The corridor was dimly lit, the occasional bolt of electricity from a broken wire the only other light source outside of the emergency lights. Marks of scratches could be seen on the walls, floor and even ceiling, the grey coloured paint removed, along with a series of bumps where the metal surface had been hit. Some parts of the wall were badly damaged, revealing the cables and pipes inside, some of them broken. By the looks of it, a fight had taken place inside there, though it was impossible to tell how long it had been since then.
The clicking sound of metal on metal reverberated through the small hallway as the robot made her way across it. She stopped in front of a red and white door, hexagonal like the shape of the corridor, the control panel intact but not functioning. The robot studied the door for a while, then she finally came to a conclusion and she spoke.
"I cast magic missile!"
Shining smacked his hoof against his forehead, groaning. "Twilight, we've been over this already. You're playing as a robot, you can't use magic. Magic isn't even a thing in this game."
His sister pouted. "That's not fair. Rainbow's character gets to keep all of her traits," Twilight said, pointing a hoof at the blue pegasus sitting across the table from her, who was now reclining in her chair, dangerously close to having it fall to the ground.
"Twily, please," Shining said, lowering his hoof, "Rainbow's character is an alien with high physical statistics and low intelligence, fast and strong and good for combat but terrible at decision making."
"Yeah!" Twilight replied, "Why does she get to have a character that's just like her?"
"Twilight, please. Pinkie over there is playing a male character and she doesn't complain, so-Pinkie! I told you not to eat the dice set!" Shining shouted at the pink earth pony sitting in front of him.
"Sorry!" she replied, lowering the multicoloured dice she was holding in her hoof back to the table.
Shining gave a quick look at them. "Pinkie, the d12 is missing."
The pink mare silently and guiltily spewed the purple die. "It's not my fault if they look like candy," she muttered.
"When do I get to fight stuff?" Rainbow asked, somewhat annoyed, still reclining in her chair.
Shining Armor looked at his notes and at the screen in front of him. "I think we can resume now. Twilight, it's your turn."
"I shoot a normal, technologically developed, completely non magic, ordinary missile," she said with a quip in her tone.
A small retractable barrel protruded from the back of the robot, just above her shoulder, and after she'd carefully aimed it at the door one single missile was fired from it. The shot hit the door, the small subsequent explosion resulting in a hole sufficiently large for her to comfortably walk through. The hallway continued on the other side, darker, and no sound could be heard. TW-1 stepped through the opening and into the darkness.
"Your turn, Rainbow," Shining said.
As a response, the blue mare fell to the ground, having been startled awake from her nap.
"Do we have to keep taking turns like this?" Twilight asked, annoyed that her turn was already over.
"Well, you decided to split up when you entered the abandoned spaceship, so it's your fault we have to do this thing," Shining retorted, passing the dice to Rainbow who was now back to sitting in her chair. He was about to describe the situation her character was in when the door of the room opened.
"Are you guys alright?" Sunburst's voice came from the doorway as he walked in, "I hear the sound of something falling."
"Yeah, we're alright. Just Rainbow feeling a little sleepy," Shining replied.
Sunburst walked up to the table and noticed the game. "Can I play?" he asked.
"Do you know the rules?" Shining asked back.
"Yeah."
"Okay then," Shining said, grabbing another chair with his magic and putting it between Rainbow and Pinkie.
"But wait! We've already started, now we'll need to start over to get him to join us!" Twilight lamented.
"Well, actually-" Shining picked up some paper sheets from the table and passed them to Sunburst, who'd sat down in the meantime "-I was going to add a fourth character anyway, so he can play him instead of me, I'll just rewrite his origins a little so you'll meet him sooner. Please ignore the notes I left there," he continued, turning to Sunburst.
"You mean the ones about the romance with the robot character?" Sunburst asked, examining his character sheet.
"...Yeah... that one," Shining answered.
Sunburst looked at the characters the others were playing. "Oh."
"What would Cadence say?" Rainbow snarkily remarked, looking at Shining with a smug face.
"Knowing her, she'd ask why she wasn't invited," Sunburst said, arranging the character sheet and relative materials on the table in front of him.
"Your turn, Pinkie," Shining said, passing the dice set back to the pink mare.
Rainbow smacked her hooves against the table. "Hey! Aren't you forgetting something?"
Shining shot her a glare. "What do you want to do?"
"Look around, for starters."
Deep in a dimly lit corridor of the abandoned spaceship, the muscular figure of the six-legged alien creature slowly began to turn around, taking in the surrounding area. She kept spinning, faster and faster. Then she got dizzy and passed out for some minutes.
"Pinkie, your turn," Shining repeated.
