//------------------------------// // Let the Game Begin. // Story: Moondance Game // by BattleCat311 //------------------------------// [Early night, Moon Dance’s residence]. Moon Dancer was not having a good night. Her head was pounding, and her body was aching. Her magic felt like it was trying to expand out of a body that was too small to contain it. She had already lost all the control in her body and was blearily staring up at the ceiling. This day was just not going her way. And worst or best of all was the screen floating in front of her in a long flowery text. [Statues screen.] It all started this morning when she had planned and implemented the perfect party. Or at least a good first attempt at one. She had been so happy while planning that party that she understood why Lemon Heart made a living out of it. It had been so much fun to pick out the cupcakes, the streamers, and tables. And most importantly the guest list. It was her birthday and she wanted all her friends to be there. Everyone had shown up, everyone that is except Twilight Sparkle. It wasn’t till the end of the party that she realized her peer was not coming. And she was now a peer instead of a friend because anypony who knew her would know that this party meant a lot to her and blowing it off as she did just crushed her. Twilight was the only peer that might have been more intelligent than her. Certainly, she was more powerful. Her magic pool on its own was ten times the size of her own and being princess Celestia’s prized pupal gave her access to knowledge daily that Moon dance could only dream of. She had tried to connect with her. Tried to somehow forge a friendship between the two. Working on projects together. Trying to talk to her during lunch. Trying to engage her with her studies. She thought that it was working and that she would be able to make Twilight Sparkle her friend. Yearend to be acknowledged by her peer. Nope. That didn’t happen. Come time for the party she never showed up. Not one word or note that she couldn’t make it or even a message. She was just ignored. Tossed to the ways side. Like trash. When she looked back on the memories of the show her absence hurt even more. Because she saw how the self-absorbed mare was reminded by Spike that Moon Dancer’s party was today. She basically spat in her face and stabbed her in the heart by saying some silly prophecy was more important and that she didn’t need friends. How did she know this? Because the night didn’t end there. Nope. Not by a long shot. After she closed the party while trying to keep a straight face. She had left to go home. Only to be assaulted by another soul trying to mesh with her own. I don’t know if you know this but having your soul battle it out with another soul is neither painless nor without consequences. Honestly, she didn’t even know how she had even met Daniel’s soul in the first place. Mabey it was the act of some ROB or some pony out there trying to screw with life, an errant spell that mas miscast? but the soul did something that no one could ever have expected. It gave up. She could feel the powerful, merciless, and monstrous soul. Just give up. Perhaps that is not an honest comparison. The soul was strong. Orders of magnitudes stronger than her own. But instead of swallowing her up and absorbing her. It gave her itself. Daniel liked MLP and was a decent fan. Not watch every episode kind of guy but he defiantly loved to read the fanfics. There was a shortlist of ponies that he really enjoyed, and Moon Dancer was on that list. So, when his soul realized what it was doing it stopped fighting, stopped absorbing her soul. And instead, he let go. It was touching. To give up your soul for a stranger. It’s indescribable. And humbling. Moon Dancer thought she was kind. But this was a level of kindness that was unreal. All his power, all his knowledge, all the things that made Daniel were now being absorbed and assimilated into Moon Dancer. Showing her the show and letting her see herself from an outsider’s perspective. She was not going to be the same mare she was moments ago. Her views were now to different, her self-reflection to complete. But in her core and soul, she at least would still be herself. But the struggle was not over. Her body still had to get used to the larger soul, the influx of memories, and the power that came with the soul. For hours Moon Dancer writhed on her carpet as she struggled to get her body under control. It wasn’t the pure torture that she thought it could become. It was more like a severe cold or muscle spasms. They hurt but nothing she would not live threw. But it left her unable to do anything as her body adjusted. When the powers finally settled down Moon Dancer felt week, powerful, and too full all at once. No pony could have handled that power. A human mind would have been able to cope with how it was structured but her own equestrian mind was not primed for anything like that. So, with no other choice, it had evolved and changed. That still didn’t quite explain why there was now a floating text screen in front of her. [Status] Name: Moon Dancer/ Da#$#$@! Level 1 0/100 exp Age:18 Race: Unicorn Occupation: The Gamer Title: Twilight Light. STR: 5 Vit: 5 Dex: 6 INT: 21(10+11) WIS: (10+11) LUK:5 Points :5 [Skills] [Gamers Mind- Recognizes reality as a game. Immunity to Mental disorders.] [Error- Due to error during download emotional control aspects of Gamers Mind