New Beginnings
The rain stopped. Warm light broke through the cloud layer, and as the soft fingers of sunlight caressed her cheek Luna awoke with a jerk and ruffled her deep blue wing feathers softly. Blink. Blink. “Ah what a lovely morning!” She said inwardly. “Tia sure outdid herself today…” The princess rolled out of her royal four-poster bed, and made her way slowly to the large mirror that made up one wall. Her reflection stared back at her, unmoving. Sigh. Suddenly there came a cacophonous knock on her bedchamber door. “Come.” One of her guards trotted around the door, and knelt before her. “My Princess, your dear sister is asking after you.”
“Ah, thank you Sunshine.” She said, while giggling to herself: ‘What a silly name for a Night Guard!’
The Throne Room. Her sister’s majestic mane flowing down around her royal self seemed to add radiance to the room.
Her smile widened when she saw me, “Greetings...Woona.” Her younger sibling looked at her with disapproval of her use of that…infuriating nickname.
“Why dost thou torment me so, Celery?” That deflated her smile a bit. However, in the Celestia way of cheerfulness, she said with a slightly forced grin;
“And you, little sister. Glad to see you’ve finally risen to see my beautiful day!”
“Of course, Princess.” Did she do the same for her little sister? Did she stay awake and watch her remake the skies each night? A small sigh escaped her lips. Her sister didn’t seem to notice.
“Now, the reason I called you here. I know how you’re always on those so-called ‘computer games” and I’ve just been informed of a new system... Oh what did they call it...” Celestia pondered over this while her sisters mouth stretched to her ears in a broad grin. “The Uniment?!” Luna couldn't believe what she was hearing. The thing she had been waiting for for so long had finally come into existence... The Uniment, or Universal Armament..Essentially a gateway into the once impossible: Virtual reality.
With a flurry of white, the techie's lab coat swirled round as he turned the corner, Luna following eagerly, with little hopping trots, showing her excitement. “So,” Hop. “where,” Hop. “are,” Hop. “we,” Hop. “going?” Luna said in between her bouncing. She was evidently ecstatic. The techie glanced at her nervously and replied with a practiced politeness: “Well my Lady, we are headed to the Research and Development branch in order to test our latest breakthrough. We decided that you would be the most obvious candidate for testing, given your love of all things game-like.” He brought a hoof up and adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat and continued. “Of course the “Uniment”, as such we named it, will not be used only for gaming, the possibilities of this technology are nigh endless! Military drills, Virtual classrooms for the fillies, almost anything is possible with this headset.”
A double door of metal slid open in front of them, revealing a mass of lab coat wearing Colts and Mares, noting down observations on clipboards, walking around in pairs or threes exchanging notes, or fiddling around with little buttons. It made Luna squee with happiness just being in the prescence of so much tech. The technician had other plans however, and nudged her out of her squalor of ecstasy with a short statement. “Oh, considering the implications of the Gear, we need to test the server's capability with multiple users, so we brought in two more test subjects. One Lyra Heartstrings and one Vinyl Scratch.”
The names sounded familiar to Luna, she had met them before but couldn't match names to faces. As luck would have it, the princess didn't need to. Her companion lead her around a large machine (she stared at it with a rather obvious display of wonder) and to a circular white antechamber of the main laboratory, revealing three sets of the Uniment and two ponies not donning lab coats. The first had a mixed mane of turquoise and white while the other's hair was a spiky dark and light blue. Judging by the Cutie Marks they were Lyra (A Lyre) and Vinyl (A double quaver), respectively. Both of the ponies gasped and knelt at first sight of Luna, who then laughed and said good-naturedly - “There is no need for that, dear ones. This is no royal visit! We are here to aide the testing!” Both mares were visually relieved and beamed at Luna, drawing a similar smile out from the princess of the night. The techie then coughed quietly and reminded her to tone the Royal Canterlot voice down a couple notches at which her ears flattened slightly as she blushed and apologised.
Eager as ever, she bounded over to the Uniment setup, her eyes filled with glee, and asked the technician how it was worn. He told her and helped her place the necessary electrodes on her flank, body core and horn while two of his colleagues mirrored his actions for the two other subjects. “Does this tech only work for unicorns? Shame for the Pegasi and earth ponies if it does..” Vinyl queried while scratching her head. She was met with a short laugh and an explanation – the Uniment draws some power from a pony's special parts, be it wings or a horn. For earth ponies however it draws power directly from the heart, for it is the most potent part of them. Vinyl nodded her head in understanding - “Awesome sauce! When do we start then, Prof'?”
“As soon as the Princess is ready.” was the reply.
Luna smiled and shook away the butterflies growing in her gut, and gave the go ahead, “We.. I am sufficiently prepared.”. Lyra, who had been silent until now, suddenly spoke up: “Are you sure this is safe? There wont be any danger, right?” The Technician glanced up at her from his clipboard, “Oh no, you'll be perfectly secure.” Lyra sighed with relief and stepped up next to the Princess and other unicorn, ready to go. There was a five second countdown. A lever was pulled, and the lights on one side of the Uniments flickered on. Over the sound of a slight whirring, the techie said to the three ponies: “In order to activate the program, you must use the command “Link Connect”. At your own pace.”
The words were uttered.
The consciousnesses of Princess Luna of Equestria, DJ PON3, And Lyra Heartstrings entered the Uniment.
Their lives would never be the same.
[Chapter 1 End]
Author's Note
Hope you enjoyed Chapter 1!