Chapter 15

If I told you that I felt ready and confident enough to go and have fun with Ruby before telling her how I feel, I would be lying through my teeth. It’s funny the couple of days before the weekend I felt truly happy and full of hope. For the first time, I felt as energetic as a wonderbolt who could clear a sky in 10 seconds flat. Even Peach had taken notice to my happy energetic self, with her having told me to slow down in making so many red velvet cakes.

That hopeful energy had suddenly changed to pure despair. All of a sudden, I felt like I was gonna make a complete fool of myself if she doesn’t feel the same way about me. Even after that it would probably feel awkward around her if it doesn’t go the way I hope it will. I even feared that it would result in her not talking to me again, which would bring me down immensely to a feeling of loneliness. (Although some would argue I had options with Angel)

“Hey so, I kinda have to admit; I think I might have a crush on you. No, that sounds like I don’t care enough.”,I said to myself rehearsing my attempts to tell Ruby how I feel as I drew a little bit of art.

It helped to make me feel like time would go by slower so our “date” could come later.

“Hey, call me crazy for thinking this but- no. Imma be real with you, I think you are it, Dammit Velvet.”,I scolded myself rehearsing a little more.

As I was trying to come up with a good idea on how to tell Ruby, I remembered my mother talked about how somepony could love you just for being yourself. The thought had brought me a feeling of hope. If what my mother said was true, then it proves that maybe Ruby has the same feelings for me as I do for her. If she can like my awkward self and goofiness, I know I am in love with the right one.

As I was preparing my lines, I heard a notification from my pc letting me know that Ruby was online.

“Damn, if only I had a bit more time.”, I said before looking over at the clock that read 4:30 PM.

“Well, maybe I spent enough.”, I told myself reminiscing on the two hours I spent on my way of talking instead of working on this drawing.

It was a drawing of a bunch of ponies in a field A weird thing you might notice with this drawing in particular is the fact that the ponies were drawn rather sloppily. Whenever I am not drawing anything abstract, I tend to make the subject of the drawing have a quirky art style. I find a bit of quirkiness appealing, like it is an alternate world being portrayed. Kinda weird to describe it, but if you find an appeal to that stuff then you know exactly what I am talking about.

Saving my drawing for later, I scrolled over to the message window where I got the notification of Ruby being online. In a matter of seconds, I had gotten a call from Ruby in Kaos as the alias “Bananaboni”. Don’t ask me what it meant, I was even confused with her explaining it to me.

“Hey there Velvet.”, Ruby greeted me as I connected to the call.

“Hi, uh how are you doing?”, I nervously answered Ruby.

“I am doing fine, thankfully I am home alone tonight since dad is working overnight so that means we have all night to spend in VRCinema.”, Ruby said gleefully.

“O-Oh that’s good. You could show me that channel you have been talking about on Ourtube that bullies ponies.”, I said to Ruby.

Hell yes I will show you SkorchCynical tonight.”, Ruby exclaimed to me happily.

It kind of made me at ease knowing that Ruby was excited for tonight, especially with her showing me SkorchCynical. I now felt that maybe just going in and watching videos with Ruby would take my mind off of it for a little bit before later.

“So, are you ready to go?”, Ruby asked me, taking me out of my thoughts.

“Huh? Oh, yeah I am ready just- going to grab me some water real quick. Y-You go ahead and join a server while you wait. Preferably an empty server so nopony bothers us.”, I said standing up from my chair.

“Ok, I’ll leave you an invite link once I’m in.”, Ruby says before leaving the call to startup VRCinema.

“Dammit Velvet, you had to stumble into letting her go right ahead instead of going with her.”, I say to myself as I went over to grab a glass of water from the faucet.

As I was pouring water into the glass, I noticed the sun beginning to set as Celestia was trading shifts with Luna. One thing that is weird about Hoovesiana is the time the sun sets. One day you will see the sun set at around 4:00 in the evening, and another day you will see it set at around 7:00 in the evening. It’s really random. I’m pretty sure that one day the sun had even set at around 3:30 in the afternoon. It’s weird.

