It’s been a good few days… maybe a week or 3 since I took Rarity, Lyra, and Sweetie Belle out to participate in the musical, honestly those three have been in and out of the house constantly going to plays, operas, musicals, you name it. And each of the shows they’ve been a part of have been getting astoundingly amazing reviews, I guess the stage scene just needed that fresh breath of air.
Needless to say that because of this I haven’t been able to see much of them, and since Bon Bon hated leaving Lyra to her own devices for too long she was in and out with them now and again. Really the only ones who stayed in the house were Twilight, Spike, Pinkie and I. Spike and Pinkie more than anyone else.
I recently took Rainbow and Scootaloo out to a nearby go-kart track, dirt bike track, and finished up the day with with them taking them up in a plane to go skydiving. Being the adrenaline junkies that they are hey loved every minute of it and set out to do things like that while they were here, so they were out of the house constantly with those endeavors.
Applejack, I managed to take her out to this huge ranch a few miles outside of the city, she found the horses there unnerving at first but she quickly got used to it all and she took to it like a natural and much like Ico with the Arts trio, the Rancher offered Applejack a place to work and stay for the remainder of the time we were here, of course she accepted. I had to give her a messaging crystal, which I learned worked when I got a letter from Celestia one day I was sitting in the bathroom, goo thing I was already on the toilet was my immediate thought when it happened. Of course after I learned that they all got messaging crystals and simple flip phones and a list of numbers to call if needed.
Apple Bloom is actually staying at the same Ranch with AJ, surprisingly, not really, there was a lot of repair work needed done and Bloom impressed the Rancher when she fixed up an old drainage pipe that’d been causing them trouble for some years.
And I was right, at the end of each day I talked to them about asking Pinkie into my herd, and while they all seemed happy at the prospect and encouraged me to do so, they didn’t exactly seem surprised. I was a bit irritated at this, though at the same time I knew it was most likely going to happen. I really only needed to talk to Goldy about it if my hunch that the kids didn’t know was correct, but considering how it’s been going they most likely already know as well.
Speaking of my daughter, Fluttershy and Goldy were always going into the woods to try and find more animals to interact with, I had a plan to bring them to the city’s zoo, the aquarium, and a few natural museums, was gonna take Twilight along for that one.
Speaking of, purple book-smart kept herself cooped up in the library and on the internet, she picked up on how to use that… faster than I was comfortable with, so one night I made my way to every computer we had in the house and turned on safe mode for whatever one's Lilac already didn’t. Don’t need Twilight or anyone else finding out what can go on in certain parts of the internet.
Lilac was in and out, she did have to work, well she didn’t have to but she said it gave her some to do other than sitting around all day, and I completely understand, it does get boring after a while. Tina being an 8 year old really didn’t have much going on, she had gymnastics every day except Sunday from 3 to 6 and I normally took her to that, usually she rode a bus after school but since it was out it was my job, and Lilac would pick her up hen she got off work.
ViVi was out and about with her friends, she obviously had a much more modern phone than my people due to being raised on the planet with a fuck ton of tech and next to no magic. Really most days it’s been, like I said, Pinkie, Spike, and I stuck in the house… I was planning on having a Pinkie day…. Just needed to think of what to do.
Anyways as I was pondering what to do for Pinkie’s day, I might bring Bon Bon along, have the 2 food ponies out for a day that’ll be fun, I turned the corner on the second floor and bumped into someone.
“Hey watch where you’re going!” The person said a bit annoyed, it was Spike.
“Sorry Spike, what’re you doing wandering around the halls?”
He shrugged, “Getting lost, not much to do with Twilight sticking to the library.”
“Ah.” I looked at the drake turned human and I felt bad, I really haven’t been able to think of anything specific for him and I to do, “Well… anything you specifically thought about doing?”
He shook his head, “Nah, you got anything? I’ve explored pretty much the 5th and 4th floors and I just got done with the second.”
The made something click in my mind, he explored 3 of the 5 floors of my house but not the 3rd, good. I smiled, “Actually I do have an idea, how bout we just hang today, shoot the shit?”
He gave me a smile, “Sure sounds good.”
“Awesome.” I walked past him and ruffle his mess of hair, “Follow me up to the third floor, there’s something I want to show you.”
“Oooookaaayyyy?” He still followed me despite the obvious confusion.
As we made our way up the stairs and stopped off at the 3rd floor I hit the light switch on the wall, the lights in the hall flickering to life after years of disuse. It was weird no one stayed on this floor, not for any particular reason, it was just an extra residential floor that had no special amenities, or so everyone thought.
“So what’re we doing up here? Doesn’t seem to be much going on up here, in fact it doesn't look like this part of the house has been used much at all.” Spike said, trailing a finger across a side table located in the hall, leaving a clear line amongst the dense dust.
