From there, things got a little fuzzier, because the odds were very high the Crusaders would haul him off in who-knows-what direction as soon as he got there. And then he'd tell them... What? That he had somehow become a living video game character? Up until now, he hadn't actually considered what might come as a consequence of telling ponies what was going on. Since the Crusaders were his close friends and also the most likely ponies to spill the beans if he tried to keep it secret... If he was going to make a decision on the matter, now was the time. Twilight's advice settled down onto his mind in the usual way, and thus Spike considered the angles.
Pros: He'd have a social group close to him that he could talk about the whole thing with. He'd have ponies to show off to. Maybe he could help them get their Cutie Marks. Maybe they could help him pick up and train new skills. It would be fun.
Cons: He'd have a social group close to him to talk to anypony they felt like about the whole thing. He'd have ponies to show off to. He might end up helping them get their Cutie Marks. They might help him develop new skills. It would be dangerous.
...Well, that was a pair of distressingly similar lists. Arguments about "fun" and "dangerous" being synonyms aside, this really did feel like an arbitrary choice. Telling them could get them all into odd situations, not telling them could hurt feelings, they'd probably find out eventually anyways... It was that last bit that he felt was the most important. Be it through deliberate focused meddling or just bad luck, the Crusaders would positively absolutely certainly get mixed up in whatever he chose to do. Heck, the odds would probably increase along with the danger he got into (asymptotically, the Twilight-trained part of his brain chimed in), so keeping them in the dark would be worse and more dangerous for them and others.
Why did he think of danger now instead of earlier? That was simple (to him, anyways): Before thinking about this particular wrinkle this had been his problem, and his mostly-alone. As soon as he got other ponies (especially ones his own age) involved? Then the risks actually mattered. But hey, as far as risks went, how much worse could this be than anything the CMC had already done? He himself probably was not a danger or a threat, and he wasn't planning to do anything too insane. Even if he were going to do anything risky, this is a group of fillies who have already dealt with basilisks and worse. And maybe...
Maybe nothing would happen. Just because he happened to have an ability that told him about his HP, gave him damage resistance and regeneration, and defined his claws in terms of their attack power... None of that meant this had to be a dangerous game. ...That was a pleasant thought at least, but his life had already been weird and dangerous even before today! From general Ponyville madness to the Everfree Forest, the Changelings, Discord... There was always risk in life, but maybe now he'd be better suited to face it.
Honestly, his power could probably be used to help protect ponies from all those things. He had MP after all, and a lot of games had buffs. Plus breakfast had just proven he had the ability to get and maybe give perks (albeit small ones) with food alone, much less spells.
So it was probably reasonable to chalk up the "danger" side of the equation as being, um, not much worse than usual. He didn't have any real concerns about keeping it a secret, so long as ponies respected his privacy as much as they already did. Getting the CMC their Cutie Marks... He'd be lying if the thought didn't have a kind of appeal. It's one thing to say that you and your friends were always meant to be together, it's another to have literal evidence of it the way Twilight and the Elements did. And as far as skills went, well... Here's hoping this game has a way to track tree sap resistance.
As for telling other ponies, he'd cross that bridge when he got to it. But for now, there was no question that he was going to tell the Crusaders and the Elements: He'd already told Twilight, he had a quest to tell Pinkie, he'd never keep that kind of secret from Rarity... No questions about it, it felt best to just get ahead of any misinformation, confusion, or drama. 'Tell early tell often', or something like that.
That might be easier than it seemed: If he ended up walking Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom to their houses after school, and then took Scootaloo to Rainbow Dash's place... That would actually run him by all the Elements except for Fluttershy. And the list of fines was going to force him out towards her place anyways, so there it was: A solid plan!
Now to just hope and pray nothing wrecked it.
Spike's first trip out of the Library since his new powers came to light was... Well, enlightening. He learned many useful things in those first few seconds. There were two dozen or so ponies milling about on their way to work, getting breakfast, or doing chores in the early hours of the morning... And only a tiny handful had a 'Level' higher than 7, with nopony breaking double digits. All told he saw three or four titles, universally attached to the rare outliers who were closer to 10 than not.
