mylittlejamjar | [Visual/Locked from Kyouko]

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[Visual/Locked from Kyouko]

It's come to my attention that the winter holidays in this world are bearculiarly similar to Christmas, a holiday made for spending time with either a group of hot studs or your special somebody. Unlike last year, I'm sadly going to skip on the stud meeting - but please save me a slice of cake - as I'm no longer a single bear anymore.

As a lotta you are already aware, but I've been training myself mentally and physically to reach the top of the maturity ladder, and my training is telling me that I gotta prebear the most romantic date imaginable.

[Teddie's standing in one of the Agency rooms, arms behind his back. This entire time he's been wearing a pair of glasses in hopes to make himself look smarter, but seeing as he's Teddie, he only manages to make himself look more ridiculous. Behind him are a few crayon drawings taped to the wall. He smacks one of them with a small tree branch, his temporary pointing stick. It's a little difficult to make out, but anyone with a good eye might catch that it's a drawing of a familiar city.]

Now, my field research concluded that Canterloft is the most romantic destination this world has to offer.

[See, it's not spying if it's for research. But enough about past nonsense, Teddie points to the next drawing, something much more sparkly looking. It...it also looks like it's covered in glitter.]

But with the inclusion of the Sparkling Crystal Place, I'm exbeariencing a sudden case of what we in the science business like to call "a difficult choice." [The scroll pans to the corner of the room, giving a good shot at Teddie's turtle, Peek, next to another piece of paper taped to the wall. It's drawn in such a way that it's meant to look like an itty bitty chalkboard, question marks scribbled all over it. Peek herself is wearing a tiny pair of glasses, clearly representing the science business of Equestria.] I need to know if we're still allowed to go there, or if I have to come up with a new sporting event to make it all pawsible.

[The scroll then turns back to him, one paw nudging his glasses "professionally."]

Any and all opinions on this matter are appreciated, as well as any and all snacks as I am scientifically starving at the moment.

[As if on cue, his stomach proceeds to rumble, causing him to drop character and grab onto it in an overdramatic flair. The feed ends there.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Don't try what? Don't tell you to just cut me off now? Well I just did dunno what you're going to do about. Just say the word and I won't talk to the nerd again cause I don't need to deal with this.

Edited 2014-12-25 04:16 (UTC)

GUYS, c'mon, cut it out!

[It's about time Teddie said something.]

No one's not not talking to anyone, okay? We're all friends here.

I din't mean he's done talkin' ta ya, I meant I'm gonna pulverize him.

[ Simple matter-of-fact clarification. ]

Kyo-chan, he's my friend. I don't care what he says, you're not allowed to hurt him!

... You come first. He's not allowed to hurt you.

Pokey wouldn't hurt me. The drill arms go over my bear arms, I'm perfectly safe!

And if it does hurt, I'll just tell him and he'll stop.

... Hmrf.

[ She goes back to what she was doing before, disgruntledly. Which is leaning against a wall nearby and chewing on an apple. ]

Yeah, whatever.

I ended up hurting him, you'd be right to kick my butt.

...

Glad we agree on that, then.

If you care about him? You'll move on beyond just wanting to protect him. If you think he cant do it on his own, you'll help teach him to protect himself. I've been in a place like this before. I've done this before. And this next part? Isn't a threat.

He's going to get hurt here. Stay in a place like this long enough and you do. What you need to do is get ready for that. And be ready to help him after he is. And to deal with the hurt you'll feel after he's hurt.

Edited 2014-12-25 04:50 (UTC)

[ Well at least some of that rattles her. ]

that last part isnt goin 2 happen

can we talk? please

Why?

[Someone is being an obstinate asshole.]

because

cmon werent you gung ho about givin me advice 2 secs ago

I already have you a warning and you tell me I'm wrong. You don't want to listen to me, even though I did this crap for three years.

Why do you actually want to talk to me?

cause obviously u've done this b4 and i want to know what happened

figure out what the circumstances were so i can avoid it this time

u mustve done somethin wrong

u obviously care about him 2, u tellin me u dont want to help him

I must've done something wrong? I must've done something wrong?

I realize all the things I did wrong there all the time. But guess what I couldn't stop it when the town decided it was time to force us to kill each other for sport. I couldn't help it when it brought out invincible murder machines that burnt us alive in our house. I couldn't help it when it turned the town into a radioactive wasteland and I watched the few people I cared about die from it yeah clearly it happened because I did something wrong.

[Because he did something wrong. Because he did something wrong.

It hurt because, even when Mayfield flung unavoidable death at everyone, Pokey couldn't help but blame himself for it. Especially since so many of the early pain caused to those he cared about was his fault.]

