//------------------------------// // Passing the Time // Story: OTR: Haven Station // by The King of Hearts //------------------------------// //// Passing the Time //// Rarity and Spike walked down the open mall, window shopping as they traveled. Ever since Rarity had called first dibs on the spa and conditioning treatment, she had been simply giddy. Something that Spike had noticed, and decided to take advantage of since he knew he could get away with a little more when she was in a good mood. “Oh!” Rarity said, eyeing a fancy hat within one of the countless boutiques, “One moment, Spike!” As Rarity ran inside, Spike waited patiently in the main section of the mall and scanned his surroundings. Was there a store he would be interested in? Finishing his check on his right, he frowned. The name of every store was either something incredibly unappealing to him, or was written in French… Which was also unappealing. But, it looked fancier somehow. Looking to his left, there was little different. There was a toy store, a plus size mare’s clothing store, and an outlet selling fancy suits. That would have been somewhat appealing to him, had he not already had matching tuxes with Alex. However, there was one more store at the end of the mall, with a blinking sign. Squinting, he was barely able to make out the word written on the flashing display. “Arr… Ca… De?” Spike slowly read, before getting the entire word at once, “Arcade!” “Would you carry this please, Spike?” Rarity asked, levitating the hat into his saddle bad, and gently placing it in the main section, “Please be careful with—“ “Can we go to the arcade?!” Spike asked, turning his face to Rarity. “Umm…” Rarity said scratching her head, “The… Arcade…” “Yeah!” Spike said enthusiastically, seeing he clear lack of interest in the option, “It’s supposed to be huge!” “I’m not sure that an arcade is a place for a lady, Spike,” Rarity said firmly, hoping he would simply buy that. “Come on, Rarity!” Spike said, “Just for a few minutes?” Sighing, Rarity nodded, “I’m going to run into the store next to it first, however. I’ll meet you inside when I finish.” “You’re the best, Rarity!” Spike beamed, kissing her quickly on the lips as he ran off to play some games. “Oh, what will I do with you,” She giggled, following behind him for a distance, before turning into her store. //// “Woah…” Spike said to himself, looking at the rows, and rows of endless game machines, “I… I want to play them all!” There were racing games, with cars to sit in, games with guns to shoot zombies, a rock climbing wall, a laser maze, and some form of dancing machine… That one in particular caught his eye. Walking over to it, he examined the two ponies that were currently playing. They had to stand on their hind legs, and hit one of four arrows, depending on which one was scrolling up the screen, while some hyper-happy-techno blared from the speakers… Spike liked the look of it… It was called: Hoof Hoof Revolution, and it could be played two player! Maybe Rarity would want to try with him. Walking over to a vacant machine, Spike fished a bit out of his bag, and tried to slide it into the slot. However, the gold coin was slightly bigger than slot, confusing him. However, instead of giving up, he simply kept trying, hoping that something would change, and suddenly accept his money. “Wow,” A pony said from behind him, “Look at this guy!” Looking over his shoulder, Spike saw a group of colts standing behind him. None of them were particularly fit, and all of them had some issues with acne. There were two brown Pegasi, one cyan earth pony, and a white unicorn, whom Spike assumed was the leader of the group… The brown ones were thin as rails, the cyan pony seemed to be right in the middle, and the white colt was on the wrong side of a few hundred pounds, with quite a collection of zits on his face. “This your first time in an arcade?” The cyan one asked in a snide tone, “Do you need some help getting it to work?” “Sure!” Spike smiled, not understanding that he was being insulted. Walking over, the large white colt tried his best to look cool as he caught the coin spike tossed him in his hoof. “So… What was I doing wrong?” Spike asked, “Did I just need to push really hard?” Scoffing, the white colt simply rolled his eyes at Spike, adjusted his glasses, and then tossed his bit under an arcade machine behind them. “Hey!” Spike shouted, “My money! What was that for?” “That was for coming into my arcade…” The leader said as he upwardly inflected the end of his speech, making everything he said sound like a question, “And not paying me respect, as the king of this place…” “What are you talking about?” Spike growled, “I just wanted to play a game!” “Well, it looks