//------------------------------// // Living with Ponies, Day 1 // Story: Overactive // by Mariorulez14 //------------------------------// Author's Note: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and all associated characters, locations, etc. are property of Lauren Faust and Hasbro. I do not own these characters, nor do I claim to own them. Now then, continue on with your entertainment endeavors. Overactive A story by Mariorulez14 Chapter 3 After Mr. Gilbert, the neighbor I called about the hay and alfalfa, politely excused himself after getting a glimpse of three cartoon ponies from his daughter's favorite show, I left the food preparations to the ponies as Shelby and I ate the Chinese food I'd ordered...well, we attempted to. Fluttershy went stiff as a board after we mentioned “egg rolls”, so Shelby called in a pizza while I calmed Fluttershy down and assured her that there weren't any actual eggs in the egg rolls. By the time she recovered, smoke started to billow out of the kitchen as Pinkie Pie and Rarity stumbled out, followed by what smelled like burning rubber. A few opened windows later, we figured out that Pinkie Pie tried to sauté one of my mom's prized plastic orchids that she usually puts on the table when the holidays or family come around. After apologies from the two coughing ponies, I trashed the plastic-infused pan and tried my best to hide the melted plant in the closet where it came from. Fluttershy and Shelby gave Greta a tick bath while Pinkie and I were on kitchen clean-up, with Rarity coming in afterward to give the dog a haircut and a little bit of styling; the fashionista assured me that my mom would think it was adorable, but I grumbled and went back to scraping plastic out of the frying pans. Shelby got a call from her parents to come home to dinner as Pinkie sent her home with a box of fresh cookies (it must have been like the 50th batch of cookies she'd made since getting to my house) and I introduced them to what I described as “America's national sport”-watching television. Fluttershy took a liking to watching Wild Kingdom and Pinkie was completely enthralled by Ace of Cakes, while Rarity took to my parent's room to watch America's Next Top Model (which, she informed me, has an Equestrian counterpart called Equestria's Most Fabulous Mare). By 8:30, all 3 mares were asleep – Fluttershy was snuggled with Greta on the pillow, Pinkie Pie was snoring under a blanket of chocolate-smeared paper plates while Rarity claimed my parents' queen-sized bed all to herself. I shut off the TV in the living room and went up to my own bedroom, where I took a few Advil to calm down the sore spot on my head and fell straight asleep. ---------- I had my second rude awakening of the week as I was woken up by our smoke alarm. And I'm notorious in my family for waking up panicked when an alarm goes off. I ran as fast as I could into the living room yelling “Fire! Everypony out!” I looked around the house to see that there was a distinct lack of smoke, just an extremely frazzled-looking Pinkie Pie holding her left hoof. She saw me and immediately pointed at our smoke detector. “Joey, your buzzer-madoodle shocked me! And not in the good, funny joy-buzzer type of shock...the kind that hurt!” I could hear Rarity groan and start whining loudly about her beauty sleep from my parent's room and found Fluttershy consoling a scared Greta. Our large, rust-colored Irish Setter looked intimidating at first glance (she was half as tall as my 5'-8” father) but she was really just a big softie that was showed a lot of affection and got scared easily – especially when my mom felt the necessity to run loud things such as the garbage disposal. As Rarity got closer, I could hear her hooves literally slamming against our hardwood floor as she angrily made her way to Pinkie Pie, who had her hoof in her mouth in an attempt to soothe the burn she had carelessly received. “Pinkie, must you make such an obnoxious racket?” Rarity's murderous expression softened up a bit as I explained what happened with Pinkie and the smoke alarm. “Well,” she said at last, “a small burn's no excuse for waking me from a wonderful dream. I was about to be awarded the best designer in all of Canterlot!” Rarity excused herself to the bathroom to “freshen up” as Fluttershy came back in with Greta. “I'm not sure what you humans feed your dogs here...what do you feed them?” I juggled ways to let it down as gently as I could to her, since dogs here ate meat as a main diet. “Well...um...they kind of eat meat. Like, cow and turkey...that kind of thing.” Fluttershy just kind of gulped as she left me to feeding Greta her breakfast, probably not feeling up to opening a can of an innocent animal's flesh and watching a sweet dog like Greta devour it like, well, an animal. Afterward, I left Greta to her duties outdoors. As I watched Fluttershy sit down on the couch next to a still-sleeping Pinkie Pie, I thought back to her cottage back in Ponyville. Being in another dimension and everything was probably freaking her out, seeing as there wasn't anyone to watch over the animals that were usually her responsibility like Angel Bunny or Sir Roostington. And that gave me an idea. “Hey Fluttershy...do you think the animals back in Ponyville are doing OK?” I asked the yellow pony, who just looked at me with those sad teal eyes. “Oh yes, I'm worried that they're getting hurt or not eating enough with no one there to watch over them...” I grabbed a slip of paper out of a kitchen drawer that advertised a