The grey earth pony found himself in the middle of a corridor. To his right was a door that read 'DO NOT ENTER IF UNAUTHORIZED - Chaos-powered engine maintenance room - Qualified employees only', bright sparks could be seen excitedly flashing behind the glass panel on the door. To his left was a door with a flashing, tantalizing red sign above it that read 'WARNING', while on the door itself were the words 'Storage room - Do not enter in case of malfunctioning power supplies - Unstable materials stored inside', tempting him inside with the prospect of great danger and equally great rewards. Ahead of him, the corridor boringly kept going, plain and uninteresting, too long for him to see the end of it. The pony took careful time to consider his surroundings, then he spoke.
"Neither the right or the left door seem safe to go through. I have no experience with either of the things contained there, and while there could be valuable components it would be a risk to try to obtain them, one that could potentially hinder the primary focus of our mission. They do not show signs of having been opened, so it's likely I wouldn't gain any valuable information by exploring the rooms. My best option is to keep walking forward, potentially looking for a map of the place or for a log that recorded what happened here."
Everypony in the room stared at Pinkie, baffled.
The pink pony stared back. "What? It's called role-playing, guys."
The pony began his trek down the long corridor.
In another wing of the ship, TW-1 found herself in front of another locked door, this time with a functioning control panel. She connected herself to it and tried to open the door by hacking into the system.
A die was rolled, and a one was the result.
The door blew up in the robot's face, leaving her dizzied but not significantly damaged. Fortunately, the explosion created an opening large enough for her to walk through.
Inside another corridor, Lenoba, the six-legged alien, woke up from her sleep. She began to walk down the hallway, and eventually reached a broken door. It looked like a fight had taken place on the other side. The alien charged to the door, and-
Shining looked up from his notes and to the table. Eighteen.
-sent it flying backwards as she smashed into it.
Ro continued his long trip down the corridor, finding nothing of interest and with no end in sight.
TW-1 entered a room with a series of computers and calculators inside, some of the screens still flickering. She walked up to the nearest functioning one and began to fiddle with the controls, trying to get it to work. Suddenly, it came alive, the lights in the room turned back on and a pre-recorded voice began to come out of the speakers, somewhat distorted.
Shining got up and cleared his throat, preparing to do his best impression of the recording, but just as he was about to begin Pinkie spoke in his place.
"If there's a possible chance for something that can be called future behind the spiral, the only way to find out is to leave the final frontier to eternity, and fly!" the pink pony droned out in a robotic-sounding and distinctly male voice.
In their respective corridors, both Ro and Lenoba heard the same message, and the lights around them too came back to life.
TW-1 moved on to examining the files contained in the terminal she was using, browsing her way through a series of directories and connecting herself to the machine in order to decrypt the ones with the lower level of protection while downloading a backup of all the data she could find to examine it later. She picked out a few files, one named 'objectives' and one named 'travel log', along with a hidden and heavily protected document labelled 'for the Captain's eyes only'.
Lenoba walked inside a seemingly empty room. The furniture had been broken and scattered on the floor, and claw-marks were clearly visible on the walls and even on the ceiling. The alien noticed a darker mark on the floor in the middle of the room and moved closer to examine it. As she lowered her head, however, she heard shifting sounds coming from above her, followed by that of glass breaking. The lights went out, and behind her something dropped on the ground from the ceiling.
Ro finally reached the end of the hallway. There was a door, tightly sealed, with a still functioning eye-scan. The earth pony tried to activate it, and much to his surprise the door opened after scanning his retina. He walked inside the room and found a large glass cylinder in front of himself, the inside rendered invisible by what was presumably steam. He pressed the only button present, which resulted in a scan of his hoof getting approved by the system, and the cylinder began to open. A cloud of mist came out of it and in a body which fell on the ground, hard to see because of the vapour. The shape of the body seemed to shift, and then it got up and moved towards Ro.
"Who are you?" the pony asked, defensively stepping back.
"You can cal-"
The sound of crying was heard from the other room. Sunburst got up and walked out, going to put Flurry back to sleep. The others stared awkwardly at each other for a couple of minutes while they waited. He finally came back and sat at the table, then cleared his throat.
"You can call me K."
"K? That sounds dumb. How about we call him Glorp instead?"
Shining smacked a hoof against his forehead. "How about no, Rainbow? I specifically chose the name K as it has a series of implication that would tie into the overarching-"
"I like Glorp better, too!" Twilight said from her side of the table.
"You heard your sister, Shining." Rainbow grabbed Sunburst's character sheet. "Mind if I take this for a moment? Just let me change your name for you."
Shining took the sheet away from Rainbow and held it in his magic. "I'm the one writing the story, Rainbow, if I say that it's important for this character's name to be K then you should listen to me. Besides, it's Sunburst's character, you can't change it without his permission."
Sunburst passively watched the scene without doing or saying anything, showcasing about as much interest in the situation as the character sheet itself.
