Exploring the Castle

by Dragonfire2lm

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Human, Comedy, Adventure, Princess Celestia, Crossover
Length: 4048

Henry Stickmin broke the teleporter, next thing he knows he's in a castle who-knows-where with talking equines. A choose-your-own adventure Henry Stickmin crossover fanfiction.

Henry Stickmin, he's escaped prison, stolen a priceless diamond, infiltrated the airship of world-class thieves, broke out of The Wall and was on his way to putting his name in the history books.

One too many fails led to him breaking his most infamous gadget, the Teleporter, and now he's... Definitely not on Earth anymore, that's for sure. Maybe he can still make bank even in this new land of magical ponies?

A choose-your-own adventure inspired by The Henry Stickmin Collection and the first story in the Henry Stickmin Equestrian Collection.

Featured on 14.11.2020!

Oh. My. Goodness it got featured, I've never had any of my stories hit the feature box. Thank you everyone who took the time to read, favorite, upvote, or comment!

Published 2020-11-13 05:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-11-13 05:30:01 UTC

-

Henry turned around and walked back into the broom closet, but there was nothing there, no choice to make, path to follow, and no reason to remain inside it. And yet, Henry remained, flitting around the closet without a care in the world, doing absolutely nothing useful or remotely interesting. There wasn't even anything useful to steal, just brooms, mops and chemicals that could kill someone if left out in a poorly ventilated room.

The world's most boring deathtrap, except it wasn't even that because Henry wasn't even fiddling with the bottles. He was done poking around and was simply standing in the middle of the closet.

Henry?

You okay buddy?

You want a hug?

I could play the distraction dance music? You like that.

Oh, I get it, this is just for the reference isn't it? This is a man named Henry and he's now in a broom cupboard... What? Closet sounds weird, There are just some words you don't say or think with my accent... No Henry, I don't know what my accent is either. I only called it a broom closet because of the reference, I didn't even plan for this to go as off the rails as it did.

You want to stay in there? Okay.

Henry decided to remain in the relative safety and calm quiet of the small broom closet, no danger, no stress, and maybe when he felt up to it, Henry would poke his head out and see what else this place had to offer.

FAIL

Guess I'll wait for you to leave...

Retry

Stained Glass Hallway

Henry went left, he rounded the corner and paused.

Sunlight streamed through large stained glass windows that illuminated the room with an assortment of colours. Henry slowly walked up to one in awe, it depicted six equine-like creatures, unicorns and pegasi among them, attacking a larger, darker mare with a rainbow.

He walked over to another window, this also showcasing the dark mare but this time opposing a white mare of similar design. The stories these windows told made no sense to him, but they were certainly beautiful.

His attention was drawn to a noise behind him. Footsteps? No that was the sound of hooves, only slightly muffled by the carpet, and getting closer.

Henry looked frantically around the room, he spotted a tapestry hung on a wall just past the windows, a door down the hall and an old suit of armor, made for one the equines Henry presumed. He could hide, or he could try his luck and run down the hall into the next one.

Tapestry
Door
Suit of Armor
Run

-

Henry scrambled to hide behind the heavy cloth tapestry, he made sure it wasn't damaged or moved by his mad dash for cover. The hoofsteps were growing closer, Henry froze, not even daring to breathe as the silhouette of a unicorn walked past...

And stopped, not even a second later, Henry's hiding spot was moved aside, and he found himself staring down at a disgruntled unicorn in gleaning golden armor. The tapestry, as it turns out, didn't quite touch the floor and the guard had noticed Henry's shoes.

Henry chuckled sheepishly.

FAIL

This isn't hide-and-seek...

Retry

-

Henry walked down the stairs and cleared his throat. Once he reached the two guards, he grinned and began to dance a merry little jig and clapped once as music played from seemingly nowhere.

He kept dancing and after a few seconds, the two guards started dancing as well, their four-legged frames were somehow capable of copying his movements. Henry reached towards where he dropped the tiara.

