Celestia's Finest: Featherless Flock

[Elbeyon]

I figured this is between the party and before we got called on the new mission.

Speaking about my pm that lead you here. Maybe, this is the first time Star Chaser has been to Love's place. That might make things more fun, organic. Yeah, maybe, that's a better idea. :smallbiggrin:
A few days ago - Love texts Star Chaser, "Want to hang out this weekend at my place? I've got a surprise."

Love hardly ever uses her apartment. Instead, she's surely in the basement like usual. The stairs are down that musty dark alleyway. A flickering light illuminates the path down, the only way forward is through the darkness to the lit platform below.

[Miltonian]

Star Chaser gallops down the alleyway at full tilt. Boosting herself into the air, she draws her electrolaser pistol with one, fluid motion and fires several well-placed shots at a the small pack of Diamond Dogs chasing her. One hits the leader right on the nose and he falls with a whimper. The others all take cover. Star Chaser takes one glance at the entrance to Love's basement and dives down the stairs. She gets to the bottom and knocks loudly. To herself, she mutters, "She wasn't kidding when she said she lived in a bad part of town."

[Elbeyon]

Love's soul jumps out of her body at the loud knock. Here she was counting the seconds going by and the time had finally come. Love checks the video, see's Star Chaser, triggers a physical switch on a nearby wall to open the door, and nervously runs to try to greet her before the door closes behind her. Reaching in a huff, she holds her rapid heart. Beating so loud, she's afraid her girlfriend will hear it.

Love had been redecorating the past two days straight. As comfortable as her home was to her, she figured a more comfortable, normal style would make a better first impression. Once a ponies' eyes get use to the comparatively bright light, they could see they now stand in the foyer. The entrance walls were stone. The floor wood, and polished. The wood almost certainly fake. Plants dot the wall. A lamp hangs overhead, but the room is too lit to for that to be the only light source. A fanciful rug rolls out to the entrance and exit. The air is dry and warm like standing next to a fireplace. A stark contrast to the cold, wet outside. It looked like some pony traveled back in time and stole the style. Not a bad thing necessarily, it certainly captured that home, comfy feel to it.

Love continues to breath heavy as she catches her breath.

[Miltonian]

The instant the door opens, Star Chaser dives inside and slams it shut. She then uses whatever passes for a lock and presses her back against it, breathing hard. "Sweet Celestia!" she says. Her eyes fall on Love and some of the tension evaporates from her. "Love! In the future, I vote we meet at a nice cafe. Either that, or you get me a license to carry a bigger gun when I'm not on-duty. Those Diamond Dogs were after me and they did not want to sell me the latest issue of Smithstallion, if you know what I mean."

She nuzzles Love's cheek. "Good to see you again."

[Elbeyon]

Love chuckles, exhausted. "I'll keep that in mind, Sunshine." She's breathing just as hard as Star Chaser even though she ran only the length of the house. "I know just the cafe." She gives one last hard sigh before she straightens up and tries to regain her normal composure. The hard breaths fall off in favor of quiet short ones.

Chuckling. "I'll look into a bigger gun for you."

Love returns the nuzzle and an extra peck on the cheek. Her own cheeks lighting up red and a smile, moving across her mouth.

She motions Star in with the wave of the hoof. "Come in." She points to the chromebot by the door. "Feel free to leave anything with the bot that you want." She starts walking. "The bathroom is there." She points to a door. "Are you hungry?"

She starts leading her to the dinning area. The stone wall coverings stopped in the foyer, and everything was wood or carpet now. The room has a massive table in the middle with seats for twenty something ponies. There is a bit of greenery in here too, and the walls don a few paintings. All natural landscapes. Again the room has a measure of refinement to it, but the focus is always on that comforting style. The place looks lived in, with odd little defects and personal oddities that don't really fit the theme of the room.

The kitchen is nearby. A few love's are in the background doing their own thing and eating.

"I haven't personally eaten yet. You in the mood for anything specific? I have a couple meals prepared for myself." She looks into the kitchen. A lovebot sends her a thumbs-up sign.

[Miltonian]

Star Chaser removes her saddlebags and hands them over to the bot. "Quite hungry," she replies, "I didn't get much for breakfast. Had to run by HQ and drop off a form so Red Tape could get it properly filed. Day late already. I'm a pilot, not a paper-pusher."

She takes a look around and a grin spreads across her face. "Well now," she says, winding up, "I suppose you could say that there's a lot of Love to go around here." She giggles and slides into a seat. "I'll take whatever you're making, Love. I'm pretty easy to please. On the station, they used me as a trash disposer whenever they had leftovers. Then I got down here and found out that they used dogs for that planetside." She pauses. "That's not true, by the way. My parents didn't feed their foal table-scraps. They were better than that."

