PAO: Pony Art Online

"Watch for the incoming wave!"

Everyone dodged out of the way, shielding themselves behind buildings and crates as a blast of energy rippled through the streets. Floor forty-eight's boss had done something completely unexpected, and teleported itself out of the dungeon and into the central city, along with the whole raid party. Each player had the home turf advantage, but that meant all their planning had been wasted, and no one knew what to do.

"Applebloom, where's your sister?" Sweetie Belle yelled as the boss, a manticore corrupted by dark magic, charged another blast.

Applebloom rushed to take cover next to Sweetie Belle behind a building just as the next wave of energy shook the whole city. "I saw her charging forward with Sunset and Pinkie Pie, I don't know how close she is though."

"Fluttershy?" Sweetie Belle asked.

"Her pets are healing whoever they can and bringing them to the edge of the city where they're safe." Applebloom turned around as the manticore's energy began leaking off the main streets, forming ghost-like apparitions.

The wendigo lunged at Applebloom's shield, bouncing off and dissipating as Sweetie Belle cut through it with her sword.

"We have to regroup," Sweetie Belle said, "everyone's spread across the city right now and there's no way to tackle that thing alone."

It was easier said than done. The pockets of players that remained slowly spread apart as they were harassed by the wendigos. Some fled to the edge of town, while others ran toward the center of town assuming the main force was going to meet there.

As more and more creatures spawned, players stopped checking their maps to find other raid members, focusing all their attention on the hordes of wendigos and magic energy flooring the streets.

In the fray, Sweetie Belle and Applebloom only managed to run into Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash by chance. They collided paths in the residential side of town, where there were the most player houses.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so glad we found you," Rainbow Dash said with a sigh of relief. She whirled around and cut down three wendigos rushing down the street. "These things are getting out of control, we can barely get to the manticore."

Sweetie Belle agreed, but she didn't have a plan to fix it. "Half of the raid is scattered on the edges of town, and the other half's split up around the city."

"Are the NPC's doing anything?" Scootaloo asked. "The town guard should have been triggered."

"They're not spawning fast enough," Applebloom answered.

Sweetie swiped open her menu and checked the names of the raid members. No one was dead yet, but not a lot of players were doing good health wise. On her map, she noticed a group of members meeting up two streets away from the boss.

"RD, get out of combat mode," she said, pointing to the group on her map. "I think some players are planing to hit the boss from here, you need to tell the rest of the raid to head over there." Rainbow Dash sheathed her sword, nodded, and took off to the sky in a flash.

"We need to get moving Sweetie Belle," Applebloom urged. She held back a whole herd of wendigos with her shield, slamming them back onto the main street.

"Scootaloo, help me clear a path through the street," Sweetie Belle said, drawing her scimitar. "And keep those wendigos off our backs Applebloom."

"What do you think I'm doing," she grunted, shoving back the creatures.

Scootaloo took the lead once they got out onto the street, swinging her warhammer and sending piles of wendigos off the street. Sweetie Belle was close behind, using her scimitar and higher attack speed to hack through any thing that tried to flank them. Applebloom followed the two, keeping a whole horde of wendigos at bay with her shield slams.

To the other players they passed, they looked like they were parting a sea of monsters as they marched down the street toward the boss. Slowly, lingering players fled from the alleys and joined up with the CMC, helping them push back the wendigos. The group grew to a system of ten players, dicing up the wendigos like a machine.

"What's the plan?" one player yelled out in the midst of all the fighting.

Sweetie Belle shouted back. "The rest of the raid is grouping up on the other side of the city. We need to distract the boss long enough to give them a surprise attack advantage." As if it sensed someone was talking about it, the boss charged up another wave of energy.

"Behind the Tanks!" Scootaloo shouted.

Applebloom and two other Tanks linked their shields together, deflecting part of the wave back on the surrounding wendigos. It was a powerful blast, clearing a patch in the horde for the players to regroup. No one took damage thanks to the Tanks, but the strength of the blast left their stamina drained.

