She didn’t understand much about what was happening, but she was pretty sure that, despite the seemingly pleasant look on the man’s face, letting him get close was going to be far from a pleasant plan. Her suspicions were confirmed when he approached, and raised his hand before slamming a crushing fist into her body. She tried to create a mystic shield in front of her using her magic, but his fist slammed through the magic with ease, powering through the shield and pounding into her face, knocking her flying back.
She was blown into the air by the impact, off of her hooves and careening away from the giant red man. The blow had been strong, but she hadn’t expected him to send her off the ground so easily. Nor had she expected it when he leaped in the air after her, connecting a second slam of his mighty fists into her face. For some reason she couldn’t understand, at least by any known form of pony science or magic, she felt herself fly back again, as if this was the first strike and she was being lifted rather than simply being hit on the way down. A bruise began to form on her cheek, as her foe drove his iron-gauntleted fist into her gut, knocking her up into the sky further, while he landed on the ground. The crash onto hard floor hurt less than she would have expected, but it did nothing to alleviate her fear as the beastly man looked down at her and briefly adjusted his glasses.
“You can try to run away you know,” suggested the mighty draconequus. Twilight immediately took him up on the suggestion scrambling away from the massive red male. She made it a few feet, at least, before she felt a sudden, overpowering force tugging on her body. It was like being trapped in the magic of a more powerful unicorn, but as much as she scrabbled at the ground or tried to throw out counter-spells, nothing worked. No matter what she did, she was being pulled closer and closer to the giant by the second, and nothing she was doing was stopping her out of control movement.
She turned around to watch what was coming, as if that would help her defend herself, and saw the beastly creature bringing her closer and closer, even though she still wasn’t entirely clear on what he was doing to get her there. Then, just as she had feared, the mighty beast raised his massive hand to strike. She continued to desperately try (and fail) to backpedal as he drove his fist forward against her... And somehow, just before he hit, she was overcome by a sudden instinct and raised her hands, crossing them over her face.
“Ohh, fooey, you blocked it!”
“What?”
“When you’re backing off and a strike hits, it gets blocked! Don’t you know anything about games, Twilight?” her tormentor mocked her. She didn’t of course, but she would take any advice she could get, and kept trying to take steps back as the great red beast assaulted her.
She didn’t understand the way that the blocking in this world worked, but the specifics of it didn’t matter, she just needed to avoid taking a cinderblock smash to the face. She could think about the mechanics of it later. She just kept stepping away, and despite the strange force dragging her closer to her foe, she was at least avoiding too much damage. She had no idea what she was meant to do to fight back, of course, but as long as backing off was some sort of passive protection, she would be able to figure out what came next. Then she heard a low chuckle, and the monstrous creature reached out and grasped her bodily in his mighty hands. In that moment, she couldn’t even SPEAK in response. She was just pulled up, and the beast leaped into the sky, holding her with both his arms.
They began to twist, and she felt herself stretched out lengthwise. She wasn’t even entirely sure what was happening, her body was being twisted and thrown around too fast, drool flying from her lips as she turned. The monster rose up high in the air, and then began to fall back down. She could only hold her breath in shock, bracing her body, which somehow just made it hurt that much more when they landed on the ground, and she felt her body smash, spine bend, and muscles rend from the force of motion suddenly stopping. She let out a weak gasp of air.
“Now, time for a killer combo!” Discord announced, laughing as she was grabbed by the neck and the beast began to swing his arms, like a windmilling windup punch. Or, perhaps the more accurate metaphor would be like a baseball player preparing to throw a fastball, seeing as she was being whipped around so hard that it felt like she was stuck in a wind tunnel, and the world was starting to go a little dark.
“If I burn meter here, Twilight, it switches game, WATCH!” Discord laughed, as the monster released her, and she flew up in the air, towards the window through which she could see Discord’s arcade. She flew out past him, but he didn’t strike, and she didn’t get a chance to even try. She was being propelled past him so fast that she couldn’t touch him, just fly up... And then back down, towards another one of the machines, with some strange meaningless word next to it. Some others at least were in classic Equestrian, but she didn’t get a chance to read them before she fell towards the machine - And like before, rather than crashing into the glass screen, she fell through it.
