Friends, Pets, and Coins
Luna gazed out of the window of the Chosen Few’s stealth speeder. The ground rushed past them and seemed to merge together in a green-tinted blur. Trees, flowers, roads, stones, monsters, players, lakes… the sheer speed of the vehicle made it nearly impossible to make out the terrain below them.
“ETA, three minutes,” Noble growled from her seat at the front of the speeder. Her mismatched draconequus hands held the controls as she made a slight turn to the left. “Cloak is on, so the Legion shouldn’t be able to tell that we’re coming.”
“Perfect.” Silver nodded to himself and polished his one of his twin short swords. “Jexxc and Fawkes just sent a message to me saying that the Legion is massing outside the base. Fawkes is in charge of the other members. He’s up for officer status in a month, so this is good practice for him. The Legion will beat our defenders, but as soon as they get inside, they’ll be in for a massive surprise…”
“Heh,” Button chucked from beside Luna. “I guess you could call being incinerated a surprise.”
“I think that definitely qualifies,” Luna agreed. She reached her character’s leg over to give Button a side hug. “And an even bigger surprise when we steal all of their spaceship parts.”
Button snickered and returned the hug. “Ah, the joys of raiding.”
Silver glanced back at them and raised an eyebrow. “You two are acting weird.”
“Umm…” Button removed his avatar’s hoof quickly. “No we aren’t.”
“Dude, you just totally made your toons hug.” Noble looked into her rear-view mirror and raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you guys are getting into that roleplay junk. Next thing we know, you’ll be having a wedding back at the base. Gross.”
Luna and Button turned to look at each other. Smiling, the princess nodded to their comrades. “Do you want to tell them?”
“Are you sure?” Button whispered. “It might get weird…”
Noble coughed loudly. “We can hear you, ya know.”
“What might get weird?” Silver demanded, glancing back and forth between them.
Button shrugged. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?”
“I’ll tell them.” Luna smiled broadly. “Uh, do you guys remember that Fade went on vacation to Canterlot a bit ago?”
“Isn’t he still there?” Noble turned the speeder further left.
“He is…” Luna glanced at her coltfriend’s character. “And I live in Canterlot. We decided to spend some time together, and—”
“Holy shit, you two are bucking each other, aren’t you?” Noble blurted.
Button coughed and spluttered. “Noble!”
“Oh, what the… well, are you?” Silver asked. “I’ve seen enough romance movies to see where this is going!”
Luna giggled. “We’re not ‘bucking,’ but we are dating.”
Noble stopped the speeder in mid-air and spun her seat around. “You’re kidding. I was right?”
“Not about the bucking part,” Button muttered.
“Holy shit!” the draconequus repeated. She howled with laughter. “It all makes sense now! The duoing, the private chat, the suspicious absence of both of you last night… how did I miss this? You two probably reek of glowy red hearts and luuuuuuurve.” Cackling madly, she turned back around and resumed her piloting.
“Is this going to interfere with anything in the guild?” Silver asked quietly.
Button shook his head. “Nah, it shouldn’t. Actually, we should be on even more once I go back home. Spending more time together and all that.”
“Okay then,” Silver said with a shrug. “So long as you’re cool with it, I don’t care too much. Good for you, though. You two seem to fit pretty well.”
“Thanks, Silver,” Luna replied.
“Heh, fit together, if ‘ya know what I mean.” Noble snickered to herself.
“Noble!” Button kicked the seat in front of him, but the chortling draconequus just kept laughing.
“Anyways…” Silver pulled up his map. “We’re almost there. Noble, are you sure that your contact is ready?”
“Yeah, she just sent me a message that she’s in position. Do you have the thing?”
Silver nodded. “It’s in my pack. As soon as we get inside, she can have it.”
“Perfect!” Noble pressed a few buttons on the speeder’s command console. “Okay, I’m going to get us ready to land. Hold onto your flanks. Or, if you’re Mem and Fade, hold onto one another’s flanks.”
“Noble!” Button cried again. “Why?”
Luna muted her mic and leaned over to Button. “That doesn’t sound like a terrible idea,” she whispered.
Button blushed furiously and looked over at his marefriend waggling her eyebrows. He cracked a smile and gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Maybe later, eh?”
“Hey lovebirds, you ready yet?” Silver asked in a monotone voice. “You might have muted one of your mics, but Fade has one too, you know.”
This time, it was Luna’s turn to blush. “Oh, sorry.”
