Hospital Escape (+00:02)
“So the first thing you need to know is that literally every single cutscene is unskippable.”
He opened his eyes.
Above him, the midday sun filtered through gnarled and twisted tree branches. He squinted against the light. This wasn’t his room.
He turned his head to the side. He was entirely surrounded by trees. A forest so thick that he could hardly see 10 feet between the trunks. He was in some sort of partial clearing. A Path stretch out before him.
There was only one explanation. Obviously he had gotten blackout drunk at the party last night, and wandered off into the woods. There were no woods anywhere near either his house or the party.
But he did have a splitting headache, which lent some credence to the theory. He reached up a hand to massage his aching scalp, and slammed himself in the face. It was yellow. And a hoof.
At least he knew where this world lay on the spectrum of pony hoof hardness.
“So while we’re waiting for this nonsense, I’d like to take a moment to explain some quick things we won’t have time for later. Like I said, every cutscene is unskippable… theoretically. We are going to take some drastic measures to get around this.”
The yellow pony slowly got up on shaking hooves as the camera circled behind him.
“So the first thing I need to explain is ‘horn cancelling’.”
In an instant, the pony lunged into a forward at incredible speed, as if a timberwolf had taken a bite out of his tail. The instant he connected with the ground, however, a surge of green magic flared through his horn. The former human was upright in an instant, hoof to forehead in pain. But an instant later, he was rolling forward. Then, another flash of green light…”
“Basically,” PonyRunner could already see the chat spamming BASIC MingLee LEE MingLee out of the corner of his eye, “I’m cancelling the slow, wind-down part of the roll with this ‘you can’t use magic’ animation, then cancelling that into another roll. This is the fastest movement we have at this stage of the run. Even if we weren’t forced to walk really slowly for this segment, it’s still faster than running with un-upgraded stamina. Unfortunately it only works while we don’t have magic. We will not be upgrading stamina this run, but we will be getting magic for… reasons. Very special reasons.”
The ex-human rolled directly off the road into the thicket.
“As you can probably guess from the category name, our main goal right now is to get to Celestia, who is in Canterlot. In a casual playthrough, there are two main ways to get there. Either we take the train, or, if you’re a pegasus, you can fly there.”
The small yellow horse-with-horn continued to awkwardly stutter-roll through the forest, ignoring the various uncanny sounds surrounding him, his purpose singular and absolute.
“So you’re probably thinking: ‘PonyRunner FunnyNumber, why are you a unicorn? Why don’t you just fly there? See, thing is, pegasi are actually really slow”.
PonyRunner risked a glance at the stream monitor. He wasn’t sure, but the Rainbow Dash Guy whose username he couldn’t remember looked like he was frowning.
“Not only do you have to do a whole quest thing to learn how to fly, which takes ages by itself, but unicorns are just… insanely broken. You’ll see. As a unicorn, we’re gonna learn everything we need to beat the game… in the next three minutes.”
He rolled directly off a cliff.
“Oh…” PonyRunner said, solemnly.
He plunged into the treetops below. The screen faded to black.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen”,
“Wait… bro” said Gage, “were you going the right way?”
“Was I? I thought this was the right way…”
“Was that a death?!” asked Dash Guy incredulously.
The audience was already laughing. They knew this bit.
“Can we start over? I think we have enough time–”
The screen turned white. A sterile-white tiled ceiling slowly materialized.
“Eyyy just kidding!”
There was laughter and mild applause at a bit well executed.
“It’s like Demons’ Souls”, said Gage, “This is a forced death. Normally you just follow the path, pick up a few items, learn the controls. Then you get your cheeks clapped by a timberwolf. But if you die at any point, you just wind up in Ponyville General anyway! So PR intentionally dies here to hurry the process along”.
“There’s a long cutscene coming up”, said Ponyrunner, “So now would be a great time for some donations…”
Nurse Redheart had the worst luck. Nursing was difficult enough at the best of times, but all the worst, most nonsensical emergencies just had to happen during her shifts. Her’s and Doctor Horse’s, for some reason.
Her patient had been discovered by pure chance by a passing pegasus. Evidently he had fallen (or, Celestia forbid, jumped) off a cliff in the middle of the Everfree. Why he was in the Everfree, nopony knew. Nopony knew anything else about him either, for that matter.
She glanced down at the patient file in her hoof. No known medical history, no name, no identifying features, no record of his cutie mark, no missing ponies report (reminds me of that one green filly, she thought). And, oddly, no major injuries. One would expect falling off a cliff to have a more adverse effect on one’s health, but this unicorn was either very lucky or skilled with magic. He had escaped with nary a scratch. Nothing but sprains, bruises and a concussion, which was still dangerous, don’t get her wrong, but much less severe than it should have been?
