What is love...
“Wake up, Jason...”, a voice said disturbing my slumber and bringing me out of the dream I was having.
“I don’t wanna go to school today...”, I mumbled, thinking that it was my mom years ago.
“You are still sleeping... aren’t you?” the voice asked, becoming more clear to me. Suddenly I could smell smoke in the air. It clicked in my head that I was in grave danger. For all the years I had been on oxygen because of my illness, I knew that if I were to get near fire, I could blow up. Pure oxygen is explosive when exposed to a flame and with all the oxygen I needed to survive, one little fire could blow up half a block. So smoke meant ‘run as fast as you can or you’re dead’ in my book. I was so startled that when I sprung off the sofa, I flew straight into a wall. I remembered seeing a dog do the same thing on an internet video clip... I immediately felt sorry for all the times I had laughed. Realizing someone was laughing at me, I turned around to see Spike and Twilight. The little dragon was enjoying the pain I had inflicted upon myself out of misguided fear.
“See, I told you he would wake up! A little smoke does the trick every time!” Spike said, still laughing. I didn’t get mad, if anything I was actually glad that he had got some revenge. Pranks and practical jokes lost their fun if the target didn’t put up a fight. Now that he had the taste for it, Spike was going to be a little more fun to mess with. Twilight was obviously upset with him and worried about me. For some reason she never could hide her thoughts. She always wore her heart on her sleeve. To show I was fine with what Spike did, I walked over and held my hoof in front of him.
“Good job... you got me.” I said with a small semi-impressed smile. Spike pounded my hoof with his clenched fist. “Now what’s up? You must have woke me up for a reason.”
“Oh, yeah. I needed to tell you that while I was gone yesterday, I went to talk to Princess Celestia.” Twilight said cringing a little as if I was going to flip out.
“I sorta figured that's why you had left... you may continue.” I replied, moving my hoof around in a ‘keep going’ motion.
“Um, okay... I informed her about you a little and she told me to bring you to Canterlot in a week. She wishes to speak with you on a few matters...” Twilight explained, showing a bit of hesitation near the end.
“Sounds fine to me. I was going to spend the next couple of days trying to find a means of making money anyhow. And a week sounds long enough to spend time with Vlad before leaving him. I know that pets don’t do well if you always lea-”
“Excuse me, but who’s Vlad?” Twilight asked, cutting me off. At the mention of his name, some short screeches and squeaks came from directly above us. We all looked up to see him just hanging from the ceiling.
“A bat?! How did he get in here?! Come on now! Shoo! I can’t let every stray animal just-”
“He’s not a stray, he’s my pet... and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell him what to do.” I interrupted.
Twilight looked at me dumbfounded and asked, “Out of all the pets you could have, WHY A BAT?!”
“Because they were fresh out of cat...” I answered, making it sound like I had just ordered something from a restaurant. Vlad swooped down and landed on my back, causing Twilight and Spike to jump a little out of surprise.
“He doesn’t drink blood does he?” Spike asked warily. I opened my mouth to answer that question yet again but Twilight explained before I had a chance to speak.
“No, Spike. See how he has large ears and no tail? Vampire bats are known for having small ears and short tails. This guy is clearly a fruit bat.”
I clapped my hooves together in light applause. “Very nice... ‘A+’ for you.”
Twilight smiled at my comment. For once I was actually being sincere. I would usually just spout a bunch of sarcasm, but she actually impressed me this time. Perhaps she WAS the very same Twilight I had known. I had my doubts that she was the same intellectual unicorn I viewed in the cartoon, but this gave me a glimpse into what she was really like. Without realizing it, I had been staring at her for a while silently, most likely with a creepy smile.
Spike coughed to break the silence and asked Twilight, “Isn’t there something else you were going to tell him?”
Noticing that he was right, she quickly said, “Oh! That’s right! It’s hearts and hooves day I am going to be out all day with Pokey Pierce! I’m sorry to leave you like this but I made plans with him the other day and...”
I held up my hoof, silencing her before saying, “It’s not a problem, I was going to look for someone who could hire me anyways, remember?”
