At Your Service

by Deyeaz

X - The Joys of Trespassing (Into Your Host's Bedroom)

X - The Joys of Trespassing (Into Your Host's Bedroom)

Midnight came back inside his room, slinking out of his bloody and sullied dress clothes and tossing them nonchalantly into the laundry basket. He went to his little bathroom and blew his nose into a piece of toilet paper, the remaining dregs of violence-drawn blood spurting out and staining the white two-ply red. As he disgustedly chucked the used toilet paper into a trash bin, he slipped into some house clothes, all the while keeping his white hair concealed by his black cap.

He came back downstairs in a pair of charcoal fleece pajama pants, and a black-and-white panda hoodie, the doughnuts down below smelling all the more delectable. Vinyl and Octavia just looked at him as he entered the living room. “We can eat in the kitchen, ladies,” he offered, pointing towards the door leading to the aforementioned room.

“What are you wearing?” snickered Vinyl at the sight of the hoodie.

“Can it, this is the only thing I had that wasn’t in the wash,” he grumbled. While the two women entered the kitchen and sat in the two chairs of the table, Midnight followed suit, but sat crosslegged on the granite countertops.

Midnight ate a doughnut with gusto, his stomach rather barren of food. It was satisfactory the moment it hit his tongue, slid down his throat, and entered his stomach. But he noticed that the atmosphere was rather awkward, as no one was talking and were all concerned about the food. “How are they, ladies?” He asked, hoping to cleave the intimidating silence of chewing.

“Pretty good, I suppose…” Vinyl answered, eyes still fixated on her food. “Although eating doughnuts alone feels pretty bland, for some reason….”

“Hmm… You’re right, Vinyl…. Oi. You.” Octavia’s blunt call and finger snap was more than enough to get Midnight’s attention. “Make us something else to eat with these doughnuts.”

“Are you serious.” Midnight’s deadpan easily screamed that he was not in the mood for Octavia’s shenanigans.

“Now.” The vehement command says it all. Octavia was inches away from snapping.

With a heavy sigh of discontent, Midnight slid angrily off the counter and sluggishly shuffled to the stove. “How do ramen noodles sound?” he questioned as he pulled out a pot and poured water from the sink into it before putting said pot on the stove and cranking the heat up on it.

“What flavour?” asked Vinyl, the thought of ramen exciting her slightly.

“Er… there’s shrimp, beef, and chicken, but I’ve got some vegan friendly flavours like tomato, hay, Caesar salad, and such.” With that, he pulls a large packet of hay-flavoured ramen from the pantry, and rips the packaging open, allowing the offwhite block of hard compressed noodles to flow outward into the pot. The water inside boiled and began to be siphoned up by the noodles. “Mind if I sing?” he asked, as he started stirring and preparing the ramen.

“No, you may not sing,” Octavia bluntly retorted.

“Singin’ anyway,” Midnight said over Octavia’s mutter of “Goddess damnit….”

“Ohayogozaimasu.” He started saying boastfully in Neighpanese. “Kyou wa, ramen otsukuri masu. Tanoshii desu ne? Jaa, hajimemashou!*

“I still masturbate while eating top ramen

At a faster rate in the bigger quantities

It counts as rape when I’m slurping at this unbelievable pace

I turn the temperature up all the way

Sweat up on my face.”

“If you give no effort, if you got no money

Then i got a cheap method:

Crack it open throw it in a pan and let it cook, bitch

Now that’s a real education; fuck books.”

“If you wanna make in college

Acknowledge all the flavors

That be droppin mad knowledge

On these pussy ass canned goods.”

“We got chicken and beef to boost the manhood

Anybody want a piece of me

Will have to get this ramen first

Start with the shrimp and the fire,

If you're fully blazed then this shit'll get you higher

Hah!”

“35 cents a pack, three for a dollar; unbelievable pricing:

That’s the future of a blue collar worker

And I’m talkin’ ‘bout ramen,

The shit'll fill you up when you're feeling like an Hoofricaaan,

Come back when you're in the state that I’m in,

And say ‘hi’ to my homeboy, Top Ramen.”

“Okay, ladies, soup’s–” Midnight was confused to see that nopony was sitting in the table behind him when he turned his head. “...on?”

~Meanwhile~

“Tavi, should we really be doing this?” Vinyl asked with a mild hint of worry in her voice as she and Octavia stood outside a door that was stamped with a plaque labeled “Bedroom”.

“Why not?” She answered back. “Besides, his mediocre singing was awful….” Octavia shuddered at the thought of his off-tune singing.

“He was rapping. It’s kinda supposed to sound ‘mediocre’ because there’s no real tune, just a rhythm,” Vinyl countered.

“Whatever, I still disliked it with a passion. Now, let’s dig up some dirt on him.” Octavia opened the door, and the two of them were swept off of their feet at the sheer sight of the room’s contents.

