Time Vigilante: Butterfly Effect

Chapter 1: Establishing Identity

There was, once upon a time, a day when I was run over by a car. I lived, of course. The driver was concerned, and called the hospital for me. On top of that, he wasn't going very fast, so he only knocked me off my bike. The pain I felt was numbed by shock, but I still felt it. And I remember my limbs refusing to listen to my brain. I remember how it terrified me.

Right now, however, it's a completely different story. My body doesn't feel numb. I can feel everything. I can feel every hole in my arms and legs, I can feel my lack of fingers and toes. I can feel flimsy, hole filled wings on my back. I can feel the horn on my head. I can feel the two different sets of genitals between my legs. I can feel the Saber fangs in my mouth.

I can feel the body of a changeling. The mental image my body has given me… doesn't terrify me. It makes me want to jump for joy. This creature has powers I have always envied them for. The power to transform.

But I'm aware of Multiverse Theory. The first thing I have to do is gather the facts. Even if I know some things about the world and its inhabitants, that doesn't always mean it's true. I need to approach the world as if I know nothing, but seek information that tells me what I should know.

And thus has lead to opening my eyes at long last. I was in a hospital room. There were some unicorn and Pegasus doctors and nurses calmly going about their day outside my room. I could sense their emotions too. It was an odd sensation. But any time one of them looked in the direction of my room, I could sense curiosity. I don't know how I knew what this emotion felt like through my senses. It just worked, I supposed. But where I woke up and what I sensed told me two big things.

The first is that these ponies don't seem to mind that I'm a monstrous bug pony. The second is that they probably don't know what a changeling is yet. Now this can either work for or against me. There's no telling how many ponies saw me in my base form. Worst case scenario, everyone in town knows about me, and there is no point in wearing a disguise beyond personal aesthetic choice. Hopefully the consequences aren't too bad. But regardless, my presence in this world, knowing what I do about it, the butterfly effect is going to be powerful.

I was interrupted from my musings as a Pegasus nurse walked into my room. I could sense her joy and curiosity. That joy… it actually had a taste. It was pleasant, like a red gala apple.

"Ah, I see you're awake. Can you speak?" She asked. I decided to humor her, and answer.

"I can." I said shortly. Her excitement following that statement was like a quick sugar rush to me before she composed herself.

"Good! Can you tell me your name? And what you are?" She asked. I hesitated with a frown. I looked over myself for the first time, thinking about how to answer that. I looked… painfully decayed.

"I… I was hoping you could tell me." I told her. It wasn't technically a lie. The amnesia card, while certainly cliché, was the answer to a lot of the unknown variables. If I used it, I could get away with not knowing something that should be common knowledge.

The nurse frowned and scribbled a note onto her clipboard. I barely noticed she had that. "Amnesia then? That's a shame. Is there anything you can tell me that might help us learn more about you?" She asked. I paused to consider this. Should I tell her about my empathic abilities? The empathic vampirism might scare off people…

"Your sympathy tastes pretty sour." I answered. She stopped writing to look at me in surprise.

"... I'm sorry, what?" She asked. I could taste her confusion. She wasn't sure if she heard me correctly.

"Your sympathy. It tasted like lemon flavored candy. I can taste your emotions." I told her. The concern I tasted after that lead to her next question.

"Can you elaborate on that? I want to understand this… empathic taste of yours." She requested. I just shrugged.

"You and me both, lady. It's not every day you wake up in a body that isn't yours." I told her. This got her to stare at me for a good long minute before frantically writing in her notes.

"Please, explain." She asked. I decided to go as close to the truth as possible. Maybe having a confidant at the hospital could help me.

"Well, as best as I can remember, before I woke up here as this thing, I was just some human living with my parents in a world where only humans were sentient…" I paused. Every mention of humans confused her. "Uh, evolved, magicless apes, basically. The concept of magic existed, but magic itself was limited to sleight of hand and optical illusions. Everything a human couldn't do was done by machines they created. I was not one of the great humans who made great things. I was a shut in that sat around writing made up stories."