Twilight blushed and went on to say how sorry she was and I kept telling her the same thing. The way she went on about it started to give me a headache so I proceeded to cover her mouth and tell her that it was fine for the hundredth time, making my point as clear as possible to her overreaction to the situation. She started to apologize one last time, but I had enough of it and pushed her out the door while saying, “Yes, yes, I know its a tragedy, it really is terrible that you have to leave to go on a date, I’ll see you later, GOODBYE!”. I slammed the door behind her before she could turn around and let out a breath of relief.
“Tell me about it. Twilight is always like that around her friends. If there is any chance that she might be disappointing somepony, she will apologize until the sun goes down.” Spike said, before taking a gem out of his stash and eating half of it.
“Well you can’t change who someone is, no matter how badly you want to... its just something we will have to deal with. Think you can keep from burning this place down while I’m gone?” I asked, pushing open the door.
“I don’t burn everything I touch you know... but yeah, you go and find a job. It’s about time you stopped mooching off us.”
“Oh come on, you know you love me... ‘Mailbox’.”
I quickly shut the door behind me in order to avoid getting hit with the jewel spike was munching on. Vlad was still perched on my back, but I didn’t mind. At least with him with me I wouldn’t be seen talking to myself like I often did out of habit. I never used to have conversations with myself but as year passed and my friends drifted further away, I began to sort of ‘keep myself company’ by pondering things and speaking about them aloud while looking at the problems from different perspectives. One thing I was worried about was how much I could go over even though I was ‘technically’ one person. I say technically because I had many different... lets call them personalities. I could say how great something was one moment then look at it from a completely different angle as though I was someone else and continue to say how I was wrong before because I had failed to note certain aspects of the object in question. It also made me very good at predicting others. If I knew what a person was like I could snap myself into their mode of thinking, aggression, tactical prowess, intelligence, emotion and all... just to know how they would fight in a game and counter their every move. Call of Duty, as much as I hated to admit it, was like chess to me. If I knew how the other team behaved and watched their movements long enough, I could cut them off at certain points and come out on top. However this skill probably wouldn’t guarantee me a job.
I searched around for places that were hiring, only to find that nobody needed me. By the time I had found out that there was no job available for a unicorn, it was already well past lunch. Vlad jumped off my back as I sat down and leaned against the shop I had just left. I was exhausted from all the pointless searching and needed to relax so I pulled out my headphones and brought them up to my head. However, before I could even turn on my mp3, I heard a shout come from my right. There appeared to be a stallion with a ski mask running down the road. He was carrying some saddlebags in his mouth, looking back for any pursuers.
“Help! Thief! That pony stole my saddlebags! Somepony stop him!” Shouted a familiar looking pony.
Now the average human on earth would just ignore the thief and let the authorities handle everything... but so far I hadn’t seen one police officer the entire time I had been in Equestria. Right when the stallion was about to pass me I stretched out my leg. He tripped and hit the ground, soon grinding to a halt. I got up and hurried over to his side as he struggled to get back up.
“Hey, was some nasty fall you took back there. Are you alright?” I asked, watching him rub the side of his head, cringing a little.
“I think so...” he replied.
“My mistake, let me fix that...” I growled darkly.
I turned around and gave him a quick buck with one of my legs, knocking him out instantly. The pony that had her bags stolen came trotting up a second later, breathless and wheezing. It turned out that the thief had stolen from Vinyl Scratch. I levitated her saddlebags and presented them to her.
“I believe these belong to you?”
“Oh my goodness, thank you so much! I don’t know what I would have done without you! Octy would have been so mad if I had lost these again. How can I repay you?!” She said, grasping the bags with her own magic.
“It was no biggie... I couldn’t just let him-” I was cut off by a groggy groan. “One moment...”
I slowly walked over to the stallion who I had knocked out earlier and gave one more quick buck to make sure he stayed down.
“Like I was saying, I couldn’t just let him take what was not his. You cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is the law of equivalent exchange and I believe it applies to life directly. In order to get what you want, you must work for it.”, I said, looking down at the unconscious stallion lying on the ground in front of me.
“Whoa, that’s some deep stuff. Are you a poet or something?”, Vinyl asked, tilting her head a little.
I chuckled lightly and responded, “No right now I’m not much of anything. Just some dude looking for a place in this world.”.
