New Life Plus

By Hedzentails

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Level One
Character Setup

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Hi.

Yeah, that’s the start of my story. No, the only story I'm ever good at starting is a video game story.

You’re probably thinking I need to get a life, but if you ever say that to my face, I will stop at NOTHING to make you suffer the most agonizing K.O. imaginable. Seriously, as much as I would prefer not to, I’ve heard, and cried about, that saying too much to just let it slide.

You’re probably wondering why. If you’re not and just thinking that you can take me on, I can still say that you can’t; I’ve gone through enough to get me ready to take on the final boss with nothing but a level one hat and my fists.

And that hat could be leather and I wouldn't even put any buffs on myself.

Anyway, back to the why.

My whole life has been a game. Half of it, literally. Sorry if that’s a little confusing, but it’s the truth. The first seventeen years of my life were a game in the sense that I had a lot of fun living it and never gave up until I got what I wanted done DONE. The eighteenth year was a game in the sense it was literally a game. I had to play well or I died, and when I died, I just got revived by some of the best team-mates I’ll ever know.

Either that or I respawned in bed, back at the castle.

It’s a very complicated story and all I’ve done so far is explain it, not tell it, but I’ll start it properly now.

If you like skipping the opening cutscenes, you could probably jump to a little further on in this chapter.

This story began one lazy Saturday afternoon when I had nothing better to do than to just sit back and play video games for hours on end. It was raining too, so I’m covered for not going out with my friends. They were the people who’d be gaming too anyway so I was socialising even when I was being anti-social.

Two of my friends and I were presently anti-socialising in a game of Borderlands 2, in the process of defending that beacon thing to help Angel get us back to sanctuary. My launcher wielding, trigger happy, too-serious-to-make-it-fun commando comrade, Carl, and I were successfully holding the fort against wave after wave of loaders, but my other friend, the slightly-nooby, ever eager, gunzerking Lee, hadn’t been doing well since this mission started.

“Oh god, I need help!” he yelled over the computer, still sounding way too happy for a level fourteen in this situation. “I got hit by a nade in cover and I can’t shoot anything!”

“Cryin’ out loud, get your shit together, man!” Carl almost deafeningly roared back, switching from launcher to the most overpowered shotgun in the entire game. Seriously, he got that thing at level eight and it's still good ten levels later. “How the heck are we supposed to win this game if you keep makin’ one of us drop the ball to pick you up?!”

“Wow, get some ice, hot-head,” I whispered back, heading over to my downed comrade and reviving him. “And Lee, I really think you should’ve hosted because I’m having trouble at level nineteen. I don’t know what’s keeping Carl up but even he’s having trouble here.”

“Pfft, I got this covered!” Lee joked back, that poor, deluded, joyful bastard. He got back up and sprinted back out of cover, gunzerking with a pistol and a sniper rifle. I really do pity that fool and I know Mister T would pity the freakin’ BUTT off of him.

Oh well, he was the Pinkie Pie of this group and probably the Applejack too.

Yes, I still like that show at my age. Sorry, but I just have to say 'speak of the devil' here.

“Holy crap, what the hell is that thing?!” shouted Carl, deploying his turret and aiming at something behind me. How he spotted it with his eyesight, crappy computer and graphics options from THAT far away, I have no idea.

“What’s what?” I asked, turning on the spot with my shotgun ready. I think I froze instead of the computer, and how hard I did freeze actually felt like I’d turned into a statue.

“Oh, Karen!” Lee laughed stupidly, turning to look at the source of the commotion and putting his back to the constructor that had appeared. “It’s one of your pony things! You've made a friend!”

No, he didn't watch the show, he just tolerated it. Which is one hell of a lot more than I can say for Carl.

Oh yeah, introductions. Hi, I’m Karen. I play video games and watch ponies and stuff.

“Are you freakin’ KIDDING ME?!!” he roared, almost breaking my headphones and my ears. “WHO THE F@&* PUT THOSE IN THE GAME?!!!”

He didn’t ACTUALLY say ‘who the fatandasterisk’, I just don’t like writing that out. I prefer screaming it at Seath the Scaleless for his stupid f*%$ ing curse crystals.

“In what game?” asked Twilight Sparkle, the pony princess of friendship in Equestria, an apparently fictional world in the cartoon ‘My Little Pony; Friendship is Magic’ created, and I really hope it was just created as a CARTOON, by Hasbro. “What’s going on?”

She was behind the cover I was healing up behind, so she probably couldn’t see the giant robots attacking.

