Chapter 4: The Welcome Wagon
"I'm here to take over the world. What about you?" I said before pushing the extra plate of pancakes and Hay Bacon over to him. I don't think he understood I was joking as he was just staring at me as if I was an enigma.
"Open, this is Chance. The colt we are looking after," Loving said to the dumbstruck stallion who was still processing the fact I was sitting here. He eventually came out of his stupor and turned toward Loving before whispering something I couldn't really hear, but I did hear something about next month so it's something. When there semi quite chat was finally over Mr. Seas decided that talking to me might be a good idea.
"It's nice to meet you Chance. I was told you'd be here next month though so excuse my remark," Seas said as he extended a hoof toward me. By the way he spoke I could already tell that I was not going to like this guy at all, but I've jumped the gun with that feeling before so it could be wrong again. Putting my feeling aside I extended a hoof and shook his before saying,
"You don't have to apologize for something like that; it was perfectly reasonable to question why randomly appeared," Letting go of his hoof I let him sit down at the opposite end of the table from Loving. Breakfast was rather quite until everyone was done, and Seas decided to speak,
"Those pancakes were amazing! Did you try a new recipe, Loving"
"Actually, Chance made them, Open" Open Seas looked over toward me with an eyebrow raised. I nodded a confirmation to him before shoving another pancake into my mouth, and humming happily. Mr. Seas was eyeing me up and down which was starting to get uncomfortable, and I was about to say something when Button cut in,
"Hey dad can me and Chance go to the arcade today?" Thankfully Seas looked away from me to Button so he could answer his question face to face. It was apparently okay so Seas handed Button ten bits and was about to hand me some until I pulled out a small pouch from my vests pocket.
"You'd be surprised where I find money," I said as I tossed the bag up repeatedly catching it as it fell. While I did find Bits rather often I also made them in other ways as well.
***
"Got any eights?"
"Go fish. Got any kings?"
"eeyup"
"I win! Now pay up" Arrow then handed me another fifteen Bits before challenging me to another rematch to get his other 75 Bits back.
***
"Alright then, but I think Button should show you around town first." Mr. seas said before looking toward Button who was squinting up at one of the cabinets I was going through for the pancake mix. Following his gaze I saw exactly what he was looking at, and I was somewhere between laughing my ass off or covering his poor eyes. I didn't get a chance to do either though because he just had to ask,
"Mom, what's a Playmare?" Loving's eyes shot open at the question, and my decision was final. I fell off the chair laughing at what was going on as Loving was frantically grabbing for the magazine to hide it form Button while Mr. Seas just stood there stupefied by the whole thing. It took me a solid five minutes before I finally was able to stop laughing long enough to focus on the magazine, and bring it down.
Loving tried grabbing it out of the air as I floated it over toward me, but I kept it just out of reach to make this take as long as humanly possible. Button had snapped away from the magazine to look at me while I made it levitate just above his mother who was trying desperately to grab a hold of it. She eventually realized that I was purposely keeping it out of reach, and decided that I had fucked around long enough.
"CHANCE, YOU DROP THAT MAGAZINE THIS INSTANT" The sudden yelling made me jump, and it caused the magazine to land right next to Button with it opened to one of the more lewd pages. Loving quickly grabbed Button and shielded his eyes while I took a moment to appreciate the fact that Button had caused all this trouble from noticing a magazine. I decided that this had to end with something though so I took a look at the magazine and said,
"Elephants got smaller dicks than that guy!" Everyone in the kitchen froze and turned to me as I picked up the magazine with my magic and handed it to Mr. Seas before I walked over to Loving, and pulled Button out of her grip.
"Want to go jogging with me and Arrow, Button?"
***
"A Playmare?"
"eeyup"
"And you just left?"
"yeah"
"You just can't go a day without causing trouble, can you?"
"I'm an eighteen year old who is trapped in a magical colts body! you think I wouldn't abuse it!" I said as me and Arrow turned the corner, and started making our way back toward Button's house. We had been jogging for a good hour, and Arrow had asked me about my morning which I'm sure he's enjoyed so far. His ears however were splayed back, and he whispered something,
"I really wish I could help you..."
"What?" I asked as I didn't hear him right, and it sounded like he said something about a fish. He didn't respond though which kind of caused us to drop the conversation all together because he wouldn't respond to me anymore. This was one of the annoying things about Arrow because when he says something quite like that he wont talk anymore until we would split up.
I eventually gave up trying to get him to speak again because I realized it was a waste of time just like always, and I decided my time was better suited for looking around town as we went by. All the buildings looked exactly alike with the only exceptions being stores and the gardens in front of them being in different patterns. The one thing that really stood out was a crater in the center of town which Arrow said was where the old library stood before some jackass blew it up.
I was going to see if Arrow would let us go by the crater so I could see if any old spell books survived, but while talking about it he said that all surviving books had been moved to that weird castle in the middle of town. This meant one of two things, I could go and have access to many books about magic or I could go and be denied entry from what used to be public books. I was hoping for the former as my research was only just starting to bare fruit in Manehatten when I found that old tome in their library.
"Hey, you're that new colt in town!" an orange filly said which snapped me out of my thoughts. Her mane was a type of purple and looked as if it was purposely made to look unkempt. She was looking at me with a quizzical expression, and waved a hoof in my face to try and get my attention,
"Sorry, I was distracted. You're right, though" I said before looking behind her to see two more fillies running over toward us.
"Why'd you run off like that, Scootaloo?" Said the yellow one with a red bow in her even more red mane. She looked over toward me or rather toward my ass, "YOU DON'T HAVE A CUTIE MARK"
"MY EARS!"
"whoops, sorry I got a little excited. I'm Applebloom, and that's sweetie belle" She said motioning toward the white filly that had finally joined the rest of the group. Arrow was looking toward me expectantly, and I knew exactly what he wanted me to do,
"My name is Chance. Nice to meet you all" I gave them a small smile to show that I was being genuine, but I think they took it a different way.
"He's shy!" Sweetie said quickly walking over toward me and invading my personal space, "Don't worry, we will help you!"
"Wait, what!" that was all I could say before being dragged off by the three fillies to god knows where. Arrow didn't exactly help the situation by laughing and letting them drag me away to 'help' me!
*****
"CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS...um... what do they call ponies that help shy ponies?" Applebloom asked while I was busy trying to get a yellow pegasus to speak. They dragged me along for some convoluted scheme to get me to be less shy when really I just don't want people giving me their problems again! I however felt bad for this poor mare as she was absolutely silent the whole time until I finally decided to ask her why,
"I was waiting for you to finish speaking," I facehooved as I realized that she was just being polite, and not just extremely shy toward children. I wasted a solid hour of my life talking to this mare for absolutely no reason; looking over toward the crusaders I saw them all looking at there own asses with a sad expression forming on their faces.
"Looks like we have to try something else," Scootaloo said before turning toward me, "Can you-"
"I am not dealing with this bull sh-" Everyone in the room was staring at me; waiting for me to finish my sentence, "Never mind, I'm just done with this!"
"Why not!"
"Because you dragged me along to deal with a problem I don't even have!"
"So, I was going to ask if you wanted to help us pull pranks around town!"
"Did you say, pranks?" A smile similar to the grinche's formed on my face as I turned toward them and said, "Sure, let's go pranking!"