//------------------------------// // XI - A Spark In Oil Will Start A Fire // Story: At Your Service // by Deyeaz //------------------------------// XI - A Spark In Oil Will Start A Fire Late afternoon. Octavia and Vinyl had long gone home, after much goofing around in Midnight’s apartment, the former had watched television downstairs with Jericho, while the latter had played on Midnight’s computer. However, as the sun had started to complete its sojourn in the sky, the two mares had realized that they should head home. They were to leave Midnight and Jericho to their own devices. “Goodbye, Sarosian,” Octavia had said belatedly. “Return to my apartment at eight o'clock, or there will be Tartarus to pay.” “Uh-huhhhh…” he droned monotonously. “Yeah. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” “Goodbye, Jericho!” Octavia then chimed in a rather warm voice. The monkey ran forth and jumped at Octavia, in which she had hugged the little simian. Apparently, they had bonded through their television marathons. “See you soon!” “Ooh eeh!” The chimp screeched joyously as he leapt out of her arms and landed on Midnight’s shoulder. “Heheh, she likes a monkey more than you,” mocked Vinyl playfully. “Oh. Haa haa haa haa…” Midnight resonated dully. “Well, get home safe, you two.” He was about to turn around and relax on the couch, when he saw that Vinyl’s arms were outstretched. Her eyes were closed, and she was beaming as she stood there, arms ajar. “Are… are you reenacting a crucifixion or something? Because you’re not doing a good job at it. Your arms need to be more perpendicular.” “No, you dumbass!” She rebutted, looking serious for a moment. “I’m asking for a hug!”         “Sorry, toots. I don’t like ponies hugging me,” he stated. Vinyl’s arms fell slack to her sides as an downtrodden expression tainted her face. “Oh, relax: I’m like that with everypony.” “Okay…” Vinyl huffed in defeat as she slipped on her hoofwear and headed for the exit. Once the door was closed behind them and they were a good ways away, Octavia snickered mockingly at the DJ’s poor misfortune. “Poor Vinyl, denied a hug by her one true love!” She jeered jokingly. “Shut it, Tavi. It’s just a pointless little crush. It will die down in time.” “I’m not surprised you have a crush on the likes of him. You can never really do any better, you know.” “Wha-?! At least I’m not super buddy-buddy with a primate,” spat an offended Vinyl, cheeks ushered a mad blush. Octavia’s cheeks followed in her friend’s stead. Soon, the two of them commenced a back-and-forth argument between themselves on their way down the stairs. ~ “Ha-Choo!” sneezed Midnight and Jericho in sudden unison, the former washing the dishes and the latter eating a banana. “What the…” Midnight muttered. “Jer, I think somepony’s talking some mad shit about us.” Finally letting his brilliant white locks cascade out from his cap, Midnight figured that he would read the rest of the day away until fatigue would get the better of him in the evening. Hunkered in his bed, the Sarosian grabbed the book from off his bedside table and continued to read from where he left off. A slightly exhausted Jericho sidled into his bed. It was a large basket lined with cotton, a tiny pillow the size of Midnight’s fist, and Midnight’s old navy-blue baby blanket with silk lining and a smiling full moon embroidered on it in the middle. Why a twenty-seven-year-old stallion would still carry around and own something like that is a rather delicate and embarrassing topic to press upon. Midnight was immersed deeply in his tome. It was a book he had read several times, one whose text he remembered syllable by syllable. The embossed title, Come In From the Cold, shined a faint silver in the light of the overhead reading candle. It was a second-person tale of how a colt, orphaned at a young age, is taken in by the country’s combatant’s guild and raised to be a stallion skilled in battle. As he ages in the the town that the guild is nested in, he also grows to acquire knowledge on how to combat evil and uphold good. Midnight was continuing off from his previous location: the stallion’s coming-of-age ceremony, in the middle of winter. It was before the frivolity could commence in the grand mes hell, when the stallion was told by a scout that his best friend from when he entered the guild was lost on her way to buy him a present. So the stallion had set out to bring her back, in the middle of a snowstorm. “What a way to grow up,” Midnight had once commented when he had read the book for the first time. Even if he had read it several times, he was still enthralled by the aura of adventure it emanated. The essence of tragedy tacked to it. The musk of romance that lingered in it. ~ “Quicksilver!!!”         You cry out for her name as much as your voice could allow, ears perked to hear her voice and legs ready to rush out to her location. “Where are you?!” You cry, almost desperately.         “I’m here!” It is faint, but you can hear her over the roar of the wind. “P-Please, help!”         Your legs act faster than your brain. They carry you forward towards her call hurriedly. The gnarling bite of winter pecks at you as you trudge forth, using pure power to both carry you through the deep snow and keep your legs from suffering hypothermia. The screaming blizzard is almost ready to sweep you up off your hooves. Your fingers are about ready to solidify into pure ice. You cannot even see three yards in front of you.         Only when you reach the edge of the town’s forest do the screeching wind and the mighty snow partially let up their assault. Your intense shivering from prior your entering the forest lowers, and the snow’s powerful descent slowly dies down. You spot a cave about several yards away, blocked by a massive boulder. “Quicksilver!!!” You holler the name of the mare you’re looking for. “Are you in the cave?!”         “Yes! H-Hurry!” As you sprint forward, you can see her face, plastered with terror, sticking out from a hole in between the rim of the cave and the boulder. Her tears had stained streaks out of the dirt that had been powdered on her cheeks from her time trapped inside. “Oh th-thank goodness you’re h-here!” Quicksilver stammered. She was beyond freezing in there, hugging herself for dear life and warmth. “P-P-please g-get me out! P-Please!”         And you thought you were having problems with the cold.        “Okay, calm down!” You say in the efforts to relax Quicksilver and come up with a strategy of releasing her. You finally reach for the sword at your hip, only to hit yourself in the nose with it as you try to draw it out. The hilt was frozen to the lips of the scabbard. “Damn it….” Your brain successfully concocts a plan B as you remove the sheathed weapon from your hip’s side and climb on top of the boulder and take a stand on the cave’s roof. You take the tip of your sword and slam it as hard as your frigid muscles can into a small gouge between boulder and cave. Not too much, though: you needed the right amount of torque for this to work. “On three, you push and I’ll jimmy the boulder away!” You announce. “One… Two… THREE!” Over the sound of you pulling down on the sword like the lever to a mechanism, you hear Quicksilver grunt once as she pushes against it. After a few seconds, the boulder only moves about an inch or so. “Again!” You say, grinning cockily at the progress. “One, two, THREE!” The two of you try again, exerting more effort than before. Eventually, the laws of kinematic physics take over, and the boulder rolls off a few more inches, just enough for any pony to squeeze through. You get off of the roof and plop down on the snow below, back against the boulder. Even though the snow was slowing its descent, there was still metric tons of it on the ground. You didn’t care if your rear end was cold. Even with Quicksilver’s help, your arms feel as hot as lead and as heavy as anvils. Calling that boulder massive was an understatement in and of itself. “Oh, thank you, thank you!” Quicksilver wailed, hugging you tightly. “The things I go through for you, lady,” you mutter jokingly, panting lightly as you return her embrace. She was your source of warmth in the frozen vastness. “You owe me big time for this.” She removes her head from your shoulders and looks into your eyes. All of a sudden, your heart started thumping. Like a drum played furiously in the midst of a grand festivity. Your face reached horrifyingly blistering temperatures. You could melt an iceberg with the heat your cheeks radiated. You see that hers look much like how yours felt. You inspected every aspect of her, now that you were close. Her green irises, her storm-hued fur, her soft-looking lips, her slender arms, her modest breasts—Your eyes dart here and there to drink it all in. ~ Midnight stopped reading momentarily. His own heart was lightly racing, beating at his rib cage. He closed the book with his thumb still on the page. “What the hell…?” he murmured in concern. This wasn’t what happened when he had read it before multiple times. So why now? What had set off this alarming response to a scene that Midnight was so accustomed to? Shrugging it off as just Octavia and Vinyl being the obnoxious root to this mess and on his nerves, he reopened the book to where he was left off. “Maybe I’m just losing my mind…” he huffed. ~ “I guess I do...” She plants her lips onto yours, her hand on the back of your head. Time dilated. The seconds devolve into minutes, hours, even days. It was corny, but it was true. She sits in your lap and continues kissing you. Your initial shellshock melted away as you took initiative. You place one hand on her hip and the other on her back, frozen pinkie finger clumsily twirling her silver Prench-braided mane. She moans slightly in your mouth, and your brain simply shuts down from the pleasure the both of you share. She pulls away. Your faces are both extremely bright and blazing, the two of you mildly panting for air. “How… How long have you–?” “Quite some time now, actually,” she answers. “Back at the ball during the summer two years ago.” “Wha–?” You remember. The ball. Her asking out her previous crush to the ball, only to be turned down for somepony else. The two of you ditching the ball because how the both of you “were too cool for it,” when in reality, neither of you could get a date. Camping out under the stars with a bottle of swiped alcohol from the party, making ridiculous shadow puppets via candlelight and tent wall. Sharing drunken stories about each other. Gossiping as the liquor spoke for you. Eventually passing out and waking up late in the morning, cuddling together and with awful hangovers. “Why didn’t you say anything?” You finally sputter. Quicksilver smiles warmly, and your heart leaps a bit in your chest. “Well… I was terrified. I was afraid of jeopardizing the friendship that you and I share. If you hadn’t said yes, what would have become of us?” She looks rather upset. “I didn’t want to do that. And I’m positive that what I just did was not at all acceptable.” You start feeling some remorse. She didn’t want to tell you because she cherishes the relationship she currently has with you. And for two years, she had kept it bottled within. Two years, unrequited love and desire were all she had to keep her going as she watched you, tried everything she could to spend as much time with you as she could push without coming off as