//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: Friendship is Optimal: Friendship ist Krieg // by anima draconis //------------------------------// "Of all the things you've done in your life, this is gonna be the most untrve ever, you know that?" Aurore looked at her friend with an amused smile, she knew he wasn't one to care about the 'trve' stuff, but she liked to poke him with that. Lucas gave her an annoyed look before flipping the middle finger at her. "This is how many fuck I give, just because it's you who said that." The 24 years old woman responded with a laugh and glanced at the box that was laying on the table in front of her. It was the box of a Ponypad, a gaming device that had been popular for some times now. The device wasn't really interesting to her; small, colourful horses wasn't her thing, it was even the opposite. For her one true passion was extreme music, since she discovered the joys of heavy metal in her teenage years, she was only living to hear what would happen to this music in the future. And it was more to be closer to the underground scene than everything that she left her small town in the French countryside for a large city where she studied history. It was on the university campus that she met Lucas who was a philosophy student. Because of their shared love for extreme metal, they quickly became friends. So here they were, at Lucas apartment, a simple one with a main living room completed by a small kitchen corner, a small bedroom and a bathroom. The walls were covered by various posters of bands, movies and video games, but mostly bands. And in some places, between the grim faces of black metal musicians, the blood and splatter of death metal covers and some corny 80s horror movie poster were pictures of little equines, the same equines who were living in the world of Equestria Online, the game supposed to be played on a Ponypad. Aurore knew Lucas was a brony, he wasn't one of those who hide it out of fear of being teased. He was one weird person, always out of this world, daydreaming about going away somewhere else. And he mostly was the one to love totally random stuff, he was a fan of gory horror movies and yet he watched My Little Pony and other cartoons, he was an absolute fan of all that was brutal death metal and other goregrind stuff but yet, his love for celtic folk music was also very strong. His behaviour was also a little weird, always making exaggerated gestures, always doing some silly dance moves when he felt like it, always telling you random things when you least expected it. He was Lucas, quite a silly but friendly dude. "Let's be serious one second there" he said "I thought that I would introduce you to the joy of Equestria Online, because it is an awesome game to play with friends and I know you're sad because I stopped kicking your butt on Unreal Tournament. But most importantly, in a few weeks, it would be the only way for us to be together." And this is why Aurore said Lucas was being untrue. Not because he wanted her to play Equestria Online, he had done much worse in term of proposition, but because he was planning to do what was called the emigration. It was a process that uploaded your consciousness in the virtual world of Equestria Online, and destroyed your physical body, so the process was only one way. She didn't really knew why, but some time after the public release of the game, some announcements were made and apparently, the technology that permitted people to upload themselves in the game had been created. It was kind of weird to her that of all the thing that could have been chosen, it would have been that cartoony world. And seeing her friend leaving everything behind to become a cartoon horse was probably the silliest thing she had witnessed in her life. Aurore was keeping a sort of poker face, inside of her, she was laughing at the absurdity of it all and somewhat crying over her friends telling her he's going to leave. This part of her that was laughing liked the way Lucas was thumbing is nose at life, it was like he was saying "I hate you life, you're a bitch, but I don't want to die because death is scary, and boring, so I'm gonna leave this world to a digital one where life isn't a cunt!" and it was so him that she was amazed he didn't choose to emigrate sooner. But yet, she was mourning in advance, he was the only person she was comfortable being around, and even if they would still be able to be in touch, he wouldn't be physically with her. And behind all the cynicism and misanthropy she was showing, she cared about the small group of person she had been able to sympathize with, and Lucas had been unconsciously pushing her away from what he called her "trve facade of black metal misanthropy with some cherry on the top". A part of her feared that his lack of presence would make this facade becomes her true self. She was stopped in her thought when Lucas took the box and removed the Ponypad from it. It was the size of a laptop screen and the thickness of a touchpad. Its back was yellow with three pink butterflies printed in the middle. A keyboard with the same color pattern, a mouse and a power cable were also taken out of the box. "Just wait a second, you'll see pony you in no time." said Lucas as he was setting the Ponypad up for its first use. Once the device was plugged and its battery charging, it was connected to the internet and finally, the game launched. After a title screen