Return to Equestria

by David Silver

44 - Hello

David emerged from the store to collide his swinging right hand into the soft warm snout of a pony. He squeaked and danced away. "Sorry!" Did he just swat some random pony? "Sorry, didn't mean that."

There was a pony with glasses, smiling nervously, his cheeks darkened. "It's alright." Oh, um, that pony he had met... at the game. He had a name. It was a super nice name... Completely great... Pity he couldn't remember it... "Um, are you working?" He pointed past David to the store he was emerging from.

"I finished my work, at least here." David closed the door more carefully than he had emerged from it. "You're from the game, right?"

"Yep!" He seemed to brighten, taking that as a sign of being recognized. "I wanted to talk about that... if that's alright?"

David scootched further to the side, so other ponies could come and go without them in the way. "Sure!" He fired a finger gun at Gerome, whose name he still didn't remember, with a pchew sound to go with it. "What's up? Oh! I have a question."

"You do?" Gerome inclined his head, one ear going up. "If I can help."

David tapped at his head. "Up here. When you imagine an apple, do you see an apple? Can you weigh the imagined apple? Can you taste the imagined apple? Or are you just thinking of the concept of 'apple' and none of that sensory stuff?"

Gerome made gestures as if he were holding an imaginary apple, but swiftly slapped his hooves down. "I can do the... Do you?"

That was not a finished thought... "I can do all the senses on an imagined apple. I just took a bite out of it, because I can. I can feel the moisture of that chomp, and down it goes, yum."

Gerome licked over his lips with sympathetic approval of the apple chomp. "I... Don't think this is strange. I mean! Please don't think this is strange..." He held up a hoof towards David. "But I put an apple right here."

David examined that hoof. It had a heart on it, as the ponies of that world tended to have. It did not have an apple on it. "I don't... see it?"

"Nopony can, but me." He brought his hoof closer and sniffed at the hoof? Or was it the apple he could see? "I can do all of what you just did with the apple I put there." He took a chomp of... nothing... He chewed at the nothing and even swallowed the nothing. "Mmm, a little sour."

"Wow." David patted Gerome without thinking of it. "Wow. You have Pro and Hyperphantasia. There I was, thinking I was special with just one of them."

Gerome clapped giddily, perhaps enjoying the petting more than required. "I can make you a pony." And lo it was, at least in his vision. "You'd make a nice earth pony... Your fur would be the same color your skin was... Um, your cutie mark." He leaned off to the side, as if looking at an actual pony, not an imagined one. "A set of papers, like the bundles you walked in with."

Not the image David had given his ponysona before, but... "Not bad. But I'm a human." He hiked both thumbs at himself, a human trick. "Sorry."

"N-no!"

That had come out loud. David shrugged softly. "No what?"

"No... you're fine the way you are. Um..." Gerome played with his hooves nervously. "So! Um... Movies!"

"Sorry, but I don't know any of them." He hadn't been a big movie watcher in human land. Pony movies, entirely outside his general attention. "I'm sure a lot of them would be neat."

"Actually..." Gerome inclined his head the same way David had. "I don't watch them either... Music!"

David laughed suddenly. "Wow, you are just firing topics, aren't you?"

"Sorry..." Gerome sat up with an awkward smile. "I'm not good at this. Making friends is, um, hard..."

David relaxed at the admission. "Oh, well, if you want to make a friend, let's do something you like doing. Hopefully, I like it too, and, pow, that's one way we're friends right away."

"W-what if you don't like it?" Gerome shrank at the horror of that scenario. "What then?"

"Then you get to show it to me anyway. Maybe I'll be alright with it." He hiked a thumb at the computer cafe they were in front of. "A little kid, a foal, Pipster. He showed me how to have some fun with driving games. Still pretty bad at it, but it was fun. We're friends about it now."

"That sounds nice." He licked his lips. "Alright! About the game. Did you make your persona yet?"

"I was going to the day before," admitted Dave with a dramatic shrug. "I can usually belt out characters quickly, at least in the systems I knew well. It'd help if I had a computer tool, but I don't know any for this game."

"Oh!" Gerome hopped to his hooves. "There are some good ones. I can show you. I wanted to help you make the character. Um, you'll have to finesse it a bit, since you're making alicorns, and none of them will have those rules."

"If they did, I already messed up." David reached for the door, his plans to escape into the world ending. "Let's head inside, if you want to show me."

"I do!" And he darted inside, waving for David to follow. "Um, wait... I thought you never played this?"

"I haven't." He closed the door, back inside with the noises of the café reaching him in videogaming pleasure. "But I have played other things like it, um... in another country."

"Another country," breathlessly gasped out Gerome. "Wow! Oh, well, you aren't a pony... You wouldn't be from here... That makes sense. Sorry, being silly."

David gently ruffled Gerome's mane. "Not a problem. Oh, if you're an introvert and things get too loud or you just get tired, feel free to say so. No offense will be taken, not a scrap."

Gerome hurried to a terminal and got to typing with eager hoof taps. "Who's that?" And there was Joypad, noticing. "They have a card, so they've been here before..."

"Another player, at the imagining game." David paused his march to talk to Joypad. "Seems to want to go over how to make a character."

"Neat." She inclined her head at him. "Just... be careful."

"Of?"

"He could just be interested because 'look at the strange new thing.'" She shrugged with an eh. "Don't freak out, but don't assume nothing either."

