Breach of Privacy

Chapters

Welcome to the neighborhood
When a protagonsit walks in a house
Cloud Storage

Welcome to the neighborhood

Since arriving in Equestria two months prior, Chris had seen all manner of strange and mystical things. In addition to the one-way portal that had dumped him into sugarcube corner in a teleportation trick gone wrong, he had encountered unicorns, pegasi, griffons, magic, and even dragons! But the world was not without its quirks and strange behaviors. Case in point: right now.

"Twilight. Why are you hiding in my cupboard?" Chris arched an eyebrow at one of the most influential ponies in the world, as she tried to make herself scarce behind a teacup. The purple alicorn grinned sheepishly, her body twisted into an awkward position in order to fit

"Um… just inspecting for cracks in the wood! You know how these new houses can be. Gotta make sure everything is in perfect shape!" She shuffled nervously. "Just pretend I'm not here!"

"What about those holes?" He gestured to two suspiciously eyehole-shaped openings in the cupboard door. "They look pretty suspicious to me. Almost like you were spying on me!"

Twilight responded on impulse, years of hearing that line causing a knee-jerk reaction as she adjusted her position in the small space. "It's not spying, it's scientific observation! Oh, wait." Her eye twitched as she realized she had played her hand. "Ponyfeathers," she muttered as she was unceremoniously hoisted out of the cabinet my Chris, who also grabbed her thick binder of observation notes labeled 'Humanus Ginormous morning ritual ' and carried them to the front door.

"Nice try, Sparky. And for the record, it's homo sapien, not humanus ginormous. Now, go home to your fancy crystal castle and write a friendship report about spying on people or whatever. I need to eat my toast before it burns." He set her down gently in front of his door, opening it inwards and gesturing for his unwanted guest to leave. Twilight let out a long, drawn-out sigh before reluctantly trudging outside, the door slamming behind her.

"Glad that's over with." Taking a quick glance at the notes he had forgotten to throw out after the purple princess, Chris felt his eyes widen in shock. "She has my wake-up time?! How? Does she have hiding spots-" he stopped, the realization dawning on him. "...everywhere," he breathed. "Probably two in each room. Welp, there goes my morning…"

Chris quickly ate his toast, then went back to his bedroom, first. It was a fairly spacious room with a very opulent bed in the center, a move-in gift from Celestia since she was the only other creature who needed a bed that size. The sheets and blankets were tossed aside immediately and the mattress carefully lifted up to check underneath. Nothing. Chris also ducked his head behind the dresser, and in the closet, tossing clothes haphazardly to the floor in search of a secret alcove, or recording crystal, anything to indicate he was being spied on by a certain neurotic equine.

"Aha! It's got to be in here!" Chris joyously proclaimed, swinging the door of his second, empty dresser wide open. "Gotcha, Spar...ky?" Instead of finding a hidden princess, Chris found himself staring down the barrel of a loaded party cannon. Attached was a note: 'Happy housewarming, Chrissy buddy! Enjoy your cake and sprinkles, courtesy of your bestest best friend! -Pinkie Pie' It was then that Chris noticed the tripwire that had been attached to the dresser door, and the cannon started rumbling…

"Oh, no…"

After three hours of cleaning up cake batter and glittery sprinkles from the bedroom, and another forty minutes showering off the sticky goop, Chris prepared to head off towards the Castle of Friendship in a huff. If Twilight was going to invade his home, he was going to barge in and demand to know her hiding spots! It'd be easy, hopefully.

Just as he was about to open the door, though, it swung open and hit him in his face, sending Chris staggering backwards in a daze. "Aw yeah! Great to see you got the place settled, C! Nice digs, lotsa room." Without even noticing the occupants, the one and only Rainbow Dash trotted in. She made a beeline for the fridge, grabbing a cider from within, and plopped down on the living room couch, chugging the beverage. "Delicious!" She let out a loud burp before glancing at the human rubbing his head. "Oh there you are, C. Why are you up against the wall?"

"Rainbow, you can't just barge in without permis-"

"HEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRREEEEEEE'SSSSSSS…" the door slammed into Chris again as another small horse entered, along with a rental oom-pah-pah band. "...your welcome to the neighborhood song! We hope you will stay here for a while! So that when your face is long, we can make you smile!" Ever the bundle of energy, Pinkie Pie sang with unbridled joy as she danced and twirled around, somehow throwing streamers and party supplies around in such a way that the room was flawlessly decorated in moments. "This is your welcome to the neighborhood soooooong! It isn't very long!" As quickly as she had appeared, the pink bundle of energy was gone, and the living room now needed cleaning as well.

