Equestria Legends Online: Brothers

by 4428Gamer

The Daily Grind (2/2)

Alex/E1ectric_B1itz’s POV
Noon, Feb (5th)

---

Tap. Tap. Tap-tap tap. Tap.

We were given the blacksmith as a quest reward yesterday but there were a few things that were missing when we got it; more specifically, no furniture. After doing a sweep of the shop all we could find was a counter for someone to run the business and shelves along the walls. The entire building was falling apart too.

Tap-tap-tap...tap.

Since the sun was going down, and the building was too small to fit us all, we as a group decided to sleep back in the inn for one more night. Gwen was hoping we could have slept here to save money but that went out the window when she noticed the already broken window.

Tap. Tap. Bmmph!

The next day rolled around and we tried investigating. Kaylee went ahead and spent some money buying some chairs from a store in town and when she tried taking it out of her inventory, the game said no. That only the owner and whoever they allowed could place furniture.

Since I was the one the NPC gave the deed to, that meant I was the owner. Since we couldn’t find out how ‘allowing’ someone worked, Kaylee just gave me the chairs to place them. Then it worked fine. In a video game it makes sense. In practice? Dumbest thing ever.

Tap tap tap tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Tapapapapapapapapapapapapapapapapa—

“AUGH!” A demented scream echoed from inside the building. I barely made it out of the way as the front door I was tapping swung out to hit me.

From inside the building was the storefront and a very angry Kaylee glaring at me.

“Will you stop. Punching. THE DOOR?!” She screamed. “You have been doing that. For TWENTY MINUTES!”

“What she said.” “Alex, please stop,” Gwen, then Joey, added. All of them looked very unpleased.

Normally I would feel guilty or possibly scared of Kaylee’s death scowl but my frustration hit its breaking point. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I spat sarcastically. “Do any of you know how to make the menu for this place come up? Because I don’t see any of you trying!”

Like Kaylee had definitely exaggerated, I had been going around tapping the door, walls, and store counter in the hopes that I could get some kind of menu to come up.

The game’s tutorials went on and on for pages about how a store menu would have all these options to work on a shop you owned. Only problem is that it forgot to mention how you were supposed to get to this menu in the first place.

“Well obviously punching the door,” Kaylee said through gritted teeth. “Is not helping. So stop.”

I huffed. “Yeah. Got it.”

Kaylee turned and skulked back into the room, reclaiming one of the chairs as Joey teetered back and forth in the other one out of boredom. Gwen settled for lounging on the counter like a slob. Meanwhile, Sarge and Rachelle were out running errands.

Lucky them, I thought. “Look, maybe we should cut our losses,” I suggested. “We didn’t plan on getting a store anyways. Why not just pretend it doesn’t exist?”

Gwen sighed. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. I only want to keep this place so I can learn how to set up my own later. But if it's bugged? Kind of a bust.”

“Um, excuse me! Are you Blitz?” A voice quickly called out.

Curious, the others glanced out the doorway while I turned around. From not far down the road there was a random player walking over with a purpose. He was a blue Earth pony with a blond mane and the username Rextrous floating above his player crystal. When he got closer, he paused to stare at the building in confusion.

“I can’t believe it,” he muttered. “Somepony’s already received a shop? But...how?”

Somepony, I questioned with a light scoff. Who is this guy?

“Hold up.” Kaylee got out from her chair again and flew over beside me to get a good look at the player. “You’re Rex, right? What’re you doing here?”

“Rex?” I glanced back at her. “You know this guy?”

“Yeah, Sarge and I met him almost a week ago. We check in with him about King.”

I turned back to look at the guy who was starting back at me with an odd look. “Why?” I asked. “I’m sorry, I-I think I’m lost.”

Suddenly, ‘Rex’ seemed to understand what was going on. “Right. My apologies.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m one of the administrators for the game. More specifically, I’ve been assigned as the local administrator for the Ponyville area. We have been leading the effort towards finding the Elements of Harmony.”

“Wait, Admin Rex?” With a look of recognition, Gwen rolled off the counter and stood tall, dawning a formal tone. “I’ve heard about you but I don’t think we’ve met.”

“I don’t believe so.” Rex shook his head. “Out of this team, I’ve only met Siren and Sarge. Although I have heard about Fleur de Lis and her two teammates.”

“Us?” I blinked. I looked at Joey who only shrugged. “Why do you know us?”

“You were the three that were at Golden Oaks Library when it blew up,” Rex clarified. “Other admins mentioned seeing Fleur de Lis which made us first think there was some sort of NPC error before we learned otherwise.”

“Oh. Oh.” My eyes widened somewhat. I keep forgetting; Joey mentioned Rachelle looks like a character from the show.

Rex went on. “Sarge found me today to get an update about that player and he mentioned that his group acquired a shop through a quest. I came to see for myself.” Then he frowned. “But I’m confused. This is one of the shops a player gets when they complete a story-line quest. I was told those had been disabled.”

“Apparently not,” Gwen fired back before any of us could. “I was showing the kid how the gossip system worked with the NPCs and he unlocked it by accident. He did it when none of us were looking, too.”