“Bow chicka bow-wow,” Noble crooned. She set the speeder down in a clearing close to an enormous plasteel-walled complex. The cloaking device stayed active as she turned the engines off. “Okay! Just a quick stealth trek over to the maintenance entrance, and she’ll let us in.”
Button shook his head wryly as he opened the glass canopy of the elegant vehicle. He activated his stealth mode before hopping out, weapons drawn. After glancing around and running a quick scan for threats, he glanced back at the others. “We’re clear.”
Luna followed with her own stealth field active. She activated her pistols and prepared her chaos magic as she took her habitual spot at Button’s side. “What’s the configuration, Silver?”
“Noble, you’re running heals today. Fade is on tanking, if possible, and I’ll be primary DPS.” Silver and his wing-draconequus came out of the speeder and stood behind the ponies. “Mem, I want you running control. Be aware, Red Legion is a PvP specialty guild. We may have to reconfigure if the fit hits the shan.”
“Meep meep,” Noble chirped as she pressed the command to lock the speeder. “Aww. I miss the non-stealth ones. They make the fun noise with me!”
“Stay serious, Noble. We’re need to have our heads in the game,” Silver growled.
The outline of Noble on Luna’s HUD gave a mock salute. “Yes, oh great master. We shall remain ever-serious. Shiny.”
Sighing, Silver shook his head and took a step toward Luna. “Fade, you’re on point.”
“Gotcha.” With that, Button walked forward and the rest of the group followed. Luna and Silver hovered above the ground to free up their front hooves or talons to hold their weapons, and Noble walked behind Button with her bow drawn and ready to fire.
After an uneventful trek through the underbrush, the party came to a massive white wall stained red by something that vaguely resembled paint. Luna grimaced as they took a right turn and followed the wall eastward. They didn’t see any foes, player or otherwise, until the came to a brown dirt road that led away from a small gate.
“Okay, this is the maintenance entrance…” Noble muttered as she scanned the area. “One guard, looks like. My contact should be inside.”
“Mem, can you portal Fade and me behind him?” Silver asked, raising his blades.
“Yeah, one sec…” Luna focused her magic on the wall behind the pony standing guard. The portal opened silently, and another appeared beside her melee teammates. They nodded to her before walking through.
“Mem, snipe him. Noble, hit him with a full draw. Fade and I will finish him off. On my signal. Three, two, one. Shoot!”
Luna fired her silenced sniper rifle at the guards head just as Noble released her acid-dripping arrow. With a cry, Button slammed into him with the full force of his augmented hooves. To finish the job, Silver crashed downward from the air with both swords, decapitating the still barely aware guard. His head rolled down the road, and Silver grunted in satisfaction. “Quickly!”
Noble and Luna dashed through the still open portal, and the full team strode over the the small door beside the gate.
Nodding to herself, Noble typed something on her wristpad. After a second, she grunted. “She wants to join our voice chat. Can I invite her and then kick her after?”
“Fine,” Silver replied. “Just hurry. I don’t know how long it’ll be until that guard returns or alerts someone.”
There was a ding in Luna’s ears, and a new, chipper voice joined the room. “Hey, guys!” the female voice chimed.
“Everyone, this is Traxx,” Noble said. “She’s one of the Legion’s mechanics.”
“Soon to be former mechanic,” Traxx added. “Noble said you guys have some openings on your team?”
“We do indeed,” Silver replied. “I’m Silver Quill, guild leader. Do you mind letting us in? I believe that we have something of yours.”
“Oh, sure!” Traxx declared. The door in front of the group beeped twice and then opened to reveal the smiling face of a deep blue pegasus mare with a black and blue striped mane. She wore a technician’s belt and had a stained brown apron filled with a variety of tools. “C’mon in! Wait, where are you?”
The group stepped inside and decloaked after the door shut behind them. Traxx nodded and cracked a grin. “Ah, of course! Sneaky, sneaky! Do you have the thing?”
“Right here…” Silver looked inside his saddlebag and muttered to himself. “I know it was here somewh— ah!” He pulled out a small metal cylinder with a blue light on the top. “As promised, one Discord-Forged tier five augmented screwdriver.”
“Yes!” Traxx took the item and did a small dance. “I’ve wanted one of these for a while!”
“Wait,” Button said slowly. “You’re betraying your guild… for a screwdriver?”
