Chapter 5
It was one of the best nights of sleep I’ve had in awhile. I don’t know why, but meeting Gem last night somehow managed to make me sleepy. Like a good kind of sleepy, like the one that makes you feel warm on the inside from eating a warm cookie before bed.
Waking up this morning felt good because I didn’t have a alarm clock yelling at me to get up early. I rubbed my eyes before looking at the silent alarm clock that read 6:47 AM. It was later than what I usually wake up in the morning, but I was feeling so good that it didn’t bother me that I overslept. As I sat up from the bed, I gave my back a good morning stretch. I let out a sigh of relief as my back crack from the world’s greatest good morning stretch.
Finally getting up from the bed, my hooves were feeling a little sleepy from the good nights rest they just had.
”Its okay bed. I’m going to be back tonight. You and I will sleep together later”, I say to the bed as I put the covers back in place.
Walking over to the mirror that I kept over a shelf with a small wooden box on it, I looked at my mane to make sure that I didn’t have bed head. Thankfully, I must’ve not tossed and turned in my sleep because my mane looked the same as it was last night. As I look in the mirror, I glance over the wooden box. I called that box my memory box. Inside of it, there were pictures of me and my family before they, well, went away. It is also my most prized possessions because it keeps the memories alive of my parents. Although they do bring up the bad memories occasionally.
I stopped myself from grabbing the memory box to avoid starting my morning feeling emotional. Stepping away from the mirror, I walk over to the kitchen to fix myself some breakfast. Though I do know how to cook, I usually would do cereal for breakfast. The cereal of my choice is a cereal called,”Red Devils”. Red Devils are a cereal that tastes exactly like red velvet cake, trust me it is accurate since I make them on a daily basis at work. Using my magic to grab a clean bowl from the sink, I use my hooves to grab the cereal with an almost sensual grip. This was the one food I took seriously. Pouring the cereal into the bowl with my magic, I walked over to the fridge to grab the milk. The milk carton felt a little bit light, I assumed that later I would need to buy more at some point. Turning away from the fridge to the now glorious, not yet wet Red Devils. Pouring the milk on the cereal, I get the fresh scent of Red Velvet cake. Celestia, if only you could get that scent of milk going over red velvet cake.
Taking the now freshly scented cereal with me back to my room, I sat down in my chair while switching my PC back on to check on any upcoming news with Smoke or even SF2. I would usually just go on the website before checking Smoke because sometimes they would get the wrong story on a certain game or update. As I took a bite of cereal as I loaded up the page to check for updates, I nearly spat it right out after the news that I had read on the home page.
The home page read,”The Final Countdown: Due to a recent rise of toxicity among players and hackers trying to get the very rare item known as “The Golden Fork”, we are sad to announce that we will no longer add more Golden forks to the game after the one that is currently hidden in the game right now. For anymore questions regarding other issues in the game, contact us with our business email. Safe hunting!~ The devs”. I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were gonna stop adding forks in the game? This had to be a joke. It had to be.
In a panic, I logged onto to see if the unbearable news was true. Sadly, what I thought was a hoax was indeed true. The page was filled to the brim with a ton of complaints with them doing this. Many of them saying,” I can’t believe the devs! They absolutely betrayed the community by doing this! I hope something bad happens to them!”, and other shit like that.
Along with the angry comments I was greeted with, I noticed my messages had 4 unread notifications. All four of them were unread messages. I figured that they would all be from PJ asking me to help him again. And for the most part, I was right. Well, sort of.
One of the messages was from PJ, and the other three were from Gem. It actually managed to kind of put me at ease with the whole craziness of the news that happened today involving the Golden Fork. Her messages were relly to let me know about where she will be and what not.
Gem (Offline) : Hey, So I decided that I would be online after school today. I totally forgot that today was a half day for me because the college I go to has some election thing going on.
Maybe you and I could talk more and you could introduce me to some of your friends you have.
I’ve never seen anyone with that many friends, you must be really popular. Anyway, see you later today Lotus.
It made me feel good that this was a friend who wasn’t going to talk to me once and just forget about me. That actually made me feel like I could talk to somepony else when PJ is up my ass about something. Speaking of PJ, he had sent me one message asking me to call him on Kaos and how he wants to talk to me.
“Ugh, he better have a bunch of flowers saying he’s sorry if he wants to speak to me”, I think to myself as I dread the thought of talking to him after last night.