It wasn't messy, or disorderly. If anything, it was a neat freak’s wet dream. A book shelf on one side of the room had books ordered in an alphabetical style, all of them kept dustless and organised. The carpet floor had a maroon circular rug that sat beneath a king-sized bed of great length, furnished by crimson sheets trimmed with gold. The walls had a few portraits of a desert, a lone island in the midst of an ocean. There were some anime scrolls on the wall as well, as well as a smaller, cubic bedside table/bookshelf filled with reference books and manga next to the bed. Across from the bed was a desk bearing a large computer screen and a high tech computer tower, the computer chair looking plush and well sat in. There were a few energy drinks next to the tower. On the left of the computer desk was an oak board, peppered with hooks, filled with what looked like-

“-weapons?” Vinyl said inquisitively. Apparently so. It was a shelf littered with a plethora of sharp butterfly knives, exotic daggers, Oriental tantos and kunais, and a long Hoofghani sabre resting in the center. The end of the weapon’s hilt had an open-mouthed brass serpent, fangs poised to strike, and the side of the blade was inscribed with a foreign language, at least to Octavia and Vinyl’s eyes.

“Great. He’s worthless, obnoxious, can’t sing, and he’s a blade-swinging lunatic?” Octavia groaned. “Lovely….”

“Oh, come on, Tavi!” said Vinyl casually as she plucked a random butterfly knife from off the wall and undid the latch, freeing the two handles from sheathing the blade. “These things are cool!”

“They are not cool, they are dangerous, and you know it!” Octavia was pointing an accusatory finger at Vinyl for her pigheadedness.

“Oh, relax!” said a knife-swinging Vinyl. “Stop being such an uptight bit-”

“What are you two doing in my room?!” bellowed Midnight in an amalgamation of shock and anger. Given that he had been looking all over for them since their sudden disappearance, it was only a matter of time before he had realized where they had vanished off to. The two ladies jumped, the butterfly knife in Vinyl’s hand wildly flying out from her grasp. The renegade blade whizzed at a terrifying speed and bit greedily into Octavia’s index finger, drawing forth some blood. It would have burrowed deep into her chest had it not been for the handles that slowed its momentum. Her expression sank from the peaks of surprise to the trenches of anguish.

“OWWW!” Octavia wailed in agony as she clutched her hand desperately, shining rubies dribbling down the length of her finger and staining the carpet.

“Shit….” Midnight grumbled and rushed forth, dread gradually flooding in him as he placed Octavia in the computer chair. “Let me see it.”

“No!” She squealed, eyes squinted tight. “There’s no way I’m letting a dirty nigh–”

“Shut up, put aside your differences for a second, and let. Me see. The wound,” he said firmly. Reluctantly, a teary-eyed Octavia opened her palms and revealed her blood-soaked hands, her gashed finger being the root of all this pain. “Okay… it doesn’t look too deep. We just need to disinfect it and bandage it.” He opened a drawer in his computer desk, and pulled out a first-aid kit. “Now,” he said as he pulled out a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide, “this is going to sting, so bear with me.”

Octavia winced and let out a short howl of pain as the chemical commenced stinging the cut and dissolving the bacteria. Midnight then pulled out a gauze pad and medical tape, and applied them to the wound, sealing it tightly without cutting off circulation. “Are you alright?” Midnight asked.

Octavia nodded as Midnight wiped up the blood in her hands with a few napkins he kept nearby. It was only after he completed the cleanup that he realized how his hand was grasping hers. Caring, concerned. Like a mother would behave to her child. His face burned stupidly at the incident, and his brain went on the fritz when he noticed this. “G-good,” he stuttered dumbly. “Th-th-that’s good to hear.”

“You can let go of my hand now,” Octavia deadpanned. The Sarosian quickly obeyed, mortified beyond comprehension as he stood back up.

“G-Got it. Sorry,” he said. ‘Damn it, man, what is wrong with you?!’ he internally belated. ‘Why are you going red as a beet at a time like this?! Just… get whatever it is you’re thinking about out of your head!’

“Midnight, why is there lotion and a box of napkins next to your computer?” Vinyl asked suspiciously.

‘Oh, Goddess,’ he thought in defeat. ‘Think fast, big boy!’ “I, uh… I get dry hands when I watch emotional movies,” he bullshitted monotonously with shifty eyes.

“Sure you do…” Coyness and skepticism tainted the DJ’s tone.

‘Change the topic, damn it!’

