Lyra Launch (+00:04)
Applejack had just crossed the bridge into Ponyville when she saw… him. A yellow unicorn, with a red mane, standing almost horizontally on the side of a barrel – which he appeared to be levitating – was flying directly towards her, and her cart, at very high speeds. Whatever was going on, it seemed dangerous.
Ah think Ah should probably... stop him?
“Woah there pardner!” she yelled, pulling out her lasso (which, of course, she always kept on her at all times). With a flick of her neck, the lasso sailed over the unicorn and his strange transportation device. Applejack pulled down hard, yanking the strange pony to the ground, and out of whatever spell he was under. The barrel split, spilling apples everywhere.
“Nice, hit the trigger”, he said.
“The hay? Is this one’a mah apple barrels?” She bent down to meet the stranger’s eyes.
“What exactly do ya think yer doin’? Somepony could’a been hurt! Includin’ you”, she glowered at him.
The unicorn gulped.
“Well… you see…”.
“This is another unskippable one, so more donations if you’ve got ‘em.” said PonyRunner
“Oh, actually”, said Gage, “what’s the status on the incentive? That’s coming up fairly soon”.
The donation reader cleared his throat.
“let me just see… so far, Twilight is in the lead with thirty-two thousand, one hundred and eighteen dollars and 69 cents”.
“Nice”, intoned both Gage and PonyRunner, followed by a delayed and muttered “nice” from the Rainbow Dash Guy.
“Followed by Rarity with twenty thousand dollars and 32 cents”.
“Unfortunately” said PonyRunner, “all of you are wrong. Where’s Luna in the running?”
“Luna is… actually third with 15k!”
“Guys, guys, please. Come on! Step your game up, PR’s on record pace!” said Gage. “She’s not just best princess, she’s fastest princess.”
“Yeah”, said PonyRunner, “Don’t you want to go fast? I though this was a speedrun. Shaking my head over here.”
“Nah”, said the Rainbow Dash Guy smugly, “I’m voting for best pony Dashie. Everyone vote Rainbow Dash!” he called out.
But Gage only smiled as he turned to face his co-couch-commentator.
“Oh, she’s not an option”.
“…Huh?” The smile sloughed off his face.
“We never see her in any%. Or Fluttershy and Starlight actually. If we were a pegasus she’d be here instead of Applejack. We skip all her other appearances”.
“So, yer tellin’ me,” said Applejack, “that yer an ‘alien’ from ‘another dai-mension’, you don’t know how you got here, and we’re all… fictional characters?”
“Pretty much!”
“That’s plum near the craziest thing Ah’ve ever heard!”
“You’re the Element of Honesty, you tell me if I’m lying”.
“Sugarcube, Ah’m not a lie detector. Believe me, if Ah was, Ah could’ve avoided a whole heapin’ mess’a problems”.
“Well, believe it or not, the facts remain: I don’t have money, food, a place to stay, or a way home”, said a.
Applejack’s expression softened.
“Ah suppose that’s true… maybe I’m bein’ too harsh on ya, even if ya do seem… well, either way! After Ah take care of this delivery, Ah guess Ah’ll take ya to see Rarity. She’ll probably have something fer you ta do While Ah talk to Twilight about... all this.”
Suddenly, a change came over the unicorn.
“So, the way this section works, is it’s… kind of a reverse escort mission? Gage, can you explain this one?”
“Sure. So, Applejack is going to take us around Ponyville, show us the sites, you get the idea. It’s kinda free-form, you can wander around, talk to the ponies, do whatever.”
Applejack raised a solitary eyebrow at this, but nevertheless continued to pull her cart into the Ponyville outskirts. a was sticking uncomfortably close by her side.
“AJ has three ‘states’: escorting, wandering and waiting. What she’s doing now is escorting. If we get too far from her, she’ll say something like–”
The unicorn suddenly sprinted away from the cart.
“Don’t wander off, sugarcube!”
“...that, and the game won’t let us move away. There’s a soft boundary surrounding her, like a bubble that pushes us back. If anyone watching at home knows any way of getting around this, please get on the HiE Speedrun Discord–”.
