And So The Games Begin
Green wire there… Copper node here... That connects to that, which goes right there…
I was in my apartment, underneath the metal husk I had been building for the past four days.
The thing was shaped like an egg laying on its side. Half of it was solid steel, hollowed out to fit electronics inside. The upper half was cut into a frame so I could fit small fogged windows into it. At the moment, I was working on the inside, trying to get the wiring right.
“If I connect that right there, that should leave enough room for the…” I trailed off, my voice mumbled.
I heard hoofsteps behind me, and it startled me into knocking my head on the frame.
I muttered a curse, and looked behind me to see Applejack standing a few feet away.
“Oh,” I said, surprised. I hadn’t seen much of AJ since the whole ordeal with Cerberus. “hey AJ. What’s up?”
She smiled at me. “Howdy, Conner.” She looked behind me, at me machine that I was building. “Uh, what is that thang?”
“A side project I’m working on.” I said. “When it’s done, it’ll be really fun to use.” I looked around my apartment, noticing the mess that my equipment made. “If I knew you were coming, I would have cleaned up a little.”
She waved a hoof. “Nah, don’t ya’ll worry none. Don’t bother me. Ah actually came here ta ask ya a question.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah? Whatcha need?”
“Well,” she began. “Once a year, Equestria holds a competition that the entire nation can partake in. Ah came ta ask if ya wanna join in.”
“What kind of competition?” I asked.
She smiled widely at me. “A big ol’ game of Tag!”
I stared at her. “Tag?”
She nodded. “Yup. Tag. The entire country of Equestria is encouraged to play, though not everypony does.”
I stared at her, wide eyed. “That… Is…” I burst out laughing. “Genious! Where do I sign up?”
AJ beamed. “Town center. Ya’ll can sign in there, like everypony else! From what I hear, the games gonna start in Ponyville this year.”
I furrowed my brow. “I can’t imagine that the game will spread all that fast, given it covers the entire country.”
She nodded. “From what Ah hear, it takes a while for the rest of the towns to get in on it. Ah think it takes an extra day or two ta get to them. But it sure as sugar is real fun, when it gets up an’ goin’.”
I had a thoughtful smile on my face when I said,”Yeah… I imagine it is.”
So, we left for the town center, to sign in on the massive game of tag.
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The next day came, the day that the game started.
All the participants (basically everyone in town) were gathered around the stage set up at town hall. The mayor stood in front of the podium at center stage.
“Greetings, and Good day to everypony!” She said into the mic. “Today is the ninth annual Equestria Tag Games!” The crowd cheered. “Today we play a game of tag for everypony to play in! And we, as Ponyville citizens, have the honor of hosting the start of the game!” The crowd cheered even louder. The mayor’s smile widened. “So, without further adieu, I welcome Princess Celestia to the stage!”
The mayor moved aside to let the princess take the stand.
Celestia, as regal as ever, gave her patented motherly smile. “Greetings, citizens of Ponyville.” She said. “I welcome you to the Games, and hope you all have good luck on the field of tag.”
She surveyed the area around the stage. “For those of you who have only signed on this year,” I saw her eyes flick to me at that, “Or those of you who forgot, I shall relay the rules to you all.”
“Rule one,” She began. “This is merely a game of tag, and should be treated as such. Under no circumstances should anyone come to purposeful harm during the games. We are all here to have fun, not have to worry about your safety.
“Rule two: If you are tagged, you are out. I know that this rule is a little obvious, but I’m sure we all remember last year’s incident.” The crowd murmured their agreement. I was left clueless.
“Rule three: you are only allowed to run. No flying and no magic. Those would be considered cheating, and you will be disqualified for using them.
“Those are the three and only rules. Now, we shall discuss the goals of the players. You all will be in one of two teams. The first are the chasers, the second, the runners. The chasers’ goal is to tag all of the runners before the end of this week. Each chaser will be magically given a red bandanna around the neck to identify themselves by. The runners’ goal is to get to the designated ‘finish circle’, where, if one gets there, you will win the game. There will be safe spots for both chasers and runners to go to, to sleep and eat, should the need arise. There is to be no conflict in those areas, or the offender will be disqualified. A royal guard will be there to supervise. The games will end when every runner has been tagged out, all the runners have reached the designated ‘finish circle’, or when the week ends.”
