The Harmony Scrolls V: Manerim

Author's Note: This chapter is entirely optional, so feel free to skip it. But, if you like fluttershy stalking Alex, please, read! XD The Shadow Of Death was also an immense help on this chapter, and we had alot of fun producing It. Enjoy! :D

Alex opened his eyes, not quite sure what woke him up. It was still very early, with only the pale blue-grey of pre-dawn light creeping in through the windows. Everything was still in shadows. Rainbow dash was snoring lightly nearby, but that wasn't what woke him Alex realized with a start. There was a presence in this room, lurking in a nearby shadowy corner. It squeaked slightly when he stared at it.

"Fluttershy, what are you doing?!" Cried Alex, staring back at her, with a severely displeased look on his face. "Oh, uh, nothing Alex, just admiring this floor." She said in her timid voice. Alex frowned at her until she shuffled out, with her head down. Alex got up and started to get dressed quietly so as to not wake Rainbow Dash. "Ummm, would you like some breakfast?" Alex whipped around to look at Fluttershy. She was back in the doorway, head still looking at her hooves and the floor, but Alex thought he saw her sneaking looks around his middle. He suddenly became aware that he had yet to pull up his pants, having stripped nude when he went to bed."

He quickly pulled them up and said in clipped tones, "No, not right now thank you."

"Rainbow Dash, I caught fluttershy staring at me..." "Wha-what was that?", yawns Rainbow Dash, opening her eyes sleepily. "Fluttershy was staring at my, well, er..." "Was she really?", asks Rainbow Dash, in sly tones, "Well, can't say I blame her but she better cut it out." Alex huffs at Rainbow Dash's attempts to tease him, and he finishes getting dressed while Rainbow Dash pulls on her armor and equips her sword, making sure it's clear in its scabbard. Alex double checks as well with his sword.

The two go to the main hall, where the other Greybeards are eating breakfast. "Ummm, please sit. We're having scrambled eggs. You'll need your strength if you're going to go crawling around a dangerous dungeon full of scary things..." Alex pauses for a moment, but decides that breakfast is harmless and Fluttershy wasn't likely to try anything in front of others anyway. She was just too shy. "Alright then," he says eventually. Dash and Alex sit down side by side, across from the Greybeards. Alex takes care to sit at the seat furthest from Fluttershy. Might send a message, thought Alex.

Fluttershy gets up and goes to the kitchen to grab a couple more plates of scrambeled eggs for the two guests and when she returns she's balancing the plates on her outstretched wings, one to a wing. She carefully trots over to their side of the table and slides one of the plates in front of Rainbow Dash. She sidles up to Alex and proffers a wing, clearly inviting him to take the plate. "Ummmm, thank you," Alex says, grasping the plate. "Ohhhhhh," moans Fluttershy, barely audible but Alex and Dash both heard her.

It seems his fingers brushed her wings as he grabbed the plate. From his close proximity to the yellow Pegasus, it was quite apparent that her wings had twitched and that she wore the slightly vacant face of someone who is in apparant ecstasy, but trying to hide it.

Rainbow Dash hissed, and Alex winced slightly. He was starting to regret his decision to stay for breakfast, but so long as he didn't give her cause to come near again nothing else could go wrong, surely?

"Alex," hissed a voice.
Alex looked around, expecting to find Fluttershy hiding under the table or something, but it was just Dash.
"What is it?" he breathed.
"Look at the eggs," muttered Dash in obvious irritation, "What do they look like to you?"

Alex looked down and at first couldn't make head or tails of what he was looking at, but it dawned on him. If you considered the two curved mounds made of piles of bright yellow scrambled eggs, forming a curved, narrow valley between them and also the general shape the outline formed it look an awful lot like a...
"A flank. HER flank," she spat. "This is going way too far."
Dash got up, and with obvious effort she screwed a neutral expression on her face.
"Thank you for the meal," she said, in a diplomatic tone. She avoided looking at the yellow Pagasus, lest the anger she was disguising boil over, "We must be going however, if we are to recover the horn before nightfall."
With that, she turned on her rear hooves and marched out of the room. Alex got up, nodded at the other greybeards but avoided Fluttershy's gaze, and followed the blue pegasus out of the room. He found her some distance away back in their room in an obvious rage. She was pacing and muttering dark threats.

"Who does she think she is!" exploded Rainbow Dash suddenly.
"I know, I know," sighed Alex, "Let's just get out of here."
"I ought to take this sword and ram it down her throat!" exclaimed Dash, glaring out of the doorway back towards the main hall where her target was presumably still eating her meal.
"We might find it difficult to get away if you did that", chuckled Alex wryly "Besides, it should be me that does it. I'm the one she's going after."

Dash fell into a brooding silence and after a moment Alex asked, "Why are you taking it so personally anyway?"
"Well," she replied after a while, her voice now without its former heat, "We're together, we're partners, and...maybe something mo-...Well, she should know better anyway..."
Alex went crimson, and for the first time so did Dash, the red glow just visible through her blue coat, contrasting with it to make it stand out quite clearly.
"Right," spoke up Alex, breaking the flustered silence, "You're right, we are partners."
Dash look up at his face and a grin formed on her own.
He knelt down so his own face was level with hers, "And maybe...No, definitely more."

He kissed her and it felt like the world around them slipped away, to be replaced with a warmth that glowed and suffused them to their very soul.

Tthe sound of hooves on stone rapidly retreating brought the rest of the world rushing back and they broke apart. Alex turned around just in time to see the tip of a pink tail slipping around a distant corner of the hall.

"Well," said Alex, a little awkwardly, "Maybe now she'll stop bothering me."
Rainbow Dash just grinned up at him.

As Alex and Rainbow Dash readied themselves to leave, Fluttershy came trotting up to Alex, who refused to look in the yellow Pegasus' cyan eyes.

"A-Alex?" squeaks a timid voice from behind him.
"Yes, what is it?", responds Alex, looking a bit cautious.
"I...I'm sorry for bothering you...I didn't know you and her were...Together," she blushes
"Um, that's ok," he replies, obviously relieved.
"Before you leave though, can I ask you something?" inquires Fluttershy, a bit more assertively.
"Well, alright then." he says, taken aback at her change in demeanor.
"Could you...maybe...shout at me again?"

Silence falls and a look of stunned disbelief is evident on Alex's face.

"Why?" Alex asked, who then had half a mind to jump off the mountain.

"Because...*squeaks*itfeelsgood*/squeaks*"

Alex turned around and walked out the door without a word.

As the door was about to close behind him, he heard a once again timid voice ask, "Is that a maybe later?"