Once the glass was full, I took the glass with my magic and sat back down at my desk to see if Ruby had sent me the link to join. As I had predicted, she had the link sent to me. As I clicked the link, VRCinema instantly booted up and put me on a loading screen that was very different from the last time I had played it. Instead of it being a plain picture of the VRCinema logo, it was now an animating version of the logo with some music playing.

“Huh, must’ve updated since the last time I played it.”, I say to myself while the game was loading.

Once my game had finally loaded, I was introduced to another screen I hadn’t seen since the last time I played VRCinema. I was taken to a welcome screen that was going over the new layout of the whole game. Basically, the game now had a social feature to where parties of friends can request a private server to their liking. Definitely a very useful feature for not having to deal with obnoxious players.

Another feature that came up was a little tab at the top of the screen showing both Ruby’s and I profile picture. It had showed that me and her were connected to a voice chat.

“Whoa, this is something new.”, Ruby said to me in the chat.

“Yeah, Where are you?”, I asked Ruby.

“Right now I am in this avatar editor. It says that we can fully design our own avatar for the game.”, Ruby explained.

“Is it a difficult avatar maker?”, I asked her.

“No not really. It’s got basic stuff in the basic settings.”, Ruby explained.

“Thank Celestia.”, I said to myself.

One thing that had always bugged me about games with customizable avatars is that some are way too complicated to work with. For example there was one game I had played with a custom avatar setting that had over 75 different sliders just for the face customization. What’s worse was that I had to mess with all of them in order to progress. All you need is a basic five settings for each body part and the color, none of this excessive crap.

After I had finished making my avatar look a little like a mix of my StuntMerc and myself, I was ready to join in a server for the two of us.

“Did you pick the server you wanted?”, I asked Ruby.

“Actually I was gonna let you decide what you wanted the room to be.”, Ruby answered.

“Oh You sure? I-I don’t mind if you you choose.”, I asked.

“Yeah, you go right ahead. I’m still designing my avatar so you might as well choose.”, Ruby says to me with a gleeful tone.

“Ok, t-thanks.”, I say before going to pick the Party server menu.

I was pleasantly surprised with some of the options you could choose from. Not only could you use some of the stock maps already in the game, but you could even download some maps made by the community. The map I chose to run on was a couch with a bunch of music posters in the background. I couldn’t tell much from the thumbnail what the bands were, but what really got me to choose it was the title being, “Punk Theater”. I assumed it had something that I thought Ruby would like in terms for her love of music.

“Ok, I am ready. Whenever you are.”, Ruby told me.

“I’m ready, just had to choose a nice place for the two of us.”, I said to Ruby before clicking start.

“Oh, then you better have chose a nice place.”, Ruby said before chuckling.

“Oh I think you will like it.”, I reassured her.

Once the game was loaded, I was met with a brand new overhaul of the hud. It now had the menu to select videos combined with the right hoof side of the screen. This meant that you didn’t have to go through another menu to grab a video which made it easier and faster. It also took up less space than the old hud. All of the data on the hud was a lot less cluttered than it was before. For once, I could actually see a lot wider than before now that there wasn’t a video marker on the bottom of the screen.

“Not a bad place Velvet. Not a bad place at all.”, Ruby said to me taking me out of my amazement of the HUD.

“Thanks. I figured you would like it for the music vibe and stuff like that.”, I explained.

“Yeah, I do it brings the- OH MY GOSH!”, Ruby yelled out to me.

“What?”, I asked out of fear.

“They have Moose posters on the wall!”, Ruby said excitingly.

“Oh wow I didn’t know it was that band. I just knew it was a random poster from bands.”, I said to Ruby.

“Looks like you chose the right map for sure having my favorite band as one poster in it.”, Ruby says gleefully.

“Nailed it!”, I told myself in my head.

As we sat down into the chairs in the game, I noticed Ruby’s avatar looking like a female version of the singer of Moose.

“Well, I can take a guess on why your avatar was taking so long. Especially since you were losing it over the poster.”, I said to Ruby chuckling.

“Oh, heh yeah. I was uh working hard to try and make Blast Bell from Moose look like a girl. It’s kind of silly, I know”, Ruby embarrassingly explained.