Discord? What the hay kinda relation did this guy have to Discord? Suddenly, his crazy-talk was starting to make a lot more sense.
“...However, at certain points, AJ lets us off the hook and we can wander around a limited area without needing to be near her. She’ll just keep walking until she hits a checkpoint. If the player isn’t there when AJ arrives, she’ll wait for us to catch up, which loses time because AJ is the one that actually loads in Carousel Boutique. So, PonyRunner needs to do as much as possible here, but still be at the checkpoint exactly on time. It looks like an auto-scroller, but there is zero downtime.”
Applejack was almost cross-eyed from the strain of figuring just out what in Equestria this unicorn was talking about. She almost didn’t notice him wander into an alley – just on the edge of what she considered acceptable-boundaries-for-wandering-off – and dive head-first into a dumpster.
“S-sugarcube? Just what in Tartarus are you doin’?”
Suddenly, he exploded out of the dumpster, scattering trash everywhere. He was holding aloft a ratty bag of bits, glowing like he’d just discovered some incredible treasure.
An indeterminate number of centuries later, a unicorn felt a tingling down her spine, certain that a bond of kinship had been forged across the millennia.
“This 15 bit bag is actually guaranteed to be in here, which is very convenient because it’s important for a glitch coming up soon. And, for some reason, opening the dumpster makes AJ’s cart move very slightly faster!”
He put the ratty thing in his mouth and trotted on back to her cart. She really did not want to think about where it had been. She quickened her pace. She needed something, anything to distract the unicorn, and herself.
“O-oh! Look! There’s the famous, ah, Sugarcube Corner!”
She pointed a hoof at the bright pink dessert-themed confectionery store.
“Maybe the Cakes’ll give you a free cupcake if you go in there and wash your dang mouth–”
She turned to scowl at a, but there was nopony there. Only a rapidly dissipating dust cloud.
“That’s our audio cue. Chat, are you ready for the greatest trick in the run?”
It was an exceptionally normal day in Ponyville, and Lyra Heartstrings felt like the most exceptionally normal unicorn of all. She was sitting, normally, on a bench outside Sugarcube Corner, enjoying the normal weather and eating a deliciously normal cupcake, that she had purchased, with money, from Mr. and Mrs. Cake. Who, she had to admit, were looking extremely normal today.
But there was something else. Something wrong.
She felt a buzzing in her horn. This was not normal. If she concentrated, it almost sounded like a... crowd of ponies. A crowd that was chanting something. Something which sounded an awful lot like ‘Lyra Launch’.
Something was approaching her. Approaching fast. She turned, cupcake forgotten.
It was a yellow unicorn with a red mane, galloping directly towards her, at top speed, kicking up a trail of dust in his wake. The chanting was audible now.
“LY-RA LAUNCH! LY-RA LAUNCH!”
Suddenly, the unicorn snatched a nearby trash-can off the side-walk with his magic, and launched it straight at her. She didn’t have time to yell, let alone grab it with her own magic. Or cast a shield. Or do anything else a unicorn could. All she could do was hold her hooves in front of her head, and hope.
There was a loud clang. The trash-can was, thankfully, empty. But it still hurt. She dropped her cupcake, and leaned away, hunched over in surprise and pain. She was filled with rage and brimming with tears.
Who did this lunatic think he was? She was going to give him a piece of her mind–
She didn’t get the chance. Something big and furry landed in the space between her back and the bench. She yelped in fear and snapped bolt upright. This had an unexpected effect.
She felt like she was leaning back through soft, furry jello. Yellow jello. It was the unicorn. He was phasing through her body.
Suddenly, everything began to vibrate, as if an enormous amount of force were being channelled out of Lyra’s body and into her attacker’s. He became a blurry haze, the mere suggestion of a pony. And then, he was gone.
Lyra looked up, fear and anger replaced with confusion and wonder, as she saw the unicorn fly straight up into the air, and mid-air dodge-roll into the third story window of Sugarcube Corner. There was cheering.
“Huh?”