"I see… you seem to be taking this better than expected." The doctor noted.

"I'm rather surprised about my calm demeanor too. I fully expected to panic when I woke up, but I couldn't muster up any fear whatsoever." I answered. "Maybe a little concern on what feels like a monster's appearance, but not fear."

"That's very interesting… do you know of anything that could have done this?" She asked. She's thinking outside the box. I like that.

"A few things. Only concepts made up by humans for entertainment media however. One that comes to mind is an ability set known as the Gamer. It prevents any mental afflictions from distorting a person's judgement and allows them to treat the world as a video game, kinda like the popular role playing games of my world." I proposed. Her eyes widened.

"Oh! Well that explains why none of our tests made any sense." The nurse exclaimed, relieved. "Is there anything you could do to find out if that's actually what you have?"

"Maybe… let me see if I can open a menu or-" I was cut off by a game menu opening in front of me. Judging by the nurse's shock, she saw it too. In front of me hovered a massive wall of stuff. It looked pretty much like the menu in Borderlands. It showed me, front and center with a bunch of equipment slots either greyed out or empty on the left, and empty slots on the right labeled Inventory. There were five tabs with different icons on them in the upper left corner. From left to right, they were an exclamation mark, a map icon, a backpack icon, a gear icon, and a Medal icon. Tapping on these icons took me to each tab. The exclamation icon turned out to be the Quest Log, and the Gear icon turned out to be the settings tab that let me choose how my menu looks, and how it interacted with the world, such as when others can see my menus, what game it's based on, and a bunch of other stuff I couldn't possibly get into right now without completely forgetting I'm telling a story here.

The medal icon was just a bunch of challenges that gave various rewards for completing. Just scrolling through them, I could see they were divided into three categories. Feats of Power, feats of Time Vigilantism, and… Feats of the Harem?! I… didn't know this equestria supported that. Judging by the Nurse's amusement at me dropping my jaw at that one, apparently it's not uncommon.

The skill tree also appeared to take from the Borderlands format. I had one special ability at the top that was unique to me, and then three different skill trees under that that modified it in various ways. The ability was called Time Dilation. From what I could tell, it basically allows me to alter my perception of time so that I'm faster, and everything else is slower.

The three different skill trees had their own names too. The green one was called Parasite. Most skills their messed with my ability to leech stuff off a target, like health or Mana. The skill at the bottom of it, aka the final ability of the skill tree, allowed me to basically use my shapeshifting power to steal someone's body. Scary stuff, and the nurse thought so too.

The Red skill tree was called Cloak and Dagger. It was heavily based on stealth. The last ability in that tree allowed me to make someone forget I existed.

The Blue skill tree was called Love and Lust… and that one was just about as kinky as you'd expect. It gives me certain advantages when seducing people, such as being able to read their fetishes, and modifying my body to fit them… The last ability on that one let me basically fulfil sexual fantasies at a whim. The nurse was blushing hot red as I looked through that one.

"I don't get it… what's with these crazy abilities? You don't have to get them, do you?" The nurse asked.

"Unfortunately, I don't have this power for no reason. With great power comes great responsibility, and some day, either sooner or later, something will come along that will challenge my power. It's a trend I noticed in superhero comic books. Power invites challenge. Challenge forges heroes. And many heroes give up their personal lives to protect people. Naturally there are exceptions, and I don't exactly see myself doing that, but… who knows what will happen?" I explained.

"So… in other words, we're going to be expecting you to come back every now and then?" The nurse asked with a frown.

"Whether I want to or not." I confirmed. "My best guess is, some ancient evil is gonna rise from ancient legend and I'm going to have to face off with it."

"Well… then we're going to need some way to help you recover when they do bring you back here." The nurse said. I smiled, glad to see she's the type to take initiative.

I chuckled as I sensed something… deeper in her words. "What, have you taken a liking to me or something?" I asked, amused. She clamped her mouth shut and blushed before glaring at me.

"Don't get the wrong idea, I'm just interested in you because of how unique you are." She shot back.

