//-------------------------------------------------------// A sweet diary -by cealdra- //-------------------------------------------------------// //-------------------------------------------------------// recieving a invitation //-------------------------------------------------------// recieving a invitation Let me introduce myself. The name’s Storm Shield (Storm for short), or at least that is what i go by these days. Back when i was still young and well lets just say a bit different in appearance i was a human known as Rowen Leavesdale. But that was more then 50 years ago. I am what is commonly known here as a 'new blood'. A term used for a equestrian that was drawn in to this world to enrich their constantly depleting gene-pool. Due some odd reason the lay-energies in this realm have some strange effects on the genetics of unborn children, or foals as they tend to call them. The direct male to female ratio is estimated 1 to 10. As result of this female/female relations are quite common as is artificial reproduction by means of donation from the few male's that are around. And of course this leads to the problem of interbreeding (atleast in the long term view of things). And that is where the 'new bloods' come into place. But that is a subject i will delve into in a later time. For now, just ignore this little ramble of mine. For i do not think you would be reading these pages if you did not want to learn the story of my life and how it became as it was. So without further delay, this is how it all began and how the end is closing in. The day began like most others, rudely being woken by my younger sister as she stumbles down the stairs like a elephant. Seriously, what doesn’t that kid understand about the fact that I do not need to rise at 6.30 in the morning. Having graduated recently from college I do not have to get up until I want to. Its not like I have anything else to do then looking for a job. But alas for me, the only thing even remotely available is flipping burgers at a local fast food place. I graduated with some of the highest scores of my year in the fields of management and psychology( focused on group-mind and how to influence those). Not to down talk those who actually have a job like that, its just not my thing I would go completely out of my mind in a repetitive job. But every single apply I had send over the past few months had been shot down. Most of my class had found a job by now, but no.... not me. It was like there was some universal dislike against me! Even applications below my level were turned down. I would have accepted the fact that I couldn’t get a job if they did not rebuked me with lame excuses like 'we are sorry, but there seems to have been a misunderstanding. We have no vacancy like that'. Even though they had placed said vacancy for several weeks in both the local newspaper as several jobsites or 'I am sorry but you do not have to correct experiences in your resume'. But that is life I guess. As the thoughts about a to-do list for that day the sounds from downstairs were slowly dying down, until the front door was slammed shut with a force as if the intent was to knock it out of its hinges. That meant it would be around 7.00 am and that my sisters ride to school would arrive any minute now. As if it was perfectly timed, the chiming of the old clock in the hallway sounded the hour I could hear the loud low grumbling noise of a old muscle car drawing near. I'm not a mechanic, nor would I even pretend to know anything about cars. But the sound of that exhaust could not be healthy. You know the sound of a car with a leaky exhaustmuffle? Well this one sounds like it was missing all together. The ritual of being woken by these sounds have been well established for about a year now, how on earth my sis and this guy ever came to be together is beyond me. She is a bit of a nerd, not socially awkward or anything just someone with a higher IQ then average but not the personality to cope with it. Her boyfriend on the other hand, a complete and utter musclehead. If he ever had even 1 working braincell it would have died long ago due the serious overuse of cosmetic products and steroids. He is know around this town for 3 things. 1) He`s the local schools quarterback. 2) He's more obsessed and concerned about his reputation and appearance then anything else. 3) People are surprised that someone who can hardly spell his own name, let alone do basic math, get passing grades. As you can guess, the 2 of us do not get along well, for that reason I tend to be out of the house whenever he comes around or I don't show myself until long after he leaves when he stays over for the night. My policy has always been avoidance of conflict is better then solving it. Guess that’s why my general reputation around these parts is that of an complete wimp. Despite the fact that I personally cannot complain about my physical fitness or appearance. Anyway, deciding that it would be better just to get up and prepare some breakfast I let myself drop out of bed. I knew I could sleep in for as long as I wanted to, my mother was hardly around to complain to me about any bad habit I might have. Ever since dad went MIA in some god forsaken desert in Iraq it appeared as if she wanted to work herself to death. Before the message she had worked long hours, being a assistant DEA meant having to do that. But at this time it was just being plain insanity. She left at 6.00 am and often would not return until well into the night. It meant that I normally had a whole lot of freedom, although it being a pain sometimes. Like today for example. After reluctantly having showered and dressed myself I came into the kitchen to see a sight normally reserved for the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. Everything was just about everywhere. Blobs of some unidentifiable blackish goo were scattered all across the cabinets around the furnace, I didn't even dare to blink or look away from that stuff for I could swear that it moved in every direction