like you’re out of luck!” One of the brown ponies shouted over the loud noise of the arcade, “No more money!” “Psh,” Spike rolled his eyes, “I’ve got plenty of THAT.” Levitating a hefty sack of bits out of his saddle bag, the boys dropped their jaws, they had never seen that much money in their entire lives. “I’m going to play this dance game, like it or not!” Spike said, levitating yet another bit from the bag, “And I’m definitely not going to pay YOU any respect!” Narrowing his eyes, “You know what this means…” Spike pulled back slightly. Truth be told, he had no idea what it meant. “We must settle this with a dance-off!” He shouted, abandoning his upward inflection for one sentence. “Dance off!” The cyan colt started shouting. Soon, the news spread like wildfire, as almost everypony in the arcade finished their games, and made their ways over to the ‘Hoof Hoof Revolution’ machines in anticipation of the exciting battle that they were going to see. “W-wait,” Spike said, “I didn’t agree to this!” “Too late,” One of the brown colts said, “You’ve insulted Twinkie’s honor.” “…Your name is Twinkie?” Spike said, grimacing, “Sorry about that.” “On to the machine!” Twinkie called as he stepped on to the sensor mat, making an inappropriately large display as he did it, “Token me!” Jumping at the chance to pay for his game, a lot of the ponies in the audience started throwing their game tokens to him. Levitating four off the ground, he inserted them into the machine, and waited for Spike to follow suit, watching him with a smirk the whole time. Scrambling, Spike carefully levitated four coins off the floor and inserted them all into the machine. “Hoof Hoof Revolution!” The announcer on the game shouted. “Are you ready to get pwned?” He asked, with the usual tone, smirking to Spike. “What does that mean?” Spike asked. “Wow,” He said arrogantly, and rudely, “I can’t believe you don’t know what that even means.” Rolling his eyes, Spike hit his hoof into the machine, “Let’s do this.” //// Rarity walked out of the store, and examined the necklace she had just purchased… It was beautiful. Of course, on her way to the arcade, she realized that it would have felt a LOT better if Spike had bought this for her… She would have to tell him to buy her more presents. Entering the arcade, she was a bit confused since the only thing she could see was a pretty large crowd of ponies, surrounding some kind of game. Noticing the lack of ponies in the rest of the arcade, Rarity assumed that Spike was somewhere in this crowd… It really would have been much easier if she had just looked at the arcade machine in the front. “Spike…?” She whispered, trying to look over the group of colts. Considering entering the crowd, she became rather uncomfortable at the strange looks she was getting from the boys around her. She was used to receiving admiration from the men around her… But this wasn’t admiration. This almost looked like fear. “Uh…” One said, his voice cracking loudly, before turning away from her. Everypony simply started avoiding eye contact with her. “What is with everypony?” She said under her breath, “And where is—“ “Hoof Hoof Revolution!” The announcer on the machine called loudly as she turned her head to it. “Aaaaand… There he is.” She said to herself, feeling a bit stupid for not looking at the CENTER of attention for him. //// As Twinkie stood up on his hind legs, and grabbed the bar behind him for balance, he turned and smirked to Spike, “You know how to stand up, right?” Grinning back, Spike stood up on his back legs, and puffed out his chest, maintaining his balance perfectly, “I’ve been standing like this most of my life.” “Psh,” Twinkie said, looking back to the screen, and pressing a few buttons, and selecting a song, “I picked an easy one, just so you can get the hang of things.” “Wow, thanks!” Spike said, getting into position as the song started playing. Of course, the song WASN’T that easy… And since this was his first time playing the game, it especially showed. On one hoof, Twinkie was jumping and bouncing along with the song, hitting almost every note that came up the screen. On the other hoof, Spike clumsily flailed around the dance pad, missing almost everything, as his health bar quickly drained, locking his score at twenty, despite the few hits he scored after his failure. After what seemed like an eternity to the purple pony, the song finally ended, and Spike was presented with a big letter ‘D’ on his screen, whereas Twinkie got an ‘A’. Turning around, Twinkie raised his arms in victory, in possibly the lamest way possible, as the crowd cheered for him. Rolling his eyes, Spike leaned forward, and attempted to pick the next song in line. “Hey!” Twinkie called, “Winner