Different Approach

by armid

Sleepy Buddy

Dear Diary,

Today has been quite the trip. It made me think about myself lately. About my “magic”, about the new “friends” Steely and I’ve made and about what happened last night at the fencing match. My head felt as if it was holding onto billions of thoughts and it desperately wanted to pour them all down at the same time.

To start things off, when I got to school, Steely wasn’t in his best shape.

“Hey man,” I said. But he didn’t even answer. It didn’t take me a long time to realise he wasn’t really standing — he was asleep.

“Steely?” I pulled him back to see his face but he didn’t wake up.

“Steeeeely!” I held his shoulders and gave him a wiggle.

“Alternative….dimensions….magical...ponies,” he muttered in sleep.

“Have you been staying up all night watching Code Phase or some other anime?”

“Princess...Celestia...”

I have to admit, I was a little concerned about what was going on in his head after I heard that. However, classes were about to start and I couldn’t have left him like this. I had to wake him up.

So I slapped him.

“WHAT? WHO? WHERE?” Steely’s eyes opened wide. They were as red as the roses in our garden.

“Easy, easy.” I patted him on the back. “You ok?”

“I...uhm...uh.” Steely’s red eyes were looking around, dazed on what was happening. After giving his head a little shake, he replied, “Oh, hey, Flame.” Steely’s left eye was twitching, and his heavy eyelids were slowly closing. I wondered whether he even slept last night or not.

“Dude, when did you sleep last night?”

“Six,” Steely responded after a small pause.

“But it’s seven right now…” I narrowed my eyes. “What were you doing?”

“I had to figure some… stuff out.” Steely rubbed his face and forced his eyelids to stay open.

“Were you theorizing about what would happen in the next chapter of that Pizzaria robot horror game?” I sighed.

“No, I…” He shook his head once more. “It was about what the girls told me yesterday.”

“OH!” I almost forgot about the “session” Steely had with Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle. “What did she say?”

“Wh-” Steely rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Who is she?”

“Sunset Shimmer?”

“Who?

“The girl who broke into your garage? Bacon head, sees your memory and has the tendency to invade your privacy and the—oh.” It was then that I noticed Steely had fallen asleep again.

I dragged him to the bathroom and splashed his face with some tap water. His eyelids fluttered into life again as water dripped down from his face.

“Steely, you should have stayed home.”

He shook his head and wiped his face of water.

“What did she tell you yesterday anyway? Seriously, what made you stay up all night?”

“She had good reasons.” Steely looked at me with his red eyes.

“W-what?” I narrowed my eyes, waiting for a clarification. But nothing came. “You’re not saying anything about how she breaking into your garage or invading our minds is justified! How?”

Steely held his head with his hands and blacked a couple times before responding. “It’s not… easy to explain. But I think, she… made up for it by expla—”

“NO!”

Steely’s exhausted eyelids stopped closing and he locked his gaze with me.

I raised my voice. “I don’t know what she told you that makes you jump to THAT conclusion but I can not think of one single reason that would justify invading someone's memories and personal life.”

“Look, I had the same mindset at first but… things are just more compli—”

“The only complicated thing I see here is you deciding to come to school when you barely had an hour of sleep.” I stepped closer. “Get your clonies running and find a corner to sleep. You can’t even keep your eyes open for five minutes.” I walked to the door to leave.
“Why don’t you never liste—”

“Take care, Steely, gotta run!”

---

The whole class I was wondering about yesterday. I still couldn’t get my mind off that fight and what I did. “She deserved it,” a thought crept into my head. I could easily picture her trying to touch my hand and see what I knew about Steely. Then again, she also helped me once by doing that.

“I warned her!” said another voice in my head. That one was something I couldn’t ignore. I did warn her yesterday multiple times to leave me alone, yet she kept pushing. I even warned her about what would happen in the ring. She stepped in herself. Did I have to do it…

Flaming Star stopped writing in his diary for a second.

No

He stared at the two letters he had just written. He stared at them, in silence as the sensation of guilt grew inside. But soon after, he shook his head and moved to the next line.

“Why is Steely just forgetting about her breaking into her garage?” I know Steely. If there was anything that would make him raise his voice, it was either someone messing with his toys or his mom showing his childhood pictures to others, or something like that. What has gotten into him?

As I was deep in my own thoughts, the class ended. It took me a couple of seconds to realise that the others were leaving the classroom, but I snapped out of my thoughts before anyone could call my name.

Steely had geology class during that period and I hoped I was not going to see him when I checked up on his class. As I got closer to there, I saw some of the students come out of the class and among them, was Steely. No red eyes, but lifeless. No expression on his face could be seen. That was enough of a clarification for me that I should be looking for my Steely somewhere else. But where?

I could guess a couple of locations he might have been at off the top of my head but I decided to walk to the main hall to check up on the map real quick first. That thing has helped me find my way around more than I can remember.

As soon as I was walking to the main hall, I saw someone running straight at me like a train on rails. And before I could react in time, they crashed into me, landing us both on the floor.
“OH! Sorry, are you ok?”

I raised my head and saw a pink face and a pair of big blue eyes staring at me.

“Pinkie Pie?”

“Hiiiii!” she said as she waved her hand furiously.

“Watch where you’re going next time.” I stood up and dusted myself up.

She hid her chuckle. “Sorry. I was trying to find the girls as fast as to tell them Sunset is in the infirmary and that we should check up on her.”

