Chapters The Equestrian Gaming League
Gamers, what else could be said about such a community of ponies that are so far spread, yet so stereotyped as one single group. The gamers in Equestria were streamlined on over a hundred different communities. Whether the gamer played MMORPG’s, Team Shooters, Simulations or any genre of game, there was a group for it, with anywhere fifty to seven million players. The largest gaming community in cyberspace was none other than the Equestrian Gaming League. Some of the greatest gamers in the world played in this league, and their ranks spanned the globe.
Ember Wing was not the greatest gamer in Equestria, though he has been called such a thing. He didn’t like the idea of being the best in the world. How many games would you need to play in a day in order to keep that title current? How many gamers would come out of the woodworks to challenge you? Like a single samurai on top of a hill, after a while, slicing and dicing would get tiresome. Not to mention, that kind of competition never really interested him. He was more interested in the greatest game in the world.
He had done a lot of studying and research to find ways to plug numbers into a computer and create his own ideal game. Sure, a utopia was impossible to make, but it didn’t need to be perfect. It simply needed to be a game that did not get old and had enough to do to stretch over a good amount of time while also not having too much to do. Sure, he knew gaming, and yeah, he knew what he liked when it came to the digital medium. However, creating such a game would cost ridiculous amounts of money. Yes, he did very well for himself playing and competing online, but this would be decades of work for just one soul such as himself.
Today, he was feeling a bit more social than normal. So, after talking himself up into interacting with other ponies, he met Twin at the mall food court. Of course, there was always going to be regrets in his life. There was just no way he could have known that he was being stalked by none other than a player who was ranked #198 in EGL standings. He had his own page in the EGL Info Site and his stats for Team Shooters was something to behold. However, with Ember Wing living so close, he may as well have painted a gigantic target on the back of his mane.
Gold Smith, the golden orange unicorn glared at him as he stood beside the pegasus, who was sitting at the table and sipping on an Orange Julius while he glared at his computer. He was trying to crunch some numbers, but it was very hard when this guy was down his throat, trying to prove something.
“Gold, I’m telling you, it’s not worth the effort. We can go around telling each other we’re better until we’re blue in the face, but honestly, that’s not at all why I play.” Ember said as he finally got some time to type in a few more digits before he was, once again, bombarded.
“Then why are you on the rankings? Last time I checked, you didn’t reach #152 without having something to prove. You’re a streamer, aren’t you? We could make it a showdown between local gamers!” Gold was prancing around the real intent of this whole thing, and Ember knew it.
“So the other local gamers in Ranchtown, none of them are worthy of your time? No, you need a guy with a HoofTube channel that has ninety thousand subscribers and climbing. It’s not so much that I out rank you, but that ponies tend to tune into me because I’m a little more entertaining to watch. You’re fishing for notoriety, and what better way than to go head to head against a professional gamer?” Ember said this and Gold was getting angrier by the second as he spoke. That’s when Ember checked the time to see that Twin Tips was a little late. She must have been jogging to the mall instead of driving.
“So, you’re saying you’re not going to do it?” Gold’s eyes scowled toward the pegasus and he wetted his lips a bit as he thought. Then he shook his head and stood up on one of the chairs at the foodcourt table. Ember did a double take as he did this and looked at him as if he were crazy.
“Alright! Everyone in the mall!” He caught the attention of a good number of people in the food court and they stopped eating to pay attention. “For those of you who watch the EGL Championships and tournaments!”
Ember Wing wasn’t very happy about all of this. He cringed at this, knowing that after this, there was no way he was going to turn down this challenge, and that asshole knew it. Every part of him wanted to kick that chair out from under Gold and watch his head bounce against the hard floor.
“I am Nemesis, from the Tree of Death! I am here to challenge him to a game of Dark Matter! Now I’m gonna challenge him in front--”
“Oh my God!” A female voice called out from the side, drawing both to look. There was Twin Tips, dressed in her jogging suit and with her earbuds around the back of her neck as she walked in with a bottle of water, having worked up a good sweat. “Wow! You have my attention now!” She said, the sarcastic enthusiasm was nice and condescending.
“What the-- Twin?” Gold asked and she gasped, clapping both hands on her cheeks.
“Oh my God! Nemesis just said my name! Oh my God! This is going to be an extra long blog tonigh-- shut the hell up and sit down, Gold. It’s not Ember’s fault you suck so bad you part time as a intergalactic singularity on the weekend. Leave him alone! Go wallow in self disgust somewhere else.” Twin said all of this, and slowly, it was clear that Gold Smith was getting somewhat uncomfortable standing on top of the chair with everyone staring at him. He slowly made his way down onto the ground and slowly, people began to go about their business.
At first, Gold was about to give her a piece of his mind, his mouth was already open and his finger pointed at her. However, before a word came out, Twin grabbed onto his finger, swiped him around and slammed his head against the very tall, very thick pillar made out of white tile. The hit didn’t draw blood, but he would definitely have a bruise. She twisted his finger to lead his arm behind his back and make sure he was in a good deal of pain and very uncomfortable.
“No, you’ve said enough, now it’s my turn.” Twin Tip’s voice was very low, and very sincere as she whispered into his ear as he struggled.
Ember sighed and continued to type on his computer, agitated from Gold Smith’s vile presence. The fact that Twin was giving him the riot act didn’t bother him in the least. As she held him at bay, he took those extra seconds to save his work, turn off his laptop and start putting it all away.
“Now, you’re going to go walk past Ember without giving him the time of day, not even glancing toward him. Then you’re going to go back home to your little hovel, and whine and cry about how you beat up Ember for talking shit about the Turds of Death.”
“The Tree of De-” He started to say but was cut off as she inched his finger to the side, bending it and causing him to cry out.
“Shut the hell up! One more word and I’m breaking your finger, so your next challenge will be null and void! Now! You’re gonna gather your troops and bring them to us, because we’ve got friends, a lot of friends that can 0wn your ass to the moon and back. We’ll be gathering them today. Don’t speak, just nod yes. Do you understand?” She whispered to him as her voice gradually softened to a gentle whisper.
There was one solemn moment of indecision before Gold Smith nodded his head. She immediately released him. True to his word, he immediately began to walk away, many eyes glued to him. He was red in the face, defeated, and his finger felt ached, but otherwise fine. She knew his pointer finger was uninjured, she only aimed to make him uncomfortable. If Twin truly wanted to, she could have broken his hand in two places.
Her pulse was erratic, her forehead was sweaty, and her breath was going a mile a minute. Twin gazed over at Ember, who walked over to her with a puzzled expression, his backpack over his shoulder. “Ummm, Twin? Are you--” She grasped him by the arm, pulled him over to her, dipped him down and kissed him with all of her might! She explored his mouth with her tongue and gripped his shoulders in a firm manner, breathing in ever so deeply.
As her mouth released him, her eyes opened and he suddenly felt the stare of a very predatory unicorn, one whose pupils were dilated to the size of bottle caps. Her mouth opened in a devious grin that made him strangely aroused but also very freaked out. She breathed out onto him very loudly and then pulled him away in an instant, making him yip in surprise!
She rode him like a savage riding a beast! Twin beat her pelvis against his like he was a desert water pump and her tits flopped up and down enough to make small slapping noises. Both of them were back in their house, their clothes strewn about it as they finally got to the door.
She pounded her cunt full of his cock, feeling so full and flowing with juices from her immense arousal. Twin had already orgasmed five times and they had only been at this for maybe four minutes. Their genitals mashed with carnal savagery and their hands groped each other all over. That was when the moment came where he could no longer hold it in. She was giving him no chance to gain his bearings, and her constant pounding against him gave him no room to catch his breath. His cock gave in and fired a load deep into her.
She laid down onto him and kissed him on the lips, starting to machine gun his cock with her crotch smashing away as she moaned at a high octave into his mouth. After his last squirt inside of her, she simply sat there on top of him, gasping and panting for breath, her tongue hanging out. Her ice blue fur was covered in sweat while her blue, silver and gold mane laid flat against her in the biggest pile of sex hair ever. Her pussy ran free of the hot liquid it was filled with. His semen seeped from between them and let them both know that there was a lot of it.
“Well, now that you’ve committed a crime of passion and metaphorically fucked my brains out, I suppose now you want to start making some calls with me.” Ember said as he was also trying to catch his breath.
“Hey… don’t rush on my part.” She said, still feeling his cock all the way inside of her as she still had him between her thighs. “Your penis is in my vagina and all the sudden everything else doesn’t seem to matter.”
“I get that, Twin, but you kinda just filled our schedule for the next few days. I mean, I can do what you want us to do, but that plan wasn’t really supposed to be enacted for another--”
“You’ve already got enough resources and sponsors to pull it off. We can just schedule an appointment and go see her when she’s available.” Twin said as she reluctantly pulled him out of her.
“You know she’s going to be available for us.” Ember said as she slowly got up and popped his back. “This is the part I always hate.”
They sat in the very white, office that was decorated with flowers and many other colors that kept it feeling vibrant and vivacious. The rainbow haired unicorn smiled at both Ember and Twin as they sat in their seats across from her desk with little glasses of lemonade provided by her secretary.
“So! You told me you had a very good idea over the call?” Prisma Silver asked them both as she picked up her own glass of lemonade from her desk and drank it.
“Well, earlier today,” Ember started to speak. “I was heckled by one Gold Smith, better known as Nemesis from--”
“Tree of Death, yeah, I’m aware.” Prisma said with an annoyed look. “He’s been blogging about challenging you for a while. His PR gimmicks make me wonder why 5th Generation movie remakes started looking so good all the sudden.”
“No kidding.” Twin and Ember said in synch.
“Twin kinda held him down and challenged the entire Tree of Death.” Ember said, causing the young unicorn with cream white fur to pause.
“War?” She said, giving both of them pause. “You declared war on them?”
Both of them looked at each other, then looked back at Prisma. Neither of them were entirely sure of what to say, but after a while, Ember shrugged while Twin nodded.
“That’s awesome! I’ve been wanting to shove it to those pretentious pricks for a while now! I cannot believe this is how you call in that favor I owe you. Now I owe you another favor after paying off this favor! You need a team, and guess what. This is a team that has been a long time in the making. My contacts have been waiting for this for a long, long time. I’ll register our team with the EGL later today when we get them all in… or when you get them all in, I still need to do some set up.”
“Wait, you want to set up with the EGL already? We haven’t even played together as a team. If you’re getting who I think you’re getting, we have some experience together, but we’ve never actually worked as an actual unit.” Twin said, looking over at Ember, who shrugged.
“A lot of teams have become number one with a lot less. Ember, your skills are going to be paramount in this agenda. Obviously, the PR will work itself out on your channel, just make an announcement, and I’ll do the same in a different corner of the gaming community. I know some people with a lot of pull with the EGL advertisement. Do not make it until we get everyone, though. We need all of them.” Prisma said as she was already typing away at her computer. She pressed one more button and a paper printed out right in front of Ember from a slot in the desk.
He took out the paper and began to read it. The names were immediately familiar, and all the sudden it was all becoming clear. “Really.” Is all he could say as he smiled. “You’re swinging for the fences. The trio have their own clan, and they’re called a trio for a reason. What makes you think they’ll come with us?”
“Because they will.” Prisma assured him. There was a knowing smile on her face as she kept typing. “I’ve got facilities already picked out. It’s close enough to drive and big enough to where we can sleep there if need be.”
“Sleep there? Are you making a gaming team or a crew of fire fighters?” Twin asked, making Prisma laugh.
“You’ll change your tune when I tell you I’m putting in a free soda machine for a caffeine fix.” Prisma smiled bright.
“Sold.” They both said at once.
The Dotted Line Cafe was once a writing cafe, where people would come to order coffees of all sorts, snacks and other drinks. That was where many a fine stories were written by writers of all sorts. Now it was very much a gaming cafe where Local Area Network multiplayer games were held. It was the true hot spot for the latest gaming magazines, digital game menu as well as other fanfare such as toys, physical game copies (which now cost about twice as much as getting it digital, as they just weren’t made anymore), and clothing.
There were many tables around the very large, clean, sleek lounge, which large, floating screens at many tables, while others were used for food. That evening, they were not interested in the normal rabble gamers. Twin and Ember sat across the table from the three bat pony triplets. All three of them had an amazing score in the EGL, able to work together with minimal effort.
Midnight was the leader and the eldest among them by five and ten minutes. Codenamed Axel and is said to know every good hiding place in Cybertrooper 2. She has stealth ability out the wazoo, even in the run and gun games. She always seems to find a way to sneak around the place. She had a bluish gray coat of fur, big beautiful blue eyes and beautiful, long purple hair. She smiled at Twin and their conversation immediately went to school and how much it sucks. However, getting down to business was a little too important to put off.
“Alright, so the idea of our channels fusing into one single team came up. Prisma already has everything planned on the business side, but we need all three of you to sign off on it. Dusk… good to see you, bro.” He fist bumped the shorter, brighter eyed purple bat pony. He grinned at Ember and made his fistbump explode.
“Well, Ember, you know I got your back. You gave us our start, afterall.” He said and Ember gave him a puzzled look.
“What are you talking about? Your mom trained all three of you to beat the hell out of me. And you’ve beaten me more than once.” Ember admitted, as good a gamer as he was, their mother, Grem still defeated him on a somewhat regular occasion when they play. Dusk, the brother of the three took to Ember like he was the brother he never had and the two of them even had a duo before Twin started playing. To their credit, Grem could not beat them in a 2 on 1. She could come close, but either Dusk or Ember would finish her off before she could make a comeback.
“Well, I mean, we did, but we also gave you some big wins. Don’t forget that, Ember. We helped you in two of those damn tournaments and that’s why I think we got us a deal.” Vera said. She smiled at Ember and beamed another one over to Twin.
“Hold on, the two of you still haven’t asked the important questions. I don’t care about the money, that’s all been taken care of if Silver is concerned. However, if we’re going to keep a training schedule, we need those facilities here and now. Our house may be big enough but we can’t keep picking up and moving everywhere we go. Some of us have some serious hardware.” Midnight finally spoke, and Ember was putting on a similar face the more he thought about it. Game stations weren’t just laptops or desktops anymore. Serious gaming teams had team platforms and group servers of their own. Such a place would need to be built soon if they were going to challenge the Tree of Death.
“Gah, Tree of Death, what a stupid name.” Twin said, drawing their attention to her. Ember nodded to her.
“Yeah, speaking of which, you said you challenged them, but you failed to mention that you smashed Gold’s head against the wall. I heard it sounded like you almost cracked his cocoanut.” Dusk said to Twin, the other two sisters nodding at this. “Thanks, that guy’s a giant prick.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t ask you out, Dusk.” Midnight said, drawing looks of sympathy from both Twin and Vera. Vera knew, but she had forgotten after trying very hard to do so.
“Alright, well, Prism already told me that I was to be given second in command, and Midnight, if you want it, third in command is yours.” Ember got them back on track. “All of our businesses will mingle and we’ll come to an agreement, of course. We’re practically family, this is not a business venture for me, if we’re being honest. The real reason I want to do this is because we’ve been looking for an excuse to do this for a while now.”
“Oh, look, if it isn’t Chicken Wing.” All five of them turned to see Lemon Slice and Flash Photo. The whitish yellow unicorn grinned as he walked up to their table, wearing his long green shirt with the Skull Tree logo in the center, representing their clan. “I heard you had a little ‘run in’ with Gold Smith earlier today. Don’t worry about it, I didn’t tell him to challenge you and I sure as hell am not taking the rap for that idiotic stunt with him standing on the chair. Now, I did hear something about you making a team.” He looked at Ember, then Twin Tips, then looked at the other three bat ponies. “Aren’t you the trio?”
“Who wants to know?” Dusk asked. He drew annoyed looks from his sisters.
“Yeah, and we’re discussing things right now. Would you mind?” Midnight gave him a stern look. She was quite tall, and had a good six inches in height on him. Not to mention her mother taught all three of them self defense, so she could make Twin’s stunt look like a firecracker as compared to a bomb. The stern look held strong against his blatant look of disdain.