picks next song!” “Is that the rule?” Spike asked, deciding not to have the argument, “Fine. But I pick next regardless.” “Fine,” He said, flipping his long greasy mane out of his face, as he picked the next track. This one sounded much faster in the sample, and Spike prepared himself for another pummeling. Why was he even still here? //// Rarity wasn’t sure how Spike had gotten himself into this situation, but decided not to try intervening. She would probably end up looking like she was babying him. So instead, she sat back and watched him lose this strange game to the pony beside him. The song was pretty fast, and the enormous white colt seemed like he knew what he was doing. But Spike looked like he was doing no better than the first song he had just played. Surprisingly however, Spike started landing a few notes in a few parts of the song. Something nopony had expected him to do. Still, just as before when the game ended, he was presented with a big ‘D.’ Rarity giggled. Big ‘D.’ Alex was starting to rub off on her. And again, Twinkie got an ‘A.’ “Ready to give up?” He asked Spike, turning back to the audience, “I think I’ve proven myself.” “How about this,” Spike suggested as Twinkie turned back to the audience, “If I do better than you this round, I win!” “Heh, fine,” Twinkie shrugged, “You’ll never beat me anyway!” Narrowing his eyes, Spike knew that he had no chance at winning… But maybe he could use a little shock and awe and make them both losers. Scrolling through the songs, Spike noticed one that had red text, instead of the usual blue and green. “Legend of Maxx…” Spike said, listening to the sample that played along with it, “I like it!” Twinkie turned back to the machine, having no idea the song Spike and just chosen, and readied himself. The notes filled the screen faster than either Spike or Twinkie had anticipated, and both of them were assaulted with combinations that they weren’t able to follow along with. Having had no idea this was coming, Twinkie missed a large sum of notes right off the bat, and failed the song with a measly score of ten. Spike did ONE note better and failed at fifteen. Since both players lost, the song immediately ended and simply presented them both with ‘D’s. However, the key difference in the score, was that Spike had managed to hit one more note, and surpass Twinkie’s score. “Yeah!” Spike cheered, “I won!” The crowd was silent, all of them embarrassed for their king. Seeing the shock on everypony’s face, Twinkie tried to make himself look cool again. “So what if he beat me in ONE song,” Twinkie announced, “I could trounce him in ANY game here! I’m way cooler than he’ll ever be!” “You tell ‘em boss!” The cyan pony shouted. Spike rolled his eyes as the audience slowly started buying into Twinkie’s speech. “So, that’s why I’m going to prove it, and beat him in a new game!” Twinkie announced, briefly noticing a pony making their way to the front of the crowd, “And after that, he’ll have to admit that I’m way better than—“ “Great job, Spike!” Rarity said to him, smiling cutely at him, “You won!” “Uhhhhh…” Twinkie said, wide-eyed at the gorgeous mare in front of him, “You know this guy?” “Well of course,” She said politely, “He’s my boyfriend!” A rolling gasp was heard by the crowd as they took in that piece of news as everypony started whispering to one another in disbelief. “Let’s hurry out Spike,” Rarity said to him, “My appointment is soon!” “Of course,” Spike said, stepping off the game pad, “Good game! Maybe I’ll see you guys tomorrow!” Walking out together, they didn’t look back once at the stunned crowd. “I just got pwned…” Twinkie sighed. //// “I’ll pick you up here in two hours!” Spike said to her, as they approached the large spa building. “Thank you, dear,” She smiled as they walked up to the booth next to the large entrance. “Do you have an appointment?” The mare asked in monotone. “I believe so!” Rarity said, “It should be under Rarity?” Looking at a clipboard, The mare saw the name and nodded, “Okay, you can go in.” A loud buzzing went off, that was followed by the massive doors opening, revealing a clean white room with a few pieces of furniture. The two started entering before the mare quickly called to them. “It’s just one at a time!” She explained. “Oh,” Spike said, stepping back, and looking back to Rarity, “I guess I’ll see you later.” Smiling and nodding, she leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek, “We’ll go out for dinner after.” “Sure thing,” He smiled earnestly. Turing around, Rarity walked into the building as the doors closed behind her. Looking around, Spike decided to head back to the room for now. All that arcade business drained him… He’d come back for Rarity when he woke up. ////