Twilight grabbed the sheet in her own magic and tore it away from Shining's control. "Well, he clearly doesn't have anything against it. Right, Sunburst?" Twilight's horn began to glow a little brighter as she started to modify the text.
Sunburst didn't answer. Rainbow Dash began to move a wing in front of his eyes, but he just kept staring ahead.
"There, all done!" Twilight said as she placed the sheet, which now read 'Glorp' on the top, back in front of the orange unicorn.
Sunburst sneezed. "Sorry, I got a little distracted there for a moment."
Shining silently muttered something to himself.
"Oh, come on! Don't be such a grump," Twilight said.
"Yeah! Why was the name K so important, anyway?" Rainbow asked.
"It's because it sounds like Kai."
Everypony turned towards Pinkie, who'd just spoken those words.
Twilight then turned back to her brother. "Wait, is this about that dumb music you listen to?"
"It's not dumb," Shining replied, irritated. "In fact, it's extremely good. You just can't appreciate it."
"Extremely good, sure." Twilight sighed, looking up. "Like that Rider of the Cosmic Whatever or however that song is called."
Shining stood up from his chair, planting his hooves on the table. "It's called Rider of the Astral Fire, Twilight, and just so you know it has the best chorus in all of the genre."
"What about Nightfall?"
Everypony turned once more to Pinkie.
"The studio version or the live version?" Shining asked.
"The live version," the pink earth pony replied, looking at the tip of one of her hooves.
Shining sighed, looking down. "Okay, fine, the second best chorus in the genre." He sat back down. "But my point still stands!"
"Guys, can we go back to the story?" Sunburst asked.
"You mean the game, right?" Twilight asked back from the other side of the table.
"Yeah, the story, game, whatever you want to call it. It's why we're here, right?" Sunburst replied.
"He's got a point," Rainbow said, "quit talking about your dumb music and go back to doing your part, Shining. And try to be better with names, remember that Sunburst liked my idea better than yours."
Shining looked at the pegasus, clenching his teeth. He suppressed a reply and instead took a deep breath, closing his eyes. "You're right," he said, reopening his eyes, "we should go back to the game. I believe I made you skip a turn before, I can make you take an extra one now if you want."
"Sounds good to me," the pegasus replied.
"Good. Now, where were we? Oh, right, the attack."
Lenoba turned around, just in time to see a shadow rushing towards her. She tried to dodge, but she'd turned around too late to have enough time to avoid the creature currently attacking her. Instead, as she was dashing to her right she was hit in the side by the thing's body.
"Here, roll to see how much damage that did," Shining said as he passed a four-sided die to Rainbow.
"Only a d4? From the way you made that sound I thought it was going to be something more serious than that," Rainbow said, grabbing the die and preparing to throw it.
"Oh, you're not rolling for the damage," Shining said, smiling at the pegasus. "That's to see how much it left you with."
Rainbow momentarily stopped. She swallowed and looked at the die in her hoof. "Well, that's what I get for irritating the GM, I guess," she silently whispered to herself. She tossed the die forward and watched as the small tetrahedral piece of coloured material spun on itself over the brown surface of the table and slowly came to a stop, displaying a one on the three sides of the tip pointing towards the ceiling.
The six legged alien was thrown across the room by the impact, crashing through some pieces of furniture and finally smashing against the wall. The creature attacking her quickly made its way over her body, standing at a short distance from it and preparing to attack once more, Lenoba lying on the floor, panting as she struggled to get up again.
"Your turn, Twily."
"Are you alright, Rainbow?" Twilight asked, looking at the pegasus who was breathing a bit too fast and jerkily shifting her position on the chair.
Rainbow looked up. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine, don't worry. Just got a little caught up in the scene, that's all."
"If you say so," the alicorn replied.
TW-1 began to study the files she'd selected, while still downloading as much of the rest as she could. She first tried to open the more heavily protected one. She began to work through the various layers of encryption, and ultimately-
"Woo-hoo, a nat twenty! Nice job, Twi."
-she was able to obtain a readable version of it.
Shining passed a folded sheet of paper to Twilight.
TW-1 decided to temporarily ignore the file, which she had now copied, and focused on searching for other hidden or encrypted documents. As she did so-
"Well, statistically speaking, the chances of rolling a three are the same as those of rolling a twenty. So I was just as good this time."
-the computer recognized her intrusion and began to shut down. She was able to stop it, but this forced her to take time to reconfigure her parameters to avoid being recognized again.
"Your turn, Rainbow," Shining said, passing the dice set to the pegasus. "I believe you were about to be crushed to death. Wanna try to go for a save roll?"
"Sounds good to me," Dash replied.
Shining looked over his notes. "Given the situation you're in, the type of creature you're fighting against and the distance, I'd say you need a fifteen or higher."
