Little Hooves in a Dark World

by David Silver

3 - Shadow Looming

The sound of the door opening made Raspberry jump in her nest of bedding on the livingroom floor. The steps coming closer didn't help calm her. "Got your stuff." She let out a heavy wheeze that turned into a laugh. It was Louis! Thank every deity one wanted to name. She hopped free of her bedding with a shaking of her body, ending with a flick of her tail, she went to greet him.

"And you brought everything!" She nosed into him, helping with the bags.

"Couldn't forget the fun and games." He sighed, plopping down onto his rear, humanized again. "Need help setting this all up? You have a lot of tech gear."

"Lovingly collected over the years." Sandra, hands returned, used them to start moving her things. "Where do you want me setting things up? You--" She paused, noticing something. "When did you get that?" She was pointing at Louis' right arm, where a bandage was firmly wrapped around some wound.

"I told you you needed to relax." He smirked, waving off her concern with a shake of his hand. "The nurse said it wouldn't scar, if I keep the bandages on tight enough, but it'll hurt for a few days."

"Nurse?!" She shook her head, not feeling very relaxed. "You didn't have that when you left. What happened? My house isn't that dangerous, I thought."

He smiled, though it seemed pained. "I was ambushed."

"Ambushed?!" She gripped his shoulders. "By what?!"

He shrugged her off. "Nothing. No idea."

Sandra glared at him. "You didn't get ambushed by 'nothing' and get a neat new bandage. Why are you being evasive?"

"Because I don't want you freaking out, like you're doing." He grabbed her tower, moving the computer into the living room and finding a spot for it to live. "Let's get your studio going right around here." He indicated an area. "The lighting should work great."

Sandra rolled her eyes. "You know I'm not done asking." But she did let it drop, at least for the moment. Working together, they got a studio set up. "You are too nice."

"Loyal," Louis corrected, hitting the power button to boot up her PC. "And you have people to amuse, and maybe lift your own heart. We're safe here, okay? You're with a friend that'll protect you."

"Lou, you're not that rich that you should just take care of a friend without warning." She sat on the computer chair in front of her new station. "And not nearly immortal enough to laugh at getting cut doing it! Seriously." She pointed to his wounded limb. "Care to explain before I call bullshit on this protective nonsense?"

Louis winced, looking away. "I..."

"Louis!" She scowled, giving him the sternest glare she could muster.

"Some guys were following you. I called it in. But before they could get to you, well...." He scratched his neck and snorted. "There were a lot of them, so I decided to do a thing..."

She threw up her hands. "There were a bunch of them and you dived in!" She barked out a strained laugh. "And you came back with just that one cut? I don't know if I should be hitting you or just being impressed. Both is a pretty fine option from where I'm sitting."

"It's a gift I picked up." He rubbed at one arm with the other hand, avoiding the bandage. "Loyalty. Knowing they were coming for you, I could fight. Knowing they were messing around in your house, looking for you? It was like every Loyalty fiber in me was on fire, and I fought." His grin was proud as he stood taller. "And I won!"

"And took down half a neighborhood at the same time!" Sandra tried not to feel touched by the gesture, but she failed miserably. "I'm just glad you're alright." She adjusted the camera on top of her monitor. "It would not have been worth it to have you hurt for this."

"I will protect you from anything that tries to hurt you, and it was all worth it!" He puffed out his chest. "And now it's time to put on that mask and get to work!"

She snorted at that. "I don't have a mask." She pointed to that camera. "They never see my real face. One of the perks of being a Vtuber." She turned that finger to the pony on the screen. It was a little virtual Raspberry, rendered and reacting to Sandra's movements. "They get to assume I'm just some random perfectly normal human with a pony avatar, and they like it."

Louis moved in to stare at the avatar, blinking his eyes. "But..."

Raspberry gave her friend a sidelong glance. "What, don't like her? We can swap the avatar." With a few clicks, she conjured a hulking ogre, a lurching zombie, and a too-cool-for-school techie before swapping back to Raspberry. "But they're expecting this pony."

"Oh, no. I like Raspberry. It's just... I'm sorry..." He winced and started walking backwards. "I'll be in the kitchen. Call me if you need me, but if not, I'll start dinner. You haven't eaten in a while, right?"

Sandra laughed softly. "Yeah, but I wasn't that hungry, Lou." She smiled a little, amused despite the tension. "I'm still not. This whole day has me on edge. Thank you, again, you crazy nut." She flicked the final button to go live. "Hey, my herdmates! Today's been wild." She clicked the button to make her avatar flip out her wings. "But not too wild to keep me away from all of you!"

Raspberry dove straight into a video about humanized ponies that had a chat about the lore she made up on the fly, about how the ponies became more human, and where the magic had gone, and what was happening in that world. It was all made up, and basically wrong, and that was half the point. "They say, if you're a good person, you might find that pony magic." She smiled, her avatar following the motion. "So I expect some of you to show up next stream with hooves. Lemme know, okay?"

A super chat arrived. She perked, eyes moving to read over it. "I have some hooves right here, still attached to their legs."