You liar, I insulted inwardly. It sounded so real I almost nodded along. How’d you do that?

Rex noticed Joey sitting inside the shop and gave him a look of awe. “Is that true? If so, you’re pretty lucky.”

“Yeah, I know,” Joey said, beaming. Whether he knew it or not, his smugness only made Gwen’s lie more believable.

“I tried getting him to do it again but it hasn’t worked,” Gwen concluded. “But now we have no idea how to get this place running.”

“Is that right?” Rex thought on it, falling into Gwen’s trap. We were already onto the next topic before he had the chance to ask a single question. “Well, in that case, I’m glad I came by. Allow me help.”

“Thank you,” Kaylee breathed in a sigh of relief.

We brought him in and closed the door behind us before filling him in on the issue. How we got the deed, how I was the only one that could place furniture and then how we couldn’t open the menu for the place.

When we brought up that detail, Rex cringed. “Yes, I think I know what the problem is. Blitz? Could you bring that deed out for me?”

Shrugging, I obliged and started unrolling it for him.

He glanced at it for a second and nodded. “Alright. Now tap it for me.”

“What?” I paused and furrowed my brow. “I’ve already done that. That’s just going to send it back to inventory.”

“Humor me.”

Rolling my eyes, I tapped the piece of paper and— “Woah!”

Several pop up windows came up at once. From charts and status bars to multiple inventories and prices of other shops in Ponyville, there was an overload of information jumping at me. Then, at the center of all the windows was a summary of all the information kept front and center.

Tight Fit’s Right Fit Armory
(Lv 1 Blacksmith: Armorer)
Owner: E1ectric_B1itz

Requires attention: Disrepair
Stock is empty. There is nothing for sale.
There is no one currently employed.

Note: Shop will remain closed until
somepony is actively working.

What would you like to do?

Below that were multiple options leading to other menus, each of which were more detailed than the last. I studied each and every part of it with a bemused look on my face.

“What is this?” I demanded. “I’ve put this thing away four times and it never did that!”

“Near or inside the building?” Rex asked.

“Yes!”

He gave a solemn nod. “And did you keep the deed open when you tapped it?”

“Ye..." I let my mouth hang open for a second and slowly rolled the deed up in my hooves. The menus all vanished at once. “...No. No I didn’t.”

“Are you serious?” Kaylee glared at Rex. “Around the building and open? Why would that matter?”

“I’m not the one who designed it but I do understand the convolution.” He watched as I opened the menu back up. “There should be an option to remodel the structure. That should fix the building and let you choose what type of shop to run.”

I started navigating through the menus again and pressed that exact option before a mountain of choices for what kind of shop to turn this into.

“Woah. This is a lot,” I said aloud, scrolling through the options.

“It’s every type of shop the game has,” Rex explained. “The ones who designed the game’s economy figured there would be players interested in building businesses of their own. Those are premade layouts. I’m told they kept it rather open-ended.”

As I started finding some options that sounded good, I clicked on one of them and watched as it listed a number of supplies and money we needed to remodel. It wasn’t a short list either.

“Where do we get all this stuff?”

“Ah. You see, that’s why I came to help originally,” Rex assured us. “Everything you need can be bought in town. And I’ve already been granted permission from the head admin, Jupiter, to get you started.”

Joey went wide-eyed “Wait really? We don’t have to do anything?!”

Gwen seemed more skeptical. “Why?”

Rex smiled. “If players are running a shop, they can take special orders from other players. And if you sell everything cheaper than other stores, that would help everypony searching for the Elements. It’d be a benefit for everypony.”

There he goes with that dumb wordplay again, I noticed.

“Or we could sell it for someone else to deal with,” Kaylee offered.

“Or, or,” I started, reading through the menus. “We set this thing to autopilot and lower the prices. Apparently, that’s a thing.”

“Whatever you would prefer.” Rex chuckled. “I would only need a list of supplies and I can get them to you within the hour.”

“Guys, wait,” Kaylee interrupted. “Should we really be keeping this place? I mean, do any of us plan on staying in Ponyville forever?”

Gwen smirked. “Even if we don’t, it’d be nice to have something like a base. Besides, I wouldn’t mind a place where we can talk without someone trying to listen in on us.”

Joey giggled. “That sounds sketchy.”

“Good kid, you’re learning,” Kaylee snarked at Gwen’s expense. Then her scowl came back. “But you have a point. Talking at the inn’s lobby when anyone could listen over our shoulder gets kind of annoying.”

“Hey Alex? Can we make a staff shop?” Joey asked me. “I wanna get a stronger staff.”

“Okay, first? It’s a wand,” Gwen corrected him. “If you want a staff, go buy one. Second, what do you think this is, Harry Potter? We’re not making a shop just to build wands.”

“...What’s Harry Potter?” Joey asked after a few seconds.

“How do you not know what that is?” Kaylee stared at him.

Joey stared back. “Uh...Eight years old?” He shrugged.

“That’s not an excuse!”