“N-No Ruby, It’s cool actual. It’s actually r-rather-”, I said nervously stopping.

“Rather what?”, Ruby asked,” Does it look funny?”

Thankfully Ruby couldn’t see my face. If she did, she would’ve seen one of the reddest faces to ever see on a pony blushing beet red.

“N-No, far from that. I was just gonna say i-it looks rather c-cute.”, I say with an even more embarrassed tone.

“Awwww, that’s very sweet of you to say. Surly it isn’t that good.”, Ruby said with a heartfelt tone.

“It’s true, it looks very g-good. Do you like the way it turned out?”, I asked trying to change the subject away from my compliment.

“I do. It’s gonna stay my VRCinema character forever.”, Ruby said happily.

“That’s good, real good.”, I say awkwardly.

“Is something wrong Velvet?”, Ruby asked me with a slightly concerning tone.

“No, nothing’s wrong.”, I say to Ruby.

“You sure? You seem a lot more nervous than you usually are. Especially with your stuttering.”, Ruby observed.

“No, Nothing’s wrong. Just, o-one of those rare days where it’s cold h-here in Hoovesiana.”, I said to Ruby lying.

“Okay, just checking on you since you seem a little uptight.”, Ruby said to me.

“Don’t worry about me. Just my regular old self here.”, I say chuckling nervously,
“So uh, how about you show me all about this SkorchCynical guy you have been talking about.”

“Oh right, The one channel that I love almost as much as I love Moose.”, Ruby said before pulling up a menu on screen displaying a short playlist of SkorchCynical videos.

The best thing I could use to describe SkorchCynical’s channel is simply describing it as softcore bullying. What is softcore bullying you might ask? Well to put it in SkorchCynical terms, it is simply bullying a user of Ourtube for one video critiquing their content. The video I saw was of him critiquing a rich pony in Manehatten who posts videos basically showing how much better than everypony he thinks he is. Skorch went hard on the asshole, but it wasn’t exactly personal. The only Ourtube user to really get personal was “Tree Leaf”. Sadly, he bit the dust on the site and hasn’t come back. Man, I miss Tree Leaf.

“Well, what do you think of him?”, Ruby asked me.

“He is funny, reminds me of Tree Leaf a bit.”, I said to her.

“I miss him, he was who I watched before I discovered Skorch.”, Ruby explained to me.

“Wait, you actually liked his content as well?”, I ask surprised.

“Of course I did. What made you think that I didn’t?”, Ruby asked me confused.

“Well, I’m sorry if I a presumptuous about this but don’t you think his content is a little too much for a Griffin like you?”, I asked Ruby.

“A Griffin like me?”, Ruby asked.

“Well, I would never have predicted a really nice griffin like yourself to be into a dragon who bullied ponies viciously.”, I explained to Ruby.

“Oh, well he is different. While yes, I somewhat disapprove of some of his videos targeting some users with serious issues, he did it in a satirical way. Like he didn’t really wish to cause harm to others.”, Ruby explained to me.

“I guess that kind of makes sense.”, I said to Ruby.

“I could say the same about you as well. You are a really nice pony, one of the more nicer ones I have met at least.”, Ruby said with a warm tone.

“I am?”, I asked Ruby.

“Mmhm, I mean you helped me with my incident with that pony who exposed me. If I asked anyone else to help me they would just say something like,’Just ignore them’. It wouldn’t have helped me at all”, Ruby said to me.

“Well that’s good that you found me in a VRCinema server hearing you sing. I probably wouldn’t have been able to help someone as nice as you.”, I said to Ruby.

“Heh, I do know how to pick em.”, Ruby said quietly.

“Pick what?”, I asked Ruby.

“Oh uh nothing. Just thinking about my playlist. Do you mind if we listen to some Moose for a while?”, Ruby asked me.

“Not at all Ruby. Go right ahead.”, I said to Ruby before she pulled up another playlist of Moose music.

“Thanks.”

Some of the music by Moose that Ruby pulled up felt very much like the future was right next door. One song in particular,”Data”, especially felt like a futuristic fever dream. It felt like any second now machines would revolt against us all and enslave us in a mind simulation where the only one to defeat them is a hacker prophesied to be “The One”. It sounds like a summer movie actually, not sure where though.

