He had even less of an idea how to deal with her than he did before.

At first she had been nothing but smiles, welcome words and offers of various snacks and goodies. She would offer a slice of cake, and the next few seconds would find him somehow agreeing to play some sort of quadruped based party game. 'Pin the tail on the pony' indeed.

It was immediately after she had dragged him over to try out 'bobbing for apples'. Parzival had eaten apples before, but the pink party pony had told him in no uncertain terms that the apples grown by her friend would make any other taste inferior.

There was no way he could properly test this claim, but the scents his tower were sending out certainly were mouth watering. He hadn't had a real organically grown apple in years, not since back when his mother had still been alive. She had... 'acquired a client' that owned an apple tree, and payed her in fresh grown food from their personal garden.

After the pink pony had emerged from dunking her head underwater, she had taken a deep breath to replenish her lungs with fresh air. The 'real life quirks' these simulations had were certainly amusing, as if a program actually needed to breath. For one to take such a deep breath after having had to hold it? These reactions were certainly scripted with deep care.

She had immediately frozen in place, one eyebrow twitching as her hair poofed back into place from the water that had permeated it. She fixed Parzival with a frantic look, quickly closing the distance so there was barely a fingers-breadth between them. She took in another deep breath, a titanic sniff through her nose. A hurt look crossed her face, and she slowly backed away. She was shaking her head, muttering to herself as she went.

"No, you can't... he can't be..."

As quickly as she had spoken, she was gone. An afterimage took her place, slowly fading in her absence.

"What did you do to Pinkie?" Twilight asked, concern masking her features as she took a place beside him.

"I didn't do anything!" Parzival protested, trying to gauge just what the heck had just happened.

"He ain't liein', Pinkie jes came up for air after applebobbing and took a big ol' huff," The cowboy hat wearing pony affirmed, nodding her head along to her speech, "Ain't seen her act like that near a new pony before, I can tell you that. You didn't do nothin' to her before... did you?" she continued, fixing Parzival with a mild but well meaning stink eye.

"Nope, never met her before today. Can't say I like the idea of the ladies running in terror from me from only getting a single whiff," Parzival had his avatar take a thematic sniff from under the crook of one of his forward -again, quadruped, how novel- armpits. "I mean, I just took a shower. Wouldn't think I'd start stinking so bad so quickly..."

This managed to grant him a sparse group of laughter from the ponies surrounding him. If the games NPCs were so easily amused by such substandard comedic talent, then might just make a killing. Art3miss might get a laugh at that. Someone else that actually thought he was the height of comedy.

"Well, nothin' we can do iffin' she's not here," Cowboy hat mused, shaking her head. "I'll go out and take a quick looksee. If I find her, I'll get to the bottom of whats botherin' her. Yall jes stay here, enjoy yourselves, k?"

She left shortly after, leaving him to wonder if her program instructions would even let her find her wayward friend. Seeing as he was the one she had directed her outburst towards, it was more likely a hidden quest line had come into effect. It more than likely would remain unresolved until he went out and tried to fix it himself, or until whatever arbitrary time limit it had expired. Probably would last the night, no reason he couldn't just enjoy himself for a bit, then go out to solve the girls problem. Get a bundle of friendship points.

Pffft.

Friendship points. Sad thing, now that he had dismissed that, that's probably what the server called the games version of EXP. It would just be his luck.

"Want some cake?" a mare with a pale red coat offered, holding out a plate with proffered foodstuff.

"Thank you!" Parzival belted out, taking the desert in one forward facing leg. Balancing back onto ones hindquarters wasn't exactly an easy action to translate out into tactile controls, but Parzival managed without making his avatar look like a flailing idiot. Eating the cake was slightly more difficult. It didn't give him an option to 'eat' it, simply acting similar to the popcorn he had taken out previously. The best way he could figure is that this game was supposed to be acted out in mime as much as possible, to make the player feel like they actually were there in the room with these other friendly looking individuals.

Parzival separated a bite of cake from the whole, and popped it into his mouth.