[Elbeyon]

"Very hungry? Good! Food seems alright. I've heard no complaints... from me." She is happy to change the subject to work. Paperwork, apparently. "That's totally unfair. You really should have gotten more vacation days. The paperwork never ends. If we ever did as much as they wanted we wouldn't actually have any time to do work!"

She takes a seat across from her, a few second walk around the table. Love gives a nervous laugh. "You're not weirded out by the idea that there is more than one of me in the house?" The Lovebots start to hide. A duo of chromebots start bringing out dishes. There is little rhyme or reason to them, and certainly no theme. They are specialty dishes from all around Equestria. Love gives another nervous laugh. "That's such a strange thing for you to say." More nervous Chuckling. Oh Luna! Love's mind fills up on garbage data. Pie charts. Current working formulas. Invention ideas. Shooting bad guys. It's all work related! She freezes as she can't think of what normal ponies would talk about at a dinner table.

[Elbeyon]

"Are you nervous? I'm nervous." She chuckles. Love pulls her laptop out of her saddle bag onto the food covered table. A few keystrokes, a button press, and she triggers her 'surprise.' The gravity turns off. Love looks up to her intently to watch her reaction.

[Miltonian]

"It's not so bad," Star Chaser insists, reaching for the food the moment it's in front of her, "Besides, it was for the Firebird. She's my baby and if it'll keep her in the sky, I'll sacrifice all my vacation days." She smiles sheepishly. "Nights, though, that'd be a bit of a stretch."

"Oh no, it doesn't seem strange to me," Star Chaser says, "It did when I first met you, but then I realized that you," She points directly at Love, "Are only one of these at a time. If they all spoke and acted independently of you? Like, copies or something? That'd be weird." She digs into the food. "Actually," she says with a chuckle, "When you said I was going to meet you in your lab, the first thing I thought was 'Well, I guess I'll get to find out how those mares in all the old mad science films felt when they walked in, got grabbed, and strapped to a medical table'. So yes, I was a little nervous. But this is nice inst--" The gravity turns off. Star Chaser's eyes go wide. She lunges for her plate and the food on it before it all floats away and begins scarfing it down like, well, like Rose.

[Elbeyon]

That's not the response she was expecting. She starts cracking up while watching her eat. "Ops! I didn't mean to laugh. You caught me off guard." Tears start to form up. Ah! That's better. A little of the normalcy was gone. Now, this is more Love's type of environment. Putting her laptop away, Love starts floating around after one of her more favored trays, a caramelized apple platter.

Sunshine's flirting with her completely missed, she admits, "It's weird! They, me, do act independently!" She starts dog paddling. "We're all the same pony, but while my brain rents out space we're not the same pony. I have to reintegrate with them in order to reset the starting mark. Mix and repeat every night! I'm literally eleven different ponies every day!"

[Miltonian]

Star Chaser pauses in her panicked snacking. With a gentle flap, she guides herself over to Love and gently takes hold of her by the shoulders. They spin slightly in the air. "So if I did this." She carefully wraps Love in a hug. "Or this." She gently rubs a hoof up and down Love's spine. "But then, I went and did the same thing to a different...er, 'Love', then at the end of the day, you'd combine memories and remember the same event, one watching the other feeling?" She lets go and drifts away a little bit. "That...how do you do that? I'd get lost if I had to process that many memories."

[Elbeyon]

Love returns the hug in kind, starting to blush. Even more so when Sunshine starts rubbing her back! Star Chaser doesn't have an easy time escaping Love's grasp as she thought she would. Love clings to her before releasing.

Love sheepishly nods. "Yep. Then, the next day each of me would remember being hugged by you. Eleven times in total, so far. How clingy of you!" Love mocks an adventurous pose with her hooves on her hips, spinning in circles as a straight plank. Flashing a grin, "Ten fold is hardly enough!"

She puts her hoof to her chin. "I'm not sure on the process. I'm no medical doctor. And, I'm too scared to go to any else to figure it out. They'd want to study me or something. I've just accepted it. It's something I've been able to do since I was a filly." She starts swimming toward her. "I don't have to process anything. They're my own memories. I simply recall stuff like everypony. Only, I have a few more memories than anypony else."

[Miltonian]

Star Chaser nods. "Huh." With an amused expression, she watches Love's attempts to reach her. "See, this is why they didn't allow earth ponies in zero g. Once they get stuck in the middle of a room, it could take days for them to get to a wall again without help." She flaps, flips, and comes up behind Love, wrapping her forelegs around the cyber-pony's barrel and resting her chin in Love's mane. "So you get to ride the Star Chaser express. Where to? Back to food and then onto games and movies and fun?"