She tried to turn like a cat towards the ground, but she didn’t want to see the pain before she felt it. She couldn’t see what was coming. She was surprised, then, when she hit the ground... Only to land in something cold and wet. She opened her eyes and blinked a couple times, before realizing she had landed in some sort of Hearthswarming Haven style corral, surrounded by people dressed in bright red and white fur costumes, cheering wildly. She looked up to see that the bars were back, and in front of her stood some strange mixed human-beast person, with the body of a muscular man but the head of a jaguar.
“I don’t suppose you feel friendly, do you...?” She started as she stood up, and he slammed a gloved fist into her stomach, making her bend over. She hadn’t thought so.
She grunted, drool falling from her lips and eyes starting to water from the sheer impact of that fist into her stomach. She shuddered in pain, and looked up at the man, whose strange green bar labeled him as ‘King.’ He twisted around, and wrapped his arms around him, the same way the last male had. This one, though, grabbed her arm, twisted, and slammed it down on his shoulder. She gasped in agony as he did, and then she felt him twist behind her, and wrap his forearm around her neck while holding the arm he had grabbed trapped behind her. She grunted as he did, and then he gave a single tug, wrenching back on her trapped arm and her head at the same time, tormenting both her shoulder and her neck. While she gasped in agony, her mysterious opponent leaned backwards, grabbed both arm and leg at once, and started to roll.
She wasn’t even 100% sure how what he was doing was supposed to work, as he dragged her down, drove her head to the ground, and started to roll the pair in a giant circle. What she was sure of was that, somehow, it still managed to hurt like hell, with every single roll, her head was smashed to the icey ground, and she came up covered and dripping from the snow. The attack was dizzying, and left her as much embarrassed from the semi-public exhibition of her simultaneously painful and and admittedly humorous defeat as she was in pain from the repeated head smashes. Of course, with her head being driven to the floor and the dizzying spinning motion that seemed to continue for far longer than she could hope to keep track of, she quickly lost track of what was supposed to be happening.
Finally, she didn’t even know when, it was over. She looked up from her spot prone on the ground, only to see that the massive jaguar man was replaced by someone new, a tall, young, and (by human standards) handsome man whose clearly labeled name-bar indicated that he was named ‘Jin Kazama.’ The furious look in his eye, however, along with the MMA-style gloves and the loose-fitting martial arts pants, indicated that whoever this ‘Jin Kazama’ was, she could only assume he would have no more mercy for her than the brilliant red monster or the jaguar-headed grappler.
She hated being right sometimes, and this was one of them. The mysterious human stepped forward, and drove first one fist, then the other into her chest. The punches seemed to glow and her whole body instantly snapped back, making her give a high and humiliating gasp. He followed it up quickly, too, leaping and driving knees and then elbows into her face, bashing her back and bruising her body with every blow. The punches left her seemingly paralyzed, helpless to move, helpless to do anything but collapse in a vulnerable pile for the man.
Then he pulled his fist back, and she saw a strange glow form around it. She tried to step away, but she couldn’t, she found herself simply starting to tumble to her knees. Then, he drove his fist directly into her sternum once more, and she was rocketed back, flying head over heels from her foe, and up towards the strange portal in the sky that would return her to the arcade.
Just like before, she approached the portal, then flew through it, past the head of the draconequus. This time, she had the presence of mind to flail out and try to strike him, but her strike whiffed, her body flailed violently past her foe’s head and she tumbled through the air, and then into another one of the machines. On the way to the ground, she caught a glimpse of the label on the machine. Its title, “Street Fighter IV,” didn’t give her much hope for a less violent experience.
