The Final Boss Himself
As fast as the light blinded me, it vanished. I went from taking off into the air to standing plainly on the ground in the middle of town. My wings were folded along my back as I was set to a default pose.
All around me, columns of light dotted the plaza and players were left standing around. Like me, all of them stood plainly so no one was mid-attack or flying in the air. Although a few of them let out war cries or fearful screaming when they appeared.
I ignored the lights and looked around. It didn't take long to spot the landmarks and realize we were all being summoned to the starting area. Everyone around me were confused or angry but I didn't recognize any of them.
Before the town center filled to capacity, I tried running around, calling out Joey's name every several seconds; I checked each nametag and the small gems that hung above our heads. Players had regular green gems above them. But for players you befriended, you could customize the color of the gem to recognize it. Joey's gem would be blue.
After another minute of running like a madman, I begrudgingly accepted that Joey was somewhere else and probably looking for me too. With all the players, it was too packed for me to walk. But for Joey he could squirm around faster.
"Gamers and Players!"
A loud voice suddenly boomed through the crowd like a yelling megaphone. "May we have your attention please!"
Gamers and Players, I reviewed with a snicker. Aren't those two the same thing?
The ambient noise of the crowd grew silent as we spotted a group of four alicorns flying above us. I don't think they were character from the show as the lead alicorn wore a bright red coat and long white mane. Imagine a pony version of 'Fabio' and you'd be right.
The lead alicorn, which I have now elected to call Princess Fabio, waited until the crowd was good and quiet before continuing.
"Everyone. We are the administrators of Equestria Legends Online. We are in charge of analyzing the system and keeping it running in top condition."
I felt my body relax. Oh good, I thought. It's the admins. This was probably some introduction to the game; maybe even an announcement that they were about to have a day 1 patch. They probably wanted to have everyone logging out so they can get it over with.
"However," the head admin began. "Right now we are experiencing several technical difficulties in the system." My guess wasn't far off. "One of which, as some of you might have noticed, was the absence of the logout button in your player menus."
Oh. The logout's malfunctioning. I rolled my eyes with an instinctive snicker. Not a problem. Accounts and social media sites have those issues all the time. We'll just force quit the game and...
And...
Wait, WHAT?!
I quickly summoned my menu as he spoke, as did a good dozen other players around me and—oh shit—he was right. No logout prompt. Not even a box for it.
Blank.
"This is a major problem—" YA THINK?! "—since there is no other way for anyone to leave the game. We do not know the cause for this malfunction—" Oh, great. News is getting better... "—but please bear with us as we try to fix this problem. While we try to find what's causing this, for your own safety, please remain in the Ponyville Square for the time being."
My hoof started shaking violently as I continued staring at the lack of the logout button. I wasn't the only one either. Several reactions poured out from the crowd. Some people shouted questions blended with strings of profanity from others. On the other end, players kept tapping their menus for a workaround. The hackers or tech-savvy kind had no clue what to do either.
As all this went on, players shifted through the crowds. Some walked, others shoved, and a couple of pegasi players flew to avoid the crowds. In the moving and panic, I heard people begin to snap at both admin and player alike.
"Woah."
"Hey, watch it."
"Calm down!"
"So that's how these work!"
"Whoop. Sorry!"
Among the chaos, one of the pegasi players, a mare in darker colors, flew up halfway to the admins. As the crowd's attention was on her, she took the moment to ask the big, blazing question.
"What do you mean you don't know what the problem is?!" The lady's shout held no fear. If anything, she was probably making herself seem angrier just to get the point across.
Princess Fabio—yes, I was still going to call him that—remained stern in his expression as he watched the Pegasus. "This problem isn't from a lack in the system. So we don't know where the problem might have originated."
It took me a second to realize that he didn't answer the question. Not really. Whether it was the system or not, the problem was in the game that They created. If something bad happened then they should already have plans in place to figure out what caused it.
The fact that they were instead here, doing damage control, meant that they were biding for time. That, or they were just as confused as us.
And that's when the flipping Sun turned off.
The crowd's silence shattered once more as panic spread. Except, now when people shambled around, they were running into each other. In the first couple of seconds, a few players ran into me despite standing still. After the fourth player struck me they let out a sharp gasp.
"Alex?!" A young voice called out. "Alex is this you?!"