Pinkie felt like a doozy was coming on. Something totally unexpected. Ear flop, eye flutter… but then knee pinch, which meant ‘watch for broken windows’. Or ‘Watch for Rolling Rocks’, one or the other. But her tail was twitching, so something must be falling? And she’d had that all-over tingly feeling she got whenever a new pony showed up in Ponyville… which could only mean…
She smiled and turned to her bedroom window, just as a yellow-coated unicorn, with a red mane, and a cutie mark depicting a ball with a lightning bolt, smashed through it.
“...if you’ve ever seen a Spyro speedrun, that was basically a proxy. Lyra has a unique sitting animation, and we can hit her to cause her to go into a pain animation, and that makes enough space to wedge ourselves between her and the bench. Then, when she goes back to idling, her animation pushes us inside her hitbox. The physics has no idea how to handle it, so it just launches us directly upwards at terminal velocity. And because we didn’t jump, the game thinks we’re still grounded, so there’s a few frames where we can input a roll mid-air to get through the window. Basically, when Lyra loses her lunch we get launched.”
“I knew there was a new pony in town!” Pinkie gasped, “I was going to throw you a party before you got here but then I remembered I’m supposed to ask you if you want a party before-hoof because Twilight said I need to be ‘more considerate’ about throwing parties for ponies who don’t want parties after that one time with Cranky Doodle and that other time after I threw that party for the new repair-pony and he was avoiding me somehow so I had everpony in Ponyville secretly manipulate him into coming to Sugarcube Corner as part of a giant conspiracy to throw him the BEST PARTY EVER”, she gasped for breath, “but he didn’t like the party and now he has a RESTRAINING ORDER because he thought I was going to bake him into a cupcake or something, haha I would never do something like that~”, she said, smiling.
Even though the unicorn was nodding along, listening with apparent rapt attention, she still got the impression he wasn’t really hearing anything she had to say. It didn’t bother her though; she got that reaction a lot. She continued speaking unabated.
Remember back like ten minutes ago”, said PonyRunner, “when I said there was one place where you couldn’t skip text boxes? The devs coded in a joke here where, if you mash through Pinkie’s text, she gets annoyed that you’re not paying attention and starts talking r-e-a-l-l-y slowly. I have to progress the text with a very specific rhythm, but it actually doesn’t matter what language we use, because the time you have to wait is hard-coded per text box. And talking to Pinkie is actually mandatory. Remind me to talk about that when we do Depression Skip.”
“...and then I got a twitchy tail so I knew you were coming through the window!” said Pinkie. She inhaled, catching a whiff of something that was distinctly not sunshine and rainbows.
“Wow you smell kinda bad!”, she said with undiminished joviality, “have you been dumpster diving? Didja find anything cool!?”
He jiggled the sack of bits.
“Wow! Kinda smelly though, I know just the solution!” she said.
Pinkie produced an entire bathtub from off-screen – complete with Gummy, of course – and dumped the entire contents over a.
“All clean!”
“This interaction is unfortunate”, said PonyRunner, “it’s random and only happens if someone sees you dumpster diving, sort of like Stardew Valley. Luckily, because of the exact route we’ve been taking so far, the RNG is set up to always trigger it here. And this event also clears the status, so other NPCs won’t comment on it! Everything is part of the route, trust us”.
“So, want me to throw you a party?” Pinkie beamed.
“This is a fake choice, the dialogue loops until you say–”
“Yes”.
“AHHHHH I knew I knew I knew you’d want a party! I promise it’ll be the bestest, funnest party you’ve EVER HAD! Um… except it won’t be ready today… It’ll be ready TOMORROW!” She screamed, as if this were her greatest idea since pre-peeled cupcakes.
“I’ll definitely be there!” said a.
“Spoilers, but we skip the party”.
Pinkie’s eye twitched. The audience booed. The unicorn made to climb back out of the broken window.
“WAIT!” Screamed Pinkie. She was sweating. She didn’t know why.
“I, um, forgot to... ask your name! For the... banners!”
She was filled with inexplicable dread.
“My name’s a”, he said.
“And there’s the only reason why our name is one character long”.
He jumped.
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I don't get it. FOE?
oh no
Poor Lyra.
So, while the speedrunner is in some strange quasi-self-aware game, all sorts of tricks still work. Interesting... And hilarious. Looking forward to the next one ;)
Kinky!