On top of his inherent sight of titles and levels, using Observe told him a fair bit more: Now that the skill had a decent level, it was showing him a Status screen much like his own, only slightly less detailed. Level, title, class, stats, a brief personal history, and any status effects they were under (he saw a few colds and decided to steer clear). No skills or other tabs, but perhaps that would come in time. Even the few things he saw were a bit weird. He didn't know a lot of these ponies that well, but he still saw cold details about their history, their work, their families...
Something to get used to, he supposed. It certainly wouldn't get in the way of how he saw or treated them, nor would it get in the way of his training.
Spike continued to watch ponies and use Observe on absolutely everything, even clouds and garbage, as he made his way to the first house he had to visit on "the patrol". Twilight usually did the collection of fines and overdue books herself, but sometimes it all piled up and Spike ended up taking a big list and heading out into town. Today's wasn't so bad, only seven or eight ponies, even if a few of the fines were pretty sizable. Plus the weather was great for the season: Seems like the Pegasus patrols had scheduled a nice spring shower overnight, leaving the town cool but not too chilly outside, and the ground was just a little soft under his claws.
The first target was within a stone's throw of home, so he only gained a few Observe levels on the way... Still, it seemed to be getting a bit irate about how often he was using it on 'meaningless' things. The descriptions of rocks, clouds, and random objects started to give more detail in an almost sarcastic tone... Which brought up the question of where this information was coming from.
Yeah, he was sure it was all true (he'd never seen or heard of a game that lied to the player in the UI: there was a bond of trust there), but how did his power obtain the facts? Was it just reading it from their 'profile', in some way? Was the information just... there, already true and merely waiting to be learned? He remembered Twilight going to a symposium about some kind of 'information body' outside of physical reality... The Akashi... something-or-other.
All of that was over his head right now, and even if it weren't, he had a schedule to keep. Dealing with the first fine and the accompanying overdue book was a breeze (Ms. Marker was a bit new to town, and hadn't realized it was a book her son had taken out from the library for a project), and it was doubly easy since he could just surreptitiously tuck them both in his Inventory as soon as he was out of sight. From their house it was a quick zig and zag across the street (making sure not to run into anypony, since he was a little faster than usual) to the front of Sugar Cube Corner, where he could see Pinkie hoofing out samples of some new creation.
Observing the samples showed that they were some kind of breakfast dumplings. She was passing them along to ponies along with little tiny dabs of hot sauce or lemon glaze, seemingly at random. Either that was just traditional Pinkie Pie cuisine, or she could tell which ones were savory and which were sweet without so much as looking. Even odds of either, actually...
Regardless, Spike went to Observe Pinkie herself and was not very surprised to get an abnormal response. He was a little surprised by the kind of response. After using his skill, he felt a terrible crack of static, like a detuned radio that had been slammed into the ground, and saw absolutely nothing except a brief blip of pink and blue, like a window struggling to open before being slammed shut in the same instant. That was new and worrying. Looking above her head, he saw an... explanation?
[A Magenta Mystery]
Pinkie Pie
LV 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375...
That... is more digits of pi than anyone would ever need. (Not hyperbole, by the way; 11 digits is enough for the roughly sphereical Earth to a millimeter's precision. For an American point of comparison, there are roughly 25 and a half millimeters in an inch)
HER LEVEL IS FUGGIN PI!!!!!!
Oh, and incidentally I'll assume this is a Sans sort of situation, where the low stats are deceptive because she's breaking most of the established rules of the game.
does that mean she has infinity for a lv
"Just because he happened to have an ability that told him about his HP, gave him damage resistance and regeneration, and defined his claws in terms of their attack power... None of that meant this had to be a dangerous game."
Something I'd really like to see would be a Gamer fic where the MC just does stuff like power-leveling the Crafting type skills. A potion master or a being who's power is entirely based on the tools they have on them ala Terraria. Or they just sell super powered weapons/tools to people.
9889625
There's a decimal point only a single character in, so it's more like she's too different from everyone else for levels to be a useful metric.
9889551
39 digits would be sufficient to calculate the circumference of the known/visible universe to the width of a hydrogen atom.
Has Spike ever actually hung out with the CMC in the show? I haven't watched early episodes all the way through in a long time and I can't recall anything from the last few seasons.
9889656
Every game name that comes up in the fic references a real video game. I'll probably have some kind of small contest at some point. :V
9889605
Alternatively, some games (Dragon Quest IX, for example) let you reset your level on hitting the cap, keeping milestone benefits while resetting base stats.