She pushed open the door. The unicorn was still lying there unconscious, position unchanged.
Redheart knew it was none off her business, but she’d really hoped he’d have woken up by now, if only for the selfish reason of asking him what the buck his deal was.
It was when she moved to change his IV drip, however, that she got her wish. She felt an itching in the back of her skull, as if thousands of eyes were boring into her. But when she turned, she found only one pair staring back, unblinking. His eyes were gray. Specifically, the sort of gray that said “intentionally left blank”, as if someone had forgotten to pick a color for them…
“Oh! Good, you’re awake”, she said, “Any pain? Discomfort?”
The yellow unicorn simply groaned in response.
“That bad huh? I’ll check in with Dr. Horse and see about getting you some painkillers.”
The itching in her skull had been upgraded to a buzzing feeling. It was like somepony talking to her through a very thick wall. If that wall was her skull.
“It looks like we don’t have your details. Could you, perhaps, tell me your name, dear?”
His reply was instant.
“a”
Redheart flinched.
“O-oh… ah, that’s a, um, interesting name? Neighponese, I think...?”
“Fun fact”, said the unicorn, “Neighponese is technically the fastest language, but in any% it actually doesn’t make a difference.”
What is this guy talking about, she wondered. Maybe the head injury was more serious than any of them had realized.
“It only adds up to about 1/10th of a second because of how dialogue boxes work. They display characters one at a time, but you can just mash through them to instantly complete the text box. Cutscenes all take the same amount of time regardless of language. There’s one part of the run where you can’t do this, but it ends up not mattering for a different reason. I’ll point it out when we get there.”
“Excuse me? Sir? Can you–”
“Don’t worry, I’m fine... I think,” said ‘a’ almost immediately, “just a little… confused, haha…”
“That’s… gre–” “I just need–” “nothing difficult–”.
He nodded. He wasn’t saying anything, but Redheart couldn’t help but feel he was interrupting her constantly.
Oh well, just get on with the tests. She circled round to the foot of the bed and held up her clipboard.
“If you could look–”
The mystery stallion’s head snapped to the board.
“O-o-okay…”, she moved the clipboard to the left, “now can–”.
His head was already in motion before she had finished her first syllable.
“Not sure why they had to put a camera tutorial here when we’ve already had to use the camera to get this far, but okay. This gives me time to explain what we’re about to do”.
Who in Tartarus was this guy talking to? And what is he saying?
“Coming up is a kinda gross cutscene where our character tries and fails to use the toilet. It’s really weird and uncomfortable and I don’t know why the devs always insist in including this kinda stuff”.
“I have a few theories,” Gage said, “but I don’t think I can say any of them on stream”.
The Rainbow Dash Guy looked like he was about to add something, but PonyRunner quickly nipped the conversation in the bud.
“Regardless, we’re skipping it, so you won’t have to subject yourselves to it.”
PonyRunner turned and gave Gage a weren’t you the one whose supposed to stop weird stuff from happening on stage glance, which Gage countered with a you know I’m right though look.
“A lot of the trigger volumes aren’t actually tied to progression’, said PonyRunner, returning to the game, “so, generally speaking, as long was we can get to the right location, or talk to the right NPC, we can make progress without actually watching any of them first.”
“And here, part of the roof actually doesn’t have collision.”
Redheart looked up. There was a tile missing, leaving a pitch-black hole in the otherwise sterile ceiling. If there was a crawlspace above it, she couldn’t see into it.
When she lowered her head, her patient had disappeared.
“So, it’s time for some parkour” came a voice to her left.
Standing on top of a crash cart was “a”, looking more goat than pony. Before Redheart could utter a single letter of disapproval, he had leapt clear across the room and landed atop a storage cabinet in the far left-hoofed corner. With one, final, almost majestic leap, he sailed straight through the hole and disappeared into the ceiling.
Nurse Redheart screamed.
Redheart slammed open the door and skidded into the ward hallway. She could still hear her patient talking above her.
“We need to be careful with the seamwalk here.”
There was a thunk as four hooves landed above her on other side of the corridor, followed by rapid hoofsteps as he disappeared down it. For a pony who’d been unconscious not sixty seconds ago, he was fast.
“Our goal here is to fall back in-bounds into Dr. Horse’s office so he can teach us telekinesis. Theoretically, we could just leave the hospital now, but there are a couple of skills we have to unlock here that are critical to the run.”
Redheart was at full gallop, but the voice was already receding into the distance.
Doctor Horse relaxed. After the excitement earlier had turned out to be nothing life-threatening, things had become surprisingly quite at Ponyville General. That is, until a yellow unicorn fell out of the ceiling directly next to his desk.
Doctor Horse spat out his coffee.
“I’m having trouble using my horn”, said the uninvited guest.
