interstellar5555 | 3 ♊ Take your dark days

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3 ♊ Take your dark days

Who: Artolo Apemis and any Pride who will put up with him for an extended period of time
What: Art is going lion shopping. This is not slang of any sort. You've been invited.
When: Throughout the day of February 11th
Where: Roman's Animal Sanctuary
Warnings: None planned. Feel free to treat this as a mingle log

For there to be any extended space in Vista City, things tend to be... crowded. It's the obvious solution when a city gets big enough. Roman's Animal Sanctuary has the delightful honor of having established a space the size of a baseball field some time before the city swallowed it up. The problem became when they needed to expand, but simply couldn't.

The solution: Get with the times and build upwards.

With high ceilings on all floors meant to cycle through different times of day in accordance with actual daytime, enormous windows, and certain measures taken to mimic appropriate weather, Roman's is half a zoo (to help fund its upkeep) besides just being an animal sanctuary for various abused or abandoned animals of the more exotic sort.

This includes lions.

Coincidentally, lions are why you're here.

Somehow, one Artolo Apemis has invited you to go what he called "lion shopping" and that, as it turns out, is not slang even remotely. Roman's been alerted of this high profile visit from a bunch of Pride jackasses, and is more than happy to allow the musicians to check out some of the staff areas behind the scenes instead of just being stuck in the public areas. Yes, you can feed the publicly approved llamas and goats plus large animals with sharp teeth. Under strict supervision, of course.

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Pinkie sniffles, tilting her face away from the pony's neck to look at Artolo. "Yeah, I guess..." She doesn't sound entirely convinced; nor does she look like she's about to get up.

"I dream about ponies sometimes, but I've never really met one before." They aren't really dreams. It happens during the day, and she knows daydreams don't work like that. It just seems like the best way to put it. How do you explain to people that you think about being a pony a lot?

Cautiously, because for some reason hooved things bring that out in him against all odds, Artolo starts his way to her. Other ponies are given as much of a birth as he can manage, considering he's in the pony pen. It's not really successful.

"What kind of dreams?"

Luckily, the ponies generally seem pretty calm. They're inclined to ignore people who don't look like they're going to give out food or affection.

"I dunno," Pinkie lies. "Just dreams, I guess. Not like, ohmygosh I really want a pony kinda dreams! I don't think Jin would let me do that anyway." She pauses thoughtfully for a second before asking: "How come you're allowed to get a lion now?" Last she heard, Artolo's manager wasn't even all that cool with the cats.

That is a fantastic question. One that Artolo doesn't answer right away. He just focuses on making his way to stand near Pinkie, frowning a little with his hands shoved into his pockets.

"So." A pause and he clears his throats. "Lesedi Santiago talked to me. Earlier. Like, to my face, in person." It's an experience he's still not really over, honestly. He wishes he could say it's for positive reasons.

"Oh." Pinkie blinks, raising her head from the pony's mane, though she keeps her arms lightly looped around its neck. "That's...what happened?"

She talked to Lesedi once, and she thought it went okay. She'd actually thought they could've been friends! But, well, that was before a lot of other things happened. Maybe it didn't even happen the way she remembers it.

"Yeah." More than awkward, he rubs the back of his neck. The sudden raise, well, frankly, even he'd chalked it up to some sort of clerical error. Apartment? Well, even An could only tolerate his complaints for so long.

It's a lot harder to make up excuses when the CEO of your label actually comes to meet you face to face.

"I guess I'm doing well... somehow."

"I thought your manager didn't like you."

Pinkie's got just enough tact not to mention that she thought most of the higher-ups disliked Artolo. Managers are a different matter - it seems like nobody really gets along with them anymore. She can't imagine that it was always like that.

"She... didn't." A weird kinda grimace crosses his face. The whole thing is kind of freaking him out, honestly. "I guess the boss ass bitch herself coming personally for me has put her in a good mood. She hasn't been riding my ass nearly as much as she used to when I first got with the band."

He knew he had done a few things that had turned out popular... But he hadn't figure they were that well received.

Pinkie sits back on her heels, tucking a stray curl behind her ear as she frowns. "Weird. But I mean...I guess that's good, right?" Lesedi scares her, frankly. She wouldn't want to spend a lot of time with her. But even so, it's better for her to like you than to not.

"I guess." Artolo doesn't really sound sure. Still, he guesses it's happened whether he likes it or not. "If nothing else, now I have two places outside the penthouse to fuck off to whenever I'm getting annoyed. If HQ ever gets too goddamn weird for you, you're free to call me and just hang out at either Cat Pit or the soon-to-be Lion Hole."

"Okay."

Pinkie leans back and stares disconsolately at the pony. "I mean, that's super nice, but I dunno if it'll help. Things are just plain weird, y'know? Like, not even just there." It's her, really. She doesn't want to say that, but it's true.

