"Come on Twilight, you need to time your hacking right in order to maximize your damage! Gunshy, You are using dual pistols. You need to be quick and nimble! Lightning, you are using the kung fu stance. Better your speed and strike with quick jabs!"

Azrael shouted out to them as he was busy with his own enemy. This whole moving your body thing was pretty cool. He was using his karate stance, thankfuly one he already knew about in real life as well, so it made it a bit more easier. He finishes off his enemy with a scorpion kick, landing it right in the face. he sees his target go down and quickly turns on his heel to see how the others were doing. Twilight was handling ehrself pretty well with her hacking, though the silly girl couldn't decide if she wanted to be a healer or a damage dealer, Gunshy was a little timid at first, but every now and then, Azrael could see a wicked smile every time she pulled that trigger. And Lightning, well..let's just say she is having the time of her life, and if Azrael had to guess. She was letting out some anger issues. After they each finished taking down the enemies they had pulled, the girls fall to their knees and let out a sigh of relief. Azrael chuckled and walked over to the group, crouching and sitting on his heels.

"Funny how even in the virtual world, your body here feels exhaust and fatigue after a bunch of AI just got done trying to kill you."

Twilight looks up to Azrael, breathing heavily.

"And why aren't you all exhausted?! You are only five levels higher than us!"

"Well Twilight, I may be a at level ten right now, but I got to keep my stats from my last character who was maxed out all the way to fifty. Because of my loyalty to the original game. But in order to use my more powerful abilities, I have to level up like everyone else. Soeaking of which. You and I need to have a talk young lady."

He said teasingly at the end,playing on his veteran ranking. This making her glare at him and crossing her arms under her breasts.

"You need to decide if you are going to be a healing hacker, or a damage dealing hacker. Right around now, you are going to have to split off in your tree and choose the path you want. I recommend you choose the healing path, unless you have another friend who we can get into our group who can take that role. Otherwise, it seems like you really enjoy the damage dealing hacker tree."

She nodded to him, fidgeting with her hands.

"I...really do like the damage dealing. The hacker tree is so much like magic, but in a technological sense within this game. The sounds, the use of the holograms. It is all so wonderful."

Azrael laughs and brings a hand up to her head, petting her gently.

"Then you work on getting that side of the hacker tree up. We will just have to find someone else who can be our healing hacker. They will be more essential down the road when high level event and instances come along. Now then..."

He said as he turns to the other two.

"Gunshy, I notice that ever so often, you get this wicked smile on your face as you are shooting. yet you act all shy around me. Is there a killer hidden within you that we need to know about?"

He prodded at her playfully.

"N-no! I am very gentle outside the game...I promise. It's just being in here...a new me. With all these abilities and weapons..its-"

"Absolutely liberating, yes?"

With a blush she nods her head. Azrael smiles and nods back.

"Explore your option though Gunshy. If you like to constant firing of guns, you may want to switch to dual SMGs. Once you get to a higher level though, you will be able to work in both pistols and SMGs. Keeping improving!"

He then turns to Lightning.

"And you. What to say about you. You are relying too much on speed and not adding concentration silly girl. Sure you may be fast but, I watched you barely land any hits on your enemy. You'll tire yourself our rather quickly if you keep that up."

She blushes in embarrassment but quickly mouths off at him.

"Oh what do you know! Damn show off..."

Azrael crosses his arms, arching a brow.

"You are just calling me that because you are frustrated with something new that you are trying to learn. How do you think I felt whenever I started this game when it wasn't a virtual reality? I was so lost, other higher up players made fun of me instead of helping me."

All three of them got sad looks on their faces when he told them this. The lowered their heads for a second and then looked back up to him.

"We are sorry Azrael...you are taking the time to help us all out. We have no right to complain. It is...really sweet of you to do this for us."

Twilight said as she scoots closer to him.

"If they won't say, then I will. Thank you Azrael, for taking out of your time. We know if you wanted to, you could blaze through this game."