“For a tier five Anvil screwdriver? Uh, yeah. This thing can do a lot more than undo screws, bub.” She pointed it at a wall and pressed a button. One of the screws in the wall undid itself and then hovered over to her. “Look! Telekinesis!”
Button chuckled. “Well, okay then.”
“Okay, here’s the deal.” Traxx nodded at the door. “There isn’t a code to exit, so you can get yourself out by pressing the big red button. It’ll open and you can all scram-o. Noble, will you be able to get me that invite later tonight?”
“We can do that,” the draconequus replied. “Why don’t we do it now?”
“Nah, I need to get my stuff out of the base first. They’ll probably just send their killers after me if I leave now. Because, ‘ya know, principles.” Traxx shrugged. “Anyway, I’ll send you a PM later! You should be clear down to the hangar. Just go to the end of the hallway, take a right, and then go in the big room marked ‘hangar!’ It’s that easy!”
“Perfect. Thank you, Traxx. I think that I’ll enjoy having you in the guild,” Silver said.
“Oh, fun! Okay, gotta go! I need to grab my stuff before the guild finds out that I was the one who let you in!” She bowed to them. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Traxx trotted off down the hallway and took a quick left turn.
The chat beeped once again as Traxx removed herself. Noble laughed. “She’s always chipper like that.”
“Do you know her from somewhere?” Button asked as the group reactivated their cloaks and walked off to the hangar.
Noble snorted. “We work together in real life.”
“You have a job?” Button chuckled. “I thought that you were playing all the time! How do you have time for work?”
“Eh, it’s part time. But you know my rules! No RL questions about me.” Noble smirked. “Let’s talk about you and lover-mare instead!”
Snorting, Luna shook her head. “That’s not fair, Noble. You know about us. You should at least—”
“Wait…” Silver growled. “The path away from the hangar was on the left of the door. Why do we go right to get to the hangar?”
“Silver, this is the spacecraft hangar,” Noble replied. “ It can’t be in the same place as their ground vehicles.”
Luna hummed to herself as the group rounded the corner to the left. “I guess that makes sense.” She glanced back and forth and didn’t see any of the Legionnaires. “Maybe she got the location wrong…”
“Or maybe it’s a trap.” Silver sighed. “How well do you know her, Noble? Could she be a double agent?”
The draconequus sighed. “You’re being paranoid, Silver. She’s no more a spy than I am.”
“Okay. I believe you,” Silver said. He stopped walking for a second and grunted to himself. “Fawkes just messaged me. He and the rest of the troops just died. The Legion will be inside in a second, and then they’ll all get their present.”
“Awesome,” Button said, smiling toothily. “I can’t wait to read the rants on the forums when we steal all of their stuff right when they thought that they’d gotten ours.”
“Me either,” Noble added with a laugh. “It’s gonna be interesting to read about the backlash of all this.”
After a few more moments of careful walking, the group came to a doorway. Up above the metal door frame hung a sign labeled “Ship Hangar.” Silver trotted over to it and looked at the external control panel. “No trapbox… scan shows no trap or ambush inside… no code required for entrance… I think we’re good.”
Luna readied her rifle and nodded. “Okay, I’m prepared.”
Silver pressed the opening button, and the group quickly entered. The room was very large and well lit. Bare walls and a floor made of empty landing pads accentuated the barrenness of the area. A small pile of starship wings occupied the far corner of the room, but there was no sign of the large supply of parts that the hangar was supposed to contain.
Button snorted. “Well, that was anticlima—”
The voice chat chirped as Noble removed herself from the group. Luna narrowed her eyes. “Wait… Noble disconnected.”
“Oh, bloody tartarus! That’s not a DC! She left the whole thing!” Silver cried. Quickly, the griffon turned around and—
The door behind them shut. A viewscreen next to the door flashed to life, showing a familiar draconequus wearing a smile on the other side. Luna’s HUD showed a message that had just been sent.
>Noble Rain: Activate your proximity voices, guys. I need to talk to you.
“Buck…” Silver swore. “Do it.”
Luna pressed a few commands on her pad and the sound of Noble’s mic filled her headset.
“Ah, there you are!”
“Noble, what the buck are you doing?” Silver demanded.
The draconequus raised a clawed finger and swung it back and forth. “Ah, ah, ah! My turn to talk! Guys, it’s been fun playing with you all. Really, it has. But I’m sick of it all. You’re all too serious. Too goody two-horseshoes. I need a guild that appreciates my talents! Ya know, like blowing shit up!”