"Joey?!" I immediately turned around and tried looking for anything. But with the sun still gone and the gems above us all not actually lightning anything, I only saw the blue gem hanging in the air next to me.
"Alex!" I felt someone close by walk past and then, nothing.
"Hey, get off!"
To my left, I heard another voice shout before Joey's blue gem got forced back a couple of feet.
"Joey?" I called out to him again and reached for the blue gem before lowering my hoof. As it tapped a small-sized unicorn's head, I quickly pulled him in.
The next few seconds were chaos before the two of us finally got our bearings in the darkness. As we did, I had Joey climb up on my back so that we wouldn't get separated. Since he was less than half my size in-game, him standing on my back wasn't a problem.
"Alex." Once Joey got his balance, he spoke again. "What's going on? Who were the ponies in the sky?"
He had no idea what was going on because he wasn't paying attention. He spent all this time trying to track me down rather than listen to MMO jargon he didn't understand.
Before I could explain anything, a dark and menacing chuckle echoed across the square. The laughter's audio was perfect and clear. It felt as though we were all listening with headphones.
Worried, Joey wrapped his forelegs around my neck. He was afraid that if he let go the maniacal voice would find him in the darkness. I wasn't doing any better though. I was stiff with nervousness as I kept telling myself that I was in a game. Just a game. In a town where you couldn't be hurt.
Honestly, I wasn't sure if that rule still applied or not. The sun turned into a lightless mass and we couldn't leave a video game. Dinosaurs could be bursting from the ground right now and that wouldn't be unexpected.
"Oh," A sadistic voice hummed happily, the chuckling trailing off in an echo. "I think that I might know what the problem is."
That voice. Not only was it sadistic but it seemed grim at the same time. Like, the more we were scared, the more entertained it became.
The other thing that coupled the tone was that the voice was familiar to me. Even if I didn't watch the show I definitely knew enough about this voice. Joey knew it too. It belonged to his favorite character.
“Wait, is that...?!” On queue, Joey's attitude shifted dramatically. He let go of my neck and I could feel him trying not to jump for joy from my back. He probably had a huge grin on his face right now.
A flash of lightning lit up the entire square and then stopped moving. The lightning bolt was frozen in place as if time broke with the sun. The crowd grew quiet again as floating above everything was the silhouette of a creature with an impossible body baring down upon us.
Discord.
“That would be me,” he answered. Wait, answered?
Not everyone seemed to notice him lounging on the frozen lightning right away. The only thing visible past his silhouette was the eyes that seemed to give off a faint yellow glow.
Then, a second bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, freezing in place like the first one. Now as both bolts traced the sky it gave off enough light to fill a stadium. Every player could now spot the amalgamation that was Discord.
His design was always particularly kooky. As if a four-year-old pieced him together. But now? Seeing him in person felt more ominous. Especially if he had even a fraction of the powers from the show.
That was the thought going through my head as Discord flashed an enthusiastic smile at us all. And despite the smile and 'upbeat' attitude he displayed, no one felt happy to see him.
Well. Almost no one.
"Oh, that's what this is!" Joey cheered from my back. "This is part of the game too!"
An all orange-colored earth pony, a smaller red earth pony with dark greenish hair, some heavyset looking purple earth pony, as well as a few other players all turned to stare at Joey and me with differing levels of confusion. I had no choice but to take it.
However, the only response Discord gave was laughter towards all of our shock and fear.
"Hello, My Little Bronies!" His voice stemmed from him and yet it felt as though it were echoing behind our brains. "And hello to you, my good administrators."
Discord gave a mock bow towards them as he flashed an evil grin.
"Hello!" Joey called out, making us an even bigger target of idiots.
Stop talking! I demanded in my mind.
The admins had none of his shenanigans. Without fear, the lead alicorn stared Discord down. "How can you be the cause of the problem? You are a program in the system we designed ourselves. You may have partial control of Equestria, but you don't have the power to change the layout of the system completely.”
He has partial control? Of a system they designed...They designed. But, they're in said system. And if they're in the same system Discord's a part of then...
And if they're now in the system Discord can control, if even partially, that means that their activities can be controlled by Discord. And if Discord can control the admin's activities then...
Oh no.
"The admins control Equestria," I said blankly.
"Huh?" Joey stopped shifting around. "What was that?"
"The admins control Equestria. They're inside Equestria."
"...Okay?" Joey didn't sound like he understood.
"So?" That purple earth pony from before looked to me now.
