PAO: Pony Art Online

Sunset stretched out on her bed, recalling what she could of the previous night. So many things happened it was hard to keep track. Grieve Blossom fell off her roof, she remembered that.

A lot of players had just left, most of them leaning on each other from exhaustion. It was likely no one would attempt a dungeon today without catching up on some much needed sleep.

But Sunset was wide awake as the sun peeked into her bedroom. She looked to her left and wondered why Sophisticata and Rainbow Dash were sleeping on her floor, but decided to push them out of her room and avoid prying into things she didn't want to mention. She flopped back on her bed and opened her menu screen, swiping the display over to the admin controls.

Just for fun, she played around with the controls, clicking every inch of the screen and hoping there was a button she had missed, before opening her access to the game's magic. From what she could tell, almost half of the spell needed to override computer-driven side of the Digisphere was complete. At the rate she was going, they'd finish the game before she finished the spell.

She heard hooves sprinting up the stairs as she toyed around with streams of magic.

"Phoenix! You awake yet?" It was Sonata's voice, and she sounded panicked. She knocked on her door. "Sunset, are you in there?"

Sonata sounded worryingly frantic, but Sunset had to wonder what kind of trouble she had gotten into. She swiped her menu screen to the housing options and tapped on the door's icon, unlocking it.

"Your awake, great!" Sonata said, only slightly relieved.

"It's early Sonata," Sunset got out of her bed and equipped her armor, "what problem could you have stumbled across in one night?"

Sonata beckoned Sunset to follow her back into the foyer. "Aria should explain it all to you," she said. "She's the one with the right perspective."

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Sunset swallowed another sip of her tea, rubbing her forehead. "Tell me again, what do you mean 'you didn't mean to kill him'?"

"I swear to you, I had no control over it," Aria pleaded. "He just pulled me in and ran my sword through himself."

It was still to early for her to judge the story well. Sunset got up from her couch and paced around the room. "Okay, just to recap because I fell like I'm missing something here, you went out to a night dungeon, got a bunch of loot that attracted mercenaries, and their leader turned out to be hunting Aria for revenge for Nighthaven. Then, he committed suicide because you beat him?"

"Don't forget about how I got the rest of the mercenaries to hunt me down to somewhere far, far away," added the Damage. He stayed by the door, keeping himself out of something he wasn't present for.

"It sounds stupid, I know, but that's how it happened," Aria said, getting out of her seat because she couldn't handle sitting still anymore. She walked over to Sonata. "As much as I dislike everything else, I wouldn't just kill a player for no reason."

"But you took him down to extremely low health," She reminded Aria. "Why didn't he retreat or flee?"

"He was crazy!" Aria exclaimed, stamping her hoof on the floor. "He was sure he could restart Nighthaven as an extremist group to kill anyone who deserved to die."

Sunset poured herself another cup of tea and drank it, trying to calm her nerves. Technically, it was a problem for the Knights of Yore, but she felt slightly responsible for Aria as well. On top of that, a sick feeling was finally starting to catch up to her, and waking up early was not helping with anything.

"I don't know what to do," she finally told Aria after a few moments to mull it over. "But you definitely can't keep this to yourself. You should go tell Iceblood."

The party's Tank stepped in from the corner of the room. "No way Iceblood's going to let this turn out okay," he told Sunset. "He's a nice guy but he's too 'by the books' sometimes."

"If it happened the way Aria tells it, then there's nothing to worry about," she replied.

The Tank shook his head. "With all due respect Phoenix, I don't think you've been around the Knights long enough to know how we think. Most of us like having ex-Nighthavens around, but when it comes down to the individuals, there can't be any more hate."

He glanced down at the floor for a moment, looking guilty over it. "And considering how the I froze up and let the guard slip away, there's going to be one witness who saw exactly what we saw, and from his angle, I don't think his testament will work out in our favor."

"You're worried Glass Desert's suicide gets painted as a murder, and sends Aria out of the Knights of Yore," Sunset filled in.

He nodded, then turned to Aria. "If it counts for anything boss, I think you've grown from your past. Stories about you in the dungeons circulate, and I have to say it's an honor to be in your party."

Aria blinked at him, unsure of how to react. "Thanks."

"Regardless, most of the members of the Knights of Yore aren't actually in the Clearing Group," Sunset continued, pouring yet another cup of tea. Something was beginning to work, and it was clearing up her senses. "Lower levels were the hardest hit by Nighthaven, and sorry to point out the elephant in the room, but Aria's list of kills is..." she flicked a furtive glance at Aria.

She rolled her eyes and scowled. "You don't need to remind me."

"...more than enough to tip a verdict against her favor," Sunset finished.

Sonata walked up to Aria and took her hoof. "We could run," she offered. "You've done enough for the Knights already, and there's plenty of players in the Clearing Group now, more than there has ever been. We could just leave, maybe vacation to a nice spot in the lower floors."