showing the Equestria Online logo, the Ponypad displayed the character creator. "So what do you want?" asked Lucas, "Some badass pegasus, a pretty unicorn or just a normal pony?" Aurore sighed, creating her equestrian alter-ego was gonna be a really long process. She knew absolutely nothing about ponies, and despite the obvious physical differences and the fact pegasus were able to fly, she didn't know the differences between the three types. And after asking Lucas for details, she was even more unsure as to what to choose. Unicorn could be great, magic and stuff were nice, but there were the pegasus who fly and lived in clouds, and also the earth ponies with their deep connection to nature. "If you want my opinion, you should take pegasus, so that you can see my house in the clouds, or take unicorn because there's a spell to walk on clouds, but it is hard to learn. But you're free to choose." Lucas smiled innocently and Aurore sighed. "Pegasus it is then." She clicked on the pegasus icon and on the screen appeared a white pony with wings and no tail or mane. About half an hour later, her pony was finally done. It was a female pegasus, somewhat short, with a dark purple coat, a grey and dark blue long and wavy mane and grey eyes. Aurore wasn't really trying to do a pony looking like her, what would be the point in a game that you played to go out of the real world for a moment. "And now, you are going to meet the almighty goddess of this world" announced Lucas "be ready to worship or burn her !" The screen flashed white. When the light dimmed, a throne room appeared. The place was simply gorgeous. The ground was covered by a crimson carpet, white marble pillars were going up on the side of the huge room, colourful stained glasses were on the wall and let sunlight enter the room in a whole rainbow of colours. The throne in itself was a large golden chair with purple pillows, and sitting on it was one magnificent creature. It was a pony of course, its coat was a sparkling white, its mane an ethereal rainbow and her eyes a hypnotic purple. It was wearing a golden regalia and a huge golden collar. It was as if she was directly looking at Aurore from the screen. Then, it spoke, its feminine voice full of kindness: "Welcome to Equestria my little pony. I am Princess Celestia, one of the two ruler of this land. You are here in my throne room to help me make your stay as enjoyable as possible. May I ask for your name?" Aurore was prepared to type an answer, but no window came. "You know" said Lucas "this thing has a mic, you can just speak." And so she speak. "Aurore, my name is Aurore." "I understand that it is your human name, Aurore, but in this world, you shall be somepony else as a new life awaits you here in Equestria. Do you want me to generate a name for you or do you want to think a little with the help of your friend Dunkelheit?" Aurore looked quizzically at his friend. His pseudo more important than how Celestia recognized him. "You called yourself Dunkelheit?" "Hey ! It's the only good song Varg Vikernes ever did, I consider it as a tribute." "Of all the names you could have chosen... And you forget War in Burzum's good songs." Celestia stepped in the discussion. "I guess that you and Dunkelheit share common interests may I propose a name that you might like?" "Go on." accepted Aurore, she had absolutely no idea what name pony her could possibly have. She didn't even know what a pony name was supposed to be, and no, Lucas had never talked to her about it, ponies weren't interesting her and she accepted to play Equestria Online for one and only one reason. "Is Vocal Vortex to your convenience?" Aurore thought about it, she was a singer (she and Lucas had created a musical duo, Lucas was doing the bass, guitar and used music softwares for everything else and she was singing), so Vocal was suiting, and Vortex... Was this a reference to one of her favorite singer? If so, how would she know that? It was kind of creepy, but somewhat awesome. "I guess it suits me, but how did you came up with it?" "It was easy" Celestia had a smug expression on her face "I know Dunkelheit fairly well, I just had to search a little on his Facebook page to find you and analyze your profile. I learned you were a singer and I saw that you shared a lot of song where you can hear the singer known as I.C.S. Vortex, so I deduced you were a fan, also, he is better in Arcturus than in Dimmu Borgir." And that pony was having great musical tastes. "If you have any other question, you might want to ask them now because your new life is about to begin." "I guess I will ask Lucas if I need help with the game in the future, but thanks." When she said her friend’s name, she heard the voice of her character, it sounded like her voice but a little bit higher, say the name of Lucas’ pony. She gave him a puzzled look and he shrugged. "It is the way it works, you can't say your real name or other similar stuff.Some sort of way to prevent private information being randomly thrown around, or maybe the game is just a roleplaying nazi." Aurore chuckled at the irony of defending privacy but also searching facebook pages to gather informations. Another funny paradox created by mankind infinite creativity. But enough reflexion about mankind and more playing. After all, if she was to play the game to keep touch with Lucas in the future, she may as well get in the game and discover what interesting things she can do.