"So," I turned to him. "Discord can mess with parts of the system. They just said it. But admins have the keys to mess with the entire system. A system they're inside of. So if Discord can screw with anyone inside..." I trailed off.
The purple earth pony's attention snapped back to the admins and Discord. "Oh shit."
The standoff between the leader and Discord was between one's glare and the other's relaxed smile. Although, as Discord rested his chin in his paw, his eagle talon casually snapped its fingers.
In one bright flash of light, Discord vanished altogether and reappeared behind the alicorn, walking away from him as though he were on solid ground.
Joey giggled along to this, earning another disturbed look from the same earth pony, whose user ID I saw was doomviper. In response, I just gave him the same worried look that I was giving this situation. Truthfully, I didn't know what to do.
“Oh, but you already know the answer to that,” Discord started, looking over his shoulder. “You designed me to be exactly like the 'me' in your television show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.”
He disappeared again before popping into existence besides a random unicorn player; causing him to practically fly skyward in shock. “That really is a terrible name for a show, don't you think?” That time, his voice didn't echo. It had actually come from him.
Joey's laughter turned to a small gasp before he gave a somewhat dejected look. He was sad Discord didn't jump us. He really doesn't get what's going on. But is that even a bad thing? What happens if he realizes this is real?
Before overstaying his welcome, Discord teleported right back to the red alicorn, this time on his back as though riding a trusty steed. “You see, you gave me control over reality in Equestria. But with this power, I hacked into the rest of the system, giving me power over the entire program,”
So my idea had a chance. He could’ve tricked the admins into pressing the wrong buttons or something. If he could warp reality, who’s to say he didn’t warp their vision or trick them or something? Maybe there was some kind of brainwashing. Didn't he do that in the show?
“Oh. And to make sure I stay in power.” He gave them a sinister grin as he snapped his fingers towards them. Four bright flashes of light then surrounded the four alicorns and watched their wings and horns disappear.
All of them plummeted to the ground below. However, rather than crash into the audience, they all fell into the fountain that was in the center of the square. None of their health bars looked lower from the painful crash. Not even the one admin who's head impacted the marble of the fountain.
Joey's giggling suddenly faltered. We were towards the front of the crowd and in clear view of the crash; Joey especially since he was on my back.
Joey tried looking to me to figure out what I thought of this. Rather than let that happen, I kept looking down until Discord inevitably talked again. Joey didn't need to see me freaking out.
Discord rose higher into the air, laughing like a madman as the still frozen lightning began to move once again. But rather than dash across the sky with a thunderous boom behind it, the bolts instead slithered and coiled in the air like snakes.
“Now the admins are just plain earth ponies. And, I've also taken power over their admin codes. They won't be able to do a thing to change my world,” His world? What does he mean his 'World'?
“As for all of you, I will let you keep your wings and horns while you play in a game of mine.” He waved his eagle claw in a shooing motion as if he were waving a smell away from him.
It took about three seconds before the crowd voiced their anger. Many of the players shouted profanity and complaints at the floating god in the sky with the confidence of death row.
Meanwhile, other players that towards the front were rushing to the aid of the admins to help them. Unfortunately, one of them were did the opposite as he shoved an admin back to the fountain.
The players and admins tried breaking up the fight but it wasn't working. As this went on, more players tried waking up the admin who struck the marble. That one admin, by the way, had not been moving all too much since the impact.
From everywhere else we watched some Pegasi players debating whether to fly into the sky to make their voices heard. However, other players instead settled for shouting louder. This purple doomviper guy was a great example of that as he had been shouting with the crowd. The mixture of choice words spewing from this guy made Joey even more uncomfortable than before.
“Alex,” Joey half shouted. I couldn't hear him otherwise. “Why's everyone so angry?”
I lowered myself from the ground and had Joey step off of my back. Him getting a view of the crowd was a bad idea. Especially as the riot at the fountain kept escalating.
I did my best to ignore it all and gave Joey the best smile I could. Then I did the only thing I could think of. Lie.
I wasn't a perfect liar; not like our mom at least. Still, Joey had never called me on my lies before. So, ignoring the chaos around us, I looked Joey straight in the eyes.
“Don't listen to them Joey," I spoke evenly. "This is all still part of the game, remember? Everyone's just getting really into it."