“DID THAT THING JUST F*%&ING REPLY?!!” Carl screamed in the manliest voice you will ever hear. I bet if Marcus Fenix was listening, he’d shed a tear of manly respect at that. “WHAT KINDA MESSED UP BULLSHIT IS HAPPENIN’ RIGHT NOW?!!!”

“Um, your friend seems to be very loud,” Twilight commented anxiously, hoping to keep that velociraptor of hate at bay. “What exactly is happening here?”

She began to move out of the cover we were in, but I jumped in front of her quickly so she wouldn’t get obliterated by a giant builder robot.

“Nope!” was the only thing I could think of to say, trying as hard as I could to make Maya look like she was shaking her head. I think her whole body worked enough too. “You can’t go out there! You’re an NPC and you could get killed and I really don’t think you can respawn as an NPC!”

“An NP… what?” Twilight asked, head tilting to one side. I was really starting to panic a little now. “Oh, sorry! We haven’t been properly introduced! My name is Twilight Spar-“

“SHUT THE F£&% UP, WE’RE STILL PLAYING THIS GAME!!!” bellowed the Carl that I know and love; the hardcore-MLG-360noscope-gamer Carl I’d lost so many games of anything against. “KAREN, JUST F@#* THAT THING AND GET BACK IN THE GAME!!!”

Yes, he did think every person that watched ponies liked f%*?ing them. In my defence, I only googled tiarawhy ONCE and that was the end of it.

Twilight’s confused, weak smile turned into an annoyed scowl.

“Your friend also seems… very rude, to put it nicely,” she grunted. She leaned in to whisper at me. “Can I put a muffle spell on him, please?”

“Uh…” I was just frozen there. I couldn’t even think of anything to say. If you were in the same position, you’d probably just say yes or that you really like her mane or something, but I was shocked out of my head.

“Oh, come on!!” came the over happy chuckle of Lee. “I’m down again! Help me up please!”

“Oh!” Twilight perked up almost instantly. “I’ll be right there!”

I think she was just looking for a nicer person to make friends with.

I was snapped out of my stunned statue-ness by a sudden scream of terror from where Twilight was headed, followed by the sound of a loader getting too close. I snapped into gamer mode again and spun the corner after her, equipping my trusty sniper.

My aim snapped to the loader and it only took four shots to its anywhere to take it out, a personal best with a sniper for me, and then I switched back to the shotgun again to shoot down another too-close-for-comfort loader.

“YEAH, THAT’S THE HORSEF#!*ER I WANT IN THIS GAME!!!” Carl screeched, breaking cover to unload his launcher into the constructor bot-spawner and spawn a turret to take more of the robo-horde down.

I phaselocked another bot and shot him out of the sky to heal Carl and me up, Lee still at full health due to the respawn. I think Twilight got the message that this was a real- um, VIRTUALLY real battle, but she had the idea I didn’t want her to have.

“I can help!” she cried, sending a beam of magic at the constructor. The game probably had a different idea to what she was aiming for, but shocking its shields away was good enough.

That was Lee’s cue to gunzerk with a pistol and sniper again and, credit to him, he brought it down to half health, at which point I charged in with my faithful shotgun to finish the job as quick as possible while Carl took out the things it was spawning.

As the metaphorical dust settled, I heard Lee cheering at his surprisingly valuable input, Carl laughing at how well he had done with the cover fire he’d provided and Twilight was giving a one-pers- one-pony applause to the whole thing. I think Angel was saying something too, but I couldn’t hear her too well.

“Yeah! We did it!” Twilight cheered, stamping her hooves and flapping her wings happily. She stopped her applause to smile at all of us; Lee was running over to her, I was picking up the neat assault rifle the loader attacking her had dropped and Carl was probably glaring as hard as he could through his screen at her.

“Whadda ya mean WE?!” yelled Carl, reloading his OP shotgun and marching over. I could tell what he was planning, so I quickly charged him and challenged him to a duel. “Ah, for f@!*’s sake, Karen! You want me to prove I’m better than you at this for the FIFTH time?!”

Twilight ‘ooh’ed at the duel about to take place as I switched to my sniper and aimed at his face. I don’t think he noticed me doing that as he reloaded all his weapons. The duel started and I critical-d him with an added bonus of slag. He made an angry comment while I charged him, shotgun already out as his turret spawned again.

It didn’t do him much good as I got three quick, point-blank shots off at him and won the duel.

