DAY 5: 1
Groggily, Rarity opened her eyes. As she had done for the last three days, she checked her mane. Still an atrocious rat’s nest. Sighing she checked around her for her friends. Fluttershy was easily found lying beside her, still sleeping, but the others were nowhere to be seen. The pair were still in Central Park, but there was no other pony to be seen anywhere nearby, whether players or not.
Rarity heard a rustling from behind her. She turned to find Fluttershy rising slowly to her hooves. "Why good morning Fluttershy. Glad to see you're finally awake. And are you still... well...."
Fluttershy opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Sadly she nodded.
"Oh dear. Well don't worry, I shall just have to keep talking enough for the both of us. Now then dear, we should try looking for our friends. I suppose you're still opposed to the idea of flying up high to get a look?" Fluttershy's shrinking into the ground more than answered her question. "Very well then, we shall look on hoof. Off we go then."
The pair had gotten no more than about twenty metres from their starting point when Rarity walked straight into a wall. "Well, it seems they don't want us going this way. No matter, we still have plenty of other directions to choose from." Rarity turned on her hooves and walked right back the way she came, Fluttershy trailing behind her. They had gotten no further from the starting point in the opposite direction before Rarity hit another wall.
"So, they don't want us going this way either? Well, it's still not a problem. We can still go the other way." But the next direction Rarity picked was also a dead end, with another invisible wall looming up to meet them. "Well then," Rarity said, her confidence a bit rattled, "I guess there's only one way we can go. Onwards." Turning round once more, Rarity headed off at a canter, trying to make up for lost time. While they had no mission yet, she would prefer to have already found her friends by the time it came. After all, we figured out yesterday’s mission quickly together, so if we can do the same again to-
Thunk. Rarity was suddenly admiring the view of the sky. Fluttershy's concerned face hovered into view as rarity struggled to figure out what happened. She rolled over onto her hooves and walked forward. Another barrier blocked her path. "What. No, seriously, what? They've boxed us in?"
§§§
"Now calm down Rainbow, and say it again, slowly," Applejack said.
"Okay, well while you were still out I decided to do some warm ups, you know, basic stretches, a few breathing exercises, but when I went for a run, I ran into a wall."
"Well so what? So the reapers don't want us going that way then. That's nothing new is it?"
"Well no, but then when I tried another direction, BAM, another wall. And not just two, but everyway I tried to go I hit a wall."
Applejack frowned. "Why, that can’t be. You sure you didn't just get your directions muddled up after hitting the first wall?"
"If you don't believe me see for yourself! I'm telling you AJ, they've boxed us in here."
Applejack had to check it out for herself. She went towards where Dash had said the wall was, and stopped. She moved a hoof forward, and encountered resistance. There was a wall alright.
"See? A wall."
"One wall doesn't prove anything."
"Well why don't you do a lap? See if I'm wrong."
"Alright alright, I'm going. Sheesh." Leaving Rainbow behind, Applejack walked parallel to the wall for a while. Eventually she came to another wall at right angles to the first. Unperturbed, she followed this new wall until she reached another. Slightly more concerned, she followed this one too, finally arriving on the other side of the waiting Rainbow Dash.
"See? Told ya."
"But that can't be right! Wait the hay do they expect us to do in this tiny space?"
Two green flashes punctuated the remark. "Well, looks like we're about to find out."
§§§
"So, we're still in the park, we can't find the others, and we're stuck behind four walls," Twilight was saying. "Does that cover everything?"
"I don't understand this at all," said Pinkamena. "If there are walls there should be a reaper in charge of them. They're not supposed to lock us up like this."
"Well clearly they have. I'm sure it'll all be cleared up once we get the mission." A green flash. "Speaking of...."
As with the day before, the mission came not in a scroll, but in an envelope. Twilight pulled out the mission brief, placing it aside for now as she fished around for anything else. Her magic wrapped around another pin, and she pulled it out. This one featured what appeared to be a stylised wave, in various hues of blue. "Hey Pinkamena, any idea on what this pin does?" Twilight turned around to see Pinkamena staring at the mission mail, a look of disbelief plastered on her face. As Twilight watched, her expression changed to one of abject horror. "What? What's wrong?"
Pinkamena said nothing, just pointing a hoof at Twilight's own letter. She picked it up and read it.
Mission Five: Erase another pair. You have 60 minutes. Failure will result in erasure. The Reapers. PS: Every pair has an individual time limit. One new pin has been enclosed. The timer will start and you will be released from your isolated area once all players have read the mission mail.
Twilight stared. She rubbed her eyes and looked again, hoping this was all a mistake. The words stubbornly remained on the page. "They... they can't be serious," Twilight said, vaguely hoping saying it would make it true. "This is horrible!"
