Out of the Slums

by A Crisp 20 Dollar Bill

Chapter 4: Tea Time, Part 2

Kamili faced the girls, straddling his chair.

“So, how do you want me to tell this? Long or short version or what?”

“Don’t fret, darling. That visit was the only thing that we had planned today. You can take your time.”

“But Rarity-”

“Hush, Dashie, let him tell his story.”

“Fine. Yeesh.”

All of the girls took seats around the table and Kamili started speaking, although a bit hesitantly.

“Well, I was born in Bronclyn. It’s a few hours trot away, give or take. Spent my whole life there, and I hardly ever left. It was just my older brother and I for the past few years until last night, actually. I really don’t have any family that I know of other than my close relatives. Other than that, it’s just me. Yeah.

“My family’s a wreck, to put it lightly. Poppa left a couple moons after I was born, and my momma never heard from him again, except for once, when he sent back a picture of me in the mail when I was five. That was the last I or my momma ever heard from him. I assume that I was the result of a short little relationship between him and her, and that they tried to stay together after I was born, but he just didn’t want to commit, and left.

“I don’t remember anything from when he was around. My momma never really had any good things to say about him, either. She always did keep a single picture of him in a frame, though. It was a picture of him holding me when I was a few moons old. I realize, even though it doesn’t seem like she was fond of him, there must’ve been a time where they did love each other, or else I wouldn’t’ve been alive. Maybe, or maybe not. It’ll stay a mystery, I guess.”

At that point, it started to feel easier to speak.

“My momma was the most lovingest, caringest zebra that I knew. She’d come home from working her tail off every evening and hug me so tight that I’d feel my back pop a little. It was a good kind of pop, though, the kind that happens when you stretch far enough, and you release all that tension and pressure, and just get that nice wave that pulses through your body, and you just sigh afterwards. That kind. She’d fry up okra in a pan for snacking on and then just sit and let me talk about my day to her. And after she’d listen to me ramble on about the stupid school projects and dumb teachers that I hated, my momma would tell me about her job, with the stupid customers and dumb boss that she hated, and I would listen. I loved her so much, and she loved me too.

“But one day, she just caught something. I was in my second year of high school at the time, and I just started noticing that she was getting weaker and weaker by the day. She hugged me, sure, but the hugs didn’t pop anymore. She made food, but she was rarely able to eat and talk with me anymore. Come to think of it, she did start eating a lot less around then. There was something wrong with her, but by the time she visited the doctor, it was too late. She couldn’t keep her job and she had to be moved to the hospital. I visited her as often as I could, but it wasn’t for long, sadly.

“Kofi’s the middle brother. The only words I can really use to describe him with nowadays are ‘a sack of shit and a half’. He really earned that title over the years. Well, when we were younger, he was a pretty good guy. Was into biology and everything. He could’ve been going somewhere. But, that’s hard to do when you live in the type of environment we grew up in. He got all wrapped up in drug dealing in the middle of his high school years, and he dropped out because of it.

“When I started high school, I read a lot. I liked immersing myself in worlds that weren’t connected to my own so I could relax and not think about what I was going through. I could come back to the apartment, plop my saddlebag down and crack open the next chapter of a fantasy novel or a Daring Do book.”

Rainbow and Twilight immediately leaned closer. “You read Daring Do?” they said in unison.

Kamili nodded. “Yeah, I have. I really enjoyed the series up until I dropped out of high school myself a few years ago.”

Twilight tilted her head. “Why’d you drop out?”

“Well, Princess, it was money problems. After my momma passed, I was forced to drop out and help Kofi with his drugs just to keep ourselves afloat. Had to aid in all the decisions involving money so he didn’t drive us to bankruptcy buying clover.”

“Clover, huh?” Twilight interjected. “If he was trying to buy clover for himself, what was he selling?”

“Poison joke.”

The mares around the table looked at each other, seemingly wondering if they had heard him right. Applejack raised a hoof and spoke up.