Another smiling character trotted over to the screen. Traxx waved to them. “Hi again! I just wanted to add that we here at the Legion wanted to thank you for the ship parts and Noble! Oh! And for the super screwdriver! This thing is awesome.”
Silver swore and pounded a fist against the wall. “Noble, you bitch! Get your twice-damned motherbucking face back in here so I can slice your lying head off! I trusted you!”
“Silver. You’re an idiot. I like Traxx here better.” Noble chuckled darkly. “Did I mention? Traxx is a real life friend… and one of the guild’s co-owners. Now that I’ve given them such a head start on the space race, they’re actually going to add me as a co-owner too! After a bit of time, of course, but now I get to lead raids and stuff! Blow things up and get paid for it!”
“You filthy traitor! I’ll kill you and eat your liver!” Silver slammed his rear leg into the ground.
“First, eww. Second, I know that griffons are gross, but really? The liver? I’d have thought there was a different part of me that you’d want to eat, if ya know what I mean…” Noble threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, being the bad guy is fun! I should have done this a long time ago.”
Silver’s voice froze up and he gasped for air. “You… I… I…”
“Use your words, Silvy.” Noble tapped on the camera. “Oh, and you guys should get comfortable. We’ve blocked all teleportation in there, so you can’t get back to the guild. I disabled all of your traps, by the way. My new guildies shouldn’t have any problems at all getting the parts. I guess we’ll kill you eventually, just so that we don’t get banned for holding prisoners for too long. But by then, there won’t be any stopping us. Mwahaha,” she said in a mock-villainous tone. “So yeah! Have fun!”
>Noble Rain has left your guild.
“Damnit!” Silver screamed as Noble and Traxx deactivated the viewscreen outside.
“Okay, okay…” Button muttered. “I’m gonna try teleporting all over the room! They may have missed a corner.”
“I’ll try to pick the lock.” Luna trotted over the the door. Silver slumped against the wall and then stood still. “Silver? Come on, we can’t give up.”
“Just…” he replied, panting. “Just give me a second.”
“Teleport doesn’t work here!” Button cried from the nearest corner.
“Silver…”
“She was my best friend, Mem,” the guild leader whispered. “And she didn’t even give two shits about us.”
“Silver, we need to try to get out of here!” Luna said softly. “We can deal with her later.”
“I…” Silver’s mic went dead, and then his avatar shimmered and disappeared.
>Silver Quill has gone offline.
“Oh, stars,” Luna swore. “Okay, trying to pick the lock!”
Button ran from spot to spot in the room trying to teleport back to the base while Luna opened up the control panel and attempted to open the door with her hacking.
“Damn! Nothing anywhere in the room! They got it all!” Button sprinted over to her. “Any luck on the panel?”
“Just—” A shower of sparks flew into Luna’s face and she stamped a rear hoof in exasperation. “It just blew. They have a maxed out lock here. I can’t do it.”
“So we’re screwed?” he asked quietly.
“We’re screwed,” Luna confirmed solemnly.
“Well…” Button sighed. “Drat. There goes our spaceship stuff.”
“We can get more.” Luna trotted over to him and nuzzled against him. “I can’t believe that Noble did that.”
“I know! I thought she was our friend! She’s been with us for more than a year!” Button shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense!”
Luna sighed. “Some ponies don’t care about friends as much as they do about advancement. I didn’t think Noble was one of them, but I guess I was wrong.”
Yeah…” Button looked away but then glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Well, since we don’t have anything better to do… how about that flank holding that you talked about earlier?”
Luna’s eyes twinkled. “You want to stop playing a game and make out now?”
“Kinda! I mean, we’re sorta just waiting for them to kill us, so we may as well make good use of what little time we have left.” He bowed low to the ground and then held out his hoof. “O’ beautiful mistress of the night. Wouldst thou do Us the honor of skedaddling over to yonder couch to kissify a lot?”
She threw back her head and laughed. “I thought you’d never ask.”
The two characters stayed completely still as their players giggled and left the computers. They didn’t move as corruption goo filled the room, lowering their health bars to zero and sending them back to their base, and neither Luna nor Button cared.
~~~
The apartment’s door slowly squeaked open, and an exhausted Captain Flair stumbled inside with a muttered curse. Moonlight filtered through the curtains covering the windows as the apartment’s owner slapped the lightswitch on the wall. Dim illumination from a ceiling light with only half of the bulbs functioning lit up the messy living room just enough so that the pegasus could toss her uniform onto a chair before she collapsed onto her couch.