This time, she found herself floating over what seemed to be some sort of high-tech military installation, complete with massive airplanes and little people scurrying around, accomplishing whatever tasks they needed. One individual, of course, stood out to her, a woman in what seemed to be a lovely blue dress. At least she seemed to be dressed like a fighter, and as she fell to the ground past the strange labeled bars, she could only hope that whoever this ‘Chun Li’ was, she would be less violent than her predecessors.
That hope, sadly, would not be granted, as the woman jumped into the air to meet Twilight on the way down. Only then did she notice the fact that, while the rest of her looked a lot less powerful and agressive, the woman’s thighs were almost the size of Twilight’s torso, and on her wrists were a pair of giant spiked metal cuffs. She may have been less cruel of a fighter than before, but she was, unfortunately for Twilight, still a fighter. That, point would be driven in even harder when the woman leaped in the air, and drove her leg powerfully into Twilight’s chest, the blow stunning the alicorn with its sheer force.
Of course, in keeping with the bizarre physics of these worlds, the blow sent Twilight up high for a moment, before sending her crashing back down. She could only hope that the impact on concrete ground would be less painful than the blow she had just suffered.
It might have been. Unfortunately for Twilight, she would never get the chance to find out. Shortly before she hit the ground, the mystery woman raised her foot and began to rapidly kick at thin air. It seemed like a waste of time, striking at nothing, but Twilight found the explanation a moment later. She had just wanted to be sure that Twi wouldn’t be able to avoid the blows, when Twilight fell, she found herself falling into what she could only describe as some sort of strange wall of what could only be described as constant blows. Of course, the world’s weird rules ensured she wouldn’t even be able to hit the ground, either.
While Twilight was suspended by the constant blows, her opponent screamed out some strange phrase, and then suddenly stopped... Only to turn upside down and continue them, making some sort of bizarre helicopter spin that sent blow after blow of the woman’s thighs into Twilight’s body! It was like falling into a bizarre bludgeoning form of a helicopter’s blades, and as the blows racked her body, she could only hope this experience would end soon. Of course, she doubted it would, Discord had not shown much tendency to mercy, but whatever bizarre games were being played had to end sometime... Somehow... Right?
The answer, of course, was yes. But not in a way that would please Twilight, as the woman screamed once again, and Twilight felt herself suspended in mid-air. The woman, however, wasn’t and the world grew dark as she yelled, pulled her arms back, and then pushed forward. Twilight didn’t understand where or how humans like this could get access to magic, but a massive fireball burst from the woman’s hands, and surrounded Twilight in a mystic blue inferno that, despite its not-entirely natural nature, was no cooler or less agonizing than the real blasts of flame Twilight had occasionally experienced. Though unlike those, she had never before been kept floating helplessly in the air by the flames. She felt her coat start to singe in the flame, her body twitching, her feathers burning. By any logic or science she had ever known, she would have been burnt down to a pile of ash by the assault. Of course, like before, the natural laws didn’t exist in Discord’s world, or whatever strange world he had conjured up through these infernal arcade machines. She certainly wasn’t going to be able to defeat whatever these strange game-bound servants he had summoned were in hand-to-hand combat, and tears began to form in her eyes, tears that were quickly evaporated by the overwhelming heat of the mighty woman’s mystic flames. With every muscle she had seizing up and twitching from the constant pain inflicted by the fire, it was like being tortured in a bizarre simultaneous mash-up of electricity and flames, zapped and burnt to death at once. Somewhere in the hell of constant firey blows, she heard a deep voice announce the letters “K” and “O,” before she collapsed to the ground, shaking, singed... And yet, bizarrely, her coat was completely unmarred.