Someone cleared their throat from behind him. He turned around, at the top of the stairs stood the crown's owner, staring down at him disapprovingly, her horn aglow and the stolen regalia floating beside her in a golden aura.

FAIL

Well, you tried...

Retry

-

Henry balanced himself on top of the banister, braced himself and jumped off. His shoes gripped the railing, sparks flying as he grinded down it, he flew off the end.

And right through an adjacent window.

FAIL

Gotta go fast?

Retry

-

Henry squared himself up for a charge. He ran towards the edge of stairs, tripped on the carpet, and tumbled down the staircase to land in a dazed heap in front of the guards, the crown lazily landing on the ground next to him.

FAIL

At least you didn't break your neck this time.

Retry

Royal Caper

Henry smirked deviously, primed the bomb and tossed it down the staircase.

One of the guards noticed it as it rolled to a stop by his hooves. "Huh?"

Boom

Thick, dark smoke filled the room. As the guards coughed and spluttered, Henry crept past and walked out the front door. Slipping into the shadows and away from prying eyes, he took a good long look at his new surroundings. He just left a castle and was now in a town populated with the small equines. He blinked, shrugged and plopped his newest treasure on his head, merrily strolling away to see what else this new land had to offer.

NEW RANK: Royal Caper

Restart

Seen all the fails and endings? Click Here!

-

Henry hefted the large orange crate out of the storage room, TNT was stamped on each side in big yellow letters. With as much strength as he could muster, Henry lobbed the box at the vault door.

It bounced off and landed on his head.

Brrk

The warning blare the box sent out was loud, his head stuck inside the box of explosives, Henry moved frantically around the room.

Brr, brr, brr

In a desperate bid to free himself, he began hopping around, jumping around the corridor like mad, but alas, the district alarm that filled his ears sped up.

Brrk-Brr-brr-brrk-

Boom

FAIL

You didn't hop fast enough.

Retry

-

Henry took a closer look at the lock, the hole was large enough to fit his entire arm through. With a thoughtful hum, he stuck his hand in the lock, in the hopes of triggering some hidden mechanism.

The door remained unyielding, its treasure far beyond Henry's reach.

FAIL

Did you really think that would work?

Retry

-

Henry set the case down, clambered up the pile of crates, and firmly gripped the edges of the lid of the topmost one. He pulled, heaving with effort to pry the lid off. Straining he pushed his body forward.

His foot slipped, precariously balanced on top of the pile of crates, he scrambled for purchase and managed to cling to the side of one. He sighed in relief.

The crate creaked, Henry's weight and the pull of gravity caused the crate to tip over, triggering a chain reaction as knocked the rest of the pile over, burying Henry under a mountain of wood.

FAIL

[ FRAGILE ]

Retry

-

With a grunt Henry lifted the grate up and away from the large drain pipe, it landed on the floor with a clang.

"I heard something from storage!" someone outside the room bellowed.

With no other option, Henry grabbed his prize and jumped down the drain pipe.

Wind rushed by, down he went, no end in sight. The pipe opened up into an underground cave.

Henry, with a loud crunch, landed on a cluster of dark, jagged crystals that jutted out of the floor, the case dropping from his limp hand to land in a puddle of water beneath him.

FAIL

Look before you leap

Retry

-

Henry sidestepped a pegasus attempting to tackle him. Something blue slammed into his chest and sent him sprawling onto the floor. He looked up to see the horn of one of the unicorn guards was glowing with a magical aura, and Henry was quickly surrounded.

FAIL

*clears throat* Dodge!

Retry

-

Henry took a running start and leapt out the window, glass shards scattered into the air as he looked out over an unfamiliar white city and the white wall that surrounded it.

And then, he was falling. Henry braced himself for the landing, a flash of gold in his peripheral vision.

His descent was halted by a pair of pegasi guards catching him mid-fall.

FAIL

You forgot they could fly, didn't you?

Retry

Bonus

Henry stared down at a letter that had appeared out of thin air, with nothing else to do in the broom cupboard, he opened it, fully aware it wasn't meant for him.

Firstly, thank you for reading Exploring the Castle.

