The corridor was dimly lit, the occasional bolt of electricity from a broken wire the only other light source outside of the emergency lights. Marks of scratches could be seen on the walls, floor and even ceiling, the grey coloured paint removed, along with a series of bumps where the metal surface had been hit. Some parts of the wall were badly damaged, revealing the cables and pipes inside, some of them broken. By the looks of it, a fight had taken place inside there, though it was impossible to tell how long it had been since then.
The clicking sound of metal on metal reverberated through the small hallway as the robot made her way across it. She stopped in front of a red and white door, hexagonal like the shape of the corridor, the control panel intact but not functioning. The robot studied the door for a while, then she finally came to a conclusion and she spoke.
"I cast magic missile!"
Shining smacked his hoof against his forehead, groaning. "Twilight, we've been over this already. You're playing as a robot, you can't use magic. Magic isn't even a thing in this game."
His sister pouted. "That's not fair. Rainbow's character gets to keep all of her traits," Twilight said, pointing a hoof at the blue pegasus sitting across the table from her, who was now reclining in her chair, dangerously close to having it fall to the ground.
"Twily, please," Shining said, lowering his hoof, "Rainbow's character is an alien with high physical statistics and low intelligence, fast and strong and good for combat but terrible at decision making."
"Yeah!" Twilight replied, "Why does she get to have a character that's just like her?"
"Twilight, please. Pinkie over there is playing a male character and she doesn't complain, so-Pinkie! I told you not to eat the dice set!" Shining shouted at the pink earth pony sitting in front of him.
"Sorry!" she replied, lowering the multicoloured dice she was holding in her hoof back to the table.
Shining gave a quick look at them. "Pinkie, the d12 is missing."
The pink mare silently and guiltily spewed the purple die. "It's not my fault if they look like candy," she muttered.
"When do I get to fight stuff?" Rainbow asked, somewhat annoyed, still reclining in her chair.
Shining Armor looked at his notes and at the screen in front of him. "I think we can resume now. Twilight, it's your turn."
"I shoot a normal, technologically developed, completely non magic, ordinary missile," she said with a quip in her tone.
A small retractable barrel protruded from the back of the robot, just above her shoulder, and after she'd carefully aimed it at the door one single missile was fired from it. The shot hit the door, the small subsequent explosion resulting in a hole sufficiently large for her to comfortably walk through. The hallway continued on the other side, darker, and no sound could be heard. TW-1 stepped through the opening and into the darkness.
"Your turn, Rainbow," Shining said.
As a response, the blue mare fell to the ground, having been startled awake from her nap.
"Do we have to keep taking turns like this?" Twilight asked, annoyed that her turn was already over.
"Well, you decided to split up when you entered the abandoned spaceship, so it's your fault we have to do this thing," Shining retorted, passing the dice to Rainbow who was now back to sitting in her chair. He was about to describe the situation her character was in when the door of the room opened.
"Are you guys alright?" Sunburst's voice came from the doorway as he walked in, "I hear the sound of something falling."
"Yeah, we're alright. Just Rainbow feeling a little sleepy," Shining replied.
Sunburst walked up to the table and noticed the game. "Can I play?" he asked.
"Do you know the rules?" Shining asked back.
"Yeah."
"Okay then," Shining said, grabbing another chair with his magic and putting it between Rainbow and Pinkie.
"But wait! We've already started, now we'll need to start over to get him to join us!" Twilight lamented.
"Well, actually-" Shining picked up some paper sheets from the table and passed them to Sunburst, who'd sat down in the meantime "-I was going to add a fourth character anyway, so he can play him instead of me, I'll just rewrite his origins a little so you'll meet him sooner. Please ignore the notes I left there," he continued, turning to Sunburst.
"You mean the ones about the romance with the robot character?" Sunburst asked, examining his character sheet.
"...Yeah... that one," Shining answered.
Sunburst looked at the characters the others were playing. "Oh."
"What would Cadence say?" Rainbow snarkily remarked, looking at Shining with a smug face.
"Knowing her, she'd ask why she wasn't invited," Sunburst said, arranging the character sheet and relative materials on the table in front of him.
"Your turn, Pinkie," Shining said, passing the dice set back to the pink mare.
Rainbow smacked her hooves against the table. "Hey! Aren't you forgetting something?"
Shining shot her a glare. "What do you want to do?"
"Look around, for starters."
