Applejack frowned. Her first day off in several weeks, and nobody was playing Terror Terrain Three! Or at least, nobody was playing on her side of the world.
She'd already been waiting for close to an hour for someone (anyone!) to join, and had used that time to set up her equipment for her playing session, but that had only taken about eight minutes. Then she'd spent another fifteen re-familiarizing herself with the zone she was currently in, which was the infamous Classic Killer zone, which got its name from the various cliché obstacles in the fully-destructible terrain that could be used either intentionally, or accidentally (usually the latter during really busy sessions) to kill someone, and the perpetual white and black and shades of gray visual screen. No other level did that so far as the screen was concerned. Every other was in color.
Another interesting thing that set this map apart from most of the others was that it had been made as a sort of chat area rather than actual combat, and as a result everyone that joined were all put on the same team, which meant directly attacking someone was pointless. Normally it was used by players who wanted to goof around while waiting for their friends to get on.
Bink!
“Finally!” Applejack exclaimed. She reached down to her side and lifted an over-head earpiece from the floor next to her and set it on her head. “Testing...testing...can ya hear me?” The new player's gamer tag was PartyMistr3ss. Applejack's own tag was 'JackOfAllApples'.
“Yuppers! Loud and clear!” Applejack would know that voice anywhere.
“Why, hey there, Pinkie Pie! I take it you're on break?”
“Applejack? Oh. Jack of all apples. I should have guessed!” She giggled. “No, but the Corner's been having electrical problems in the kitchen and the Cakes didn't want to risk setting their store on fire, so they're closing it until the problem is fixed, so I've got nothing to do for the rest of the morning. What about you?”
“Well, with it getting into the colder seasons and harvest time being done with, ah'm finally getting some time to mahself.” Applejack had her character leap onto a boulder perched on top of a hill. It rocked, but didn't roll. Applejack hopped down from it and trotted over to Pinkie Pie, who's character looked like her for the most part but was colored like Discord. She also had a fake arrow going through her head as a hat. Yup, that's Pinkie, alright. “So sugar cube, shall we wait for other ponies, or do you want to play now?”
Bink!
“Looks like we won't have to wait long!”
This time, the new player's gamer tag was 'TGAPTrixie'
“Ye've got tah be kiddin' me.” Applejack deadpanned, rolling her eyes. “I reckon I should be more picky when I start wishin' fer anypony or anybody to join.” She sighed.
“Who dares to mock the Great and Powerful Trixie!?”
“One who already knows yer a fraud, and the only thing great an' powerful about you is yer mouth.”
“H-how dare you!? Trixie will teach you a lesson, you farmer!”
“Hey! How did you know that Applejack's a farmer?”
“Applejack? That name is familiar to Trixie!”
“Should be. Mah friend did what you couldn't, and put an Ursa Minor to bed all by herself!”
“Ursa- it's you!” Trixie gasped and then followed it up with an angry tone. “You're that orange pony that I hog-tied!”
Trixie's character galloped along a short boardwalk and leaped from the edge to land in a bunch of bushes rather than water. Her character lost three hit points out of the thirty that was the standard health bar from the fall.
There were ways to increase the health meter, of course, such as applying a certain equipment or buying (with actual bits) an ability that would either give you more health or enable you to use a life-drain power. It wasn't hard to guess which Trixie had picked, and she quickly ran her character at Applejack, who didn't bother to dodge. “Now you die!” Trixie's hoofs glowed a bright green and enveloped Applejack's body.
After a few seconds of this Applejack rolled her eyes and Pinkie walked over to Trixie and tapped her lightly on a shoulder.
“Uh...you do know that there's no friendly-fire in this zone...and that everybody that enters here is on the same team, right? Life-drain won't work here.” The glow faded and Trixie removed her hoofs from Applejack and set them on the cobblestones that were, for the most part, the ground for the Classic Killer zone. The rest of the 'ground' was either bare dirt, or pitfalls that dropped your character into spike pits, but most of those were marked with a ironically-chosen smiley-face sign that hovered in midair above it. There were six of them scattered around the zone, one of which was at the entrance to an ammo-restock point, though all it gave you for zone-unique weaponry was a rubber chicken as a melee which clucked when you smacked someone with it, and a bunch of banana peels as a long-range that could make an enemy slip without fall and tumble forward head-over-hoofs four times. Neither 'weapons' dealt any damage unless certain circumstances, such as tumbling off a building were involved.
