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[truefriendship]

Who: My Little Phonies
Where: All around the mansion
When: 10/19 - 10/21
Rating: THIS IS A CHILDREN'S SHOW
Summary: Starlight Glimmer is making poor life choices. Everyone else gets to suffer now.
The Story:

Maybe you're outside, enjoying the fall weather. Maybe you're in the kitchen, or just wandering the halls. It doesn't matter. As soon as you lay eyes on that purple pony, walking around with a cyan-glowing horn and an insufferably smug look on her face, your world will twist.

Suddenly you're on four hooves, not two feet. You have a mane. Maybe you're lucky enough to have wings, or a horn. You aren't a human now. You're a pony, your special talent emblazoned on your flank to show the world who you are.

But clearly, this is how things have always been, right? Pay no attention to your memories of hands, this is normal now.


[ooc: Feel free to make your own top levels and go wild! See here for ooc plotting. Also here if you want to make a custom pony.]

Comments

[ssmisery]

Lapis knows nothing of Titans, and, being Lapis, doesn't care about the details anyway. There's a lot in the work ethic of a soldier training for battle that's beyond her grasp as well, which she realizes. Heck, practicing for something that's not in Wonderland won't do any good anyway, will it?

-- Ugh, that's a thought. "How nice. Are those things an event we can look forward to someday?"

[angewiesen]

Jean had realized long ago that his training here meant nothing back home, but he couldn't find it in himself to stop. He'd been doing it for years, and sitting around made him feel like a layabout. Plus--

"Totally possible," he replied with an edge of irritation in his voice. He wasn't happy about it either. "I've heard from people that've been here longer than me that people from my world have been here before, and Titans did end up attacking eventually... So, yeah. Lightning can strike twice."

[ssmisery]

Goody. At least this means she knows where to aim, if there's ever a sudden titan emergency? Lapis is quite sure she'd still rather be nowhere near any such thing. She's still technically a civilian, dangit!

"They look creepy," she declares flatly and decisively, as if that were a conclusion reached after hours of research. QED! "You do this a lot?"

[angewiesen]

"They're way creepier in the flesh," Jean snorted (something he was quite good at now that he had a horse nose). "They're not just huge, they're... Off. You can only really tell when you see one."

"Yeah. It's a part of my job back home. It's not one many people decide to take on either. There's a pretty low survival rate..."

His ears fell. They'd lost nearly the entire force reclaiming Shiganshina. He predicted that long beforehand, but somehow, it didn't make it hurt any less.

[ssmisery]

"I mean this." Lapis indicates the dummies, the training setup, waving a hoof. She flies around aimlessly a lot, and if Jean regularly sets up this big ol display she should have seen it by now -- and she probably has, at that, but seeing isn't the same thing as taking notice. That's not important. "This is normal for you, right?"

[angewiesen]

"Oh, you mean training with the dummies? Sometimes. Usually I set them up in the outskirts of the forest," because he needed the trees to grapple onto in order for his gear to work optimally.

Wait. Gear? What kind of gear? Why would he need anything to help him to fly? He had wings! Jean shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts.

"But there's the hologram room too. Rocket's tweaked it to make... What'd'y'callit. Virtual. Virtual Titans. It's pretty on point there, almost in vivo."

[ssmisery]

Yeah, that's silly, forests are terrible for flying in. If she weren't so apathetic, Lapis would almost have the urge to wingsplain. Other pegasi can take care of themselves, of course.

"Huh. I've never been." Since Lapis has, uh, difficulty getting around inside the mansion, rooms like that do genuinely fall outside her aimless wandering range. That one really isn't something she'd be interested in anyway, though. "Why even bother with all this instead?"

[angewiesen]

"The Virtual Reality Room is good, but it's not perfect. Sometimes you've got to feel real wind, and real gravity to get some proper practice in..."

"...Are you ever inside the Mansion? I feel like I never see you in there."

[ssmisery]

"I have a room." As is often the case with her, it's hard to say whether she's missed the point genuinely or on purpose. Lapis doesn't often care to justify herself.

[angewiesen]

"Everyone has a room. Peridot said she shares one with you. That doesn't mean they stay in there... Or, apparently, have any belongings."

That's right. He knew you went on a "vacation," and that Peridot didn't know if you were gone for good or not because you didn't have any things to disappear like they do when someone's lost forever.

"If you're just a rock on the inside, and don't need to eat or sleep, you don't need to stay in a room."

[ssmisery]

"Yeah, well, there's also this thing called privacy. I tend to like it."

[angewiesen]

"There's a difference between liking your privacy and being a total hermit... come to think of it, you always use text on the network too. What's up with that?"

[ssmisery]

"What's wrong with that?" Lapis paws a hoof at the ground, starting to get indignant. By this point, her use of text is just a habit and doesn't really have anything to do with her hashtag-triggers anymore, but it probably does relate to being a hermit. And she didn't come here to justify her lifestyle, anyway! "Look, have you noticed anything weird going on today?"

