Newfound Neighbors

by FrostTheWolf

02- Face to Face(time)

When I offered to help Gizmo with unpacking the boxes in her garage, I was not entirely sure what was in those boxes to begin with. My first impression was that they contained most of the essential things that you would need to take with you whether you were moving into an apartment or new home. Some of those things included clothes, dishes, an extra pair of sheets as well as furniture. Yet, there didn’t seem to be anything else alongside the boxes that would tell me that anything needed to be assembled.

Though, as we were moving everything inside to where the living room would be, I was surprised to find that most of the home was already furnished with a couple of open boxes already opened. The furniture that was placed around the room contained a few chairs, a table and a couch. All of which definitely did not look like anything that Mr. Rochester owned in the slightest. If anything, the furniture looked more colorful and cartoonish.

“Alright, that should be everything,” the unicorn informed me as I watched her levitate a pair of scissors and begin to cut off some of the tape holding the boxes together, “Time to get everything out. Though, I kind of got a bit of a head start. Can you take care of what’s left in the box I opened?”

“Sure thing,” I replied, “What’s in it?”

“Just some things from my workshop back home. I brought out some of it already, so there shouldn’t be too much left in there.”

When I heard that, I felt a bit relieved at first. Though, when I actually opened the box and took a look inside, what I found was not exactly what I was expecting. Aside from the styrofoam packing peanuts, all that I could see looked like marbles. Numerous spheres of different colors and sizes, yet there was nothing else aside from their appearance that made them stand out somehow.

“Umm, Gizmo?” I asked as I grabbed one of the marbles out of the box and showed it to her, “Why is the whole box filled with marbles?”

“Oh, right! I knew I was forgetting something. Hang on just a second,” she said, before trotting over to me and taking the marble out of my hand as she held it with her magic. Turning it around and inspecting it from every possible angle, “Hmm, this one must be my desk. I guess I’ll place it over… here!”

Without warning, the unicorn threw the marble onto the tile floor in the small office room that was adjacent to the living room and shattered the sphere. A long bang went off that startled the crap out of me as I hurried over to see what happened. In my mind, I thought that some kind of explosive went off given how loud that was. Yet, what threw me off guard was that instead of a broken marble on the floor or some kind of blast area, there was a big hardwood desk with numerous drawers on both sides and what looked like some kind of toolkit inside one of them, “There we go. Perfect!”

“G-gizmo, w-what did you do?” I asked, my brain still trying to figure out what exactly had just happened.

“What? I was just breaking a spell,” she said at first. Though, I think afterwards, she noticed the confusion that was on my face, “Oh, right. I forgot to explain. Sorry about that. Happens a lot when I get carried away.”

“Y-yeah, I might need an explanation,” I admitted, “I don’t really… well, know a lot about magic like you do, from the sounds of it.”

“Well, I’m not exactly a full on expert on magic, per se. I’m good at magic, but I’m nothing like that of Twilight Sparkle,” Okay, either that is some kind of name for a brand of grape soda or that is the name of someone back in her world. Personally, I hoped that it was the latter, “If anything, I’m more of an inventor and tinkerer rather than a mage. Though, some of these spells do help from time to time.”

Before I could ask anything, Gizmo lifted up another marble from the box with her magic and levitated it over. The orb itself was the size of a softball and had numerous different colors around it, “As for these, before I crossed the portal to the other side, I placed a compression spell on all of my belongings. Enough to shrink it down to size without actually damaging anything.”

At first, I found it a bit difficult to try and understand everything. Though, after a couple of moments, it slowly began to make some sense… I think, “So, each one of these is something you own?”

“Pretty much,” the unicorn nodded, “Though, they’re not all the same size. Usually, the bigger ones are the heavier items that have more mass. This one right here has the bookshelf where I keep all my books,” After she said that, she moved the orb to me and dropped it in my hands, “Want to give it a try?”

At first, I wasn’t exactly sure. Even though I did offer to help, I didn’t know that helping her would involve exploding marbles and the like. Then again, nothing was really going to get done if I just sat around and watched Gizmo do all the work, “Sure, uh… Can you show me where you want this to be placed?”

