//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8 
// Story: Miles Away 
// by Bucket of Skies 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 8

I would love to tell exactly what happened after that night of me being online with Gem and researching with PJ, but then this story would take ages to tell. So instead of telling you exactly what happened, I’ll just summarize it for you. 
Essentially, the competition for finding the golden fork in SF2 was a lot harder than everypony thought. Most ponies would think it would be found within about a month, maybe a month and a half. Somehow, the devs really hid the fork well. In a matter of about 4 months, not a single player found a clue on how to get to the fork. Every single player was stuck on exactly what got me stuck: That goddamn invisible wall blocking it. You would think since there are about 100,000 players playing the game that at least one of them has a clue on what to do to get past the invisible wall. But no, not a clue. At one point near the end of the fourth months, many players gave up on looking for the fork with the thought that it was a hoax and that there were no golden forks to find and that the one found in the lodge at Double Street was simply just an easter egg to the fork hunt that used to be rampant back in the day. 
While many players had given up and moved on, me and PJ were still working hard at finding it. Well, sort of. I was actually still looking for it in the game, trying to find maybe a button or switch to flip around the lodge to reverse the gravity in the lodge and maybe getting rid of the wall. PJ on the other hoof, was actually not as dedicated as he was before when he started the research to find the fork. From being on every single day to research, soon turned to going on every other day to do some research, which soon turned to once a week. When I had questioned him about why he wasn’t on to do research, he would give me the same response being,”I forgot about it”.
It remained that way for about 3 weeks until one day PJ had said fed up,”Look, there is no more evidence to find a way past that wall. It’s all a sick fucking joke from the devs to get players to play on their fucking game. Just give up. There is no hope for us to find it. I might as well accept my fate as being stuck in this shitty town and get ready for a job I don’t want to do.”
It made me sad a little bit to see that PJ had finally given up on the search. When we had spoken a couple times afterwards, I could tell that this wasn’t the PJ I was used to talk to. PJ seemed a lot more depressed and desolate. It had me worried for him for the longest time. Every once in a while I would ask him if he was ok and wanted to talk about it. To which, PJ would always isolate himself and not want to mention anything about how he felt. It seriously had me concerned for him. 
On the other side of the past 4 months, Gem and I were getting much closer playing wise in SF2. She managed to actually find a class she was happy with. Unfortunately, the class she chose was not a class everypony liked to play against: Scorcher. Scorcher could only be described as the most hated class by the entire fanbase of SF2. At one point I used to hate the class as well, but soon I began to have a tolerance of the class and realized how good the class can be when a good player can take control of the class. Especially considering where Gem had come from nothing skill wise.
It felt like yesterday I was teaching her how to even move and shoot in the game. Now she was dominating as a good combo/ melee Scorcher. She had managed to rank up over 2,620 kills as the class using nothing but a Flamethrower with the ability to airblast and a Firework gun. I’ll even admit this, she was kind of scary to play against. In times she and I had a duel as Scorchers in a private server, she would always beat me. Even with melee combat, she would always dominate me. In a way, I felt proud and embarrassed at same time with her. Proud, from seeing how far she had come from literally knowing nothing about the game to being a solid player. It really was a testament to how much a player can change if they put in the hard work and dedication.
Then finally, stuff at work and how that has gone. Nothing new really happened, only real thing to happen was the change in schedule of work. Peach had given us an announcement saying to us that we would be ending work at around lunchtime, and sadly some of our pay would be cut. Many other coworkers were furious with this news and some even had quit the very next day. Me on the other hoof, I was a little bit happy that the day was cut in half, but also a little sad to leave during the time when I usually have a heart to heart conversation with Peach. To fix that, I had made a decision to wake up earlier than usual to make it to the bakery to have morning talks with her. It worked for a little bit, until I realized that the reason she goes to the bakery this early was to make the cobbler for the day. It was then when she was a bit too busy to talk, so all I really could do was come and start baking the red velvet cakes for the day. Not much time for conversation.
There were some days where on the rare occasion we had enough time to talk for a moment. Conversations were like normal, with the occasional messing around with by Peach. There was one thing I wanted to know: Why would she cut the days in half? Every time I brought up the question, it always was at poor timing when the other workers would come in for work. Sadly, I never was able to get the real answer on why the days were cut at noon, I wanted to know because I was starting to miss our conversations like they used to be.
And that’s the story so far after these four months. If you thought that the story started a long time ago with me waking up, you are absolutely wrong. This is where it just gets started, where the craziness of this story really gets starts up. Shit is about to really hit the fan.