“True, the only thing that really comes onto the third floor is Cookie, it’s where she sleeps, don't ask me where she sleeps up here exactly, I have no idea. I do know it’s not on any other floor because she has n beds there and she doesn’t sleep in the one in my room so it really only leaves this floor, though I’ve never been able to find the spot.” I swear that cat can warp between dimensions or some shit because she just shows up out of nowhere behind locked doors and what not.
“Ok, then why are we here? To find where she sleeps, because that sounds really boring.”
I shook my head, making our way down the hall passing a multitude of locked doors, “No, I gave up on that endeavor ages ago. This floor wasn’t always in disuse, in fact when I was a kid this is where I came all the time.”
“Really, doesn’t seem like it.”
“Like I said, it was when I was a kid, come one we’re almost there.” After a few minutes of silence and a few more doors later I stopped in front of a door that looked like any other in the hall, the only real difference was that it had a little gold door knob instead of a brass one. I gave the nob a twist to the left and 3 to the right and a loud click echoed through the hall.
Slowly the door creaked open and i reached inside, hitting another light switch, once the lights were on the room looked like any other normal bare bones room, a bed, a dresser, a light, and a trash can.
Spike looked at the room incredulously, “So what you wanted to lead me to the room to what? Talk?”
I made my way into the room and towards one of the far walls and scanned it, “I wanted to bring you to a room to talk.”
Spike huffed, “Ok but why this one, why not your room?”
I was now lightly feeling against the wall, knocking ever so slightly, “Because my room doesn’t have what this room has.”
“And what's that, the smell of several year old paint?” He said, sarcasm dripping in his voice.
“Nah, every room on this floor has that smell… now where is-AHA! Here we go.” I felt a small crease in the wall and I dug my fingers into it, giving a grunt as I pulled.
“Chris what are you trying to-” He stopped his train of thought as the wall gave way with a loud groan of wood and plaster, and it slowly swung open to reveal a secret door leading to a winding staircase. “Ok what the what?”
I stepped past the open wall piece and walked into the open space it left, hitting one more switch, a dim yellow light flooding the staircase, “I told you, I wanted to take to a room, never said it was this one, come on, and please close the wall behind you.”
I made my way down the stairs, after a few seconds I heard the tell tell groan of the wall being closed and heard quick thumping behind me until it got close, “What in the Tartarus is this?”
I looked back and smirked, “A secret staircase, duh, did you and Twilight find one in the Crystal Palace? Why are you so surprised?”
He stammered, “Y-yeah, well, you know…. It was protected by dark magic and you said your world had no magic so.”
I raised an eyebrow as we continued our way down the stairs, “You just assumed my world wouldn’t have something interesting like this going on? Trust me there is a bunch of stuff hiding in plain sight on my world that so many people who live here are unaware of.”
“Ok, that makes sense, sorry, but how did you find out about this?”
“My mom showed me, apparently she was one of the few people to notice that the hallways were a bit shorter inside than the house shown on the outside, so one day she decided to find out why, and low and behold there’s a secret staircase built into the far side of the house only accessible from the 3rd floor. Though the column of stairs does extend up to the 4th and 5th floor, nothing up there, just a dead end.” I explained.
“Why though, what’s the point?”
I shrugged, “Not sure, we never found out, but I can tell you what the end of the bottom of the stairs was built for. We should be getting close anyways.” Spike held any questions knowing he’d get the answers he’d need if he was patient.
Once we reached the bottom of the stairs it ended n a short hallway that had a metal door at the end of it, we made our way to it and a gave the door a hard pull, it opening with enough force. And I turned on the last switch, once the room was illuminated I smiled happily, good nothing changed.
Spike looked passed me, “Woah, dude this room is huge and why are there couches, and a tv, and is that a fridge?” He pushed past me and stepped into the room proper, I followed after him shortly, closing the door behind me.
“Welcome to my hide away, only me and my mom knew about it, after she found this place she fixed it up into a rec-room. It used to be a bomb shelter and could likely still act as one with how far underground we are.”
“Wait underground? How far and how are we getting fresh air?”
I pointed to the vents, “Those lead to vents and filters outside, a bit of a ways away from the house, and i’d say maybe 60 or so feet underground, a good distance.”
Spike was flabbergasted, “Holy Celestia…”
I made my way to the couch and sat down in front of the large TV, “Yeah, got this TV, some old game systems, a pool table, a foosball table, fridge, sinks, bathroom is the far door over there, the couch even folds out into a bed and there is a storage area where there’s even more stuff.”
Spike sat down next to me, “Wow, why don’t you just stay down here if you have everything you could ever need?”