“Trixie knew that, she was only testing you!” she selected an emote, and her character stuck its nose in the air.
“Yeah. Sure ya did.” Applejack turned her view to look at Pinkie Pie. “Welp, we're obviously not going to be meetin' any decent players by sittin' around 'ere. Let's head over to Luna's Lander. Lyra's probably there, at the least. She usually is.”
“Hold it, farm pony! Trixie challenges you! The first pony to ten kills wins! Right here!” Again, Applejack rolled her eyes.
“Like Pinkie just said, in case yer slow, friendly. Fire. Does. Not. Work. Here. How are we supposed to get kills?”
“Like this!” Trixie used a 'Grab and Shove' spell, which was the game's version of telekinesis. What it did was what the name implied.
“H-hey!” Applejack yelled into her mic as her vision displayed her character moving quickly away from both pinkie Pie and Trixie. Her screen rolled several times when she struck the ground again, and then she came to a stop, her real eyes circling around as she got over the dizziness.
Tweetily-dee tweetily-doo! “Oh, horseap-”
Applejack's voice was cut off with a cartoony scream as one of the smiley spike traps activated and her character plunged into the pit and was brutally skewered. Her screen was filled with a pony-skull and crossbones floating above where she fell, and then her game screen went black with a number counting down from six.
Meanwhile Pinkie Pie used an emote that made her character show a face of horror, complete with covering her mouth with her hoofs.
“That was an awful trick!” She snorted, and then giggled. “But it was funny! Those smiley-traps crack me up! And the look on her face- hey!” Trixie next Grabbed and Shoved Pinkie Pie into the same trap, much to Trixie's enjoyment. Several seconds later, both Pinkie Pie and Applejack had re-spawned and had made their way back to where Trixie laughed triumphantly whilst standing on her hind legs.
“That is two kills for the Great and Powerful Trixie! Bow before my might!” Pinkie Pie and Applejack looked at one another and narrowed their eyes, then grinned evilly. And returned their faces to Trixie.
Trixie stopped laughing and looked down at her two recent victims and blinked in confusion. “Why are you looking at Trixie like- !” The two friends grabbed the protesting-Trixie and-
“Heave Ho!”
Tweetily-dee tweetily-doo!
“Aaaieee!” -tossed her into the trap as well.
The two friends brushed the digital dust off their hoofs and bumped their hoofs together, walked to the spike pit and looked down into it as the doors swung back up to their shut position. The trap door was speckled with black and white blood.
“Challenge accepted, partner!”
@ @ @ @ @
Applejack screamed as the rolling boulder she'd stood atop not long after before Pinkie Pie logged in tailed her close to her actual tail.
Like an oaf she had let Trixie goad her into getting angry, and then followed her right into this trap. Now she was running for her HP, which the boulder could wipe out in one cartoony-squish! Sadly (for Applejack), escape and survival was not to be.
Team Killer! The game announced for the fifth time from Trixie's actions. It had also sounded twice for Applejack, and four times for Pinkie Pie, much to Pinkie's delight, though two of those times had been from accidentally killing Applejack. By unspoken agreement they were targeting only Trixie for their contest, which gave Trixie an advantage over them.
* * * * *
Elsewhere Pinkie Pie rubbed her hoofs together and grinned maniacally.
“Right! When Trixie comes through that alleyway she'll step on the banana, tumble into the wall, which will leave her dazed, and then she'll trip over that rock from my inventory, step onto the rake, which will slap her in the face and she'll lose four hit points, then she'll trip over the rock again, and then I'll drop the piano that I stole from the mini-chapel near the manual entrance that's now hanging from the rope on her!” Pinkie Pie chortled and then grabbed a randomly-generated box and hid herself inside it to wait.
