[Abes]
Everypony agreed that we, the Eevee Pack, would get this next week or so off. Mostly because they wanted to keep Twilight away from us. Spike had the dubious honor of calming Twilight down. After his first attempt, I left the library. After his fourth, so did Yomega. Twilight had gained that manic gleam in her eye again.
Villhiem and I had decided to meet up with Lulu. And by that I mean, we got her favourite hiding spot out of Leo, and dragged her from the water.
If anyone asks, we beat the location out of Leo. She made us Pinkie Promise not to tell anyone else without a very good reason. We gave her a shiner for her cover story. She was unconscious for an hour afterward, though. I think Rainbow trained a glass cannon...
Anyways, Villhiem managed to get Lulu out of the reeds with the minimum of threats - a Razor Leaf in her general direction - and we were now laying on the shore. Lulu kept her tail in the water, and Villhiem placed himself in the best place to catch the morning sun.
"So," Lulu began, "what do you two need?"
"We just wanted to talk." I yawned.
"About what, darling?"
"Drop the act, Lulu." Villhiem said firmly. "And before you get defensive, we already know the why and how. But you'll have to tell the what to someone soon."
Lulu's fur began rippling like as wind driven waves. "And what could you possibly know?!" She snarled. She whipped a paw up, turning her head away. Her fur calmed until it was just only twitching slightly. She finally looked back to us. "I'm sorry, I-I just need to-"
"You need to talk to us." I interrupted. "Do you know how lucky we are that I had Luna I could talk to? We both had issues, and I can see you have some as well. Could you imagine what would have happened if I wasn't able to work through mine?"
"You wouldn't be tied a few hundred odd games of chess against your marefriend." Villhiem smirked.
I glared at the living plant, blushing crimson. "I-it's not like that! Luna just gets lonely some nights after night court!" I flicked my tail at him as I calmed down. "Anyways, we're here for Lulu!"
Villhiem nodded. "His point is that you can't bottle this up, you'll need to tell someone something soon. I can already see it's causing you enough stress as is."
"We've been there. We know." I looked off over the Vaporeon's shoulder. "The others won't understand until it happens to them. If it helps, just tell us what you told Leo, and go on from there."
Villhiem spoke up as Lulu opened her mouth. "You don't even have to tell us everything. We can break this up into pieces, if you'd like." He raised a paw, cutting her off again. "You can even ask us for advice."
"If ya'd let me talk!" She growled. "I was about to say that I told Leo nothing." Her fur, no, her body began to quake and roil, even making miniature whitecaps that crashed into the still waters of the pond. "And why should I? He- she'd never understand! And how can either of you understand?! You!" She glared at Villhiem. "You're a fucking plant! How can leaves and pollen ever compare to a raging rapid! A still pond! And you!" She slashed a paw at me. "You evolved from fucking moonbeams! You don't even have any connections to Equis!"
It was then that I noticed the tears beginning to stream down her face. "And you say that you understand! If that's understanding, then the others are fucking hopeless!" She was openly sobbing at this point. She dropped her head to the ground, covering her head frills with her fore paws. "H-how can I even explain it?"
I quickly lay beside her, draping a paw over her shoulders. "But you will have to try."
"And soon." Villhiem whispered.
"I-I..." She hiccuped. "... It was like drowning on air. A-and I couldn't feel anything, and I wasn't in control, and I felt stretched beyond my body's limits, a-and..." She trailed off into a whimper.
"Shh, shh." I patted Lulu's back. "It's okay, you don't need to tell us everything now. What you've said will do fine for now."
There was a ripping sound, like someone was tearing up a head of lettuce. I glanced up at Villhiem as he held up a chunk of his own tail. "Here." He said as he passed Lulu the chunk. "Chew on it for a bit. It'll help you relax."
Without moving her head out from under her paws, Lulu took the leafy flesh, and began to chew. "Bleh! This tastes too bitter." She complained. She still chewed on it though. I could feel her relaxing under me. "Are you a walking grow-op now?"
We both chuckled. "No." Villhiem explained. "I'm a walking herbal tranquilizer!"
"Close." I added. "Twilight discovered that the spores for his Sleep Powder are stored in the leafy part of his tail. It's not very strong, though. I think Twilight wrote it as 'the Eevee Filicophyta infuses the spores with the same kind of energy to increase their potency exponentially.'" I shrugged. "The best part: doing this doesn't hurt Villhiem, and it's no more addicting than a herbal tea. You just gotta remember to spit it out when you're done."
We lay there in silence as Lulu calmed down. Eventually, she spat the wad of chewed leaf into the water. We watched the waves slowly pull it out into the pond.
"Feeling better?" I asked at length.
She nodded."Yeah."
