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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

There's too much adding up. Too much weird nonsense to dismiss it. Artolo wants to go run around the entire enclosure nonstop, because his brain is pumping out too much energy. Instead, he stays, jittery but in place.

"Think we should do that again? With that guy?"

"I don't know."

Pinkie looks down at her hands, laying still and curled up in her lap. "He's gonna make us more like we are in those things, right? I dunno if I can do that, but...I don't like being like this either." She thinks she might be more at ease if all her weird long limbs and skinny weak fingers were just gone. But you can't just be a horse. It'd be the end of her career for sure, and then what?

Aw shit.

This is some Feelings Territory, and Artolo realizes he should have seen this coming, but he didn't, because he's a jackass. Shit. He freezes up for a moment, wondering how the hell he's going to respond to this.

"Well... What's not to like about how you are now?"

Pinkie looks down at her hands and chews on her lip a little.

"I dunno." What doesn't she like? What does she like? "I like my hair? And...my clothes are okay." She sort of likes her tattoos, maybe. They still don't seem quite right, but it's nicer to have them than to not.

Hair and clothes, alright. That's simple enough. Good and aesthetically pleasing, he can roll with that. Rubbing the back of his neck. Is there anything about himself he doesn't like? He thought no, but then weird eye nonsense happened, and here they are.

"Maybe... You won't figure out what you like until it shows up." He fiddles with his glasses. "Like, I thought I was okay with my eyes, but now they're like this, and it doesn't... feel as weird as I guess it should be." He shrugs. "Like, this is how I want them, and I just didn't know it before."

Pinkie nods, then leans her chin down on her knees. She likes the sound of that, in a way. "I don't think I can be how I wanna be. Like, you know you can't let them see your eyes." She doesn't mean it as advice, because he obviously already knows that. It's just that he knows the danger too.

"But you can't hide everything that easy." Particularly not a persistent desire to walk on four limbs and not have fingers anymore.

"Yeah, that's what Tooru said." Sure, he said a lot of things, some of them just plain shithive maggots, but it's hard to deny now that the adrenaline has... sort of eased up. Artolo still thinks it's a temptation to go running out the nearest window, but that's just him.

"I guess if it ever got that bad... Shit, I cannot even believe I'm repeating this, but maybe, like... Staying in Pride wouldn't be viable or something, you know?" Every single word is practically dragged out of him reluctantly. Considering his own condition, he doesn't want to consider it either. Things could very easily get worse, after all.

Pinkie blinks at him. The words don't seem to really make sense. Well, it does, but at the same time it really doesn't.

"What would I do then?" She can't go back home. She doesn't even really remember where it is she used to live. Pride is sort of a terrible place lately, but it's not like there's any other options.

"Fuck if I know." Yeah, he's got nothin'. In theory, it's the obvious solution, but putting it into practice seems impossible somehow. "Think maybe Helmet would let us crash on his couch?"

Pinkie considers this suggestion seriously for a moment.

"Do you think he even HAS a couch?" He always seems to kinda just...appear. And then vanish. Pinkie's not even entirely sure he's not a ghost. "It's kinda weird to think about him with like, a house and normal things."

"Have you see the freak's wardrobe?" Artolo counters immediately. "I refuse to believe that there is a hobo walking around looking that good. I mean, come on."

3 ♊ Take your dark days

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