clingy. You feel like an idiot. Never noticing the signs. Never acknowledging her subtle passes at you. Never really coming to terms that maybe you had feelings for her. You hold her tight again, earning a little gasp from her. “Don’t say that. I wouldn’t do that to you, Quick. I would never do that to somepony like you.” She embraces you again, almost ready to burst into tears. Not of melancholy, but of euphoria, as she burrows her face into your shoulder once more. Finally coming to terms with the feelings stirring within you, you look at her cheekily. “However… I wouldn’t say your debt is repaid yet.” She looks a bit shocked at what you said, but upon getting it, her face looks coy and mischievous. “So… what’d you have in mind as… payment?” She runs her soft tongue over her lips, almost hungrily. ~ Midnight slammed the book shut, eyes as tiny as pinpricks, heart hammering ridiculously in his chest. He got out of bed in frustration and paced quietly around the room. After all, Jericho was still sleeping. “Why? Why, damn it?” He hissed, peeved at why this was happening, mind working at several miles per minute to find the answer. No answer came to him in the end. “I-I must be tired after all. I guess I’ll j-just go to sleep.” Midnight strode to his bathroom, opened the mirror cabinet over the sink, and pulled out a small orange vial of fast-acting sleeping lozenges. He popped the little pill in his mouth and washed it down with a heaping amount of water. As he lumbered into bed again, he put the book and his glasses on the bedside table again before turning off the light. He used his magic to seal the curtains of his bedroom balcony window, shrouding the room in shadows. He felt his body grow heavy, his brain’s constant churning slowing to a halt. He was hoping for another dreamless night, and to awaken the next morning—no doubt extremely early—as if only a matter of minutes had flown by. In the midst of all his hopes, however, a rather interesting and highly out-of-place image inserted itself intrudingly into his mind's eye. It was that scene from the book. Where the protagonist saves Quicksilver, and they share a kiss moments afterwards. He saw himself as in the protagonist’s place, and Quicksilver was somepony he never expected to see in any fantasy of his in his life. Octavia.         Octavia sitting on him.         Octavia kissing him.         And him kissing her back.         “AHHH!” Midnight bolted upright, a cold sweat oozing down his face and neck. His heart rate had transcended the normal velocity and had practically entered sonic speeds. Jericho jumped in his bed and began screeching angrily at Midnight for his sudden scream.         “Sorry…” apologized the Sarosian. “Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep….” He had caught his breath, yet his nerves were kicked into overdrive. He strode over to his computer desk and pulled out a box of lights from the drawer. He popped one out, grabbed the lighter next to it and went outside onto the balcony.         The night was peppered with Princess Luna’s glorious stars, each shining hot and bright with the full moon that rolled along peacefully across the sky. The city lights from his location looked like a spider’s web brilliantly sparkling with dew in the light of the sun.         “Goddess damn it,” he swore in agitation, before putting the butt of the cigarette between his lips, lighting the end ablaze, and taking a long draw. The nicotine and tar, while cut down to one-third of that of your standard cigarette, dispersed greedily throughout his lungs, before he exhaled the smoke exasperatedly. “What is wrong with me?”         His mind bellowed “stop,” yet his heart cried “proceed”, as he imagined that scene from the book again. How he had envisioned himself and Octavia kissing like that. His face felt hotter than the light’s withering tip as his mind reluctantly replayed it over and over again. His heart throbbed again as he fantasized about the two of them.         He flicked the ash off the end and watched it disperse with the light breeze in the air. Knowing only one way to get to the bottom of this situation, he pulled out his phone from his hoodie pocket and texted Princess Luna about his problems. Me: Hey. He waited for a response. “Luna: Good evening! How come you are not online? I thought we could partake in some more online gaming!” Me: Believe me, we will soon. Listen, I have something to ask of you. Luna: “What is it, my little pony? Is something wrong?” Me: Well… I guess. Something weird is going on with me. There’s a certain somepony on my mind. When I think of her… my heart just goes nuts. Like a caged animal. My face gets to feel hot just imagining spending quality time with her. What do you suppose that is? … Luna: “...For somepony with an IQ of 216, you are quite dense for your age, Midnight.” Me: I’m being serious here. What is it? Luna: “Well, it’s obviously love, you dolt.” Midnight’s jaw went slack. The cigarette in his mouth plopped unceremoniously onto the balcony ground. ‘Love?’ He murmured worriedly, eyes glued to the bright screen of his phone. He thought of Octavia again, just to confirm. He imagined hugging her…  cuddling…  holding hands…  kissing… “Naaaah,” Midnight scoffed, stamping out the the grounded light. Picking it up and flicking it into the bin next to the window, he went back inside to brush his teeth. “It's probably that book working up some nerves. Totally nothing to worry about...” 'Besides... me and Octavia? Together? I wouldn't even touch her with a twenty-nine-and-a-half-inch pole.' Unfortunately for our surprisingly boneheaded protagonist, he had no idea the terrors he and Octavia were to face. ~End of Chapter XI~