Gunsmoke

by Wanderer D

Chapter 17: Premonition

Pulling into her driveway, Celestia noticed that Luna's motorcycle was already parked inside. Her sister had wasted no time in escaping school to head back home, and that could only mean one thing... well, possibly two, but she was fairly sure her sister hadn't declared her intentions to Sunset yet, so that only left one option.

Gun Gale Online.

Ever since discovering how Sunset also played that game, Luna had taken back to playing with renewed vigor, and Celestia thought it was the cutest thing that she wanted to impress her possible-girlfriend in their mutual hobby.

"Luna! I'm home!" Celestia announced, closing the door behind her. When no reply came, she smiled and shook her head. She put down the keys and her purse and made her way upstairs, peeking into her sister's room and confirming that Luna was Full-Diving like the adorkable gamer she was.

Celestia went to her room and got into more comfortable clothes before running down to the kitchen to make herself a mug of hot cocoa. Grabbing some snacks, she put them all in a tray and made her way to Luna's room. "You really like playing these games, don't you?" she muttered, taking a seat on the computer and turning the screen on. "How about we take a look at how you're doing?"

Being familiar with the interface thanks to several demonstrations by Luna on how cool the whole thing was, had Celestia set up to enjoy the show in less than a minute.

A couple of clicks brought up an aerial view of her sister's squad as they battled a hoard of dog-sized beetles. It was almost educational, in it's own way, to see how well-coordinated the group was. They covered each other's backs and were actively aware of everyone's positions.

Celestia had attempted to convince Luna to taking up coaching one of the school teams. Surely with this constant exposure to tactics and thinking on her feet (so to speak), she would excel at leading young, promising athletes to victory.

Not only would it make the school look better, but more importantly, Luna would have had a living, breathing example of how she could influence students to achieve something amazing beyond academic excellence.

Luna had—of course—refused. Which was slightly disappointing, but Celestia knew better than to push the issue. It had, however, led to Luna's involvement with the music department, and behind-the-scenes planning of larger events, which had helped immeasurably with her reputation among the students.

Celestia shook her head, and started digging into her snacks, leaning back. Let's watch how your friends, our student, and yourself battle monsters to the death, dear sister.

She chuckled at how dramatic that had sounded in her mind.

It was just a game after all.

Desert Mirage ran ahead of the group, always keeping within eyesight of Surgeon. The caverns had slowly turned into the hallways of an abandoned gigantic factory for beings clearly bigger than humans, but there was a lot of organic feel to it, even though the "living" organisms were for the most part mechanical or some sort of living-electronics.

The initial assessment that the whole thing was hive-like had been spot on, as they had already battled a few clusters of low-leveled rust beetles. What had worried Nightmare Moon and Heavy Collar, who were the pair that hunted mobs most often, was that they were clear signs of higher level monsters leaving behind their minions. So, they had decided to slow down a little and hunt them down, lest they get trapped between those and some higher level monsters they would surely encounter deeper in the dungeon.

It wasn't long before she heard the tell-tale scratchy sounds of chitinous monsters nearby, but more importantly, aside from the rust beetle cluster, she could hear much heavier stomps.

Slowing down, she signaled Surgeon to stop, then pressed against the wall as she made her way slowly to the edge of the turn and peeked around the corner.

There it was. It was a Death Scarab, the size of a tank, able to spit some sort of burning plasma that would cause a lot of damage plus burn DoT for almost half a minute, and it was also armed with an appendage at the head which resembled a battering ram. It didn't help that it was as heavily armored as a tank.

She quickly made her way back to Surgeon and updated him on their enemy.

"Hm, I have an idea, think you can kite it?" he asked.

Desert Mirage rolled her eyes. "I'll have to slow down, but yeah, shouldn't be a problem."

"Good, I'll run back and we'll set up some traps and a kill zone. Wait until I give you the signal before you head back to us."

Mirage nodded. "Will do."

She watched Surgeon head over to the others, and then inched her way back to the corner to keep an eye on the mobs. It wouldn't do for them to catch her unaware.

They were still in the same place.

Mirage grimaced. Death Scarabbs were annoying at best. The sheer size of this one was enough to worry her a little. Although she was indeed faster, the thing almost covered the whole hallway from the floor to the ceiling. Its armor would be really hard to breach and it had the annoying habit of producing rust beetle spawn really quickly.

Thankfully she wouldn't just be relying on her little guns to get through that. Mirage paused. Her eyes widened and she jumped back as far and fast as she could, and just in time, as with a crash that sent pieces of metal flying around them, a giant, crystal spider with a red glowing center slammed into where she had been standing less than a second before.

"Crud."