There are reasons he should probably stop talking to Tooru, and the fact that what, do you have a poltergeist following you is one of the first questions that springs to mind is evidence of it. Shoving the thought out of his mind, he tilts his head to the side. "Like... how?"

"Like..."

Pinkie seems hesitant. But Artolo's her friend, right? "I dunno. Sometimes I just see weird stuff, like in my head." She pauses and lets that sink in, before giving an extremely half-hearted laugh. Mistakes have been made. "Wow, that sounds like twenty percent more crazy than I meant!"

Oh.

"That stuff," he says, twenty-two different kinds of awkward. "That's. Yeah. Apparently that's a regular thing?" At least, if the weird theory Tooru threw out at him has any merit. So much weird shit, does it really? He has no idea, here.

Pinkie blinks.

"It is?" Guess whose band never really talks to each other much about weird vision stuff.

To be fair? CoT doesn't either, except for a certain volleyball obsessed and chatty cellist... Artolo shrugs.

"I guess? Or, at least, definitely me." And definitely Tooru, but Artolo is taking that to his grave. He's not letting his best friend get in anymore trouble than he's already smashed himself into to start with. "I just thought I was tripping, honestly."

...Which isn't a possibility he's ruling out, but he should be sober by now, and the eyes are still a thing.

"Really?"

Pinkie draws her knees up to her chest, suddenly all attention. She never thought this might be happening to anybody else! In a lot of ways, it's probably her own fault; she's deliberately kept it secret from everyone else. "I thought I was just going crazy or something!"

Her relief is obvious. Still, she glances around to make sure no one else is near before she continues. Just because it's maybe not crazy doesn't make it sound any more normal. Ordinarily she wouldn't mind so much, but...it seems really bad to attract that kind of attention around here. "So, uh...like, how weird is it for you?"

How weird is it for him?

Shoulders a bit hunched because that is a horse, he steps closer to her as if he's checking the animal out. What he's really doing is getting close enough so that when he nods his head down and tips his shades, she's the only one who can see his fun new eyes.

Bright blue and red.

"Pretty goddamn weird so far."

Pinkie gasps at the reveal, but quickly glances over his shoulder and schools her face back to normal. He's obviously keeping it secret, and that's probably the best thing to do.

"Oh, wow." she whispers, rising to her knees to get close enough to be heard. She runs her hand over the pony's neck, turning her gaze to it instead. Yeah, see, they're totally petting the horse! "I just woke up with some big tattoos. I'd show you, but they're kinda on my thighs. Did you...have those in the memories?"

Having shown his clear distaste for ponies, fortunately all he needs to do is nudge his shades back into place.

"Yeah, uh, don't take off your pants in public, that's usually frowned upon." Trying not to fidget too much, he listens to her more and frowns a little bit. "No... I mean, not yet, but hell, they keep coming. Maybe I'll remember something about thighs in an hour, or next week. I don't know what triggers them, sometimes they just happen." And then, fuzzily- "Wait, have you talked to any weirdos recently?"

Pinkie snorts a little, lightly. "Not tattoos, silly, I meant the eyes! 'Cause I...I don't remember having tattoos, but the picture's on things. Like, a lot of things." She can't recall ever getting a look at her own backside during those episodes; apparently whatever Pinkie that was didn't think it worth her notice. But all her belongings seemed to have blue balloons on them.

She does remember the weird guys, at least. "You mean the gold helmet guy?"

"Oh." A little awkwardly, he readjusts his shades even though there's no need for it. "No, no one has eyes like this, but... They're definitely not human eyes either, you know? Or at least, like, the few people I've seen in those weird visions. The whites are yellow instead, for one thing."

At the mention of the helmet, he perks up. "Yeah! You've seen him too?"

"I guess the people I see have the tattoos," Pinkie replies, somewhat doubtfully. Can you tattoo fur? Is it some kind of dye? But she doesn't have enough hair on her legs for that to work now.

Gold Helmet Guy is an easier topic! "Yeah!" She nods furiously, curls bobbing. "He's cool! We're like, jam buds or something! I mean, it's only been once or twice, but he seems nice!" She'd like to be friends with him. Admittedly, Pinkie would like to be friends with most people. Maybe it's because the helmet makes him seem super mysterious!

Once or twice, huh? Artolo rocks on his heels a bit. Maybe he's reading too much into things, but, still, an appearance like that, the weird request... He rolls his tongue in his mouth thoughtfully.

"...Do you think they did something?"

Pinkie thinks about the question for a moment, sucking on her lower lip. "Yeah...I mean, we jammed together, and it was sorta weird? Not like normal music, I mean." Maybe for some of the others; she's seen Greg and his special effects. But she's never experienced anything like that herself.

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