“Well in my opinion, you should work for the Canterlot guard! I mean the way you brought down that crook was like, BOOM, WHAM, POW!” To emphasize Vinyl swung her hooves around in punching motions... the last one hit me straight in the jaw.
“Oh my gosh! I’m SOOO sorry! I always over do it!” She said, trying frantically to comfort me from her blow. “Well you look okay... but just to make sure, let me take you back to my place. If anything I can at least reward you there.”
“It's fine, really. I don’t need a reward, it was nothing.”
“IT WAS NOT NOTHING! I won’t take no for an answer! You are coming with me!” the DJ said, literally dragging me away.
* * * * * *
When we arrived at her house, she bursted through the front door and hollered, “I’m back! And I brought somepony with me!”
“It had better not be another hobo you picked up off the streets....”, a voice called back from another room.
“Don’t worry, he’s... wait, are you a hobo?” Vinyl asked, still holding my jacket collar with her magic. I shook my head. “Oh... HE’S NOT!”
Vinyl released me and I scrambled to get up. For some odd reason I felt like I was being kidnapped. I knew that it wasn’t her intention and she was only trying to be courteous, but Vinyl was a bit of a maniac. It didn’t take long for Octavia to walk into the room with a stern look on her face.
“So, who is this?” She asked, tapping her hoof.
Vinyl Scratch opened her mouth to speak but then something dawned on her. “I, um, never asked his name...” She revealed, smiling nervously.
“It’s Jason, pleasure to meet you Miss Octavia.” I said formally, sticking out a hoof.
Octavia raised an eyebrow and smiled a little, pounding her hoof against my own. “Let me guess... you were minding your own business and she just dragged you here on a whim, right?”
“More or less...” I said nonchalantly.
“B-but, it’s different this time! I swear! He saved my saddlebags from-” quickly covered her mouth.
“You nearly lost them again, didn’t you?” Octavia deduced, looking Vinyl straight in the eyes with a steely gaze.
“Yeah but he saved them so what’s the problem?! We can still go out tonight and everything worked out in the end!”
“Yes but now we need to reward him. If you were just a little more careful we wouldn’t get into these situations!”
I slowly backed up towards the door while they continued to argue back and forth. I was going to attempt an escape but they caught me and shifted their argument over to who was driving me away, so I stayed in order to keep them from killing each other. It took over half an hour for them to reach a settlement. They decided that even though it was wrong to be careless with such an important item, it was impossible to stay alert all the time. With the disagreement settled, they turned to me with eerily pleasant smiles.
“So what can we do for your act of kindness?” Octavia asked, obviously forcing her grin by the way sweat was dripping down her brow.
“And awesomeness?! I’m telling you Octy, it was soooo cool! He even said something cool when he knocked the guy out! It was like something out of an action story or something!”
“Like I said earlier, I don’t need anything. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and-”, at that moment my stomach made a rather large growl and I knew they must have heard it.
Octavia smiled gently and said, “I’ll whip up something for us to eat.”
* * * * * *
It didn’t take long for the musical grey earthpony to make a sandwich for each of us. The only problem with them was that they were DAISY sandwiches. I was very hesitant in trying it for obvious reasons, but not wanting to be rude, I picked it up and took a small bite. I was shocked to find that the daisies tasted like ham! Normally I disliked the flavor of ham, but since this was the first taste of anything resembling the flavor of meat from the time I arrived, I didn’t care what it was.
As I continued to eat, Octavia started to speak. “So... today is Hearts and Hooves day and I was wondering, do you have somepony, I mean, are you seeing, um...”
Noticing Octavia's trouble getting her message out, Vinyl decided to blurt out with her mouth full of partially chewed sandwich, “Do you have plans with a special somepony or what?”
I nearly choked when she said that, but managed to recover with a drink of juice from a nearby glass.
“Vinyl!” Octavia exclaimed, her face red from embarrassment.
“What? I don’t see the point of beating around the bush when you can just say it!” Vinyl retorted.
“Well some ponies think that it’s rude to invade their personal matters like that! He almost choked!”
I cleared my throat of excess sandwich before explaining myself. “It’s fine! Really, I was just caught off guard by her question. The answer would be no... I have nobody. I highly doubt that there is even anyone out there for a guy like me. I’m a jerk and I accept that fact...”
