//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Skyrim // Story: MLP meets ___! // by EpicStory //------------------------------// The day begins with a splitting headache. “Ugh….” I groan. “Too...many...cupcakes.” The party after our fight with Handsome Jack lasted well into the night. I had a great time. Awesome tunes from Vinyl Scratch, good food, and I actually had a solid conversation with Princess Luna about the equality and balance of the internal darkness and light in us all. I guess she didn't peg me for the ‘philosophical’ type. Slowly, I woke myself up and trot, groggily, to my kitchen. I'm glad that Barry was nice enough to give a fridge full of Mtn Dew Pitch Black. I’m useless without my morning Dew. After I shotgun my soda, I finally explore my new home. It is made of a dark cobblestone with a crimson red roof. There is a large fireplace in the living room. Included are some very well stocked bookshelves. On the shelves are some oddly titled books. ‘Cherins’ Heart’, ‘Twin Secrets’, ‘Horrors of Castle Xyr’, and many more. My bedroom is fairly large, kitchen is well stocked, and all throughout the house, weapons are mounted on the walls. Outside, I find a solid amount of space for a potential forge. In it’s place, is a meager anvil, a barrel of water, and a pit of coals. Most of the basic tools, hammer, bellows, tongs, hang overhead. But what catches my eye is a small table next to a large test and workbench. It’s not the fact that they are out of place that bothers me. It’s the fact that I am certain I have seen them before. Before I can investigate further, Twilight and Spike run over. “Hey, what’s up?” I ask. “‘What’s up?’ It’s snowing in the middle of summer!” Spike says. It takes me a moment to notice the fairly thick layer of snow blanketing the ground. “Snowing...workbench...’Twin Secrets’...I have to check something.” I immediately rush inside my house with Twilight and Spike right behind me. I check the bookcase once more, scrolling through the names on their bindings. ‘Song of the Alchemists’, ‘Sithis’, ‘The Black Arrow’, ‘Oghma Infinium’, ‘Incident At Necrom’, ‘Surfeit Of Thieves’. Then, I freeze, snapping back to the ‘Oghma Infinium’, a book native to one place. “Well...this is very interesting.” I say. “What?” Twilight asks. “It seems that this world has adopted the characteristics of another.” “What world is that?” “The world of the Elder Scrolls, more specifically, Skyrim.” “Is that bad?” Spike asks. “It’s half and half.” I respond. “The good part is, I might be able to master my blacksmithing rather easily. The bad half, we might have a severe dragon outbreak soon.” Spike gulps. “Why is that bad?” He asks. “Well, among those dragons is Alduin, who is basically the incarnation of the apocalypse.” I answer. “Okay...what are our solutions?” Twilight asks “Our only solution is to find the Dragonborn, teach him or her ‘Dragonrend’, and kill Alduin.” I say. “Dragonborn?” They say in unison. “Yup. Now Spike, say ‘Fus’.” I say, not expecting that merely saying the word ‘Fus’ caused me to launch Twilight and Spike backwards. “Okay...sorry about that. So, that’s what we have to look for...ponies that can use the Voice. First, lets round up Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie Pie.” “Why them first?” Twilight asks. “Because you ponies are the main characters,” I say. “And the main characters typically get the special powers.” “Wait...what?” “Just say that word I said.” “...’Fus’.” The moment she said it, her booming voice made me tumble backwards into the kitchen, which causes a ruckus of pots and pans falling. “I’m ok!” I yell from the kitchen. “Just get the others! I’ll meet you in the town square. I just have to check on something.” ============================================================ About an hour later, Twilight and friends are gathered in the square, waiting on me. Before they start to look for me, I magically spawn right in front of them, which makes them shriek. “What the...what did you just do?” Twilight asks. “Quick travel mechanic.” I respond. They all stare at me with blank faces. “Look, ‘Skyrim’ is a video game. In that game, there is a quick travel mechanic where you can teleport from one location to another place you've been. Also, there is a ‘wait’ mechanic where you can make hours pass by in seconds for you.” “Uh...what?” Rainbow Dash asks. “Think the word ‘Tab’ really hard.” I say. Rainbow Dash shrugs and starts thinking about the word ‘Tab’ and a ‘Skyrim’ menu shows up in front of her face. “Woah.” She says bluntly. “Now, let me run over the basics.” I say as I begin telling them what the plot of Skyrim is. ============================================================ An hour later. “Okay, anything that needs repeating?” I ask. “So...we need to do all of that?” Applejack asks. “Nope.” I say bluntly. “Since this all handles like a video game, we’ll treat it like a speed run and glitch our way to the end. But first, I need to check the difficulty.” I pull up the menu and check what the