You don't know anything about what I went through or what it was like. You can't imagine what it was like to have it happen, and you don't know what it was like to lose it.

Fine. Sure. Let's talk.

[And maybe if he teaches someone, the mistakes he made won't happen again, even if he thinks it's inevitable.]

SE corner of everfree. 2morrow noon.

-----

[ Kyouko sits at the edge of the forest, munching on some potato salad. What? She can't always be eating candy.

Besides, she's reserved the candy today for her guest. There's a picnic blanket spread out and all kinds of foods on it. Gobstoppers, rock candy, taffy, caramels, chocolates, even a couple of pies and cakes from the bakery. It's a feast.

Somebody's obviously raided Bon Bon's shop. ]

[She won't be waiting for long before the grumpiest little dragon finally shows up. He's oddly stone-faced for someone so usually snide and quick to emotion, though he raises an eyebrow at the food.]

What is this, a bribe or something?

[Before just taking a handful of chocolates and shoving them in his mouth and sitting down.]

Anything you want to know specifically? Cause hey you can ask a few things before I just tell you what I naturally want to warn you about. That's how nice a guy I am.

[ She folds her arms, letting the spoon fall into the bowl of salad with a CLANG. ] Go for it.

[ She wants him to get what he has to say off his chest. She shrugs. ] Was gonna ask ya what happened. Sounds like tha's a sore subject though.

[ Pulling an apple out of her pocket and wiping it on her hoodie, she glances down at the array of food. ] An s'not a bribe. [ She doesn't want to say it's pity. She doesn't think it is. ]

[Pokey's just about halfway through one of those pies already when Kyouko tells him it isn't a bribe. He just looks at her for a moment. Perhaps to Kyouko it wasn't pity, but to someone like Pokey...

Hell. He's not going to fight her over it. Free food is free food, and he's not going to turn that down.]

What happened when? In Mayfield? Yeah, we don't have the time to go through all of that. We'd be here forever. But you know what? I'll start off by telling you a story.

I'm a pretty bad guy. I know, I know, that's hard to believe and everything.

[He waves a little scaled hand at that, tiny dragon claws lazily cutting through the wind.]

But it's true. Was true. Maybe it still is, I dunno. But it started changing in Mayfield. A big part of that was because of the people I met there. You learn, real quick, in a place like that that you can't go things alone, not entirely and not if you really want to survive. You either lean on people because you have nothing else, or you get stomped on and crushed by the place. You can try, but the only ones who could really succeed at going entirely alone were the absolute psychos in that place. I don't mean anything like the jokers you've got running around here claiming their evil, I mean actual cold blooded psychos who tried to destroy the town on a relatively daily basis for fun.

Anyway, so one of the first people I met there was this little kid named Mindy. Far as I could tell, she was probably the youngest person there; she was like, six when I first showed up. So she comes around the neighborhood selling and giving away cookies or some crap, and I decided I'd play along and pretend to be her friend because, hey, stupid younger kid who would give me food and I could possibly manipulate if I needed to. It seemed like a pretty good deal.

[He doesn't sound particularly ashamed of his original plans of emotionally manipulating and taking advantage of a much younger child at the time, but then again? At the moment he doesn't sound particularly anything, and the fact that he doesn't look at Kyouko yet while telling his story and that he's consistently focused on stuffing his face while he talks doesn't make it any easier to get a bead on what he feels.]

....It didn't really work out that way. When you spend enough time with people who...I dunno...

People who like you, who actually like you...

[He shrugs. No one had liked him before, not really, no one but his brother and maybe his neighbor back in Onett. To have been liked was something Pokey wasn't used to. He had gotten so used to being ignored or hated for his behavior that he'd accepted that to be as good a form of attention as affection. Had learned to replace it, at least in a way, and to justify himself.

It had taken him so long to deal with being confronted with people who didn't know him and, because of that, gave him a chance. Who liked him. And while it hurts to talk about Mindy, there are plenty of more painful stories he could have told then this one, for various reasons.

He picks up a few taffies and tosses them in the air, catching them on his palm again and again.]

...I dunno. It did something, I guess. Like I said, if you don't learn to care back, you get your face kicked in by whatever a place like this has planned, or can do to you. And learning to care about others also gets you hurt.

So. I kind of ended up going from planning to use her as some weird little shield or minion to taking care of her.

[And then he stuffs the taffies in his face, going quiet, as if letting Kyouko process what he's said so far.]

Edited 2015-01-05 23:05 (UTC)

[ Kyouko, who's been listening quietly the whole time, takes the opportunity to take a huge bite of her apple. Those taffies are industrial-strength. They should keep even a dragon occupied for a little bit. ]

Then this place should be easier for ya. [ She agrees with him regarding evil -- the ponies here wouldn't know evil unless it stared them in the face and asked them to make a contract. ] Ponies here're practically beggin' ya ta be their friend. S'like their motto or somethin'.