Aria smiled, "I'd like that Sonata, but I don't know if that's possible. I'm still a red player. The only reason I can walk in the streets is because the Knights burned a ton of gold to the game to make a green player again."

"Your status should have been renewed this month, right?" Sunset asked. Aria confirmed it with a gentle nod. "That leaves three weeks or so until it wears off. If you quit, that'll be how much time you have with Sonata before city guards start chasing you down to put you in the real jail, and no one gets out of floor zero without an admin."

"All of whom are disabled." Sonata clutched Aria just a little tighter, dreading the thought of loosing her closest friend. Aria didn't reciprocate the same action, but the look on her face gave away her own worry.

"So, resolve this with the Knights," Sunset told the party, "and get them to understand that you're innocent. If you keep it to yourself, it'll be worse when it comes up. I'm sure a death of a player will come up some time or another."

Aria slumped her shoulders, conceding to Sunset's argument. She knew she couldn't keep Glass Desert's death a secret no matter how much she wanted to. Not only would the mercenaries be looking for their payment, but one of them was there to see it himself. She knew she should have paid more attention to the guard so he wouldn't run off, but her senses were just not up to it after spilling blood once again.

"Sonata, you can go inform Iceblood," Aria said. "He should be with Grieve Blossom right now, training at the Namgoro Acid Pits dungeon."

"What are you going to do?" Sonata asked.

Aria picked herself up and headed for the door, explaining on her way out. "If I want to get out of this a free mare, I'll have to tell the Knights what happened on my own; Iceblood's just a middleman in the whole system. I need to go have a chat with Allegretto."

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The Knights had a habit of upgrading their guild keeps as often as possible, moving up almost every time a floor boss was killed. This time, the guild keep did not disappoint. Floor fifty-nine was a host of different dungeon types and environments, with volcanic regions bordered by jungles and deserts. In the central city the massive keep, with its towering alchemy laboratories and busy training halls, seemed to be the only thing with a sense of a normalcy.

Allegretto sat in her meeting room with her council at the top of the Knights' keep. Players of all kinds sat with Allegretto, equally judging the player in front of them who they regarded with disgust.

"We trusted you not to be stupid! Now you come back to us with a lame excuse of your clear, uncontrollable violent nature!" one of the advisers exclaimed. He leaned out of his seat to spit more at Aria, but Allegretto simply raised a hoof to silence him.

"Two hours ago I received a message from a field agent," she told Aria. "In that message, he told me about how he eavesdropped on a group of players discussing their dead leader. Your name came up in that discussion, Aria."

Aria swallowed the churning in her gut, relieved that she didn't try to keep the death to herself. "I promise, whatever he heard was not the whole story," she pleaded, glancing only slightly down to Allegretto's desk. She rarely backed down from anything, but Allegretto's calm expression and absolute control over the room gave her the intimidating edge on Aria.

"I am well aware of that," Allegretto said, "My agent, however adept he may have been, failed to pick up the details. However, I appreciate your willingness to admit to being at least part of the cost."

The adviser to her right leaned over and whispered. "Part of the cost? We haven't heard the whole story, and didn't your agent say he was tracking down the eye witness he overheard?" Allegretto said nothing, but gave a reassuring nod to her adviser.

"But, I'm afraid given the sensitivity of the subject, your participation alone cannot clear any of this up," she continued to tell Aria. "I trust that you won't be any trouble here in the keep, because this is where you'll be staying for the time being until we've heard all accounts and judged for ourselves."

"Ask Sonata and JumboJump, they're with Iceblood right now telling him what happened," Aria added, hoping to get herself out of the keep as soon as possible. It wasn't working on Allegretto.

"Jumbo's the Tank you mentioned in your story, isn't he?" she asked. "And while I'd love to hear his statement along with your friend Sonata's, I'm afraid we'll need opinions that don't come across as bias as they sound."

Aria twisted her hoof into the tile floor, slowly as to not tip off the council, but still with plenty of force. "They won't lie," she told Allegretto.

"I'm sorry, but I have to be fair," replied the guild leader. "Though I do have faith in your words, and trust that justice will come out of this in the end." She swiped open her menu screen and unlocked the double door entrance. "Thank you for your time, you're free to explore the keep as much as you like. Just remember, we do have lookouts surrounding the keep, so don't try anything too alarming."

Aria wanted to say something, anything that could express how helpless she felt, but everything she would have said she knew wouldn't be good. Instead, she turned herself around and swiftly trotted out of the meeting room without another word.

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For the third day, Aria lounged in the training hall of the Knight or Yore's guild keep. The occasional demon or mini-boss would be spawned in by the notably expensive monster spawner centered in the training hall, but even after a day of practicing on those NPCs she was still two levels behind the rest of the Clearing Group.