Azrael smile and just shakes his head.

"I feel as a veteran, it is my job to help you all out, no matter who I might run into. Ah, speaking of which, have you gotten any phone calls after level four?"

All three of them nod.

"It is three individuals. One of them calls herself Flow. Another called himself Agent Grey, and the final one..who I dislike most of all, is the Merovingian. That is why we were so cautious against you when we first followed you."

"You were...following me? You know girls, you could have just came up and said hi. Only way I could hurt you in here is if you and I had PvP enabled. As for my organization I went with. I work for Agent Grey."

"You work with...the Machines?!"

All three shouted in surprise.

"How could you work with the enemy of Zion?! The Machines nearly destroyed the last human city! Had it not been for Neo!"

Azrael puts a hand up to stop them.

"But as seen in the movie, the war has ended and a truce was forged. My organization no longer poses a threat to the humans...yet. if they do something stupid and break the truce however, that is on their heads, not mine. I have remained loyal to my organization. And I am not changing it anytime soon. However, I used to be the head of the machine branch of a faction called Exemplar Tribune. We were a Tri-organization. Zion, machine and mero. We believed in unity, and didn't let our differences stop us from becoming friends and doing things together no other faction could."

As he went on and on about his faction's feats and friendships, the three girls smiled and continued to listen. Who knew that someone from the machine organization could show such...compassion and kindness towards others. Twilight and her friends always assumed that the macgines were the true enemy in all this. Then again, they don't know things like this player does. As Azrael continued to explain, something caught his attention. he heard footsteps, not very loud ones, but he heard them non the less. he sighed and shook his head

"The fact that I can hear you sneaking, indicates that you are just below my level. I mastered the shadow master tree in the other game as well. And you won't be able to do anything since you haven't asked me to duel or don't have PvP enabled on both parties."

All was quiet for a moment, then she appeared. A pale skinned female character with long deep blue hair and teal blue eyes. She wore what looked to be a long vinyl trench coat and raver pants along with a halter top. Azrael looked over her info and caught her name, remembering that was a thing.

"Ah, so your redpill name is Moonbeam is it?"

"How...were you able to see through my sneak?"

"Well, I didn't see you at first, but as you got closer, I saw the outline of your character, not to mention I heard you coming. Sneaking is only at it's best when you are in combat. Sorry Moony."

Moonbeam crosses her arms at Azrael and hmphs at him.

"How dare you speak to me in such a way. Don't you know who I am?"

"No...I do not actually."

"I am the princess of the night! I am Princess Luna! You will treat me with respect!"

"Look...I get you are all My Little Pony fans, I am cool with that. But come on. Claiming to be the princess of the night is rather unbelievable don't you think? What else are you gonna tell me? These three are actually Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash? HA!"

Everything went quiet after that, the three girls looked at him with shock on their faces, he saw this, then looked at Moonbeam with a wide eyed expression.

"C-come on ladies...you gotta be kidding me. Are you all in on this little joke?"

Twilight looked directly into his eyes, not flinching at all when she spoke to him.

"How is it you know who we are...?"

Azrael's eyes got bigger as he was starting to freak out a bit.

"You guys are obviously trolls...yeah. I am gone."

"You will not leave so easily, welp! I demand you fight me in a duel!"

Shouted Moonbeam, sending a duel prompt to Azrael's field of vision. Should he accept and put this scrub in her place? Or should he deny it and be the better man.

"Nah,I think I will pass. I don't fight fresh newbs in the game who don't know their way around the combat system. No offense."

Azrael wasn't trying to being mean in the slightest, but apparently in Moonbeam's thought, she took great offense to it.

"You are one level higher than me! If you are so strong you should be able to take me down no problem! What's the matter? That stallion pride of your starting to wither away?!"

Azrael was starting to get a little annoyed now. Gamers like this kind who claim to be better than everyone else even though they just started really angered him, male OR female.

"Alright, 'princess of the night'. You want to play? Fine."