I found about The Henry Stickmin Collection after getting hooked on watching Jacksepticeye and Markiplier play Among Us. After learning about all the references to the Henry Stickmin games in Among Us, I stumbled across a three-and-a-half hours long video of every fail and ending in every game in the recently released Henry Stickmin Collection.

Yes, I watched all of it, yes I am obsessed with stick figures. Simply put, there wasn't enough fanfiction to my liking and since FiMfiction is the only site I'm on... I had to make Henry Stickmin crossover Fanfiction. So I started brainstorming, two ideas appealed to me, the one you've just read (assuming you didn't skip to the end) and a multi-chapter fanfic involving the Toppat Clan set before Infiltrating the Airship.

The Toppat fic is a cathartic one, wish fulfillment wrapped up in a storyline about a mercenary-with-standards helping the Toppats get their airship up and running after it lands on her house. Reginald and Right Hand Man some of my favorite characters so I wanted to write something involving them!

The idea for this entire AU is broken teleporter in the Jewel Baron timeline sends Henry and several other characters from other timelines to Equestria. Aside from either another choose-your-own adventure fic or short story that follows Henry after Exploring the Castle (I'm having trouble with working out the different branches in the story, so I might trim it down into a normal fic about Henry in Ponyville) and the Toppat fic, I'm still figuring things out as there's one more character I want to write about and this whole thing started as a half-baked fun idea anyway, I'm just having fun with it.

I hoped you enjoyed Exploring the Castle.

- Dragonfire2lm

Author's Note

Trivia!

Exploring the Castle was written entirely on the PS4, links and coloured text added on the computer.

Sanguine Dream came up with the Fist fail.

Barring the Fist fail, every bit of fail flavor text is just me, voicing my own thoughts. I'm also the narrator in the Broom Closet fail.

The Alarm segment and corresponding fails weren't in my original roadmap for the story, I was almost done writing and felt like it didn't have enough stuff, so Henry tried to steal the gems on the Elements of Harmony vault doorframe.

The story originally started with Henry using the teleporter in Stealing the Diamond but I wanted an excuse to write Toppat shenanigans in a fic later on so I changed it to when Henry smashed the teleporter in Completing the Mission. It also had three endings but I couldn't really think of a good branching off point for the third ending, so I scrapped it.

The Broom Closet

Henry sat with his knees tucked up towards his chest and his head resting in his arms as he waited for the world to make sense again, the ground beneath him was constantly changing, lights and images flickered in the corner of his eyes.

A jungle, a dessert, a prison, the inside of an airship, the void of space-

It all stopped. Henry felt cold, hard marble flooring through the fabric of his pants. A wooden pole landed on his head with a clatter. He shoved the pole, in the dim lighting he could see it was a broom, off him and stood up. He was in a closet neatly stocked with cleaning supplies. He looked around, and after a moment of hesitation, opened the door.

A hallway, a plain white hallway with red carpet rolled out over the marble floor and high ceilings spoke of a level of luxury Henry hadn't seen since that one time he turned the Toppat Space Station into a resort. Absentmindedly brushing some dust off of his black turtleneck, Henry checked for any sign that he'd been heard. Both ends of the hallway rounded corners into other areas of the building.

Henry hummed in thought, he could go explore wherever he had ended up, or he could go back into the broom closet and not deal with whatever curveball fate threw at him this time.

Go Left
Go Right
Go Back into the Closet

Author's Note

All the Henry Stickmin characters are indeed still stick figures, except we can now see what they're actually wearing. This was actually hard to work out, the designs are so damn simple I was thinking in circles on how to describe Henry, how stick figure people function, all the fun little world building I love to do with fanfiction. Then I'm like, stuff it, they just have clothes now.

Please choose one of the links to continue.

-

The suit of armor, full metal plating with a thin white plume atop the helmet, was fairly large. Henry hugged the wall and slipped behind it. He squatted down to make himself as small as possible as waited. The sound of squealing metal made him jerk up to see the armor was moving. The helmet turned around as if it were looking at him, a red ominous glow behind the visor.