difficulty setting is at. My eyes go wide. “Well...that sucks.” I say. “What is it?” Twilight asks. “Well, I was hoping that the difficulty was low enough so we could grind for levels.” I respond. “But apparently, the universe is a jerk and made a new difficulty that's harder than the maximum.” “Come on.” Rainbow Dash says. “It can’t be that bad.” “It says ‘Death for Days’ in blood red letters.” I say. They stare at me blankly. “So, I’m afraid we’re gonna have to cheat a little.” I say to them. “But...isn't that what we usually do?” Fluttershy says sheepishly. “Well, yea.” I say. “I just don’t like cheating on Skyrim. So here is what we’ll do. Barry, bring up a list of popular builds.” In seconds, a command prompt shows up above our heads. “Hey!” I yell. “I didn't know you were computer savvy!” Barry types, “It’s a hobby” in the command prompt, then deletes it. Than, he uses a command to put IGN’s community build list in front of our faces. “Now, each of us will pick a build we like from this list and Barry will make us into that.” I say. “Also, just so we can actually use our weapons, Barry, any chance you can make us whatever race our builds use?” He types “Sure” in the command prompt. “Okay, I call dibs on the Battlemage!” I yell. “Also, can you give me all the materials I need to make my new forge and our gear. I might as well use that ‘Hearthfire’ dlc while we got it.” Everyone else starts scrolling down the list of builds, looking for one that suits them. “Hmm...I like the Warlock.” Twilight says. “As a seasoned magic user, I’ll be very useful.” “I’ll take the Cleric.” Says Rarity. “I’ll make sure everyone is healthy and fabulous!” “I call the Berserker!” Yells Rainbow Dash. “I will be an unstoppable and awesome force!” “Uh...the Monk looks nice.” Fluttershy mutters. “If we see any animals, I’ll calm them down so we don’t have to fight them.” “I’ll rock the Paladin.” Applejack says. “I’ll make sure we’re all safe.” “I’ll be the Assassin! Stabity stabity stab!” Pinkie says. “Oh...kay.” I say cautiously. “Spike, message Princess Celestia and Luna. Ask if either of them is willing to help.” “Can do!” Spike says. “Good.” Then I turn towards Vinyl Scratch’s house. “Hey Vinyl!” Vinyl Scratch’s head bursts through the upstairs window. “What up?” She yells. “The world’s gone RPG!” I yell back. “Wanna save the world like a boss?” “You know it!” She responds. “God, I love how she understands all this.” I say. Overhead, Princess Luna arrives. “I came as soon as I could.” Luna says. “Princess Celestia is staying in Canterlot to try and maintain order. We've seen strange new creatures appearing. Giant rats and spiders, trolls and giants with mammoths, it’s just chaotic. What is the plan?” “Same as always,” I say. “Barry gives us powers, we save the day.” As if on cue, Vinyl walks over. “And our new powers and duds?” She asks. Barry gives Luna and Vinyl the build list. “Take your pick.” I say. “The Battlemage, Warlock, Cleric, Berserker, Monk, Paladin and Assassin are taken.” They take a moment to scan the list of builds. “I’m liking the Spellsword.” Vinyl says. “But can I get a…” “I already have a ‘dub-step’ based spell list ready for you.” I interrupt. “Sweet!” Vinyl says. “The Death Knight looks quite formidable.” Luna says. “There is always strength in numbers...even if they are somewhat demon-y.” “Okay, now here is the plan in detail.” I say. “We need to find the equivalent of the Thalmor Embassy and steal some documents, then we need to find Esbern in whatever is equivalent to Riften, talk to Delphine, locate Alduins wall, locate the Elder Scroll, find this world's version of the Throat of the World, learn Dragonrend, fight Alduin and use the Elder Scroll to send him back to Skyrim. Hopefully, the world will return to normal.” “But, wouldn't that cause problems in Skyrim?” Luna asks. “Yes, but that gets taken care of anyway.” I respond. “Now, is everybody ready?” Everypony cheers in unison. “Great. Barry, set us up!” I yell. With great speed, Barry writes command prompts, surrounding all of us with pixels. Slowly, our bodies take on more humanoid characteristics. Eventually, were are all assorted races of humans and a few khajiit, while still retaining our respective color pallets. At the moment, we are all naked, with only scraps of leather covering our private areas. It takes a few moments before everyone takes notice of this and they all blush and cross their arms and legs. “Yea...I forgot to mention that would happen.” I said while smiling. I catch myself admiring Princess Luna’s new form before a prompt showed up saying ‘Carrying too much to run.’ “Alright, time for me to make our gear.” I say as I slowly walk over to the carpenters bench. I use the available materials I received from Barry’s command codes to make a replicated ‘Skyforge’ level forge, an enchanting table, an alchemy bench, a workbench, a grinder, a smelter, a tanning rack and an assortment of containers, tools, and other amenities that created the ambiance of a true forge. With the building finished, I began crafting the armor and weapons. Some of the armor was pre built, such as robes and event based pieces. The rest, I had to build myself. I had Barry bring up the build list and specs so I could be as accurate as possible. It takes me a few moments to craft the armor and weapons, double check that they are right, and upgrade them at the grinder and workbench. Then, I take all of the armor and weapons to the enchanting table and give them their respective enchantments. When I finished, I walked over to everypony and dropped their individual gear at their feet. Then, we all accessed our equipment menu’s and donned our class specific duds. In moments, we stand together, clad in some of the most intimidating armor sets in Skyrim. “Alright, everypony geared up?” I ask the group. As if thinking with one mind, they all respond with a ‘Ah-oo!’ from ‘300’ while they raise their weapons in the air.. “Great! Everypony got their spells?” I ask again. Vinyl gives off a dubstep version of Fus-Ro-Dah. “Perfect, now, the map says that the Thalmor Embassy is a few miles to the south-west of here. We’ll have to walk from here...unless you’re all okay with riding horses.” They all stare at me with blank faces. “Walking it is.” With everything said and done, we head off towards the location of the ‘Thalmor Embassy’. We encounter some random creatures along the way. Fluttershy uses some of her Calming spells to deter the wolves, spiders, and sabercats. But the trolls, giants, and spriggans we find aren’t affected. However, Rainbow Dashes berserker tactics handle them with ease. Within a few hours in game time (a few minutes in reality), we reach the Thalmor Embassy. To my surprise, it looked exactly like in Skyrim. We grouped up on a ridge a couple of yards out of site of the guards, a couple of Thalmor spell swords and mages. “Ok, for all of this to work right, we just need to swipe some papers in a chest inside the Embassy.” I say quietly to the group. “The best way to do this is for someone with good Sneak to go in there. And that leaves...Pinkie Pie.” We all stare at Pinkie Pie, who is busy playing with her new Khajiit tail. It takes her a few minutes to notice us. “Huh?” She says confused. “Pinkie, I need you to pay attention.” I say with a serious tone. “You need to sneak into that building, go into the interrogation chamber and get a dossier on a guy named Esbern. Do you understand?” “Yup!” She says cheerfully. “Alright, then get going.” She walks off in her usual, bubbly manner, jumping up and down. “...Well...this can only go well…” I say with little enthusiasm. ============================================================ We have been sitting on the ridge for an hour or two of game time. Then, all of a sudden, we hear a loud commotion coming from the Embassy. We peek over the ridge and see Pinkie Pie walking towards us, still jumping up and down without care, but with 3 dozen Thalmor goons on her tail. “Well...anyone up for some honor combat?” I ask the group. Everyone grins. “Thought so.” We rush over the ridge, with Luna, Vinyl, Twilight, and I slinging destruction spells and Daedra summons at the crowd, while everyone else starts hacking and slashing in every direction. The fight lasts for no more than a few seconds. The area outside the Embassy is now littered with Thalmor corpses. “Okay, Pinkie, did you get the papers?” I ask. “Yup, yuppiety yup, yup!” She says. Seconds later, a message appears showing that this part of the questline has been completed. “Alright, papers are in hand, Goldir has been avenged for Squiiddish, next is to take care of the rest. Now, in order to finish this off efficiently, we’ll have to split up tasks into two groups. One will handle all of the main questline details, while the other takes care of the Elder Scroll. Luna and I will get the Scroll while the rest of you finish the main questline. Barry, can you hook us up with a sort of ‘team-chat’?” Barry types up a command and just like that, we are linked to each other. “Great, I’ll keep you guys up to speed on what you have to do to progress. Right now, you have to go to Riften and find Esbern in the sewers.” “The sewers?!” Rarity shrieks. “ I will not go in any sewer!” “Relax Rarity,” Twilight says. “You can stay topside and keep watch. Is that ok, Epic?” “Yeah, it’s fine.” I say. “Riften looks like it’s about a couple hours to the east. The sooner we finish this, the sooner things will get to normal. Now, lets head out.” ============================================================ We spend the next couple of hours (actual, real time hours) on finishing the quest line to where we need fight Alduin. At this moment, the others were almost done with the Alduin’s Wall quest. As for Luna and I, we had managed to get past the Falmer infested Alfland Dwemer Ruins and have finally gotten inside the Alfland Cathedral. About halfway in, Luna accidentally triggers a spike trap. Before it can do some serious damage, I tackle her out of the way. If I was a second too late, she