"Azrael, please don't!"

Shouted Twilight, urging him not to accept the duel.

"I am sorry twilight. But players like this annoy me to no end...thinking they are better than everyone. It's players like this that divided the community the way it did back in the original game."

Before Twilight could run over to him and stop him, he presses the 'Accept' button. The combat music kicks in once the duel starts. Azrael takes his karate stance and goes into a defensive state. In the combat system, there are three types of combat styles. Power, speed and defensive, if you combined all these at the right time with current moves, you knew how to work the system, and could take down other players five levels higher than you. Depending on the situation that is. But Moonbeam made the mistake of using a spy class on a martial arts user. All classes but gunners had a balanced weakness against martial arts players. Gunners had a better advantage, but he wasn't about to reveal that.

He watches Moonbeam go into sneak mode before he can engage her into interlock combat. Depending on her numbers, a sneak attack is a critical hit when taken from behind, but could also end in failure if the other player's awareness stats are higher. And given that he has level fifty stats from his previous data, her odds were slim to none. but, he when into his defensive state just in case to boost his defense rate. And just as he though, she comes at him from behind. And the game system being the way it is, Azrael was able to clock ehr in the gut with a solid kick, stopping her in mid charge. And now that the interlock combat was now in play, Azrael smiled wickedly as he switched into power stance. He quickly activates a skill that he was most fond of back in the day. Chi charged punch, a devastating ability with the high amount of numbers, can cripple your opponent severely. But with his stats. It was a one shot kill. Luckily this was a duel, so she could resurrect herself on the spot, but normally in PvP or PvE, you would need a healing hacker to resurrect you if you didn't want to end up at the closest hardline.

All was quiet for a moment, until her RSI or 'Residual Self Image' rose from her knock out state and glared at him. Clearly upset with him.

"Good for nothing cheater!"

Azrael grins and wags his finger.

"it's not cheating when the devs give you the stats that was left in the old data archives as a die hard player from beta till end."

"You..were part of the original game..?"

She asked in shock.

"Yep, Ran a faction, had lots of friends, loyal faction mates. It was my very first MMORPG. And now I am happy it has returned."

"So then you really are the same Azrael that we all agreed to send the modified headgear to?"

"...We?"

"Well, other than being a co-ruler of Equestria, I developed what you know to be Shadowquine Industries. Being a big gamer myself. We bought out the rights from the company that owned it in your world, and now it belongs to us. We noticed in all the time you put in, you played from beta till thelast day when it unfortunately shut down. So we knew you were the right human to send this to. Please,doforgive my attitude towards you earlier...had i known...just..I am sorry."

Azrael says nothing for a moment, then pulls up the options menu.

"Yeah...I am out."

And just as he was about to hit the 'jack out' command, the ground around him turns all blocky and techy. and a blue orb appears out of nowhere above it. Moonbeam shakes her head.

"Sorry Azrael...but I cannot let you leave. You are too valuable of an asset. You are coming to Equestria, and your body will follow in tow. As of right now, the headgear that is mounted on your head has transformed into a magical portal that is transporting you. I ask...for your forgiveness.."

She said as she lowers her head. Azrael blinks and attempts to speak, but his RSI suddenly slumps to the ground and is dragged through the portal. What Luna did not foresee though, is that having both his real body and RSI traveling through together with the combination of her powerful magic. Things were going to get strange...rather quickly. She turns to the other girls who just stared in shock.

"I have no time to explain, ladies. But I need you to jack out now and head to the outer edge of Ponyville, he will be arriving soon."

"But princess why did you-?"

"Now."

"Y-yes ma'am."

With that, they all left the game and did as they were told. Luna following as well.

Author's Note

Before you say anything. No, he is not going to be the reincarnation of 'The One' That's just too easy. No, I have better plans for this man. :) And yes, I went for the 'Luna is gamer pony' meme. It had to be done.

Like and share

May the darkness grant you peace.