“Yah mean the blue flower that dun messes wit’ your body when yuh touch it? Yuh gotta be kidding me.” Kamili held both hooves up in a figurative defense.

“Yeah, I know it sounds silly, but when processed the right way, it can be a really powerful drug. Gets ponies really high for a long time, more than clover, but with a lot of extremely common side effects. Stuff like nausea, hallucinations, and other stuff you’d expect you’d get back from a heavy drug like joke. Now, it’s not like I was proud of what I was helping Kofi do, it was all to keep us alive, y’know? But…” Kofi sighed and looked down. “Yesterday, I found out something that made everything even worse.

“So, to give you a little more context: Kofi had a little experiment kit set up at our headquarters, complete with gloves, beakers, some other equipment, and one large vial of pure magical extract.”

Twilight shot out of her seat with a shocked look on her face.

“Pure magical extract? That stuff’s highly volatile in large amounts, how in Tar-”

Kamili stuck a hoof out, silencing her. “I may have contextualized my brother as a ‘sack of shit and a half’ earlier, but you still can’t underestimate him. He knows his shit about certain things, including how to handle magical extract and a bit of networking, for obvious reasons. Anyway, I already knew about his little playset. He wasn’t hiding the fact that he was trying to modify the plant to get amplified effects. He was specifically using the magical extract to try and augment the effects. Well, long story short, after a lot of experimentation, he eventually found his wonder drug and reproduced it. Business really started to boom for him. But…”

Kamili let out a deep sigh and hung his head lower.

“Turns out the business was too good to be true. Right about the time that shit hit the fan yesterday, I found out that the experimenting caused the poison joke to fuck ponies’ brains up, big time. Didn’t have much time to think about it though, I was getting the fuck outta there.”

“Well, darling, you never did tell us what happened yesterday that landed you in the position you were in last night,” Rarity quipped. Kamili looked back up. The girls were staring at him, all seeming to want an explanation. He nodded slowly.

“A group of zebra came to our place. They knocked out one of ours and threatened us for money that my oldest brother owed them at some point. Since he can’t even hope to pay them back in the situation he’s in, they went for us. One of the zebra had Kofi by the neck with a knife, another had a fucking EMP.”

Twilight let out a stifled gasp while the rest of the girls looked at him, and then Twilight, confused.

“Explosive magical projectile. They’re highly complex magical weapons and highly dangerous,” she explained, looking to the girls. She promptly turned back to Kamili, her face full of concern. “How did a group like them get their hooves on one of those?”

“Certain ponies have their ways, I assume. Just like how Kofi got his extract. Anyway, once they found out that we didn’t have anything other than the modified joke, they were about to lock us inside with a lit EMP and blow us the fuck to Tartarus. So, we fought back. The idiot zebra lit the fucking thing and dropped it in the middle of the room. I was like, ‘Fuck this!’, so I tried to run out the door. But, one of the other zebra grabbed me by the back of my neck from right inside the door. I couldn’t do anything else but brace for impact at that point.

“The explosion launched me and him pretty far; luckily, I was farther, so when I recovered, I ran as fast as I could outta there. I didn’t stop running for hours, and I ended up where I was when you came across me.”

The girls murmured and nodded. Pinkie Pie raised a hoof. Her hair seemed the slightest bit less poofy.

“What happened to your brother?”

Kamili sniffed and took a swig of tea.

“I think he’s dead.”

The table was silent as Kamili’s words reached the six’s ears. They looked at each other, their faces morphed into somber expressions. He started to tear up.

“A-as much as I gave him a bad rap,” he said, sniffling, "he… he really was a good person wrapped in that big ol’ shit-stain of a mind. I believe he was.”

Kamili wiped his eyes and noticed a white tissue box levitating towards him, held in a light-blue aura. He glanced over to Rarity, whose horn was enveloped in the same color. Although earlier he had felt distrustful of her, her comforting, seemingly understanding look consoled him a bit.