When the rest of it began to walk off its stand with a rattle, Henry, in wide-eyed terror, fled. The armor gave chase. Up and down halls, through doors, past maids, and guards who joined the chase. Soon it was a line helmed by the possessed suit, all out to get him.

Henry ran blindly until he ran out of directions to run, sprinting into something cold and metal...

FAIL

Would a Stickmin Snack help?

Retry

-

Henry tested the door. Upon finding it unlocked, he slipped inside and sighed in relief.

Someone cleared their throat.

Henry was in an ornately decorated office, with expensive furniture and comfy chairs, it all looked rather impressive. Several unicorns, all in fancy, high-class business attire, were gathered around a desk and all of them were looking at him disapprovingly.

"Guards!" one of them barked and the next thing Henry knew, he was pinned to the floor by some kind of glowing, telekinetic force.

At least the carpet was soft.

FAIL

Maybe you should've knocked first?

Retry

New Shiny

Henry quickly scrambled further down the hall. He ran blindly, until he was knocked onto his backside by running face first into something tall, white and furry.

Henry blinked, he looked up and was greeted with the stunned face of a winged unicorn that towered over him, her green, blue and pink mane softly moving behind her in waves, ignoring gravity.

The mare, adorned in golden regalia, leaned down, looking concerned as she offered a hoof to help him up.

"Are you alright?" she asked but her voice fell on deaf ears.

The light streaming in from a nearby window served to highlight the golden tiara perched atop her head. The gold polished to a shine, the elegant curve of the headpiece itself, the way the amethyst in the center caught the light and glittered like a star.

Henry had to have it. In one smooth motion, he hopped to his feet and swiped the crown off the mare's head. He was already bolting down the hallway by the time she realized what happened, he looked back to see her blinking owlishly and the two unicorn guards hastily moving to catch up to him.

Henry smirked, his prize in hand as he navigated the twists and turns of the different rooms and corridors, knocking over priceless displays and darting around confused staff as he went. He slipped through a side door and down a short flight of stairs, free of his pursuers for the moment. Henry stopped at the landing of a large staircase, the outside world past the door that lay beyond the foot of the stairs and another set of guards.

He needed to get past the guards. The railing looked sturdy enough to slide down, with enough speed he could fly past them. He could also distract them and slip away while they were occupied or simply bulldoze his way past with a good old-fashioned shoulder charge. Henry checked his pockets and pulled out a smoke bomb.

Distract
Railing
Smoke Bomb
Charge

The Vault

Henry went right and rounded the corner to find a large door at the end of the hall. It was massive, situated in an ornate gold door-frame decorated with jewels, the door had a stylized sun with a hole in the middle as some sort of lock. It beckoned to Henry, practically screaming there's something important behind this. He stood in quiet contemplation and eyeing the gems embedded in the door-frame.

"Several instruments detected unusual magical anomalies early this morning, I'll be checking on the elements before we start court, just to be safe."

Henry heard voices from the corridor behind him. He looked around, there was a door just behind him, he squeezed into the room, a small, vacant storage room of some kind with wooden crates stacked haphazardly against the back wall, and left the door ajar to peak through it.

A tall white winged unicorn, with a flowing mane and tail, strolled past with a pair of armored unicorn guards behind her. Her unique appearance, practiced grace and golden regalia indicated she was someone important. She approached the door and lowered her head to slide her horn into the lock, her horn glowed a soft blue, and the door, no vault, slid open with all the flair of revealing some ancient, mystical wonder.

Henry squinted to see past the dazzling display as the mare stepped back. Placed on a pedestal, was a large bejeweled case. The precious stones decorating the blue case gleamed in fading mage light, their splendor immediately caught Henry's keen gaze.

He didn't care what the box contained, the case alone was worth a fortune in his eyes. He strained to keep it in sight, made a soft noise of frustration as the regal mare blocked his view as she inspected its contents. In a matter of moments, she returned it to its place and closed the vault door. Henry waited until the entourage were well and truly out of sight to leave the storage room. He made a beeline for the vault, staring intently at the lock.

