/vx/ - Videogames and Paranormal

>>156580
Amber’s neighbors are the sole audience of her private session.

>>156581
Mala nods, places the pistol under the seat, looks around, and exits the vehicle, wasting no time going inside and upstairs.

Mint Marine runs around the house towards the sea, while White Orchid follows Mala, wanting to go inside the house.

>>156583
Silver goes in before White Orchid does, hoping to address everyone before they see the colt.

>>156581
Silver can see Paper Clipping and Jubilosa together in the living room. They must have been talking to each other. Both of them look towards Silver.

>>156586
"Hello everyone, I am sorry to interrupt. I know bed situation is bit cramped at moment, but...we will have couple of visitors with us for next couple of days."

>>156587
Jubilosa blinks
“What?”

White Orchid looks into the living room
“A Griffin!”

>>156588
Silver pauses at White Orchid's interjection, looks back at the colt, then again at the griffon and stallion in the living room.

"White Orchid, meet Jubilosa and Paper Clipping. Jubilosa, Paper Clipping, meet White Orchid."

>>156589
Paper Clipping is laying the opposite direction on the couch as he was before Silver left, but otherwise looks like he hasn’t moved. He pokes his head up in a surprised expression, like he just got caught. Jubilosa is standing up, snd moves a little closer.

“Hello… where did you come from?”

>>156590
Silver answers for him.

"To make long story short, White Orchid and another colt here named Mint Marine were involved in...mission I was part of only short time after I arrived in city. It seems mission is not entirely done, and for their safety they will be staying here until I sort it out, which will be soon."

>>156591
“Oh… kay…” Jubilosa says to Silver. She looks down towards White Orchid, who looks up to her.

>>156592
Silver looks between the two of them.

"Soooo...yes. How have things been while I was gone?"

Silver limps slightly as he makes his way to towards the kitchen to get a drink of water. Jubee and Clip may notice this.

>>156593
"We're out of alcohol" Jubilosa announces.

>>156594
"I see. I will get some more when I go out again."

>>156596
Silver goes to get his drink of water from the kitchen. He continues talking with the people in the living room as he does so.

"May I be nosey about what you were talking about."

>>156597
"The War, I suppose." It's Paper Clipping who answers. "National Service and all of that."

>>156598
"That sounds interesting." He comes out into the living room with a glass of water. "Anything specific?"

>>156599
“Militia and the draft.” He answers. “The concept.”

>>156600
"I can guess you are both opposed to drafts for obvious reasons."

>>156601
"I am. She... Not entirely." He answers

>>156602
Silver looks rather intrigued at Jubilosa.

"Really?"

>>156603
"It's not black and white" She says

>>156604
Silver tilts his head.

>>156605
"It's justified sometimes, I think." She answers

>>156606
"Hmm. Maybe. It depends on who is ruling, I think."

>>156607
Jubilosa,
"That's more or les what I said."

Paper Clipping:
"The temptation to abuse it will mean it can and will be misused by any ruler."

>>156608
"Hmmmm...that is also true. Both views are accurate I think."

>>156609
Paper Clipping:
"Well you can't just say that! Either it's right, or it isn't."

>>156610
"I do not know, they both have valid points of argument."

>>156611
Paper Clipping scrunches, but Jubilosa seems to accept this

>>156612
Silver finishes his glass of water, and puts it on a nearby table or the kitchen counter, whatever's closer.

"I should go check on Mint Marine. If you want you can talk to White Orchid, or show him around, or whatever you wish to do."

>>156613
Jubilosa:
"Uh, okay"

White Orchid sits before Paper Clipping, who looks down to him. Paper Clipping is only something like six or seven years older than him.

>>156614
Silver goes out the backdoor into the backyard area.

>>156615
Mint Marine is by the water

>>156616
Silver trots down to meet him, silently sitting next to him to look at the ocean or see whatever it is the colt is doing.

>>156658
Don't tempt me into turning Amber into Patrick Bateman and making her a sigma mare. That would be too much fun.

But you're right.

Amber Sunset, after thanking Dahlia for her hospitality and bidding her good evening, goes up the stairs and stops outside Mustard's room. She doesn't understand why he seems mad at her, and with ears folded low she says,

"Um, thank you for taking me to see your family and…everything. I love you, but I need to do some cleaning and write home. I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. Take care." Without another word she turns around and leaves.

Her evening proceeds otherwise as planned. She buys her household supplies but sadly not postage stamps, goes back home, cleans everything, and practices on her mandolin. Thoroughly tired after a satisfying day, she offers a prayer to the goddesses:

"Princesses, thank you for watching over me, helping me to find love, friendship and a new family here. Please help me make a decision on whether I should bear foals so soon, or whether I should convince Mustard to wait a little while. I love you and I hope you come back to Equestria again. Amen."

