//------------------------------// // Beginning // Story: Fighting Games Aren't Just For Mares! // by DizzyChicks //------------------------------// "COME ON DAMIEN!" yelled Rainbow Dash. The small blue pegasus headbutted the much bigger human in the back. He stumbled forward shooting death glares at the female pegasus. "Again, you don't have to do that," Damien said with a frown. He had no idea why Rainbow Dash was so excited. She refused to tell him, only insisting that she wouldn't stop bothering him until he got up. Damien didn't feel like arguing with the blue pest, so he freshened up and followed Rainbow Dash. As the pair were walking, Damien noticed Rainbow Dash looking back at him and locking eyes. After a pregnant pause, she would turn back around and maintain her pace. "Why is Rainbow Dash acting so strange?" Damien pondered. "It probably was the meltdown I had last week." Today marked year number two of Damien's unfortunate trip to Equestria. One minute he was hiking trying to get away from his loud family, another he was staring right in the face of a bunch of multicolor ponies. After causing mass panic and breaking a pony's nose, Damien ended up meeting The Princess of Friendship, Twilight Sparkle. It took Damien a tremendous amount of willpower to not laugh at the pony's title. However, his joy would falter as Twilight gave him the bad news. The chances of him going back home were extremely slim. So, he was stuck until further notice. Damien soon learned there were other Princesses too. Princess Luna and Celestia. They controlled the moon and sun respectively. Damien was pretty skeptical however, he kept that to himself since the princesses offered him a newly built home in Ponyville to live in until he could go back to his home dimension. He was pretty distraught about his sudden predicament but he decided to keep hope alive and occupy himself by trying his best to befriend the town. Everyone or everypony as the residents would say seemed pretty delightful. Damien grew pretty close with one of Twilight Sparkle's friends Rainbow Dash. They would hang out a lot and roughhouse. Everything was fine until a maroon pony asked his gender. "I didn't want to be rude, but I wasn't sure." The maroon pony sheepishly looks down at her hooves while playing with the pebble on the ground. "No, problem. I'm a dude-uh-stallion." Damien would come to realize this was the biggest mistake he had ever made in his life. The maroon pony's eyes grew to the size of pumpkins and a flirty smile appeared on her face. She stopped playing with her hooves and puffed out her chest. "You can call me Cinnamon Candy, stud." She winked then walked away. For some odd reason, Damien spent months in Equestria and hadn't noticed that he was living in a society where females were supposedly the dominant sex. They were either super flirty or extremely overprotective. Although in Ponyville it seemed a bit more cartoonish. Stallions seemed extremely prissy and girly to almost parody levels. The only exceptions to this rule seemed to be Big Mac. He was the older sibling of Applejack, one of the Elements of Harmony. The giant red stallion didn't say much and just did farm work. Apparently Rainbow Dash also was one of the Elements of Harmony, but Damien never really asked. He just thought it was some club. While living in this multicolor hell, Damien soon found he had another pressing matter. He didn't have any skills to use in Ponyville. He went to school for Criminal Justice. His knowledge of forensics was useless because Equestria's technology was ancient compared to Humanity. His knowledge of laws was as useless as trying to patch a hole with soap. Damien was a stranger in a new land and had no idea how most of the laws worked aside from not to murder. Finally, he couldn't even do police work because he wasn't part of the Royal Guard. The frustration from the culture shock and genuine lack of action for himself had caused him to mistakenly blow up in anger at Rainbow Dash a couple of days prior. Snapping back to the present, Damien shook his head and looked back at Rainbow Dash still trotting to their unknown destination. "I should apologize for getting angry like that," Damien thought. "Dash doesn't deserve that." Before he could even formulate words, Rainbow Dash quickly flew into his face. "We are finally," She pauses for dramatic effect. "Here!" Damien stops walking and looks up to see a brownish building. In bright and blinding neon lights, the top of the building says, "Controller Hooves." "Dash, where did you take me?" "I seen you haven't been feeling too great lately, so I decided to cheer you up and take you to the new arcade that just opened up!" She flashed a smile at Damien, while she stayed floating in the air, her wings flapping rapidly. Damien was touched by this and smiled back. "Thanks. I also wanted to apologize for yelling at you," Damien mumbled while looking at the ground and rubbing his shoulder. "Not your fault that I have been feeling shitty." Dash was one of the few mares that didn't treat Damien like a toy, child, sex toy, or anything in between. He didn't want to ruin one of the few genuine friendships he had in this pony hell. Rainbow Dash landed on her hooves and motioned towards the building. "Eh, it isn't your fault, said Rainbow Dash. "Stallions tend to get overwhelmed and it's a mare's job to help!" She flashed another smile and walked into the building. Okay. Maybe Dash wasn't THAT different from the other mares. Damien followed Dash into the arcade, grumbling to himself about gender norms. Within moments of stepping inside a strange nostalgic feeling overtook Damien. The arcade looked like a Chucky Cheese, but the floor resembled one of those ninety's bowling alleys with abstract shapes on the floor. The smell of pizza ruminated through the building. Fillies and colts ran around while their parents either tried to snatch them from games or were passed out near a dining table exhausted from their unruly children. It brought back memories of home for Damien. He didn't want to sour the mood and he also appreciated Dash's efforts to get him out of bed so he quickly pushed those memories down. "Damien?" Dash's magenta