Game Over

  I panted heavily as I sprinted away from the Alpha Timberwolf that was on my ass. Michael and I had a great plan that- since we were only level nines- we were going to attack a pack of Timberwolves, which just happened to have a level twelve Alpha Timberwolf hidden behind the bushes and trees of the Everfree Forest. I constantly back-pedaled every five seconds after I recovered my mana and planted a few traps down, killing some Timberwolves and doing an average amount of damage to the Alpha. Although I did make a lot of progress with it, Ayden came out of nowhere. With the 3D Maneuver Gear on, he was practically a monkey. The groups split up into the forest after we complete the port-to-town quest and we were level nines with much better gear and loot as before, obviously.

  Ayden caught sight of the Alpha and he jumped on top of it with his epic Spinning Finisher skill. The flames in the Alpha's eyes went dead immediately as it hurled itself into the ground. Ayden tugged his blades out of the nape of the Alpha's neck and sheathed them. We were in a group, so we all gain three hundred experience. Ayden hopped down and walked to me.

"You okay? Your HP is kinda low." Ayden asked.

"Yep, I'm fine," I replied, even thought I had a few scrapes and cuts on my everywhere, "I think Michael went back to town, he was about to die, he might be in the tavern."

  Ayden and I ported to town and saw Michael at the nearest Tavern buying Health and Mana potions. I saw Jared at the Blacksmith getting himself a new combat cross. I looked at my Rare Jr. Reaper Scythe and thought, "I'm not switching weapons for a while". I saw Celestia strolling around greeting all the players. Even if it is 2018, I never thought an NPC could have such raw emotions. I shook off the though when Jared called me.

"What's up?" I asked.

"There's a new quest over at the tavern, the guy wants us to the goblin camp and retrieve the Golden Idol so he can get better weapons- including legendary weapons." he replied.

"Is that the reward or do we have to buy it?" I asked.

"The legendary you have to buy, but he'll give us a Relic for it, I don't know what relic it was but it seems worth it right?" He said.

I nodded, "Round everyone up, we're headin' out."

  We finally made it to the Goblin Camp and positioned ourselves outside the perimeter. Mariesa had her Rare Keen Eye crossbow hiding in one of the trees for support, so was Ayden. Jared, Michael and I were on the inside. We managed to sneak our way through the camp and into the lieutenant's tent. We saw the Golden Idol resting on the trophy stand. I quickly crept over to it and reached out to grab when I heard snoring. I stopped dead and glanced to my right to see the lieutenant, dozing off. I looked over to Michael and motioned for him to take care of the lieutenant.

  I grabbed the idol carefully as Michael went behind the lieutenant and stabbed him through the chair while keeping him quiet. Jared peeked through the tent flaps and saw a platoon pass by.

"Shit! Guys, get down!" He whispered as he hid behind a few crates.

  Michael and I hid behind the chair, dragging the lieutenant with us. One of the goblin soldiers walked in and looked around. I guess goblins are either blind, or fucking stupid because he didn't seem to notice the idol that was missing. He was about to leave the tent before he stopped. He sniffed the air and looked to where Michael and I was.

Fuck...

  It unsheathed it's sword and slowly came to our hiding spot. Just as we were about to be discovered, Jared came from behind and assassinated him. He dragged the goblin behind the crates and we poked our heads through the tent flaps.

  And apparently it wasn't the one goblin that had picked up the scent. The whole platoon of goblins were staring at us with their swords drawn and ready. I summoned my scythe and pushed through Michael and Jared with a spinning slash that took out the platoon, but alerted the rest of the camp.

"Haul ass!!!" I shouted.

  I knew that Mariesa and Ayden heard that because I saw them jump out of the trees and back to town. We ran through the forest dodging everything in our path. One of the goblins jumped on my back and drew his dagger to my neck. He released me when Mariesa put a wooden steak into his head. Damn that girl has some aim.

  After a while of running and fending off a shit-ton of goblins, we finally came to rest at town. The group panted heavily after the work out we just shared with the goblins. We saw the Blacksmith NPC with a green question mark over his head. We turned in the quest and looked at his wares. I've never seen so much good shit like this before.

  Okay, so here's how the loot works. White is easy to find, not very good, blue has magical items, yet easy to find, Yellows are rare, and have some good magical attributes, Legendary is brownish and hard to find, they are second best to Set Items; green items and some the best loot, these have the best magical properties.

  I saw a Legendary Soul Eater, and wanted it... BADLY. It was 50,000 Gold. I only had, 39,476 Gold. Oh well, I could just find a couple of quests and scrape up some gold and buy it. But the only problem was, there were no new missions in the area yet, and farming creatures for gold takes way to long. I thought Celestia might have some quests, and she just so happened to be in town today. I strolled on over to her and greeted her.

"Hello princess." I said.

"Hello, Thunder Cracker." She replied.

"Do you have anything that might need doing?" I asked.

"Well, now that you think of it, I actually do." Celestia answered.

"Wow, I never thought that an NPC could actually create a unique response." I sighed.

"What's an NPC?" Celestia asked.

I raised an eyebrow slightly at this question, "Well," I began, "an NPC is a person or thing in the game that is automatically controlled by a robot or computer, and some of the NPC's have a certain amount of dialogue." I explained.

"Well, I'm not an NPC." Celestia muttered.

Whoa wait... WHAT?

  Just at that moment, the skies went dark and darkness flooded everywhere around us. I instantly summoned my scythe and stood guard in front of the princess, even though I knew she could protect herself, she has gotten her ass kicked a lot more throughout the series of My Little Pony.