“Uhhhh…” Flair muttered to herself while she pressed her face into a pillow. “Twenty-two hours. Twenty-bucking-two hours.”
“Meow?” A familiar creature leapt up onto the couch to join Flair. The mare barely lifted her head to see the black and white face of her pet tomcat staring down at her. She could already hear his purring before he started to rub up against the back of her head.
“Hey there, Wumpus. What’cha doin’?” She groaned as she forced herself to sit up, grabbing the cat as she did so. Wumpus’ purrs grew louder as she clutched him against her coat and scratched behind his ears. “I missed you too, buddy.”
The black and white cat rolled over in her grasp and stretched out to reveal his furry belly. Flair chuckled and rubbed back and forth just how he liked.
“I’m sorry I was gone for so long, buddy. Work was hell. Literally.” She rolled her head around in a circle and sighed as it popped several times. “You might have liked it though. I got to kill things, and I know how much you like violence…”
The cat didn’t reply except by continuing to purr.
She smiled wryly. “Yeah, yeah. But I’m fine, thanks for asking. After that, I got the joy of being promoted because a bunch of my friends died, and then I got to stay up all night running around doing work.” Her smile faded. “Shit, we lost a lot of ponies last night, Wumpus. It was…”
Wumpus reached up with his paws and grabbed Flair’s mane. She yelped as he pulled her head toward him and started to fiercely lick her nose. With a chuckle, Flair freed herself and put her hoof in front of his adorable face as a peace offering. He grabbed at it with his claws and immediately resumed his kissing. Flair winced but allowed him to continue.
“Yeah. Not a fun night. But on the bright side, I got to talk with Blue again. For real this time, not like boss to ag— gah! Not so hard!” Flair leaned over and kissed her cat lovingly while he nibbled on her hoof. “So I talked to him, and… it’s not gonna work. Which sucks, a lot.”
Wumpus released her hoof and stretched out, extending his paws in both directions. He sighed and rolled over so that he could stand up and arch his back before sitting down on Flair’s legs. His tail twitched back and forth and his ears turned back at her.
“At least you’re still listening.” She ruffled the hair on his head. “He almost died last night, and I couldn’t take it. I reminded him how I felt, kinda, and then kissed him a little bit. And yes, I’m telling the truth. It’s not like last time. This really was just a little bit of kissing.”
The cat turned around and rubbed against her once before jumping down off her lap. He ran over to the doorway leading to her dining room and looked back with a long meow. Then, he rushed inside.
“Ah, you’re probably hungry, poor thing…” Flair stood up slowly and scratched her head. Her eyes drooped as she followed her pet. “Here, I’ll get you something.”
She exited the living room and walked into her small dining room. The room was almost completely filled by a table that could seat five or six ponies comfortably as well as several worn wooden chairs. Flair smiled fondly as she glanced at the only other piece of furniture in the room: an old bookcase that her father had given her when she went off to live on her own. The shelves were filled with cookbooks that she’d collected from all over the world and photographs from her various postings. From the elegant waterfalls of northern Equestria and the frigidly beautiful wastes of the Crystal Empire to the stark simplicity of a Saddle Arabian desert and the darkly wondrous Zebran jungle, the photographs were a monument to Flair’s life. Only two of the pictures had any ponies in them at all. The first showed Flair standing beside Breeze, the two wearing their matching Section Eleven badges, and the other was of a very young Flair with braces and pigtails standing beside her mother and father.
“Heya, mom. Hey, dad. Miss you guys.” She ran a hoof over the photo and smiled fondly. “Maybe I can make it to visit you next year, okay? It’s hard to get time off, and the Empire is pretty far away.”
Flair walked through the room into her kitchen. Compared to the rest of the apartment, the kitchen was immaculate. The pots and pans were all organized and the ingredients were carefully put away. A large rack filled with spices both familiar and exotic hung from far wall, and a large portrait of a Prench beach occupied its opposite. Flair nodded to herself and absentmindedly thought about something simple to cook as she walked through yet another door.
The next room held an ironing board, a washer, and a dryer as well as a closet stuffed with towels. In the corner was a litter box that Flair could tell would need to be changed. She sighed as she trotted over to the washer, where Wumpus sat beside his food and water bowls. The cat gave a pathetic mewl and walked in a circle around his half full food bowl.