eyes squinted in concern. "Are you feeling alright? Shaking his head, Damien gave a thumbs up. "Never better," he lied. Trying to get Rainbow Dash's suppressions off him, Damien tries to divert her attention. "What's over there?" He points to a long row of machines. "Let's find out!" Damien grabs Dash by the hoof and takes her to the other side of the room with the machines. "Wait! I gotta pay for our cards!" Upon further inspection, Damien realizes they are arcade machines. He mentally slaps himself. Of course, they were. They ARE in an arcade. However, these games seemed a lot more grownup than the ones he saw the foals playing on earlier. Damien looked closely at the games. One was a racing game called Poneout Paradise and instead of racing with cars, there were chariots and trains. Another was called Smack Man, in which you played as a tiny pony collecting pellets and running from ghosts, and another game was called P*onbert with a little pony jumping on squares. Damien groaned at how close the puns were to the arcade games from his home. He jumped into Poneout Paradise's seat and grabbed the wheel. "Ready to eat my dust, Dash?" Damien taunts. "In your dreams, dweeb!" Dash counters. She hops into the machine next to Damien and swipes her card to start the game. It wasn't even close. Damien and Rainbow Dash played thirteen games against each other. Damien won twelve and seeing how frustrated Dash got from losing, he let Dash win the last game. She celebrated flying around Damien's head gloating. She then caught herself and remarked about acting uncool in front of a stallion. Damien just shook his head and smiled. Dash was a character alright. After the pair's games, Dash wandered around the arcade telling Damien to meet her at the front in an hour. Damien continued to look at the various arcade games, wincing at the puns and amazed at how similar they were to their human counterpart. He was about to go back and meet Dash at the front of the arcade until a game caught his eye. The characters on the screen seemed to be a pony version of Street Fighter characters with the game being dubbed, "Hoof Fighter." Damien played a lot of Street Fighter before going to school. For old time's sake, maybe he should play? Damien chuckles at the name and sits down at the machine. He puts in the credits and opens training mode on the game. Damien cycles through the roster until he settles on a Ryu-looking pony named Iron Hoof. He chuckles to himself again and selects Iron Hoof. With all the other arcade games they were similar but maybe two things were different in terms of controls. However, with Hoof Fighter, it was exactly like Street Fighter minus the sounds and characters. "Alright, let's try a basic bread and butter," Damien said. Another nostalgic sensation tingles his hands as he inputs medium punch, heavy punch, heavy kick. The buttons make a satisfying click as Damien's fingers fly across the buttons. The combination works as Iron Fist copies the inputs and combos the computer. For the next forty minutes, Damien inputs combos he remembered from his youth and was having a blast. He had to pay Rainbow Dash back, this little surprise did make him feel better. "A NEW CHALLENGER HAS ENTERED THE RING!" The announcer in the game cried. Damien jumped in surprise. There was someone else here on this side of the arcade? It only seemed like it was just him. Damien looked over to the Hoof Fighter machine in front of his own. Sure enough, there was someone there. It was a light orange mare with a brownish mane. She was an earth pony of average stature. Damien watched as her blue eyes stared at the screen intensely. She didn't even look up at him. "Rude," Damien thought. He sat back down and picked Iron Hoof. "Really, playing a Ponto?" said the light orange mare. She scoffed and picked a big minotaur named Hugger. It seemed to be Hoof Fighter's version of Zangief. The match was set and Damien waited for everything to load. His first competitive match in a fighting game! He couldn't help but feel giddy. He stretched his fingers and smacked his hands against his face. He then turned to turn to the game and waited for it to load. "READY? STAMPEDE!" The announcer yelled. Damien immediately moved Iron Hoof trying to hit Hugger with the combo he had been practicing for nearly an hour. Hugger just...…blocked. Damien had forgotten about blocking. Hugger grabbed Iron Hoof and performed a piledriver taking half of Iron Hoof's health. Damien cringed as he heard Iron Hoof's wail of pain. He tried again to perform the combo, this time he landed it but in terms of damage he basically did nothing compared to what his opponent did to him. "Okay, I'll block this time. Hugger command grabbed Iron Hoof and put his health in the danger zone. Damien's jaw dropped. What the hell was he doing that kept causing him to lose these interactions? Damien quickly scrubbed his memories on anything useful about fighting games. He remembers losing to his older brother with the same character trying to rush in every time his brother's character would grab his character. "Remember, Damien," His brother had said. "Grapplers lose to projectiles. PROJECTILES!! OF COURSE!! Damien quickly inputted a half circle on the arcade stick. Iron Hoof stick his hooves out and yelled "Hoofoken!" A light blueish projectile came from Damien's character's hooves and hit Hugger. Hugger immediately backed off. Damien hears a low groan from the light orange pony. Damien inputted it again. This time, Hugger blocked it but he was still on the other side of the screen. Damien keeps inputting Hoofoken over and over again. The groans from the light orange mare were getting increasingly more and more annoyed. Iron Hoof shoots one more projectile from his hooves and Hugger dies from chip damage. Damien somehow came back and won round 1. Round 2 starts and Damien quickly inputs the projectile again. This round ends way quicker with Damien winning with minimal effort. Damien gets up from his seat and grins. His first win in Hoof Fighter! The mare jumps from her seat and makes her way in front of Damien. He could see the rage in her eyes. "Spamming Bitch!" The light orange mare yells. "Uh-Oh," Damien mutters.