"He's still a pony," reasoned David. "If I treat him fair, I'll be treated fair, roughly 80% odds."

"That's still a 20% chance it goes off."

David tapped Joy on her snout. "A risk I will take." He went to join Gerome. "Found what you're looking for?"

"Right here." Gerome shoved to the side, forcing his chair to slide out of the way and reveal the page he had arrived at. "I love this site, lets you make a persona nice and fast."

David leaned in for a better look. Ah. "Sure." It looked like one of a dozen such sites he'd seen back on his own world for making characters in one of over a dozen systems. "Perfect. Can I print what I make?"

"Better!" He directed a hoof near the top. "Just log in, then you can get it from other computers or phones."

"Sweet." David pulled up another chair to crash in, clicking and tapping. "So if I pick... and then..."

"Don't forget." He put a hoof on David's hand, guiding him towards another part of the sheet. "Gotta do this before."

"Oh, thanks. You can just point." He didn't seem directly irritated at the brief contact, but was also setting a line. And back to tapping did David return. "And... this is the part it doesn't know."

"No..." Gerome leaned back on his own chair. "But you can do the rest and adjust it. I'll show you how when you're done."

"Thanks." David quickly worked out the rest of his... "Hm?" Gerome was leaning against him, eyes on the screen. "You alright?"

"You sure you want to take that perk?" He pointed at the screen. "Refined Approach seems more appropriate."

David tensed faintly. Something was up, but what? "You're going to fall out of that chair." Being a wheeled chair, propping against someone also in a wheeled chair? Maybe not safe. Also, an excuse to gently push Gerome back and have him sit upright. "Let me ask straight up, why the interest? You don't give a personal tutorial to every new player, do you?"

"N-no..." He looked away, ears folded. "No... Not usually..." Gerome looked back to David with a nervous smile. "Making friends is complicated. Um... I don't want to upset anypony."

"I'm not a pony," noted David, one finger raised. "Can't upset a pony around me."

"Ha..." But he wasn't laughing, just looking more nervous.

David searched for possible answers. Was it? "I don't like upsetting anypony, or anything else either."

"You don't?" Gerome inclined his head, snorting in an equine way. "What do you do about it?"

"I'm too old to tiptoe around it." David shrugged. "Hey, Gerome."

"Yeah?"

"Do you like humans?" David asked, lilting a bit at the end.

"Not any human." Gerome pointed at David. "But at least one." And then he realized what he just said, and went a dark red. "Oh... Sorry... Sorry... I can go now."

David put out an arm, blocking the escape path. "Calm down. Um... As a friend? We're just meeting."

"As a friend, I... hope?" He sat back up. Working his forehooves together. "Maybe more? If it works out."

Did ponies come in that flavor? "Are you gay?"

"I'm not feeling super happy right now..." Gerome pushed away from the desk, wheels of the chair squeaking. "Sorry."

Wrong meaning... "Do you like other males?"

If blushes could kill... He looked almost lightheaded from it, heart storming in his long ears. "Only special ones..."

"Do you like females?" prodded David, clearly digging for certainty with the shy stallion.

"They're fine! Very fine... But, um, um..." He hopped suddenly to the ground, the chair spinning away from him. "Um!"

"Calm down." David gestured in patting motions without touching. "If you're attracted... that's actually very flattering."

"Good. Good good." Gerome nodded, some semblance of certainty returning to him. "Good. I feel like a foal. I'm not a foal." He curled a hoof to point at himself. "We're both greymanes." His mane wasn't as grey as David's. "We should act like it."

"Soak up that feeling." David tapped himself on the chest. "You're a greymane, not a foal. You're too old for this. Say what you mean, and leave it to other pe--ponies to deal with it."

"Too old... I want to hug you." He reached out a hoof. "I want to cuddle and talk about gaming stuff. I want to... do everything... How's that sound?"

"Like a greymane finding the power of the grey in their mane." David reached, ruffling Gerome's not grey mane. "But, since you were so clear, you deserve an equally clear answer." Gerome tensed, his ears going back. David gently tickled one of those ears, encouraging them upwards. "Don't be nervous. You want the truth, not for me to say whatever I think you want to hear, right?"

"Y-yes, please. Oh..." Gerome shrank back.

Which made room for Joypad to come storming in around David, towards him. "You're too trusting," she hissed back at David, facing Gerome. "You think you can just come in here and whisper sweet nothings in his ear and I'll let you get away with it? Stop taking advantage of my human! He may be nice, but he has a fierce defender!"

Most of the shop was watching the drama that had become more interesting than the gaming they had been doing.

Author's Note:

I told you they'd be back. Joypad is a mother lion, protecting her human.

Join the special community of folks who like my stories and/or get your own written here at atreon!

Join my discord to chat!

Comments

[Booster Spice]

All they need now is somegriff playing a Furengi from one of the other games to be running teh till, andd theyre all set for Gallopy Quest?

[Comet_Chaser]

Still blows my mind that there are people out there that legitimately cannot produce mental imagery. I mean I can, not to the extent of someone with pro and hyperphantasia, but still. To not be able to do so.... it just seems boring lol

[David Silver]

11487686
They live their best lives. To them, not boring, it just is what it is. I am, as noted in the text here, Hyper.

[howard035]

Uh oh, looks like class just let out at Jelly School!
I hope Joy isn't too hard on Gerome.