"Damn it! Our abilities won't work, we're out of stamina," Applebloom shouted to Sweetie Belle.

"Potions?" she replied.

The Tanks traded glances with Applebloom and shook their heads.

"We're all out."

Scootaloo swept her warhammer in a wide arc, launching a dozen wendigos back into their horde. "Well they're surrounding us, so we gotta move."

The other Damage players didn't need to be told what to do. With Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, all seven Damages formed a ring around the Tanks, escorting them through the street.

"When's the next blast coming?" someone shouted. It was a good question, one that the CMC couldn't answer. The manticore seemed to be tearing apart the center of town at random, so there was no way of knowing what to expect.

In the sky, Sweetie Belle could spot the pegasi flying toward the group across town. She guessed that the other players on the ground were doing the same.

"Once we get to the boss, its AOE strikes should clear out the wendigos for us," Scootaloo said, noticing the manticore destroying the town with its giant claws. The group picked up their pace, taking a few scrapes in the back to outrun the horde as a whole. They fought frantically, either killing a wendigo with a single hit or just leaving it to move on. If anyone stopped for a second, they'd be caught by the horde and devoured immediately.

"We're good to go," Applebloom finally said as they neared the boss, "open up the ring."

The Damages were quick to oblige, taking their focus off the back and pressing all their attacks ahead of them while the Tanks forced back the wendigos with their shields. They kept the same pace, but it was much safer with the Tanks covering the back. Together, they reached the center of the city only moments before the boss charged up another wave.

As if aware of what the manticore could do to them, the wendigos ceased their chase and turned back for the streets and alleyways of the city. The city center, originally a wide open park with cobbled walkways, was completely leveled into a shallow crater of dirt and stone.

The group split up just in time for everyone to take cover behind piles of rubble, narrowly avoiding the burst of corrupted energy. This close to the boss, the ground shook as it stomped around, tearing up more trees and grass from the park. Its beams of energy, smaller blasts that it roared from its mouth, obliterated the stone walkways.

Applebloom raised her shield up to deflect incoming rocks, and looked up to see the manticore's full shape. It was a massive beast, at least twice as large as any building in the city. Its bat-like wings didn't seem to give it flight, but was more than enough to pick up leaves and branches with its powerful beats.

Its scorpion tail acted as both a weapon and a shield. Applebloom hurled a Potion of Explosion to catch the manticore's attention, but it simply swiped its tail and absorbed the blast with the hard chitinous shell that armored its tail.

"How are we going to distract that thing?" Scootaloo worried. On her map, nearly everyone not afflicted by a crippling debuff had reached the meeting point, and even the stragglers were closing in. If they didn't attack it soon, the main group wouldn't get its advantage, and a lot of lives could be loss if the raid didn't fight with every asset they could.

"It just looks big," Sweetie Belle reassured. "Under all that teeth and fur, it's just a bunch of numbers. Taking it down should be like any other boss."

"Huh. Didn't think of it like that," Applebloom responded, "considering it's not acting like any other boss we've seen."

"Well, if you read the quest text maybe you'd understand," Scootaloo offered. "It's probably part of the floor's story."

"Reckon that story told us a way to deal with it?" Applebloom asked, aiming her spear at the boss.

Scootaloo shrugged. "Hit it until it dies, I guess."

No one else had any other ideas, so they went with Scootaloo's sound advice. Applebloom led the Tanks, drawing the manticore's blasts of magic and claw swipes while the Damages harassed it from the sides. Their attack barely even scratched the skin of the boss before it roared, charging up another overwhelming surge of power.

Everyone rolled back into cover. They were safe, but so was the boss; they hadn't even make a noticeable dent in its health bar. Still, the manticore turned, and Applebloom felt like she had a huge mark on her chest as the manticore burst her eardrums with a deafening roar.

"You happy now?" she screamed at Sweetie Belle. "We have its undivided attention!"

Indeed, its back was fully turned away from the rest of the raid, and apparently they noticed too.