"You don't need to tell us anymore then that for now." I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "Just remember that we are here for you if you need to talk."
We once again lapsed into silence. We watched the sun reach it's zenith before Lulu spoke up. "You mentioned that I can ask you guys for advice?" I nodded. She looked between us. "How did you guys learn your new moves?"
I stared at her. "I just knew how to do them, as if I had always been able to."
"To be honest..." Villhiem rubbed his tail with a paw, slowly growing back the missing part of his tail. "I was kinda making it up as I went along. But every time I used a new move, I could almost feel my body moving as if it knew what to do. Like I was riding a bike for the first time after every winter. Why do ya ask?"
"Wait." I squinted at Lulu, who was trying to make herself smaller. "You never learned any new moves, did you?"
She nodded. "I know I should've learned something water related, but..."
I gave the water-dog some room. "Okay, so. Not sure how much this'll help, but..." With a sigh, I explained. "Whenever I use a dark type move, I draw on all my negative emotions. That gives me the power I need for my moves, but it drains me emotionally."
Villhiem shrugged. "I'm a plant. I just focus on where the energy I get from the sun goes when I feed." He quickly looked around, before hissing out his next words. "Didn't... Other tell you all this?"
Her eyes widened as she began to tremble. "That... That wasn't speaking English. At all. Or maybe it was? It was too garbled to tell...."
"Okay..." I looked out over the pond again as I thought. "New plan!" I pulled Lulu from the water and sat her onto the ground facing the pond. "I'mma goin' to teach you how to Water Gun!" I stated, mushing her cheeks with my paws.
"How?" She asked through my paws. "Yer no' even a wa'er 'ype?"
I released her as I gave her room. the sudden loss of my support caused her to face plant. "No, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out!" I waved a paw out over the water. "I mean, you've already figured out how to turn into water! Just gotta do it in an outwards direction!"
A leaf bounced of the back of my head. "Dude, stop channeling Pinkie." Villhiem said, his head-leaf thingy glowing, ready to launch another attack.
"How did you reduce it to a single leaf?" Lulu asked
"Haven't you ever seen Zann do it with his swifts?" Villhiem responded. "It's easy to do when you know the how behind it. But we should focus on getting your Water Gun to work."
Lulu's frills drooped. "I, I have to confess something. I was only relying on my cute looks. I have no idea how my moves work. I don't even know how I learned Mimic, let alone how it works." She stared out over the pond. "I... I guess I never really thought this could've been real. I kinda always thought that this was just some kind of fever dream, or a fucked up world my brain created while I'm stuck in coma. Every night, I would lay down expecting to wake up from this dream, and I..." Somehow, her frills drooped even lower. She sighed. "I guess I didn't want to get attached to this world."
I shared a look with Villhiem. "Where did all this come from? Why did you never tell any of us? Ya never even gave us any signs." Villhiem asked.
"Would you confess your deepest thoughts to a figment of your imagination?"
"Of course not, they already know them." I said cheerfully.
"Exactly!' Lulu nodded. "Wait, what?"
I cocked my head to the side. "What?"
She gave me a disbelieving look. "Ri~ight." She returned her gaze to the middle distance over the pond. "Still, I've been spending my days expecting the other shoe to fall, striving to detach myself from this world, just in case. Just acting my part." Her brow furrowed. "Maybe, that detachment is what's been holding me back...." I saw her eyes shimmer briefly. "Oh. Oh!" She turned to look at me.
"Its words! They're clear to me!" With a running start, Lulu dived into the pond. Just past the reeds, she breached the surface, spouting a stream of water into the air. As the water fell back to earth, Lulu gracefully swam back to shore, her fur reflecting the rainbows in the air. With a small smile, she closed our mouths as she walked past. "Water Gun, Aqua Ring, Muddy Water, Scald. And I didn't lose my old moves."
"Mark a point for the girls!" Zann said.
Lulu spun to confront our latest companion. "When the hell did you get here?!"
"Just in time for the water show!" Zann's eyes gained a gleam. The kind of gleam that warns you of 'fun' times coming that you may or may not remember.
Or want to.
"I needed to ask you guys something...."
[Third]
"Alright, that aughtta do it!" A red stallion in blue overalls shouted to another, green stallion wearing same. The second stallion was standing by the wall on the far side of a fountain. Ever since it got a new statue as a center piece, the water pump had been on the fritz. "Give it another go!"
"On it!" The green stallion flipped the breaker hidden among the nearby bushes. It started as a sputter, but soon the water was flowing freely. "We did it! Hopefully for good this-a time..."
"Yeah." The other worker replied. "There's-a somethin' wrong with this-a statue. Gives me the creeps..."
"And they should really get-a somepony to look at the crack in-a the wing..."