[ Maybe the facade is breaking, and maybe Pokey can tell (or maybe he can't), but to Kyouko she realizes herself that she's less worried about taking care of Teddie. She's not actually that scared for him - he can fight, she can fight, they stick together almost all of the time.

She's worried about the little dragon in front of her eating all the candy. ]

I don't think so. Place like this? Doesn't work for me. It's some of the lamest crap I've ever seen, and I hate it.

[He shakes his head, still chewing on the taffy but by God he is somehow already almost done with it.]

I don't want to be their friend, and they aren't going to want to be mine, anyway. Not like it's any loss there. I'm blowing out of this place the first chance I get.

[And then?

Pokey just stares at Kyouko for a moment. He tilts his head, quizzically.

And then he starts just shoveling the food that's left into his mouth, trying to push great armfuls of it into his scaly maw.

You want some Kyouko? You're going to have to move quick.]

[ Kyouko still doesn't touch it, chewing on her apple. She brought the food for him. She offered it. She's not gonna start in on it unless he shows signs of wanting to waste it. ]

Good luck. Yer stuck here like the rest of us. [ The first apple finished, she tosses away its core and produces a second one, chomping into it. ]

Finish yer story. Wha' happened ta Mindy?

She was still alive, in the end. And happy. But?

I couldn't always manage to make it that way.

[He actually bothers not to eat during this part, at least. Maybe he doesn't think it'd be appropriate. Or maybe even his appetite is gone at this part.]

She was pretty lucky, as far as most of the people in Mayfield went. Most of us got killed a few times. She died a lot fewer. Most of the psychos there weren't willing to hurt a kid that young, I guess. Most of 'em, not all.

Most of the time, it was easy to take care of her. Things went too bad, I'd have her come over to the house the town saddled me with or I'd go to hers. She got scared easily, like I said she was just a twerp, but she could be distracted too. She was also naive, and that I couldn't always stop. Especially during the second Christmas I was there.

During that Christmas, the town decided to trick a lot of us into denying our own existences, and thus got the rest of the town to think we were weird copies of ourselves and not really ourselves, and everyone else was naturally made to feel repulsion around us. Of course, the town then also decided to encourage everyone who was 'normal' to kill those of us who 'weren't'. I was one of them. So was Mindy.

[He shrugs helplessly at the next part.]

She was just a kid. And all she knew was that she didn't want anyone to fight and she wanted everyone to have a Merry Christmas. So she thought she could get everyone to calm down by getting them to come decorate the giant Christmas tree the town had put in the middle of town with her. Again, not like there's many people who'd hurt a little kid.

But then there was Black Mage.

[Pokey can't help but let the obvious hatred he feels for the evil little wizard soak his voice.]

So imagine some creepy little guy who dresses in nothing but old, dirty black robes and a wizard hat so you can only see his dumb, piss yellow eyes and smells like a yak threw up over a skunk's butt sandwich, and you'll pretty much be imagining Black Mage. He was cruel, and evil, and immensely stupid. So, of course, he was also insanely powerful. He terrorized and scared a lot of people in town, but he liked scaring Mindy most of all.

So I thought I'd take care of it. So one day, my friend Slugger and I found him, beat him unconscious, warned him to stay away from Mindy, and burnt him to death.

Hey. Don't judge me. I thought it'd get the message across.

It didn't. I ended up lucking out and managing to kill him before he killed me a second time after I went to find him after he left a bag of unidentified meat at my front door.

[He pauses for a moment.]

...I didn't know what else to do. I mean, I thought I could strong arm him into leaving her alone, or at least distract him more. And he didn't bother her, at least for a while. Until Christmas.

So hey. You seem like you're a person who's seen a whole lot.

[He frowns, little teeth bared in anger as he talks.]

Gotta ask.

You ever seen a seven year old's corpse hung at the top of a Christmas tree?

[ Kyouko gags and almost throws up. She leans against the tree, her chest heaving. ]

N-no. I haven't. Th-that... bastard. [ Her eyes are filled with a wild hatred. She can't abide the thought of a child being hurt, much less killed. It fills her with horror and despair. ]

She... she's okay, though. [ She slumps against the tree, staring at her half-eaten apple, imagining maggots crawling out and devouring the whole thing, and her hand... she slides to the bottom. ] Still alive. Right?

[ But who could survive that sort of experience unmarked? It's a blow to any magical girl's mind for their body to be mutilated and then regrow. For a seven-year-old kid to be brutally murdered?

It makes Kyouko's stomach churn again, and the only thing keeping her food down is the desire not to waste a bit of it. ]

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