“Fine, discuss all you want. We’ll counter everything you throw at us.” Lemon said, turning away with Photo and the two of them left.
“He’s their leader, isn’t he?” Midnight said, that same stern look gazing at the guy as he left. Ember hummed his affirmation. “Alright, third rank is fine by me. The Trio can be absorbed into this unnamed group for the foreseeable future. One condition.” She said before they started to get too excited. Ember and Twin both listened closely. “That son of a bitch is mine.” Midnight ate the rest of her fries on the table and tipped the waiter five bits. “Call us when--” She started to say, then Ember’s cellphone began to ring.
He pulled it out and there came a video of Prisma. She smiled at Ember and laughed a little bit. “Hi! Ember, if you would, please pop me up on everyone’s phone?” The orange pegasus looked at her for a moment, and looked at everyone else, seeing that they were pulling out their phones as well. He flicked her image onto their phones with his finger and she waved at them, speaking from just one speaker. “Hey, guys! First of all, welcome aboard! Today, we will be touring our new location! I’m sending all of you the address!”
“Wait, what?” Midnight asked, looking at Ember, who shrugged.
“Are you telling us you have the facility hooked up and ready to go?” Twin asked, almost afraid of the answer.
“Of course I do!” Prisma said with excited giggling. “It’s all spruced up and ready to go! I told you I had this location picked out for a while. I just had to put on the internet and the power, set up the water and the kitchen. Get your gear and meet me over there, I’ve already sent out more invitations for sponsors. Just come on down.”
The cat girl got out of her car and looked at the invitation on her e-mail account. She read the proper address and walked across the parking lot into the building that looked something like a stripmall. She approached the door and saw that many lights were on inside, many colorful lights coming from machinery. They were VR Stations, all of them equipped with a Reality Tread for perfect balance and realistic walking and running in all directions. The material shaped itself with the square perfectly and moved freely and not freely, depending on what happens during the game.
She opened the door and saw a group of young ponies unlocking their large cases that held their desktops and gaming equipment. They were setting up tables, cords, systems, controllers, speakers and screens all over the large, wide open gaming room.
“Twin Tips?” Mila asked and the ice blue unicorn looked up at the Abyssinian young lady and smiled big as she ran over to her. Mila and Twin embraced tight. “Hey girl! How have you been?”
“Mila!” Ember opened his arms to her and hugged her. “You remember Aunt Grem’s triplets.”
“Wow, Midnight, it’s so good to see you again!” She came up to the taller bat pony girl who smiled and embraced her as well.
“Alright! That’s all of you!” Prisma said as she stepped into the room with a box. “Well, I just got off the phone with mom, and she said that she can definitely get all of the legal crap out of the way within a week. She’s quite awesome like that. So that means we’ll just train until then. Thank you all for coming! You guys about ready to get started?” She said as she walked over toward the VR Stations.
“Whoa, shouldn’t we at least come up with a name first?” Twin Tips said as she followed the rest of them toward the head sets and game suits with sensory pads all over them for realistic gameplay without the pesky death to go along with it.
“Actually, yeah.” The striped and spotted bengal/siamese cat girl said from the side. “I know all of you, and I love all of you, but I don’t think ‘The Loved Ones’ is going to cut it in a tournament. I think we may be the clowns in that rodeo.” She snickered, while the rest of them gave her an odd look.
“The Blue Streak.” Vera said, drawing all of their attention, and getting some stink eyes.
“That sounds like we’re people in blue paint going around naked.” Prisma said, sitting down at a desk chair. After a while, they started to all sit around. The names ranged anywhere from “Turtle Teens” to “Goosesteppers” though many of them were just jokes.
“Nah, guys, come on. We need to become an imposing figure in the gaming scene. The best thing we could possibly do with this name busting in on the scene. What we need is something that is intimidating enough to sound like we mean business, while also not sounding like a bunch of pompous jackasses.”
“Whoa, Ember. Come on, bro.” Dusk said, and gave Ember a flabbergasted look. “Racial slurs, man. Donkeys are people too.” The bat pony said, and the rest of them gave him a weird look. “So umm, yeah anyway.”
“Chaos Crew.” Prisma said, drawing the attention of the group. The rest of them thought about that name. It wasn’t bad. It rolled off the tongue well enough.
“We can take it up one more notch.” Ember said, pointing at Prisma. “That is not a bad name at all. However, if we’re flying in on wings of fire, we need something that will have a little more impact. Visa vi, Knights of Chaos.”
There was a long pause among all of them. The image invoked a horse with a full plate of charred black and glowing fire armor. A massive muscular warrior with the power to break the very earth beneath him! The Knights of Chaos turned out to be probably the best name they had to offer. Not to mention, it was Vera who pulled out a blank tablet and strapped it to her arm with a stylus pen. Within five minutes, she had a fiery logo sketched up with the initials in burning red, black and yellow.
“Oh, hell.” Vera said as she realized what she did. “Let’s not go around bragging about our initials, though.” She said, holding up her tablet drawing toward all of them. The initials read KoC…
Fully strapped in with headgear over their eyes. All of them had on some very high end equipment. The most trustworthy name in VR Suit tech sponsored Prisma in her gaming career. Thanks to her training with not only Ember, but many of them in this room, she turned into one of the more successful stream gamers in Ranchtown. She was easily able to convince them that her new team were going to be the absolute best gaming team in the EGL, and their sponsorships would be paid in full within weeks. She was betting a lot on this team, but as she looked at all of them smiling at one another, she felt like she could hold onto that hope pretty tight.
They registered EGL Team Rankings where all of the greatest players go to prove their worth in this Cyber Age. Prisma created the Knights of Chaos with the clan tag [Chaos] because KoC was already taken for some reason. One would think Chaos would be taken. Prisma set up her new account [Chaos]Rainbow Angel. The name was based on a character she created in her childhood, who was sort of a cupid super mare who shot arrows to defeat enemies and spread love through the world. After that, she entered her stats and her gamer history, linking it to previous gaming accounts.
All of them did the same. Ember was now the Dragon Warrior while Twin Tips chose the name Ice Queen. Their roster came up and all of their profiles were integrated into one team. Cyberspace interface was pretty much just like you were standing in front of a video game menu, and they used their hand gestures to an exact extent. Some of the chapter VR equipment were not at all as accurate with the hand commands.
“Alright, guys. We’re officially registered as a team. Officially rostered as seven Knights of Chaos.”
“Perhaps Knightmares of Chaos?”
“Shut up, Dusk!” Prisma gave him the stink eye that he couldn’t see. “Which game we doing first?” She said as she brought up the games that she already had loaded into their system. Plenty of multiplayers to choose from, and plenty of rankings to exploit.
“I’d go for some Dark Matter.” Twin said, looking over at the virtual image of Prisma as she materialized in the blank room. Dark Matter: Space Odyssey was created a year ago, and was an MMORPG taking place on a ship. All of them already had very high level characters and gear, but now they needed to band their resources.
“Alright, all of you have starfighters, right? If you don’t, I have three spare ones you can have. I have two I have suped up for serious firepower. Now, I can buy a ship. Anyone want to chip in?” Prisma said as she brought up the menu of the ships. At first, she had three million credits. Then, with all seven of them in the blank white room, they started giving hundreds of thousands of credits each into Prisma’s account. She ended up with five million. “Wow, alright, we can get some add-ons along with it.” She said as she picked the Apollo X89. The double cannons were changed to quad cannons and the hyperdrive was given five extra charges. Their ammo capacity was widened and they even had some credits left over.
“Alright, I’m uploading my fighter and my Land Speeder for planetary missions.” Vera said as they got to the more colorful menu that started to load their bridge settings and all of the ship that Prisma partially customized and upgraded.
“I’m using my melee character for a main on this game.” Twin said, and pulled out a curved laser blade from its holder. The blade extended to about three feet as it left the sheath-like gadget and her hard tech armor appeared around her. She was positioned as the boarding crew and defender of the deck.
“Hey.” Ember said to her quietly, drawing Twin’s attention. The unicorn in power armor faced the orange pegasus who was dressed in a pilot’s helmet and had a blaster rifle in his hand along with his red and black flight suit. “You don’t have to miss practices for ice skating because of this. You know that, right? This is more my thing, I know that.” He said, and for some reason, she started laughing.
“Ember, you’re just adorable.” She said, then reached up to the top of his helmet, and kissed his lips. She broke the kiss and then pressed a button on his helmet to put the black face mask over his face with two glowing red eyes on a black interface. “I want these bastards to go down, and go down hard. We’re doing this.” She pulled him face to face as she spoke. “Alright?” She said and he started to nod with his helmet on.
“Starship, activated. Prepare for maiden voyage.” The computer voice went off.
“Alright, guys! Welcome aboard!” All the sudden, the bridge of the ship appeared in front of all of them. All of them had very similar uniforms, though the type of armor they wore pretty well defined what they were. The more heavily armored, the more combat they tended to see.There were several terminals all over the deck with chairs in front of computer screens.
“Alright, let’s see.” Prisma sat at the captain’s chair in the center of them, typing on her arm rest terminal as a screen was beamed up from it in front of her. “I’m going to start us in the ranking slots. Right now we are #3402965. I’m going to up the difficulty for us. You think top, Ember?”
“Yeah, get us at #1, one fail in the beginning isn’t going to affect our record too terribly, but a shutout start is a good way to get noticed.” He said as he put his blaster rifle into the large holster on his belt and took off his helmet. “Not to mention while we wait the two hours, we can run a simulation. What do you guys--” Prisma was interrupted by some beeping.
Vera walked over to the other side of the bridge to press a flashing button to bring up the rank game search. “It’s already found us one?”
“You set it to the top rank, right?” Dusk asked, but then the clan name popped up and his eyes went stone cold solid white.
“No fucking way!” Twin’s eyes burned with a million fiery suns!
“What?!” Prisma stood up from the captain’s chair and leaned onto the terminal to get a better look. However, her eyes did not deceive her.
The screen read “The Death Tree Squad 2.”
The Equestrian Gaming League
“Well, this is good! It’ll be a true test of our teamwork skills!” Vera said, the blonde bat pony smiling brightly as the rest of them gave her odd looks. Aside from Mila, who nodded her approval. The much taller Midnight shook her head, pursing her lips as she glared at the screen and stepped forward.
“I’ll go ahead and hail them.” Midnight said as she pressed a few buttons on her panels. Then looked back to the main view screen to see nothing happened. “What?” She pressed it again and all of them grew sour faces as, once again, it was blank. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Incoming fire!” Dusk said as he pressed the panel buttons to up the shields to seventy percent.
“Oh, to hell with this!” Ember said as he sat forward in his chair. The room going darker with a big red light going haywire with the alarm. “Battle stations! Let’s go!” He shouted over the alarm, and there was a moment of slight panic as Twin got behind her seat and pressed three buttons to bring up the engineering bay statistics and energy levels while Prisma Silver got into the hallway, promptly flanked by Vera and Midnight. All of them brought out their blaster rifles as they hurried down the hallway. The armor they wore lit up in flashy designs as their helmets grew glowing visors.
Then there came a crash that rocked the ship hard, causing all of them to stir.
“Damage report.” Ember said as he pressed three buttons on his chair to see that they still couldn’t hail the other ship and he cursed under his breath.
“Shields are at ninety percent capacity.” Twin said as she double checked with a puzzled expression.
“Ninety percent? Was that supposed to be a warning shot?” Ember asked with a similar look on his face. Twin shrugged and he shook his head. “Bastards are toying with us. Prepare an ion beam! Let those assholes know we mean business!”
—---------
“Alright, there’s no doubt in my mind that they’ll board the ship as soon as they possibly can. We need to get to the teleporter system, pronto!” Prisma said as she hurried through the ship’s long hallway down the main passage. As they passed one of the windows that looked out toward the stars, they noticed the other ship. This caused Prisma to do a double take as she stopped and looked at their craft. “The hell is that?”
The craft was far smaller than they had originally anticipated. With the Tree of Death team, they at least thought it was going to be a type 2 but it was clearly a type 3, one of the cheaper models that barely bore resemblance to a fighter. It was more of a freighter vessel than anything. It was equipped with some pretty nice weaponry but there was no way its engines would be able to fire them very many times.
“It looks like they were still putting it together while they took off the landing pad…” Midnight noticed immediately. Then they all had to shield their eyes as their own craft fired off a very large beam of purple light that blasted straight into the enemy craft’s hull. It only stopped short a few feet as the shield took the brunt. “Nice.” The tall, curvy bat pony said as she nodded with a grin on her face. She and Vera bumped fists together, but neither of them noticed Prisma trying to do the same and she gave up after a few seconds, trying not to look awkward.
“Guys!” All three of them squeaked in a start as the intercom shouted above them. “Guys? Is this thing working?” Twin’s voice said overhead.
“Yeah, Twin, we hear you.” Midnight said, overlapping Prisma when she was about to speak. “What’s up?”
“We got a good hit on them, but they’re still within range of the tractor beam, are you guys ready?” Twin said, and all three of them grew wide eyes and Prisma motioned for them to follow.
“Yeah, Twin! We are so ready!” She shouted as all three of them began to rush, their armor making them look elite and sleek as they traveled down the scantily lit hall toward the back where the molecular pads began to work. The tractor beam was already locked onto their vessel and they were coming through.
As soon as three bodies came onto the teleport platforms, all of them clad in dark orange and black power armor, the doors slid open for the three lady fighters.
Prisma was about to tell them to hold still, but both Vera and Midnight began to fire, so she followed suit. The Tree soldiers were taken way off guard by the sudden attack, not expecting it immediately. Two of them took serious damage to their armor while the third one leapt out of the way. The three of them rained blasts on the disoriented trio, but they soon began to gain their footing and fire back.
Midnight ducked back behind the edge of the doorway as the blasts began to fly their way. Prisma took one in the shoulder and she cursed as she rolled to Vera’s side, who ducked and covered.
“How you liking that, Chaos Cocks?!” One of them shouted back at them as he fired off more rounds in a repetitive fashion.
“We’ve already got a nickname. Exciting.” Midnight said as she stood up, rigid against the threshold. As soon as the blasts stopped, she and Vera began to return fire, nabbing the talkative one in the chest as he tried to hide behind the teleporter controls. He cried out in surprise and Midnight gave him the finger as she got back behind cover and more beams began to fire.
“Who are those guys?” Midnight asked, waiting for them to run out of steam once again.
“I recognize Feather Drift and Bandage… I don’t know the other guy.” Prisma said as the two of them started to fire back as the other guys lost their charges, overheating their blasters.
“Damnit!” Bandage Wrap said as he caught a blast in the helmet, bring his armor down to zero, where his health would start running out. They were sitting ducks and they knew it. “That’s not fair! You can’t attack the–”
“Heard it before, jackasses! You should have thought of that!” Midnight said, and it was Prisma who pulled out a plasma grenade and pressed the button. One toss and a huge blazing wave of heat engulfed both of them that were still near the teleport pads. Both of their bodies were dissolved as their armor and life drained immediately from the full brunt.
All three of them let out a whoop as they came into the room and pointed their blasters around them. They watched as they disappeared into data and Midnight gave a victory chuckle. Both twins gave Prisma a fist bump at such a good move, but then all of them stopped as Vera held up one hand.
“Hold on, where’s the other one?” Vera asked, and all of them immediately turned to see that the other orange and black armored man hopped down from the countertop behind them and slipped out the door.
“Sorry, ladies!” He said as he began to dart off. All of them began to fire their rifles as he ran. Prisma cursed and all of them began to give chase.
“Get back here, you scum sucking catfish!” Midnight shouted as she fired off another barrage of beams and the highly skilled, armored player leapt atop the ceiling and darted into the closest adjacent hallway. His feet somehow running across the surface above them.
