost impossible. Hunting like that would almost be a zero-sum game: The amount of nutrition gained from eating all but the largest creatures would not be worth such intensive and persistent pursuit.
However, timberwolves need no sleep, and do not need to eat or drink, strictly speaking. They will tear a creature apart with their fangs, but gain no sustenance from the act of killing. Once they catch the scent of prey, however, they will pursue their prey until either it leaves the confines of the forest, or they catch what they are after...
So, for two miserable weeks, the changeling had fled for her life, trying desperately to stay alive. She hadn't managed to catch even a wink of sleep for two days, once the pack pursuing her had grown to a large enough size that they could climb atop one another and reach her even in the tallest trees. Her wings were damaged, from the creatures having caught her off-guard at the beginning of this mess and having gotten in a lucky bite, so she couldn't just fly away.
When she'd tried fighting them off, she'd discovered that they came back together in short order, and they had taken great offense in her having tried to stop that from happening by setting three of them on fire. They were not going to give her the chance to try that again. They were advancing in numbers too great for her, even if she were fresh and well rested. Now? She was exhausted, sore, and bleeding from dozens of places, where the wolves had managed to get the drop on her and get a fang into one of the joints in her carapace. Even if she somehow miraculously escaped, she'd likely bleed out soon. It was almost over now: She was lunch, and she knew it...
...But she wasn't going to stop running until she passed out from exhaustion. That way, even if she died, she'd be completely unconscious and unable to feel the pain of her demise.
Her shock at suddenly breaking the tree line and somehow ending up on a farm caused her to momentarily lose track of her surroundings. In that brief moment of surprise, her hoof caught on a small stone, and she tripped and skidded, before finally coming to a stop. She tried to get up, but her strength deserted her.
She was tired. So... so tired...
She nearly fell asleep, but the sudden, victorious snarls of the timberwolves forced her back into wakefulness. She tried to rise, but failed once more, and could only turn to face her inevitable doom.
And that was when he appeared: A pony, moving to engage the approaching timberwolves.
He was an earth pony, his coat a shadowy grey. He seemed no bigger or stronger than the average member of his species, and yet his movements were so efficient, so professional, that they seemed almost mechanical in their precision. There was not a single motion wasted, not even a slight muscle twitch that could suggest anything but absolute surety in his strength and ability.
He charged the first timberwolf, and as he did so, his body was suddenly enveloped in a sheet of golden fire. He slammed into the wooden beast, and it did not burst apart, as most timberwolves did, but rather it exploded into a cloud of ash and burning sticks. Without hesitation, the stranger engaged the rest of the pack.
It was like watching some figure of legend, brought to life to dispense justice to the wicked: His strikes were swift, sure, and lethal, reducing his foes into clouds of ash with seemingly no effort at all. Withing twenty seconds, and without his foes ever laying a single tooth or claw upon him, this stranger destroyed the entire pack, each one with only a single blow.
And then, he turned and approached her...
Ponies and changelings did not have the best of histories, for obvious reasons. While the pony had saved her from timberwolves, it was unlikely that he had done so out of charity: Timberwolves were likely as much a threat to ponies as they were to any other creature. She expected that his only intent now was in putting an end to her life.
Well, she was as good as dead, anyways: Barring immediate medical attention, which was practically unheard of for a changeling, she was going to bleed to death soon. She was fading already. At least whatever this stallion did would be quick...
Instead, she was startled to see a gold-tinted bottle, filled with a rainbow-colored fluid, suddenly appear on the ground in front of her.
She studied the strange container, and noted the red plus sign emblem on the front.
...No, it couldn't be.
Though it took what little strength she had left, she managed to grab the bottle, and poured the contents into her mouth.