She climbs into her bed, sleeping on her side with only the thin spare sheet insulating her from the cold. Before she drifts off to sleep her last thoughts are of Mustard and of everything they did lately.

>>156659
Mustard Trim tries to say something to Amber as she leaves the room. No matter, Amber is on her way out. Dahlia sees nothing odd about Amber leaving at 6:30 on a work/school night, and happily waves Amber goodbye.

"Come back again" She says

Amber still only has 13 bits out of her ill-gotten gains from a couple nights before. While she does have a pot, a bed, furniture, a new simp and a few other things to show for it, clean and dry bedsheets is not one of those, nor is food. Amber's blanket is also still wet.

Does the Princess still hear prayers? Does she have any power to answer them? All the same, Celestia's love carries on in Amber.

Amber is alone in her bed, with no bedsheets, no blanket, and no big, muscular zebra jazz artist nor scrawny, beta small town colt to keep her warm. From the future, she feels a chill wind blow, slowly creeping its way through her soul and filling her with anxiety...

>>156663
And so she rests fitfully. Trying to sleep in such conditions can make anypony grumpy, and already she misses Mustard's presence from the night before. But who knows what the future will bring?

>>156665
Do you feel it, little pony? That undefined fear. That dread. It comes at her with an inevitability to it. Like the inevitability of death, or of old age and the health and beauty that die long before the last life processes cease. There's a tenacity to the feeling. Perhaps Amber may feel that it's the realization that the only ponies who will ever love her unconditionally are her parents. Perhaps it's the fear that Amber will never be able to achieve her dreams of musical stardom. Perhaps it's the fear that she is going to marry a woefully inadequate, boring stallion when she could do so much better. But the truth is that the danger is much more imminent. Much more unavoidable. For the beast that haunts her, hunts her, and stalks her in the night is none other than the realization that the next day is...

Monday

Amber has gone to sleep at 2 or 3 AM the past two nights, and slept late, so she finds it difficult to go to sleep at 9 PM tonight. She has ample time in her bed to be alone with her emotions and thoughts. Any fears, desires, hopes that linger in the back of her mind migrate to the fore. She becomes intimately acquainted with all of her feelings as she has time to ruminate on them.

>>156667
kek

She must face uncomfortable thoughts indeed. Will Mustard be demanding all through life, giving her the silent treatment whenever she inadvertently upsets him? Will he be able to support an entire family on his lonesome, when he doesn't even know what career he'll pick yet? If she follows through with his wishes for foals, after this year she won't be able to work or do much of anything to support them. Can't she enjoy her youth and satisfy her wish for adventure just one or two years longer? Was she perhaps premature in falling in love with Mustard Trim with all these considerations, when there may be stallions who are older, financially stable, stronger, or more patient? Would those hypothetical stallions even want her at all, or agree to marry her?

All these are tough questions to answer for the little filly, so she focuses on other things. Mustard's support for her playing, his concern about her, his generous and caring nature, his energetic body…these let her dismiss more pragmatic concerns at least temporarily. Her parents were able to raise a family on their own on a farm, why shouldn't she be able to in the city? He's never been with a mare before, surely he'll soften around her, and he's smart enough to get ahead in life. She'll be happy here, she assures herself.

>>156669
As bad as her romantic situation is, an even worse problem is that she's going to have to work retail tomorrow morning.

Terrified as Amber is that her dreams of being an adventurer will be cut short by early motherhood, she should remember that in the magical world of Equestria, leaving behind your foal to be raised by your sister and her roommate while you and your husband go on exciting adventures travelling around the world is always an option.

>>156671
Oh no, the nightmare that is retail. At least she isn't a waitress.

That is certainly an option which occurs to her. She does have a sister with a foal of her own, though it probably would be discourteous to have her foster-raise a foal for one's own selfish desires. Veneer could not be trusted, at least not yet, and although Dahlia might be happy to do it she might disapprove of the reasons. Amber could always do the responsible option, which would be to raise her family to adulthood and then adventure, but who's to say the world will still be around then in these times? also it would take actual centuries for the campaign to go on that long

>>156669
>>156671
Exactly when Amber falls asleep is hard to say, though it does not occur until long after she lies in bed.

Amber's dreams are filled with sound. Like the night before, they are filled with music, and the music is more memorable than any sight or image.