“Same reason you wandered around the house, it get’s boring after a while, now come on, let’s play some of my games, we can talk while we’re doing that.” I leaned down, grabbed the remote, gave a few buttons a practice push, to see the light at the top of the remote flicker, cool still some juice, I turned the TV on. I proceeded to get up and look at the rack under the TV, it was lined shelf to shelf in video games, I pulled out one in particular, opened the case, turned on the the PS2 to hear that classic start up sound. It brought a smile to my face, knowing it still worked even after all these years. I grabbed the controllers and sat down, keeping the good one for myself and giving the bum one to Spike.
“Hey, you gave me the broken one, that’s not fair.” He said as the game started up, opening on a sick guitar riff.
“It totally is, it’s my game and besides it’s tradition to give the little brother the bad controller, besides it isn’t that bad, the right analog stick is just a bit… loose.” I said, giving it a flick, causing the barely padded stick to roll around freely, the springs being long shot.
Spike huffed, “Still not fair, and little brother?”
I shrugged, and brought my attention to the start screen, “I mean, you are technically my little brother, and even if Cadance didn’t adopt me, I still would consider you my little brother. We’re dragons after all, the only ones that live with ponies, we gotta stick together.” I pressed the start button, moving it on to the next screen.
“Well… I appreciate it I guess, i haven’t really had a big brother since Shining and then Twilight and I left to Ponyville for a long while and then the wedding happened, and the Crystal Empire.”
“And then everything went to shit.” I finished for him.
“Basically, you left to go on some adventure or whatever, and I was left without my two brother figures.”
I sighed and put the controller down, “I know Spike and I’m sorry, I also know I haven’t been spending much time with you since I got back, I promise I’ll change that though.”
He smiled, punching me in the arm, “Don’t worry about it, I get it. Still think it’s not fair you gave me the broken controller.”
I laughed, “Alright I’ll make you a deal, you beat me once in this game, or last 5 rounds without quitting I’ll switch you controllers.” I said, getting to the versus screen real quick and then into the character select screen.
He gave me a look of disbelief, “Ok that’s extra unfair, I’ve never played this before, and I’m guessing you have. You won’t even teach me?”
I pondered that for a moment, “Fair point.” I backed out of the versus screen and went into training and practice, “Here, in this mode, it’ll teach you how to play the game, but you only get 1 run through.”
Spike sighed, “Fine, it’s the closest I’ll get to help in beating you that’s fine.” Spike wen through the training and got a handle on it pretty well once he figured out where all the buttons on the controller was.
“Alright, you finished the last training, you ready for a real fight?”
He nodded eagerly, his excitement showing, I could tell he thought he was going to win, or at least stand a chance. Time to prove him wrong.
I made my way back over to the character select screen and gave him his second handicap, “So, i’ll tell you what, I’ll only use 2 characters, and you can use the full 5 of anyone you want.”
He looked at me, utterly baffled at that, “You sure?” I nodded, “Alright your funeral.” He selected his fighters.
“Huh, Super Janemba, Hirudegarn, Omega Shenron, Cooler Final Form, and Legendary Super Saiyan Broly, not a bad roster that.” I said, quickly selecting my 2 fighters, SSJ4 Goku and SSJ4 Vegeta, custom of course, not that Spike knew what that was, so I was cheating a bit.
“Really, the two monkey looking guys?” Spike asked me, “They look kind of week compared to my guys.”
“Maybe maybe not.” Was all I said as I picked the stage and the music.
Once it was loaded up spike got super cocky, “Alright prepare to get your butt kicked.”
I smiled, see I have this tendency to be a tad bit sadistic when it came to Budokai Tenkaichi 2, i liked to toy with the people I was playing against, so I didn’t fuse once, and I rarely ever lost unless I was feeling bad for them, or bored. So of course the rounds went exactly how you’d expect someone who has had years of experience in this game versus someone who has only had a few minutes to an hour at most. I whooped his ass into next year, Spike, was not happy about this at all, especially after I told him I used customs.
“So you cheated?!” He accused.
“Sorta, more like I didn’t tell you about a mechanic, but you played to the rules of the game so I’ll play to mine.” I handed him the good controller and took the bad one, “One more fight, i won’t use them again, I’ll pick someone else and you can still have the full tea of whatever and whoever you choose.”
He snorted and accepted,determined to beat me, now that he had a better controller and even better odds. However, this time he picked only the custom SSJ4s. I smirked at this, good good, this was going all according to plan. I picked a normal full powered Roshi.
Once again the fight started up and I gave him one more handicap, I allowed him to build up his bars to allow him to fuse at full health. If you know anything about BT2 is that custom stats when it comes to characters who can fuse get stacked on top of each other, so needless to say he was pretty much the strongest character in the game right now. Still I wasn’t phased by this.
As the round went on, he got in a few good shots however I got in more shots and had longer combos, honestly it was close match, his raw power able to take chunks of my health down when he was able to land hits. And e being able to land frequent hits even if they were weak in comparison. In the end though i won, ending with a beam struggle, and i only had a sliver of health left.
Spike’s jaw was on the floor, “I-but-how?!”