could have been seriously injured. And now, here we are, with me on top of her, both of us staring deep into each others eyes. My heart is racing, my mind is blanking. Before I do something rash, I get off of her and help her up. “Uh...are you alright Princess?” I ask awkwardly. “Y...Yes, I’m fine...thank you.” She responds. “Let’s...let’s just move on.” We continue onward, with lots of awkward silence. We manage to get past all the other traps and kill off all the dwemer constructs we find and finally, we reach the dwarven mechanism housing the Elder Scroll. We put the Lexicon we took from Septimus in the control panel and mess with the buttons until the lights line up and the Elder Scroll lowers down. I fire up our team chat to check with the others. “This is Epic,” I say. “We've got the Elder Scroll. How’s it going on your end?” “We just finished with that Alduin’s Wall mission,” Twilight responds. “and it’s telling us the next mission is ‘Alduin’s Bane’. What do we do now?” “We’ll meet each other in Ivarstead. It should be several hours to the east of your location.” “Okay, we’ll meet you there.” The connection cuts off after that. “Alright, Ivarstead is about an hour or so from here.” I say to Luna as I turn towards her. “We should be able to get there long before…” I’m stopped mid sentence when Luna catches me off guard with a kiss. My mind goes blank. I can’t form a coherent thought. Almost a whole minute goes by before she releases me. “Not...a word...to anyone.” She says sternly, but with care. Still stunned, all I can do is nod. She turns her gaze upward. “Same goes to you Barry.” He types ‘Yes ma’am.’ “Okay, now...where are we going again?” “Uh...uh...Ivarstead! We’re going to Ivarstead.” I say frantically. “Good. Lead the way.” ============================================================ After a few hours, the others reach Ivarstead. “Have you two been waiting long?” Twilight asks us. “Only an hour or two. Any troubles along the way?” I ask. “Only that we had to pry Rarity away from that one jewlery stand in Riften.” She responds. Rarity stands in the back admiring the mass quantity of rings, necklaces and tiaras in her inventory. “Alright, this is it.” I say to the group. “All we have to do now is climb this mountain, meet Paarthurnax, learn Dragonrend and fight Alduin. Once we've softened him up enough, all of you spam Dragonrend on him, one after the other. If you aren't using Dragonrend, you’re attacking him in your own way. While you all are doing that, I’ll use the Elder Scroll to blast him back to Skyrim. Any questions?” Nobody says a word. “Alright then, let’s get to it.” The climb up the mountain is simple enough. A couple of wolves and bears that Fluttershy sends away. The handful of trolls that we blast off the mountain. It isn't long until we reach High Hrothgar, home of the Greybeards. I use the ‘plate clip’ glitch to reach the other side, go inside through the back door, open the front door to let the others in, and begin the dialogue with the Greybeards. Eventually, they lead us outside, teach us Clear Skies, and point us towards the path to Paarthurnax. The trip is a minor inconvenience. When we reach the top, Paarthurnax descends from above. Rainbow Dash almost rushed him before I stopped her. I had forgotten to tell them that Paarthurnax was a dragon. After some more dialogue, we get to the part where we watch the fight between Alduin and the three Nord warriors that created Dragonrend. After it was finished, Alduin himself showed up. Without hesitation, I used Dragonrend on him, sending him crashing down. Then, as I begin chanting the same spell that was just shown to me, the others begin barging Alduin with attacks, mixed with Dragonrend. A fight that would have taken at least a few minutes, is over in less than one. I finish the spell, and Alduin leaves this world, the same way he was banished from Skyrim. Moments after he was gone, the world began to revert back to it’s former style. We all regained our equine forms and lost all of our armor, weapons and spells. Rarity was especially sad when her new jewelry disappeared. We rejoiced in our success and made our way back to Ponyville. “So, who’s up for another party to celebrate?” Pinkie Pie asks. While most of them agree, I shake my head. “Sorry, but I’m just too tired. Maybe next time.” They all understood and said their goodbyes as they walked over to Sugar Cube Corner. Princess Luna flew back to Canterlot and I trotted into my own home. I decided to check if my forge was still there. It was, and it was still as glorious as I had left it. With my curiosity satiated, I make my way upstairs and collapsed onto my bed. I had been asleep for a few hours, until something woke me up. “Huh...what...who’s there?” I stammer, half asleep. “It’s me, Luna.” She responds. Her voice jolts me to full alert. “Luna?! What are you doing…” She stops me with another kiss. “I figured the hero always gets a kiss from the princess.” //////End of Chapter 3////// Chapter 4: MLP meets DBZ Abridged!