but the one gravity had in mind for it. Breakfast would have to wait until anything that was not a serious health-hazard could be prepared in a circle of at least 600 meters from this site. *2 hours of cleaning later* Finally finished and placing the cleaning equipment back into the closet I could not only feel but also hear my stomach protesting due the lack of breakfast. Without a doubt I could tell that there would not be much left what could be within reasonable parameters classed as eatable. Turns out, I was right. The cabinets were almost completely devoid of anything that could serve as breakfast. A small snack made out of a few cheese-crackers and cup of coffee was all I managed to create. Of course, my mother forgot to do groceries again and forgot to leave some cash behind for me to be able to get them. Meaning, take-out for dinner again. But right now I had better things to do then to worry about where I would place my order this evening. I had a lot of unopened mails from my rounds of applying last week, and I needed to check whether or not I was even accepted for a interview. For most it would mean a spark of hope, to me; well lets just say I’ve been let down way to often for that. I was about half way through a pretty large list when I heard the sound of the mailbox. (Hey what can I say, desperate times call for drastic methods. Its not spamming if each mail was written focused on the specific company right?) We had an old fashioned box, one embedded in the front door. Even if you wanted to you could not ignore the sound of metal slamming against metal whenever something was pushed through it. The mail itself was the usual, a few bills some advertisement. But one envelop stood out from the rest. A deep blue one, with a silver sickle moon standing between the companies name. H.E. Relations. A thing I had never even heard about, and the funniest thing of all. It was addressed to me. Eventhough I never even registrated for any dating service at all! But still the letter it contained was a interesting one. To mr. R.F. Leavesdale, In cooperation with various goverments we of H.E. Relations are brought in to research the various states and hormonal housekeeping of young adults. *The letter rambled on about scientific status, and reasonings beyond my comprehention for quite a while. It was the ending that really captured me the most.* So to summise, I hereby stretch a invitation to participate in our research located at our headquarter. We will pick you up at arround noon tomorrow from your place of residence. As was dedicted your government, the time invested will of course be compensated. Awaiting your arival, Drs. T. Sparkle. //-------------------------------------------------------// Being collected //-------------------------------------------------------// Being collected (( Alright, first of all sorry for the masive OC-ness of the known charackters. I doubt i could write IC for a existing charackter if my life depend on it.)) To be quite honest, after receiving the message yesterday I had spend the rest of the day and most of the morning that the letter had to be some kind of prank. It would not have surprised me if a old friend thought it would be funny to mess around with my head a little. I mean common! Getting selected for some freakish study in relationships. The more I thought about it the more ridiculous it became. As if there actually was some kind of agency that would coup up young people to study the way they form relations. But still, I had some clothes packed. My granny always said to me “It will never hurt to be prepared.” The clock struck 12 noon exactly when a undisclosed purple, near lavender minivan stopped in front of the door. It was adorned with the same emblem as the letter received. Gulping I decided to damn it all and just risk it and just step aboard. The trip to the HQ had been a dull one, a few hours of traveling through several small outlaying villages to collect a few more people. All were males in my age category, which is about 18 to 25. With me being one of the older at a age of 23. Strange when you start to think about it though, here we are going to some matchmaking researchcentre. But there were only males! Now last time I checked I was definitely straight, so you can imagine that the thought was making me a bit uncomfortable. But like they say, you have to finish what you start so suck it up and go through with it. The HQ itself was amazing, in the letter they claimed to be seated at the edge of town so I expected something like one of those large office buidlings favored by large multinationals. But by all means I had not in my wildest dreams expected to see a huge mansion with a whole frigging city worth of free space around it. There was no other way to say this, but that thing was MASIVE. The entrance gates decorated with a symbol that could be decribed as a sun and a crescent moon. The flagpoles adorned flags with 2 winged and horned horses circling with a sun and moon. But that could not attract my attention as much as the ambiant flowerbeds and stretching grassfields arround the long drive way, hedgeart in many different shapes and sizes. A single thought came to mind; Who ever was the owner of this facility had more money then was good for them to be able to spend it on those lush items. Lost in thought and awe about the scenerie around I never realised the car had stopped in front of the mansion and that its front door had opened with a welcome comittie marching out. The small steps towards the door were adorned with a blue carpet, a very welcoming and comferting entrance hall could be seen through the mahogany doors. The 6 men that stood on oposite sides of eachother on the stairs to that hall were not so much. Thanks to my mother I had seen several secret agents in my life as she had received another deathtreat . But those had nothing on these guys. All moving in perfect unison, clad in starch white suits with no visable weaponary besides a sword dangling from their belts. But the