"This is breaking almost every rule I know about the game! Rule 1, no erasing other players!"
"We have to end another, no, two other ponies existence's, and you're worried about BREAKING RULES?" Twilight was incredulous. "What if it's our friends we have to fight?"
"Then they'll erase us. Simple as that."
"What? Why? You don't think we can beat them? Wait, no, that's beside the point! They can't make us do this!"
"What do you expect to happen Twilight? That by refusing to fight we'll manage to come out of this fine?" Pinkamena was barely holding back the distress in her voice. "No, we fight or we die for good. And if we go up against my friends, we're going to throw the match."
"What?!"
"Look at it from their point of view. Either them and at least one of our friends survives, or one of their friends and some pony they barely know. Which side do you think the scales are going to come down on that decision?"
It was all Twilight could do to stop herself from screaming. But they do know me! "Okay, fine, but that's a worst case scenario. There must be plenty of pairs in this game. The odds of us fighting your friends aren't exactly huge. We'll be fine, and so will they. If comes down to fighting or dying, well...." Twilight swallowed. "I guess we have no choice really." That doesn't mean I have to like it.
"Now until we start we should calm down. If we try to fight like this we're likely to make fatal mistakes."
"Oh, of course, I'd just hate to be erased because I was stressed about doing the same to some innocent pony!"
"That's not very calm."
"I AM COMPLETELY CALM!" Twilight realised she was nearly nose to nose with Pinkamena. She backed away and took some deep breaths. "Okay, I'm calm, I'm calm.... no I'm not no I'm not no I'm not!" The deep breathing was replaced with hyperventilating.
"You're not exactly helping yourself! Look, would it help if I tried to figure out your new pin?"
Twilight nodded, and handed her pin over to Pinkamena's telekinetic grasp. Try as she might, the stress just wasn't going away. The thought of facing her friends still preyed on her mind, as did the image of each one of them standing over her broken body.
"Okay, well there's two possibilities." Pinkamena handed the pin back to Twilight, who pinned it to her sash. "It's either a water orb pin, like the one Fluttershy has. But I think it's more likely that it's a water barrier."
"A barrier of water?" Twilight echoed dubiously. "I wouldn't think water would be the most effective barrier..."
"You'd be surprised. You wouldn't be able to attack while it's up, but you will be untouchable. You'll also recover strength while it's up."
"I see." She didn't. "So what makes you think it's that instead of the other thing?"
In response Pinkamena held up her own new pin. It showed an oven with its door open, a faint orange glow coming from within. "This is my new pin. It'll let me teleport short distances during battle. It can't be used to attack. So I suspect all the new pins the reapers handed out are support ones, not attacking pins. That and Fluttershy already has a Water orb pin, and it would be boring if more than one of us had the same type of pin." Pinkamena blinked for a second. "Sorry, I don't know where that last part came from."
"It's alright." Twilight took another deep breath. "Okay, I think I've calmed down now." There was an all too familiar tingling sensation in her hoof. "And just in time too."
"Good. The walls should be coming down any second now..... Yup, any time now...." Panic started to seep into Pinkamena's voice. "I'm- I'm sure the walls are already down and we just didn't see it."
Twilight fired up her player pin and sent a magic pulse out. "Nope, all still up."
Silence. "Anything yet?" Pinkamena asked, the panic now well evident.
"Still nothing."
Another silence. "Oh now that's just not fair!"
§§§
"Come on Fluttershy, the walls are down! We need to get moving!"
Fluttershy shook her head and clung all the tighter to the tree. Rarity continued to pull at her.
"I know you don't like this mission; I like it no better myself. But if it's a choice between certain death and uncertain death..." Rarity finally managed to dislodge Fluttershy, toppling backwards as the resistance vanished. "Oof! I'll take the uncertain death. Now come on, or we'll run out of time!"
Fluttershy reluctantly fell behind Rarity. Rarity felt terrible pressuring Fluttershy into this, but they had no choice. As the pair finally passed through the previously impenetrable barrier, Rarity found herself looking at her new pin. It was a needle and thread, like the kind Rarity often used for final touches on her dresses. She had no idea what it might do. She had even less of an idea of what Fluttershy's pin, a cartoon rabbit, might do.
There were still no reapers in sight, a fact which unnerved Rarity slightly. Granted, she had no desire to meet any more reapers after the last three they met, but she preferred to know where the danger might be.
They had only taken a few steps past where the barrier was before they heard a shiing noise behind them. Fluttershy turned and bolted, but her flight was stopped by the barrier that had just reappeared.
"They've sealed us in again! How rude!"
"Well isn't this unfortunate," came a voice from the other side of the area. A voice Rarity recognised, missing it's normal drawl as it was. Applejack and Rainbow Dash stepped into view. "Howdy."