“Ah, you silly goose. Here, I’ll get you a refill…”
After a moment, the cat was happily eating and drinking away and Flair had moved on to cleaning the litter box. With her face scrunched up in order to ward off the smell, she bagged up the used litter and set it into her litter trash can.
“Well, that’s that.” Flair dusted off her hooves and returned to her kitchen to wash up. “What do you think I should make, Wumpus? I’m thinking about having something with an orangey taste…”
Her cat continued to eat and ignored her.
She grinned lopsidedly. “Of course.” As she dried off her hooves, she leaned over toward her phone’s answering machine and pressed the flashing red button. A mechanical voice called out to her.
“You have one new message. Today, five-thirty p.m.”
A new, loud voice called through the speakers. “You! Yes you, little pony! Are you tired of living alone and being a doormat? Do you want to get a real job and pay off that college debt? If so, Iron Will Incorporated has the training you need to—”
She cut the recording off and shook her head. “Figures. At least I have one male in my life that I can rely upon to call me on a regular basis. Now, if only he had more than two hooves…”
Flair opened her cupboard and hummed an off-key tune to herself. Brushing her mane out of her face, she grabbed a box of white rice and put it down on the counter. She hunted through her pantry next and grabbed a few more ingredients. Once she returned to the kitchen, she saw that Wumpus had jumped up onto the counter to investigate the new smells.
“Ah, get down, silly cat!” Flair shooed him off with a chuckle and set a pot of water on the stove. “You know, I didn’t get to finish telling you about my day!”
The cat sat on the floor and looked up at her with blinking green eyes.
“So I talked to Blue, and kind of laid it on the line. I like him a lot, Wumpus. But I don’t think he really feels anything.” She turned the stove on and sighed. “He still loves Lady Rarity. He tried to deny it last time, but you don’t moan one mare’s name while kissing another for no reason. Even if you are high on painkillers. I think it might be time for me to move on, Wump.”
He meowed and rubbed against her legs, nuzzling against her.
“Yeah, I love you too. But I’m not getting any younger, Wump. It can’t be just you and me forever…” She reached down and picked him up. He meowed at the abrupt change but quickly started to purr as she rubbed her face up against him.
“But you know what? I think that I’m fine with it just being us tonight. Ya little stinker.”
~~~
Princess Celestia rubbed her eyes as she sat down on her massive bed. She’d set the sun a few hours ago and now Luna’s light filled the sky. Gazing out the window, Celestia allowed herself a small smile at the beauty of the night.
The moon posed at the zenith of the horizon, dominating the air with an unparalleled majesty. Stars dotted the sky, shining down upon the sleeping city. An evening breeze stirred the trees subtly. The gentle sway of the leaves added a slight contrast to the stillness of the rest of the night, but it did so in a way that served to accentuate the overall feeling that Luna conveyed with her art. Peace. Tranquility.
Hope.
The Princess of the Day opened up one of the small drawers of her bedside table. She reached inside with her magic and grabbed an ancient sheet of parchment, a tattered grey scarf, and a single Prench bit from many centuries ago.
Upon the parchment was a detailed sketch of a dark blue unicorn stallion. His lopsided grin and rakish golden locks seemed to make his eyes sparkle with youth and energy, while the wrinkles drawn beside his eyes told a tale of wisdom through hardship. Celestia gently traced the magically preserved paper and allowed her hoof to hover over his face.
“Hey there,” she whispered. “It’s me again. Oh, light, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I’ve been so busy…”
She squeezed the scarf lightly as a smile danced over her mouth. “I think you would have liked Chaput. He’s your kind of adversary. Smart, devious… and lying with every word he speaks.”
Celestia hugged the scarf close to her stomach. “You’d be the one handling him, if you were here. Not me. You’d insist, wouldn’t you?” With a small chuckle, she set the scarf and the paper aside and reached for the coin. As she tossed it into the air as he had, so long ago, she allowed her eyes to focus on the far wall. “Many of my ponies were killed today, Paix. I don’t know who sent them, but windigos attacked. Was it Chaput? Dmitri? The changelings? Zebras? I can’t tell any more…”
She held the coin and rubbed her hooves over the enchanted metal that had not been worn down for over a thousand years. “I usually know all the moves. I see all the pieces. You taught me that I needed to think twenty moves ahead and then have another plan in reserve.” She snorted. “Not on purpose, of course, but I learned that lesson when I was trying to deal with your antics.”