  After a few seconds, thunder struck the nearby forest and a large mist rose from the ground forming into a human being. The human cackled as he looked down upon us.

"Hello, players of VEO! This is you captor, Anonymous!" He boomed.

Captor? What the fucking hell? I thought.

"Okay, I'm gonna be straightforward with all of you. I'm basically trapping you all in the game, and taking it as my own. You bronies are ridiculous, with your plushies and watching that stupid little girl show. But I digress, I have scattered your precious Elements of Harmony across Equestria. And I have a little present for you waiting in each element's room. Any of you who try to log out, or have someone take of the VEO headset for you on the outside, will be killed by having your heads fried by it. Oh, and if you die in-game, you get your head fried too, so good luck to all of you! Kay-bye!" Anonymous cackled once more as the mist slowly cleared, but the skies stayed dark and cloudy, and I had a feeling they were going to be that way for a very long time.

"Holy shit, Cameron did you see that?!" Michael shouted to me from the tavern.

"Uh, yeah I think everyone playing VEO saw that shit Michael!" I replied.

I turned to Celestia and asked, "Might you have any explanation for this?"

"Not that I can think of at the moment Cameron, I'm just as confused as you are." She replied.

20 Minutes Later Inside the Local bar...

"Well shit, we're stuck inside a game with no escape unless we find the Elements of Harmony and kick that guy's ass... great." Ayden muttered.

"And this was all done by a fucking Anti-Brony too." I added.

"We must call the Elements." Celestia said, walking out of the bar.

"Hey, wait." I said.

Celestia looked at me, "Let us come with you. You needed something done, we'll be up to the task." I said with a loyal and confident smile plastered to my face.

"Please stay here, it's too dangerous." Celestia insisted.

"Please, your talking to the people who are on the Top Tens of seventeen different games, I think we'll be fine." I replied.

"But this isn't a game, it's your life." Celestia replied.

"But the things that we can do in the game we can't do in the game. Like magic, and our skills, yeah we can't really do any of that in real life." I sighed.

"Then how are you in Equestria?" Celestia asked.

  I was about to ask what she meant when someone burst through the bar doors. They walked over to the counter where everyone could see them.

"Attention users! We have just gained knowledge that the user: Anonymous has hacked into the game and trapped everyone in it. We are currently tracking him down so he will not show up again and change the rules again." One of the admins announced.

"Then why'd you come here?! You know that he said you can't leave once you're in!" One of the players shouted.

"Yes, I know this, but we came here to assist in your quest for the Elements of Harmony." The admin replied.

"Hey buddy," I began, "do you mind telling me what the fuck is going on, because this seems a bit fishy to me. NPC saying that they're not NPC and asking how us humans got to Equestria, and NPC having raw emotions. Doesn't anyone else find that just a tad bit strange?" I asked.

I crowd began to nod their heads and agree with my statement.

"Where in the fucking universe are we?" I asked coldly.

  The crowd's attention turned towards the three admins standing in front of us. Their eyes darted everywhere for an excuse, but they knew they were defeated. The lead admin sighed.

"The VEO was just a test, one of the scientists figured out how to transport between dimensions and the multiverese, be he didn't know how to do it without having one of our subjects disintegrate. So we created the VEO, a device that could safely transport a player to a certain area in the multiverse."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! So you just so happened to figure a way to travel between dimensions in just seconds, but to much of your precious subjects wouldn't stop dying, so you just thought 'Hey, if we make more these and set the location to Equestria, we could use the bronies as test subjects'. Is that seriously what you thought? What the fuck is wrong with you?" I scolded.

"We needed more test subjects for more research on the phenomenon." The admin replied. I could hear the intensity of his voice increasing.

"Yeah well, I'd say you pretty much got half of the fucking world as your test subjects jackass! And oh, look, they're all trapped and dying because of a fucking anti-brony, and guess what that means for you: you lose more test subject you morons! Including your own lives! Look at what you done!" I shouted.

"We didn't know that the anti-brony community would get involved with our research, we were going to cancel the production of VEO once we had enough research, but now Anonymous has hacked into the game and the mainframe, trapping us in here! Don't blame us for this!" The admin argued.

"WHY CAN'T I HUH?! YOU'RE THE DUMBASSES THAT MADE THE FUCKING THING! HOW COULD I NOT BE YOUR FAULT?!" I screamed.

The admin let out a frustrated grunt of defeat. His gaze fell to the floor and he turned to the admin to his left. I couldn't make out what they were saying but a few things.

"...are you serious? It can't be..."

"Of course I'm sure... he's been pissed ever since..."

"...it's impossible, how did he hack into the mainframe...?"

  They moved a bit further away and the conversation continued for about a few minutes. The three admins looked at each other then left the bar. Whatever they had planned, it had to be bad in one way or another. I turned to Celestia and the group with a heavy sigh before pulling up a chair and slumping down in it and burying my face in my hands with frustration. And we just happened to be in this hellhole.

I looked up at Celestia and asked, "Hey do you mind if we stay in Canterlot until this whole ordeal is over? Since we can't leave the game, we're gonna be here for a very long time."

Celestia smiled lightly and nodded. "Of course you may stay. And good job at figuring out what happened and revealing their secrets to the crowd. Now the public would have news of what happened and could probably send them to the moon for a while." She said calmly.

I chuckled slightly. "Yeah we can't do that, but he have something similar to that." I replied.

"What's that?" She asked.

"It's called hell..." I replied, "a place they really need to go."