% % % % %
Trixie laughed to herself from the top of the hill she'd pushed the boulder from as once more Applejack re-spawned and began looking for something to use to her advantage. Clearly, Trixie having chosen her breed of pony for this game had been an excellent choice, if her kill-count in comparison to the other two were of any comparison.
Trixie's smug mood was ruined as she received a banana peel to the snout with one of the peels covering one of her eyes. Trixie frowned and wiped it off with a hoof, then rose to her hoofs and took a step forward, only to automatically tumble forward even though it was no longer on her body. “Woah-ho-oh-ho-woah!” Trixie finally came to a stop, her own eyes now rolling in their sockets at home in her soft gaming chair.
As Trixie's character jumped back to its hoofs she yelled “Who dares to throw garbage at the-” Splap! A second banana peel hit her in the face, and this time steam came from Trixie's (real) ears. Trixie removed this peel as well, “That's it!!! No one throws fruit at the Great and-” Once more forgetting that the banana's effect remained even after the object itself had been removed Trixie once more went tumbling forward, this time her head stopping against a gong bigger than she was, which dealt her HP five points of damage, and hurt her real-world ears from the racket blasting from her own headset. “Somepony is going to pay for-
Suddenly the cord the gong hung from snapped and the gong banged against the cobblestones, rocked for a second, and then fell down on top of Trixie's character, flattening her and costing her another ten points, as well as dealing an additional two points every two seconds that it was on top of her to simulate being crushed under the weight.
After losing nearly all of her HP, Trixie managed to squeeze out from under the gong, which softly rang like a manhole lid (though nopony knew who originally called it was called that, or why save one, and nopony believed her) upon striking the ground.
Her character panting as if exhausted, Trixie turned her screen around in several directions, searching for the banana ninja, but found nopony. Instead, she found a small yellow-brown Diamond Dog with a bone permanently in the character's mouth. His gamer tag read 'ReeferRoofer'.
He cackled gleefully and waved the remaining two bananas at Trixie.
“Does stupid blue pony like bananas?!” He cackled again and turned and half-ran half-waddled away from her.
Trixie ground her teeth together and galloped after the scrawny newcomer, ignoring for the moment the fact that there were two hostile players already out and about. Fortunately for her, at the moment neither of them were actively pursuing her, leaving her to trip over yet another tossed banana peel, and slam into a cluster of garbage cans, from behind which ran a cartoony fat cat that screeched in protest before darting into an alley and disappearing into a dark hole in the wall of an inaccessible house that was too small for players to go into. Even if they had been using the PC version and had hacked their character to make them smaller both the cat and the hole were NPC 'ghosts' that had no physical substance and were only for dramatic, or comical purposes. A player crashing into them, was one such cliche comedy.
Fortunately for Trixie the impact cost her no life points, and the aggravated and stinky (as indicated from the wavy lines rising up from her character and a few flies buzzing around it) Trixie quickly kicked the cans away from her body and rapidly tapped a green square button on her controller to make her character stand up again. Once standing, She turned her screen about and just barely caught sight of the last two letters of the Diamond Dog's gamer tag above his head going around a corner down an alley.
“Trixie will fix you, you mangy mongrel!” She shouted into her headset before once more giving chase down the alley and slid to a stop to witness the odd spectacle of ReeferRoofer stumbling backward after seemingly having crashed into a wall, whereupon it then tripped over a colored rock, which from its coloration likely meant it had been picked up from another zone, then stepped onto a rake which slapped it in the face and cost it four hit points, then it teetered off-balanced with stars orbiting its head to trip over the rock again and finally fell onto its back, where the player groaned and made a sound like he was up-chucking after so many screen-view changes. Having enjoyed the show, Trixie trotted up next to him and stuck her tongue out and squinted her eyes shut. Or maybe it a was a her, Trixie couldn't really tell. “Perhaps next time you-”
ReeferRoofer screamed and Trixie's screen went black for a few seconds accompanied by the sound of what sounded like a piano having all of its keys struck at the same time. When it became visible again Trixie backed her character up to discover that a large black piano had just fallen out of the sky and slammed into the ground not half an inch in front of her face.