Or, the number truncates into "..." before the rest of scientific notation can be revealed. And if you assume whole levels only...
9889723
Yeah, the second one: she's clearly breaking the established rules in a big way for "because Pinkie Pie" reasons, and taking the number literally may not have been the intended reading.
Spike understands how to properly grind.
I suppose it's not really a surprise that Pinkie is a mystery even to the game.
Oh dear, Pinkie is playing the Realm like she plays Super Mario Bros. If you lay out certain actions in certain times and places, you recode the game engine to reach new places, or just load in arbitary code to execute at a later time.
Random rocks and junk also have their stories, Maud especially likes Rocks, and Pinkie would know the basics about them at least?
If the text on junk is becoming sarcastic, then my first thought would be, Discord aint out yet? Or is this his get out of stone early card? Good behaviour?
Sorry, not sure on spoiler rules on thoughts in these comments.
Any Happy Face, SMILEs appearing yet?
I love video games, don't get me wrong, but the Akashic records?! By the gods I'm interested. I love the whole idea and every time someone mentions it it just gets me really excited! I really like it, whichever form it's talked about as just gets me really happy.
I like how you had him think out rationally what to tell his friends, like a "do try to keep this between us" instead of a "you should keep this secret"
I wonder if he should gather up all the elements and have them test him all at once to prove it if they don't believe him. I'm excited for the next chapter already!
Is that a thing? "Cold Details"?
Of course it's Pi!
9890389
If I remember correctly I had intended that to be something in the vein of 'cold hard facts', but I think it got mangled somewhere along the process line. I'll probably tweak that a bit later.
When's the next chapter?
9891058
Upload schedule is sporadic: I might push one live today, or it might be Monday. I think for now, 'weekly' is going to be the outside limit, with the default being roughly half that.
9891370
Okie dokie lokie!
The Pink Ones level is both finite and infinite.
Finally the best pony enters the story.
And her level is PI! I hope its strawberry.
When Pinkie Levels Up, does she gain a digit of Pi?
9898983
With how Pinkie is... probably. Even I can’t explain her and I can figure out people like Deadpool.
I'm a little surprise that you didn't use Pinkie's full name.
9951644
The names and titles displayed by the Gamer's abilities seem to draw from a mix of both what a person's "real" name is, and what that person would consider their real name to be: A 'Bob' who has never gone by 'Robert' will usually have Bob as their displayed name. But an entirely manufactured nickname or a fake name won't show up, either.
Many Ponies Singing: "Oh my, here comes...."
Random Pony: "EVERYPONY RUN AWAY!!!!!! PINKAMENA IS COMING!!!!!"
Everypony: "AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!"
Roseluck: "The Horror, The Horror!!!!!"
Daisy: "I DON'T WANT TO BE IT!!!!!"
Pinkamena: *hoof held up to the fleeing ponies in supplication* "But, but, where is everypony going? I just want to be friends."
Gotta love the fact Pinkie's Level is Pi
The Pink One is definitely more powerful than she lets on.
9889627
Well, she can and does fight(not be choices though), but try "The Wander Inn"... or maybe it is "The Wandering Inn".
I get it pie as the number
Sure, the stats may say her power level is not above Level 3...
But have you ever seen a person with a power level that is (I assume) perfectly Pi; a mathematical constant in the known universe?
How does one else break the rules of physics if they ARE a rule?
I shudder when I think about the ways Pinkie may have minmaxed herself.
This popped into my head at the end
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3HRkKznJoZA
10359611
Nice! My preferred flavor:
Pinkie... A being that cant be understanded. Probably Discord 'more sane' alter/after ego...
Have mercy on the universe...
Pinkie's literal level is Pi. .... Pinkie Pi
This pun is amazing.
Lovely
Well that is pinkie pie in a nutshell
Hold up, I thought magenta is the color of Twilight, isn't it?
10379820
My theory has always been that Pinkie is the reincarnation of the lovecraftian diety of chaos, whoever they are.
Spike used skill Observe.
But the Skill 'noped' right the fuck out
Lmao I love it, Pinkies lvl is pie
10980067
I got the joke. XD
11014610
I think we all did.
I hope. :D
9889641
But even that is not enough to even vaguely understand the"Magenta Mystery"
10211139
a Giant dad build on steroids with a chaos zwiehander+999