have not activated. Recalibrating Central Cortex.] [ Gamers body – Provides body to live reality as a game.] [Error- Full body transformation halted. Recalibrating existing bio body to specifications. Success. Warning- the body will not have dulled the pain. Warning! Healing factor will be slower and not instantaneous. Some spells reduced or restricted.] “Fascinating.” Moon Dancer even while exhausted looked at the screen and curiously poked it. Closing both windows. “It appears as though the human soul was going to receive The Gamer as a way to introduce him to the world. However, the system had to adjust for my own self being present while the human was absorbed instead. It does make logical sense if the system wished to introduce Dan/me to his power gradually. If this is anything like the leveling and gaming system from all those other stories like The Gamer or Hail the king, or Solo leveling then it would allow for me to get stronger at my own pace. No one can just gain huge amounts of power and know instantly how to control it. Assumingly even Discord would have had a learning curve.” Moon Dancer got up off the floor with shaking legs. But then stood straighter as her strength slowly returned to her. The pain in her body was fading and she could feel herself going back to normal if not better. Examining her naked leg, she could see the small cuts she made while falling were already closing and healing as she watched. It was fascinating to watch all the muscle and skin knit together seamlessly into place. She resisted the strong urge to grab a scalpel and make a small slice into herself. That sounded way to wrong to be something she should do just to watch her skin knit together. Amazingly even the old scrapes, scars, and blemishes she had over her legs were now all gone. “Sweet Celestia. This is amazing. This may not be Gamers body, but it still leaps ahead of what modern magic is capable of. I’ll have to perform a study latter to see the limits of my new body. If I can find a way to do so without it sounding too much like self-mutilation that is.” The human world frowned heavily on self-harm, if not self-mutilation. The world of sunshine and rainbow was friendship was magic would go ballistic if any pony found out she was cutting into herself, even for research purposes. “OK, let’s take things one step at a time. What’s the first thing on the statues screen?” Name: Moon Dancer/ Da#$#$@! Level 1 0/100 exp Age:18 “Ok, so not bad. It got my age correct, so it must be using the Equis calendar cycle. The name ….” Her own name was perfectly fine however the name of Danial was glitched and crossed out. A pang in her heart reminded her that she was not only alive because this one man had been too nice to take over her soul. “Ok, it recognizes I’m not Daniel and that he is gone. But still recognizes me as the new owner of this power.” Moony was not religious but did send up a prayer to the human gods for him. “Level 1 hu, I suppose it makes sense from a game point of view that I would start from the beginning. That…sucks. I will have to go over my full repertoire of spells latter on to identify if my preexisting skills will count to my experience. Or if it will hamper me until I get them back to where I was with them. Will I have to re-learn them all or will my preexisting skills all transfer over? I can’t wait to test it out.” Moony said happily. Sure, she hadn’t wanted to become a game character but now that she was one it was exciting. There were so many things to test and explore. New ways to see the world and maybe even get stronger as a person. Race: Unicorn Occupation: The Gamer Title: Twilight Light. The next portion of the screen looked standard. It recognized she was a unicorn and that she had the power of the gamer. However, the power of the gamer being an occupation was confusing. She didn’t have an official job, but she did moonlight as an Enchanter to pay the bills. And she was good at it if she said so herself. If she got an official job would her occupation change? However, Title…. The title…. “WHAT!” Moony screamed angrily as she turned her full focus on the Title part of her statues screen. Her teeth ground together so tightly it felt like they might crack, and her hair even started to flicker with embers as she stared daggers into the screen. “How dare you. How Bucking dare you insinuate that I’m just some cheap knock off, of that self-absorbed moron!” For a moment Moon Dancers Horn glowed a bright red color before it discharged and shot a narrow beam of magic out of her head and into the ceiling. “AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH” Moony ignored the pop-ups that were appearing around her. She was too angry, to furious at the universe for relegating her to being nothing more than just a shallow copy of Twilight Sparkle. Yes, Twilight was insanely talented for her age. But that came par for the course with being a student of Princess Celestia. You would have had to be a brain-dead moron to not make something of yourself under her. And her magic pool was also magnitudes bigger. She got to train with the princess, so she got to use all those classified magic exercises no one else could know about. And judging by what she knew of the show she was being prepped and groomed specifically to one day be an alicorn. ‘Crunch.’ Moon dancer snapped out of her anger when she felt pain explode in her mouth. It felt like she had just split her teeth wide open. Her grinding must have cracked them with how furious she was. After a moment the pain stopped, and her teeth healed not only going back to normal but coming back even stronger and slightly pointed. Her health pool had gone down a smidge and then regenerated. [Skill Learned – Overbite- Adds a Strength multiplier to your bite force. Teeth will now be reinforced.] She would have been happy and fascinated by this new discovery, but she was still all too pissed at the universe for labeling her as just another twilight sparkle fan girl. It was insulting and degrading to her. As if she wasn’t her own Pony but just a lesser version of her hated rival. While being called Twilight Light may not have had the same impact on Equis where the term light was common with good and love, but she had references from the human realm now and knew that it was an insult. Trying to regain control of herself Moon Dancer breathed in deeply till her lungs were full of air. Then held it to the count of five before letting it all out. Trying to breathe out all her frustration with it. The anger and bitterness didn’t go away all at once, but she needed to calm down at least a bit or she’d have to replace her poor ceiling. If this had been a week ago then she wouldn’t have even been all that upset. It would have been a little insulting but understandable. But after being blown off by Twilight on the day of her birthday/graduation party. Seeing how she didn’t even spare a thought about her and dismissed her with all the care of an egg sandwich. She would never even have remembered her at all if it wasn’t for Spike. With all that in mind her emotions all boiled over as fat tears streaked down her face at the injustice of even her own power comparing her to Twilight. She bit and sobbed into the pillow of her couch and let loose all the anger and frustration till there was nothing left but a small unicorn that was just DONE with life. “Enough whining about Twilight. If she doesn’t have the common decency to even remember me then I don’t want her as a friend anyway. I can do better. I’ll just have to make something of myself that’s so much better than Princess of Friendship.” STR: 5 Vit: 5 Dex: 6 INT: 21(10+11) WIS: 10(+11) LUK:5 Points :5 “Not unexpected. Unicorns are not known for our athleticism, so a low strength and vitality score does make seance. I wonder how they will equate to my real strength and body now that I don’t have the body of a full game character? I suppose having to run around after Minuette, Lemon Heart, and Twinkle Shine was good for something. Further study will need to be made on the effect of running will have on the Dexterity skill or if other more agility-based activities will have an effect as well.” Seeing as there were a lot of things, she wanted to test she quickly pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write out a list of all the things she would need to do. “My Intelligence and Wisdom seem to both be rather high. I can reasonably hypothesize that Intelligence and Wisdom both have something to do with my magic pool.” [For logical thinking, and deductive reasoning you have gained +1 to Int.] Her question was answered when she felt her magic pool swell. Increasing its size by a full fifth. Her jaw dropped to the floor with eyes wide in shock and disbelief. She even forgot to breathe for a moment. To increase her magic pool by just a fifth she would have had to work tirelessly for a whole month or lazily for a year to get such an increase. And here she got it in just about an hour. Magic pools were not supposed to work that way! And she could feel that it was a permanent increase as her magic regeneration slowly filled up the newly available space In her mana pool. Mana pools were essentially the well of mana located inside a unicorn’s body that a spell caster could dip into in order to cast their spells. It was an ethereal but quantifiable pool of magic that was in almost all living things. Slowly a grin plastered itself upon her face. “This is Awesome.” [Alert- New skill learned- Magic ray Level 2. A magical ray of destructive energy that almost all unicorns learn for self-defense..] [Alert- Skill learned - Levitation LVL 5.] [Alert – Observe Skill learned- extrapolates information about an object or person.] “This day just keeps getting better and better. But this does confirm some things. I don’t have the stalwart emotional control that The Gamer had. My little…. outburst showed me that. My body still takes damage but at least it compensates and makes it stronger. My teeth have never felt better. Rage might be a bit of an issue but if I don’t go all nightmare moon on ponies, I should be all right. My base Skills look like they are going to start at level one but using them expertly seems to make them level quickly. I haven’t really used magical beams in years so having that at level 2 makes sense. I know how to cast it and point it in the general direction I want. Didn’t know about adding magic to it. I’ll have to see if their’ s a way to train it.” Moon dance was happy that she had something she could work on these days. In truth other than the party, which had been her first attempt at socializing, she had nothing of note to do. Her job only took a couple days out of the week and most of her studies from school were done with. “I still have one question on my mind. Why were all the ponies in the show Quadrupeds?”