//------------------------------// // Deck Building Ch02 // Story: Equestria Girls: Friendship is Chaotic // by raven618 //------------------------------// "Okay, Sis, let's get you started." Rarity was back home in her sister, Sweetie Belle's rome. Both the girls had finished their homework and were now working on building Rarity's Chaotic deck. Rarity, despite knowing a great deal about the game, had never really had any cards of her own. Anytime she played it was against her sister, spitting her deck between them. Now, with Rarity's new Scanner and cards, her little sister was going to help her make the best deck possible. "We should probably start by looking at the cards you got with the Scanner, and I'll give you cards that work well with them." She opened up the cardboard box containing her Scanner, behind the device was a small tinfoil package containing around thirty or so cards. After opening the package, she divided the cards into their different card types. All in all, she had ten Attack cards, five Locations, Mugic, Battlegear, and Creatures. In addition, she had 3 rare foil cards. The first of these was a Skeletal Strike attack card, the second a Mugic called the Song of Geonova. But what Rarity was most interested in was the third card, an Overworld creature. She looked like a humanoid gazelle or antelope dressed in a green tunic dress. "Lomma" Rarity read her name aloud. "Now that's one tough creature." her sister commented. "It looks like you have mostly Overworld cards here, so I can give you locations and attacks that will work to your advantage, like Rustoxic, Pebble Storm, and the Riverlands." The two stayed up a while longer working out the finer points of Rarity's deck. Afterwards, Sweetie helped her get her Scanner started up, while Rarity set up her online Chaotic account, 'Lady Lomma' seemed a fitting screen-name somehow. Sweetie wanted to get her cards 'scanned' into her scanner, but her big sis decided they had done enough for the night, and that they could do that in the morning. Early the next morning, rarity had her entire deck scanned into her Scanner. She was about to head off to school, but noticed something on her Scanner's screen. It was a string of letters and numbers, not unlike the codes on the bottom of her cards. Except this one was saying to enter it into her Scanner's main page. She didn't remember reading about anything like this in the instruction book, but she guessed she could have missed something. Slightly cautiously, she entered the code into the Scanner, and nothing happened. "Weird." She muttered to herself. Well, no time to dwell on it now, she had to get to school. She stuffed the scanner into her book bag and her deck into a holder that she clipped onto the outside pocket. And like that she was ready for the day. << Slightly cautiously, she entered the code into the Scanner, and her entire world became a flowing tunnel of white. When it ended, she found herself in a huge open building that most defiantly was not her bedroom. She was standing on a white circle that was part of a ring of similar circles. The floor of the building dropped down to a second floor a few meters to her left, and she could see a number of other people moving about, or sitting at a table in what looked like a food court. Above her were several large screens showing... something, she couldn't quite make out what. "Okay, I've been teleported to somewhere I've never seen before. Not the strangest thing that has ever happened to me." She muttered to herself. A noise half-way between a fizz and a whoosh emanated from behind her. Turning around, she saw a yellow skinned girl a few years younger than she was. Rarity recognized her as the sister of her close friend and the close friend of her sister. "Apple Bloom?" "Rarity!?" The country girl exclaimed. "What are you doing here? HOW did you get here?" "I have been asking myself that same question since I got here. One moment I'm at home setting up my Chaotic Scanner, then I'm here, where ever here is." Apple Bloom looked at the older girl for a moment, then started laughing to herself. "So that's what happened. I was worried Sweetie's Scanner had gone haywire." She took the pearl girl's hand and pulled her to the railing overlooking the lower floor. "Welcome to Chaotic." "I don't follow." "You're in another world. The world of Chaotic, or part a the way there. What's important is that here, folks play Chaotic for real, instead of just with cards." Play for real? Another world? "Okay, I am going to need you to explain one more time, slower and with more details." "No time for that." turning around, Rarity saw some kind of robot. It was about the size of a backpack, but hovering a few feet off the ground so it's head was about eye level with her. "The young miss has her first match in five minutes at the Crellin drome." "Alrighty then." Rarity again found herself being dragged by the red headed girl, this time out of the building and onto a moving sidewalk that was carrying the two girls towards another large building. This one was blue and round shaped, with a wave of white metal beams around the back half. "You have played Chaotic before, right?" Apple Bloom asked her. "Of course I have. Who do you think Sweetie Belle practices with?" "Okay good. Now, I'm going to try and make this brief. Y'all are going to be playing Chaotic, except instead of just playing with cards, y'all are going to become the creatures. Ya still with me?" "Yes, I think so." "If'n it's anything like my first battle, you should be good to go from here