Sandra laughed it off. "Attached to you, I assume." She did not actually assume that, a cold sweat overtaking her. "That's all for the stream right now, my colts and fillies! Find that pony magic!" She smacked the end stream button. "Jesus fucking Christ. Why don't I just put myself up in the public eye? Might as well paint a target on my forehead." She shivered violently, before calming herself. "At least that's over. Now, where's my Knight in Shining Armor?"

She rose to her feet and slipped on over to the kitchen. "Did you hear any of that, or should I summarize?"

He was facing the stove, poking at some sort of meat in a pan. "I could only hear you talking, and you were having fun, from the sound of it. What'd I miss?" He flipped dinner over skillfully with a fresh set of hisses and sputters. "Dinner will be ready soon."

"I doubt you could have heard me talking, even if you were listening. You didn't turn off the stovetop fan. As for what you missed?" She collapsed into one of his chairs with a loud sigh. "My stalker is still stalking. And he's being maximum creepy while he's at it. How did he even figure out where I lived? We need to know that, or he'll just keep right on following me."

"Can't you block him?" He shrugged softly. "Not an expert on that site, but pretty sure you can block people."

"You think I didn't?! Each time, I block him, and he shows up with a new account." Sandra folded her arms under her chest. "It isn't hard to make those, and he's willing, just to piss me off."

"So why can't you block them all, then?" He turned, frowning at her. "He doesn't have enough time to make 50 accounts a day, and that would be required to beat your blocks."

"Sure, but each time means I get a nasty little creepy comment from him. Fifty creepy messages a day? Not what I'm looking forward to, even if that meant I was keeping up with the weirdo." She rubbed at her head. "Really putting a damper on my Laughter, you know?"

"Sorry to hear that." He turned back to his cooking. "But that does sound rough. Maybe he'll cool off if you ignore him."

She shot up, pacing back and forth. "He's already way past the 'ignore it and it goes away' zone. I saw him, in the real world." She threw her hands up. "He sent a small gang of goons to rifle through my house! Do you really think I should just ignore that?" She was rubbing at her temples, muttering to herself. "I can't let that go, nope. And you even attacked one of them, didn't you?"

Louis tapped his fingers on his counter. "Technically more than one of them." He started plating the food, creating delicious smelling offerings on two of them that he put on the dining room table. "But they were just punks, random thugs, not even armed."

Sandra trailed after him, sitting in the seat he didn't take with a plate. "And you're just thinking about if they had a weapon or not. Louis, you're nuts. I love you, but, nuts." She bit into her meal, closing her eyes. "Oh, god. This is incredible. Are you secretly a chef?"

Louis grinned. "Maybe. Maybe I also cook for others." He started eating, pleased with the results. "I may not be a Laughter, but a good meal can put a smile on a face."

"It really can." She quieted her concerns for the moment, just enjoying the food and the company. "Thank you, again. You're going so far beyond the call of duty and I'm not even sure how to thank you."

"You can do a shout-out on the next video." He speared a slice of his meat and chewed with a happy look on his face. "That'll be enough for me. Also, just to be clear, you are paying rent. I know you're mobile."

Sandra considered her computer. "So long as I have that and all my stuff, sure, which you got for me." She snorted softly. "But yeah, I'm happy to pull my weight. I'm the one crashing in your house all of a sudden. It's the least I can do. Bloody heck, what do I do with the house I already have? I can't even consider going back to it right now."

Louis started cleaning up. "Pack a few bags, enough for a week, and store them here. We can get the rest of your stuff later."

"Later like the cops catch this guy, or like never?" She twirled a fork at him. "And the cops aren't known for being good at catching people who aren't people, and this guy's putting out all the nasty vibes of something that bumps in dark places."

"Is it time for a herd meeting?"

Sandra frowned with thought a moment. "I'm not sure what I'd be asking them. I don't want them charging blindly at something we don't get."

He reached across the table to rest a hand on her shoulder. "So, we ask. You're the first pony to be approached by this jerk without being attacked as the first move. That means we, all of us, can start looking for him." He paused a moment. "Wait, you have his address, right? You said you saw him."

She brightened at that. "I do. At least, that's where he was." She dug out her phone and the address stored within. "What do you think they can do with it?"

"We're ponies." Louis chomped on some broccoli idly. "We have tricks. You just bring that address to the meeting that I'm going to call the moment dinner's over."

Author's Note:

Time to get serious, hm? Louis proves he can handle himself.

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Comments

[Amethyst Dragonfly]

"We're ponies." Louis chomped on some broccoli idly. "We have tricks."

So there not Just one trick ponies?

Just what is Sandra's stalker? Besides being creepy and a pony murderer that is.

[Twinkie Sprinkle]

Hopefully it'll be possible to catch the creepy stalker guy.

I may take to calling him "Michael Myers" as a placeholder if he goes without a name for long enough.

Oh and to answer the question about votes from last chapter...it would be fun to do another "Choose Your Own Adventure" again in the future, but perhaps this story is working well at the moment as its own sort of experiment.

[David Silver]

11840925
A full CYOA is quite fun, but no small project. Did you read the last one I did?

[Twinkie Sprinkle]

11841059

Oh come to think of it I did.

In hindsight, with all those choices and possibilities, it must have taken a lot of energy to run after a while. Hopefully that isn't quite the case this time.

[David Silver]

11841764
It's quite a sprint to fill them all in properly, but it was fun. No regrets.