—----------
Mila wasn’t expecting such a large test of her skills so soon in the game. The enemy was returning fire and somehow, they had taken plenty of damage without going too far below their shield capacity. Somehow, they’d survived her onslaught of beams from her sentry tower ion cannon. The green display before her had the red image of the ship in front of them. It still looked like a ship mechanic threw up all over it and decided to call it a paint job, but it was far more advanced than she originally expected. Still, why they would upgrade that hunk of junk was beyond her ability to comprehend. What were they hiding?
She targeted one of their main cannons as their ship fired large beams into it and Mila let forth yet another barrage of ion blasts. Much to her delight, she took out its side cannon, splitting the main hull seemingly in two as part of their ship broke completely off. The abyssinian cat girl clenched her fist and let out a hoot as she bared her fangs in a grin.
“Take that, ya bloody pirates!” She said in her strong accent as she waited for her cannons to power up once again. That was when her sensors went off in her helmet’s visor, causing her to turn her head.
The ion cannon station was a few doors down the main corridor from the main bridge, where she was alone and her display in front of her in a very small room that she was perfectly willing to call her office. However, the controls on this station were still quite alien to her. Mila could aim the cannon on the long movements, but the more delicate targets, it was a bit of a pain. She kept over compensating the controls and overshooting the smaller points she was aiming for.
As soon as she looked out into the corridor, though, there came a flash of blue light coming from a long bladed laser dagger. She barely had time to reach up and grasp the wrist of her assailant and stop him. He had black armor with an orange frame on his pauldrons and his gauntlets. There was a blaster strapped to his waist and she was a little insulted that he thought he could get extra bonus points for a melee kill on a “helpless” victim such as herself. His blade was dangerous, though and the tip stuck straight into her shoulder. Her armor took a dip and she cursed!
“Get off me!” She shouted as she dipped her fist downward. From her wrist, she produced a tiny sphere that shot from her bracer and stuck to his chest. With a heaving wrist movement, she pointed his body to the side and his chest went bang! With a combustion so close, Mila took some damage, but her opponent stumbled straight back from the blow. The top of his armor was annihilated and she saw him under his armor. Her eyes bugged out behind her helmet’s visor as she saw his real face.
Here was a red tiger with thick black stripes across his cheeks. He had bright blonde hair that spiked up on the right side, while his left side was nearly long enough to reach his neck. The tiger-striped abyssinian glared at her with the armor on his chest shattered and his helmet lying around him in pieces.
“Well, looks like the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak.” He said in his own Abyssinian accent. He leapt to his feet and poised himself to attack her once again. They measured each other up and he looked to her blaster rifle at her hip as his hand hovered over his own. He’d lost a chunk of his health, and all of his armor in that little ploy she pulled and she was far better off than he was. Still, her armor was still damaged, and he figured he could come out on top if he played his cards right.
As soon as he pushed off to charge her and grab his blaster in a quick draw, he nearly activated his anti-gravity boots before she made her own helmet withdraw and fold into her body armor, revealing her catness as well. This caused him to come to a screeching halt as he looked upon her darker brown spots and her beautiful brown hair. Those big beautiful green eyes gazed at his amber eyes and they were stuck in that moment for what felt like forever. The two felines seemed stuck in time as he measured up every inch of her being and she gave him a smile that took his heart and caught it in his throat.
“Hi, my name’s Mila.” She said in a small, meek voice that caused his cheeks to grow three more shades of red on top of his fur color. He forgot himself for a moment, but he was soon snapped out of his stupor, at least part way.
“Oh, ummm, Razor.” He said as his fighting pose was gone and the wind was taken from his sails. “I-I’m please to meet–” As soon as he held his hand out to her, she grabbed it with a hard grasp, and her blaster rifle pressed against his muzzle.
“Likewise, mate.” She grinned and blasted him into data particles.
—-------
“Status report!” Ember said, drawing an exasperated sigh from Twin as she glared at him.
“Fifth time, Ember!” Twin snapped at him as he backed down a bit as she pointed a finger toward the orange pegasus.
“Yeah, bro, give it a rest.” Dusk said as he fired the smaller lasers to not only block their smaller beams, but also put damage on their shields. “Not much has changed. They’re still at 38% and we’re still at 76.” He said with no shortage of pride in his own efforts to help. “And it looks like Mila got back on her cannon, so there’s that.”
“I just don’t get it.” Ember said as he looked at the comm link, which was still inactive. Then he looked up at the view screen, which showed the blasts coming from them and going into the enemy craft. He shook his head, still concentrating as another one of their main engines went out. “How are they failing so spectacularly? I thought they were all ‘We’ll get you for this, Chicken Wing! You’ll pay for making fools of us!’ And now they’d take their vengeance on us…” That’s when he looked at the two of them giving him odd looks.
“Well, first off, congrats on making them out to be 80’s cartoon villains and second off, I don’t think this is their A game. Something tells me we happened upon their good squad rather than their big time players, bro.” Dusk said as he heard a rather loud jet of laughter from the doorway.
“I really really hope this not their A game!” Midnight said as she walked in with both Prisma and Vera in tow. The taller bat pony said as she sat and spun in her chair to get to her console. “These guys were a joke! I could have taken them down with a twig and it wouldn’t have made a difference.” Midnight said, drawing a glare from Prisma.
“Uh, excuse me. I think Vera and I contributed to your insinuated lone victory as well.” Prisma said as she sat down in the captain’s seat, drawing a look from Midnight.
“Yeah, I was getting to that. You helped, a little.” Midnight said as she tried to hail the other ship once again. Their main weapons were all knocked out at this point and they were on auxiliary power to keep their shields active.
“A little?” Prisma glared at the bat pony, causing Vera to stir in her seat a little bit, seeming like she wanted to say something but Midnight’s look became hardened as her and the unicorn stared at one another.
“Okay! Let’s not do this right now. We’re about to decimate this craft in our first victory as a team. Where’s– Oh, there she is.” Ember said as Mila walked through the door, prancing as if she were the prize stallion of the evening, ignoring the fact she was a cat.
“G’day!” The perky cat said as she waltzed in and Ember began to hail the other ship once again. This time, he laughed a bit as they accepted this go-around.
“Ummm, hey… Em–Ember!” The very nervous pony on the other end said. His other ponies around him were putting out fires and going crazy with panic as the alarm sounded off around them and a pulsing red light beamed across the image.
“Feather Drift?” Midnight asked as Feather started barking out commands to his two subordinates. “Did you seriously board us with all three of your crew members and let AI take control of your ship during a battle?!”
“Ummm,” Feather looked around him at his two crew members as they continued to fight fires and keep the ship from completely losing power. “I mean, maybe. That could have been where we went wrong.” The red pony scratched his green mane, blinking at the alarm and squinting a bit like it hurt his eyes.
The entirety of the Knights of Chaos gawked at him as he thought for a long moment. They gave each other glances, wondering how someone could be so dense as this.
“So, we were wondering if, like, you guys could maybe call this one a draw?” He asked, immediately drawing a burst of laughter from Twin Tips, resulting in a roaring guffaw from them all. There was a long period of Feather Drift looking dumbfounded toward them before they finally began to simmer down a bit. Mila coughed a little bit and Dusk’s sides were starting to hurt from going a little hard with the laughter.
“Okay, for real, someone please kill them.” Prisma finally said, and there came a heavy ion cannon beam from their beautiful ship. Before Feather could object or even know what was going on, the image cut out and the screen popped up with bold green letters reading “Victory!”.
“Well, aside from a few overlaps in our foresight, I think we did rather well, taking down the 5th ranked team and whatnot.” Ember said as he motioned for Midnight, who excitedly remembered as she pulled out her tablet, starting to press buttons. She kept pressing, and sliding her finger across the screen, her face growing more and more puzzled. “Uhhh, Middy?”
“Dude!” She ejaculated, causing everyone to reel back. “Check this shit out!” Midnight shouted as she jumped up and down a little, both Twin and Ember’s eyes widening as she jiggled. With a flick, her screen came up on the main view and all jaws dropped.
“Knights of Chaos: #102”
—------------
“Well,” Ember said as they all sat in the headquarter’s main lobby. They’d decided to take showers, go get something to eat while also bragging to everyone in the entire world that they went from #3402965 to #102 after just one solid victory against a bunch of morons. “I suppose we should celebrate, since our first outing was such a gigantic success. Who wants to go out for artificially flavored bacon and wheat?”
Twin Tips rolled her eyes and looked away so she wouldn’t say anything she would regret, but that was when both Midnight and Prisma gave each other looks.
“I mean, bro,” Dusk scratched his chin a bit as Ember raised an eyebrow. “It was a success, yeah, but we were also just supposed to be in a training exercise to raise up our teamwork methods. We were good, for sure, but I feel like more exercises are kinda needed for this team to really get our gears set correctly, you know what I’m saying?” The purple bat pony with silver hair put his hands on the table and looked around at the others.
Ember looked at him for a moment before glancing at the others. “You guys think so too?” He said when he noticed that they were being rather quiet.
“I enjoyed myself, for sure.” Mila said as she raised her hand and gave Ember a cute little smile. “But he does have a point, it was a bit of a daft idea to throw us against the wall to see if we stuck so early. We might want to think better of it on our next venture.”
Ember was nodding at this point, noticing that Prisma was the leader of this little guild and yet she was not talking. In fact, she looked a little melancholy at the moment. Midnight didn’t look much better. Vera was just as hard to read as always, since she always looked somewhat somber.
“Okay, that’s a good note.” Ember said, causing Twin to look around and start noticing the same things. It was somewhat strange, considering they just climbed up millions of ranks from a single game. “In that case, let’s just retire for now–”
“Retire?!” Vera gasped with some alarm, causing all of them to look at her with varying levels of annoyance. “Oh, right, yeah.” She cleared her throat and went back to being silent. Dusk wrapped an arm around her shoulders as they sat on the couch next to a coffee table. He consoled her for a moment and she decided to hide her face in his collarbone.
“So, yes, let’s go home for the day and then come back with a fresh start.” Ember said when everyone was back down to the conversation.
“Sounds like a good idea, bro.” Dusk said as he kept his arms around Vera and rubbed her shoulder as she tried her best not to be embarrassed. The rest of them nodded to him as they began to gather their things.
Midnight went to Vera and held her hand as she lifted her up from the couch. Dusk nodded his thanks to his older sister and got up as well. He went over to the rainbow haired unicorn and waved as she looked up at him, a little surprised.
“Hey, I just needed to talk to you for a second, if you had a minute.” The bat pony said and she smiled at him with a bright expression.
“Sure, what’s going on?” Prisma asked as he gave her a bit of an uneasy smile.
“Well, I noticed there was a bit of uneasiness here and I wanted to tell you,” He sighed. “Yeah, Midnight…” He looked over to see she was walking with Vera, who seemed much more in a perky mood. “She can be a lot. Take it from me, I’ve not only lived with her for my entire life, but also have been in a gaming group with her for almost a decade now. We must have broken up the group and renamed ourselves like seven times now.”
“Oh, well, I don’t want there to be any animosity between us. I really think it’s not a good idea to talk bad behind someone’s back when you’re supposed to be on the same team. You know what I mean?” She put on as big of a smile as she could.
“She’s kind of a bitch.” Dusk gave her a sidelong glance with a knowing grin.
“Yeah, kind of a bitch.” She finally admitted as she put a hand to her t-zone and pinched a bit. Prisma Silver gave a big sigh. “I tried really hard not to say anything but I’m supposed to be the leader here and she didn’t really seem interested in letting me have the role.”
“She’s good with it, she just needs to know what it really means to follow someone else’s orders and work as a team that she isn’t in charge of.” Dusk said as he waved to Twin and Ember as they waved to him and left. “I’ll definitely be talking to her tonight. Don’t you worry, I’ll try and get her to work with a better team mentality.” The gray haired purple batpony said as he combed his fingers through his hair and Prisma smiled at him.
“Thank you.” She said, looking at her watch and sighing. “I suppose I should get going. My moms are going to have me over tonight. They want to hear all about my first day with my new team.” She lifted her fingers up a bit and gave him jazz hands. “Whoo…”
“It’ll get better.” Dusk said with some semblance of reassurance. This made her purse her lips a bit and nod. “Yeah, it’ll get better.” He said, trying to make sure it wasn’t him he was trying to convince.
—--------
The real problem with holding out on sex for the first part of your life until you were nineteen was that all of it came back to bite you in the end. At nineteen, their libido was at critical mass and needed to be sated every single chance they got. Being childhood friends and having such obvious tension for so many years meant that sex was all but assured as soon as they got home.
The ice blue unicorn bounced on top of Ember, his cock all the way inside of her as she went down to the base and began to grind her pelvis against his. She leaned down and kissed him, their tongues intertwining as he began to pump against her, causing Twin to moan into his mouth.
“Are you sure you want to try a threesome?” Twin whispered to him as she reached back and began to grip his balls in her hand and squeeze gingerly. He grunted a yes to her. “Still not sure who with?” He grunted a no as she gripped him harder and caused him to twitch inside of her.
His phone began to ring, causing him to give a great sigh. It didn’t really disturb him but it was still a distraction he didn’t need. Then he gave her a strange look as she climbed off of him, his erection still firmly in her grasp. “Answer it.” Said Twin, nodding toward his phone on the floor next to the bed. With an incredulous look, she nodded toward it once again and he reached over the side of the mattress, picking up his phone. As he pressed the green button, she kept sucking him and it suddenly became clear what her motives were.
“Hello?” Ember answered, wincing a little bit as he bit back a groan from the back of his throat.
“Um, hi, this is Ember Wing?” A female voice asked on the other side of the line.
“Yeah, can I help you?” He asked in his courtesy business voice as he felt fingertips trace lines over his scrotum. His ball sack hardened to her touch and brought a smile up to her face as she made his cock into her mustache and gave it little licks along the side of the shaft.
“Yes, hi, my name is Night Coder, and I’m a friend of a friend of a friend, if you can follow that.” She said, making him lift an eyebrow at her from across the phone line. “Can we talk on video phone? I have a few things I was wanting to show you.
“Oh, now’s not the greatest time.” He said as he eyed his girlfriend, who was now attempting to deepthroat him, and not doing the greatest job. “But what is this pertaining to?”
“Well, your friend’s friend told me that you were taking classes and wanting to code a game for the Cobalt VR2, but you were wanting it in the style of the–”
“Neptune 5? Yeah, who told you that?” Ember asked as Twin began to pump her mouth over his penis and he almost made her stop, but he knew that she wouldn’t. His hooves ground against the bedsheets and it was taking a lot of willpower to stop himself from gasping for breath. “Nevermind, when do you want to meet?”
“Oh! Really?” Her voice was incredulous, almost shocked but she cleared her throat. “Um, could we meet tomorrow?”
“Yeah, yeah! How does nine thirty sound? We’ll have– lunch.” He tried to make his voice not sound strained.
“Are you working out right now?” She asked and he began to nod.
“Yes, totally got the curls going right now. Getting swole and all that. I’ll meet you at the Dotted Line Cafe. How’s that sound?” Ember asked, his voice only growing more breathless as Twin Tips got better at giving a wondrous blowjob. Now her sizeable tits were around his shaft and her mouth put enough suction pressure on his head to rival lower sea levels.
“Sounds great! Thanks! I’ll be there!” Night said as she heard him. “Take it easy, though, you sound like you’re about to pop a vessel.” She said as she giggled a little. “Anyway, seeya then!”
“Yeah, seeya then!” He said as he finally hung up the phone. “Wow, you won’t be– oh! Fuck!” Ember said as he arched his back a little and pressed his cock up higher through her bust and let out a jet of semen into her mouth, followed by a bigger wad and another. She drank greedily as he shivered and her tongue ran trails around his urethra.
“Can I come along?” She asked as her tits continued to bob up and down on his length.
“Yeaahhhh… sure…” He looked down at her bright blue nipples as they bounced in front of his eyes. She giggled.
The Equestrian Gaming League
Vera couldn’t go home after such an abysmal performance. One moment, she felt like herself and was all ready for action. The next moment, she was curled up in the fetal position, wishing she wasn’t there. Such embarrassment and insecurities were going to be the death of her. So, where did that leave her on a fine night like that night? Neon Power, of course! The arcade when arcades were resurrected after a long and untimely death was her solace from many of her troubles, especially when Dusk and Midnight had their little spats and stopped talking to each other.