Celestia picked the paper back up and stared into his blue eyes. “But now, things are changing. The game is speeding up. The king is moving into play too quickly. He’ll be here tomorrow, and I’m not ready. There are too many variables, and it…”
With another sigh, Celestia put her head into her hoof. “Oh, Paix. I don’t know if I’m going to win this game. I’ve always had the final move. That last trick, or the coup de grace. Controlling the sun and having more magic than almost all of the unicorns in any given nation would do that for somepony. But how do I fight a battle where I can’t afford to lose any pieces? Any sacrifice is too great. And with their power, we may be overcome...”
The princess reached across her bed to grab a brown folder marked Confidential and sealed by a powerful ward. Her magic reached out and cut through the barriers, opening the pages to reveal a long document.
“I may be seeing you soon, Paix.”
Report: Griffonian Plutonium Implosion Devices. Codename: Endgame.
End of Act II
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Oh geez
Congrats on joining the 1,000 likes club, you Definetly deserve it!
!!!!!!
Slice of Life chapter!!! :D
6473365
Woo!
Sexy
Is that a reeeeeeally subtle Garth Brooks reference? Or am I crazy?
I'm going to hazard a guess that Flair will have a much more prominent role in the third act if she gets a quarter of a chapter to show her talking to a cat relaying events that just happened.
I'm now very curious who Silver and Noble are. Do we know silver?
I know the pain of guild BS far too well.
If something like that happened to me in something like Guild Wars 2, I'd have the offender hunted down mercilessly for weeks on end. It's drama like that that makes me glad I'm a solo player.
Heh, so in the end the traitor was the one who they held closest. Isn't it always like that? Still, sucks.
At least Button and Luna know it's only a game, and had their priorities straight
So... Celestia's she's thinking of announcing MAD? That won't end well.
Heheeheh, awesome chapter well done!
Damn it Noble... you jerk D'x
So much betrayal...
Nice job!
I'm going to take great pleasure in watching Noble get what's coming to her. I mean, she just fucked over two of the most powerful characters in the game. Not a smart move.
Noble, let me tell you a little story. Way back in the day there was a server by the name of Palomides. On that server there were three factions, let's call them humans, elves, and dwarves.
The dwarves weren't very numerous but they had a select group of highly skilled and motivated PvPers who generally ruled whatever zone they currently occupied.
The humans ruled by weight of numbers. Kill 1 and 8 would 'port back in. Kill 8 and you might just get 80 in return for your efforts.
The elves... they had their skilled soldiers and they had their magic, but for years they were generally on the defensive - their lands being the go-to destination for PvP for all three sides.
And then an expansion was announced that would overhaul the PvP lands of this game.
The elves of this server took note and began to plan. For too long had they felt the brunt of both other factions' efforts (or it certainly felt that way). They plotted, practiced, and organized. Swords were polished, resources were stockpiled, and targets were identified.
In the opening hours after the expansion's release, the elves of Palo surged forth. Server instability be damned, they were on a mission. The humans, despite their numbers, suffered the brunt of the initial push and were wholly unprepared. Despite their dogged defense the elves' fury never gave them a chance, and they quickly lost control of both their frontier and the magic relics from which they drew power. The dwarves resisted longer, and they held portions of their lands, but they too lost their relics.
For the better part of two weeks the underdog elves' raw determination kept both other realms at bay - a feat neither other realm ever managed.
So beware, Noble. You make you and yours a target for the disenfranchised and downtrodden minority. Their wrath can be sudden and terrible.
Report: Griffonian Plutonium Implosion Devices. Codename: Endgame.
.... well fk me sideways with an alicorn.....
~~~
For the mmorpg side... it's called a server wide witch hunt. Someone pulled crap like this in a few mmo games ive played they would harassed until they had to abandon the server if not the game all together. People take those betrayals seriously and have ben known to hack/kill peoples computers for it.
~~~
For Button and Luna there like teenagers in love and I"M loven it! I still can't wait for Luna to introduce him formally to her sister.
So is a 'plutonium implosion device' supposed to be an atomic bomb?
Because if it is, as far as I'm aware uranium devices were much simpler than plutonium implosion bombs and thus probably easier to make. Also plutonium is much rarer in nature and the best way to obtain it is as a by-product of running a nuclear reactor, whereas uranium can be dug out of the ground and separated with electromagnets to get your fissile stuff.
As someone who spent three years of his like playing EVE Online: Heh.