Twilight collapsed to the ground, shaking in pain and tears falling from her eyes. She looked at her forehooves and her legs, fluttering her wings as she tried to understand what had just happened. How? And of course, her body was completely unmarked, but somehow that felt like it made things worse, like it was almost an insult to her that her form was unscratched despite the agonies it had been put through. She should have been seen burns... Well, no, she should have seen NOTHING, her eyes should have been burned in their sockets, and even if she could see it should have been worse than burns, she should have seen raw muscle and sinew in her body. Instead... Instead she was unmarked. Worse than that, most of the pain was gone, surviving in traumatized echoes, while the rest of her body was back to its full health. Somehow, against her will, she found herself being dragged up to her feet. Then the voice called out again.
“ROUND 2. FIGHT!”
“Wait, please!” She cried out, “Please, stop, Discord, I’m done with this game!”
Suddenly, a mysterious black box with words she couldn’t focus enough to recognize appeared over her.
“Oh, do you want to stop? What’s wrong, you don’t like the game?”
“NO!” Twilight answered, hoping she sounded defiant but sure she was starting to sound like a petulant child (an impression no doubt backed up by the tears that fell down her cheeks, “No, I don’t like the game, I don’t like playing like this, I don’t understand what’s happening! I came here to fight you, not your servants, but the least you could do is actually have them fight, not pull out these weird magic tricks all the time!”
“Weird magic tricks?” Discord laughed, “That’s a rich phrase coming from you. But oh, very well, if you want a fair fight where punches don’t make you fly, I can do that. No more tricks, just an honest battle with you and her, is that better?”
She didn’t want to answer him, but she couldn’t stop herself. After a moment of shaking, she wiped away the tear in her eye and answered “..Yes.”
“Alright, Twilight,” Discord said, and a highlighter on the strange text moved, “Then let’s resume. Ready, set... Go!”
The mystery woman stepped forward, but not with the strange repeated motions that Twilight had seen so far. Now the movement was more normal, more reasonable, and Twilight could at least see how someone could move like that. She raised her hands, ready to fight off this ‘Chun-Li,’ and while she wasn’t sure that Discord was being true to his word, there was at least some evidence in the fact that the mysterious labelled bar no longer floated above their heads.
She stepped in towards her opponent, ready for a more fair battle for the first time that day, hands up and looking to throw some boxing-style punches. Her foe would no longer be able to stop her with that bizarre interrupting-paralyzing sort of magic these game-people seemed to have. As she stepped in and started to throw her punch, though, she realized just a moment too late that while this woman may have used her mystic powers for combat before, she was probably still a trained martial artist.
Twilight bent double as the mysterious blue woman slammed an iron-like kick into her gut, crushing her abs, before following up with a high strike right to the side of the head. The impact was enough to stun her and send her stumbling to the side, and before she could even start to recover, the strange woman followed up her attack with a leaping roundhouse kick that slammed her in the head again. Already off-balance, Twilight was immediately knocked to the ground, sprawled on her back and with no defense against the blue-clad woman.
The mysterious woman stepped forward, and dropped her hips onto Twilight’s body, straddling her and staring down at her, before raising one of her fists and driving it into the helpless princess’s face. She may have specialized in kicks (how could she not with legs like those?) but her punches were no laughing matter either, and every impact sent Twilight’s head rocking back against the hard concrete ground.
Blow after blow rained down on Twilight Sparkle, like the woman’s fists were made of solid rock. Her skull slammed against the dirt behind her like she was a basketball being dribbled by one of the Manehatten Trotters, and she was starting to lose the ability to focus on what was happening. She needed to put a stop to this beating, so as much as she disliked using her spells on mundane creatures like this human, she gathered her strength, focused the magic in her horn, and gave a loud cry of rage as she tried to throw out the most powerful spell she could. She felt the power grow in her and...
Nothing happened. She looked up at the woman straddling her helplessly, before a fist rocketted into her face, and sent her head crashing back to the ground again. From far above, she heard the cruel laughter of Discord as she clutched her throbbing head. A small and somewhat pointless mercy, the woman astride her ceased her brutal bashes as Discord spoke.