She shot both guns at the creature's face, managing to score a critical hit on one eye, making it recoil and even lowering a third of its HP, but she didn't stop to look. She knew the sudden arrival had nullified her sneaking, and now she not only had the spider to deal with.

"Surgeon!" she shouted into her radio. "I'm coming your way whether you're ready or not! And it's not just the beetles and scarab! I have a Quartz Spider behind me too!"

She dodged to the side, avoiding being splashed with a sticky web, then jumped over and slid on top of a collapsed column.

Mirage hit the ground running and tried to put as much distance between her and the pursuing monsters as she could. She jumped once more to avoid the spider's web, but miscalculated her direction and ended up stumbling on a demolished section of the floor.

She wasn't fast enough to jump a second time. Sticky, crystalline web splashed her legs from the knees down, and she fell forward with a gasp. She twisted on the floor, raising both guns to shoot the spider again, when its head was blown off.

"I have you covered, Mirage," Nightmare Moon's voice rose on the radio.

"Thank you, Moon, I don't know what I would do without you!"

She was suddenly surrounded by Surgeon, Coyote and Thunderbird, who started shooting the rust beetles, who were much faster than the approaching death scarab.

"How much time do you need to get free?" Surgeon asked as he blew apart a beetle.

"Just a few more seconds," Desert Mirage replied. "I'm sorry, I never saw the spider."

"Odio estos bichos," Coyote grumbled, still shooting, but managing to find the time to kick the leg of the collapsed spider.

With a final tug, Mirage was free and she rolled up to her feet, taking a second to shoot two more beetles. "Leave a couple alive, so that the scarab doesn't charge us yet!" she ordered, as they backed away. "How far are we from the traps?"

"Just a dozen meters down the hall," Thunderbird replied as the four turned around and fled. "But we need to be at least double that distance to stay out of the blast radius."

"This is far enough, let's waste this giant dung beetle!" Surgeon shouted. "Remember that Collar wanted it charging if possible!"

They turned around and started firing, blowing the last three rust beetles to pieces and peppering the death scarab's face with plasma and laser bolts.

It paused for a second, then its eyes lit up with red energy and it immediately started charging towards them.

"Wait for it!"

"Wait for it!"

Mirage gulped, seeing the monster get bigger and bigger in front of her.

"Now!"

The floor under the scarab blew up in a massive explosion that pushed Mirage and the others back. She could even feel the heat of the flames against her skin.

When the debris cleared they all stared.

"No way."

"It's alive after that?"

"Malditos insectos mala-madre..."

In front of them, still moving and trying to right itself, the death scarab lay on its side, unable to find purchase with its broken horn to push itself upright again.

"Well," The Lion said walking up to them. "At least its underbelly is not armored."

"I still hate bugs," Coyote muttered.

"Pinkie!" Applejack sighed in exasperation, lowering her guitar and glaring at her friend. "What the hay was that?!"

From behind the drums, Pinke twitched. "Two elbow twitches, a knee jerk, tickly toes and goosebumps on the back of the neck!" Pinkie said worriedly. "We might be attacked by giant monsters!"

"Oh my," Fluttershy said. "I hope it's a false alarm."

"Well there's nothing out there," Rarity spoke up from the window. "I'm sure if such a dreadful creature does appear, it will let us know it's here. Now, if we want to finish this for Sunset in time we should get back to practice." She turned and frowned. "Are you feeling alright, Rainbow Dash? Are you cold?"

"N-no," Rainbow Dash said, rubbing her arms. "I just felt this really intense shiver running down my back and giving me goosebumps, that's all." She shook it off and smiled confidently. "Let's carry on."

"Here they come again!" The Lion roared.

"How's destroying that stupid nest going?!" Coyote called, shooting at the rushing mobs.

"A few more seconds!" Heavy Collar shouted. "I have to do it in one go or it'll spawn another one of those things!"

The two giant, crystalline, ants charged forward, one of them limping on its remaining legs; the other missing its jaws and antennae.

"They're trying to break through to get Nightmare Moon!" Surgeon warned. "She took down the leader, so she's the focus now! Mirage, you take the one missing the legs, I'll work on the other one. Lion, Coyote, Thunderbird, block its path to Moon!"

"Way ahead of you!" Desert Mirage shouted, running up behind the left one, and jumping on top, making it rear back as she emptied two shots into its torso, and a solid beam of plasma shot through its head, finishing the job.

Thunderbird and Coyote planted themselves on either side of the Lion as ordered, making a wall between it and Moon, who was waiting for her rifle to fully reload. The three of them battered the enemy monster with their weapons, but it didn't stop, hammering through them.

Just as it was about to reach her, an explosion of red smoke made it stop when it covered the area where Nightmare Moon was. The monster tittered in confusion, then pain when Surgeon shot it on the side, blowing a considerable chunk of crystal at such a short distance. Just as it turned to face him, a blade of pure plasma severed its head from its body.