Oh, Noble. You hath garnered the wrath of two of the most powerful players in the game.
Hell, that happened once a while ago in an old RPG I played. People would do this shit all the time.
I had one rule: You screw the clan, you screw over everyone, and you make enemies of everyone I know. That was the rule.
Someone broke my one rule. You can imagine the witch hunt that followed.
What. Did she just say that, with the bug in her room. Man she is either stupid or a genius.
did Luna and button do the fun times?
6473787
If by fun times you mean kissing, then yes. If you mean something naughtier, then no.
6473737 Actually I think that was the document
Damn, Noble is one treacherous bitch and it was nice to see a bit more of Flair's live. The moment with Celestia reminiscing about Paix was also kinda sweet. Keep up the good job.
I really hope noble and that guild gets screwed over in the end.
As a paranoid ex leader of a similar group I think it was dumb of silver not to put more precautions in place.
The bases layout was leaked. Okay that could be anyone. But when they found out an officer was responsible for sabotaging them, that would be an immediate demotion of all officers in any group I controlled. If I can't physically contact you in real life you are off the list until I can assure my groups safety.
Ah, I remember my last big server Witch Hunt. Sneaky bastard was part of our guild for five months, then we found most of the guild's funds completely missing and his name no longer on the guild list. Not even the guild he sold us out to could save his sorry ass. Granted, once I was the accused VICTIM of a Server Witch Hunt... That was a horrible experience and forced me to go solo for a while.
Pretty good job on recreating that scenario, Docc. Can't wait to see where it goes from here.
Noble and Celestia have no idea what they've just unleashed, don't they?
Nuclear warheads incoming!!!
6473377 I'm calling it now. Luna is totally gonna buy the game at the end of the story & confiscate everything that traitor took from them & then some.
6473515
Clearly you've never played EvE online. That kind of thing is actually applauded there.
TACTICAL NUKE, INCOMING!
6473872 i said fun times, not sexy times
6473534 And this is why he has a physicist as an editor. hehe :P
6474381 Smashing one particle into one atom isn't going to do very much. I do that about every 1.33 seconds at 120 GeV.
6474386
Hell, when I left EvE about a year ago, Pandemic Legion was so big that they practically gave out free titans to all members. (For those of you who dont play EvE, a titan is the biggest most expinsive ship you can buy besides the one of a kind special event ships. Also the most useless half the time.)
6474403 Umm, you did.. lol. Take a particle, smash it into an atom.
Plutonium actually doesn't work very well with gun-type models. Reactor plutonium is invaded with the presence of another isotope that makes a gun-type model prone to quantum kabooms. You don't want bombs to be controlled by quantum kabooms. This is why all our plutonium nukes are implosion type triggers.
6474443 Mmmmm... I love me some Doctor Who.
lol We can just blame Docc, for introducing physics into his magical cathorse world will just pwn everything.
hi and great game stuff and i mean serously i really like it
6474516 as an actual gamer, looking at this post, it's always more than 'just a game'.
this chapter reminds me of the good old times where i was a mercenary in many online games ah that was a good time so ths is a good chapter
Personally, I feel more sorry for Silver than anything else. I think that whoever Silver is IRL, he's going to be somegriff important that ends up saving Button and/or Luna.
Probably a stupid question, but have you sent this to EQD yet?
If you have, why haven't they posted it up?
6474516 and you are the type of person i hate the most on MMO's, yes it is a game but that does not excuse this type of behavior and it never will.
It's a sonic one, very buzzy.
It's a pair of sonic sunglasses now.
I have learned my lessons and will never insult Games again.
Please stop scaring me.
6474433
Plot twist: Gryphon superweapon spontaneously explodes, taking a chunk of their own military with it and causing confusion. Gryphonia collapses soon after, and Luna and Button spend the next 20 years playing video games and making out.
6475450 Sounds about right.
I suspect the cat. I like cats, but I think it's a Changeling.
I love the video game part of the story. I can relate on so many ways. (Except the girlfriend part)
This is my new OTP! I'll go down with this ship!
6473596 In EVE Online, this would be a "it must be Tuesday" thing.
So we might be seeing Equestria's version of Nukes, sweet
I really enjoyed this chapter I can't wait for the next to come
Eh. If Princess Twilight could engineer a Friendship Spell that kills Windigos by the dozens if not hundreds, surely she could engineer an anti-nuclear spell. Maybe.
Or she could build a Gardens of Equestria type emergency defensive.