“...Sunset Shimmer is in the infirmary?”

“Yeah, I don’t why but Ms. Colourful brush looked at her hand and went “*gasp*” and we were all like, “*hmm?*” and then she told her to head to the infirmary.”

“...Her hand?”

“Yeah, anyway, I’ll catch you later. It’s an emergency! Byeeee!” She hopped away.

I kept walking to the main hall but I couldn't stop thinking about last night. I know I said I want to punch her face because of what she did but really I didn’t want to hurt her. At least not in a way she would have to head to the infirmary. If I can’t simply control myself, how can I control my power magic? Had I gone too far?

I saw the posters on the information board, from club announcements and band practice times to simple drawings of the younger students. And in the middle of them all, was the map.

“Let’s see where you might be Steely…” I stepped closer and inspected the map. The first place I looked for was the workshop, and just by a quick look I realised it's quite far. “Maybe somewhere closer first.” The second location was the lab, but if I remembered correctly, the younger students had the first period there. So that can’t be it too. Then it finally dawned on me. “He slept in the toilet didn’t he?”

As I was about to walk off, a pink poster caught my attention to itself. It was pinned on the board right next to the map. “Cuddle Love Pet Shop” was written in big letters on the poster. “A place to find a friend for yourself or leave your friend to be taken care of for a few days.”

There wasn’t much time left until the classes would start again so if I wanted to check on Steely, I had to be quick and hope I could find him in time. I couldn’t see anyone in the bathroom, but as soon as I stepped inside, I could hear the scribbling sound of pencil on paper. Following it led me to one of the doors. By giving a quick glance at the door nub, I realised it wasn’t closed
.
“Steely? Are you there?” I asked.

“...yeah.” His voice still sounded tired.

“You aren’t sleeping in there are you?”

The door opened and he stepped out. He had it under his eyes. “No.” He walked to the sink and washed his face again.

“Well you better. Maybe not there… but man, you should just… sleep.”

“Sleep?” He turned his head towards me.

“Yeah. By the way, were you in there the whole peri—” Before I could finish my sentence, Steely passed out and was about to drop on the floor when I caught him. “Steely?”

His eyes were only half closed but I doubted he could understand anything of what I said.

“Dude, you are not that light you know?” It took my all to not drop him on the ground. I didn’t have any other choice but to put him back on the toilet seat again.

Before I headed back to class, I noticed there was a small yellow notepad on the bathroom floor. It was Steely’s, I knew it. I decided to hold onto it for now; he didn’t seem in the right shape to take care of it.

---

After every class, I checked on Steely to make sure he was alright and by the time we had to eat lunch, he was feeling a little better. But I had to check on something else too.

I found Pinkie Pie hopping to the cafeteria so I decided to take this opportunity to ask her something. “Hey.”

“OH, hi!” She smiled, and waved her hand.

“I uh… wanted to know how Sunset Shimmer was. You know, you said she was in the infirmary this morning.”

“Oh, she said she was fine. Just a sprain.”

For some reason, even though I didn’t quite like her, I was happy she was fine.

“That’s ni—”

She cut me off. “But Ms. Pointy Syringe said her hand looked messed up. Like, someone stomped on it after it sprained. She also didn't let me have a lollipop. Oh. OH! It’s Taco Tuesday! Sorry, Flammy, see ya later!” She dashed straight for the cafeteria afterwards.
That good feeling of relief turned into a terrible sensation of guilt. No matter how much I reasoned with myself, I still felt terrible.

---

Steely had picked up food for me too. Though he still looked like a mess.

“Hey, how was toilet-sleeping?” I smirked at him as I sat down.

“I can keep my eyes open so… that’s something.” he said before taking a bite of his sandwich.

“Even if you still look like a red-eyed demon?”

Steely remained silent and kept on chewing.

“You passed out this morning.” I looked at him but he avoided meeting my gaze. “No one passes out like that just from lack of sleep. Did you- You didn’t eat anything yesterday did you?”

Steely didn’t answer.

“Do you really think skipping meals will solve your issues with your dad? C’mon Steely, you’re smarter than that.” I crossed my arms.

“No but-First off: you don’t get to tell me that when you tried to fail school instead of talking stuff out with your father.” He pointed at me.

I wanted to defend myself but he beat me to it.

“And secondly, I’ve been processing a lot of stuff. And I mean a lot. Let me just…” He started searching his pockets.

“Yeah, yeah I know. Sunset Shimmer told you a bunch of stuff yesterday and you still can’t take it all in. I mean, OK. Maybe there was just some weird stuff about magic they didn’t tell you before but—”

“Where is my notepad?” His restless eyes darted across the table carefully before he slapped his forehead. “Did I drop it in the bathroom?”

“Don’t worry, I gotcha.” I took out the yellow note pad from my pocket and handed it over to him.

“Thanks.” He let out a sigh of relief and opened it. It felt as if he wanted to make sure what he wrote down hadn’t disappeared or something. “You-did you look inside or…?”

“No. Was there something personal?”

“Just the notes I took from…” Steely paused and looked away. “Some experiment. Nothing big.”

“Anyways.” I rolled my eyes. “I-I am a bit confused on how I should be seeing Sunset Shimmer right now. On one hand are all her desperate attempts to invade our private life and on the other are the times shehelped us. Just—”

“Just what?” Steely leaned forward.

I sighed. “Forget it.”