[Elbeyon]

"Ah ha! I'm not any pony though. If I so desired to escape I'd spin my way to freedom." She smiles, proud of herself. "I've had a little zero-g training since last time you've seen me. I had to if I wanted to be a part of your world." Love holds on tight to her engine. She can't help but blush at the whole scenario. "First stop? To the table!"

To be clear: Love's not in a bot right now. That's why she was so out of breath just running to the door.

[Miltonian]

"Excellent choice! Food!" Star Chaser suddenly dives and 'lands' right on the table. Releasing Love, she begins to stuff her face once more, occasionally batting something Love's direction since she can't move around quite so easily in mid-air.

"I need to get one of these things," Star Chaser says with a sigh, "This is so relaxing right now." She 'lays' backwards and just lets herself drift. Contented sighs come from her and she closes her eyes. "Take away the sound of cars in the background and this kind of feels like how things were growing up."

[Elbeyon]

"Not quite." Love grabs the side of the table and starts inching her way across the room.

"This was only the first gift. You know that I'm giving you this generator? It's yours to keep. If you're enjoying it so much, maybe I should get one to keep around here too." Ah ha! Love pulls a box out from under the table. Pieces of duct tape stuck to it. She opens the case and starts pulling obviously fake lasers out of it. "Now, surprise two."

Love shouts, "Pull!" A lovebot "runs" out on to the dining room floor in a poorly made giraffe costume. Made of patches and slightly sagging back and forth as the lovebot moves. The curious nature of the guns becoming all too obvious. Laser Tag. "There are ten other loves in this house. You've already hunted me down." Love places a hoof over her heart. "Want to get the rest?"

[Miltonian]

Her eyes shine like diamonds. "Love, I could kiss you right now."

Star Chaser seizes one of the pistols and examines it, making sure she knows how it works. She grins and strikes a dynamic pose. "I swear upon the love we share, I shall strike all of you down!" she says with playful enthusiasm, "Wherever love hides, I shall find it! For I set my sights on the impossible and do not stop until it is within my hooves! I am the pegasus whose eyes are always on the far-away goals. I aim for the stars! For I am Star Chaser!" She bows.

[Elbeyon]

Love rolls her eyes and playfully says, "Well, I'm not against a little smooching."

Sunshine's speech is truly an inspiration! She claps dramatically and cheers as Chaser bows. "You've conquered me twice!" Love grips the fur around her heart. A sly grin sneaks on to her face. "And, don't worry. I won't be hiding."

The giraffelove stomps and she pulls out a tag rifle. Dramatic music plays on cue. A loud, dramatic cocking noise comes from the giraffe's fake gun, obviously too fake to be real. It must have been played over a tiny speaker.

Scene? I was thinking Star Chaser and Love could have some fun with their game. Eventualy, Love would invite her to a movie and popcorn on the couch. And, she'll see if it's alright if all the love's join her in watching the movie.

We could hit a couple posts on that scene? Or, if you're fine with it we could call it a wrap. The duo have a fun, innocent first date. Ten love's playfully fighting over popcorn, making a mess while enjoying the movie with their girlfriend. :smallbiggrin:

[Miltonian]

Sure! That can be the end. But I do have one question. Who wins at Laser Tag?

[Elbeyon]

Hm. Star Chaser and Love vs ten Lovebots. Love is competitive... She would have tried to make sure the match was close as possible, to put up a good fight. Shall we let the dice decide? :smallbiggrin: A quick contest roll off or something like that?

[Miltonian]

Sure!
Star Chaser's Shooting: vs 12
Star Chaser's Dodge: [roll]3d6 vs 9

Edit: I rolled in the rolling thread...she got an 18 for dodging.

[Elbeyon]

A quick game of tag. Love's not going to be much help to Star Chaser. :smalleek:

Love
[roll0] vs 10 Beam Weapons/TL 10 (Rifle)
[roll1] vs 7 Dodge

Lovebots
[roll2] vs 13 Beam Weapons/TL 10 (Rifle)
[roll3] vs 9 Dodge

[Miltonian]

Love and Star Chaser face off against the Lovebots. Things start off well. The bots only engage a few at a time and, with their skills combined, they manage to down several of them. Then, Star Chaser gets cocky. Convinced that her expertise in zero-g will allow her to impress Love, she leaps from cover and sends a burst of lasers downrange at the next group of bots. But they duck and return fire, striking her and putting her firmly out of the game. From that point, Love is easily flanked and taken down as well. The rest of the evening is spent eating popcorn and watching movies with Star Chaser firmly squished in the middle of lots of Love. It's a weird experience, even for the most open-minded pony, but she doesn't complain. And, worn out, she falls asleep right there before the movie is even over, nestled against the real Love's chest.