Rainbow picked up the die and prepared to throw. "Doesn't sound too hard," she smugly stated.
"Also, since your character has just been severely injured, you should be limited in your ability. So you'll be rolling with a d12."
Rainbow dropped the die she was holding in her hoof and stared at Shining, wide-eyed.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" the unicorn asked, staring back.
Silently, gritting her teeth, Rainbow picked up the correct die and then simply let it fall on the table.
Shining looked at the results, then wrote down something.
With an agile jump, Lenoba dodged to the side and-
"Wait, what?" Shining lifted his head to look back at the seventeen displayed on the side of the die facing the ceiling. He took a long, deep breath. "Guys, this is the last time we use something that has been inside Pinkie's mouth. Remind me to take out a different set later."
With an agile jump, Lenoba dodged to the side and avoided the creature's attack. As the shadowy figure impacted the wall, the metallic surface tore away under the strength of the assault, and the monster went through it, ending up inside a room filled with computers and barely missing TW-1 with its body.
"But that doesn't-"
"Sunburst, I believe this would be a good time for your first turn. If Pinkie doesn't mind, of course, but this way you'll fit right in with the current rotation."
"That's okay for me," Pinkie said.
Slowly approaching Ro, ~~K~~ Glorp assumed a pony-like shape. He studied the pony, trying to decipher his features, and decided to adopt a calm strategy, trying to earn his trust. He smiled warmly to the pony, who-
"Twelve," Sunburst said, sparing the other unicorn the trouble of stretching his neck to read the result of the die he'd rolled on his side of the table.
-smiled back. Suddenly, a loud alarm went off and a flashing red light filled the room. Steam began to hiss out of the pipes lining the walls, the gauges on them signalling they were reaching a critical level of internal pressure. A pipe above the entrance to the room broke, beginning to spray its contents, the metal floor rapidly turning to a shade of red from the heat. Acting quickly, ~~K~~ Glorp threw himself over Ro's body, protecting the pony, and a few seconds later the pipes on the left side of the room exploded, tearing a hole into the wall.
The two got up, Ro unharmed, ~~K~~ Glorp marked with a few of what looked like scalds that rapidly healed away, almost ingested back into his skin. Despite having sustained the bulk of the explosion, he didn't appeared to be particularly harmed. After making sure that the other pony was alright he walked up to the hole, the pipes now emptied out, and stared into the other side, Ro following him.
The blast had destroyed a chunk of the wall, revealing a room filled with computers. TW-1 and Lenoba were both inside the room, one near a computer and the other near another hole in the wall, panting. Together with them was a large creature, lying on one of its sides and with what appeared to be scraps from the recently broken wall lodged into the other.
"That makes no-"
"Pinkie, your turn," Shining said, cutting off his sister.
Ro rapidly made his way through the hole and inside the room, and walked up to-
"NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE!"
Everypony turned to Twilight.
"We went into completely different, almost opposite directions when we entered the ship and split up at that three-way path. There's no way we all ended up in the same exact room when all we did was walk straight!" The alicorn looked at her brother, her brow curved in a questioning and annoyed expression.
"Well maybe the corridors were curved!" Shining shot her an equally annoyed look. "Now can we go back to-"
"Well maybe you're just doing a poor job." She firmly planted her hooves on the table, causing a die that had been left a little to far from the centre to roll off the edge. "And don't give me any of that 'maybe the corridors were curved'," she added in a mocking tone, "you clearly said they were straight! It's evident that you didn't think this through, and if you'd really planned this ahead you'd have a map to show the path we followed."
"I have a map!" Shining barked back, standing with his front hooves on the table like the alicorn.
"Show it."
Shining looked to the side, swallowing. "I can't," he said, "it's got stuff you aren’t meant to see yet," he hastily added.
"Or maybe you don't have it!" Twilight retorted, smirking.
"Well maybe the writer was getting tired of having to jump between three different locations!"
"You mean the narrator, right?" Sunburst asked.
"You mean the GM, right?" Rainbow asked to the orange unicorn to her left.
"You got yourself in this mess, Shiny! You're the one who made us split up!" Twilight yelled.
"How is this my fault?" Shining stared at Twilight. "You're the one that decided to split up! What kind of idiot enters a mysteriously abandoned spaceship that's possibly infested with hostile aliens and decides to split up at the first occasion?"
"Oh, screw it! I qui-"
-Lenoba, making sure that the alien was alright. Upon noticing her state of distress and her wounds, he took out a few pills and fed them to her.
The creature got back up, roaring, and in the light of the room the presents finally managed to get a good look at it.
"Shining?" Twilight asked, still sitting a the table. "Where exactly did you get this game?"
"It was a present, Spike brought it when he last visited. He said he'd gotten it from-"
The creature turned towards ~~K~~ Glorp and began to charge.