Wade thrashed in his vertical harness, hurriedly flicking at the interrupt switch on his helmet and hoping it would maybe pause the game in progress. He scrabbled at the front of his suit, gagging at something sweet that had somehow gotten in his mouth.

A hacking cough flung whatever it was to the floor beneath him.

"Lights!" Wade called out, tipping the visor on his helmet back so he could more easily see. The helmet was designed to let the user see the world around them even in game, which was why he had been playing with the lights dimmed. That way if his wife had come in to try to talk to him, he wouldn't have ended up ignoring her.

He stared at the soggy mouthful of food that had landed on the floor, eyes wide and not understanding.

It was cake.

More specifically, it was definitely the exact bite of cake he had taken a bite of, in the game.

Parzival gave a wracking cough, a low sound that tore its way out of his chest. Looking around, he noticed a large number of ponies had gathered around his avatar.

"Oh, sorry," he stated, giving an embarrassed sounding laugh. It was returned with confused looks. "Just something caught in my throat. "

"Are you okay?" a random stallion he hadn't gotten the name of asked. Judging by the mark of a fizzing bottle of soda on his flank, Parzival guessed he'd probably be called something like 'Soda Pop'. "You were just... standing there. Not moving, just creepily staring at the wall."

It seemed that his short sojourn in the real world had not gone unnoticed. A shame the interrupt switch hadn't paused the simulation, but at the very least it had stopped his motions from the real world being translated into the game. Lord only knows what they would have taken from from him spitting out a chunk of cake on the floor.

The cake.

How did the bite he took in the game get into his mouth in the real world? His door was still locked, logs stated that he hadn't been disturbed up to the point where he had left the game. It couldn't have been a form of teleportation, even though the technology was technically viable, the power requirements would tank half the country for a single cubic inch of matter. If anyone had actually managed to make it in the first place, which as far as he was aware no one had yet. no fully functional, anyway. Every once in a while you got some joker saying he had 'done it', but then it came to light they hadn't made it farther than the 'I disintegrated it' step.

So how?

Subliminal suggestions? Maybe he had simply thought the cake was in the real world... wait. That one could actually make sense. You only needed flashing lights to properly jumble a minds processes, and seeing as he had a game visor on, coupled with the fact he was playing an unaltered unedited presumably untested game that Halliday had been only intended for one person to be able to get their hands on, it could very well be that he had put triggers that would persist into real life.

Or trick him into thinking had gone along with him into real life. Had he even actually taken off his helmet earlier? The current trend his thoughts were taking started to make his head hurt. He must have still just been in the game, a simulated space derived from player logs and mental echoes.

Those thoughts behind him, Parzival quickly exited the teeming party. It wasn't that he didn't like the festive atmosphere, but the cool air on his skin felt nice. That and he remembered the issue of the pink tinged one, the one that cowboy hat had gone out to look for. Pazival didn't see the orange one anywhere nearby, but he did have an idea as to where to find the pink one. Maybe if he finished this quest quickly, he could add another pony to his friends list and still get to enjoy the party...

Anyway, he didn't have to be a world class tracker to notice the muffled sounds of crying. Coming from above him. Looking up, he surmised that she had suspected that the cowboy hat toting one would be the one to go out looking for her. So she chose a direction said friend wouldn't either wouldn't be able to go -probably not this one, seeing as she had made it up there somehow- or wouldn't think about going. Pretty smart.

For the setting of a library, a still living tree made for good landscaping. Wouldn't make any sense out in the real world, but he would have sold a lung to be able to live in a place this this instead of the stacks. Parzival was glad those days were far, far behind him.

The greaves bonus stats added plenty of lift to his vertical takeoff, making it so his departure from the ground and upwards was a rather smooth affair. Pretty soon he was clambering up limbs of the tree, swiftly making his way to the top of the canopy. He could have just flown up and landed right on top, but that might alert her to his presence before he got himself situated. The sounds of a distressed female grew ever louder, and Parzival almost stopped with the thought, "Do I really want to try to talk to an emotional girl? Even one just inside a game?"