It didn’t matter the order of birth, Vera was always seen as the middle child. Any time they were on two opposing sides, it was always up to her to join forces with one of them and she just couldn’t do it. She went silent and decided to go play somewhere else, away from her siblings so that she didn’t need to feel the pressure. It was always so stressful being in a team with them. Here she thought everything would be different now that they were in the Knights of Chaos, but no, it was just someone else who opposed Midnight and more people to take more sides.
She didn’t think about any of that when she went to one of the classic game cabinets to play one of her favorite beat em ups. Battle Bash had to be her favorite game out of any of them. It had a small cult following behind it, but she never liked its fanbase. They were all game purists and thought that it was the perfectly little angel of a system when it really wasn’t. She loved it while also being able to admit its flaws. It was more just for the nostalgia, and she was perfectly comfortable with that. She couldn’t make it to the end of the game by herself either, mostly relying on her siblings, otherwise she would die at level 5, and she was perfectly comfortable with that too. She worked the joystick and pressed the big red, blue and yellow buttons all the same.
This time, though, she must have been off her usual talent, because she found herself way low on health at level 3. Her big, blue, muscular pegasus thug wasn’t performing like he normally did and she found herself getting distracted by her thoughts. She sighed as the continue countdown sprang up. She dropped her hands to her sides and dipped her chin down to her chest.
“You out of bits?” A hand came up beside her, one with brown fur and two round golden coins. The purple bat pony looked over to see that the one it was attached to was not a pony or a griffon, but more a mixture of the two. She blinked as the strange girl offered her the coin. The newcomer wore a black shirt with a band that she had never heard in her life. Who was Green Salamy?
“Uhhh, no, but I won’t turn you down.” Vera reached up and took one of the bits and put it in, while the griffon pony mix put hers in the slot next to it. Now there were two big muscular ponies beating up everything in sight. “Thanks.” She said, her cheeks quite red.
Vera couldn’t help but notice that the newcomer’s tits her huge, bulging from her shirt that had a cherry pie on it with a gigantic chainsaw sticking out of it with “Green Salamy” splattered in the cherry sauce beneath it. Apparently Chainsaw Cherry was the name of one of their albums. She had a beak and a white feathered head while the rest of her body was lion-like, just like a griffon, but she had hooves and a pony tail. She couldn’t help but love her orange hair in a ponytail as it matched her actual pony tail.
“For someone who’s staring at me, you sure are doing well on this game.” She said, causing Vera’s breath to catch in her throat as her face went beet red. She stared at the screen as she broke out in a sweat. “Hey, I’m okay with it. At least you’re playing with me.” The strange girl said as they began the boss fight against the giant bartender. “I’m Tessa.” She said to break the awkward silence that stretched out afterward.
“Oh, I’m Vera.” She said in a small voice. She was a few inches shorter than Tessa, and she could tell she was pretty good at the game cabinet. Normally, the younger crowd was on the VR stations and were absolutely awful with the classic controls. “What…”
“What am I? A hippogryph. My dad is a pony and my mom is a griffon.” She decided not to be forthcoming with the fact that her other mother is a shark pony, she figured the hippogryph part was already hard enough to chew.
“Oh, no, I was going to ask what Green Salamy is?” She asked, looking back down at her shirt.
“I like one of their songs and it’s not even on the album the shirt came from. I just really like this shirt.” Tessa admitted as their characters started beating people up in space in the game. This made Vera chuckle a little bit but then stop as Tessa gave her a sidelong glance and she blushed a little bit. “What brings you here?” The hippogryph asked, then cursed as two guys got her surrounded.
“Troubles.” Vera said, causing Tessa to hum her understanding. “They’re mind troubles, granted, but after a while, I just get tired of my sister acting like a total…” She thought of the best word.
“Cunt?” Tessa finished for her, causing Vera to snort and try and stifle a laugh so she could concentrate on playing the game. She tried not to nod at the word, but it was very apt when describing her sister, as much as she loved her.
After the little laughing session, they were silent as their little game representations plowed through armies of big muscly thugs and scantily clad mares with whips and chains. The 90’s sure weren’t afraid to stereotype ponies.
“You’re not offended, are you?” Tessa asked as they started beating up the fetish women with the leather bikinis. Vera shook her head, shrugging.
“Not that I fantasize about these women every time I make it to this level.” Vera said, giving her a sidelong glance, her cheeks going a bit red once again.
“Oh, no, of course not. That’d be ridiculous.” Tessa said as she glanced over at Vera to see she was looking at her again. The bat pony quickly looked back at the screen. “You’re imagining me in those outfits, aren’t you?”
“No comment.” Her cheeks deepened their flush as she tried to hide her meek smile. It was Tessa’s turn to snort.
—--------
Ember and Twin sat across from two pegasi, both of them were eerily similar. Both sported very dark blue fur and reddish hair. Night Coder’s hair was more of a hot pinkish red while Firewire’s hair was more of a dark reddish hue. Both of them had their laptops out in front of them, along with a smaller laptop and several notes in several journals with papers sticking out of each of their pages. The developers were very quietly going over their notes, speaking silently among themselves.
The waiter came by with a tray of drinks. Two black coffees and two other caffeinated drinks with annoyingly long names and ingredients. As they took their drinks, Night Coder put on her cheesiest smile while Firewire gave her a puzzled look.
“Alright, well, thank you for your patience.” Night said, her hair was disheveled and her gamer jacket had patches from not only her favorite gaming franchises, but also her favorite bands. Her favorite games ranged from Demon Hoof to BloodCount. Her favorite bands ranged from Two Lost Ponies to Steam Horse. She took deep breaths and her wings wiggled a little bit as she thought for a moment, then spoke once again. “First of all, I subscribed to your channel and I’ve watched a lot of your playthroughs. It’s kind of how I know that you want to get into game development.”
Ember nodded, his eyebrows raising a bit as he sipped his coffee, which he adorned with cream and sugar. Twin wondered if any of them knew that during some of his more recent playthroughs, she was giving him a blowjob from below the camera’s view. She decided to say nothing.
“So, we all know that BloodCount has not had a game in development since the failed sequel for the Neptune 5. BloodCount 7 didn’t really take off and was cancelled. I think there were a few rough demos for it leaked to the public, but we got the general idea.” Night said as she turned the computer around to show off the Slideshow she’d made using a few sketches. Now they were sketches of wretched demons, and even a very rough sketch of a winged demon woman with a crown on her head. “Well, we decided that The Death Machine should take up where BloodCount left off, to some extent.”
“You…” Ember stammered his words a little bit. “You have the rights to make a BloodCount game?”
“Not exactly.” Firewire said, gaining everyone’s attention. “We have been in talks with the publisher who owns the rights, and we are trying to get them to license us the intellectual property, but they are being rather stingy. What we’re hoping for on your front is not only an extra hand in development—”
“But also a bit of public relations boost to get some notice.” Twin Tips finished for him as she sipped her sweet ice coffee drink through her straw with a knowing nod. “Not a bad train of thought.”
Firewire and Night looked at one another and neither of them could honestly argue with that assessment. There was a long moment of silence between them that seemed to stretch on for minutes when it was actually just around twenty seconds. Then Fire cleared his throat and nudged the awestruck Night from her silent contemplation.
“Oh! Right, so we were wondering if you were interested in creating a VR BloodCount!” She asked, then picked up some of the concept art, only for the stack of papers it was under to slide down to the floor as he took it from her. She cursed and started to pick up papers as he looked over the sketches.
There were drawings of faceless ponies wielding broadswords, vampire creatures, zombie ponies stitched together into huge, malformed monstrosities and werecats all sketched onto just two sheets of paper, front and back. Some were simple doodles while others seemed to have quite a bit of detail put into them.
“Who drew these?” Ember asked.
“Oh, I have a friend from college who took a bit of interest in this project.” Night said as she continued to drink her caffeinated beverage. That’s when Ember looked at her hands to see that they were actually shaking. They weren’t out of control but they definitely had a bit of a tremor.
“Are you a little nervous?” Ember Wing asked, making Night pause and swallow a large drink of her ice coffee.
“I’m actually just running on caffeine and willpower at this point. Game development doesn’t exactly have appointed hours of operation.” She said, seeing that both Twin and Ember wore worried expressions. “It’s fine. It’s only been forty eight hours. Who needs sleep, am I right?”
“Fifty hours for me.” Fire said, causing both of them to blink. “Yeah, a little extra help in this game development would be appreciated. We’ve got the engine working just fine and we even have a few of the setting details and models generated, but we’ve still got a long way to go.”
“Okay, well, first of all. I have a bit of a dedicated team to run myself.” Ember said, visibly seeing both of them pause and pinpointing the moment where both of their hearts sank into their stomachs. “So I can actually bring in a few more hands to help on this. We have a sketcher that could probably draw up a few more concept arts for you on this. I don’t know how she feels about vampires and monsters but there’s no harm in asking.”
“Wait, you’re serious?” Night Coder asked.
“He better be, because I want in on this.” Twin Tips said as she finished her drink and set it aside.
Both of them eyed her, a bit incredulous. “Are you a coder?” Fire asked.
“Not exactly, but she has access to a motion capture setup.” Ember said, causing both of their brains to break at the same time. “And I guarantee you will not find anyone more enthusiastic or capable.”
Both of the blue pegasi gazed at the couple as they thought about all of this discussion’s implications. After five months of coding, neither of them were even close to where they wanted to be with the development. Now, they ask one pony for help and they get just about every prayer they ever wanted answered.
“If that’s not acceptable, I understand, of course.” Ember began to say, causing both developers to nearly jump out of their seats with their hands up.
“No! That’s completely acceptable!” They both began to talk over one another as they reached for his hand to shake it.
“Welcome aboard!” Twin said with a big bright smile on her face. “Can I go sleep now?”
—----------
“So, how did your little talk go?” Prisma asked Dusk as the two of them sat at a round bar table. It was lit by a large kerosene lantern. The tavern was dimly lit all over and the night sky showed an unparalleled cascade of stars, along with an ever deepening horizon of purple as the sun gave its last peek before settling completely. Dusk was clad in a dark gray trench coat, which went quite well with his dark purple fur and his silverish gray hair. The cream colored unicorn sat across from him with a tall bottle of whiskey at her side and two shot glasses between them. The biggest light in the room was a steadily roaring fire in the fireplace and the tables around them were scant with other ponies.
“About as well as you might think.” Dusk said as he poured them both another drink and they downed them after a little click of glasses between them. “She’s still certain that you’re delusional and she was just doing what was best for the team and blah blah blah, I’m sure you get the idea.” Dusk said as he rolled his eyes.
Prisma was dressed in a black jacket with a white button-up shirt. Her modest breasts were bulging from beneath the shirt as the jacket held tight against her chest. She didn’t look surprised in the least. Her dark brown boots made jingling noises as the spurs spun a little, shifting in her seat. “Well, I don’t know exactly how to approach that situation and I’m a little tired of thinking about it right now. So, one thing I have been wondering is how is Grem?”
“Mom? She’s alright. Still busy with royal affairs and making sure stuff is going alright in the Ranchtown government and whatever. How about your moms?” Dusk asked, pouring her another drink.
“The same, pretty much. Kind of weird how similar our parents are in their jobs. Now, here I am trying to chisel out my own business through multimedia outlets. Beyond this team, the best thing I have are a few Hooftube shows and three podcasts that are popular… enough.” Prisma sighed and took another shot. “I can’t really explain how much I need this to be a win. So far, we’re making some headlines, but the point is that it needs to keep up.”
“Kay, well, it looks like we went from one stressful subject to another. So, how about we talk about something that’s not so stressful?” Dusk suggested as she downed her drink in one gulp once again.
“Well, I’m all ears. What do you have that’s not so stressful? The high level clan that’s after us or the fact that our team won the day but were still pessimistic about our chances in the EGL?” That’s when she was interrupted in her train of thought. She looked down to see that his hands were gripping both of hers. The way his fingers slid onto hers and held onto her made her heart begin to race as she looked up at him with deepening red cheeks.
“I mean, there is the other reason I wanted to have a nice virtual evening with you.” Dusk said as she continued to blue and look away.
“You did seem adamant about meeting me here on such a nice…” She cleared her throat a little bit as her fingers began to curl around his hands as well. She looked out at the waning light as the stars and the moon began to become visible over the horizon. “Sunset outside.”
“You almost said it.” Dusk said as he snickered a little bit and she snorted.
“Yeah, you wish.” She looked off to the side, her expression becoming worrisome. “I just don’t know if we should be doing something like this. You know I take my professional career very seriously and mixing it with my private life just seems like it could be a problem somewhere down the line.” Despite saying this, her hands began to wander over his as her fingertips traced over his knuckles and their digits became intertwined with one another.
“If you think we should set some boundaries starting out, we could do that.” He said as the barmaiden came by and picked up the empty Amber Cat bottle, along with the two glasses. “You know, just to make sure this is the direction we want to go.”
“You know, you talk differently to me than you do Ember. Is there a reason for that?” Prisma said, causing him to smirk a little bit and look off to the side. “I’m not saying I mind, by the way. You have this inflection like you want to impress me.” She said as she began to look into his eyes, dreamy and full of wonder as he snickered a little.
“Is it working?” He asked and they suddenly noticed that they were leaning a little more over the table toward one another.
“Oh, well, you said something about boundaries. We should set those. Yes, I think boundaries are good starting out.” Prisma said, trying to go back to her more orderly, professional tone, but he noticed that dream-like tone of hers kept going as she gazed at him through the lantern light.
“Okay, then I think we should keep the kisses to an acceptable level. So, we can keep them more along these lines.” His fingers ran through her rainbow mane and pressed his lips against hers, causing her to give a tiny yip of surprise. It took no time for her to melt into the kiss and her eyes to remain half opened. It was a moment before he broke the kiss and she released a breath that was just short of steam in its heat. “I think a kiss like this may be a bit too much.” He pressed his lips against hers again, this time making her moan into his mouth as his tongue began to press against hers.
Her heartbeat was pulsing so loud, it was all she could hear. All she could see were his eyes as they opened and closed intermittently. His kiss was well perfectly mingled with their tongues playing and rubbing along each others. His fingers combed through her multicolored locks and her hand ran along his brow to his silver mane.
She gasped as their kiss broke again and both of their breaths began to fill the air between them. Her eyes flicked all over his face as he smiled at her and their muzzles pressed against one another. The purple bat pony started to grasp for words, trying to think of anything to say. Yet, she didn’t seem like she cared to such a thing as she leaned her forehead onto his, her horn resting against his head as her hands went down his neck, caressing him.
“So, those boundaries–” He began to say and she tossed the table to the side, causing the lantern to knock against the floor and roll away.
“No.” She said and Prisma pulled him down to the floor behind the overturned table. The other ponies in the tavern gave them a sidelong glance, but nothing more as they saw they weren’t turning over the table to shoot any of them. They caressed one another as their blood ran hot and their lips couldn’t seem to stay apart.
They only stopped when the door to the tavern slammed open, and the most grotesque monstrosity stepped in with two huge six shooters. The skeletal zombie creature with the black, rancid cowboy hat began to fire his two magnums into the other players as they too began to knock their tables over for cover and fire back at him. The evil, undead entity roared as bullets careened into his dead flesh as he approached his assailants.
“Is that the bounty for his mission?” Prisma asked, and Dusk nodded, kissing her for a moment longer before she pulled away. “Shouldn’t we help them?”
“I don’t care.” Dusk admitted, kissing her once again and she delved deep into yet another makeout session.
—---------
“And just what have you two been up to?” Midnight said. The tall, purple maned bat pony put her hands on her hips as both Dusk and Prisma walked into the lobby of their headquarters. “It’s been fifteen minutes and we were supposed to be doing practice.”