most ofsetting was the way they all seemed to look exactly alike, altough it could be the clothing and the shades that made it appear that way. Moments later we all stood in the grand entrance hall admiring the design and splendor of it when from one of the 2 stairs leading to the second floor a woman walked down. Judging from the slightly awkward movements and tendency to clutch the railing she either recovered from some serious leg fractures or never really learned to walk properly. My mind instantly reeled towards the first, but only later I learned just how wrong I had been. The woman donned in a simple but elegantly designed kneehigh skirt and blouse of a deep lavender color matching her long straight hair exept for that small pink and deep purple streak in the middle. But I noticed something strange about her atire aswell, something I had dismissed before but I could not help but notice the similarities of it all. She wore a small band of white ribbon adorned with a almost shining blue crystal on her left arm. Something those 6 guards had worn aswel except theirs was was golden yellow with a red crystal. Before I could overthink the strangeness of it all I was crudely shaken out of my train of thought by the sound of someone giddely clapping their hands together combined with a small high pitched squee. “Welcome, welcome all. I want to thank you all for sacrificing your precious time to aid us in our studies towards relationships.” I could hear some mutterings from the other arround me indicating my own thoughts. All were along the lines of sacrificing? We were dragged to this place. “Well before we all get a bit aquanted and start our research I would like all of you to just follow my assistant for he will be showing you to your room. At least the room where you will be staying for the first few days of our little experiment anyways.” She had not finished speaking when a young man of about 25 appeared wearing a purple and green hoody combined with jeans and hiking boots, and again with the strange ribbon with a glowing crystal on his arm. With a obvious sigh of disaprovement the woman spoke to him “Spike! I thought I had told you to wear that set I had laid out for you. So why didnt you? You know a first impression is essential to good introductions!” The young man shrugged his shoulders and simply replied in a sarcastic tone “But Twilight, you said to wear what felt the most comfortable. So I did.” The conversation went on like this for a few minutes until the woman just gave up. And all the while my smile grew watching the spectacle, it was like watching a classic movie case of a mother and son bickering. But alas, to all good things come to an ending. “Well now, like I said before please follow spike and he will show you to your rooms.” As I stood in the small room I knew one thing. I would need a map of this place, becouse I will get seriousely lost in the maze like structure of these hallways. The room itself was not to shabby, it was decorated like a normal hotel room. A rather large but comfy bed, a small table with 2 chairs, a cabinet for my clothing and a small bathroom complete with my own private shower. Overall a pretty nice place to hang arround for a while. Spike told us the run of things as we were walking to the nightwing as he called our place of residence of the moment. Thing like at what times breakfast, lunch and dinner were served. How to get our clothes washed and the likes. Aswell as the fact that dr. Sparkle, which he called twilight, would be visiting us throughout the day for a intervieuw and introductional conversation. Well that small speech and the passing of ownership of a white crystal that was supposed to be my key to this room was about 4 hours ago. It took me about half a hour to even figure out how to open that blasted door! How was I supposed to know I only needed to hold that thing to the door and think about twisting a key in a lock. I had no idea for how long I would be stuck in here before that woman would come up to me for some small talk. I knew I was the last candidate they had selected from the numbers on the door. So I could be here for quite a while. Slouching on the bed I flipped on the TV searching for something nice to watch to kill the time. *The goddess may know how much time has passed* Slowly I started waking up to sounds in my room, I could not believe that I had fallen asleep. Grudgingly I opened my eyes, only to peer into 2 bright blue ones attached to a smiling girly head with a head full of frizzly pink curls. “HI! You know Twilight was a bit disappointed when you didn't answer the door but then she thought you might had fallen asleep and so I volunteerd to check whether that was true as I came in I could see you were sound asleep, like curled up like a little foal sleeping soundly you know I usually sleep like that aswell especially after having been up aaaaaalllll night but not so much on normal workdays but anyway so Twilight asked me to tell you that she said to me that I was supposed to take you to her when you woke up again so here am I to tell you to follow me.” Blinking a few times as my mind started to process the torrent of words spewing from this girls mouth. When the pieces were finally falling into place I could see her blinking a few times with a still growing grinning smile. Fearing another torrent if I did not act soon enough. “ohw ok, show the way I suppose.” Not even letting me finish she was already beckoning me to follow as she skipped out the room. Regrets about coming to this place were already starting to form in my mind. //-------------------------------------------------------// A talk and interview //-------------------------------------------------------// A talk and interview Eugh, doesn’t this one EVER shut up? We had been walking for about 10 minutes towards the dining area, I had seemed to sleep through dinner aswell, but this bouncy girl had not had her jaws shut for more then a second before firing another volley of speech. Although I could hear