The effects were almost instantaneous: The aches of two weeks on the run suddenly vanished, as did the pain of her injuries. As she looked on in awe, her bite wounds also healed. More incredibly, her stamina suddenly returned, and then seemed to grow ten-fold, as if, instead of having been driven nearly to death with exhaustion, she had just woken up from a great night's sleep. And perhaps most fantastically at all, she felt an incredible amount of energy well up inside of her, as if she had suddenly consumed enough love to feed a dozens of changelings for a dozen moons.
Inconceivable. A healing potion. The stallion... that strange, inexplicable, wonderful stallion had given her a healing potion, and one so potent it had restored both her stamina and her love energy to their fullest!
Such brews were almost impossibly rare, as their ingredients were almost fantastically difficult to come by, and had to be distilled through an insanely complex process that only a small number of beings were well-versed enough in potion-crafting to complete. While hospitals could take care of most injuries these days through mundane means, only a healing spell or a potion could take someone from the brink of death, and restore them instantly to wellness, and unicorns who knew complex healing spells were even rarer than the potions. Such items were normally kept only by the fantastically wealthy, or by major government figures whose sudden death would be considered a global calamity (Like certain alicorns). It was said that Princesses Celestia and Luna had three stored away somewhere, in case of an emergency, and that anypony else could count themselves lucky to have even one.
And this... this stallion had given her a potion worth a king's ransom, no, ten kings' ransoms, as though it were nothing...
...To a nameless drone like her.
It would be difficult to put into words how moved she was by such an act of kindness and generosity. Even the queen would never be so giving: If she were to gain possession of such a brew, she'd never allow anybuggy near it, or even know it existed, let alone give it to someone she'd never met before.
Rising to her hooves, she took in the appearance of the pony, and for the first time noted the words above his head. She took a moment to come to a very important decision, and then bowed, and said, in a voice choked with emotion...
"I do not know where you came from, or what brought you here, but you have my eternal, undying gratitude... and my allegiance, Lord Shadowfax. From this day forward, I renounce all loyalties, and swear myself to your service. From now until the end of time, your allies are my allies, your enemies are my enemies, and your cause is my cause. If you wish me to guard your body, none will touch you save after stepping over my corpse. If you wish me to serve you, I will perform any task, no matter how menial, without complaint, and to the best of my ability. If you... if you wish for a companion, I promise you will find none more skilled in the romantic arts than I. From now, until the end of my life, I am yours, and yours alone."
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Meanwhile, in another universe...
A figure sat behind a computer, looking at a message that just appeared...
'Changeling wants to join your guild. Will you let her?'
'Yes/No'
The figure pondered this unusual turn of events for a moment. It was unheard of for an NPC to make a request like that. He'd dropped the potion just to see what happened, although he'd intended to drop a standard healing potion, not one of his Total Restoration potions. Still, he had dozens of those to spare, so it was no big deal.
This... changeling's reaction must have been a part of the April Fool's Event. He moved his cursor over to click yes, and then paused, wracked by a fit of coughing. It lasted only a minute, but when he pulled his hand away from his mouth, it came away speckled with blood.
"The doctor was being optimistic," the figure said as he noted that his hand was covered in more blood than it had been when he'd suffered such a fit this morning. "I'm not going to last the month. I'll be lucky to see the end of the week..."
He considered, for a moment, just clicking 'No', dropping his items off in the guild warchest, and calling an ambulance. Since he'd woken up this morning, his lungs had been on fire, as were his guts, he was sweating buckets in spite of how cool it was today, and he felt a pounding in his head that would not stop. He was on time with his meds, but his body seemed to be taking a bad turn, and he might very well have only hours, instead of the days he had been promised only last week by the doctors.
But then again...
He sighed, and then clicked 'Yes'. His condition had been confirmed incurable. The truth is, he'd been almost fantastically lucky to last as long as he had, even at the young age of twenty-six. If he was about to die, it would just mean that he didn't have three weeks of bedpans and feeding tubes to look forward to while his body finally gave up the ghost. In the meantime, he'd die doing what he loved: Playing games with all his friends.