There really wasn't any choice. Parzival had decided to be a hero, and heroes went and tried to soothe the hearts of distressed maidens. That's how it went. Regardless of how scary crying women were.

"Hello?" he stated upon reaching the top layer, mere feet away from the pink pony who had eloped from the party.

Her head whipped around, eyes stabbing him with an icy glare.

"No! Go away!" she called out, diving into the treetop like it was the deep end of a swimming pool.

Parzival carefully made his way forward, discovering that she hadn't so much swam through the treetop as it had looked like. The leaves remained relatively undisturbed where she had dived through, meaning...

"Teleportation?" Parzival breathed a shocked sigh of respect. So the supposedly magic-less earth ponies could do stunts of this magnitude? Cool. Maybe he'd go back and stick with with the base class if this was the kind of stuff they could eventually get... But as it was, he couldn't follow. Not normally, anyway...

Loki's Crown of Horns.

A simple tiara design of headgear, with two large horns reaching skyward. A bit unwieldy, but they had a very welcome effect. They either allowed their wearer to teleport via line of sight, or allowed them to follow along the teleport trail of another player. That way, even if you teleported into an area that normally didn't allow any players you didn't invite, they could very well come along and say 'screw you' to the rules as long as you had teleported in yourself.

So, situationally useful.

Prodding the area he suspected the pinkette to have 'jumped from' gave him a slight tension in the area pushing back at his hooves. It worked. With a feeling similar to slipping down a slide, Parzival slipped through to fall on the ground.

"What?! How did you... No, just stay away from me!" he heard before he gathered his bearings, just noticing the tip of the pink ponies' tail slipping into a swiftly closing hole in midair.

"Can't do that, madame," Parzival slurred briefly, shaking his head. A quick leap forward saw him through the next portal, just in time to see the ends of the ponys' pink legs disappearing into another one ahead. "What is this, a magical game of tag?" he joked, diving through the next one.

Right into the side of a wall. The portal had been opened right in front of a sturdy brick wall, only about two feet away from its rigid surface. She had played him good, but he wouldn't allow himself to be swayed when he had come so far.

"Wait!" he called out, trying to distract her. Her movements faltered slightly, her head turning back to shout out-

"Stop following me! Just stay away from me you big meanie!"

"No can do," Parzival muttered, quickly getting back to his feet and jumping through the portal left behind her. He had calculated correctly, only being a split second after her. He barreled into her back, sending them both into a boneless tumble on the dusty ground.

"Please... stop..." came the quiet whimper as the pink pony once more tried to make her escape.

"Wait!" he called out, physically huffing as the stamina bar was no doubt balancing dangerously near 'empty'. "C'mon, please! Just hold on a minute! Why wont you talk to me?!"

"Because I hate you!" the pink pony declared, whirling towards Parzival with tears in her eyes. "I hate you, I hate that you're here, I hate the very idea of you, I hate your presence, I hate that you... smell like him," at this she broke down fully into tears, hanging her head towards the ground.

"I don't understand," Parzival stated, wary confusion evident in his tone. No male was ever to truly know the wonder and mystique of the female mind, but he knew full well enough that when faced with a crying woman, you try to comfort her. Minimum words to avoid digging yourself a hole, just enough to let them know you are listening.

"Of course you don't," she sniffled, "Of course you don't..." she repeated, wiping at the still flowing tears from her eye with a foreleg. "Don't you get it? You smell like Holly. That means you're using his identity settings. That means... " she let loose with a body wracking shudder, shaking in place before continuing. "That means you won the contest he was always talking about. You found the egg."

She let out another sob, composing herself before she continued.

"If you found the egg... that only would have happened once he died. When his will was released."

Her head rose, fixing Parzival with teary red eyes. There was no anger there, only pure sadness laced with acceptance.

"The very fact that you're here, your very existence... means I'll never see my Holiday again."