Free For All
A giggle of excitement came from the mint pony as the door to her house burst open. Lyra Heartstrings rushed through her doorway and stopped at the instrument that would be the foundation of her entertainment for the next few weeks: her television. The seventy inch screen illuminated the whole room as it was turned on. Another giggle came from the equine as the game case underneath her foreleg was levitated into the air and opened.
The game disc popped out of the case and floated over to the nearby Ex Cube Don't Sue Me. The disc tray opened, the game was placed inside, and then it closed. The electronic was turned on in the process of the tray being opened, and she bit her lip as surround sound met her ears. The account name “Lyra_Heartstrings” logged into the Ex Cube Adjoining Network System, Please Don't Sue Me.
Lyra pressed the green button on the controller, which initiated the game and made the television grow dark for a few moments. Her eyes remained glued to the screen, her mouth ready to emit another fangirlish squee. Her eyes widened as the title sequence to the game flashed on the screen, and a bunch of flashes of papers and tanks were shown.
Lyra sucked it all up, her hooves moving to her face in surprise. “Humans!” She screamed out, before she pumped her hooves in the air. “This game has humans in it! That last game with the cat-like protagonist wasn't so fun. I kept dying.” She added to herself.
Lyra had been capable of gathering games created by the humans due to Princess Celestia. The Princess provided her with a list of possible games every month that Lyra could pay bits for. The game that she chose made Princess Celestia send an additional letter that said, “Do not take anything seriously.”
A pair of glasses was shown on the television, as a set of hands moved the glasses up to the off screen character's nose. Three game options popped up to her in the dark environment, which was surrounded with computers and lights going on and off. A world unlike her own remained in the background, behind the three selections. Her eyes marveled at these more than the menu selections, since this was the first time she acquired knowledge of human's whereabouts, assuming the world and map in the background was true.
Lyra's nose wrinkled a little bit in irritation as she tried to make out any more possible clue that was in the background. Surely if the humans wanted to show off their graphics, they wouldn't make such a dark and gray color the main pallet in their games? Color was what made the world go round! It provided the world with depth and the beauty of color was the mixing to create more wonderous hues. When everything was gray, the game didn't look pretty, at least, to her.
Lyra brushed her thoughts away and her eyes moved over the choices. “Multiplayer, Zombies, or Campaign.” She said to herself. Her eyes lit up at the possible circumstances. “Multiplayer! I can play with other ponies over the world wide web?!” She yelled out. “Oh this is going to be awesome! I already have my little microphone.”
A small black and green headset levitated over to her, before gently perching on top of her head. The microphone pointed out parallel to her sound travel, and she let out another giggle as she attached the headset to her controller. She pressed the green button on “Multiplayer”, which caused the television to go black for a few moments.
The moments passed and the black was replaced with a gray background, with soldiers holding guns while epic music was playing in the background. Lyra assumed that Vinyl Scratch probably made the music, since there was a decent amount of wubs in the whole song. “Oh, what do I do?” She asked herself as the giant menu on the left side presented itself to her.
Lyra looked over her current options. “XBOX LIVE, SYSTEM LINK, LOCAL, OPTIONS” and “STORE” were presented to her. The orange highlight moved over the five options as she struggled to figure out which one she was going to do. A sudden idea came to her. “Maybe if I look over the manual, it would tell me!”
Lyra smiled at her genius as the CD case for her game was opened and her hooves fumbled around for the manual. A few pages were flipped before she realized that LOCAL was probably the best choice. After all, she wanted to play against other ponies in her area. The humans could wait.
Two button presses later and the map was loading, epic music playing while she waited. Another menu screen visited her as the sound of horns blared from her television screen. Five “custom classes” were presented to her, along with another five premade classes of guns, perks, explosives, and all of the other things that made gamers like this ejaculate in their pants. Lyra picked one of the classes and squeed in delight as her character pulled back the slide on one of the guns, providing her with the first visual of a human hand. “A hand! I just saw a hand!” She said, as her left control stick slowly moved forward. The character moved in the direction of the stick and Lyra stopped it with the removal of her hoof.
Five minutes passed and Lyra had completely moved around the map, emptied her ammo and grenades, only to find that no one was in the game. The manual taught her how to use the controls, so she backed out of the local game and moved back to the menu. XBOX LIVE pointed out to her once more and she accepted that option.
As if the game wanted to plague her, ten more options were provided to her.
“There are so many options!” She said, as she moved the highlighting over “Public Match”.
