Waifu Quest pt1

You power on your Wii U, itching for some hunting.

As you do, power in your home blinks a little, though the console stays lit. Odd.

Disregarding it as a random event, you load up your hunter, a 'newbie hunter' as the file was made just the other day.

Only in Jaggi armor, with a matching short sword and shield. You managed to get the tutorials out of the way, at least. Always a drag, but at least they were faster and more skip-able than previous games.

In fact, you had just finished the urgent quest for that useless Shakalaka, Cha-Cha. You always left him at the village, he just got in the way. Apparently, later on, there would be an equally useless one that you would probably also leave at the village.

This time, however, there was another urgent that you had to complete before you could move on to the 2* Port quests.

"Huh...?"

"Quest: Strange Winged Kirin..."

You flipped over to the flavor text portion, first noting that this was worth literally zero reward.

The quest giver was "Anonymous", which was strange. Even stranger was that, instead of quest flavor text, there appeared to be...rules?

"Greetings, horsefucker!" It started out, causing you to blink. This was a T-rated game, so...

You continued reading.

"By accepting this quest (and you must to move on), your pony waifu will be downloaded into your copy of MH3U, absolutely free of charge! Keep her alive for a week of real time, and she joins you in real life with a portal back to her world!"

"This has to be fucking with me." You said, eyebrow arched in confusion.

"There are a few, simple rules. Rule 1: You must be around life-threatening danger for a majority of the time! No fair cheating with gathering quests!"

"Rule 2! The pony must be within a thirty foot radius of your character after being found. If the pony wanders outside the range, it adds a day onto her needed survival time. This rule adds a day every time she does it."

"Okay...?" You found yourself saying as you read on.

"Rule 3! The pony can interact with your game, within the limits of what it can do in the show. No magic if they can't use it, now!"

Your eyebrow couldn't arch any higher without leaving your skull. Was this a hacked game? The only person that knew you watched MLP was...literally no one. Your power level was perfectly hidden.

"Rule 4! The more the pony assists you, the harder the game will become! This rule will not break the rules set by the game, but it WILL make your time in the game more difficult. Rare drops become even rarer, invading monsters become the worst you can possibly find, and so on."

Great.

"Probably Savage Deviljho on my first "question mark quest", mark my words." You grumbled, well aware of this game's love for invasion quests since Tri. You also noted that this quest itself had a question mark on it for the main monster.

"Rule 5: Pausing the game will put the pony to sleep. The pony will, however, have intense and disturbing nightmares while paused. Watch how long and how often you abuse that button! This also applies for turning the console off. Leaving the pony like this for too long will cause them to become an unstable, insane mess! Loading screens, however, do not apply to this penalty...unless you are deliberately triggering them. In that case, each loading screen will act as a pause screen. The game will be able to tell between deliberate and necessary loading screens."

You figured you might as well ignore that rule, as Monster Hunter was rather hard to *pause*. Besides, there was really no need to pause it at any point. Not like the Wii U was a huge power leech in the first place.

"Rule 6: Going online with this pony still in the game will cause her to become the hunting target of *ALL* quests. The pony will be treated as an Elder Dragon, for all in-game purposes. Death for the pony is *permanent*, and you cannot have a do-over."

You involuntarily gulped, realizing that it was now or never. This pony's life, whether you wanted it to be or not, was in your hands. Just one thing was uncertain.

Who was going to show up? It kept saying "pony", not which particular one.

"Finally, Rule 7! At the end of the week, the hardest enemy in the game will spawn as a boss, and you must kill or otherwise incapacitate it for the pony to be able to safely leave the game and come into your arms. As a final note, you may communicate with your pony via text or voice chat, if you have access to them. They can also communicate with you via the same methods. Good luck!"

You read the rules over one more time, then noticed something. "Winged Kirin" was the quest name, so...an alicorn? There was one particular Alicorn you had an...attachment to. It suddenly dawned on you, and then the apprehension set in.

You accepted the quest, because there was really no way around it. Urgent Quests were, well...urgent. Either you finished the quest, or you stopped playing right now. No way to get around this.

A small loading screen, and you were in the familiar area of the Deserted Isle.

Priority one was finding her. Suddenly, over the mic in your gamepad, you heard a feminine scream, followed by a ping from Area 6, which was noted as being a Jaggi den. Priority one achieved, now to get there.

You popped open the chest, grabbing the rations and first aid meds. Downing two of the three rations to get your stamina to one hundred and fifty, you then ran in that direction while looking over your actual objective. The only objective was 'escort unknown target to camp'.

Quickly making your way to the area, a second life bar popped up under your own. This one read "Twilight", and the green bar was at three quarters. She had already been injured a bit, and the alicorn was retaliating.

Several Jaggi lay slain on the floor, while a few small scrapes were along the side of the purple mare. You immediately went to her defense, dashing to her and putting your sword through a Jaggia's neck.

"AH! Wh-who or what are you!?" She cried, horn lit up.