So, run away, get to the finish line, and win. Simple enough. Though simple doesn’t always mean easy.
“To start off the game,” Celestia continued, “we shall pick a single pony to start as a chaser. From there, you all need to run from them, and not get tagged. To attain victory, for the runners, you must make it from here to Canterlot castle. My throne room, to be specific.”
Quite the distance, though there should be those safe zones placed periodically. I would imagine that some might take the train, though that has a certain measure of danger to it.
“Now that we have the ground rules set out, it is time to pick the first chaser.” Celestia gave the podium to the mayor.
The mayor, for her part, had been given a bingo ball machine, presumably with the names of all the contestants on a ball.
The mayor spun the handle on the side of the machine, and a few seconds later, a ball came out of the bottom.
The mayor picked it up and read off the name, “Caramel!”
The pony in question walked up to the stage, and stood next to the mayor. I recognised the guy from some of a few parties at the club. The dude could really party hard, though he didn’t have all that much stamina. At least, as far as I could tell, from observation.
The mayor then went onto some speech that I really didn’t listen to. I was busy looking around at who was here.
The first thing I noticed was a certain prismic mare. Out of all the colors in the crowd, she still stood out. Next to Rainbow Dash, stood Twilight. Twilight looked as though she was nervous, but still looked hyped up for the beginning. Maybe this was her first year competing.
Applejack was standing next to me, so I didn’t need to find her.
I scanned the crowd, but could see neither hide nor hair of Rarity or Fluttershy. Made sense. Didn’t seem like their type of thing, anyway.
Near the front of the stage, I could see Vinyl. Shs stood there with her usual cocky grin on her face. It’ll be fun to see what happens to her by the end of this.
My thoughts were interrupted by the mayor saying,”-nd so we would like to officially start the Equestrian Tag Games! May the best pony win!”
With that, everyone ran in different directions, most of which were running in the direction of Canterlot. Some ran the opposite way, however, and I could only guess that their intent was to see how long they could last.
Me? I wanted to get to the castle as soon as possible. On foot, leaving Ponyville and getting to Canterlot should take about a day, and half of the next to get to the castle. So, I’ll be busy.
With those thoughts in my mind, I ran toward the mountain that held the capital of Equestria. With luck, my trip will be quick, though I didn’t count on it.
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I ran through Ponyville, making sure to check every corner I turned. I had only run into two chasers after the games started, the previous hour.
Ponyville, despite popular belief, is actually pretty big. Or, rather, it seemed that way. There wasn’t the massive amounts of buildings that you would find in a big city, but every home on the outskirts of town had a sizable lawn attached to it, so what was lacking in quantity, made up for it in individual size.
It took me an hour to get to where I was, and I wasn’t even close to getting out of town. That should tell you enough about the size of Ponyville.
I was running (more like jogging) down the street, being careful to check my back every now and then. When I turned into an alleyway, I found something I didn’t expect.
About twenty people were waiting there, all of them talking to each other, but clearly alert of the entrance to the alley. In the crowd, I saw a few familiar faces, such as Ditzy, Caramel, and Bon-Bon. And all of them were wearing a red bandanna around their necks.
I froze in place as they all turned to look at me. Clearly, Caramel had gotten lucky in tagging that many people in the first hour.
They faced me, smirks played across their faces.
“Hey, Conner.” Bon-Bon said. “How are you today?”
When in doubt, go with levity.
I took a casual stance, put my hands in my hoodie pockets, and said,”Oh, you know, pretty good. When for a nice jog just now.”
“Oh?” she asked, not even trying to hide the smugness.
I heard a soft noise behind me, and figured that there were some ponies sneaking behind me.
I went on with the conversation at hand. “Yeah. I was about to do a favorite pastime of mine, too, but you caught me before I could start.”