Horse was instantly overwhelmed, but after years of living in Ponyville, his brain knew the best course of action for dealing with the confusing and incomprehensible: just clock out for the day. Hit the bricks. He reverted to general practitioner mode.
“What seems to be–?” said Horse, but the other unicorn was already speaking.
“I guess after the accident in the Everfree, I must’ve... lost my ability to use magic? Haha…”
He was behaving exceptionally suspiciously, but Doctor Horse was too far gone to notice or care.
“You’re a unicorn, can you help me learn unicorn magic?”
“Well, certain–”, “If you would–”, “Stand there an–”, “I’ll demonstrate”.
Horse picked up his coffee mug in his magic.
“Now you–”, “just have t–”, “now focus on–”, “press RB to–”.
Horse had no idea what he had meant by “RB”, but this stallion obviously did. He wrapped the box of syringes – that Doctor Horse hadn’t actually pointed out to him yet – in green light, and quickly lifted and threw them across the room, in the general direction of where Doctor Horse hadn’t yet told him to put them.
“A good first start, if a bit… excessive”, said Doctor Horse, but the other unicorn was already on the move, talking as if he were narrating his actions to somecreature invisible.
“Now that we have TK, everything is broken wide open”, he said, blasting the office door open with his apparently “newly rediscovered” magic. Nurse Redheart skidded to a stop directly outside. Almost like he had timed this.
“What the buck are you–”
“Ah, Nurse Redheart! I was just helping our dear patient relearn unicorn telekinesis!”
Doctor Horse smiled, but his empty eyes betrayed him. She knew that look. Don’t question it, just do your job and let somepony else deal with him.
She gulped.
“a, you r-ran off before I could run your hoof grip checks!”
“It’s actually faster to do it in this order because of the cutscene skips.”
“R-right! Sure! Anyway–”
She pulled out a thaumometer, and the redhead unicorn instantly pressed his hoof against it. He seemed desperate to get this over with, and she was happy to be rid of him. There was no grip strength reading. The needle did not move. Buck.
“Oh that’s–” “Let me try–” “Press X to–”, she extended her right hoof shakily.
The stallion grabbed on her hoof with his own and violently yanked back. Thank Celestia she was an earth pony or this guy would’ve sent her flying across the room.
“Thanks, I’m feeling much better now”, he said. And then, in a completely different tone of voice, added, “this is basically the inventory tutorial, I’ll explain why we need this later”.
“That’s great!” she lied, “You’re discharged! You can leave now. The exit is–”, but he was already in motion.
“TK is absolutely cracked. It’s the whole reason this run is possible. Imagine Half Life 2, Sonic ‘06 and Breath of the Wild combined”.
He sheathed a crash cart parked against the wall in his magic. Oh no. Oh no-no-no-no–.
In one swift movement, he leaped into the air, twisted 180 degrees, and blasted the cart directly into his own back. Both he and the cart sailed down the corridor as ungracefully as a rock and rag-dolled against the far doors.
“This is the fastest form of movement”. There were echoes of laughter.
Before either Doctor Horse or Nurse Redheart could comprehend the true nature of this manoeuvrer, he had already picked the cart and himself up. He positioned the cart at a roughly 45 degree angle from the door, and wedged himself into the gap between them.
“This is called a ‘drop clip’”, he said, followed by, “wait, angle’s wrong”.
He picked up the cart and moved it imperceptibly.
Redheart and Horse could only stand and gape as he dropped the cart, picked up the cart, and then threw it at the door, pushing his upper body directly through it. He picked himself up and pulled his rear end through after him.
“That’s not the exit”, said Redheart. She felt like she could hear hooves stomping in celebration. Or was that...?
Both of their heads snapped backwards towards the clip-clop sounds rounding the corner behind them. It was purple, had a horn, and had wings.
“Oh! Nurse Redheart, Doctor Horse!” said princess Twilight Sparkle, “Can you help me with something? Princess Luna thinks there’s some sort of disturbance in the dreamscape, and I think I’ve narrowed down the source to somewhere in this hospital. Have either of you seen anything… strange, recently?”
It was going to be one of those days.
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... And I thought nornal HIE was stupid. This beats them easily.
You are creating chaos, and it's beautiful.
this is dumb. looking forward to the rest!
i love this already
Okay, you have me intrigued. Looking forward to seeing where this madness goes next. And if anypony can break out of the programming. (I assume the run avoids Pinkie entirely if it can. Nothing speedrunners hate more than RNG.)
I don't know what's going to happen next.
All I know.
Is that it's going to happen fast.
I'm excited to see where this goes.
holy shit bro, this is a whole new level of stupid, the good kind, and I'm all for it. I hope more comes out soon so I can continue laughing my ass off
This is great! Please do more!
DEATH TO THE SUN TYRANT!!