Trixie swallowed and then jumped when the damaged piano lid sprung up and ReeferRoofer's gamer tag appeared above his character's ears.
He weakly grabbed hold of the top of what was left of the piano and pulled himself up and flopped over the side. His HP read as five and the teeth in his mouth were covered with piano keys even though realistically, if he wound up with anything in his mouth it would have been the strings or wooden splinters. He spit them out, each making a plinking sound as they struck the cobblestones.
“Me hurt!”
“Hey!” A high-pitched and annoyed voice from on top of a roof yelled down. “You ruined my trap!” Trixie looked up to the roof where Pinkie's character stood on the edge looking down at her would-be victim and actual victim and was about to call Pinkie insane when a second piano dropped out of the sky and crushed her character and knocked the Diamond Dog back head over heals several times.
* * * * *
Pinkie Pie looked up in the air and saw a gray Pegasus that she knew from around town. This particular Pegasus frequently came into the SCC to buy a box of fresh muffins for her and her daughter.
“Oops! My bad!” The Pegasus apologized while wearing an idiot-grin, fluttering in midair with her front hoofs behind her back in an 'apology' emote. A few seconds later, her character Binked out of the server again, leaving the ruins of the two destroyed pianos on the ground below along with an incredulous Diamond Dog.
“What event this be, piano-rain day?! Me outta this Pony funny farm!” The player declared, and after putting the last two bananas back in his inventory, left the server as well, vanishing like fog evaporating in the sunlight.
% % % % %
Trixie this time respawned inside the bottom of a dry stone-ringed well, complete with bucket and crank at the top. Normally this was not a problem, as one of the spells the Unicorn players had access to would allow her to walk up walls, however first her mana points would need to reach ten, and that would take about thirty seconds. Even this on its own was not really a problem so long as Trixie was willing to be patient, but that was the key detail right there: Trixie was not a patient Pony, and after waiting for only half the time she improvised and used the grab-and-shove spell to grab the bucket, and then aimed her view down to shove it down towards herself. She smugly smiled at her ingeniousness, and waited for the bucket to reach her.
It was only as it came within four feet of her face, still traveling about 25 MPH, that she realized her mistake.
@ @ @ @ @
As Applejack set up the last wooden barrel for a stairway trap she'd set up what sounded like a big crowd of laughing Ponies and other beings echoed through the zone followed by an announcement in bold and blinking letters at the top-center of her screen between her life indicator, (which was on the top-right side) and her weapon-select, (which was on the top-left).
Suicide!
“What in tarnation?” She thought aloud. It had been a long time since she'd heard that particular announcement, even during the more violent PVP matches. She stopped and looked around her in all directions and then spoke louder into the mic. “Hey Pinkie Pie?”
“Yeah, AJ?”
“Wazzat you?”
“Nope! I've seen a couple other players since we've started, though, so it could have been one of them!”
“Really?” AJ asked, genuinely curious, given how inactive this zone had been before their contest began. “Who'ja see?”
“I saw Derpy the mail-pony from our town, and I saw a Diamond Dog. Both of them left a few seconds ago, though, so it couldn't have been either of them!”
“D'ya think it could'a been Trixie?”
“Trixie can hear you, you know!”
“Oh we know, we were just choosing to not ask you directly!” Pinkie explained with zero sarcasm in her voice.
Trixie muttered something intelligible and Applejack chuckled, and took a sip of some iced tea that Big Macintosh had brought her.
“Thank ya, big bro!” She saluted him and Big Mac nodded.
“Eeyup.”