“That’s not the issue, Vinyl.” Midnight cleared his throat as he picked up the fallen balisong. “The issue at hand is that knives aren’t toys. Not sure if your parents told you this.” He was the only one that snickered at his little jab. “Yes, with some time, you can learn to do some cool-looking and intricate tricks with them –” he made an example of his words by deftly turning his wrist with the safe handle of the balisong in his palm, flipping and fanning it with fluid and swift motions until he closed it shut, locking the latch and placing it back on the rack, earning an “ooh” of fascination from Vinyl at the complexity of his moves “ – but if you’re not careful, injuries like what Octavia has, or worse, will happen. Got it?”

“Yeah….” Vinyl grumbled, feeling as though she was being lectured by her father.

“So, what have we learned?”

“Not to play with knives….”

“Well, that, but I think something else was learned: don’t invade other people’s rooms. Honestly, this is a guy’s room: I could have had something embarrassing laying around like underwear or porn, alright?”

“Okay, okay, I get it!” Vinyl interjected agitatedly. Her agitation was punctuated by a mild rumble of her stomach. “Let’s just eat breakfast, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s head downstairs,” Midnight buzzed nonchalantly, before adding: “and then, maybe I’ll consider letting you kick it up in my room, okay?”

The three returned downstairs to the kitchen and settled at the table, with Midnight settled cross-legged on the counter again, the trio greedily eating their ramen. Vinyl and Midnight were having no trouble eating their food, since the former and the latter had experienced many cram sessions in college where real food was next to impossible to purchase. Yet Octavia was having trouble eating with her injured right hand. With each attempt at trying to utilize her chopsticks, the gash in her finger prevented her from going any further than picking them up and only mildly twitching them in place before she winced and dropped them. She was half-tempted to take the bowl and plunge her face in, slurping in the concoction of noodles and broth with her mouth alone. However, being a mare of standards, she vetoed that thought and came up with a more sanitary one.

“You.” Midnight craned his head to look at her. He had a nagging inkling at what she was going to say. “Feed me.”

“Feed you? What are you, a toddler?” argued Midnight.

“Do it!” snapped Octavia. “It’s your fault that I have to ask you this in the first place!”

“Yeah, because I was the one who suggested that you two should snoop around in my room and play with razor-sharp and dangerous knives.”

“Well, you could have used your magic to heal this damn cut!”

“Uhhh… I just got the shit clobbered out of me this morning, sweetums. I’m in no position to heal myself.” Nonetheless, Midnight got off the counter and sat on the tabletop a foot away from Octavia, his seat transition rewarded with a grunt of complaint from both Octavia and Vinyl. Carefully tucking his long white tail in his lap, Midnight’s horn glowed a vibrant lime green, swallowing Octavia’s chopsticks in his magic’s embrace and grabbing a fair deal of noodles. “Say ahh.”

Octavia silently opened her mouth and ate at the web of noodles at the end of the chopsticks. Even though Midnight was using his magic to get the job done, he still felt rather embarrassed to be doing it. His cheeks flared red again, like when he was tending to her wounds.

Stop it! roared Midnight’s conscience in indignation. What are you thinking, man?!

‘What? I can’t help it. Despite being a complete stuck up bitch, she’s got to have some good features.’

That philosophy means nothing. It’s because of that thinking that ponies can manipulate you, use you until they’re done with you. Then they kick you to the side of the road like a dead raccoon!

‘Isn’t that view on the equine race too extreme?’

But not incorrect. She'll be no different. Just you wait. When you need her most... she won't even lifting a finger to help your sorry ass out.

So immersed was he in his inner conflict that he was paying no mind to the sound of Octavia screaming his name to get his attention, which she eventually got…

...after she punched him in the stomach.

The wind blitzed out of Midnight’s mouth with tremendous force, toppling him over onto the ground with a loud thud. Vinyl winced at the sound, while Octavia, although glad she got her message through, is reevaluating her choice of hitting him, since she had done so with her injured hand. “OW!” The two blared in pain.

“What the hell is with everypony getting injured today?!” Midnight hollered.

“I’m telling you that I’m finished!” exclaimed Octavia, for what might have been the fourth time. The chopsticks that Midnight had subconsciously handled had found their way up her nostrils thanks to his carelessness. “For Pete’s sake, listen when I’m talking to you!”

Midnight looked at the chopsticks that dangled out of her muzzle as she was ranting on about his “carelessness” and “stupidity” and other unkind terms. In the end, all he did was laugh like a maniac at how ridiculous she looked. “What the hell are you laughing at?!” Octavia squealed, as Midnight could only clutch his sides and chortle stupidly. Vinyl joined Midnight in his uncontrollable laughter. Octavia, finally realizing where the source of their laughter resided, removed the chopsticks from their position and threw them on the ground in a fit of rage. “STOP LAUGHING!”

~End of Chapter X~

---

*Translates to “Good morning. Today, we will cook ramen. It’s very exciting! Now, let's start, shall we?"

Comments

[Moongaze14]

I've been reading this story for some time and I got to say that I'm glad that it came back.