Winning is Everything

by SparklingTwilight

Rating: teen
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Sonata Dusk, Equestria Girls, Aria Blaze, Adagio Dazzle, Tragedy, Horror, Violence
Length: 1059

Twilight Sparkle plays the sirens' virtual reality game. It's terrible. But she's going to win.

Sometimes, the only way to win is to not play. But the sirens want their magic back and Twilight Sparkle is polite and curious--oh, so curious. Curiouser and curiouser... down we go.

Era: Post-Season 9.

Cover Art: The background portion of the VR machine is by Delapouite with rights only to that portion of the art discussed at the link. I edited it to look like Twilight.

Published 2024-07-03 22:20:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-07-03 22:20:00 UTC

IN YOUR FACE!

Author's Note

Soundtrack for the video game in this story (from Mozart's The Magic Flute).

Note1: Flug-seahorse = Flying Seahorse. "Flug" from German.

Note2: You may recall Jason and the Argonauts' sirens... this also references Heavy Rain--this tragic video summarizes that source. Video warning: traumatic death.

IN YOUR FACE!

"Hello INSERT NAME," the video game prompted.

Twilight Sparkle selected her name with her hooftroller.

"Hello Twilight Sparkle. Welcome to Bottled Song."

"Should we really be hopping across the world portal?" Sonata Dusk, one of the Sirens that had been exiled to the human world, asked.

"Yes. Now shut up," her youngest sister, Aria, pushed Sonata aside, then jumped through the portal.

"Nerds still want us out," her eldest sister, Adaigo, said. "But we're doing it."

"Okay!" Sonata smiled, going along as usual.

Once all three were through, Adaigo set about exercising her natural flug-seahorse body.(Note1) All parts were there and probably working, but she opened her maw to sing, and nothing came out. She was still flummoxed by the curse that menaced the Sirens when they had been banished.

Then, she was momentarily flummoxed by Twilight Sparkle, the pony one, staring at her.

"You're not supposed to be here--" Twilight lowered her crowned head, frowning and preparing a spell.

"Actually! We are," Aria said, as they had rehearsed.

"Who gave you permission?"

"Nocreature. But! We brought a gift." She held aloft in her magic a strange set of equipment.

And that equipment now was being used by Twilight Sparkle.

"To move forward, press X"

"Here is Jason. He is walking away. Press X to Jason."(Note2)

"Press X to what? Oh, it means 'press X to go to Jason.' Got it. What a weird name."

"Jason is being entranced by Sirens. Oops. You didn't quite get to Jason before they led him astray and he was horribly--"

"This is awful," Twilight Sparkle lowered her hooves and started to detach the hooftroller.

The screen flashed red all around her equipment-ensconced face. "Tutorial Complete. You were predetermined to lose."

"What pony would ever want to lose?"

"To win the full game, you must free the Sirens and restore their voices."

"But they're the badgirls," Twilight objected.

"It's heroic to save people," the game said. "And the Sirens aren't so bad any more. What happened to Jason was an accident. They just wanted their mellifluous voices free to share with the world!"

"Twilight?" A soft voice came. "Are you coming to the meeting? That's a scary helmet--"

"Fluttershy?" Twilight turned.

"Eeep."

The game flashed an epilepsy-inducing series of lights, but it eventually stabilized.

"Was that you, Fluttershy?" Twilight asked.

Silence propounded.

"Sooo... this game makes tacos?"

"The banishment seriously brain damaged you Sonata." Aria placed her hands on her hips.

"Don't bother. All we have to do is get this game into the hooves of a sufficiently powerful pony and it'll alter reality," Adaigo explained.

"How?" Aria asked.

"I stuffed it with confiscated magical artifacts the Golden Girls have been snatching."

Sonata snorted and slipped a taquito into her mouth. "Hyuk-tuah tee-hee-hee."

They ignored her.

"But how does that work? And why do you know it's going to work?"

"Because it talked to me."

"We're trusting an assortment of evil-ish magical artifacts?"

"Do you want your music back?"

"Buck it."

"The Heroes of Equestria have been corrupted and only You can defeat them and break the Curse and Free the Reformed Sirens!" The three digital Sirens sang, then faded to a scene of them glumly entrapped behind bars.

Twilight Sparkle ran, jumped, hid, and fought enemies. Eventually, the screen flashed red and announced: "BOSS BATTLE!"

Twilight blinked. "I'm fighting Fluttershy?"

Her friend fluttered before her. "Hi. I um. Feel real mad. Urrrrrrk."

"I'm not going to fight Fluttershy."

Fluttershy whacked Twilight across her muzzle. She felt blood in her mouth. "That's too realistic--"

A voice came from outside the game: "Y'all dancin' in there or--whoa--"

The screen went haywire again.

"So, we kinda wanted to give you this game to apologize. Video games are, like, culturally the most important thing in the human world. Like, this is a big darn deal," Adaigo said.

"Please finish it today. The machine will self-destruct or like, maybe go back to the human world in a few hours," Aria said.

"This seems like a ruse to distract me while you escape!"

"No, no, no," Aria blathered. "We're going back through the portal."

"I thought we were entering the game to merge with the curse--" Sonata's exposition was muffled by Adaigo.

"What?" Twilight asked.

"We're going back now. Ta-ta!" Adaigo cracked a grin. "Promise you'll finish it?"

"Sure..." Twilight frowned.

"Tee-hee--" Sonata giggled. The Sirens disappeared, and Twilight was left with the awful game.

Fluttershy reversed mid-air and bucked Twilight's face, ghoulishly laughing and speaking not-at-all like Fluttershy. "Ha-ha-Twilight! Reverse Fluttershy will easily defeat you, the dumbest of our coterie."

Twilight shook off the shock and summoned a shield. Fluttershy's next sortie bounced off.

"It's just a game." Twilight summoned her magic. "I should do my best."

"Eeep," Fluttershy cringed, sounding more like herself. Then she was obliterated.

The second boss was Applejack. The third, Rarity. Fourth--Rainbow Dash.

The fifth, Pinkie Pie, warned Twilight in-between pelting her with pies. "I'm not myself, Twilight, but I gotta warn ya', it's not happy outside. Not partyriffic at all! It's not happy-not happy-not--" she kept repeating and the game started skipping. Twilight started to rip the game's image-displaying device off her head.

"I don't care that I promised the Sirens I'd finish. A gift doesn't have to be fully used to be appreciated. It's the thought that counts... no matter how twisted," Twilight closed her eyes.

Pinkie Pie started smothering Twilight with her pie. Twilight spit and bit back and shoved Pinkie into a sharp corner.

Then, Twilight ripped the goggles off her face.

"We're free!" Adaigo cracked her neck, and trilled a beautiful string of notes.

"I'm gonna get wasted! On tacos!" Sonata giggled as her stomach rumbled.

"Thanks, I guess, for saving us from that bucking terrible curse and game. Oh holy Cthulhu! All your little pony friends are bleeding on the bucking floor!" Aria's eyes grew wide.

Twilight Sparkle affixed the sirens with a desperate, troubled glare and held up her bloody and cracked rather-sharp virtual reality hooftroller.