"Sure." I said with a big toothy grin.

"Shut!" She said, putting a hoof on my mouth. I just giggled a lot. I clicked over to the settings tab and scrolled down to the Invite to Party section.

"Can I get your name? I want to see if you get this menu too." I asked her. The idea intrigued her, so she answered.

"I'm Nurse Bandage Cross." She answered. After putting her name in, the party invite box appeared in front of her. After she accepted it, she saw a bunch of stat bars appear in front of her. Health, Mana, Experience, the whole lot.

"Uh. Menu?" She tried. The screen popped up in front of her, and I dismissed mine. She definitely had the same ui as I did, but she actually had equipment that boosted her stats. Such as the nurse's dress that increased her healing by 15%. I had to laugh a little at the mental image of those old "this is my ass kicking outfit" memes.

Her abilities were sort of expected though. Her ability was Adrenaline Revive, which did just about what you expected. Her skill trees were a little… unique, though. Green was "First, do some damage", which is NOT what the doctor's oath is at all, the red was "Medical Hazard" which seemed to be about dealing damage over time to enemies and also leeching health off them to a teammate, and the Blue was "Surgical Precision" which was also odd because she's a nurse, not a surgeon. She seemed… really embarrassed to have those as skill tree names.

"Well, it definitely gives away my bad temper…" she muttered. I looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, these skill trees seem a little strange for a medical professional. Sounds like we have things to talk about later."

Cross nodded, but composed herself. "Well at any rate, your full health bar and lack of debuffs tells me you have a clean bill of health. You don't need to pay anything, however because you have given me the tools to better aid my patients in the future. I'll just have you sign here, and then you're free to go." Wow. She must be an avid gamer if she knows how health bars and debuffs work. I smirk as I go to sign the form… and fill in some additional information such as race, age, and preferred gender. (changeling, 22, and Female.)

Before I gave her the clipboard back, I stopped to wonder… how the hell did I manage the dexterity needed to write? Then I looked at the transparent hands my magic was creating. "Oh cool." I muttered before hopping out of bed. Seems this system was automatically teaching me a lot of stuff. Like how to control my new body so I didn't come off as some braindead fool of a bug. I decided to browse through my menu a little more and, though I found it odd that Shape Shifting was not on my spellbook (which was in my inventory after I left the hospital), Temporal Distortion and a few simple fire related skills were.

Further exploration of my menus found me discovering a Character Creator in my Options menu. At first I was very highly confused… but then I realized that this off-menu allowed me to design disguises like they were their own characters. Naturally, I went ahead and designed my few OC characters right away. There was Summer Dash; A fire colored unicorn mare who I had written for a Power Ponies roleplay. She had a decently well maintained mane and tail style, but mostly just went with whatever the wind gave her, and she had a brilliant emerald color to her eyes. She had an alternative form of a Werewolf with cryokinetic powers. I found it fun designing those, but every ability I gave them added another quest to my log to learn a new spell.

There was then Emerald Symphony, a Pegasus singer who happened to be Summer's sister. She was a green mare with golden eyes and yellow highlights in her properly maintained braided mane style. She also had an alternative form. She was given vampire blood in one of my old roleplays, so naturally I was given a quest to learn Hemokinetic powers and vampiric traits.

Lastly, I made what will be my standard form when living as a citizen. A Pegasus with a light green coat, red mane highlights, and some decently blue eyes. Not the most eye catching thing besides his lack of a mark, but…

Speaking of Marks, Summer's mark was an atomic cloud surrounding a Mana star. Emmerald's mark was a winged microphone. And the Default Boy, I decided to give a pixelated controller as a mark to show my skill as The Gamer. And as for my name? As I signed on the document in the hospital, I'm going by the name Switchlock. It's been my username online for ages, and was actually the name of my first oc ever: A surprisingly normal changeling.

Now that I've established my identity, it's time I established what I'm going to do next. Which is… well, I need to gather facts first. To learn about the world. Even if a lot can be assumed, that doesn't mean I should. So it's time to hit the library!