on in. I'ma go watch from the big screen." And her only connection with reality was running away from her. Great. She looked at the massive building, a circular door opened in front of her. Stepping inside she found a massive room with data lines covering the walls. Directly in front of her was a small slot on a stick in the floor. In the center of the room was a mass of rotating curves. Behind that was another sick thing, and another girl, who looked as confused as Rarity was. She had lime colored skin and yellowish gold hair that was combed back over her head. She was wearing a black leather jacket with yellow stripes on the sleeves, and a purple shirt with a black lightning pattern under that. "Rarity Belle." The mass said in a distinctly electronic voice. "Chaotic screen name, Lady Lomma. And Lightning Dust. Chaotic screen name, Eightyeight MPR. Please step forward." Both girls walked up to the sticks in front of them, "Dock your Scanners." Looking at the slot, she found it was the perfect shape to hold her Scanner, which she just realized she had been holding the entire time. Once she put it into the slot, a massive, clear white board appeared above it. On one half was the Chaotic symbol above a ring of white squares that seemed to come out of the board. The other half was blank, save for a yellow border that connected with the right side of the board, while the left end expanded into a small rectangle. Below this board was four more circles of squares: green, purple, grey and blue. "Normally, Chaotic players are required to win a number of online matches before they are sent the scanner codes that allow them to enter Chaotic. However, both of you acquired Scanners that were already programmed with the codes admitted." 'So that's what that code was.' Rarity thought to herself. "Since you both managed to enter Chaotic at roughly the same time, your first battle will be against each other. Assemble your fields for a one-on-one match." "So," The other girl, Lightning, called from across the room, "Do you have any idea what's going on?" "I guess they just want us to play the game." "Select your creature from the blue dial." The mass instructed. Rarity looked at the dial, then started clicking it down with her hand. On the left side of the board, her Creature cards started ticking by. Through the hologram, she could she Lightning doing the same thing. 'Okay, time to start thinking strategy. If it's a one-on-one battle, I should use a creature that can hold their own without much help.' That could be a power house like Arias or Viqtarr, or... 'Guess I might as well live up to my screen name.' She placed Lomma on her board. She guessed the other three dials were for the other card types. The grey dial brought up her battlegear. 'Lomma's disciplines are all alright, and she deals five extra damage with water attacks. So I guess I should use something like, the Ring of Na'arin.' For mugic, she choose the Song of Resurgence, just in case the battle went south. When she touched the icon for the mugic, it turned into a blue heptagon, she placed this in the yellow rectangle to the left of her field. "Choose ten location cards, then place them in the white Location Randomizer." "Thanks for the tip, Gyro." Lightning bantered at the spinning object above them. Rarity looked through her locations, thanks to Sweetie Belle, she had ten locations, but that was all she had. So she was stuck inputting locations that would help her, like Cordac Falls, and the Riverlands; but also locations that could hinder her, like Runic Grove and the Storm Tunnel. "Players, lock your decks. Press the red button located on the top of your scanners." Both girls did so. The dials under the board disappeared, and Lightning's half of the board became visible. Her creature was a yellow winged gargoyle with one eye and his tounge hanging out. "Since neither of you have been in a drome match before, you may decide among yourselves who will be the attacker." "I'll let you initiate the attack." Rarity was surprised to hear her opponent relinquish the initiative like that, but she wasn't going to argue with it. "Very well, Lady Lomma, you will be the attacker. Spin the Location Randomizer." Rarity gave the white dial, which hadn't disappeared like the other dials, a hard flick with her wrist. Her locations flashed by quickly, before slowing and stopping on a canyon river. "The Riverlands." Rarity breathed a sigh of relief. "Now, choose your attacking creature and target creature." Rarity took another look at Lightning's creature, in the white line underneath the creature's picture, was the creature's name. "Lomma attacks, Krekk." "Touch your creature cards." Both girls put their hands against their cards, causing the holographic board to disappear. Their hands became wrapped in a glowing field of white energy, which started crawling up their arms until it had enveloped their entire bodies. When the energy dissipated, instead of two human girls, were two creatures, in the flesh and blood. "Mirror. I NEED A MIRROR!" Lomma, formerly Rarity started screaming. "Oh I just know something has happened to my hair!" "You have hooves and horns, and it's your HAIR you're worried about?" Said the winged demon man that used to be a high school girl. "And what about ME. I just grew WINGS! That's... actually kind of cool when I think about it." "Let the battle, begin." The spinning mass started to glow white, and the next thing either of the former girls knew, they were once again teleported, this time to a rocky cliff over looking a rushing river.