“I..." Joey flinched at the next line of complaints coming from the purple pony. Some of his words were, unfortunately, familiar to Joey, others were more exotic. Some too exotic for me to know. "I don't think so. They sound really ang—”
ZZIIIIP
A chorus of zippers shutting spread across the square.
Then silence.
Not a single player in the entire area said anything as they, as well as Joey and I, stood there each with zippers forcibly attached to our mouths.
No, I corrected myself. I tried running my tongue along the inside of my lips and instead felt the cold metal of the zipper's teeth. Not attached. Our lips are zippers. We have two rows of teeth!
Joey didn't wait for an explanation. He started screaming. Or rather, he tried to scream. It was muffled behind the zipper and barely louder than the jingling of the tab as Joey was thrashing his head in every direction.
He leaped back onto my back and clung for life like a koala. As he did, I and every player I saw tried unzipping their mouths as we all lost our courage. No matter what we did, the zippers never gave an inch. They were jammed shut. To make matters worse, whenever I tried to pry the zipper open it felt like I was trying to pry a tooth out of my gums. Even after a let go the pain stayed.
Pain? I thought. I feel...Pain?
“My, I haven't even told you what the game is, and you're already anxious to get started. The game that I have in mind is a bit of a scavenger hunt.”
“a avan-er un?!” Joey tried talking, but that was all that he managed to get through the zipper.
“I have taken the Elements of Harmony and placed them all in secret hiding places; inside and outside of Equestria. Your job is to find the Elements and use them to reach me. There, we will have a fight to the death. If you manage to retrieve the elements and defeat me, then I will allow everyone to log out,” Discord concluded.
Discord lowered his head towards the crowd. “But it won't be as easy as you think. You see, I've added a few features to the game. In the original system, if you died in the game, you would instantly respawn in the last town you were in. But that's too boring for me.
“So I re-wrote the system so, when anyone died, their avatar would be lost," Discord continued, "And their Nervegear Helmet in the real world will fry their brains.”
What?!
The crowd stiffened up as Discord leaned down towards us.
“In shorter words; if you die in the game, you will die in the real world.”
The entire crowd gasped from under their zippers. So did both of us as Joey finally decided to fear Frankenstein's Zoo Monster.
Discord's response was uncontrolled laughter as he took in our expressions. Then, for whatever reason, Discord traced a line across his neck with his talon and had us watch as his head fell off.
The head rolled down his arm and into his lion's paw; causing Joey to trip and fall off my back entirely. The crowd had similar reactions but Discord didn't seem to care. His head just continued a mad cackle as it sat in his paw.
“No need to lose your head over it,” He joked. Discord then allowed our zippers to unzip and disappear all at once. They weren't needed anymore. No one felt like speaking.
“And, also," Discord's head melted in his paw before he pulled a new head back out of his vacant neck. "If there is any tampering with the helmet in the outside world, the helmet will kill the player instantly. Actually, quite a few players have already died this way.”
“...He’s lying," Joey muttered. "He’s lying! Ruh-Right Alex?!” Joey glanced over at me at the wrong time as I looked more terrified than he was. "Alex?"
So much for trying to tell him myself, I cringed. I tried looking straight up at Discord so Joey still couldn't see my face. Though his silence forced me to say something.
“I...Uh. Joe. Dis. Discord doesn't—” Before I could even come up with something, a player to our right, a dusty-gold coated unicorn mare, turned to blue code and dissipated in seconds. A dark brown Pegasus behind her looked even more terrified than I did.
A lump fell in the back of my throat. “oh no...”
I looked toward Joey whose eyes were as wide as mine. He hadn't seen the evaporating person; thank god for that. What he, instead, saw were the different sized clouds now appearing around Discord.
In these pink and blue clouds, cotton candy, I noticed, there were images and videos on each of them. They were all of news broadcasts showing that people on the outside were already reporting was going on about the game.
Some were interviews from people, probably other moderators, and some were images of the game itself with text from national networks. However, one 'news cloud' caught our attention.
The cloud, like all the others, had a title floating above it reading “Channel 8: Breaking News!”. Projecting from that cloud was a single reporter talking outside the newsroom; a reporter we recognized instantly.
“...Alex." Joey's voice was a tremble. And with a shaky hoof, he pointed at the same cloud I saw. "That’s Mom.”
In that moment, I remembered back at the forest what I had told my brother.
“...And if there's no 'Breaking News' then Mom should be home already too. I bet she'll want to hear all about Joey the Wolf Slayer."