petting zoo that had opened downtown a few months before and showed it to Fluttershy. “Here on Earth, we have things called 'petting zoos'. It's mostly farm animals, but they walk around freely and human kids can feed them and pet them. I was thinking it'd be something that you can do while you're here-” I was cut off as Fluttershy quickly got up with a smile on her face and walked towards the door. Kind of scary how quick she can cycle through emotion, yeesh, I thought as I watched the pegasus pony take flight in search of the city's petting zoo. I picked up a couple of the paper plates littering the couch (being careful to not to wake up Pinkie as I remembered yesterday's hoof-to-the-face), threw them in the garbage and decided to call my parents and let them know about how the my days were due to a request they made before they left; my mom even left a note on the refrigerator that read: Call us every day honey <3. As I dialed my mom's cell number, I tried to decide whether or not I should drop the news about the cartoon ponies living in our house. “They'll either take me to a doctor or think I'm joking and laugh”, I thought out loud as I heard my mom's cell phone ringing. ...Wait, my mom's cell phone? Oh God, they're home, I thought as I heard the front door click open. ---------- “Oooh, we missed you baby!” My mom began her motherly love-assault and had me in a bear hug as my dad laughed. “Gotta admit Joel, you kept the place real clean,” he chuckled to himself, “maybe we should leave you here alone more often.” I laughed nervously. There was a pink mare on the couch and a white one in my parents' bathroom. I thought about my dad and his ability to tell wild stories to children at the work parties he often attended and my mom's landscaping career, where she was basically required to have an imagination. What will they do if they see characters from a show for girls in the house? I thought as my mom looked worriedly at the bruise on my left temple. “What happened to your head, Joel?” she asked as she went to get an ice pack, even though it didn't hurt as much as yesterday. “Um...I slipped and fell helping out in the school cafeteria...” I lied, taking the ice pack from my mom as she lead me to the couch. I scooted a bit to the side to avoid my mom sitting me down on top of the still-sleeping Pinkie as she looked me in the eye. “Joel, you should have called,” she said softly. “At least you're OK, son...it looks more like a horse kicked you in the face,” my dad called from the doorway hauling a full set of luggage from our van. “Sorry mom, I should have...but why are you home so early? Weren't you going on a cruise or something?” My dad, who was headed down the hallway toward their room, set down what he was carrying and told me about how the ship's windows were blown out by a sonic boom, despite the fact that there were no supersonic aircraft flying in the area. The cruise would have to be rescheduled as they called in a new boat. “And there's the last one...” I said under my breath. Rainbow Dash blew out a cruise ship's windows and my parents took a plane over 1,000 miles to the coast to get on that cruise ship. She could be anywhere if she was flying that fast... “What, Joel?” My mom kind of tilted her head as I remembered she was sitting right there. “Oh, it's nothing...” Hopefully. “Well, I'm gonna take these into the room, honey.” My dad grunted as me picked up half the luggage and started toward the room. I suddenly heard Rarity squeal out of fear as she galloped down the hallway and into the kitchen, probably intimidated by my dad (he was more than a foot taller than I was, so I didn't blame her). I could tell my dad couldn't see Rarity, since he was humming a tune to himself as he other half of their bags and brought them into their bedroom. I heard her yell something about “brutes invading her privacy” and a few dishes and cups clack together, getting a facial reaction from my mom, who went to investigate. At this point, Pinkie Pie was starting to wake up and I reflexively shot up out of my current seat as the party pony stretched her legs. She sat upright as I sat back down and she instantly went from looking tired to her usual, hyperactive self as she bounced past my mom and into the kitchen. “That was weird, I could have sworn I heard someone getting into the dishes...” she said to herself as she walked toward the restroom. ---------- It was around 10 AM when I saw Rarity again. Her purple mane was matted and she still looked a little unsettled about her encounter with my dad, but she sat herself on Greta's pillow and gave me a stare that rivaled Fluttershy's. “I was not informed that there were going to be bigger humans arriving in your home,” she huffed as she worked on getting her mane to her previous state. “They're my parents, they live here. It's not like I can move out, I don't even have a job...” I gave Rarity a bit of a peeved glance as I went into my room, got dressed and brushed my teeth as I smelled my dad frying bacon in the kitchen. Bacon's a great breakfast choice when there are horses in the house, dad, I thought. Then again, he didn't exactly know about them, so he had the Benefit of the Doubt. I heard the TV switch on, breaking me out of my thoughtful state and told myself It's just Pinkie Pie...probably looking for more Ace of Cakes to watch or something. “Last time...” I heard Kyle Hebert's voice come from the living room and my eyes shot open. “Oh good God,” I said out loud. “Pinkie Pie just discovered Dragon Ball Z."