The others relaxed, watching Nightmare Moon emerge from the cloud of smoke like some sort of vengeful wraith wielding a plasma sword. She nodded to them in thanks. "A job well done, everyone, we have reached our objective."

She pointed with the sword at the large hydraulic doors at the end of the current room.

"How are we doing with ammo and items?" Lion asked. "I still have all of Sara Jane's special ammo ready."

"I'm good, for ammo and my personal stash of healing items" Mirage said. She limped over to sit against a wall. "Just give me a few seconds to buildup my HP."

"Given how solid our teamwork has been, I'm only down a couple of stimpacks, but we should all heal before going in there." Collar said, and the others followed his advice, using their own stash to get their HP maxed out.

After allowing a few moments for the stimpacks to take full effect, Surgeon nodded. "Alright guys, let's do a quick checkup to make sure we all have additional healing items and see if we can buff up before we go in. Remember: The objective is to win on the first try."

"So you keep saying," Thunderbird muttered.

"Hmm." Twilight turned from one screen to the other, before pushing her chair back to roll over to where Sunset lay. "This is not good. What are they doing right now?"

Lemon Zest glanced at her, keeping an eye on the group in the screen. She had to admit the battles had been pretty cool to watch. Sunset Shimmer—or Desert Mirage as she was called in the game—was an extremely competent gunfighter. She had felt like she was watching some sort of weird sci-fi reality show, with amazing fights, a lot of strategy and an excessive amount of terminology thrown about for good measure. "They're settling down for a bit, the collar dude just told them to heal up, and they're counting bullets."

"Okay, that gives me some time," Twilight said, pushing her chair to the box containing the book. "This fight might turn ugly."

"What do you mean?" Lemon Zest asked. "I mean, doesn't having magic in there count basically as cheating? That would make things easier, right?"

"That's not exactly how it works..." Twilight sighed taking off her glasses and rubbing the spot where they usually rested. "True, Sunset can access her magic there if the magical input is high enough, but we haven't figured exactly at what threshold it turns from simply sensorial to being able to produce a physical result like magic... I'm afraid at this level, it's simply making her feel damage even more than normal and—"

"Wait, she feels the pain?!"

Twilight nodded. "And that's not the worst... look at her thigh just above her knee, where the giant ant managed to hit her."

"It's bruising..." Lemon Zest looked from Sunset to the screen. "Twilight, I don't know if it's a good idea to continue this with something that can kill their characters. What will happen to Sunset if she dies in the game?"

"We'll cut off the feed if she gets too close, as it is it's not exceeded Sunset's security parameters," Twilight said, biting her lip. "I don't like it, but she told me specifically not to cut her off unless it was absolutely necessary."

"Twilight, this is a bad idea."

"I know."

"No game is worth the risk, you shoul—"

"I know!" Twilight cried, startling her girlfriend. "But she and I—we're scared of what we became and what we might become again if we can't control the magic! I don't want to lose my friends! I don't want to lose you if I—"

She rested her head on the bed.

"Sunset and I still have magic. She can even use it in the real world, and I—I opened a dimensional portal again. We know it's dangerous... but Zesty, we need to get a grip on ourselves."

Lemon Zest took a deep breath and held Twilight close. "Let's keep an eye on the readings. We need to make sure Sunset doesn't do something even more tremendously stupid."

"How are you feeling?" Nightmare Moon asked Mirage, who was rubbing her leg where a vicious swipe from one of the ants had gotten a lucky hit.

"It's going to bruise," Mirage admitted even as the wound disappeared. "I felt it more so than usual too... there's a trickle of magic being fed into me as well, so hopefully Twilight is paying attention in case something big happens."

Nightmare Moon grimaced. "You know there's no way you're coming out of a boss fight of this level, with such a small squad, without wounds. You might be killed."

Sunset shuddered. "If I get to that point, Twilight knows to unplug me."

"Do you know what happens to you if you die?"

"Normally I just wake up in Glocken as other players. HP at 1, in a safe zone."

"Normally?"

"I've never died with magic being poured into me along for the ride besides my natural reserves... also, I'm not sure if my trip home might have changed a few things about my physiology."

Nightmare Moon nodded, placing a comforting hand on Mirage's shoulder. "Stay as safe as you can. I know you're strong and that you have a good reason for this, but I do worry."

"Thank you, I really appreciate that, Moon." Mirage looked up at her and nodded firmly before stretching and giving the others a thumbs-up. "I'm ready to go guys."

The squad gathered together in front of the doors, exchanging nervous glances before activating the doors and stepping into the darkness.