Deep in a dimly lit corridor of the abandoned spaceship, the muscular figure of the six-legged alien creature slowly began to turn around, taking in the surrounding area. She kept spinning, faster and faster. Then she got dizzy and passed out for some minutes.
"Pinkie, your turn," Shining repeated.
The grey earth pony found himself in the middle of a corridor. To his right was a door that read 'DO NOT ENTER IF UNAUTHORIZED - Chaos-powered engine maintenance room - Qualified employees only', bright sparks could be seen excitedly flashing behind the glass panel on the door. To his left was a door with a flashing, tantalizing red sign above it that read 'WARNING', while on the door itself were the words 'Storage room - Do not enter in case of malfunctioning power supplies - Unstable materials stored inside', tempting him inside with the prospect of great danger and equally great rewards. Ahead of him, the corridor boringly kept going, plain and uninteresting, too long for him to see the end of it. The pony took careful time to consider his surroundings, then he spoke.
"Neither the right or the left door seem safe to go through. I have no experience with either of the things contained there, and while there could be valuable components it would be a risk to try to obtain them, one that could potentially hinder the primary focus of our mission. They do not show signs of having been opened, so it's likely I wouldn't gain any valuable information by exploring the rooms. My best option is to keep walking forward, potentially looking for a map of the place or for a log that recorded what happened here."
Everypony in the room stared at Pinkie, baffled.
The pink pony stared back. "What? It's called role-playing, guys."
The pony began his trek down the long corridor.
In another wing of the ship, TW-1 found herself in front of another locked door, this time with a functioning control panel. She connected herself to it and tried to open the door by hacking into the system.
A die was rolled, and a one was the result.
The door blew up in the robot's face, leaving her dizzied but not significantly damaged. Fortunately, the explosion created an opening large enough for her to walk through.
Inside another corridor, Lenoba, the six-legged alien, woke up from her sleep. She began to walk down the hallway, and eventually reached a broken door. It looked like a fight had taken place on the other side. The alien charged to the door, and-
Shining looked up from his notes and to the table. Eighteen.
-sent it flying backwards as she smashed into it.
Ro continued his long trip down the corridor, finding nothing of interest and with no end in sight.
TW-1 entered a room with a series of computers and calculators inside, some of the screens still flickering. She walked up to the nearest functioning one and began to fiddle with the controls, trying to get it to work. Suddenly, it came alive, the lights in the room turned back on and a pre-recorded voice began to come out of the speakers, somewhat distorted.
Shining got up and cleared his throat, preparing to do his best impression of the recording, but just as he was about to begin Pinkie spoke in his place.
"If there's a possible chance for something that can be called future behind the spiral, the only way to find out is to leave the final frontier to eternity, and fly!" the pink pony droned out in a robotic-sounding and distinctly male voice.
In their respective corridors, both Ro and Lenoba heard the same message, and the lights around them too came back to life.
TW-1 moved on to examining the files contained in the terminal she was using, browsing her way through a series of directories and connecting herself to the machine in order to decrypt the ones with the lower level of protection while downloading a backup of all the data she could find to examine it later. She picked out a few files, one named 'objectives' and one named 'travel log', along with a hidden and heavily protected document labelled 'for the Captain's eyes only'.
Lenoba walked inside a seemingly empty room. The furniture had been broken and scattered on the floor, and claw-marks were clearly visible on the walls and even on the ceiling. The alien noticed a darker mark on the floor in the middle of the room and moved closer to examine it. As she lowered her head, however, she heard shifting sounds coming from above her, followed by that of glass breaking. The lights went out, and behind her something dropped on the ground from the ceiling.
Ro finally reached the end of the hallway. There was a door, tightly sealed, with a still functioning eye-scan. The earth pony tried to activate it, and much to his surprise the door opened after scanning his retina. He walked inside the room and found a large glass cylinder in front of himself, the inside rendered invisible by what was presumably steam. He pressed the only button present, which resulted in a scan of his hoof getting approved by the system, and the cylinder began to open. A cloud of mist came out of it and in a body which fell on the ground, hard to see because of the vapour. The shape of the body seemed to shift, and then it got up and moved towards Ro.
"Who are you?" the pony asked, defensively stepping back.
"You can cal-"
The sound of crying was heard from the other room. Sunburst got up and walked out, going to put Flurry back to sleep. The others stared awkwardly at each other for a couple of minutes while they waited. He finally came back and sat at the table, then cleared his throat.
"You can call me K."