Tilde!
Equestria is going to get turned upside down as Ponyrunner/a speed run through. Pretty simple story concept yet very funny! I love seeing everypony’s reaction to a player using exploits and glitches to get around. Also his commentary. Just imagine the “game” breaking because a spouts on about going to kill Princess Celestia. This insane pony wants to kill the alicorn who can control the sun? Cannot wait to see how they perceive him using his inventory.
Only four minutes into the speed run!
—Cragadilian
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Izzy Moonbow.
LYRA LAUNCH! LYRA LAUNCH! LYRA LAUNCH!
Wait... is she talking about Lapis Print? I was not expecting that.
11475828
I saw that reference too.
Lmao love the Lapis reference.
I too spotted and enjoyed the Hold It Together reference.
Oh, this won't end well...
And I had assumed Pinkie worked off of a random seed determined at the start of the file. If she has predictable behavior, then she's as exploitable as anypony else. This is gonna get wonderfully weird.
As if Speedrunner Mario wasn't enough, imagine Speedrunner Pinkie.
And 'a' has been only half-pressed by Lyra's idle animation! If only they could legitimately reproduce that upwarp...
Oh sweet, I love catching references to other fanfics! And you chose quite a fine one to reference!
11475781
Upside down and possibly inside out as well depending on how much more breakage happens.
Lyras and references and dumpsters, dude's hitting all the highlights.
11475574
Idk man but if you set the graphics level high enough on a potato you may just be able to do it, as I think the world is framerate limited. Blame discord on that spaghetti code.
11475330
I'm familiar enough with speedrun to understand the idea. I'm just saying, the execution so far has failed to entertain me. I gave it another chapter but are still not interested. The slapsticks are pretty standard and not very creative. And the constant commentators' narration injections to spoon-feed the explanations of the speedrun tricks are pretty annoying and immersion-breaking.
The only thing I feel intriguing is the NPCs' feelings of cosmic horror, which, as I said, would work well in a horror setting where someone is trying for a genocide route parodying Undertale, or a bad ending route like in some horror visual novels. Ironically, in a comedy setting like this, adding such feelings from the NPCs would quite break the mood and pace, compared to just showing their dumbfounded reactions to the player's behaviors.
Ooh, nice "Hold It Together" reference.
I'm quite enjoying this, the idea of having everyone react to a speedrun of their own world while being able to hear the commentary coming from the person's character is pretty funny.
As is the mental image of thing like travelling with the crash cart, the barrel, and Lyra Launch.
I'd have half expected Pinkie to know about speed running and just say the first letter of each paragraph she needs to say, and do everything extra fast, but that way it was done here is good also.
Wonderful Lapis Print reference.
Really enjoying it so far, keep it up!
Can't wait for the part where they transport the Scootaloo.
11476171
Item-dup the Crusaders for maximum NPC interference.
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All HiEs are cannon. All of them.
Well that sounds oddly familiar.
is this equestria some kind of simulation or what?
Damn, Can't wait for the bucket-train ticket skip in which you place a bucket in front of the ticket booth in order to get out of the line of site of the ticket salesman and then sneak past the booth without spending any bits, saving approximately 4 seconds in the canterlot train station and initiating the wanted criminal event, making the security around celestia be lowered by 35 percent, making the run 20 seconds shorter than normal by lowering her maxHP
This is fantastic
11476153
Where?
11476498
"and that other time after I threw that party for the new repair-pony and he was avoiding me somehow so I had everpony in Ponyville secretly manipulate him into coming to Sugarcube Corner as part of a giant conspiracy to throw him the BEST PARTY EVER”
11476309
I like to think that this Equestria is real, and the humans are some sort of cosmic horror to the ponies.
Wish I'd read this sooner, characters in-universe reacting to speedruns is always a riot. Case in point:
So, Lapis Print the unicorn is cannon here. His paranoia will go through the skybox
the reference, combined with the fact that both fics were their author's first, gives me the impression that the fandom is still very much alive
11477824
Pardon me, but what story are you referring to?
Glitching through an NPC to reach a certain part of the stage quickly? Now that's pretty well-thought out.