The unicorn nodded, before leading me over to where she wanted it and instructing me on what to do. Turns out, when she said ‘breaking a spell’ earlier, Gizmo meant that literally. The only way to stop the compression spell was to break the orb through physical force and doing so would have whatever was stored inside revert back to its original size. Fortunately, the spheres that contained the items would disappear after being released, which made cleaning up afterwards a bit easier.

After we finished furnishing where Gizmo wanted to set up her personal workshop, we moved on to the rest of the house one room at a time. Though, there was one thing that stood out to me while we were working. A lot of the furniture and appliances that she happened to have brought with her were no different from that of some of the things that were back at my house next door. This came as a surprise to me, because I wasn’t exactly sure how advanced Equestrian technology was like. Even more so when you take into consideration that I didn’t think I would end up meeting one until today.

After what felt like almost an hour, we were finally coming across the last box that we needed to unpack. Though, something about this one was different. Not only was the box smaller than the rest, but it was just listed as ‘tools’. Which was strange since I thought that Gizmo’s tools were with her desk back in the office.

“Hey, Gizmo?” I now asked, picking up the box and setting it on the table in the dining room as the unicorn trotted out of the kitchen, “Do you have any idea what’s in this last box?”

“Oh hey! That’s where I kept my gadgets!” she beamed as she pulled out a chair for her to sit on. With a shimmer of her horn, the box moved closer to her as Gizmo began to rummage through everything inside, before setting the spheres on the table and teleporting the box to the pile of cardboard that we had in the garage.

“Your… gadgets?” I asked.

“I told you I was an inventor, didn’t I?” she replied back with a smile, before cracking open a metallic marble on the floor. From the orb, two silver colored wristbands were on the ground as Gizmo slipped them on her forehooves, before looking back to me, “Unlike a lot of the other ponies I was in school with, I wanted to use my magic to make things that can possibly help somepony who needs it. No matter what it is, I like seeing the joy on other pony’s faces when I see that my inventions can improve their lives.”

Before I could ask, I watched as the underside of the wristbands began to expand and cover her hooves. Around four particular points on the wristband, I could see these spikes start to grow out from the side, almost like they were claws. However, they weren’t exactly sharp and pointy and after a couple of seconds, the ‘claws’ began to move. Each one was moving individually, before they began to form a clenched fist as I looked back to Gizmo. “Well, what do you think?”

“I… wow,” Yeah, this wasn’t exactly the best time to be put on the spot. Especially since I’ve only just met her a couple hours ago, “Gizmo, that’s… very impressive.”

“I know right?” she told me, “I decided to come up with these as a way to help ponies with day to day tasks, without having the need to grab everything with your teeth. I used griffon and hippogriff claws as a reference and just worked my way from there. Only difficulty with this was that the materials to make it and the technology to have it connect to the nerves around the hooves is very hard to come by-”

At that point, she stopped and looked back at me. After a couple of seconds, she began to scratch the back of her head in embarrassment before looking at me. “S-sorry… I kind of get carried away when talking about the details of my work.”

“No no, it’s fine,” I assured her, “In fact, I’m honestly surprised. With things like this, you could help a lot of people who really need it.”

Gizmo, upon hearing me say that, had her ears drop down for a bit and looked away from me for a brief moment, “T-thank you. I… really appreciate hearing that.” Yet, despite sounding rather positive, her body language gave me a different impression. Her tail was moving from side to side and her back legs were shaking a bit.

“Gizmo, is everything alright?”

After hearing my question, her legs stopped shaking and her tail stood in place before she looked at me. The brief hesitation that I saw was immediately replaced with a curious and confident smile as she looked back at me. “I’m alright. Why do you ask?”

I will give you my all!

Oh come on! Out of all times for my phone to go off, why did it have to be now?

“W-who said that?” I heard the unicorn ask, looking around the room like she had just heard a ghost speak to her.

“It’s my ringtone,” I tried to explain to her, pulling my iPhone out of my pocket and showing it to her before getting out of my seat and heading to the door that led to the backyard, “Someone’s calling my phone right now. Hang on just a moment.”