She tilted her head, and gave me a bemused look. “Really? And what would that be?”
I smiled at her. “Freerunning.”
Once as the word left my mouth, I sprinted toward Bon-Bon.
Clearly, I had caught her off guard, because when I was just about get in front of her, she froze.
When I was about to collide with the cream colored pony, I juked to the left, heading straight for my target.
Just to Bon-Bon’s right (my left) was a conveniently placed stack of crates. The crates were stacked in just a way that I could run up them, then grab onto the ledge of the roof of the building they leaned against. So, that’s what I did.
I bound up the crates, and clambered up onto the rooftop, where I sprinted across to the next roof.
If I had looked behind me, I would have seen the look of surprises on all their faces, then them giving chase on the ground.
They followed me from the ground, and I was running out of roof top.
When I was just about to run right off the edge of the final roof, I stopped, and looked around the ground below me for something that could give me an advantage.
I saw something, and almost squeed out of sheer fanboyism.
Just below me, was a cart full of hay. A cart so perfectly aligned with the roof I stood on, that it would have been criminal to NOT do what I was about to do.
I looked behind me, and saw that the ponies that were giving chase were still behind me, looking up to the roofs periodically, probably looking for me.
That time, I DID squee out of fanboyism, then I said in a wistful voice,”Oh, I really hope this works.”
I took a few steps back, ran, and dived off the edge, straight into the cart full of hay.
Surprisingly enough, it worked. When I hit the bottom of the cart, all I felt was a small thud, and somehow, the hay had been formed around me, completely undisturbed by my jumping into it.
I heard hoofsteps come running nearby. When they stopped I heard a voice say,”Where did he go?” I didn’t recognize the speaker.
“I don’t know.” someone responded. Bon-Bon, if I had to guess. “Maybe he jumped down and ran into an alley.”
“Don’t the others have those covered?” Random Pony asked.
“Yeah. We should go check with them, see if they caught him.”
Hoofsteps were head, running away from my position.
I sat there for a minute, stunned. That shit actually worked? Did they really just do that?
I poked my head out of the hay cart and looked around. I couldn’t see anyone that was chasing me. They must have all left.
HOLY SHIT! THAT ACTUALLY WORKED!
I jumped out of the hay with a huge grin on my face.
As it turns out, Assassin’s Creed tricks for free running actually work, and are effective too.
With renewed vigor, I jogged my way toward the edges of Ponyville, and hopefully, toward the first safe spot.
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After the first encounter with the massive chaser mob, I ran toward the edges of Ponyville. Each time I ran into the mob, they had gotten bigger and bigger. Thankfully, they weren’t focused on most of those times, and when they were, I gave them the slip pretty easily.
When I reached the outskirts of Ponyville, I was being chased by a group of four ponies.
I was just straight up sprinting down the road, not even bothering to try and out maneuver them. Not yet, anyway.
When I was about to reach the borders of Ponyville, I skidded to a stop, and faced my chasers.
They were still running toward me, as I figured. When they got within about twenty five yards of me, I ran toward them.
The looks of surprise they had when I stopped only grew larger when they saw me running toward them. Then, their looks turned to determination.
We ran toward each other, neither side willing to give in.
When we were about to collide, I jumped with as much strength as I could muster.
A pony of about average height only comes up to my chest. When I really put my mind to it, I can easily jump one.
Thankfully my chasers had formed a horizontal line when we started to play chicken. They probably thought that it would stop me from trying to juke my way out of the way. And it would have worked, if I didn’t vault over the guy in front of me.
Placing my hand on top of the pony’s head, I pushed myself over him, and rolled when I hit the ground.
My pursuers had too much speed to stop quickly and turn after me, so I had plenty of time to run up from my roll, and sprint into a nearby alleyway, hopefully before my chasers saw me.
Just like the rest of my day, my luck payed off.
When I got to the alley and took cover behind a corner, my pursuers were only just turning around. When they finally did, I was nowhere to be seen, and they clearly thought that I was a lost cause, after they searched some of the area.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Those guys had been chasing me for the past twenty minutes.