Rainbow held up her empty cider bottle in a mock toast before tossing it backwards, shattering against the wall. "So my kinda destroyed my cloud house during stunt practice, so I'm crashing here for a while. Cool? Cool. Thanks C, you're awesome."

Chris angripy glared at rainbow. He did owe the girls for helping him get this house, and he was good friends with them, so he didn't have much choice. "Ugh, fine. But you're helping me with cleaning this up-"

"Oh wait I just remembered I got a storm to set up gottagobye!" The pegasus took off like a rocket, the resulting draft sending everything in the room flying into a state of disarray.

"Raaaaiiiiiiiiinnnnbooooowwww! Get back here and help me sweep, you Blue Angel reject! Rrrrgh!" With a scowl, Chris picked up a broom and got to work. It was going to be a long night...

Author's Note

I've been in such a funk recently. Kinda depressed. Hopefully this new story sparks a ton of new ideas and get my energy back.

-Your favorite wolf/pony/other,
Ashen "Ashfur" Brightfur

When a protagonsit walks in a house

After a long day of helping out on odd jobs about ponyville, Chris settled in for the night. Curling up in his fresh sheets, he was finally ready to slip off to the land of dreams. Maybe he'd run into Luna, he liked talking with Luna.

CRASH

Chris's eyes shot open as the last echoes of something shattering bounced around the bedroom. Something had fallen over, and he'd probably forget it in the morning and hurt himself stepping on it if he didn't do something about it now. As he grumbled to himself, putting on his slippers and nightgown from Rarity, he heard a second crash. Was he being robbed? Chris dashed into the living room with a leftover wooden board from the house's construction as a makeshift bat. "Who's there?!" He cried out, pressing the magic crystal that illuminated the room in enchanted candlelight. There, standing among a few shattered ceramics, stood… "Discord?"

The long, snakelike figure of the town's resident draconequus slowly, ominously turned in the flickering shadows of the candles. He opened his mouth to speak, his fang glinting in the moonlight. Chris shuddered.

Then a small, glowing frog with bug wings appeared beside Discord, breaking the silence in an irritating, high-pitched voice. "Remember! You can press the A button to talk to NPC- eeeeeeeeeeeee-" it squealed as Discord flicked it away with a claw. Chris took notice during this that the draconequus was wearing a green, pointed hat.

"I do hate those annoying tutorial helpers, don't you? Oh well, I suppose it can't be helped. Good evening, Chris! I was just stopping by to stock up on coins." To emphasize, Discord picked up a clay pot and tossed it to the floor, spilling chocolate coins everywhere.

"Wait, why is my house suddenly filled with ceramic pots?" Chris questioned, noticing the sudden abundance of pottery in his living room.

"Oh, you know how these npc houses are, Chris. Full of lootable goodies!" Discord reached into the hall closet and pulled out a copper sword that definitely wasn't there before. "Ew, low level weapons." He tossed it to the side. "Now watch this." He stepped outside and closed the door.

Chris groaned. "Is that bargain-bin happy meal toy gone? Good, he makes my head hurt. Now I gotta clean up this mess before- huh?" As he reached down to pick up the first ceramic shards, they started to twitch and move. Suddenly, all the bits and pieces of broken pottery flew back into place, reassembling into complete pots that were shattered moments before. "Wait, what?"

The door flung open again, and Discord strode back in. This time, he paid Chris no mind and proceeded to systematically smash every pot, finding only a few sparse treasures. Seemingly irritated by this, he walked outside again, muttering "I don't know why I bother breaking every pot in every building. I have a golden triangle to find!" Chris angrily followed, confronting the mismatched creature on the porch.

"Discord! Will you stop messing around with your chaos powers in my living room and let me sleep? It's like three in the morning!"

Discord laughed, taking out a pocket watch from his ear. "Oh, is it that late? My watch is only showing a quarter past eggplant. Terribly sorry my boy, I was just having an adventure and I ended up making your house look absolutely breadful!"

"Don't you mean dreadful?"

"Nope," the chaos spirit replied with a smirk.

Chris took a half-second to process that before bolting to the front door, opening in and deciding that a room full of pottery would be preferable to any more of Discord's antics. Sadly, his wish was not granted. "Discord! My living room is FILLED with… is this banana nut bread? Ew! There's so much that I can't even get the door open!"

"I did tell you it was breadful."

"Fix it!"

"Oh, gladly!" Discord slapped a hat on Chris's head that had a giant exclamation point hovering above it. "There! That lets me know you have a quest for me. Now I just have to finish my 1,732 other quests and I can get to yours. I'll be back!" Laughing, Discord spiralled off into the night, his cackling laugh echoing on the breeze.

Chris groaned. "Friggin' protagonists. Maybe Fluttershy's animals can help eat all that damn bread… I HATE banana nut bread!"