“Oh, come off it, Middy.” Dusk said as he got to the fridge and pulled out a soda, popping it open. He turned to see Prisma sat down on the closest edge of the couch while Midnight stood in the middle of the living area. Mila was between them, on the side of the couch opposite of the two. “We were playing Gravestone Valley VII.” He said as he sipped his drink. “We were already practicing. No one said we needed to always practice as a team. Ember and Twin aren’t–” Just then, both of them happened to walk in.
“Hey, guys.” Twin said as they came in. Then they noticed the somber faces on all three of their comrades. Dusk sat beside Prisma on the couch while Midnight sat cross legged on one of the larger loveseats. All of the seats faced the center of the room like a pow wow. “Sorry we’re… late?” She said as she surveyed the room and was unsure if she should say anymore.
“Hi!” Mila said, being the only one with a bright smile. The two of them waved back to her, and she looked on either side of her to see that no one was even attempting to perk up.
“Alright,” Ember said as he rubbed one hand down his face. “What’s wrong? Something’s obviously up.”
“Midnight is having a few problems passing on the title of leadership.” Prisma said, drawing a sour look from the tall bat pony, who huffed.
“I led the trio for years and we became one of the greatest teams on the net. We took several contest victories without complaint.” Midnight said, drawing a scoff from Dusk. She darted her eyes at him and he tried his very best to not start laughing immediately. “Something you’d like to say, Mr. Dusk?”
“Yeah, we won a lot of victories together, but saying there were no complaints would be a complete and total lie.” He told her, trying to be more sincere than he sounded mean spirited for her sake and the sake of his own well being. “You have a tendency to take point in all of the important maneuvers and save a lot of the glory for yourself when we’re supposed to be working as a team.”
“Name one incid–” Midnight began to say but he immediately interrupted.
“Dragon Helm III, the Titan Crest raid when we were fighting the frost giants. You literally sacrificed Vera so that you could take the lead kill and she took on three others.” He said, noticing she had no words of retort. “Then there was Golden Bullet, when you used me as bait. Xero Shot 6 and Zombslaught 4! You have a bit of a problem when it comes to hogging the spotlight and being the star player.” As he spoke, Midnight was clearly growing more and more agitated. His tone and the fact that she had no argument was growing more and more apparent.
“Midnight,” Ember cut in before the bat pony was at a boiling point. “No one is here to come after you. The fact of the matter is that you are, in fact, one of the best players here. Whether you’re better than me or Prisma is not the issue here. We’re all good at our own thing and we love that you were able to lay down your group for the team we’ve made. The point is that this is not the place to let pride get in the way. We all want the same thing, and that’s to become the best team that we can be and make some sponsors happy so we can do what we love and get paid for it. We still have two weeks to get our clan up and running and there’s a lot of work to do.” Ember explained, looking at all of them. “That’s part of the reason why I wanted us all here. I wanted to make sure we all stayed on schedule and we didn’t let our little lapse yesterday get the best of us.”
“Yeah, but what lapse?” Twin asked, drawing all of their attention. “We totally stomped them.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying too!” Mila said as she sipped her coffee and set the mug on the table beside the couch. “The Tree of Dick didn’t have a chance against us.”
“That’s part of the problem.” Ember sighed, thinking about that game. “We did beat them, but we not only overestimated them a few too many times, but we also had a few rookie mistakes, especially when we let them board the ship and didn’t even have a deck team ready to intercept them immediately. We were a little slow on the mark. If it were their A-Team, we may not have won.”
Mila raised an eyebrow at this, and looked to Dusk, Prisma and Midnight. The three of them nodded their agreement.
“But that’s not the problem we’re trying to fix right now. Right now, we need to figure out this whole leadership problem and the willingness to lead others to an outright victory without letting pride get in the way.” Prisma said, as she and Midnight locked glares.
“I’ve been thinking about that as well.” Midnight said, with no shortage of a growl in her tone. “And I think we should have a contest of gameplay to determine who should hold the mantle of leadership!”
There was a long moment of silence as all of them looked at her with flat, annoyed expressions. It seemed as if she didn’t hear a word any of them said at all and was still determined to have some sort of arrogant mark of superiority. Prisma sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Fine, what sort of contest did you have in mind?” Prisma asked, drawing a sinister grin from the tall, shapely bat pony who stood up and pointed downward at her.
“A series of tests to see who is victorious! I will not be the one who chooses! That will go to the rest of the group.” She said, looking toward the others. “They can decide what we play to compete. Whoever wins the majority of the games will be crowned the leader of the group. “What say you, Prisma?”
“Well, aside from the outright over dramatic tone, I guess I can accept.” Prisma rose up from the couch, drawing a sigh from Dusk beside her. “Mila? Dusk? What should we play?” She said, looking back toward the couch.
“I really am not all that interested. I just want to get to the training so we can kick those sorry assholes back to the stone age.” Mila admitted, then looked over toward Dusk, who shrugged.
“I don’t care either. This is dumb.” Dusk leaned his head back. Before Midnight could say anything to either of them, though, Ember spoke.
“I will choose the games. I have a few in mind already and we can go ahead and get started right now, if you’d like.” This surprised all of them, turning back to him. “I’ll choose a series of tests for the both of you and I will determine which of you is the victor. This will not be in the parameters of the game, as I will have final say. If you accept me as the judge, then there will be consequences if either of you attempt to cheat or argue with any of my decisions. Do you both agree?”
“Yes!” Both Prisma and Midnight said at the same time, then looked at one another. Their excited, fired up energy began to boil to the top.
“Alright, well, there’s one last thing we need to discuss before we do that. We’re thinking of getting into the game development business!” Ember grinned, drawing some very surprised looks.
“Game development?” Prisma asked, looking at him with eyes of wonder. “You mean those people that you met today?” She asked, and he was nodding with his grin stretching wider. “They were legit?”
“Yeah, they knew their business, for sure.” Twin smiled and nodded. “We talked to them a lot about their new game and it sounded like it was right up Ember’s alley. We also had a job for Vera…” She said, and that prompted everyone to look around the room for the blonde bat pony. “Speaking of which…”
“Yeah, did you text her yet?” Dusk asked Midnight, who was already getting out her phone.
“Last time I checked, she didn’t even look at my text message.” She came to the screen and gazed at it with disappointment palpable in her expression. “I’ll give her a call, she’s probably lost in another book or something.” She said as she clicked her number.
—---------
“Oh, they’re so beautiful.” Vera said as she uncovered Tessa’s breasts. She was straddled on top of her on her own bed in her room. The griffon-like creature smiled at her as she brushed her light brown and blue hair off of her white feathered face. Her breasts were a bright tan and her areolas were a darker shade of brown. Her nipples were inverted into horizontal slits but the darker area around them were bumpy and aroused as the smaller bat pony began to caress them.
“Suck on them.” Tessa whispered as she lifted her shirt up more and picked up her breasts more to angle them more toward Vera. She complied and began to run her tongue over the very sensitive area.
The two of them had the night of their lives after Vera offered to take the hippogryph home. They ended up at The triplet’s house when both of her siblings were doing other things. After a night of discovering new music, new movies and video games, the two of them spooned and cuddled the night away. As soon as Tessa woke up, she began to kiss Vera's cheek and down her neck, drawing her more and more to her.
“I’ve never done this before.” Vera admitted as she looked toward the hippogryph’s face. “Have you?”
“I’ve had friends to fool around with, but I don’t want to fool around with you.” Tessa said, drawing Vera closer to her and pressing her beak against her snout.
“Y–you don’t?” The purple pony with the long blonde hair immediately began to worry a little bit, like she’d offended her or that she didn’t want to do this anymore. Her worries were laid to rest as Tessa began to kiss her on the lips, causing their hearts to beat even faster.
“No, I want to savor you.” Tessa’s wings began to wrap partways around her and their wings joined together at the edges like their own little tent. Their mouths began to trace each other and Vera’s heart fluttered as she felt her tongue lick against her lips. “You’re a delicate little flower and I want to feel you all over me.” She placed the pony’s hands on her very large breasts again and instructed her without words to squeeze them tight.
Then Vera’s phone went off and both of them slumped with a sigh. She picked up her phone and looked with wide eyes. “Oh no!” She whined and gave an even more exasperated sigh. “It’s already ten thirty! I’m so late!” Vera looked at her phone, then down at the hippogryph, who still had her huge tits in full view.
“Hey, relax.” Tessa said as she grabbed her by the wrist, stopping her from getting off of her. The warmth between their pevises was still reaching high levels, but the hippogryph was enjoying it too much to let it end like that. “Just let me see that for a second.” She said as she took the phone from Vera and began to type on her touch screen. The bat pony’s cute worried face made Tessa smile as she typed and sent the message. “There, you have a good thirty minutes now.”
“What did you send them?” She asked, taking back her phone as it was handed to her.
“I said you woke up late and aren’t feeling well, so you’ll take a few moments to get yourself right.” She giggled as Vera began to blush deeply.
“I don’t… like to lie.” She said, looking at Tessa, who shrugged.
“You didn’t. I did. So you’re in the clear. I need to go to class in a few hours anyway, so I won’t take up too much more of your time.” She said this as she rose up and began to lie Vera back as she put on a wide eyed expression. “But I want to eat you first.” This made the bat pony gasp.
“Y-y-y-y-you what?” She trembled, but the bird-like girl could only laugh a bit to the side, keeping a hand to her beak so she didn’t burst out. She moved out from under Vera, and took a moment to admire her perky white panties with the little pink polka dots. She also admired the wet spot that she had a hand in making. The two of their underoos pressed together made for quite the dampening.
“Do you trust me, Vera?” She whispered to her as she got close to her face and gazed deep into her bright blue eyes with her red irises. As the purple pony looked back at her, her heart was racing and her breath was drawing back and forth in shallow spurts.
“Y-yes.” She finally said, and that was when the hippogryph hooked a finger over her tiny pink and white panties, beginning to pull them down. She didn’t even need to see those beautiful pussylips that were partially visible between the outer labia. Without even thinking, she lifted her butt up to allow her underwear to come off smoothly. Then she watched as Tessa eyed them, grinned at her, and flicked them away onto her floor.
“Now, I am going to eat you.” She said in a seductive, deep tone that made Vera melt. “I am going to taste you and make you all mine.” The bare-chested hippogryph went down to her naked bottom and had her spread her legs out wide so she could see every little detail of her private area. She was drenched down there, even more so than she originally thought. Her inner and outer labia had a film of vaginal juice covering it, which glistened in what little light came into the room from the window on the other side.
“Tessa, I’ve never let anyone see me like th–OH!” She jolted up a bit as she felt her give her a big, smothering kiss, complete with a wandering tongue that tasted all over her inner pink skin. “Oh! Gods! That’s my–”
“Your what?” Tess said as she held her legs wide open and grinned up at her from the vantage of her crotch.
“Mmm-my…” Vera began to deepen her blush as she looked down at the girl who was now smelling her hormones full force.
“Say it.” Tessa said in a teasing manner, then caused the girl to yelp as she gave it a little kiss. Then she gave her vagina another kiss, this time directly on the clitoris, making her grip the bed sheets. “Say it and I’ll give you a treat.”
“My pussy!” Vera said with a deep red flush coming to her face and she began to cry out in long, gasping moans. She treated the purple girl with long lashes of her tongue and sucking on her, even giving tiny little nibbles here and there as she went. “Oh my Gods! Yes! It’s so good!”
“You like it?” Tessa asked and the wide eyed gaze, pleading her to continue was all she needed to know.
Her tongue kept working and stroking Vera’s vaginal lips, even beginning to suck on the clitoris. Her howls of pleasure only grew more pronounced and she nearly tore her bed sheets from their sides as her legs twitched uncontrollably.
“Don’t stop! Oh! Fuck! Shit! Cock! Fuck me! Yes!” It was Tessa’s turn to widen her expression as the bat pony let out a slew of curses when she was fairly certain she hadn’t said a single one the entire time she’d known her. “Yes! YES! OH YES! I’m gonna cum! Make me cum! FUCK!” The cry she let out was nearly high enough to be considered on the octave of a dog whistle as she splashed Tessa in the face with her juices and the muscles in her pussy began to spasm. Her legs wrapped around Tessa’s shoulders and shook her as they twitched.
The hippogryph was impressed with the pressure with which the bat pony squirted, but she figured it was one of her first, if not her very first real, intense orgasm. Tessa’s pony-like tail wagged from side to side as she swayed her butt in gleeful satisfaction of a job well done. The exhausted bat pony was clearly delirious with pleasure as her head rocked from side to side with her eyes halfway open. Her blonde hair was an absolute mess from grinding it into the pillow and sweat gleamed off her forehead as Tessa took a moment to wipe her face with a napkin from one of the takeout bags they had lying there.
“Seems like you liked… Vera?” Tessa asked as she crawled up to the bat pony, only to see her eyes were closed and she was now gently snoring. “Oh, my.” She giggled and pulled the cover over the two of them. Then she cuddled up close to the sleeping pony and kissed her on the cheek. “Stop making me fall in love…” Then she wrapped an arm around her and watched her sleep until she dozed off herself.
The Equestrian Gaming League
The skies shined with pink and blue intermixed and the trees produced white petals with flowers drifting along the wind from them. In the forest clearing, there stood ancient carved pillars of black stone and in the middle of them stood two figures. Prisma stood before her, wearing a tiara, a bright blue robe and various rings on her fingers as the two of them stood in a bright green, grassy field. Across from her stood Midnight in a tight, black leather tunic with hard leather shoulder pads and daggers sheathed all across her sizable chest. The tall bat pony held a long dagger in one hand and an ornate, red short sword in the other. Midnight gazed at Prisma through her mask that only showed her eyes, as the rest was covered in hardened black leather as they faced one another down.
On top of the black pillars, Mila, Vera, Dusk, Ember and Twin watched the two of them size one another up. That’s when the cat girl stood and raised her hand. She was clad in her own black chainmail armor that covered a generous portion of her body, but her dark purple leggings and plate pauldrons.
“Alright, you two ready?” She asked, as she lifted her hand, making them both go into a more concentrated fighting stance, glaring at each other. There was a long pause. So long, in fact, that the others sitting on the pillars looked to Mila with confused expressions. They were about to say something before she finally shouted, “Begin!”
“Anathematic!” Prisma shouted as she began with a large purple beam of light that came very close to blasting Midnight, who very quickly rolled out of the way. As she rolled, she released three daggers, which flew straight for the unicorn girl, who held up one hand and stopped them in midair. One sound of her voice caused them to disperse. As she did this, she noticed that Midnight was flying straight for her, both of her arms outstretched, holding two daggers ready to stab down at her. “Ignis Scutum!!” She shouted, causing a fire shield to form in front of her. As Midnight landed on it, she felt the heat and dropped to the ground with fire on her tunic.
“Hey! What the hell!?” She began to pat herself down, yelping at the fire on her. As Prisma prepared another spell, Midnight popped out of existence in front of her in a puff of smoke. The real Midnight came out from behind her with a dagger in hand, ready to stab her directly in the back. That’s when Prisma stomped her hoof into the green glade and caused a cataclysmic quake, knocking Midnight off her charge.
All of the ones on the pillar watching had to hold onto their pillars as the very ground beneath them shifted.
“So!” Ember said, catching Vera’s attention as she watched the fight with locked interest. “Where have you been, Vera? It was a cool two hours before you finally graced us with your presence.” She looked at the orange pegasus. He was clad in white platemail armor with golden etchings all across the shoulder pads and bracers.
“Oh, like I said… I wasn’t… feeling very well.” Vera said, not looking at Ember. He grinned as he saw her neck disappearing into her shoulders as she began to slouch and stoop.
“I heard you, but I’m not sure that’s all there was to it.” Ember said as they continued to watch the two ladies down there begin to create more explosions, which rocked the pillars they sat on once again.
“Yeah, sis.” Dusk said, drawing her attention. He was dressed in a green cloak with a wooden staff, vines growing all around it. “You say you weren’t feeling well, but you came into the lounge glowing like the sun. Seems like you were up to more than just being sick. Could this have something to do with the other voice I heard in your room last night? You were up pretty late.” He began to smirk as the blonde bat pony began to sweat and shiver.