Sonata had just finished running through an evening of dungeons with JumboJump and their new party before she decided to watch Aria, hoping to calm her down.

"You should treat it like a vacation," Sonata suggested, sitting on one of the resting benches while Aria rolled under the swinging arm of a stone golem and hacked it in the back until it died.

She wiped the sweat off her brow, taking a seat to let her stamina recover. "When we get out of here, we can take a vacation to anywhere in the world. Just us two."

"What about Adagio?" Sonata asked, raising an eyebrow. "She'll still be with us when this is over, won't she?"

"Even if she's still alive by then, I wouldn't want to walk an eternal life on the same hemisphere as her," Aria said, her words rich with detest. "She lied to me about what happened to you. She told me you left us to live your own life, when you were with that bastard alchemist all that time."

Sonata sighed in agreement. "She told me I would help whatever plan she had if I worked for him. All that time, I thought Long Glider was the one Adagio misjudged. I even thought he did right as a boss, until he began experimenting with pain. I guess it was really Adagio who got too much trust from me."

"I wonder what she thought she would do," Aria wondered, drinking a thick, honey-based liquor from her inventory to recover more stamina. "By now she would have devastated the world with domination or something."

Sonata laughed at a thought Aria put into her head. "Imagine if she was just sitting in a room planning a fool-proof plan that's never going to work. She totally would, wouldn't she? Adagio liked to have things planned out, and I bet this game's got her stumped."

"Serves her right," Aria scoffed. "Always clawing at power the way she did. Didn't you hate the way she treated us?"

"Well," Sonata thought for a moment, "she did buy me tacos all the time. Even in the real world she'd stand in the slow lines to get me one."

"Alright, you should have gotten off those things a long time ago, because it was becoming an unhealthy habit," Aria warned. "And just because you can eat a taco every meal of every day here, doesn't mean it's the same in the real world. You don't know what humans can put in those things."

Sonata simply shrugged. "Anyways, it was the only redeeming thing Adagio had going for her. She was just plain manipulative any other time."

The training hall's door creaked opened on them. Iceblood walked in, followed by two of the advisors Aria recognized from Allegretto's meeting room. The two stood back a safe distance while Iceblood delivered the result of the discussion. After hearing the events from every available source, thirty-eight Knights, who were randomly selected as the jury, had come to a unanimous decision.

"You're not completely out of the Knights," Iceblood relayed to Aria, "but, unfortunately, you are relieved from duty in the Clearing Group for the time being."

"And my player status?" asked Aria. Will it stay green?"

"Surprisingly, it was Allegretto who took your side," Iceblood said. "She tries not to show favor in anything to be as fair as possible, but in this case she seemed to appreciate your contribution to the guild's progress, even if other players were against it. Her good word convinced the guild to keep renewing your pardon as long as you need it."

"That's a lot of gold to spend, you sure you didn't have anything to do with getting me in the good graces of the guild leader?" Aria asked, cracking a wide grin.

Iceblood himself smiled wolfishly. "How do you know I was there to help? Maybe I wanted to get you back for all those lost bets."

"You wouldn't," Aria laughed, "not when I know most of your embarrassing secrets."

"One," Iceblood corrected. "I slipped one, and it's not even that bad."

"Fine, then I'll just Fluttershy know, along with the rest of her friends," Aria taunted, already reaching to open her menu.

Iceblood narrowed his glare and just backed away slowly, conceding the victory to Aria. "Well played. Well played indeed." He turned and whispered something to the advisers. They looked relieved and made for the door as fast while trying to keep a calm composure.

"I suppose you'll need a place to stay, now that you're no longer active with the Knights," Iceblood mentioned on his way out the door. "I know you still have your own house, but we're moving up pretty fast and it'd be nice to have you close by." He swiped open his menu and messaged Aria and Sonata the coordinates of a location on the floor.

"Only nice place on this floor," he told them, "I'd vacation there everyday if I could." The large double door echoed as it closed shut.

With the news received and time to think on all the things she could do, Aria looked down at the location of the map. Floor fifty-nine had very few residential locations worth buying. Sunset had the unfair advantage of remembering where her mansion was placed, recalling the decision to place it where it was way back in the alpha phase of the game. Her mansion was completely isolated, with no space for any other player to settle.

Aria made a mental note to call Sunset out on "not knowing anything about the upper floors" the next time she got the chance.

"Wanna go check it out?" Sonata asked eagerly, excitement clearly on her face.

"Fine," Aria said, "I guess I can take a short vacation." She sheathed her sword and prepared to change out of her combat armor, but Sonata already had her hoof, dragging her out of the training room, then the guild keep. Soon, they were out of the central city entirely with nothing on their mind but hopes for some good times.