Nonetheless, I am forgiving depending on how badly sorry another pony is. I logged onto Kaos to hear what PJ had to say. As expected, he was online in Kaos patiently waiting for me to call him to talk. I let out a sigh before saying to myself,”Here we go”, as I click call user. The calling tone rang for a couple of seconds before the sound stopped as PJ’s name came up on the screen. It was silent for a little bit before I heard a kind of distraught voice say something.
“Hey”, PJ says with a depressed tone.
“Hey”, I say to PJ in response. His tone concerned me for a second.
There was a brief pause before PJ began talking.
“Look, I want to say sorry for how I acted last night. I just was really driven to get the fork because I need the money badly”, PJ said.
I was going to say that it was okay because I know where he came from, but he cut me off before I could say something.
”I live in the northern part of Hoovesiana. More specifically in Mounting City. I am desperate for the money so I can move out of here and move to Ponyville and try out for the Wonderbolts. It has always been my dream, but my parents don’t support me on this. They want me to become a preacher like they are. I don’t want to do that”, PJ says with an almost tearful tone.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My best friend who I had never met anywhere besides online, was actually not that far away from where I lived. Mounting City was about a 45 minute ride there by carriage. All this time I could have met him and see what he is like in real life.
I broke the silence of me processing all this information at once.
“Now it makes sense”, I said to PJ now understanding what he was going through.
“I know a lot of ponies try to keep their personal lives private from others online, but your the only one I trust that well with that”, PJ says.
With a sigh of acceptance for what I was about to say, I told him about my life as well. I mentioned everything from the job I worked at to even where I lived. The only thing I didn’t mention were my parents. I didn’t want to get into that with him.
“Whoa! All this time we could have been seeing each other. Not like as in a date, but like as friends. Celestia I never knew that you were that close”, PJ replied having hearing my personal info.
There was an awkward silence between the two of us before PJ finally grabbed my attention with what he really wanted to talk about.
“I assume that you heard the news with the golden forks and shit”, PJ says to me.
“Mhm”, I say back to him.
“Look, I can’t do this without you. I tried doing the jumps in the lodge over and over again and you were right. There was an invisible wall. I need you to help me do research. From now on, it is our research we are gonna be doing, no more lone wolf work. What do you say? Will you join me again to help me get the fork”, PJ asks me with a voice of need.
I couldn’t turn him down, not after him opening up to me like that.
We both agreed that we would start from scratch with our research to figure out what each clue of the leak meant. Thankfully we knew what the basic map clue and location was. It was the “reverse grav” part that was throwing us off.
I looked over at the clock that now read 7:16 am. I had to leave in about an hour if I was going to submit to the art trot like Peach says I need to do.
“Look, I would like to start our research right now, but I have to go for a little bit”, I say to PJ as I stand up from my chair.
“It’s ok, I am leaving for a thing my parents are doing in a bit anyway. So you’re gonna be alone for the afternoon. Hopefully you can try to start our research on the ‘Reverse Grav’ part”, PJ says as I hear him stand up as well.
“Ok, I’ll see you later PJ”, I say to PJ before preparing to log off. “See you Lotus”, PJ responds to me back before I leave the call.
I would usually take a shower at around this time, but I was so anxious to send in my submission that I just wanted to get it over with for the day. Grabbing my notebook with the finished submission in it, I walked out the door to start heading over to the place war the art trot is held at. It was a rather cooler day outside than it usually was, and that’s saying something considering how humid it gets here in Hoovesiana. Though I was in a quick hurry to get to the venue, I took my time to enjoy how cool it was outside.
Walking over to the venue, I realized how crowded it was on the streets today. I guess other ponies realized the advantage of it being cool outside and wanted to go shopping before this cold front turns to shit. I shuddered at the crowd of ponies in front of a store center that was having a closing down sale. This was one other downside to me having public anxiety, my dreaded fear of crowds. One might say I would also be claustrophobic, but I hated being in crowds more than anything in the world. It was that fear of being around other ponies who would see me have a anxiety attack and probably not care.
I try to look around to find another way around the crowd of ponies. All the directions I looked at were blocked by a crowd of ponies. I knew, sadly, that the only way to get past the crowd is to go through it.
“Fucking hell”, I say to myself as I dread the thought of moving closer to the crowd.
My hooves began trembling as I tried to move forward into the crowd. I stood there stiff for about a minute contemplating going in.
“Come on Velvet. You can do this, You can fucking do this. Left hoof in front of right hoof and vice versa.”, I say to myself in my head trying to gain confidence to face my fear head on.