I heard Gizmo say something else, but couldn’t entirely make everything out as I answered the call and put it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Hi Sam!” Oh dear, I knew exactly who that was. But why did she decide to call now of all times?

“Hey mom. How’s your-?”

“Sam? Sam, I’m seeing your ear, sweetie.”

Oh great, this is a FaceTime call? Well, we’re off to a great start…

“Hold on just a second,” I said, removing my phone from my ear and having it face towards me. I can see both of my parents on screen as I let out a small sigh, “That better?”

“Much better,” I now heard my father speak this time, “Though, where exactly are you? You’re not sneaking around the neighborhood and prowling around in someone else’s backyard I hope.”

“Yeah, about that,” Well, I guess there’s no turning back at this point. Either tell them or dad’s going to be suspicious of me for the rest of my days, “Hey mom? Remember when you said that we were going to be having someone move in next door?”

“I remember. The one moving in where Mr. Rochester lived at-”

“Wait, Mr. Rochester’s gone? When was this?”

“I told you last week, remember?”

This continued on for a bit longer than I had hoped for. When it came to my family, it always felt that there was some kind of ‘disconnect’ going on. By that, I mean that some people in the family know about something going on, but there’s always one person that’s out of the loop. Sometimes it’s mom and sometimes it’s me, though it was mostly my dad. I couldn’t exactly blame him though, considering his line of work in IT and Cyber Security.

Eventually, the conversation came back around to me. “So, what does that have to do with where you are now, Sam?”

“Well, they just arrived today and I offered to help them move all their things in,” I explained, “Mom wanted me to make sure that they felt welcomed, so I thought helping them with moving their things was a good way to start.”

“That’s very kind of you, dear,” I heard her reply, before Mom decided to ask a different question, “So, who’s the new arrival?”

Oh dear. How exactly was I going to explain this?

“Hey, Sam. Is everything alright?”

I felt my heart immediately skip a beat once I heard that voice. As I turned around, I found that Gizmo had just stepped outside and closed the door behind her with her magic. I get that she might’ve been concerned, but since the front camera of the phone was facing directly towards the door, both of my parents not only heard her voice, but saw her.

“I-is that… a unicorn?”

“Sam, what was that voice just now?” Gizmo asked, sounding rather confused as she tilted her head.

In my head, I felt as if I needed to say something. Not just to clear up my parents' confusion, but also Gizmo’s. “Gizmo, I’m actually talking with my parents now,” I told her, before turning the front of my phone towards her, “Mom, Dad, this is Gizmo. She just moved in next door.”

Despite both of my parents being put on the spot, they did make the effort to say hello to her. Though, unfortunately, the unicorn was still… processing, from the looks of it, “You’re parents… are in a box?”

“Wha-? No!” I immediately shook my head, “They’re just on vacation and decided to call me.”

“So, wait… You’re talking to your parents, yet they are not actually here right now?” She asked me before tilting her head in confusion.

“Yeah actually,” I tried my best to help clarify things for her. Unfortunately, it seemed that all I really did was just confuse her even more.

“They're not here, yet why can I hear them? Why can I see them?! Just what is that Celestia-blasted thing!?!”

At that point, there was only one thing I could really say as I looked back at my phone and heard the sound of Gizmo’s teleportation spell going off behind me. “Mom? Dad? I’m… going to have to call you back later.”

---

Author's Note:

Poor Gizmo.

Comments

[Kieva Lynn]

I have to admit....

Twilight Sparkle would be a good
name for a grape flavored soda...

[Xanderfox]

10844362
Elements of Harmony Brand Soda!

[youkjl]

I think the little pony needs snuggles

[FridayPie]

I think Gizmo getting inadequacy complex. Nopony could appreciate her inventions in Equestria, but in human world they pale in her own eyes in comparison to tech she sees.

[Noobly60]

Hahahaha

[Alondro]

Gizmo oggled the device in awe, "You can communicate long-distances without having to enchant a dragon to belch out the letters?!"

Sam nodded slowly, "Yes, though your way sounds a whole lot cooler."

[Morphy]

10844362

I keep thinking of Pony Sweat...assuming they don't already have that in the far Eastern side of Equestria.