While they kept going on about nothing important, I finally zeroed in on an option that I liked more than the rest. “Hey Rex? What do you think about this one?”

He walked over and read over the menus for a second before nodding along. “I like it. Actually, I was hoping you would choose something like that.”

“Wand shop?!”

“NO,” the rest of us fired back.

---

Light Chill’s POV
One Hour Later

---

While it might not have been the obvious best choice, Alex’s idea did sound like a good second best plan. So after the Rex guy saw it, he took down everything that he needed and set out to hunt it down for us while we got to relax for a while.

As we waited, Fleur came back with some groceries and Alex filled her in on what was happening. Then, a little while later, Siren gave up on waiting and sent a message to Sarge to fill him in too.

Not long after lunch, Sarge made it back the same time Rex did. Without too much trouble, Rex gave Alex everything he needed to fix the shop before having all of us step outside so we. So that...Um...

“Why do all of us have to stand out here?” I asked. “Couldn’t Alex do this from inside?”

“If we did the store wouldn’t update,” Alex explained. “Besides, the shop’s about to look completely different anyways. Don’t want anyone getting stuck in the wall.”

Sarge shook his head. “It’s a weird day when that sounds like an actual threat.”

“It won’t happen,” Rex reassured him with a chuckle. “There’s plenty of safety checks in place to keep it from having a mistake like that.”

Siren glanced away and muttered something I couldn’t hear. All I could tell was that Rex’s smile became a lot more sad.

When Fleur noticed the tension, she stepped up. “Alex? You...Go, please?”

“Right.” He opened up the deed and then the menu, finding the list of supplies. I watched as each progress bar filled itself in before this large text reading ‘Are you sure?’ popped up.

“Alright everyone.” Alex pressed the button.

“Everypony,” I corrected, cheering Rex up from his rut.

“Not on your life,” Alex told me with a smirk. Everypony then watched as the shop was sealed inside a dome of light, making it impossible to see.

“Family. Friends. Benefactor I‘ve known for all of one hour,” Alex listed off. “I’d like to formally thank you all for coming to the grand opening of my general weapons shop.” He spoke with a deep tone as if trying to sound professional despite the growing laughter in his voice.

“Get on with it,” Gray said with a roll of her eyes. Although she was smirking along too.

“Hey, I’m biding for time while the giant light fixture does it’s thing,” Alex admitted with a fake, unamused look. “I welcome you all to...Club Blade & Beyond!”

As if adding to effect, the light dome started shrinking down until the edges and eventually the entire building became visible, allowing us to see what the building had now become.

There was no longer a large porch with a forge on it. Instead, the building took up all the space it was allowed, looking bigger by comparison. There was now also a second story made up of a single room. Since it was the only building on this street with a second story, it looked even bigger as a result.

“The top floor is a private meeting room for plotting any kind of job or for Gray being sketchy,” Alex explained. “And downstairs is a room for storage, the showroom itself and two workshops. We can make almost any weapon except for the bigger stuff. Sorry Sarge.”

Sarge gave out a weak shrug while Rex let himself chuckle at the store’s sign. It was designed exactly like what the store’s name was based on back home.

“Club, Blade & Beyond?” Gray repeated slowly. “Are you serious?”

“It was either that or Blade Pro Shop,” Alex admitted with a grin.

“I think I would have preferred that one,” Sarge admitted.

“Ya know, Bloodbath & Beyond would have been better,” Siren told him.

“I thought so too, but somebody.” Alex glared at Rex. “Programmed it so you couldn’t have the word blood in store names!”

“Aw, come on.” Siren glared at him too. “Swearing I get; it’s a cartoon world. But blood?”

“You say that as though I made that decision,” Rex pointed out. “Again, I did not design the shops.”

“Ohmahgawd!" Gray blurted out, stopping only to fit through her chortling. "Uh, excuse me? Manager?! What’s the thread count on your cloaks~?” Gray said in this high-pitched voice that almost made Siren and me double over laughing.

“Do you sell Timberwolf-scented candles?” Sarge added with a smile.

Alex opened his mouth to answer but suddenly gasped, turning to Rex. “Please tell me we can make candles here.”

Rex, unable to answer through his laughing, just nodded.

“We do now!” Alex cheered.

All of us spent the next couple minutes joking and laughing. Probably more than any of us normally would. It was the first time in a while that any of us had been so genuine.

Author's Note:

Originally, I planned on only making one of these between the arcs. But as many of you may have noticed, we got some new cover art!

Everyone go ahead and thank Mix-Up for all the help with it! It came out great.

---

The shop itself might get some use later on down the line but for now this is probably the most attention Club Blade & Beyond's getting.

...Huh. You know, looking back on it, maybe Blade Pro Shop is better. What do you guys think?

Either way, I'll be taking a break on this story for a bit. So until next time everyone!

Cheers,
-Zeke

Comments

[bluemoon1996]

I was gone for a LONG time (seriously from like last august till about a month month and a half ago) and its FANTASTIC To see this rolled again

[robotic]

This is a great read so far loving the direction cant wait for the next !