“YOU HAVE GOT TO BE F#@!ING KIDDING ME!!!” he roared furiously, probably just mad that a brony/pegasister/pick-one had taken him out. “WHAT F*!&ING MODS HAVE YOU GOT IN?!! YOU WERE HACKING THE F*%$ OUT OF THIS AND THAT IS SOME MAJOR BULLSHIT!!! I AM OUT OF YOUR CRAP!!!”

And so ends the tale of an MLG ragequit gamer who probably went on to be the greatest gamer of all time at that defeat.

Twilight seemed to hear the beep of him leaving the call and her ears perked up and she glanced around quickly, searching for his disconnected body.

“Okay, mission finished,” I muttered before turning to face the now non-fiction Twilight Sparkle. “I’ll say sorry to him later, but first, please explain to us why the F@!? ARE YOU IN THIS GAME AND BEING REAL RIGHT NOW?!!”

She flinched a little at my outburst, but not as much as I would have thought. Probably because Maya can’t express my rage as someone who isn’t an action-limited character.

“And here I was thinking Carl was bad!” Lee laughed. As much as I wanted to punch him, he was way too happy for me to actually do that and kill his mood.

“I’m sorry, but there’s really not much time to explain!” Twilight explained quickly (and ironically), suddenly taking on a serious tone. “I decided to look for the greatest warrior I could find to help save Equestria from complete destruction!”

“I’m missing something here,” Lee stated blankly while I listened harder.

“Then why did you pick a random game of Borderlands 2 to find one?” I asked, admittedly a very stupid question to ask a PONY that knew nothing of this game.

“This is a game to you?” breathed Twilight, as if it was the most spectacular thing I could’ve said. She shook herself out of that trance and her concerned look returned. “We’ve really got to go now before it’s too late! I’ll make sure to get you back here as soon as I can! Brace yourself!”

She started casting a spell as I tried to comprehend what was happening and Lee just stared in amazement.

“Wait, hold on!” I cried out at last, but I could tell it was too late by the tugging I felt at my waist and the tingling all over. I quickly turned to give a last dramatic look at Lee and blurt out a quick string of words. “Tell Carl I said sorry make sure you level up enough by the time I’m back bye!”

And then I disintegrated.

IRL.

DISINTEGRATED.

But the last thing I heard Lee say was something about giving my little pony a go, so there’s a pro tip for you; if you wanna make your friend a brony/pegasister/I-don’t-care, just ask Twilight Sparkle to invade his video game and disintegrate you!

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After what felt like ninety-five billion years but was probably really only four seconds, I began to sort of put myself back together. The weird thing about tha- uh, ONE of the weird things about this whole thing was that it kind of looked like a Borderlands 2 character’s respawn, just with a flash of bright red instead of that tunnel of blue stuff and in first person.

It is NOT something you want to see happening to your own body. I seriously cannot understand how any of the playable characters in that game haven’t gone COMPLETELY insane yet.

When I was completely recreated, I fell out of the air I was somehow hovering in and landed on the bed that was beneath me. After rolling onto my back and a few very disgruntled groans, I looked up to see Twilight staring at me with a look of worried confusion which could only mean something bad had happened.

“Oh god, am I bald now?” I asked in sheer terror, reaching up to feel my head. You could not imagine how happy I was that I hadn’t suddenly gone completely bald for pretty much no reason. “Oh, that’s a relief… so what went wrong?”

“You’re not… you don’t look like the great warrior I brought back…” Twilight replied unsurely. Well that was an easy one; I don’t tie my hair in a side-ponytail, I don’t wear clothes that show off my un-tattooed arm and my clothes are also not that colourful.

“Yeah, I probably should’ve said something before you did that thing…” I mumbled, barely even contemplating the effects of the mistake she’d made that would change my life for a really long time.

“But… you have its voice!” she cried in what sounded like disbelief. Her cheeks went a little red for a second before she went on. “Oh, sorry… I don’t think I caught your name… or anything else about you…”

There was an awkward silence for a moment before I coughed in that way people cough during an awkward silence.

“Sorry, this was really not what I expected to be doing today at all,” I stated, pushing myself up to stand off of the bed. I gave a weak, nervous and tiny wave and put on the friendliest expression I could in this situation. “Hi. I’m Karen. Uh, I already know who you are, just don’t ask how; I’ll tell you later.”

She blinked at me with a confused expression of ignorance, somehow reminding me of my predicament and the question I really wanted to ask.

“Oh yeah,” I said, perking right back up again. I put on an angry/nervous/stupid look before I continued. “Why the heck am I here? Did I go insane by playing video games too hard? Am I dead?”