The first, fragmented memory that Amber has is of encountering a very large, orange stallion with odd, foreign looking ornate dress, a jeweled headpiece, and braided mane who approaches her beneath the gold-trimmed walls of a restaurant or night club. He speaks in strained Ponish with a strong accent, and approaches Amber directly with a request. He says that he has come in from out of town, and is looking for a mare. When she asks details, all of his answers lead to a tablet of some sort, though its relation with this mare is uncertain. Mustard Trim is there, and he wants no part of it. He is open and remorseless in his jealousy of the attention Amber gives the stallion, and he tells Amber he thinks the stallion is dangerous. Amber does not heed Mustard, and leaves him to get in the stallion's automobile. Her feelings towards the stallion are entirely non-romantic, and not of a sexual nature. But there is no denying that in his mystery, in that aura he gives off of something new and different, he provides her with a feeling she cannot get from Mustard Trim. And all the while, at every point in the dream, the viol of that aging griffin plays, filling her ears with intrigue. There is surely much more to this dream, and Amber knows it did not end with her entering his car, but the conclusion evades her waking recollection.

The second dream is shorter, as Amber sits under a spotlight playing her Mandolin on the stage of what seems to be a music hall, likely remembered from Childhood. It's Amber's own Greensleeves that fills this section - not that that song is what she would be playing in the moment, but it is what accompanies the memory. There is a crowd of ponies watching, and at least in thought, Mustard Trim is among those in the first row.

The third memory is of Amber sitting down in a field of tall grass before a river mouth that slowly empties into a bay. A light wind blows the grass and the tops of nearby trees. There are two small foals next to Amber, one the color of wheat, and the other a light cream color, and she understands that a stallion sits just to the left and behind her. The sound is of that filly from the church singing the folk songs of the old Equestria.

The final dream is recalled in more detail. This one too is filled with the haunting notes heard in Club Maurice, which play over nigh every moment. In this dream, Amber comes to the conclusion that she will never be able to escape the music, and asks the pegasus filly at Club Maurice where to find the viol player. She tells her to simply wait, and follow him home. This, she does, following him down the dim streets, past the smell of garbage, around the barking of dogs, and across an antique bridge, over a poluted river next to decaying mills with grand smoke stacks. She follows him down a narrow, winding street, until she comes to an apartment building. She does not go up immediately, but sticks around. From the floors above, she hears the music, and it is not like the music she has heard before, nor indeed, any music she has ever heard before. A whole orchestra plays on enchanted instruments. As she cannot hold back the curiosity any longer, she goes up to the room, and knocks on the door. It is unlocked, and she opens it. Dancing lights, a dog made of energy...

Amber wakes up. It's an hour earlier at least than she intended to wake up. She has to work retail in a few hours...

>>156674
She wakes up and groggily ponders her vivid dreams, their brilliant sounds and sight, before they can be forgotten. What a strange and exotic stallion, surely he did not come from Equestria? She doesn't feel any guilt for meeting this odd and imposing figure in her dream, but tries to think about where she saw that sort of dress and braided mane in her history books. [1d20+6 = (1+6) = 7]

The third gives her pause. It felt similar to how she got her cutie mark, but evidently it wasn't that scene from her life, as it was in a different place and she wasn't the size of those foals. Those second and third dreams must be visions of the future and snapshots of her hopes. Will these be realized? Who can say.

The last dream gives her pause. She hangs onto the magical notes for as long as she can, though she cannot hope to interpret what she saw.

Reluctantly she gets up and stretches.

>>156677
Sun ain't even up yet.

The dress and braids belong to the young maidens of Yakyakistan, who wear such dress on their wedding days.

Amber tries to reimagine the symphony of the last dream. The notes are unfortunately hard to perceive in the ear. Not that Amber has any difficulty in imagining music, mind you, but some ethereal quality of the music renders it difficult to reproduce, even in the mind. This is note a problem Amber encountered in the Club Maurice.

Amber has an entire hour before she even intended to wake up. She could go out and eat breakfast.... if she had any money. She could go to the post office... if they opened before she had to be in work. She could practice the Mandolin... if she doesn't mind her neighbors hearing it at this hour. She could go out for an early morning walk. She could walk all the way to her coltfriend's house and politely ask him to join her for twenty minutes before work and school so they could talk about their feelings and their dreams. She could even go back to sleep. Okay, that last one is just wishful thinking.

>>156678
Amber really doesn't want to lose those ethereal notes forever, so at the risk of upsetting her neighbors she tries her best to recreate them in the real world. She grabs her mandolin and tries to match tempo, pitch, and every other characteristic of the music, though she can never truly match it.

Perform: [1d20+3 = (9+3) = 12]