I had kept quiet hearing Ruby sing along with the song. Now, I’m not one to know how passionate someone is performing music, but from the sound of Ruby’s voice, it sounded like she was really giving it her all with singing it. For a moment, it seemed she was oblivious to me even there, as she sang out a particularly high note with the finale of the song. I was amazed by her performance. Not only that, but I felt chills in my spine from her singing. That’s how powerful her singing was.

“Wow, just wow. That was amazing.”, I say in pure amazement from Ruby’s singing.

“Heh, I kinda lost myself in the moment. That was just me messing around.”, Ruby said to me.

“That was messing around? That sounded heavenly.”, I say questioning her judgment of her singing.

“Oh Velvet you don’t mean that.”, Ruby told me.

“No seriously. It was the best singing I have heard in a while.”, I said to Ruby meaningfully.

“My director says that I am not as good as some, says I need work. Like a lot of work.”, Ruby said with an unsure tone.

I don’t know why, but this had made me a little mad. Not mad at Ruby, but rather the pony to tell her she needed more work.

“Listen to me Ruby, Don’t listen to what he says. He may not see what you’ve got with that beautiful voice of yours, but I do. And I am not even a music pony. My point is, don’t let him discourage you. You have a wonderful voice and nopony can say otherwise and mean it.”, I said sternly to Ruby.

She sat there quietly for a little bit after.

“D-Do you really mean it? You think my voice is beautiful?”, Ruby said kind of perking up.

“I swear to Celestia I mean it well.”, I said with a serious tone.

She and I sat there silently before she let out a sniffle and a chuckle.

“I do know how to pick em.”, Ruby said with a heartfelt tone.

“What? The videos?”, I asked her.

“No. Good friends.”, Ruby explained perking up with a sniffle.

Her saying that made me blush, like it had a much deeper meaning than what it sounds like. There was an awkward silence between us before I decided to break up the silence.

“So uh, you have any other songs to sing? I would like to hear you sing more.”, I said nervously to break the silence.

“Oh, actually, I was thinking maybe you could give it a shot.”, Ruby says to me giving me a surprise.

“Wait, me? No no I can’t.”, I said to Ruby nervously. “Oh come on Velvet. I believe you can sing. All you have to do is try it.”, Ruby said to me.

“B-But I don’t know any lyrics to a song.”, I try to say making up a bullshit excuse to not sing.

“Oh here, I’m gonna pull up a Smashing Melon’s song with the lyrics up on the screen.”, Ruby said pulling up a menu.

“W-wait I didn’t agree to this. I’m gonna sound like shit.”, I said nervously.

“Just relax and be cool. You’ll do fine. I know you will.”, Ruby said before pulling up a song.

I could see there was no use trying to argue out of it so I sucked it up and sang as best as I could. I actually didn’t sound as horrible as I thought I would. Granted, it wasn’t good by any means, but it was better according to Ruby.

“See, you did fine. It’s easy to get into it.”, Ruby said chuckling.

“Oh shut up you. You have more experience, I said making Ruby laugh, “I think I’ll stick to drawing instead of singing, thanks.”

“That’s something I have been wondering about you.”, Ruby said to me.

“Hmm?”, I asked Ruby.

“How did you get into drawing? A lot of friends that I used to know who were into that had something that set them off to draw. I want to know your story behind it.”, Ruby said letting a Night to Forget playlist play in the background.

“Well, it’s kind of a mixture of things. Some of them being kind of deep. Like really deep.”, I explained to Ruby.

“How so?”, Ruby asked curiously.

“It’s kind of a long story, you wouldn’t be interested in hearing it.”, I said dismissively.

“No, I would like to know. I can tell you something about me afterwards if you do.”, Ruby said convincingly.

I didn’t want to have to get deep into my whole “tragedy to get me to a vigilante” moment, but with Ruby’s way of speaking, it was hard not to.

“Oh alright, I’ll shoot. But I can’t promise you’ll feel good asking me about it.”, I warned Ruby.

“Ok.”, Ruby said to me.