what she said nothing quite registered in my head. Many of it seemed like complete and utter nonsense. Things like flying ponies, magic and all kinds of baked items combined with inter falls of gibberish. But after a long walk we had finally arrived. A small room at the back of what I presumed was the normal dining area. As the pink defective talkingmachine opened the door I could see dr. Sparkle sitting at a small table filled with various dishes. “Aah mr. Leavesdale, I am glad you could join me tonight. And Pinkie, thank you for bringing him here. But I do prefer to have this talk to be a bit private. I`m sure you can understand the sensitivity of it all.” The all business face got replaced by a sheepish smile as the skipping escort cheerfully hopped outside the room closing the door with a bump of the butt. “Sorry for that, she`s a sweet girl but sometimes she just gets well how to put it.” Her face scrunched up in a rather cute way as she thought about the right words. “Well I guess the best definition of Pinkie, is well her being Pinkie. But please forget about that for now” With a wave of her arm in a dramatic fashion she directed to the food on the table “Please eat, i'm sure you are hungry. I am sorry but no matter how talented our chefs are, they can only prepare vegetarian dishes.” I personally did not really care, although a barbeque once in a while was good I always thought a good meal could also do without meat. Lets just say I was not disappointed, the food itself was fit for a king. As I was eating I could see how dr. Sparkle was writing down several things on a clipboard with her eyes set on me. Was she really studying me on how I eat? Has she never seen anyone use cutlery with their hands before or something? It was about halfway the meal when she spoke again. “I have a few questions I would like to ask you. It should provide us with enough detail to find the ideal match. So let us cut to the chase directly. Feisty or mellow?” And with that started the most awkward, strange and interesting interview I had in my entire life. I mean I had several conversations with psychiatrists after my dad went missing. And even they were not as thorough with picking my mind clean of what I thought and wanted. I guess in hindsight many questions would be making a lot more sense then they did back then. How obvious can stuff get when you are asked items like: Interracial love, can you accept that? How important is looks, could you accept a mate that would not define standards? If a alien race is in threat of going extinct due lack of males, would you sacrifice your future on this world in favor of theirs? The conversation lasted for about an hour. After the initial questioning a awkward conversation followed. I learned a lot during my days in college on psychology. Though not in the way of picking the mind clean of secrets, but to decode behavior to better reveal problems in a malfunctioning company. But this woman, her signals were all over the place. It was like attempting to read the body language of a being impersonating a human. But had only vague references, like pure textbook references, on how a human in general behaved. Other then the strange way she seemed to behave the conversation went on smoothly. We discussed many things, or rather nothing at all. Things like politics and religion were a foreign concept to this woman. But she seemed interested anyway. I think she just wanted to get a feel for me personally, you know. To get to know the person behind the answers to her great list of matchquestions. Well enough after half an hour or so, she just stood up and left the room. But before she exited she motioned me to sit still while smilingly telling me that she had learned enough from me and that she would now proceed with the second fase. Which subsequently was fetching the one I would be most suited to with pairing up. I dont know how long I was stuck in that room alone. It could have been an hour or 2, but it could just as easely have been about 5 to 10 minutes. The creaking of the door along with the smiling face of dr. Sparkle alived me from the in my mind torturing long wait. “Well then mr. Leavesdale, from the information given during our little talk, I would like to introduce you to the one who we have selected as your ideal mate.” The speed of the matching had confused me more then the entire list of questions during the awkward little chat with this strange woman. But nothing, not even my wildest dreams could prepare me from what walked through the door. A pearl white horned pony with a light purplish and pinkish mane and tail. The tip of its horn was about chesthight for me. Its nearly comically animelike large seagreen eyes peered up attempting to meet mine. Before I could do anything or even attempt to speak, dr. Sparkle simply smiled “mr. Leavesdale, meet Sweetie Belle. Sweetie, meet Rowen Leavesdale.” A innocent but nervous smile formed on the ponies muzzle as it raised a forhoof and waved a bit akwardly. I already had troubles processing the weirdness but my brain just fizzled when in a gentle and sweet melodious voice it spoke with a little blush appearing on its cheeks “Euhm, hello?” And with that my brain decided that it had enough. It had decided to put on an all to familiar sight to all who use windows on their computers: A memorie dump followed by a compleet reboot. As I fell in a fainting episode all I heard before everything went black was the voice of dr. Sparkle “Well, it seems the subject has lost his con.......” *Notes* Still have not found a editor, but i will keep on looking. //-------------------------------------------------------// Note from author //-------------------------------------------------------// Note from author Hey there, As you can see the story is on hold for a moment. This is mainly due reasons that im rewriting the story a bit. I wont change the story-line but its more a visual aspect that im changing so its more appealing. Tnx for the patience and i believe it will be worth the wait.