“Guys, come on. Leave her alone.” Twin said as she frowned at them. Then the unicorn clad in the yellow gi suit jumped from her pillar and cartwheeled off of Ember’s, landing on Vera’s and sitting beside her with her arms wrapped around her. Vera nodded her thanks to her and leaned onto her. “She obviously doesn’t want to talk about it.” She said as all of them saw a gigantic explosion occur on the ground, once again rocking them and causing them all to sputter and yelp in surprise as the pillars shake.
Even though she got her magical shining shield up, it shattered immediately as Midnight threw three bombs into it, causing a gigantic combustion that caused Prisma to fly backward. She hit the ground, battered and bruised with her constant regeneration spell not healing her as fast as she would have liked. She cursed the fact that she didn’t have Ember or Dusk to heal her but took solace in the fact that Midnight also looked quite disheveled. The two of them stood in front of one another, their clothing in tatters and their breathing hard.
They faced each other down. Whatever plan they had was firmly in their mind as the smoke began to dissipate and Midnight got back into her fighting stance. That was when Prisma’s face went slack and her eyes widened. Then her face began to darken in a blush. Midnight saw this, and she screwed her expression up in confusion as she tilted her head to the side.
“What?” Midnight asked as she continued to try and get back into the fight, but Prisma’s face kept looking away, her cheeks flushed to a horrible degree. “What?!”
“Your…” Prisma cleared her throat. “Your boob is showing.”
“Wha…” Midnight looked down to see that her chest to see that one of her gray tits was, in fact, sticking out, leaving her darker gray nipple exposed. Before she could even react to it, Prisma thrust both of her hands forward, blasting a huge beam of frost into Midnight, causing her actions to slow tenfold. She squeaked at the sudden freeze as it solidified her body almost completely. Before the effects went away, Prisma stomped the ground in front of her, causing a gigantic shock wave to wave across to the batpony, knocking her out with 1 HP remaining.
“The winner!” Mila said as she stood up with both of her hands in the air. “Good work, Prisma!”
The rest of them clapped as Midnight got up from the ground with a snarl on her face and her arms shaking in fury. She wanted to yell at her for the dirty trick but was so embarrassed, she kept to herself.
“So, Vera–” Ember began before the purple bat pony burst out.
“I didn’t get licked!” She squeaked, causing all of them to widen their eyes and gaze at her. The moment of silence stretched for quite some time before Ember cleared his throat and Twin patted her back, petting her mane as she brought her back into an amorous hug.
“Right, so anyway, I was needing all of you to come help with this new project we’re doing on this game creation, but I was needing you most of all.” Ember said, drawing a strange look from the blonde bat. “That’s right, they’re needing someone to do concept art for their new game.”
“Concept art? What kind of game–” Vera began to ask before she heard an exasperated growl come from down below.
“I knew we shouldn’t have chosen Dragon Helm 3! I should have known you’d cheat!” Midnight snarled at Prisma, who scowled back at her.
“Cheat?! I didn’t cheat! You just have on flimsy armor! And that’s coming from a sorceress! It’s not my fault your tits are so big your shirt can’t hold them!” Prisma pointed straight back at her and the two of them gave each other death glowers.
“Okay!” Ember said as he got between the two of them. The paladin sighed as the two of them continued to glare each other down, even when he got in the middle and he gave them both glares of his own. “That’s enough of that. There was no cheating and quite honestly, I found it to be a bit of a tie.”
“What?” Both girls asked as they snapped their looks at Ember.
“Yeah, both of you were at the same level, essentially and both of you knew how to use your respective classes. So, honestly, this just proves that both of you know how to play Dragon Helm 3. I don’t know why we chose this game to begin with but I don’t see how it proves how either of you can lead a group. Perhaps we should have done some raids or something but we really don’t have enough people for that. So, let’s find another game that encapsulates the role of a leader.” He held up a finger, stopping either of them from speaking further. “Hold it. That will have to wait. We’re already late for our next appointment and I think our guests have already arrived and set themselves up.”
“Guests? What guests?” Midnight asked and drew looks from all of them present.
—------------
They’d been working together for around two years at that point. Video games and computer technologies were the push that brought them both together and the call to the gaming platforms was a strong one. Even though servers were his original profession, Firewire began to study up on gaming engines and found that he had a knack for creating and tweaking them to do what he wanted. More than that, he knew their capabilities and knew what would be too much for them to handle. Virtual reality game engines became something of a passion for his as they started to take hold of the mainstream gaming public and he found himself flying with the new technology.
Then Night Coder came along and saw potential in his gaming engines. Virtual reality games were still taking shape and she was becoming more fluent in the C# language as time went on. The two pegasi found that they not only looked quite similar in their fur and mane shades, but they also showed a similar affinity for games and creation. She could code characters, design freely and she knew how to shape the game’s engine to suit her needs within its confines. Night Coder also knew how to make a plan and stick with it while also improvising as needed. Firewire was fine with creating characters and obstacles with interesting levels, but Night excelled at it.
They started small, doing things like making a stick figure game that was simple yet practically made like a small adventure game with badly drawn backgrounds that were vast enough to look out upon. Then they created a low resolution ninja game where you had to defeat as many clone ninjas as you could before taking four hits. They were quite popular on gaming media sites and sold rather well. The two of them called themselves Double Blue and created three small games with moderate success. The residuals from those three small titles gave them enough to where they could live in moderate comfort and keep the lights on while they began development of their magnum opus.
Long hours in front of multiple computers and code screens took its toll on them. Soon, the truck loads of pizza and boat loads of caffeine were not enough to satisfy their cravings of freetime.
“But we’re in their lodge, what if they walk in?” Night Coder said as Firewire slid her shirt off, exposing both of her breasts as he clutched them in his hands, pinching her hot pink nipples. She began to say something else but then she felt his mouth on her neck, licking her and causing her to break out in gooseflesh.
“Then we should put on a proper show for them.” Fire whispered into her ear, causing her to melt into his arms. His hand trailed down into her pants and clutched her pretty pink quim, squeezing juice from it and causing her to squeak. “Besides, they were still deep into their little pvp scuffle.” He said, massaging her on two spots with both hands.
“But what are you going to do with all of that cum?” She purred toward him as her hand reached back and clutched his ridiculously hard phallus, stroking him through his pants. “Don’t tell me you’re going to waste– OH!”
He tugged her trousers down to her knees and pushed her over into the chair with her ass on full display in front of him. The blue pegasus mare fell as a willing victim as the male blue pegasus decided that they should probably hurry. He wasted no time in getting his horse cock into her and pounding her butt with his pelvis as his erection reached all the way inside her wet, wanting pussy. She was forced to bite the back of the chair to keep from moaning too loudly.
Night Coder had just had a shower before they left and he had plowed her pussy while she was there as well. The two of them had the appetites of pubescent high schoolers, despite having graduated college. Just as she did in the shower, she backed her ass into him, making his cock beat against her cervix, stretching her pussy tunnel with his wondrous girth.
“I don’t know, maybe I should pull ou–” Before he could even finish the sentence in his breathless voice she growled at him and backed into him completely, making sure there was no escape. Night felt his cock grind against her insides as she felt her juices cover his entire length. That’s when he began to pound her vaginal tube without relent and making her cover her mouth with both hands as he started to pulse huge wads of cum into her.
“Yes,” She hissed under her breath and looked back toward him as he continued to fuck her and cum inside of her. “Give me your babies, fill me up!” She whimpered as she smothered her mouth onto the chair’s back once again. She felt so full as he freely covered her insides in hot white spunk. Then she pouted as he pulled out of her, letting some of his jizz leak out of her pussy hole. “You’re the worst.” She whispered to him as he started to pull his pants back up and chuckle.
“You think you could make it to the bathroom without someone noticing your ass on display?” Firewire winced as he was forced to fit his still erect penis into his jeans.
“Nope!” She grinned back at him as she pulled her underwear back up along with her pants, zipping up. “Don’t care.” He raised an eyebrow as she enjoyed the afterglow in her chair, smiling at the feeling of her thoroughly stuffed, cream filled sex organ.
That’s when the door opened and in walked Ember Wing. “Hey, guys.” The orange pegasus looked at the other two pegasi as they sat in their designated spots in the room. Firewire waved to him, innocent enough as he typed away on his computer, as did Night Coder as the two of them sat at separate desks. “How are your accommodations?” He asked as he was followed by Vera.
“This is probably the most space I have ever coded in.” She said as she continuously typed and looked between two computer screens. “And we have an entire staff on call to test our levels. I somehow think our cup runneth over.” She said as Vera began to sniff the air, making her eyes widen a bit. “So, I hear you’re quite the artist.” She smiled at the purple bat pony.
“Oh, I’m okay, I guess.” Vera said as she giggled, brushing her hair to the side of her face and eyed the sketch book that Firewire extended to her. “What kind of game engine did you make for this new Blood Count?” She asked as she picked up the 3D headset off of Firewire’s desk as he blinked at her.
“Ummm, okay, I’ll pull up the level as far as we have it now.” He said as Vera put the VR headset. As she did, there was a white room all around her field of vision. As he started loading up the game engine, blocks began to form on the walls, floor and ceiling, beginning to build a dark castle environment.
“Hope you don’t mind if I make this a two player game.” Ember said as he appeared beside Vera in the game. Both of them were in the middle of the castle’s courtyard, surrounded by stone walls, towers, and a dubious red night sky. In front of them was the main castle door that stood nearly ten feet tall, built of dark oak.
“Wow, well they certainly have the atmosphere down.” Ember said, drawing a grunt of agreement from Vera as she looked around. “Have you two built any enemies for the lev–Wow! You are totally naked.” He said as he looked at the bare butt bat pony who yelped in surprise as she realized that not only was she naked, but so was the orange pegasus, who had a long, brown cock dangling between his legs. “And wow, were your tits always that big?”
“No, they’re not this big.” Her eyes darted left and right as she covered herself with her arms. “They programmed it this way.”
“Yeah, no we didn’t.” Night Coder said with a snicker. “We didn’t have a costume set up for the player yet, and Firewire said that naked is always better than the motion capture crap suits. Sometimes, naked is better than pretty much anything.”
“Well, isn’t that a little inappropriate for a professional work environment?” Ember said as he turned away from Vera, who appreciated his decency, but also couldn’t help but stare at his long prick, which was now beginning to harden a bit. The idea that he got that way from looking at her made her cheeks flush.
“Says the guy who was getting it on with his girlfriend while he was on the phone.” Night Coder said, causing Ember’s eyes to widen. “Yeah, it was pretty obvious. I don’t think you’re very good at hiding the fact that you weren’t working out. Either someone was bouncing on your cock or you were getting slurped. It was cute that you tried, though.” Night said, causing Firewire to chuckle.
“Says the girl who has semen pooling in her vagina.” Firewire said, causing both Ember and Vera to widen their eyes even further.
“That’s fair.” She agreed.
To Vera’s surprise, not only was Ember at full mass, but she was finding herself under slick conditions between her legs. Her nipples on the fronts of her deceptively large tits were poking out, hard as pebbles.
“Alright, well to answer your question, we do have some of the classic Blood Count monsters present in this sequel. However, some of the more intricate creatures in the game are what we need an artist for. Vera, have you played Blood Count before?” Fire asked, making the bat pony nod and hold up her hand, causing an electronic pad to appear in it. She also caught wind of the fact that Ember had a full view of her tits that he labeled as FF’s.
“Yes, my brother has it on his computer and I’ve played it on there more than once.” She said as she began to sketch something on the pad. “I can do a sketch of it, and even get a bit of detail into it along with the code modifiers.” The blonde bat pony began to do her work on the tablet with the stylus.
Ember looked down in front of him to see a figure begin to take shape. At first it was just a strange looking dog figure. Then the dog figure turned into a skeleton dog. That skeletal canine began to move as if tugged on by puppet strings.
“Wait, you’re a coder?” Night asked and Vera shrugged.
“I took a few classes in a couple of coding languages. I’m not especially schooled in virtual reality coding, but it should use a lot of the third dimensional models as earlier systems, right?” Vera said as the dog began to move in a running cycle as she dragged the stylus across the screen.
“You’re seriously plugging in all of the outward info we need for a single creature. Do you know how to apply artificial intelligence?” Firewire said as he watched her input the cosmetic data, including a barking animation.
“No,” She looked at the dog, worried now.
“I can do that, no problem. You literally just did some of the hardest parts within seconds.” Night said as she took the skeleton dog and began to open its data files as they were input into the engine. “How in the hell did you do that?”
“I like making gifs.” Vera said as she waved the data pad away. “So we just go up to the castle door now?” She asked, seeming to forget that she and Ember were totally naked.
“Almost,” Night Coder said, and they could hear her typing on her keyboard. It sounded like a hummingbird slapping against the keys. “First we need to test out a few mechanics. Just kind of move around and get a feel for everything. We’re trying to test the sensitivity levels.”
That made Vera blush and widen her eyes as she glanced over at Ember’s still throbbing member. “Vera? Are you alri–” Ember was about to ask her, but she turned to him and began to run her hands over his chest and his abdomen. She was a bit shorter than he was, and looking down at her gave him a perfect view of her bust and her dark pink nipples. “Vera?” He asked, drawing a look up at her.
“S-sorry, I was just wanting to take the opportunity to…” Her cheeks were flushed as she pulled her hands away from him and looked the other way. That’s when she felt his hands begin to grasp her very large, blossoming bosom and squeezed them. She let out a soft whimper of ecstasy and put her hands over his as he did. “I-I’m sorry, I won’t tell–nnmm–Twin.” She whispered to him and he leaned over to whisper into her ear.
“I will.” He whispered and pinched both of her nipples softly, making her squeak in her bat tone. She had to stop herself from drooling. She reached back and gripped onto his long, hard shaft, squeezing it tight.
“So,” Firewire said, drawing them out of their trance. “I’m guessing that means the stimulation centers work well enough.”
Both of them muttered about how it was working just fine as they drew their hands away, trying their best to hide their extreme levels of arousal. That’s when the two of them began to move their way toward the castle’s door.
As soon as Ember pushed the doors open, Vera couldn’t help but notice that his ass went taut with the effort. As the two large castle doors swung open, there was a great hall that came into view. It was dark, aside from a few wall sconces with flickering torches. What little light there was revealed a large bat flying at them both. Both of them gasped a bit but then remembered that this was just a demo, and the bat passed through Ember harmlessly.
“Wow, that is a pretty nice looking bat. Are they all that big?” He asked and Night hummed confirmation.
“Yeah, we just didn’t want to place too many of them in the first level, so we’ve kept them rather scarce in this side of the castle. I’m going to go ahead and give you both the proper weapons. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you want.” She said as a menu popped up in front of both of them. There came three choices. The sword, the flail and the spear scrolled from left to right and both players looked at one another.
Within seconds, Ember was wielding a spear that stood just a head shorter than himself. He gave it a few test lunges and grinned at the cool jagged edge that led to the tip of the spear. Then he looked over at Vera and expected her to wield the sword, but instead she was already spinning the morning star on its thick shaft. The naked bat pony had the spiked ball on the end of a chain and suddenly felt the awesome factor of this game.
“Oh, yes! This is the flavor we needed in this game.” Vera said as she kept spinning it, switching it into her other hand as she kept spinning. As soon as she saw a floating specter coming toward her in the doorway, she lunged forward! With one swing of her spiked ball and chain, she smashed the skeletal ghost in the ragged cloak in the skull. With a huge hole in its skull, it burst apart, giving way to view a line of zombies beginning to descend the stairs.
From the side, Ember could see a werewolf coming out from the shadows in the hallway. Before the fanged monster could reach Vera, the orange pegasus jabbed his spear forward and jammed the blade into its chest. He quickly backed away as the creature swiped its massive claws toward him and he swiped his blade across its face, causing it to snarl as it was dealt massive damage from his weapon. With one more slash, he caused the monstrous wolf to go down in a heap before disappearing into pixels. He grinned as he saluted the beast with his spear in hand.