“I used to draw as a young colt a lot for my mother. The drawings weren’t anything close to what I do now, but they held that impact with my mom and dad. They kept all my drawings on this poster board we used to have in the kitchen. It had even got to a point where she had to take off some drawings off the board.”, I say chuckling a little before continuing on,” But anyways, I made all those drawings for my mom and dad. I had kinda stopped when I was 10 because it had seemed like a lost interest to me. Well, around 5 years ago they had went out to go for a trip for their anniversary. It was the first time they had left me alone in the house. I was expecting them to come back, they never did.”, I say gloomily.

“What happened to them?”, Ruby asked concerningly.

I gave a kind of stifled breath remembering the day vividly.

“Let’s just say that it was a bad couple of years for me until I started drawing again. It made me feel more complete, like I could do something for them since they are gone. It was one thing that kept me going along with meeting my friend Angel.”, I said to Ruby.

“Oh Velvet I’m so sorry to open old wounds like that.”, Ruby said apologetically to me.

“No, it is okay. You wanted to know so I gave it to you.”, I said to Ruby.

There was an awkward silence before Ruby spoke up.

“So, is there anything you want to know about me?”, Ruby asked me.

“Actually, I was curious to wonder how you had gotten into Moose? Especially since you love them so much and stuff.”, I asked of Ruby.

“To be honest, it’s kind of a similar story with yours.”, Ruby said.

“Oh?”, I asked Ruby.

“Well, unlike you, I never met my mother before. Dad says she had run away a long time ago after I was born. There were no pictures of her or anything. All there was of her were Moose CD’s in her drawer that I kept. Ever since then I have been listening to them to keep her memory alive.”, Ruby explained to me.

Hearing this made me feel bad for her. It’s one thing to lose a parent you have met, but it’s another to lose another one who you haven’t even met.

“Oh, man. That’s kind of rough. Actually, really rough.”, I say to Ruby.

“It’s not so bad. I like to believe that maybe she still is out there somewhere.”, Ruby said to me.

“You think she is out there?”, I asked Ruby.

“Maybe. It’s a dream though.”, Ruby explained to me before going silent.

I was about to say something before she had risen up a bit.

“But at least I know I’ve got you as a good friend to have my back.”, Ruby says to me with a brighter tone.

“Heh, yeah I am guess.”, I said nervously.

“Well, it’s getting kind of late, I might go off now and take a bath.”, Ruby said to me.

“Oh crap wait!”, I exclaimed out before her avatar went transparent for a second before coming back.

“What is it?”, Ruby asked me.

This was it; the moment of truth. Do I have some courage left in me to sputter out the one question burning a hole in me these past couple of weeks?

“Well, um, You see- It’s kind of -um w-weird for me to s-say it but-”, I stammered off.

My mind sure didn’t have courage to work properly asking the question.

“Um, what Velvet?”, Ruby asked me confused.

“Oh jeez um. This is gonna sound absolutely weird but I feel I must say it”, I say to Ruby.

“What the fuck are you doing Velvet? Get it together!”, I said to myself in my head.

“Then tell me. It probably won’t be the weirdest thing I have heard besides my Kaos name.”, Ruby said to me.

“W-Well th-that’s the thing. You see it’s k-kind of hard to explain because y-you know its online and all that stuff with us being far away and-”, I said before stammering off once again before Ruby’s avatar walked up to my screen.

“Velvet, you can tell me anything. You don’t need to be nervous telling me whatever it is you want to tell me. I’ll listen.”, Ruby said with a parenting tone.

If somehow Ruby was a magic witch that managed to put a spell on me to calm down to tell her how I felt then I would feel amazed. But alas, it was unexplained, as I had regained my thoughts and collected myself to begin saying what I wanted to say.

“Ruby, these past couple of weeks since you had came to me for the player that scammed you, I had been getting this feeling about you. It’s strange to say it about an online user, but I felt like I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you. I had also felt bad seeing you go offline. Like I didn’t want you to leave just yet. Not like in a stalker way, like a very best friend kind of way.”, I explained to Ruby.

“What are you trying to say?”, Ruby asked me.