“This makes the most sense... I mean... I want to play with the public, right?” She asked herself. Of course she wanted to do it, but that didn't mean it was the best idea.
Lyra accepted that option, only to be met by more options. Annoyed, she pressed the green button as many times as she could until a map started to load. A sigh of relief came from her as she realized that she was finally going to be able to play the game. “Finally.” She said to herself.
The map loaded up and the first thing that met her ears was a loud “FUCK!”
Lyra jumped in her armchair, her lower lip quivering at being scared by a profanity. “Well that wasn't nice.” She said to herself, as the map “Nuketown” loaded.
Explosions rang out from her television as another loud, “FUCK! FUCKING FAGGOT!” rang through her headset. Lyra turned her headset volume down and picked one of her classes to allow herself into the game. The bottom left numbers told her that her team had a collective score of 10 while the other team had a collective score of 60. Free For All was the mode, and she was using a fully automatic assault rifle. She let out a small squee once more as she moved forward, out of the brush and into the middle of the map. She immediately died and watched the killcam. The other player jumped around the corner and his belly hit the floor. His gun fired ridiculously fast and it killed her character. The blood coming out of her character made her wince slightly, but she had seen worse.
“Well that was quick.” She told herself, as she spawned again, moved forward, and died almost instantly from a character on the other side of a fence. “What the-” Lyra said to herself, as she spawned and died again. Unfortunately her microphone wasn't muted, so she ended up speaking aloud to the lobby. The yells of “FAGGOT” and “FUCKING CAMPER” were diminished as the other players in the world heard a girl voice. It was probably the first girl voice they ever heard.
“Woah, we got a girl in here?” One of the players asked, “Hey bitch, when did you put the X Box in the kitchen?”
Lyra was taken aback and she looked behind her. Her kitchen remained clean and spotless, since she cleaned it before she left to go get the game. “Um... My X Box isn't in the kitchen.” She said, as she managed to kill another character. A squee came from her mouth as she saw the +100 move across her screen. “I got a kill!” She exclaimed, before her character died once more.
“Aww.” She said.
“Yeah, take that bitch! Fucking camper!” Another deep male voice said.
Lyra frowned, before licking her lips and spawning once more. She wasn't aware that constantly moving around the map meant that she was camping. She was going to have to remember that for future games. She spawned right in front of gunfire and died once more. “Aww.” Lyra said again, as she spawned again, and died. And spawned, and died.
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Three minutes passed and the game ended. Lyra was at the bottom of the score board, but she didn't mind. After all, a score of 1 to 30 was not so bad to her. However, to the other players, it was the end of the world.
“Wow, what kind of noob goes 1 and 30?” A different deep male voice asked. “Man you might as well kill yourself if you are going to be that bad at this game.”
Lyra frowned and felt tears well up in her eyes, but she remembered Celestia's words. She wiped the tears away. She couldn't ignore this kind of behavior. If her friends were being talked to this kind of way, she would interject. This anonymous person under the account name of “XSmokeKush420X” had to be reprimanded.
“Listen here, that isn't very nice.” Lyra responded as she waited for the map to load.
“Like I give a fuck, bitch.” The other voice responded.
“There's a bitch in the lobby? Hey! Make me a sandwich!” Another voice added.
Lyra raised an eyebrow before she looked at the lobby. The other account with a mic was named “XXCaliSwagXX”. She wasn't sure what that meant, but he wasn't being so nice either. But then again, maybe he just wanted a sandwich. “How am I going to send you the sandwich if you aren't here?” She asked. “Wouldn't it just get soggy?”
Her response was met with 3 laughs from different people, before CaliSwag responded, “Just... where do you live?”
“I live in Ponyville.”
“Ponyville? Where the fuck is that?”
“Well um... in Equestria!” Lyra responded, a giddy smile on her face.
“Wow, you are making shit up. Tell me where you are before I come into your room in the middle of the night and rape you.”
Lyra was taken aback once more, and she frowned. “That is where I live. Why would I lie to a person that I don't even know?” She simply asked.
“Shut the fuck up. I know you are lying. You are just a-” But he was cut off and muted.
Lyra frowned before the game started again. One troll was not going to ruin her day. She smiled as the map loaded and she readied her controller. “Bring it on. I got this.” She said to herself.
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Princess Celestia sighed as she lowered her own controller. She was up way past her bedtime, and it was Luna's turn to watch over the night. “I hope Lyra took what I said to heart. A game like this can't be taken seriously.” She said to herself, as the Princess retired to bed.