That was when he turned around and saw two minions of evil fall to Vera’s chained mace. She was already up the stairs and moving on, beautiful in her naked form as she strode past her destructive path.
“Wow, Vera, you get into this, don’t you?” Night asked as Vera faced down three acolytes at the top of the stairs that began casting fireballs, which she very quickly dodged all but one. With one swipe of her flail, she bashed one of them to the side, injuring him terribly as the undead, hooded figure fell to the floor. “If you’re feeling brave, you could try out one of our more popular games.”
“Oh, yeah?” She said as she flailed yet another one down as Ember entered the fray beside her. He blocked one of their staff from attacking her with his weapon and jabbed into his defense, stabbing his spear deep into his chest. “What game is that?” She asked as the acolyte went down, and she took down the last one remaining.
“It’s our survival horror game, The Lost Manor.” This stopped both of them in their tracks and they looked at one another.
“Wait, you have a survival horror game under your belt?” Ember asked, all the sudden, his grin began to stretch across his face.
“Yeah! You want to try it out?” Fire asked as he began to type in another program.
“Ember?” Vera asked as she saw that he was formulating something in his brain. He looked at her with a devilish smile and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“I just got a great idea…” He pulled her close and she couldn’t help but blush deep.
—-----------
Prisma flew around the race track in her bright, rainbow colored racecar with the gigantic “10” across the top and the sides, on the hood and the trunk. The round racetrack had both cars going around it, catching up to one another as Midnight drove her black muscle car, periodically firing off the nitrous oxide and blasting across the track every chance she got. As soon as she thought she was going to lap the rainbow maned unicorn, there she was revving up next to her, clutching her steering wheel tight as the two of them locked eyes through their helmets. The bat pony cursed as she shifted gears and turned as hard as she could as she hit the breaks and went into a drift. To her surprise, there was the rainbow racer drifting her way into something of a mirror image. The two of them kept a close proximity as they curved through the entire race track as if they were reenacting an action movie car chase.
As they drifted through yet another curve in the track, however, they locked bumpers. At the speed they were going, they began to swerve hard!
“Hey! You bitch! You took up the track again!” Prisma shouted as she tried to regain control.
“Me?! You should have gotten the fuck out of my way!” Midnight shouted as the two of them faced one another in a scene that seemed to go into instantaneous slow motion. The fronts of their cars interlocked suddenly, and collided hard! The two of their cars flipped up and sideways, causing them both to screech in terror as they began to bash into the pavement. Tires flew, glass shattered and metal twisted as the two cars hit the asphalt with sparks flying in every direction.
“Whoo!” Dusk hooted from the stands, clapping his hands as Twin sat beside him and pinched the bridge of her muzzle with a sigh.
“So, the crash is your favorite part?” Mila asked as she sat behind him, popping another nacho in her mouth.
“No, I just like watching them make left turns.” Dusk said with a chuckle as the two racers got out of their complete wrecks. The two cars reformed beside each other as they stood in the middle of the track.
“You did it again!” Both players shouted at the same time as they pointed at each other, scowling into each other with a fury.
“Yeah, because this never gets old or anything!” Twin said from the stands, drawing both of their attention. “Alright, I’ve had just about enough of this little scuffle the two of you have been going through and if this continues, I’m about ready to call it quits for this team!”
This drew everyone’s attention as they gazed up at the unicorn with the ice blue fur and multicolored, beautiful mane as she huffed, sputtering. “If this is what we have to look forward to for the rest of our time as a team, then we may as well stop all of this and cut our losses. It’s not worth it when our leadership is always up in arms and arguing over strategy and petty squabbles that should be so simple to solve when cooler heads will prevail over us!”
Obviously, her words cut deep because all the sudden Midnight and Prisma looked at each other, speechless. That’s when Twin took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair, taking a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry, but I didn’t sign up for this gaming team out of any deep seeded love for video games. I’m mostly here because my boyfriend just so happens to have a great passion for all of this and I enjoy playing with him and all of you as well. I’m not even all that good at it, but I feel like you all accept me as I am because you’re all just cool like that. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but this is not working at all.” Twin said as she looked off to the side, her sudden fury replaced with something of melancholy and slight annoyance in herself for getting frustrated.
Then she yelped in surprise as both Ember and Vera entered into the game, popping in from a beam of light seemingly out of nowhere. The two of them were smiling when they came in, but that smile soon melted away from both of them as they looked at the team.
“Oh, ummm, what’s…” Ember cleared his throat. “What’s happening, guys? How’d the…” He looked on the race track to see the two cars that had respawned. The rubble and debris littered the entire track around them. “Racing… go…” He cleared his throat once again. “I have fantastic news!”
“Oh, thank God.” Mila said as she sighed behind all of them, drawing their attention. “We could use some!”
“Yeah! Not only does the Blood Count game look amazing so far, but I also have a perfect, foolproof plan for the leadership role of this group!” He announced with his arms up. When he drew very little fanfare, it was Vera who gave a little clap, trying to be happy in that moment, only to soon stop as she saw no one joined her. She looked off to the side with red cheeks. “Alright, what’s going on?”
“It’s not going well. Let’s put it that way.” Mila said, and the rest of them murmured their agreements. “We’re starting to question the future of this team as a whole if we can’t even agree upon something so simple as leadership.”
“Okay, then, what we need is a definitive competition that cannot be disputed, no matter what.” Ember said as she stepped toward them and popped his back as he leaned backward and stood tall. Some of them winced at the sound of his very audible, cracking spine. “We need to swallow our pride and push forward as a group instead of worrying about who is in charge of what. Who gives a crap who is the leader of this group? It’s not like they’re going to be leader of every facet of everything. We just need a figurehead that will act as a guide as we trounce our enemies with our awesome skills and prevail no matter the cost! Just look at what we did to the Tree of Dildos the other day! We trashed them and wiped our mouths on their tattered remains! This is not about victory over each other, but victory over those assholes that doubted us! That’s why we’re going to choose a leader tomorrow using this definitive method and then we’re each going to be leaders and lend a helping hand to each other!” Ember said, causing them all to raise their eyebrows.
“What’s this…” Dusk started, then reeled a bit as everyone faced him. “Definitive method?”
“Two words:” Ember held up two fingers. “The Lost Manor.” He said with a grin on his face, causing everyone to pause.
“That’s three–” Vera started to say.
“I figured it out as I said it.” Ember sighed at his failed attempt at holding suspense.
The Equestrian Gaming League
“Horror?” Midnight asked as they all sat in the lounge with Firewire and Night Coder, who were sitting on the guest couch in the center of the room in front of the very large television. They both held mugs in their hands and sipped them as they nodded. “Your idea for a leadership contest is a survival horror game.” The gray bat pony asked as she gazed at the two of them, then looked toward Ember, who also nodded. “Have you been huffing chemicals or something? That’s a terrible idea!”
“What’s so terrible about that?” Prisma asked from the kitchen as she brewed more tea for everyone. “You heard them. Not only are we going to be going through a haunted house, but we’ll be leading our own people through a maze. Not only does it test our gaming skills, but also our abilities to manage our people and resources. It’s actually pretty brilliant.”
“Oh, come on, you had to say it.” Twin said as she took a gulp of her tea and rolled her eyes, looking at Ember, who beamed with pride. “Alright, so who’s going to be on whose team?”
“That doesn’t matter quite as much as our incoming messages.” Dusk interrupted people before they started talking about which team they wanted to be on. “Yeah, amazingly going from the lowest rank in the EGL to becoming near the top 100 kind of draws a lot of attention. Have none of you noticed the fact that our inbox has been constantly beaten and battered for the past two days?”
There was a sudden silence between all of them. The only sound that could be heard was a solitary giggle. They all looked at Vera, who was on her phone.
“Yeah you can come on…” Vera started but then paused as she saw everyone was looking at her. “Just… yeah, come on over. I’ll talk to you soon.” She said as her eyes widened and she stared back at them. “Yes, they’re all here. You’ll see them. Bye.” She hung up her phone and giggled nervously. “Sorry.”
Dusk gave her a look that made it look like his brain was rebooting. Then he shook his head and got his thoughts back online.
“Alright, well, my point is that we are on the cusp of something great and I really don’t want to ruin this. Otherwise, I’ll have to go back to the trio and under the tyrannical rule of…” Dusk stopped immediately as he saw the bloodshot glare of Midnight sitting across from him. “Mediocre Hooftube comments…” He chuckled with nervous shivers as her glare turned into a scowl.
“I agree wholeheartedly.” Twin said, drawing more attention. “Either we get this group together as a team, or we go our separate ways.” They let that sink in for a moment. Then there were a few deep breaths before they all began to nod.
“So, what’s this game like?” Mila asked, leaning toward the two programmers who looked at one another.
“Well,” Night Coder said, grinning as she thought for a moment. “I suppose we should just go ahead and show you rather than jabbering on about it.”
—----------
They were broken up into two teams. Prisma led Dusk, Twin, and Mila while Night Coder acted as their guide. Midnight led Ember, Vera, and Tessa, who became something of a late entry since she was Vera’s guest, and Firewire was their guide. Each group entered a different wing of the hotel, almost complete opposite of each other. The hotel had two floors and each floor had four very large sections. It was also dark, desolate and had very few working light bulbs. What light there was only took up small portions. The hallways were filled with wreckage, strewn out luggage and the walls had sections missing. The strongest light came from the full moon outside the windows, which were mostly broken and/or boarded up.
“So,” Vera looked around them with her hippogryph friend holding onto her arm with both of her own as they walked through the hallway. “What’s the objective of this game?”
“You pretty much find a whole collection of books.” Fire said as he shined his flashlight slowly around the hallway, showing the level of detail they put into this whole place. There was a broken ice machine on one side of the hallway, while the other side had a hollowed out vending machine that once had soda inside. The place wasn’t completely wrecked, but it certainly hadn’t been kept very well. “There are two sets of books, each with six volumes, and you are looking for the red books. The other team is looking for the blue books.”
From beyond the gloom of the partially lit hallway, there was a bonging noise, slow and rhythmic. It was like water pipes that fed into a huge vat in spurts. It was on going, and cut into the silence like a slow-moving knife.
“You ready to start the search, Midnight?” Firewire asked, causing her to look at him, doing a double take.
“Hm? What? Oh, yes, I am ready.” She said, trying her very best to hide the quiver in her voice as they made their way through the halls of that desolate place. “Are you going to be leaving us?” She asked, making him look back at her with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, but I’ll still be on your voice comm, so I can help you to some degree. Just try to use my help sparingly.” He said, seeing that the look of worry did not leave her face.
“You sure you’re up for this?” Ember asked from behind Midnight, causing her to shake the look from her face and go stony.
“Of course, I am. I’ll be right as rain. Just… stay close, okay?” Midnight said, slowing down to get more beside Ember as he nodded. He even patted her shoulder gently as a sign of reassurance. She nodded her thanks back at him and took a deep breath. This seemed to comfort her more as they passed through a cross hallway. It was decorated with very aged pictures of homesteads that looked more like pictures of ghosts with how faded they were. It gave them a faded, otherworldly feel.
“Alright, so one decision and then I turn you all loose. Straight ahead or left or right?” He said, standing in the middle of the cross halls, moving his flashlight as he mentioned the directions.
Midnight looked down all three of the halls. None of them looked hospitable but then again, she figured that was par for the course. Two of them were completely dark on the left and right, but straight ahead, there was at least a light working a strobe effect. She now knew why there was an epilepsy warning as the game loaded up on their headsets. The bat pony sighed and nodded forward.
“Let’s keep going.” She said, and her group hummed their approval, not looking forward to navigating gloom-ridden hallways. Everything was so worn. The carpet looked stained all over, the wall plaster had holes in it while the wall paper was peeling in multiple places. The light they passed caused Midnight and Vera to squint their eyes away from it as Firewire stopped suddenly.
“Fire?” Vera asked, wondering what happened, if he was lagging or something. Then the light went out for a heartbeat and when it came back, he was gone.
“Whoa!” Midnight jumped as she went back a few steps and Ember held onto her while all of them made their own startled noises. “You asshole!” She shouted into her comm device. Their audio turned on to laughter.
“Sorry, but I had to do that. I’ve been wanting to do something like that for a long time.” Fire said as he calmed down a bit. “Anyway, I’m here to help whenever you need me. If you get lost and find yourself in the weeds, just let me know and I’ll do what I can to get you out of the boring zone. It’s pretty easy to get turned around in this game. Good luck.”
Midnight sighed and turned on her flashlight, motioning for them to follow.
—---------
Prisma opened one of the doors that was opened a crack. She moved her flashlight to her blindspots like she was an agent with a gun, however, she didn’t have one. The room was mostly empty, aside from a chair covered in filthy linen. The rainbow maned unicorn was breathing hard as she kept her eyes looking around. One door was closed inside the room, while the other was most assuredly a bathroom. Part of the carpet was burned, as was a large section of the lower wall on the far side. There was a large black pile of ash, wood and cushion, which could only be the charred remains of a bed.
“Um, Prisma?” Twin asked, causing her to look back at the ice blue unicorn. “Can we go in now?”
“Oh, right, yes.” Prisma said in a somewhat jumpy voice. She took a deep breath and moved into the room. Twin, Dusk and Mila walked into the room behind her and peered around the corners, making sure there weren’t any spooks or vampires or whatever. The room was very dark, and the window was thoroughly boarded up. “Alright, remember, blue books. Check in everything. If you need to be out of eyeshot, bring a buddy.”
“Well, at least you’re not telling us to split up.” Dusk said as he picked the filthy linen up from the chair, shining a flashlight down underneath it. He grimaced as he saw the chair cushions were wide open, and burned to a light brown underneath. He wondered what the point of draping a sheet over it was if it was already lightly roasted. “It doesn’t look like it’s in here.”
The door slammed! This caused all of them to jump and Twin to give a yelp in surprise as all of their flashlights turned to the door.
“Come on! Really? A door slamming jump scare?” Prisma said, sighing and rubbing her temple with one hand. “I thought this game was supposed to be scary, not panic-inducing blood pressure.” She took a deep breath, and everyone else got their nerves about them once again. “Alright, they’re not here, let’s move.” She said as she turned toward the door once again, hoping beyond hope that it wasn’t locked.
“Wait a tick.” Mila said as they walked toward the door. She looked to the right and saw that the bathroom was still there. Somehow, it was actually not nightmarish. It was more just a bit untidy. The sink was still intact, though it leaned to the side on its small base. The shower curtain was probably the worst thing about it, being ripped off at some point with only shreds left on the curtain rings that were hooked onto a rusted rail up above. The abyssinian cat girl walked into the bathroom, keeping her flashlight trained as she approached a toilet that still stood, but was only full of broken porcelain rather than water. Then she turned her flashlight to the bathtub, and was startled to find that it was filled to the brim with a black tar. She furrowed her brow at this sight. That was when the black, viscous goo began to bubble.
“Oh, bloody hell…” Mila said as she began to see something ascend slowly from the tar. The thing was skinny, but it had wide, blank, white eyes and a mouth that seemed to stretch to unnatural lengths in a silent shriek. It had no legs, it had roots covered in the syrupy pitch black fluid and its arms were far longer than they should have been. “Fuck me dead!” She shouted, frozen in place as the hellish creature turned its solid white orbs onto her.
“Mila!” Prisma shouted. “Get out of there!” She took a step into the bathroom and reached for the cat girl.
As the thing began to reach for her, she was broken from her lull in thought and turned, running in a flash. Prisma got out of her way as the thing’s roots stretched even farther and faster than any of them expected. It inhaled a gigantic, sputtering breath as it reached the doorway, but Twin was there. She ducked down quickly, grabbing the door and slamming it as hard as she could. The creature’s head was caught in the doorway and there was an audible crunch, then a snap as its neck was crushed and its head rolled onto the floor.