[angewiesen]

"Nothing wrong, it's just kinda antisocial..."

He paused, and perked an ear at her change of subject.

"Weird? Nothing's weird. I'm just doing my training, like always..."

Though, he still remembered this being a lot harder for some reason. He flicked his tail in thought, then looked back at the sheathes he was keeping his blades in. Although they were all in order, he felt like he was missing something.

[ssmisery]

Lapis scowls and flattens her ears. That evidently wasn't the answer she wanted; she can't accept it, even if she's not certain of why. The pawing becomes more agitated. (She can't really fold up her body language the way she normally would, so even being tense about not feeling quite right doesn't feel quite right.)

"I'm missing something," she mutters. "There's -- something I was trying to figure out."

[angewiesen]

"...Weird. I kinda feel that way too. Like-- my gear isn't right."

He looked back at it again in annoyance. He lifted his wings, and then folded them again. And repeated the motion. Twice. Then he walked a circle around Lapis.

"You look right though. You're the same color as always."

[ssmisery]

Lapis glances back at herself too, lifting a wing as if there could possibly be some sort of physically hidden secret to find. She does not bother to inspect Jean in turn; she's much less interested in him than in herself, and she's not really qualified to go around appraising Earthlings. They all tend to look a little samey to begin with.

"It can't be a memory thing, can it? What are things we've talked about before?"

[angewiesen]

"Stuff we've talked about?" Jean knocked his head to the side, and then thoughtfully sat down on his rump. "We have a lot of 'cultural exchanges,'" (hoof made air-quotes included) "And... I dunno, fishing? Depressing stuff. You asked once on one of your posts if anyone feels like they're a different person than who they were when they first came here."

So no, his memory was pretty good.

[ssmisery]

The wing closes again, and Lapis falters, her muzzle scrunching up. Since she's merely a pony-shaped gem, she still has a stone embedded in her back as always; but since she IS pony-shaped, she can actually see it a little. Like, it's still kinda awkward (especially with MLP's freaking giant heads and tiny bodies) but that's a heck of a lot better than a humanoid body can manage without outside assistance or shapeshifting.

And there's something fundamentally weird, fundamentally foreign, about properly catching sight of herself. If she wasn't already sure something was wrong, somehow that little detail would clinch it. Still, if she can't put her hoof on why, it's just another vague off feeling, adding no new clues to the mystery. All she can do is stubbornly hold onto that feeling and hope to do something with it before it slips away again.

All that said... she shakes her head, turning it back to Jean. The memories check out so far and that's probably not even the right lead, but she has to pursue something, and that means pushing for specifics.

"What do you know about gems so far?" It's the first followup that comes to mind given her train of thought, but to be fair, if we're generally sorting out facts it's not an unreasonable question; she knows she's not the only one he's talked to.

[angewiesen]

"Well, you're rocks. You've all got a rock on you somewhere and that's you-- whatever shape you take isn't really alive, it's just like... a tool."

"And you aren't totally unique, like humans are. Peridot told me there's actually tons of other Peridots running around, so there's probably more Lapises and Pearls and what-not. You're all made-- by who, I don't know-- to do a certain job that you know how to do right away and that's... All you do. You and the others here live on Earth and you've broken away from, uh, what'd'you'callit. Homeworld. And you do what you want, which is a weird thing for Gems to do. You're all rebels or something. And you're really proud of it too."

[ssmisery]

She listens patiently without any outward reaction. It's a pretty decent summary, for the most part -- from Lapis's perspective, not a summary of gems, but a summary of what things a non-gem finds notable. All culture and society, little cold hard data about how they actually work, which goes to show that he has been talking to her a lot.

He's not right about everything, of course, although it's good of him to be so cooperative. "What do you know about me?" she continues, on a cautious whim. A question like that can be dangerous, and she generally can't afford to spare much concern for what anyone else thinks of her, but somehow she's surprisingly curious now.

[angewiesen]

"Like, about you? Or about you?"

Sorry, he didn't really know how else to get that across. Her as Lapis the Gem or her as Lapis, the individual being?

[ssmisery]

That gets a raised brow and a dry "What, has someone been saying things about me?" Once again it's not clear to exactly what extent she got what he meant and would simply rather be sarcastic.

[angewiesen]

"Nah, not like that," Jean raised a hoof thoughtfully. "I mean about you, Lapis, not you Lapis the Gem. I've never heard anyone aside from Peridot say anything about you anyways."

[ssmisery]

Lapis gives a horsey shrug, which is also a lot like just stretching her back and shoulders. It looks comfy. She runs out of her limited curiosity fast, though. "I dunno. It's not like you've met any other Lapis Lazulis to compare. We're not even that common on Homeworld."