Author's Note

You ever just walk into every house in an RPG, take thier shit, and talk to them like nothing's wong?

Me neither. Unless it's a one-of-a-kind item. Or there's an achievement for it.

Cloud Storage

There are lots of things that are unpleasant to wake up from a nap to in the middle of the afternoon. For most people, it's something simple, like a weird noise from outside or discovering the dog needs to be let out. Chris was not that lucky. He woke up from his nap to discover clouds. Everywhere.

"RAINBOW!"

Chris angrily clawed his way out of the clouds covering his bed, clambering over them to try and find the floor. He noted that he was interacting with them as though they were giant pillows, which could only mean the cloudwalking potions he had been using for his cloudsdale vacation last week were still in effect. Growling at his bad luck, he tore the clouds away from the door and pushed it open… only to have it barely budge from the clouds behind it. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me. I'm gonna pluck all her feathers when I get my hands on that mare…"

Barely squeezing his way through the doorway, he realized that the clouds were even more compacted together in the hallway! Testing the bathroom door right across the hall had a similar result, the sheer amount of cloud managing to turn on the sink halfway across the room. Deciding that it was pointless to try and fix that, Chris decided that the fastest route out of the house, straight through his living room and to the front door, would probably be the easiest way out. Gritting his teeth and grabbing a fistful of cloud, Chris began to tunnel through the fully white clouds pressed together in his hallway.

It was slow-going, with the soft, pillowy tunnel he had created leaving Chris in a tight space a few times, but he ultimately managed to claw his way into the living room. He thought he did, at least, since the clouds started to squish together a bit less, which implied much more room to move in. Emboldened by this, he redoubled his efforts to get out, digging through his room with newfound determination.

"Are you sure Chris will be okay with this, Rainbow? We packed these in really tight."

"Don't worry Twi, Chris is my buddy. He won't mind, and as soon as we clear these out, he'll never even know! Thank goodness he's out of town this week." The voices of Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle resonated through the clouds to reach the irritated human.

"Oh, really?! Because I got back from Canterlot YESTERDAY! Why is my house filled with clouds?!"

Rainbow stepped back in shock, stammering out a response. "Wait, I thought- you were supposed to- Twilight, say something!"

"Ohmygosh, I'm so sorry, Chris!" Twilight wailed as she dashed to the wall of clouds, starting to dig through them. "Rainbow needed to get rid of this cloudbank before the weather inspector showed up, and this was the only place she could think of! Don't move, once I figure out where you are, I'll teleport you out!"

Chris grumbled. "My house is not a storehouse for your clouds, Rainb- huh?" He paused, rubbing his head to confirm what he had just felt. "Uh, girls? I just felt a drop. These wouldn't happen to be rainclouds, would they?"

"What? No! They'd only start raining of you poured water on them, Chris. I wouldn't expect you to know weather pony science, though. See, at the moment, these clouds are roughly at 73% saturation, which means that-" Twilighr was about to go into a lecture as she noticed the wall of clouds darken and start to drip. "Okay, now they look more along the lines of 95% saturation… Chris, what's going on in there?"

"Shoot, the sink is running in the bathroom! Twilight, do something! It's getting cramped and soggy in here!" Chris desperately clawed at the clouds before noticing that he wasn't making full contact with them anymore… the cloudwalking potions must be wearing off!

"Aw, shoot, C!" Rainbow poked at one of the clouds to how damp it was. "Don't move a muscle! These things are so packed full of water now that the slightest impact will set 'em off!" She tried to gingerly move a cloud aside, but alas, it was at that moment that Chris's cloudwalking came to an end and he fell three feet straight down through the dark clouds, belly-flopping into the living room floor with a loud THUD. To Twilight and Rainbow's horror, the clouds began to quiver… the last thing they saw was a wall of water heading right for them.

Not too long later, Twilight, Rainbow, and Chris regained their senses, waking up on the soggy, mud-soaked ground in front of Chris's house. The poor human took one look at his house, now a prime example for water damage. Several windows were busted, the carpets were drenched, furniture was tossed about by the torrent of water, and there was a duck swimming in what used to be the small front garden. "Hey, Rainbow?"

"Y-yeah, C? Buddy? Pal? Best friend?" The pegasus grinned sheepishly, taking a few tentative steps backwards. She tried to flap her wings, but they were covered in mud and wouldn't be able to fly until she cleaned them.

"I'm gonna give you a ten second head start to start running… and it started nine seconds ago!" Chris lunged for Rainbow, and she galloped off with him in hot pursuit. Twilight simply shook her head, and wondered how she was going to explain the bill that would inevitably result from this to her economics committee.