Mila’s breath was going a mile a minute as her chest rose and fell in heaves. Her heart was pounding so loud, it was beating against her ears as she gazed at the black head with purely white eyes glaring off into dead space. Slowly, it began to turn into something of a gray ash as it dried completely up before their eyes. As it dried, it crumbled, and so did the door. As the door crumbled away, the bathroom was left in complete shambles as most of its contents turned into ash. The toilet, sink and the bathtub became hunks of debris. However, within the ruins of the bathtub, there was something that stood out within her vision. As the room’s door opened to all of them, they stood in silence as they were getting over the shock of the whole situation.
“Found one of the books.” Mila said as she walked into the room and picked up a blue tome.
“Hey! Congratulations!” Night Coder said in the communication device. “One down! Five to go!”
Dusk wrapped an arm around Mila as she came out, seeing she was a little distraught from the experience. She managed a tiny smile for him and nodded her thanks. Then she sighed. “Brilliant…”
—----------
Midnight’s hair was disheveled, her head was beginning to ache and her heartbeat was going a mile a minute. So far, they’d managed to find two books. Both times, something horrible and shocking had happened.
“Midnight? Are you–” Ember started, but the bat pony held up a finger to shush him before he could go any further with that statement.
“Just… catching my breath, Ember. I’ll be fine.” Midnight gathered herself, scratching her mane as she looked up to see Vera and Tessa both wearing similar expressions. “I’m fine! Just go on ahead, I’ll take up the rear guard for a while.”
They began walking through the hotel hallway once again. It was dark, as normal, and the eerie creaks and sounds happened so frequently, Midnight simply started ignoring them. The purple haired bat tried her best to fix her hair but after a moment of finding knots, she gave up on that. She’d just enjoy a long shower later.
The creaks started happening again, this time in a bit more quick succession behind her. She turned around and shined the light from left to right, then she looked down to see there was a cat statue behind her. The stone cat was sitting, staring at her with an unamused expression with its tail up. It was pure gray stone and very well carved and Midnight scowled at it.
She turned around and saw that the others were way ahead of her. “Whoa! Guys! Wait!” Midnight said as she started to run. Only as she ran, she felt like she wasn’t getting any closer to them and the hallway was only getting longer. She kept running, but soon she gave up. Midnight gasped for breath as she leaned against the wall, sweat running down her face. She looked around to see that the others were gone.
Then she looked back. Midnight sighed and growled her frustrations as she pinched the place between her eyes. There was the cat statue, this time it was predatory, leering at her with malicious intent. She snarled back, accepting its challenge.
—-------
“Shit!” Ember gasped. “Where’s Midnight?” He looked around, not seeing her behind them. “Middie?” He called to her.
“Midnight!” Vera cried, looking around for her as well. The blonde bat pony’s expression, that of sheer panic.
“Hey, Vera, dear, it’s okay, we’ll find her. Don’t worry about it. We just need to start searching.” Tessa held her hand as the hippogryph started looking around the hallway for her. That’s when they heard a very distant voice. “Whoa! Guys! Wait!” This lit up all three of their expressions.
“Midnight!” Ember said as he started back down the hallway where they came from.
Before their very eyes, Tessa and Vera saw Ember disappear into the shadow. One moment, he was running and the next minute, there was nothing. Both of them raised their eyebrows and showed the whites of their eyes.
“Ember!?” They both shouted as they looked around for him. They ran for a few feet but they found no sign of him.
“Where did he go?!” Vera said in a panicky, high pitched whine as she put her hands on her mouth as tears began to well up.
“Vera, get a hold of yourself.” Tessa said in an anxious, whispering tone as she held both of the bat pony’s arms, shaking her slightly. “You need to remember, this is just a virtual reality game. You need only lift your headset and they are all right there.” The birdlike creature said as she pulled the bat pony close and began to pet her blonde mane. “Come on, deep breaths.”
She did as Tessa instructed, taking deep, cleansing breaths as she leaned close into her soft, voluptuous bosom. “Thank you. Sometimes, I get over anxious with these types of games.”
“It’s fine, honey, you just need to remember when to dial it back some. We all have our quirks.” Tessa said as her arms held her tight against her.
“We do? Then what’s your quirk?” Vera asked as she looked up at the taller bird-like girl. They met in a little kiss as Tessa caressed the bat girl’s back, along with her wings. This made Vera’s breath catch in her throat as she felt the stimulation run through her sensitive body.
“I get horny in scary situations.” Tessa whispered to her and ran her tongue over the side of Vera’s purple face, making her quiver. Her trembling became worse as the hippogryph’s hands squeezed her wings softly. She slid her hands down her wings and began to squeeze Vera’s tits. “Ooooo, no bra.” She licked her own beak and smiled at Vera’s cute blushing face. “Good girl.” She purred.
They met in another kiss and Tessa lifted Vera’s shirt. As soon as her nipples were visible, the hippogryph latched on, beginning to suckle. Vera cried out in a lustful moan as she held onto her head. To Tessa’s surprise, the tits she grabbed onto were far larger than she anticipated. She wasn’t sure how she hid these honkers away, but it was hard to keep the full girth of those boobs in her beak as she sucked and licked her nipples.
“Tessa! Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this right now.” Vera whimpered and it was obvious Tessa wasn’t paying attention to her, because then she put the bat pony’s hand down the front of her panties.
—--------
With a mighty roar of defiance, Midnight swung the metal framed chair down into the monstrous, stone cat beast’s skull! In another direct hit, she finally smashed the stone exterior wide open! The monstrosity lay still on the ground. Its deformed limbs no longer mobile and its horrific growl no longer present as she stood. Her chest heaved in great sobs, her hair was frayed beyond current repair, her hands trembled as they finally dropped the chair and her legs could no longer hold her as she dropped to her knees. Tears began to roll down her cheeks as she shook all over and her hand went to her muzzle. She clenched her eyes shut as she wept.
“Midnight!” Ember shouted as he came to her, seeing the huge thing that looked like a broken statue of a feline horror. “What the hell?!” Then he looked down to see her frightened eyes turn to him. “Oh, God, Midnight...” He murmured in a very worried tone as he pulled her into an embrace and she began to weep more openly.
“Ummm, Ember? Should I shut the simulation…” Firewire began to ask in Ember’s headset but Ember motioned for him to hold it.
“I’m sorry, Ember,” Midnight said between sobs as she buried her face into his chest and kept weeping harder. “I tried so hard to live up to the legacy of greatness but I can’t.”
“You really know how to put pressure on yourself.” Ember whispered to her as she kept crying into his shirt and keeping herself close to him as he ran his fingers through her mane. “You really don’t understand that you achieved that status a while ago.” He said as he put his lips against her head, kissing the top tenderly.
“What are you talking about? Look at me! I can’t even make it through a stupid horror maze!” She said as she renewed her vigorous weeping.
“Horror has always been your weakness. It’s always been your soft underbelly. Everyone has a weakness, something they’re not nearly cut out for. For me, it’s racing games…” Ember looked off to the side with a sudden scowl.
“You don’t like race cars?” She began to ask before he looked back at her.
“They’re boring as sin, Midnight.” He said in a very clear, matter of fact tone. “Either way, there are plenty of games I’m not good at. The only reason I got so good at some of them is because I played them a ridiculous amount. You can even beat me at some of them.” Ember admitted to her, feeling a bit of relief as this brought a bit of a smile to her face, amid the tears. “It’s not who you can beat, nor is it how well you play the games, it’s about how good it feels to conquer your goals and help others do the same. You know that feeling.”
“Like when I beat you at Xero Shot 2.” Midnight managed, having calmed down quite a bit.
“That was a lucky shot!” Ember said suddenly, growling at her. This drew a bit of a gasp from Midnight. This was not a gasp of fear, but a gasp of surprise intensity, even admiration.
There was a long silence between the two of them as they breathed against one another. Midnight connected her lips to his as she stood up straight. She was only a few inches taller than him and was able to hold him as they kissed, closing her eyes. At first, Ember was startled by it, but soon, he melted into the kiss. Whether she meant it or not, the amorous embrace lasted a good long while. Their warmth connected, as did their tongues for one moment. Then Midnight pulled back, her eyes wide as if she woke from a daydream.
“Oh! I’m…” She cleared her throat and backed away from him. “I’m sorry, Ember. I was…”
“Hey.” Ember took her hands and pulled her back to him. With what seemed like a natural reaction, they kissed once more for just a brief instant. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad you’re doing better.”
“Oh, shit.” Midnight said, then checked the game interface from her wrist, seeing the time was still going. “We literally just left Tessa and Vera alone! We need to finish!” Midnight said. As she saw he was about to remind her of what he just said, she cut him off. “Win or lose, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying!” She composed herself immediately and pulled him along. “Come on!”
—---------------
“And that makes six.” Prisma said as she held up the last book. The rest of the room was partially melted into the ground. Shelves and furniture were halfway sunk into the wood floor, as well as the lower half of Mila, who had a sizable butt imprinted into it. The entire thing stopped melting as they took the book and the hotel had gone back to being a normal structure on their end. “Wow, that was spazmatic and ulcer inducing, but it was quite fun!”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it, dear.” Night Coder said in a purr. “I hope you’ll enjoy our new game that you guys will be helping us with.”
“I’m sure we will!” Prisma said as she passed the book onto Dusk, who put it away with a sigh.
“Okay, well I’m late for my normal workout routine.” Twin said as she stretched a bit. “I should get going. Tell me how things turn out.”
“Yeah, I need to go help mum at her bakery in an hour. So I’ll bug out too.” Mila said as Night Coder came back on the communication device.
“Umm, don’t you want to talk to the other team and see how they’re–” Before she finished with her sentence, both Twin and Mila got out of the game, pulling their VR visors off of their eyes.
Both of them were met with the image of Firewire being balls deep within Night as she bounced up and down on his lap. His big, dark blue cock reaching deep into her pussy. Both of them were bottomless and Night’s pink nippled tits were visible as her shirt was pulled up over them.
“...doing?” Night Coder finished and paused her bouncing.
Mila blushed and looked away from them while Twin blushed and gave them a very flirtatious smile.
“They’re fucking, aren’t they?” Dusk asked from inside the game and both Mila and Twin said “yes” at the same time. “I knew it.” He smiled over at Prisma, who blushed.
“So, were you wanting to go check on the other team?” Prisma asked as they helped one another across the thoroughly uneven floors. As they got to the hallway, Dusk grabbed her by the hand and pulled her against the wall. “Oh…” She said in a breathless voice and pressed her lips into his as he wrapped his arms around her. Prisma’s breath caught in her throat as the purple bat pony explored her entire back with his hands.
“The answer is no, by the way.” He said as he gave her a small break from the kiss.
“Yeah, I figured.” She managed to get that much out before Dusk engulfed her lips in his own. He held her close as his fingers explored her delicate rainbow mane and she whimpered into his mouth. After just a few more moments of rubbing their lips and tongues together, they were left out of breath and holding onto one another. “We should probably tell the others.”
“We will, I just don’t know when will be a good time.” Dusk whispered back to her and gave her yet another amorous kiss. She melted back into it for a moment before breaking the kiss and leaning her forehead onto his as they cuddled against the hallway wall for a moment. Then the bat pony went still. This drew a puzzled look from her.
“What is it?” She asked, then she heard it. There was someone that sounded like they were either scared, in pain or having a very rough orgasm. After just a moment of looking around the musky, dark surroundings that were still creepy, but noticeably less so since they actually beat the game. They followed the sound as best they could, going down the hallway to the clearing between perpendicular hallways. What they found gave them extreme pause.
Dusk saw Vera, a very naked Vera on the ground with her newly introduced hippogryph “friend”, Tessa. Both of them were intertwined, sitting face to face with their legs wrapped around one another. Their pussies rubbed together as their hips moved against the other and their tongues were connected as they kissed with such passion and Vera whined in her familiar high pitch as she raked through her third orgasm. The bird-like woman reached down and squeezed her ass as she began to grin and grind harder against her wet, throbbing cunt.
“Can you cum again?” Tessa asked, starting to grind even harder, making Vera cry out in a higher pitch. The purple bat pony girl was obviously too taken by her raw sexual energy as juice gushed from her with such ridiculous regularity. “Cum for me again, my sexy little pony.”
“Dear sweet mercy.” Prisma said without even thinking about it. This caused both Vera and Tessa to stop what they were doing. The carpet beneath them was visibly damp at this point and Vera’s face began to redden to alarming levels.
“Oh, uuhh…” Tessa said, staggering her words very hard as she tried to come up with something, but the visage of both of them with their tits pressed together and pussies kissing totally defeated anything she could ever come up with. “We got… bored?”
“Vera… just wow.” Dusk said as he closed his eyes and pinched in between them in a sigh. “You’re just lucky I’m the one that caught you and not…”
“Holy SHIIIIIIIIII—” Midnight seemingly appeared out of nowhere with an incredulous Ember. Everyone’s eyes widened and blood pressures went through the roof. “---IIIIIIIIIIT!” The taller bat pony glared at her sister, then turned an even more evil eye toward the hippogryph, who began to sweat.
A very heavy tensioned silence covered the hallway. That was when Prisma leaned over toward Dusk and whispered. “Were Vera’s tits always that big?” Causing him to give her a weird look.
—------
“Well,” Night Coder said as she sat there, her pussy still filled with hot semen, unbenounced to the rest of them. “I’m glad you all enjoyed our little game. It was a bit harsh in some areas, I’ll admit.”
“I told you the bathtub thing was a little much.” Firewire said, causing her to pat his cheek with a sneer, making him snicker.
“But at least now we have a definitive answer to who should be the leader in your group!” Night said in something of an excited voice as they all sat in the lounge. All of them had lunch in front of them from one of their favorite sandwich places.
“Well, hold on.” Ember began to say, but Midnight stopped him, shaking her head.
“No, this time, it’s true.” Midnight said, finishing her daisy sandwich as she wadded up the package. She looked over at Prisma, who wore an incredulous expression. “I have to admit, I failed at this. Yes, I really suck at horror games. My weakness in this genre is a liability that I can’t ignore and that showed in my performance. You carried out the mission and finished in a very surprisingly fast amount of time.” Midnight said this, causing literally everyone else in the room to drop their jaws. The tall bat pony sighed, obviously not comfortable exposing such a raw nerve. “I will accept third in command.”
Everyone cocked their heads to the side or widened their eyes.
“Did you just say third?” Twin asked, literally rubbing whatever was in her ear to make sure she was really listening. “Who would be second?”
Midnight motioned toward Ember. The look on his face made it obvious he was not privy to this either. “He is a born leader and he has even led me through some of the harder times in games. Not to mention he defeated my mom by himself when he was very young.” She said, a jealous, sour expression crossing her face as she glared at him, making him swallow a large portion of his sandwich. “I decided I’m not going to bring the team down because of my own hubris. I’ve been acting like a stubborn, narcissistic child because of my own high opinion of myself.” She closed her eyes and turned her head off to the side, her face turning a deep red.
“Thank you, Midnight. That means a lot to me.” Prisma said with a genuine smile on her face. “We are going to rule this league with an iron hoof.” She said with a growing grin. “Now, for our next order of business…”
“Yes.” Midnight said, turning a raging glare toward both Vera and Tessa, whose petrified expression began to grow at the bat pony woman who only seemed to grow in size. “Next order…”
“No, not that.” Dusk said as he connected his phone to the projector unit on the wall, which turned on and brought up the image of their message list. At first, it looked like just a normal list of e-mails, that was until you look to see that all of the visible messages were on the same date, and there were fifty. One automatic reload brought up yet another batch of them.
“Did we just receive five more messages in that one minute?” Ember asked, making Dusk nod.
“All of them are either from the Tree of Death or regarding our rivalry with them.” Dusk said, scrolling down to the next page, showing that the next page was from earlier that same day. “It’s looking like there’s at least five Hooftubers who are reporting on it with a lot of anticipation. Our silence has actually magnified the anticipation.”
“Alright, I’ve had enough of this.” Prisma said, looking to Ember and Midnight, who both nodded with a grim look on their faces. Then she looked at the rest of her team and their guests, who looked on with similar expressions. “I think it’s time we prick this thorn in our sides.”