I finally gathered up the courage to move forward into the horde of ponies. Stepping in slowly, I was heavily breathing to calm myself down. I was around three steps away from stepping inside of the cluster of ponies before I stopped again out of fear from stepping so close to the crowd. Before I could say something to myself to try and gain confidence, one stallion had bumped into me from behind which then forced me into the crowd. I tried to gather myself inside of the horde of moving ponies getting from one place to the other. My heart began racing with fear being in the middle of the crowd. I was tempted to move back to where I started to get out, but I was so far into the crowd that I had no choice but to move forward out of the crowd.
The rest of what happened was a blur. The one thing I remember was bumping into a mare who told me to watch where I was going. I was on the ground in the next second on the other side of the crowd panting trying to catch my breath. Thankfully, my submission wasn’t damaged from the chaos from the crowd. I collected myself and my things and began to move as fast as I can away from the crowd.
As I was shuddering from the aftermath of walking through my worst nightmare, I was quickly drawn out of it by the sound of a colt screaming. This wasn’t the type of scream involving colts playing, it was more of a scream of fear. I quickly turned to face the source of the scream of distress. It was the group of young colts from yesterday, but they were circled around something going on. As I moved closer to the circle to observe, I quickly realized that this circle was around the young griffin who was being pushed around by three of the colts around him. My instincts took over as I was rushing over to separate the colts from the poor griffin in distress.
I had a feeling in my body I had never felt before, a feeling of confidence. On my way over to help the griffin, he was pushed to the ground by a gray and black unicorn.
“Yeah! Stay down where you belong you griffin”, one colt shouted at the downed griffin. I began to hear the griffin start crying as he was laying there on the ground about to be trampled by these little assholes. “
Hey, Stop that shit right now”, I yelled running at the group of colts.
The group had turned around as I approached them.
“Uh, wait, this is the game we are playing. We are, uh, wrestling this-our friend here”, The colt with shorter yellow hair.
“Yeah, of course you are. You better fuck off before you do something you regret you little shits”, I say sarcastically to the group.
The colts went silent for a second and then walked away grumbling with their breath. Once I had seen that they were far enough away from me, I looked down to check on the griffin who was on the ground with a tear in his eye.
“Are you okay”, I ask the downed griffin. The griffin nodded at me no slowly perking up.
“Here, let me get you up and home”, I say as I held out a hoof to the griffin.
He took my hoof as I lifted him up on his talons.
“Do you mind telling me what your name is”, I ask him as he was starting to stand.
“M-my names Stormbreaker”, the griffin says quietly.
“So Stormbreaker, do you know where you live”, I ask him as I kind of dust off some dirt on his wing.
“I um, live right there in that red house over there”, Stormbreaker said pointing to the small red house.
“Here, I’ll walk with you to your house to explain what happened to your parents.”, I said as I began walking towards the house.
“Um, My parents aren’t home r-right now. I’ll just go in and tell m-mommy what happened when she gets back”, Stormbreaker says as he began to fly towards his home in front of me.
“Ok, but tell them what happened, ok? Promise me you will”, I say to Stormbreaker as he approaches his front door of the house.
“I-I will”, Stormbreaker says before walking into the house and shutting the door.
I figured that I had dealt with the problem with the group of colts a little bit harshly, but then again they were being harsh to Stormbreaker so I guess it’s even now.
As I reached over to find my art book in my satchel, I realized that it was no longer there. I quickly panicked trying to find it all over the field where I was just running to be a hero. After about five minutes of searching I managed to find it, in a pile of mud.
“Oh no no no no no no please don’t be damaged!”, I continuously say to myself as I search through the muddy bag for my art book.
I couldn’t find it in every pocket I checked. That’s when I noticed that my book was facing page down with my submission in the mud.
“Shit Shit Shit Shit Shit!”, I say to myself frantically as I check to see the damage.
The drawing wasn’t faded thankfully, but it was covered in spots of mud all over it. It was practically ruined. There was no way I would be able to even be considered for a viewing at the art trot. I then remembered that if I didn’t submit anything then Peach would revoke my check. Even though it was covered in mud, I knew I had to submit something. I decided to just suck it up and go to the place, despite the submission looking like shit.
Making it to the submission place didn’t make me feel so good. Like my insides were turning to dust in the snap of a tree branch. I didn’t remember much from the whole experience because I was having an anxiety attack while submitting. All I remember was the pony running the table asking me,’Are you sure you want to submit this?”, She had said something else but I wasn’t listening too well from me having an anxiety attack only seconds before stepping up. I knew that it was bad. Really bad. All I really wanted to do after that was to go home and stay away from the sun for a day to self loath. I began to feel a tear drop from my eye. I knew I fucked up, I fucked up badly with the submission.