Octavia slammed her hoof on the table. “Trust me, you are NOT by any means, ‘a jerk’. Vinyl on the other hoof...”
“Come on, you know you love me!” Vinyl said, wrapping her arm around Octavia and bringing her uncomfortably close.
“Even so... there is a pony out there for everypony. Just give it time. Who knows? Maybe you have found that special somepony already and just don’t know it yet.”
“Yeah like with me and Octy here! She might say she hates my guts but she’d be lost without me, and she knows it!” Vinyl said, giggling mischievously.
I had been told this all before and I didn’t buy it. My 'predicament' was a special one. I knew that if I even found someone, I wouldn’t be able to feel any better. Burdening others with my problems was something I had no interest in... especially if it was a person I cared about. If I were to find someone, I wouldn’t be able to help if emotions came into play. Feelings were odd and disturbed me. In my eyes I was never going to be good enough. That and the fact that when I got mad and snapped, I could devastate whoever was near with a verbal assault. I couldn’t love because I was too emotionally and psychologically dangerous. There was one thing that I didn’t have to worry about anymore... the illness that plagued me could no longer get in the way. It was one of the main problems I saw with the relationship issue. I couldn’t go out and find anyone because I was tethered to an oxygen tank. Not only that, but I also would occasionally need help with daily activities. I felt that I couldn’t put that on to anyone's shoulders and expect them to still love me as an equal. I felt as though fate had conspired against me to throw me into a perpetual loveless limbo, but like many other problems in my life, I shrugged it off and accepted it as what was meant to be.
I spent a few hours with Octavia and Vinyl before they needed to leave for a special Hearts and Hooves party. We had mostly talked about the philosophy of love, life, and other things I had went over before with my friends... Vinyl made a few gagging noises when we would talk about feeling love and what the signs were. I had made it perfectly clear that I had never felt the emotion, nor did I care about feeling it. It actually was pleasant talking to Octavia. For once my vocabulary didn’t go over the head of the one I was talking to! I can’t tell you how many times I had to ‘dumb things down’ for the listener. I had completely given up on talking to my mother because she never understood a single word that came from my mouth. Sometimes it was like talking to a dog... she heard me, but she didn’t have a clue as to what I was going on about! It was nice to say something and have someone respond with a clever statement of their own for a change, but all good things must come to an end and we eventually went our separate ways. I told Vlad to go home while I went for a walk. I needed to think a few things over... like if I could manage to find love as a pony instead of a human.
I walked the empty roads of Ponyville for sometime under the pale moonlight. I had never before experienced a night so quiet and serene. The night sky was entrancing and I couldn’t help but to stop on a small bridge and gaze at the moon and stars. I took a deep breath and exhaled, absorbing the peaceful air of tranquillity. There was a cricket chirping in some unknown direction but it just made the moment that much more perfect. The calm atmosphere was relaxing and something I adored. My solitude didn’t last however as Twilight had found me sitting by myself. She didn’t look happy at all... her head was low to the ground, her walk was slow, and her face was contorted into a pout. She sat next to me and let out a mournful sigh.
“So how was your date?” I asked, already knowing it didn’t go well.
“Horrible. We had made arrangements to go to the Hearts and Hooves day dance together, but when we got there Pierce confessed that he never had any interest in me and he was really in love with Cloudchaser...” Twilight said, starting to break into tears. “I was nothing but a piece of bait to make her jealous! He left me as soon as he could to run off with that spikey headed pegasus!”
Tears were flowing steadily down Twilights face now. I had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach from watching her. I knew I had to say something.
“He must have been out of his mind to hurt you like that. If he had the slightest bit of common sense he would have seen that he traded a diamond for a lump of coal. He’ll regret his decision one day and try to get you back, but by then you will have moved on and found someone who truly deserves to be with a unicorn like you... now blow.” I said lifting the sleeve of my jacket in front of her nose. She proceeded to exude a copious amount of snot into the green fabric, but I didn’t care, it wasn’t like my jacket was in good condition or anything. After removing my arm from her face, Twilight rubbed her wrists against her eyes and cleared them of any tears before smiling happily and then turning her attention to the very same moon I had been gazing at...
“Jason?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks...”
