War Games

by River Road

Epilogue

[Several Weeks Later]

“Oh boy, finally!” Spike jumped out of Twilight's backpack and rushed up the stairs towards his favorite sleeping spot. “That whole school stuff was even more boring than usual today. I'm gonna nap for days!”

Twilight chuckled. “You're gonna nap for hours because that's the longest you can go before you're begging for a walk again. Have a nice nap, though, I'm in my lab.”

“Have fun, don't turn food into not-food!”

Twilight giggled and shook her head at her dog's priorities, then walked out to her small lab, booting up the computer and moving around to set some things up and grab a medium sized puzzle box from a drawer.

Going back to her computer she opened her music files, starting up one particular song that had always seemed fitting in many ways for this particular project, and humming along with the beat.

‘I'm not the damsel in distress’

She tapped her foot along as she twisted the puzzle box, keeping an eye on the song's timer. At a particular timestamp she paused the video, counted to five and clicked play again, a hidden folder popping up as the song continued.

'Oh, it's magic...’

Opening the folder she pulled up several files onto the screens, then turned her attention back to the box, making the last few twists to open it and reveal eight large round tags with circuitry framing a large round empty slot in the middle.

'Oh it is fantastic, I see something, I blast it
And let me tell you why’

Twilight smirked as she took off her necklace, slotting the geode into the appropriate tag and putting the whole thing around her neck again as she made her way over to the mirror hung on the wall.

'See, I find this business rather fun’

Her brother had always jokingly said that with her intellect she could one day take over the world if she wanted. Not that Twilight actually did want, but there was a reason that the files were saved under Project Omega. Even as a last option she liked to think that she wasn't likely to go through with it, but mostly it was a code phrase and a proof of concept.

Magic was spreading around them and had already put them at risk several times. But anything you prepared to help achieve world domination was bound to hold up in most other situations as well. Project Omega was for all those things you only pulled out when you were running out of options.

'Why? Come on, guess!’

Twilight wrapped her fingers around the tag, activating it with the geode’s magic. Glowing pixels surrounded her for less than a second before fading away again. Twilight the Healer looked back at her from the mirror for another second before disappearing with a glow of her hand in another wash of pixels, leaving Twilight the Swartalfar Artificer in its stead.

Twilight tilted her head slightly, then smirked just enough to show her fangs and purred along with the end of the song.

“Or bold girl.”

Comments

[Neece]

"(...) And everyone knows that magenta doesn't exist so it's perfect for stealth."

Ork Pinkie is best Pinkie

[River Road]

9935717
A friend just told me that I'd accidentally made a 40K reference there even though I've never read anything of it.
Amusing as that is, I was actually going for a reference to your brain being a dirty, dirty liar.

("Us orks are too smart for our own brains!" )

[Neece]

9935887
It's Purple for 40k Orks (therefore bookhorse is sneaky ork horse ), but double references are awesome. Specially when not intended

[Darkstarling]

9935887
Well if Pinkie isn't an Orc she sure does a good impression. Orcs are even slightly psychic: if you could convince enough of them that a stick was a gun, it would shoot. Pinkie theory number 512...

[River Road]

9936324
I'm not saying she isn't an orc, she's just not specifically a 40K orc because I know pretty much nothing about it. They're generic orcs; if anything they're vaguely inspired by LotR, but to be honest Pinkie was inspired by many things other than any actual orc.

[Darkstarling]

9936467
It’s just wonderful that you managed to independent come up with the same crazy logic.

Meanwhile, I’m The Bad Guy is just great for Darth Sparkle. Let’s hope she never feels the need to go that route.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Delightful stuff... though Twilight really should be careful with these blind trials. No one likes getting their chain yanked on a frequent basis, even for science.

Still, a most entertaining tale of swords, sorcery, and silicon, with a most intriguing stinger. Thank you for it, and best of luck in the judging.

[River Road]

9936486
I'm glad you enjoyed it.

(And I maybe could've made it clearer in the story but there were a couple weeks between the main story and the epilogue. Twilight didn't have anything to do with them being trapped in the game.)

[fanreader999999]

Cartoons

[hawthornbunny]

Everyone turned to Sunset expectantly only to see her give them the driest look they'd seen yet, the look of someone who'd been trying to set them on fire with her eyes before remembering that she was a fire mage and was now trying to not set them on fire with her eyes.

Oh my god, just take my fave already. This fic is bloody brilliant. XD

[River Road]

9948921
Good to see you again and glad you enjoyed it.
(I'm taking your fave already, you're the one who took a week to hand it over. )

[AlexTFish]

Do we have to kick some butt and chew some bubblegum because I’m aaaaall about bubblegum.”

Heh! Excellent Pinkieism!

Spike-the-dog is superbly written. The best dog-who's-sentient-and-playing-a-human-in-a-game I've ever read.

“So, all of us are right hands while the other four are all leaders of some kind?”
Pinkie hummed and batted at one of her bells. “So you think it’s basically main cast versus supporting cast?”

It's the Hearth's Warming Eve play all over again.

Lots of fun. As soon as they started to think there must be a big bad I had a vague guess, but couldn't quite see how it would work. I love the surface-level explanation of Twilight roleplaying as an atheist white mage who just uses items because that is the kind of thing she'd do, and the eventual reveal of her not being an elf subject to Rarity's command was nicely done as well. By the time of the final boss fight I was pretty much expecting that actually there was no Equestrian magic, it was all just Sci-Twi hacking the VR game... but that's probably because I have a soft spot for Sci-Twi hacking VR games to make surprisingly-realistic adventure games for her friends

Thanks for the fic!

[River Road]

9993858
And thank you for the comment. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
No hacking involved, but Twilight did have those plans long before magic came into play. Introverted nerds and their overly contrived show-them-all power fantasies, amirite.

[UrsaMajor]

I liked it, but I'm confused by the epilogue - what's going on there? I'm not familiar with Wander over Yonder, so the music doesn't mean much to me.

[PresentPerfect]

10079259
I guess Sci-Twi's evil now? :B