“Skill versus raw power Spike. You can have all the power in the world but if you don’t know what to do with it it amounts to nothing. Imagine if I decided to fuse with them when I was fighting you with them.” I said, giving him that mental beat down.
“No thank you, that is just not fair, has anyone ever pushed you to have to fuse with them?” He asked, clearly something like that being impossible in his mind.
I nodded, “Several people actually, I still won but they definitely were able to take down the rest of my team and force me to use SSJ4 Gogeta.”
“Wait you had an entire team backing you up too?!” His mind officially blown, “Wow… I really didn’t stand a chance. Were you even fighting me seriously as the old man?” He asked as he slumped down into the couch.
“Honestly, no I wasn’t.” And it was the truth, I wasn’t, I just was having a bit of fun.
“Is this how you are back in Equestria when it comes to your power?” He asked out of the blue.
“You know…. I’m not sure, I haven’t had to fight anyone in a long time Spike.”
“Maybe you could get Luna or Celestia to fight you.”
“Yeah, Celestia would be super easy to get to fight me, I’d just have to freeze her cake in ice even she can’t melt.” I said with a laugh.
Spike chuckled at that, “Dude, she’d kill you if you did that.”
“Nah, she loves me too much to do that. So I got ton of other games we could play, or you could play and I could watch, go pick out whatever.” I told him.
He got up, picked out a game and put it in the system, replacing BT2 and putting it back in its case. It went on like this for a while, us playing games, sometimes he’d pick out one that was single player and he would play, on those ones I’d take over on the parts he’d have trouble with and that was our day until our stomachs started growling.
“Hey Chris, is there any food in that fridge?” Spike asked.
“You could go check, I’m not sure.”
He nodded and got up to check, “Ugh, no it’s empty.” He said, shutting the door.
“Really are you sure?” I asked him, getting a yes in reply, “Check again.” I told him.
He did, “See there’s nothing…. What, there wasn't any food in there a minute ago and now it's jam packed.”
I looked over my shoulder, “See what did I tell ya, there was something in there.”
He squinted at me, “You did something did you, that weird freezing time thing, did you really waste a power crystal just to do that?”
“Power crystal, that’s what you’re calling them? And no, no idea you’re talking about.” I said turning back towards the TV.
“Whatever.” I heard him say, “No wonder you want to add Pinkie to your herd, you’d both fit together great.”
I threw up my hands, “REALLY?! DOES EVERYONE ACTUALLY KNOW?!”
Spike plopped down next me, a plate full of miscellaneous items, “Mmmm, pretty much.”
I grabbed a cheese stick from the pile of food and took a bite out of it, “Even Pinkie?”
“She’s the one who brought it up dude, besides the whole show you two put on at the theatre seems to me you already knew she knew.” He said, pulling out a pickle and biting it clean in half.
“Yeah well… shut up.” Ha, best retort, high five brain, “Actually on that note, you still pining after Rarity?”
He looked at me with a raised brow, “No, I’m not. Didn’t anyone tell you, I feel like someone told you.”
“Eh, I can’t assed to remember everything now can I?”
“Ha, hasn’t stopped you before. But, no, after the whole… Princess Platinum stuff it kinda hit me hard that Rarity would die long before I would.” He said, staring at the plate of food.
I put down my half eaten cheese stick, “Sorry, I should’ve been there to help you through it.”
He waved it off, “No, don’t worry about it, the girls all helped me out, it just had a lasting effect you know?” I nodded, “So… how do you do it?”
“How do I do what? You’re gonna have to be a little more specific.”
“How do you deal with the thought that Fluttershy is going to die before you do? Pinkie too?”
I shrugged, “I guess I just… don’t. Like, don’t get me wrong I don’t have this disillusion that they won’t die. It’s more like, everyone dies, so no point in worrying about it right now.”
“What?”
“Well I mean everything and everyone dies at some point, some things just die faster. Hell, I’ll die someday, you’ll die, even the Princesses and Discord will die someday. Everyone has to go at some point, Spike, just no point in worrying about until it happens. Life’s a ride, you just gotta enjoy it while you can, don’t let the fears hinder you or you’ll miss out on tons of chances.” I explained.
“So a whole, ‘you’ll cross that bridge when you get to it’ scenario huh?”
I nodded, bringing the cheese stick back up to my mouth and taking another large bite out of it, “Pretty much.”
“Huh…” Was all he said for quite some time, it wasn’t completely silent though, we did play video games to fill in the gaps, “Hey Chris?”
“Yeah Spike?”
“Thanks for hanging out with me today.”
I gave the younger man a smile, “Of course, I’ll come and hang whenever you want, promise.”
He returned the smile, only for it to turn mischievous, “I’ll hold you to that, I bet I can beat you in the game now that i have more gaming experience.”
I laughed, “Not on your life, kid.”