“Oh, Twilight, going back on your word so soon?” The mighty draconequus laughed, “You silly girl. I thought you said you didn’t want any bizarre magic tricks. Were you lying to me, or has my dear friend here already beaten your brains around so badly that you’ve forgotten in less than a minute? Not that the timing would matter much anymore, I took away your match timer. Didn’t you say you wanted a fair fight? Is this not FAIR?”
“N-NO!” Twilight cried out, rubbing the tears out of her eyes and trying to get some semblance of focus back after the vicious assault, “How could this POSSIBLY be fair? I’m a normal pony and she’s a martial artist! There’s nothing fair about that! My magic is the best I have, I wanted you to take away her magic, not mine, if you take mine away, it’s just no-AAAGHHHH!” She didn’t get to finish her sentence, as the massive legs of the woman who was straddling her twisted and suddenly closed in on her like a vice, pure power and muscle crushing the pinned pony with all that the strongest martial artist she’dgrasp of the blue-clad battler, her body ever seen could pour on. She shook, spasmed, and began to weep as the woman squeezed her.
“I don’t think she likes hypocrites” Discord laughed as Twilight shook in the destructive grasp of the blue-clad battler, her body twisting and twitching as agony coursed through her, “Poor Twilight, you’re trying to fight someone far greater than you in this field. You brought in your power and skills, she brought in hers, and you’re being completely... Well, crushed!”
“GAHHHHH!” Twilight screamed as Chun emphasized Discord’s words, squeezing down on her body with those iron-like legs, and starting to shake and feel her body turn even more purple as that was the last breath the grasp would allow her for now, those powerful legs pulsing too tight, now, for her to be able to breathe, just torturing her with their power.
“Trying to fight a martial artist with merely your far-inferior body... You know what this is like, Twilight?” Discord laughed, “This is like if you had challenged a chaos god to a battle, planning on using magic to supplement your lack of skill, and then you complained when HE used spells as well and they were more than you could handle! Wouldn’t that be silly of you, Twilight?” Discord laughed, “Wouldn’t that be a bad move? Do you see, now, Twilight, why all this is happening... Or do you need a bit more of a demonstration? Show her, Chun!” Discord encouraged.
On his orders, the massive-legged martial artist squeezed her thighs tighter around Twilight’s body again, starting to crush in on her sides, and Twilight could feel the muscles twisting and twitching in her body as they, and her bones, were bent in the face of the solid-rock scissor hold. There was little she could do to stop the attack, just lie there and shake, literally breathless in the face of the massive leg muscles of the woman astride her. She wanted to answer back, of course, to tell Discord it wasn’t the same, he should just fight her... To tell her, well, ANYTHING, but she realized he was right. Or at the very least, she realized she wasn’t going to get out of here anytime soon, she was helpless, and his tricks and magic and games were something she couldn’t handle. She could only silently sob as the blue battler squeezed tighter, her body wracked with tears and agony by Discord’s powerful replacement for the fight.
She wanted to keep fighting, she wanted to deny her position, she wanted to battle back, but right now, there was nothing she could do. She could either submit, admit that this was too much for her to handle, and accept her defeat in at least this stage of the contest, or she could try to keep fighting and get crushed until her body broke. With options like those, the choice was clear. Twilight helplessly slapped the flat of her hand against the ground, and gasped out “I GIIIIIVE!” with what little air she could draw into her lungs around the overwhelming squeeze that Chun’s legs had locked her in.
It came out as nothing but a weak shuddering wheeze, but it seemed the other creature understood well enough what had happened, and Twilight felt her start to disentangle those mighty thighs from around her body. She rolled on her front, on her hands and knees once more, clutching her helpless and bruised midsection as she gasped air into her oxygen-starved body. Each breath felt like it was dragging vicious razor-talon’d claws on the inside of her lung, and her tears fell harder to the ground as Discord’s cruel laughter echoed around her.
“You see, Twilight?” Discord laughed, “You see how foolish you were to fight me? You don’t stand a chance, you’re nothing but a little toy that I get to play with for as long I like, until I get bored. This is a game, and it’s one I have no intention of losing. Do I make myself perfectly clear, or do you need my friend here to demonstrate further?”