Mom was a news reporter for a local network. If there wasn’t an emergency going on she was home before six. Now it was 6:30 and underneath her, in the box, it read 'INCREASING INCIDENTS FROM VR GAME'.
There was no audio for the broadcast. Not that we could hear it anyways. However, while the cloud passed by, we got a good look at Mom as she spoke.
Something about Mom was that she had the toughest poker. She wore the best fake smile and even after growing up in the same house as her there were times where I still couldn't tell if she was genuine or faking it. It all stemmed from how well she did at her job.
Only, as I watched her report on news that had something to do with her children, her tough poker face wasn't only cracking.
Mom was losing all the chips.
She couldn't hide the tears welling up as she stifled to keep everything under control. To her credit, it didn't look like she had stopped talking. She kept reporting.
“Now, in this game, there are a few rules,” As everyone’s attention went back to him, all the clouds faded away instantly. Including Channel 8.
“NOO—” Joey tried screaming in desperation, but I held his mouth closed. Not now. Not now was I about to let Joey become a target of Discord. Not when I found out that the god could fry us whenever.
“First," he began. "You cannot receive help from the outside world. That is if you can even manage that. If I catch anypony communicating to the outside world, all of you will die. Second, any tampering with the system from inside the game, the rule-breaker will die instantly.”
Joey started thrashing until I let him go and was rewarded with a glare.
“And just so you know, I have a couple of monster friends who want to go out of their designated areas, so I'm letting them roam a bit. Maybe you'll meet them when you go out of town, but they won't follow you into a city or town. They hate crowded places.”
Discord drummed up more maniacal laughter. “But a few of you might have thought, 'There's only six elements, so this will be easy.” I might’ve been thinking of a ton of things right now but that was not one of them. Discord could bet his snaggle-tooth on that.
Joey backed away at this point. I was thinking the same thing. We were closer to the front than I'd like to be. But rather than keep an eye on him, I kept a focus on Discord's explanation.
“Well, I'm sorry to burst your bubble.” He started to belch out a bubble that soon enough expanded to become bigger than his own size. “But I thought that only six elements would be boring. So I added four new elements,” he popped the giant bubble with his eagle talon and it popped into ten smaller bubbles. Each one showing a different artifact-like object.
“They will be hidden all over Equestria, but they will be guarded by my favorite kinds of monsters, just like a boss of each element. If you find the element and defeat its guardian in a boss battle, then you may walk away with it in hoof. But I must warn you, my guardians are no pushovers.”
One of the sluggish lightning bolts suddenly began acting as normal and flashed behind Discord, somehow lacking the thunderous boom that was supposed to follow. “Well, there you have it! So just remember, your lives are on the line, not mine.”
He started laughing in our faces as the second bolt of lightning struck behind him silently before both bolts went back to slowly slithering like snakes.
“So, My Little Bronies…” He drew in a breath for dramatic effect as the rest of us simply continued to glare at him. “Let the games..."
"BEGIN!”
Both bolts of lightning ran wild once more and an echo of thunder rang out across the square, startling everyone. The sound and light forced many of us to shut our eyes and flinch. And at that moment, Discord was gone.
But the laughter remained.
Even when the thunder and lightning faded. Even when the setting sun turned back on, Discord's laughter didn't stop. For the next minute, it was the only noise against the silence.
Everyone patiently waited until the laughter faded. Everyone was too busy processing. A few players tried and failed to break the immortal ice while others simply walked off. They wanted out of this plaza.
And I couldn't agree more. So I turned to Joey to tell him where we...
He was gone.
"Joey?" I started looking around. He wasn't next to me.
“Joey?!” I shouted. But he wasn't there.
"Hey."
I looked over at doomviper pointing towards one of the streets leading out. "I saw him run in that direction."
Following where his hoof pointed, I spotted the road immediately. It was smaller and not too many other players went that way.
"Thank you," I shouted before using my wings to push into the air and searched for any sign of my brother.
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"Not really," I answered. You know, like a liar.
I get that reference!
Pegasus: So, you want us to beat an MMO?
Discord: Essentially.
Pegasus: F*CK YOU!
Discord: Woah, I’m sensing a lot of hostility here!
Pegasus: Honestly when was the last time you heard of someone BEATING Everquest?
Discord: When was the last time you heard of someone PLAYING Everquest?
Pegasus: That’s fair...