"Wait, hold on!" You said over the mic, just in time for her to blast your avatar with a spell.

You flew into the rock sitting in the center of the area, and your health was neatly cut in half.

"Hey, wait a minute!" You said again as you got up. "I'm not going to hurt you!"

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

Another Jaggi lunged from behind a rock, and was immediately split in half with a purple beam. The beating of wings was heard, then she flew off in a panic. You jumped up, latching onto the mare and bringing her down, hard. Her HP bar dropped by another tenth, just over half now.

She kicked her legs desperately, which you had restrained.

"Twilight, wait a minute, dammit!"

The mare stopped, her frantic flailing brought to a swift halt. You noticed your own HP bar was rather low, but that was fine. You hunter could respawn, she couldn't.

"Alright." The pony said, voice as cold as death itself. "I stopped. Now, tell me where the BUCK I AM, AND WHO THE BUCK YOU ARE!"

"My name is Anon, and you're in a video game." You said quite lamely, before she could run or otherwise escape.

"A...what?!" The purple alicorn replied, going from incredibly angry to confused in a half a second.

"A video game, it's a simula-"

"HOW?!"

You flinched, turning down the volume on the TV a bit before it blew the speakers out.

"I...can't say for sure, but when I booted up my console a few minutes ago, the electricity in my home blinked." You started, slowly letting Twilight go.

"And I was testing a dimensional mirror spell a few minutes ago...okay, so it seems there was a mishap with that."

The mare picked herself up and winced. The scrapes and cuts had bled nicely, matting her entire left side with blood caked into her coat.

"Ow...okay, uh, Anon...so now I ask: Who are you? I know your name, and you somehow know mine."

A wyvern roared overhead, a roar you recognized well: Rathalos. He shouldn't have been around until the late 2* quests. You looked around the area at all the slain Jaggi, realizing this must be Rule 4 in effect.

"We need to get you to my base camp. I'll explain everything there."

A quick hop, skip, and a jump had you safely under the broad yellow tent of the base camp. The familiar jingle of a quest being completed rang out, which caused the alicorn to jump.

"Oh, sorry. Forgot to warn you about that."

"You weren't kidding, were you." The mare said, listening in wonder as music came from seemingly nowhere.

You chuckled as Twilight went quiet. You quickly traversed the rewards screen (taking a seemingly important Rarity 10 item labeled 'PTE'), waiting for the loading screen to finish up. Twilight yelped, looking around as her surroundings suddenly changed.

"Wh-what happened!?"

"We, uh, teleported." You said, not exactly lying. "Now I can explain things."

You spent the next few hours sitting in Tanzia Port, having your Hunter avatar simply sit at a wooden bench. Twilight had joined you, listening with rapt attention as you explained what the quest note had told you. As you were talking, you noted that Twilight's own injuries were healed.

Good to know either cartoon physics or video game physics still worked for her too.

"So...that giant roar...?"

"Was a wyvern I shouldn't have fought yet, yes."

"It's my fault, I could have gotten you killed!"

You chuckled.

"I can't die, Twilight."

She looked at 'you', perplexed.

"What?"

"When my HP runs out, I merely faint and return to the base camp."

"Okay, but...you said 'waifu'? What does that mean?"

And now the sweating starts.

"Well, uh...it's a sort of bastardization of the English word 'wife'." You said, blushing invisibly on your couch.

"W-w-wife...?" Twilight said quietly, blushing intensely. "How can I be your, uh, 'waifu' if we only just met...?"

If your own flushing got any more intense, you could have easily been confused for a cherry.

Well, see, there's this...cartoon. Of you and your friends."

Twilight blinked.

"Go on...?"

"I just...saw in you things that I wanted, is all. You'd be the perfect soul mate for me, I think."

You went quiet.

"Hence..."

"...waifu." She finished out, equally embarrassed. "To be fair...what you did WAS pretty heroic..."

Twilight cleared her throat.

"I'm not going to shoot you down yet, Anon, but...I do need some time to sort myself out."

She looked around the pub.

"So...anywhere I can actually sleep...?"

"Yes, follow me. Remember the 'thirty feet' rule."

"Mmhm."

Another short loading screen and you were walking through the blacksmith area, to a small boat tied to a pier. The NPC there, Neko, didn't react to her presence, not that you expected him to. In the boat was a comfortable-looking bed, which Twilight hopped into. She sighed, looking uncomfortably around.

"I miss Spike already."

Now you felt bad. If you hadn't made her your waifu, then she'd still be home...

No, stop that. There wasn't a chance in hell you could have predicted something like this. You just had to make sure she made it through the next week or so of fighting, and then...either a Dire Miralis or Alatreon.

You weren't too worried about item drops with either of them, simply because that was her ticket out. She could help with them. Either dragon was certain to give you trouble.

You sighed, leaving the console on and turning in for bed yourself. You'd talk with Twilight about it more in the morning, whenever the two of you were up. The mare was damn lucky you were on a month's paid vacation.