Led by Allegretto, the Knights of Yore's guild leader herself, thirty-four other players rushed out from the street, hacking through the manticore's legs and sticking daggers into its back. With surprise on their side, their attacks were all critical hits, and consequently, a solid percent of the manticore's health bar disappeared.

===================================================

===================================================

"Incoming claw!" a player shouted to his teammates. They had already lost most of their Tanks, leaving many of the Damage players vulnerable to attacks.

The claw hit hard, directly flattening two players and tossing aside the others that tried to save them. When the boss turned to face another group of its attackers, the players were no where to be found. Just another two to add to the death count. The raid was slowly beating the boss, but their numbers dropped to a staggering twenty eight. It still had five percent of its health.

Facing the manticore head on was Applejack and Applebloom. They switched in and out, giving each other time to recover their stamina, and consistently kept the manticore's attention away from the Damages. Behind them, Fluttershy kept her pets attentive, healing the Apple siblings with her two enchanted bears, while buffing their armor and stamina with an Ancient Arcane Tortoise.

The manticore raised its wings to blow away its attackers, repeating its attack pattern for the fifth time, and exposed the joints of its wings to be hit. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo leaped up, reaching incredible heights with their strength and agility attributes, and crippled the right wing. On the other side, Phoenix and Rainbow Dash did the same.

Now, only four percent of its health remained.

Furious, the boss unleashed its roar onto Applebloom and Applejack, knocking them back with a barrage of energy blasts.

"This is insane," Rainbow Dash said as she launched an attack on the manticore's paw. "How didn't you know about this Sunset?"

"I didn't write the quest line!" she defended herself. "I only worked on the environment and programming, so blame all this on the other developers Twilight hired."

"Sure, just blame Twilight." Rainbow Dash backpedaled away from the boss, narrowly avoiding getting hit by the manticore's arcing slash. It followed up the attack, using its tail like a heavy bludgeon, but Phoenix managed to drag her away.

"Let's just get this over with," Phoenix said. "Get ready, it's repeating its attack pattern again."

On queue, the manticore opened its wings, and the Damages all made a move for its weak spots.

===================================================

===================================================

Floor forty-nine wasn't what most of the players expected. Even Phoenix was left with a pleasant surprise by PAO's developers.

The central city was the largest of the floating rocks, surrounded by smaller boulders that were either filled with a dungeon, or plain wilderness. Between each of the floating sky islands were smaller buildings nestled into the clouds, favoring all the pegasi players who had grown accustomed to flight.

Many hadn't gotten a grasp on the skill, still uncomfortable with the extra appendages to control, and were just as helpless as the grounded earth ponies and unicorns.

"This is absolutely..." Rainbow Dash paused, taking in the massive floating islands, and the small cloud settlements. "...awesome!"

"How are we supposed to get around?" Sweetie Belle asked Phoenix.

She pointed to the gliders that were docked along the edge of the sky islands. Next to them, a board displaying a map of all the streams of wind that could carry the gliders around the dimension. "Those gliders should take you anywhere you want. They're automatic be default, but you can change glider settings before you use them to switch into the manual mode."

Rainbow Dash was barely paying attention to the gliders. "Well, while you slowpokes are floating around, I'm going to see if any players want to have a race."

"Ahem," Phoenix coughed.

"What?" asked Rainbow Dash.

Her friends all looked at her and opened their menus. Their inbox was filled with frantic messages sent by friends of the players in the raid. Many of them were panicking, seeing that their friend had vanished from all lists.

Rainbow Dash's faced turned sour, and she covered it with a hoof to her head. "Oh, crap. No, girls, this part's the depressing part. I really don't wanna have to tell players that their friends are... gone."

"I reckon we don't have a choice," Applejack said.

"She's right RD," Pinkie Pie added, "sometimes making someone happy means telling them the hard truth. It's better if they find out now."

Rainbow Dash sighed. "I know... just... give me a moment to think. I'll catch up on my list later."

They all nodded and left Rainbow Dash to herself. Together, they headed back through the central portal to the lower levels to personally tell everyone how bad the casualties were.