Twilight weeped on the ground, unable, for the moment, at least, to do much else. It was clear enough that she wasn’t going to be able to force him to fight her on her terms at this point, it would be his type of battle, or nothing. She shook her head, her muscles aching from exertion and the repeated beatings she’d suffered. She looked up in the air, up at the portal that Discord grinned wickedly down at her from, and shook her head. This whole experience had been rough, but getting to his hellish arcade had been the worst part. She knew, though, that without an admission of defeat he wouldn’t be letting her out. Quite frankly, she wasn’t entirely sure she would have been able to resist pleading even if it wasn’t the only way out of these twisted game machines.
“I just... Want to be done... Here...” She shuddered, “At least get me out of the arcade... Please...” Tears stained her vision as she looked up at the draconequus, “Please, just let me be finished.”
She didn’t know WHAT exactly she’d said, but she instantly knew that it had been the wrong thing, when Discord’s wicked smile returned, “Finished?” the Draconequus laughed, “You want to be... Finished? Did I hear that right?” The laughter grew louder, “Silly little pony girl, that’s not Street Fighter. You need to get your games right! You’re thinking of a different franchise entirely.” Then his eyes raised a little to look at the blue martial artist, “Chun, why don’t you be a dear and give her a nice boot, so we can send her somewhere where someone can... Finish Her.”
Twilight didn’t have time to think about what he had said, and wouldn’t have time to object, either, before the mighty woman drove what felt like a crushing soccerball kick into her side. It drove the last air she had left in her body from her lungs, no doubt crushed a bone or two (if that could even happen in this bizarre game world, and then she felt herself launched bodily into the air. It was like she had been strapped to a rocket, the kick not only landing flush against her body, but sending her in seconds from flat on the ground to nearly a hundred feet in the air, heading out towards the arcade once more.
Hard, high, and fast she flew towards the portal, her body careening like an out of control acrobat into the sky. She didn’t even bother making an attempt to grasp onto Discord as she flew out of the machine and passed him, and simply focused on trying to make out what new horrific game world she was going to be tormented in next. She flew out of the Street Fighter cabinet, and towards another machine. Like before, this was at least labeled in (admittedly poorly spelled) Equestrian Standard. Unlike the others, though, this one she recognized the label, and knew well the wicked reputation of the game she was about to enter. She closed her eyes in horror as she fell into the pitch-black cabinet with the label “Mortal Kombat II.”
She tumbled into its world, falling straight down, and landed in front of a shirtless, smiling man with wraparound sunglasses. He did at least seem less frightening than the blue or yellow warriors on the side of the machine, but she knew he was no less likely to destroy her. She tried to raise her hands in a desperate attempt to block whatever assault was coming, but it didn’t surprise her to find that she couldn’t raise them an inch. Her hands felt like they were glued to her sides, and the most motion she could manage was a bizarre drunken sway. That just made it so much worse when she heard a cruel voice, practically anticipating her destruction, call out “Finish Her.”
She watched, practically paralyzed, as the man stepped forward, and then... Reached into a pocket in his pants, and pulled out a small scrap of paper and a pen, and scribbled something across it. Then he tossed the paper at her. She tensed her muscles (or tried to) in fear as she saw it fly towards her, fully expecting it to become some sort of razor-blade or shuriken, but instead all that happened was the paper stuck to her chest. She regained enough control of her body to look down at what it was: A photo of the man in front of her labeled “To My Biggest Fan: Cage”
The deep voice spoke “Johnny Cage wins... Flawless Victory. Friendship,” and then a pause, before it repeated ‘FRIENDSHIP?!’ in a voice that implied not even the speaker could understand what was happening anymore.
“Okay, Johnny, send her back here,” Discord said, and a bright green glow surrounded her body. She could only look up in horror and, now, confusion, as she was levitated towards the portal to return to Discord’s arcade.