An hour later (due in part to a power outage that prevented them from getting back on for about thirty minutes) their contest had come right down to the wire with Pinkie Pie and Trixie having nine kills, and Applejack with eight. With Trixie being just as close to victory as Pinkie Pie the two friends were now moving about together so as to increase their chances of survival. At the moment the pair were fleeing through a small brick town from a bunch of toppling objects that Trixie (with the unintentional help of another player that had been setting up a domino-like line of objects crossing over rooftops and running along streets) was causing to topple around and in front of them in an attempt to separate them again. So far other than making one or the other of them trip from time to time, she'd accomplished nothing else save for angering the other player, whom filed a complaint before leaving.
Finally, after dodging a bounce-spring that had enough push to bounce them up two stories into the air Applejack hurdled a trashcan down an alleyway, yanking hard at Pinkie with a quickly-equipped lasso as she did so. Together they managed to escape the various falling objects, and followed the alley all the way to its end. Its dead end.
“Welp, no way out going this way!” Pinkie said, tapping some of the walls in the hopes of finding a secret passage or a spot where the seams of the walls were not aligned properly.
Occasionally the zone-craftsmen and testers missed some of these or left a glitch here or there. Some of those glitches (sometimes called 'secrets' or 'rabbit holes' by the players that found them) or seams could be exploited and be used as a hiding place or as an escape route that would leave an opponent befuddled. Unfortunately, this alley had no such secret...or did it?
An exclamation point blinked a few times above Pinkie's character's head and a big red button (which contrasted the rest of the environment) that read Warning! Do Not Push! appeared on the left wall (if you were facing the dead end). Pinkie made a wide-eyed face at the button and lifted a hoof to lightly press against it.
“Sugar cube, I don't think ya should be messin' with that there button. I mean, it says right on it not ta push it!” Pinkie Pie turned her character to look at Applejack and emoted 'roll eyes'.
“AJ, if they did not want us to press it, then it would not be here, would it, silly filly?”
“Well when ya put it like that, I suppose it makes sense, but-” Ignoring her, Pinkie went ahead and pressed the button.
Some odd music that neither of them had ever heard before began to play, sounding as if it had been reversed and a creepy, screechy laugh came from their TVs, and even through their earpieces.
You should not have done that!
Suddenly, accompanied by the sound of stone grating on stone the ground in front of the dead end changed from cobblestones to a spike trap pit, as did the ground behind Applejack, who had whirled at the sound, and had backed up against Pinkie in surprise. For a brief moment the pair considered jumping the one heading back the way they'd come, but then what should appear at the end of it but Trixie Lulamoon, looking around and wondering a little nervously at the still-playing music.
When Trixie saw the other two Ponies trapped between herself and a hard place that also had a pit in front of it, she laughed like a nearly-triumphant super-villain and leisurely advanced towards the edge of the pit on her side.
“And so The Great and Powerful Trixie is victorious!” Applejack frowned at her. “Was there ever any doubt?
I'd rather kill mah own character mahself than give her the satisfaction of- Applejack drew in a sharp breath as an idea came to her. Wait...that's it! Applejack leaned a little closer to Pinkie and whispered to her to buck her into the spike trap.
“What?!” Pinkie 'whispered' back. Trixie was too busy gloating and monologuing to notice them talking, though. “Why would I do that?”
“So we can still beat 'er, o' course! If you keel mah person, then you score! None of us actually declared any rules!” Pinkie cast a glance at Trixie, whom was now, of all things, setting up a camera from her inventory to take a picture, and then nodded at Applejack.
“Hey Trixie!” Applejack called, interrupting the blue overconfident Unicorn, who looked up, still fully-confident that her victory was assured. Applejack carefully maneuvered around Pinkie to stand behind her.
“Using your friend as a shield? So much for 'Hero of Equestria'!”
“You lose.” Trixie made a confused face for half a second, and then began to laugh right as Pinkie Pie bucked Applejack's character backward against the dead-end wall.
Trixie's jaw dropped in disbelief and she began stuttering, pointing a hoof at them.
“T-t-that's not-”
Tweetily-dee tweetily-doo!
Applejack, smirking, dropped from sight and died, giving Pinkie Pie the last point needed to score ten team kills, and leaving Trixie the loser of her challenge, much to her surprise.