“Ok, here goes. I’m gonna say it, but you promise it won’t change any way you think of me?”, I nervously asked Ruby.

“I promise. There is nothing you would say to me to make me think different of you.”, Ruby comforted me.

“Ok, here goes; Ruby, I know we haven’t met in real life, but I think……...I think I might have a crush on you. You are one of the only ones I have met that really appreciate me for who I am. Because of that, you kind of brought me out of a lonely state. A place where I felt that there was nopony, griffin or anybody that cared for me as so much more than a friend. Like, maybe as a lover of some kind.”, I told her, letting her know the honest truth.

There was a long silence between us, longer than I had liked it to be. I almost felt as if she had completely disconnected from the server and left. But then, to my surprise, I heard Ruby sniffling.

“Velvet, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Why would you ever think that would ever make me think differently of you?”, Ruby asked me with a tearful voice.

“It isn’t exactly normal to ask someone to be your significant other online.”, I said embarrassed.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with telling someone how you feel about them, even if they are miles away from each other. While we are on the topic, I have some things I would like to get off my chest.”, Ruby said to me.

I perked up to listen to Ruby.

“In the past, I have been in some relationships with friends who have used me for stuff and never really appreciated who I was or what I was trying to do. Because of that, I had kind of become an isolationist for a short time. I wouldn’t go out to meet with friends because I felt they were using me. Since then, I felt I could never be friends with anyone. But that changed when I met you. Despite never meeting me, you made me feel like you had truly appreciated me as myself and never would use me for anything. It was further proven the night I came to you for help I was exposed. You jumped right in and helped me through my situation. You had even made me feel better about it by showing me your cute face.”, Ruby says to me chuckling.

That last part made me blush.

“It was that night that I had kind of realized the same feelings as well, but I felt too nervous to ask you. So instead I had waited for you to tell me if you felt the same way I did. In a way, I sensed it earlier this evening with you nervously stuttering when talking to me.”, Ruby told me.

“You knew?”, I asked Ruby.

“I felt those vibes from you. But anyway, I had been waiting for this moment for a long time. And now I can say that I feel the exact same way about you based on how well you have treated me.”, Ruby said with a full hearted tone.

“Does this mean that you want to be my-”, I asked Ruby before she had interjected with some tears of joy.

“Yes, a thousand times yes!”, Ruby answered me with a passionate tone.

I did it! I thought it was unbelievable, but I had done it. I told her exactly how I felt and it paid off in the long road. She felt the same way about me just as much as I did for her.

“This is, amazing. But how are we gonna be able to make it work with us being far away from each other?”, I asked Ruby.

“We can do whatever we can to make it work. I have faith we can sort this out.”, Ruby said to me.

“You really think so?”, I asked her.

“I know so, since you are my ‘guardian’, as you described it”, Ruby said chuckling.

“I mean it though, I don’t want to imagine a situation where you are hurt or something like that”, I said to Ruby.

“You are my sunshine.”, Ruby said to me.

“Your what?”, I asked Ruby.

“Oh, Sunshine is a guardian in Griffin stories who guards and loves all who care for others. In the myth, he guarded his wife who had been fighting a disease put on by an evil force.”, Ruby explained to me.

“Huh, your ‘sunshine’. I like it.”, I say grinning a little.

“Well, I think it’s time for me to go now. I definitely will see you tomorrow morning before you go to work.”, Ruby said to me with her avatar going transparent.

“O-Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow morning Ruby. Thanks for everything tonight.”, I said full heartedly.

“It was nothing. Have a good night. I love you.”, Ruby said to me suddenly.

Never once have I been told that by someone who cared for me as a boyfriend, it was always by my parents in my dreams. Now, I felt this caring passion for the first time.

“I l-love you too.”, I stutter saying it for my first time.

Ruby had chuckled before her avatar had now fully disappeared, leaving me alone in this empty server with this Night to Forget playlist. Ironically, it was playing my favorite song by them,”If It Means A Lot to You”. That song was about finding love from a distance, which was exactly what I had done tonight. So to those who said that finding love online isn’t possible: You had just been proven wrong. Suck on that!

Author's Note

Yeppers. Suck on that