“Kamili, some of us know what you’re going through, and we can help,” she said to him. “I myself lost my last grandparent when I was a foal. It’s a difficult thing to understand, death. One day they’re here and the next they aren’t. However, it doesn’t mean you have to forget the best of who they were, right?”

Kamili nodded slowly. Fluttershy lifted herself off the ground with her wings, carrying herself across the table and to Kamili’s seat. She landed and held out a foreleg, preparing for a hug. Kamili held out a hoof sharply.

“Wait a second.”

Fluttershy looked at him, seeming slightly confused. Kamili plucked a tissue from the box, still hovering in midair.

“L-let me wipe my snout. I don’t want to get snot all over you, y’know…” he said, giving her a small smile. Fluttershy returned the smile and patiently waited for Kamili to finish cleaning. He finished, placing the used tissue on the table next to him, and he leaned in for the hug. The two embraced tightly, as if they had been friends for years.

At that moment, Kamili thought about the fact that he had started to make friends, real friends. He could tell that this wasn’t just a hug for sympathy’s sake, but more importantly, for friendship’s sake. He realized he had spouted many of the details of his life to the girls, but he didn’t really feel uncomfortable anymore. Sure, it had felt weird at first to let out his story to random mares he had just met, but as he kept going, he knew that they were really listening and that they cared, enough to ask questions of him.

He appreciated it, truly.

Rainbow Dash smirked at the two. “Well, that’s nice and sappy and all, but I have one more question.” Kamili let go of Fluttershy and gave his attention to Rainbow, nodding.

“So, you talked about Kofi as being your middle brother and that you got into that big kerfuffle because of your oldest brother. Who’s he?”

Kamili gulped audibly. He had known that that question would be asked at some point, and he didn’t really know how to answer them without feeling as if he had betrayed them in some way. As much as he disliked choosing between lying or telling the truth, it was something he had to decide on in the next few moments.

“Well… My oldest brother was a pretty shady individual, to say the least. I really don’t know a lot about him personally, a lot less than I should know. He started keeping a lot of his business secret from the rest of my family when I was a colt, and he moved out when I was about seven. He’d still come back sometimes to hang with Kofi and I, so I assume family was at least a little important to him. He used to tell me to go into another room so he could talk to Kofi alone, though, but I’d always eavesdrop. He’d tell him about his drug dealing escapades, and from what he was saying, it seemed like he was doing pretty well for himself. At least that was what I thought until he stopped visiting for a long time.

“Like the naïve little colt I was, I kept thinking that he’d come back eventually to finally stop by and apologize that he had waited too long to buy milk at the grocery store or something and that he’d hang out with us again. But, that innocence was shattered about a year and a half after his visits stopped. Apparently, he had done something really bad, even by Kofi’s standards, and had landed himself time in a Canterlot prison.”

Fluttershy gasped, covering her mouth with her hooves.

“What did he do?” she said in worry. Kamili shrugged.

“Dunno. Neither my momma nor Kofi would tell me anything about it, and at some point, I stopped really caring. He wasn’t really in my life often enough for me to care much. It was always a touchy subject the couple times I did bring it up before then, though.”

Kamili looked around the table at the girls, who all seemed mostly to fully invested in his tale up to that point. Twilight looked to be in deep thought about something.

“Is that all, darling?” Rarity asked. Kamili nodded.

“Feels about it, yeah,” he replied.

She smiled warmly. “I’m glad you felt like sharing those things with us, Kamili. I truly had no idea of what you might have been going through before we met.”

Kamili grinned back at her, taking another sip of tea. “I’m glad you decided to give me a chance.”

Rarity chuckled. “Well, maybe it’s my generous spirit talking, but I feel like letting you take another one right now.” Kamili raised an eyebrow at the statement.

“What might you mean by that?”

Rarity put on a semi-serious face. “So, I have a proposition for you. While you were unconscious on the couch, we, sin Fluttershy, took a visit to see my good friend Coco Pommel. She most prominently designs Bridleway dresses, although I do ask for her assistance at this location of my boutique from time to time. We kindly asked of her if she was able to spare some room in her apartment for a guest in need.”