“I really wish I knew, Karen,” Twilight replied sympathetically. “I put the spell on a great warrior who saved me from some evil machines and her obnoxious team-mate who gave the impression that he wanted to hurt me too!”

“Oh great…” I whispered, staring at the floor as I rubbed my forehead in accepting disappointment. “This is gonna be tough to explain… Right!” I popped back upright. “Let’s skip all that stuff for now! Let’s just forget about the how part of the why and just get straight on to the why part of the why! What’s the actual reason that you needed, uh… a great warrior here?”

“Oh, well…” Twilight started, and I could tell she was about to go into a full-on lecture mode that a lot of people I know had gone into at some point. “We needed a great warrior here to help us with the problem of some monsters attacking Equestrian towns and cities. These monsters are definitely not of Equestrian origin, but we did manage to locate their actual point of origin.”

“Uh huh,” I agreed blankly. I had no idea what she was going on about, but I just pretended I did by nodding and waving her on. “Please continue.”

“Alright, so their point of origin was somewhere close to a town on the edge of a cliff that some machine things were attacki-“

“Overlook,” I put in, feeling very proud of myself for helping the super-genius princess of friendship.

“Uh, right, Overlook,” Twilight repeated unsurely. She went on anyway. “Their point of origin seemed to be near Overlook, but near in a global sense. That planet doesn’t seem to even be in the same galaxy as Equestria, according to our astronomical experts in Manehatten.”

I smirked a little bit at the understanding that that place actually existed. Twilight raised an eyebrow and her mood seemed to deteriorate a little.

“Is there something funny about this?” she asked in a slightly irked tone.

“No, sorry,” I said quickly, raising my hands in front of me like everyone does to try and get an angry person to calm down. “It’s just… there’s a place that… never mind. I’ll be quiet.”

“Thank you,” she replied with a victorious nod. “As I was saying, these monsters appear to be from that planet. In fact, some of them did look a little like your species…”

I was about to ask what that meant and why she was staring at me so accusingly and suspiciously when the door to the room burst open and a guard pony charged in. I almost laughed as he tripped and fell onto his face, but he got back up too quickly for it to count.

“Princess Twilight!” he yelled, saluting quickly as he panted and sweated harder than I would imagine for even a guard pony. “It's great that you’re back! Did you find a-” He noticed me. “Excellent work, your highness! And not a moment too soon! One of the monsters is attacking Ponyville right now and we need all the help we can get!”

“Wait, what?” I asked quietly when the guard span around and left the room as quickly as he’d come in.

“Oh no…” Twilight whispered loud enough for me to hear. She rounded on me. “There’s no time to waste! You’re from the same planet as that warrior was so you should be able to handle this!”

I still didn’t know what was going on and my confusion gave her the time to push me out the door after the guard. I flailed and protested a little, but not enough to stop her.

“What’s going on?!” I yelled, turning my head to face her.

“A monster is attacking Ponyville!” she yelled back. “Weren’t you listening?!”

“I was, but…!” I trailed off as the panic took over. “I’m… I’m not a warrior…”

“You can think this is a game too if you want!” she encouraged sharply. .“But you’re from a planet of monsters and you’ve survived this long so you must be able to handle yourself better than we can!”

It was nice that she thought I could handle this but it was the wrong way to show it.

And then I turned back to where she was pushing me to see the source of that noise. It looked like a bunch of buildings were collapsing, half a billion ponies were running around panicking and the guards were charging around shooting arrows at a giant floating eyeball.

Which looked horrifically familiar.

And shot smaller floating eyeballs out of its pupil.

No, you did think right.

I just wish I didn’t.

There was an actual, fully three-dimensional, angry Eye of Cthulu attacking Ponyville. AS IF THIS DAY COULDN’T GET ANY WEIRDER.

“Here’s a sword!” yelled Twilight over the mixture of sound, jamming the handle of a sword into my hand. “Go help the guards and I’ll give as much support as I can!”

She pushed me away from her and charged back inside, probably to shoot lasers from the windows or something. I didn’t really care about that though. I was much too focused on the present scenario I found myself in.

“What,” was all I could think of to say in that blind fit of terror.

I'm pretty sure I felt my trousers get damp as the adrenaline took over and I ran towards the guards already fighting.

Author's Note

All games mentioned or bosses slain are not property of me. Google their owners because I can't be bothered to list all of them, and yes, there WILL be a lot of them.
Also proofread by Feathrnite who still despises all of humanity and will destroy the universe one day.
Cover art in progress.