TNT Crate
Wand
Hack-O-Matic
Fist

-

Henry pulled out the Hack-O-Matic, a small black disc with a few buttons and a screen on top, from his pocket and read the instructions that came with it.

Hack-O-Matic

Unlock any door, any time!

"It even works on combination locks!"- Gadget Gabe 2020

Henry chuckled mischievously and placed the device over the lock. He pushed the power button, it beeped, the screen lighting with blocky text.

SEARCHING...

LOCK FOUND...INITIALIZING...

RUNNING LOCKPICK PROGRAM... PLEASE WAIT

From within the vault, the shrill ringing noise of an alarm went off, the gems in the doorframe flashing red.

DOOR UNLOCKED HAVE A NICE DAY

Henry frowned as armed guards swarmed the corridor and in a flash of golden light, the winged, horned mare from earlier appeared, looking furious.

Henry sighed as the business end of several spears were pointed at him.

FAIL

So much for Quality Guaranteed...

Retry

Alarm

Henry withdrew a wooden wand from his pockets and shoved it into the lock. For a brief moment, nothing happened, then the wand glowed with the same blue light he'd seen earlier and the door responded.

Henry walked up to the gleaming case and opened it. Inside were five gold necklaces with custom cut gems in the middle, and a golden tiara with a jewel in the shape of a six point star. Henry picked up one of the necklaces, inspecting it for any potential value.

He shrugged, dropped the necklace onto the floor, dumped the rest of the jewelry onto the ground, and walked out with the case.

He watched the vault close and hummed in thought, gaze locked onto the six jewels decorating the doorframe. Tucking the case under one arm, he walked over and tugged experimentally at the closest gem. An alarm began to blare down the corridor, the gems in the doorframe flashing red. Henry ducked into the nearby storage room. He spotted a large metal grate over a drain in the middle of the room he could pry open and jump down to escape. The wooden crates stacked in one corner of the room could also have something useful and lying beside them was a large, empty sack.

Crates
Sack
Drain

Throne Room

Henry, case in hand, climbed into the empty sack, tied it up and flopped onto his side. He heard the door open and the sounds of guards moving about, the rattle of their armor a distinctive noise.

"No sign, must have missed them." one called out and they filed out of the room. As their hoofsteps grew faint, Henry rid himself of his disguise and cautiously crept out of the room and down the hall.

He stuck to winding passages and narrow spaces, avoiding patrolling guards and the occasional servant. He reached a side room, the plain white doors leading to a wide, open hallway with an archway to Henry's left and a stairwell further down. Seeing no sign of any movement, he adjusted his grip on the case and stayed close to the wall as he moved.

He reached the archway and peered around the corner. It was actuality a massive doorway, the doors opened inward to a throne room with a curved ceiling, red carpet along the floor and a raised platform, upon which the white mare from before sat in a gold throne, addressing a sharply dressed crowd of unicorns. Henry tiptoed past while they were distracted.

Unfortunately for him, the mare noticed. She stood up, furious. "The Elements! Guards! stop them!"

Armored unicorns and pegasi rushed to answer her call to arms, Henry had to act fast as the pounding of hooves rushed to meet him from both the throne room and behind him. He could try to dodge the oncoming assualt. There was also a window within jumping distance and he fumbled around in his pant pockets, pulling a pink plush toy of some sort of fantasy creature.

Dodge
Window
Doll

Elementary

Henry hastily tossed the doll behind him and ran for the exit as several guards dogpiled it instead of him. Darting past the guards at the bottom of the staircase and hiding in the nearest available bush as all Hell broke loose.

Henry grinned victoriously as he brushed some leaves off of the bejeweled case, already envisioning a future of wealth and luxury. He wasn't sure where he was exactly, it wasn't Earth or any of the places he'd been teleported to before, but it didn't look like he'd be seeing any familiar faces any time soon.

He supposed he would have to make do.

NEW RANK: Elementary

Restart

Seen all the fails and endings? Click Here!