Kamili’s heart skipped a beat. He stammered his response. “Y-you really mean…?”

“Yes, darling, I do. She was so charitable as to let you move in later this afternoon, if you’re able. However, as she can’t let you stay for free forever, she set a few rules for you.”

Kamili nodded his head. “Hit me with ‘em.”

“First of all, when you are in her home, you will listen to her and do what she asks to help around the apartment, like cooking and cleaning and such.”

“Got it.”

“Second. If you get into any trouble with the police or with the law in any way, she will kick you out. Be on your best behavior.”

“Understood.”

“Finally, she will let you stay in her apartment for no expenses for one moon. During that time, she wants you to find and keep a job.”

Kamili gulped. Will I even be able to find a job in this stupid city that hires zebra with no work experience?!

“After that moon has passed. You can either move out and find a place to live, or you can stay with Coco and pay rent to her.”

Kamili took another sip of his tea; it had become lukewarm. He pondered. One moon is plenty of time to work with, Kamili, don’t get anxious. There’s gotta be at least one pony who’d hire a guy like me in this city. Plus, you won’t have to pay for food or housing until time’s up, so that leaves plenty of time to go job-hunting.

Wow.

He looked up to Rarity, meeting her soft gaze and starting to tear up again.

“I accept.”

She gave him a warm smile. Her blue eyes sparkled majestically, even in the dull light of the room. However, she was thoroughly unprepared for Kamili to leap at her and give her a tight hug. His happy tears slightly bedewed Rarity’s hood, creating darker purple spots on its fabric.

“Thank you for giving me this opportunity, Rarity,” he said to her graciously. “I won’t forget what you’ve done for me. I promise.” Rarity returned the hug.

“Do ya Pinkie Promise?” exclaimed Pinkie Pie. Applejack lightly elbowed her.

“Kamili?” Rarity asked, whispering into his ear.

“Yes?”

“I forgive you. I mean, I know now it was your brother, but I still want to forgive you for him.”

Kamili smiled. “Thank you,” he replied, whispering back.

“And, I’m sorry for blaming you for that right on the spot and casting you under all that judgment.”

“I understand. I forgive you too.”

The two broke off the hug; both were smiling at the other. Kamili looked to the other girls and put out his forelegs.

“Group hug?”

The girls shrugged and trotted over to Kamili and partook in a big hug.

“You know what?” Kamili said as they broke off the hug. “I’m feeling like having some more tea. How about you all?” The girls nodded in agreement.

“Coffee’s fine with me,” said Rainbow Dash. Applejack nodded and gave an Mmhm in agreement.

“Well then, I’ll make you all some tea or coffee, whichever you prefer. My way of saying, ‘Thanks.’”

The girls all nodded simultaneously and took their seats around the table once again as Kamili trotted back to the countertop to prepare their teas and coffees. He was very happy to do so, as they had taken him in. Why shouldn’t I repay them, at least a little?

After he brought all of them their drinks (as well as a teacup for himself), the girls started chatting about their lives back in Ponyville, about their jobs, and about their families. It seemed to Kamili that these mares were six in a million. Their friendship’s internal chemistry had been cared for and nurtured so well that throughout their further conversation with him, he never found himself as bored. Rather, he felt as drawn in to their lives as they seemed to have been with his. They had fond memories of each other stretching years back. The troupe spent so long talking and laughing that their cups went cold, but it didn’t matter to Kamili. He was so, very happy that they accepted him and understood him.

He had been given a second chance from somewhere, and now, he was determined to make good on it.

Author's Note:

Welcome back!

At first, I wanted to make this kind of a dialogue-only chapter, but I quickly realized that it couldn't have worked like that. Eh. I think it turned out well otherwise.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this latest installment and that you'll be back for the next chapter in Kamili's story.

Peace!

A Crisp 20 Dollar Bill