Speaking of time, I looked up at the sun to see how long it had been since I last checked.
A couple hours, from what I could tell. The sun was getting really close to the horizon, so I would guess that it was somewhere between four or five o’clock.
I made my way out if the alley, and back down the street, toward the first safe zone Celestia had mentioned.
I got there about ten minutes later, and found out that the place was a boarding house just outside of Ponyville. A red flag bore the words ‘SAFE’ in big, white letters on the roof. Ponies could be seen around the area, in the lawn and the house itself.
As I made my way to the front door, a pegasus mare walked up to me.
She wore the armour of one of Celestia’s day guard. She had a white coat, and a mane and tail of bright red. On her flank was a symbol of a bright red flash of some kind.
She walked up to me and said,”Neutral ground. No chases or antagonising to cause someone to get disqualified. See someone break these rules, and you tell me. Got it, monkey?”
I frowned at her. She didn’t sound overly friendly. Maybe humour would lighten her mood…
I pointed to myself and said, “I’m an ape.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course you are.” She didn’t sound like she cared all that much. “Do you understand the rules of the safe zone, ape?”
I nodded. “You could use my name, you know.”
She rolled her eyes again. I got the feeling she did that a lot. “I don’t know your name.” She held up a hoof to delay my response. “Not to mention, I don’t care. If you understand the rules, then our business is concluded. Go and do whatever it is that you apes do.”
With that she walked off.
I frowned after her. She was kinda a bitch about that whole experience. Honestly, I don’t think I did anything to deserve hostility from her. I had barely said a few words at all, and she still wanted me gone.
“Don’t mind her.” Said a voice to my right.
An old stallion walked up to me. He was a greyish blue, with a pure grey mane and tail. For a cutie mark, he had a quill and parchment.
He walked over to me, looking after the departing mare. “She’s always like this. Not entirely sure why, though.”
I looked at him. “Really?”
He nodded. “She’s always been a grump, ever since I had met her. Its gotten worse as of late. Couldn’t tell you why.” He looked at me. “Oh, but where are my manners.” She stuck a hoof out toward me. “Blue Ink, at your service.”
I shook his hoof. “Connor Jason Hents. Some people call me Change.”
He smiled at me, and it brought out the lines in his face, as though he was used to the expression. “Nice to meet you, boy. But like I said, don’t mind Flare. She’s always been a little grumpy.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Flare?”
“Signal Flare.” He amended. “The mare you just met is named Signal Flare. One of the finest guards in the force. If she wasn’t so mean all the time, she would have made captain before that boy, Shining something.”
“Finest guard, eh?”
He nodded. “Best I’ve seen in years. Ever since she joined, she had a gift for it. Always did her job to the letter, and without much in the way fault. She’s smart, dedicated, and straightforward. She really does her job well. Shame she has to always snap at ponies.”
I shook my head. “What she needs is a friend.”
He nodded agreement. “Indeed. She needs somepony to get her out of that little shell of hers. She’s always snapping at ponies who don’t deserve it, and then reasons that it was their fault. I suppose that someone should try to get her to lighten up, but everypony that tried, ended up with a broken hoof of three. She scares them all off, says that they’ll distract her from her job.”
Huh. Well, guess who I’m going to be bothering for the next while?
I shook my head. “Well, I’m sure she’ll get out of her rut at some point.” I turned to the old man. “Do you know who owns this place?”
He nodded with a smile. “That would be me. I take it that you would like to get a bed for the night?”
“Indeed, I do. Got any to spare?”
“A few. I can show you where.”
We started to walk into the boarding house.
“So,” I said, trying for small talk. “Hear anything about the competition?”
Blue Ink nodded. “All the safe zones get periodic updates on the percent of ponies turned into chasers. Last I checked, and out seventy percent of Ponyville are chasers now.”
My eyes widened. “That many?!”
He nodded. “Last I check, though that was an hour ago. This year went by fast, too. I have been using my home as a safe zone since the beginning of the Tag Games, and that has to be the fastest I’ve seen a town get turned.”