Well, this is going to be a very unique story.
Can't think of the last time anyone has completed an any percent kill Celestia story. I can't even fathom any method by which it could be accomplished.
11474745
Suicide via repeated/epic facehoof.
11474752
Hmm, that sounds like a workable exploit. :)
Don't know why, but I would really prefer it if the Rainbow Dash fan would be quiet.
Assassinate Celestia% is going to go so well.
Just avoid Pinkie Pie.
11474675
Bold of you to assume there won’t be any RNG manipulation
I didnt even began to read this story but AMAZING Work, literally change my life.
this is great
This is amazing. Must read more.
I am loving what I am reading
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"Pinkie Pie is a black-hole and would absolutely eat up all of our time with party nonsense. But... if we manage to upset her enough to turn into Pinkamema before she can start a party, Maud Pie would kick our ass halfway up the Canterhorn, which actually shaves off time getting to Canterlot even with the added cutscene of getting rescued from a ledge!"
11474745
- Head to the post office and start Derpy's sidequest, get the parcel quest item
-Open the parcel immediately and sell the present(fails the quest, doesn't matter), use the bits at the train station to travel to the frozen north
- Get to the edge of the frozen north where the map border of Mt.Everhoof is barely in reach
- Roll and fall between two rocks bordering the mountain and fall through the map, respawning at the base of Mt.Everhoof and thereby bypassing all entry requirements
- Since none of the Villains are there to trigger the quest sequences, just climb up the mountain and clip through the barrier using the cart exploit
- Pick up Grogar's bell, which immediately starts and completes the "Beginning of the End" questline
- Cheese Celestia fight by standing on a very specific spot between a bookcase and a barrel on the right corner of the arena, where none of her attacks can hit you
- Keep using Grogar's bell off cooldown and Kill Celestia, getting Bad Ending #14
Loving this so far. The juxtaposition between the AGDQ gang's exposition/applause and the ponies' bewilderment at the
gamereality-breaking insanity was golden, and I'm willing to bet it'll get even more hilariously zany as the yellow pony does more and more awful things for the bad ending.Congrats on the first fic, and best of luck with proving that you "definitely have the motivation to finish" the rest!
:)
I've coughed and gagged laughing so hard at this! Great work!
Neat.
There’s already so much creativity in this. Can’t wait for more.
More please
Ooh, I will be watching this with great interest...
inaccurate; ever since GDQ switched to subs-only, chat has been fucking dead every event.
y'know, seeing this premise, I thought this would be something poorly-written and stupid. Instead, it's hilarious and I'm sorta invested. Cheers for a creative and more-importantly *well-executed* fic, hope you keep it up! :)
This premise is so clever, it's got me thinking about what if other fics were games. This is almost like cosmic horror but we are the cosmic horror
This is actually great, many peaple underestimate the comedic effect of confusion, but not you and I love it.
I fucking love Speedruns-from-the-perspective-of-in-game-(or-faux-game)-characters stories. I remember this one on Spacebattles about a Worm Speedrun that was pretty wild.
I see they used Dr.Horse strat. While effective and easy to perform, It isn't the best one, cause you still have to go though the cutscenes.
11475163
yes but the no-clip Pinkie Pile Driver route requires frame perfect inputs so not really the most advisable for tourney or on stage performance
11475163
Hey obama, whats your last name
I forgor
It'd be more interesting if this was a horror story parodying Under Tale genocide route from the perspective of the in-game characters.
As is, I can't say it managed to entertain me.
I cannot put into words how much I love this.
11475251
The thing is, it's Kill Celestia%, not Genocide%. Reading the wrong story for that mate...
This is absolutely bloody brilliant, I love it!
Make sure to make a slight detour to Ponyville Park and pick up the [Box of Sapphire Cupcakes] so that you can unlock Spike's friendship skill the first time you encounter him without backtracking.
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Unless the Sun stops revolving without Celestia moving it and everypony fries~!
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Has that clip even been performed in a proper run, yet? I thought it was still TAS-only.
And Redheart didn't even ask him if he wants to reverse his controls looking up and down, disappoint.
> no missing ponies report (reminds me of that one green filly
I see what you did here, and I approve
Absolutely marvelous! I wish it had multiplayer for co-op runs with teamwork similar to Left 4 Dead 2 runs. Imagine the chaos
I love how the NPCs are self-aware. They are like, "why am I skipping through speeches? And what the heck is RB and X button and why am I saying it?"
I love this, I can't remember last time I read something as hilarious
Everyone panic! It’s a speedrunner!
- Every NPC in existence.
Catapults self with medical cart,
This is THE funniest thing I have ever read! Astounding job!
You know... this feels a lot like how Pinkie breaks reality, as she knows all the clip-through spots and easter eggs.