I shook my head. “And to think I have to run from all of them tomorrow…”
Ink smiled. “Aye. Should be fun. But for now, here’s your bed. Rest well, and be sure to get some breakfast in the morning.”
I nodded, laid down on the bed, and went to sleep early.
I had a long day ahead of me tomorrow…
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I woke up the next day at around three in the morning.
I figured that was a good time to wake up, since I had a long walk ahead of me.
I went into the kitchen of the boarding house, to find Signal Flare at the stove, cooking something. Eggs, I think.
I sat at the table and watched her. Outside of her armor, she looked pretty. Her mane and tail had a certain kind of look that claimed she didn’t take much care of her hair, yet didn’t need to. They were rumpled, unkept, and still portrayed a certain kind of appeal. Her coat was a pure white, despite the fact that she must have gotten some dirt on it.
When she moved she moved with perfect assurity, as though she had done this a thousand times before, and could do it in her sleep.
I got the feeling that she did most things like that.
The only thing wrong with the picture in front of me, was her face. Her face was set in a neutral mask, as though she just didn’t care. It ruined the image that the rest of her body was portraying for her.
“Keep staring, ape, and I throw you out the window.” She said in a cold, even voice.
That voice would have probably cowed others into looking away from her out of fear, but I merely tilted my head.
“Why?”
“Because, if I wanted to be stared at, I would actually make an effort to be noticed. You, staring at me, is distracting.”
I snorted. “ I find that hard to believe. You haven’t even looked at me through this entire situation.” Which was true. She just kept cooking her eggs, or whatever they were. “And if you were truly so distracted, you wouldn’t be moving so confidently, now would you?”
I saw her eyes narrow. “What do you want?” She asked, finally looking at me.
I shook my head. “Nothing. I just think that you could be a little more kind to others. All I did was sit here, and watch you work, and you threaten to throw me out of a house that you don't even own. You keep calling me ape, which would be like me constantly calling you horse. You could try using some common courtesy, thats all I’m saying.”
She looked back at her work at the stove. “Courtesy gets in the way of the job. I don’t have time for it. Drop the subject.”
“But you aren’t working right now.” I said, ignoring that last part. “It wouldn’t get in the way of anything.”
Her eyes narrowed again. “Fine. Maybe you just irritate me. Now, drop the subject.”
I ignored the demand again, and asked, “My mere presence irritates you? That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”
She cast an angry look at me. “No. Now, drop the damn subject!”
I did this time.
I got up from my spot at the table and walked toward the front door.
“Fine.” I said back to her. “But you won’t get much of anywhere in life with an attitude like that, despite what you might think.”
With that, I closed the door behind me, and left for Canterlot castle.
I had a competition to win.
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3595302 Yep. That pretty much sums it up...
Me gusta.
Assassin's Creed freerunning? Hell yes! This story, in all honesty, just keeps getting better and better!
Not sure about the entertainment factor? You crazy? This chapter was freakin awesome. Prossibly the best so far...
You must update soon or I will die from anticipation...
BTW: I meant prossibly, that was no typo
3598123 ... The Hell does prossibly mean?
Wow, I wasn't expecting a reaction. It's my catchphrase hybrid between possibly and probably which cancel each other out so you get might. Do not question my actions - I am getting tired...
"Genius".
- went for a nice jog just now
- they weren’t focused on me most of those times,
- juke out of the way
- on the lawn
- ever since I first met her
- He stuck a hoof out toward me. "Blue Ink, at your service."
- a broken leg or three. Hooves are small and hard and therefore are impractical to break.
encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSchCBsiiuZO9zDVGadfHnfVQwrhVFIANWGPkktDLPLEkHeV1LquQ
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f5/76/80/f576808b5c8d5cc1583d78a96e8db188.jpg
st below me, was a cart full of hay. A cart so perfectly aligned with the roof I stood on, that it would have been criminal to NOT do what I was about to do.
*looks at the Assassins Creed Jacket I'm currently wearing.* Well shit