Oh, What A Night
There once was a boy that lived each and every day independently. Day in and day out, this boy would travel to school, work, and home. Each and every day he performed the same daily routine. He would get up, go to the bathroom and take a shower, go get changed, drink his coffee, and then he would leave for school. At school, he would go to class and sit in the back of the room. Then, once his daily classes had ended, he would head straight for his car and return home, where he spoke to nobody at all. He would come home and immediately lock himself in his room, either writing himself to sleep or fall asleep after watching some TV episodes on his iPod. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, instead of coming straight home, he would stop at work and out in his hours before coming home.
This boy was misunderstood entirely. Sure, he acted like a typical eighteen year old kid and liked what they like - Halo, Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War, Killzone, inFAMOUS, etc. - but he enjoyed things that a lot of people would make fun of him about if he told anyone, such as My Little Pony - drawing and writing some interesting fan fictions about them.
This boy was a phenomenal artist - a cartoonist, more specifically - and was skilled with his story compositions. His longest story has stretched passed one hundred and ninety pages and still grows to this day. He had more than forty drawings - the majority of which were images of Pokémon - and had written over thirty-five stories that were complete or about to be completed. This boy's imagination ran wild, allowing him to either draw or write about something fascinating with ease.
The only thing this boy lacked was friends. He felt that they were of no importance to him, so he never bothered to connect to anybody around him. His silence was deadly, but his compassion and understanding of others when they spoke to him was ironic. He wasn't a lonely fella, but he didn't want to be around a large crowd of individuals that considered him friendly.
Tonight, on this lovely Friday, December evening, the snow was falling ever so gently outside. It was the day before Christmas Eve and this boy's cold spirit towards friendship drove him to call it an early night. He had a painfully long and stressful day, managing to obtain four traffic tickets at the same time, risking his license being suspended. His parents would kill him if they found out he got four tickets today - speeding, improper turn signals, passing on the right, and window tints being too dark - and would probably disown him if they found out. It's not like this boy does this all the time.
This boy is fairly smart, seeing how he graduated high school within the top fifteen students. He is smart, but he just made one ridiculously stupid mistake at the wheel in the morning. Upon receiving the tickets, the boy now describes cops as, and quote, "fucking fat tubs of lard who have absolutely no fucking lives and pull over innocent kids like me," end quote.
This boy had enough for today and hurriedly went to sleep for the night, listening to the serenity of the light snow fall outside and the gentle wind whistle through the air. He fell asleep quite quickly while listening to nature and soon found his active imagination take him to new and fascinating places.
"Umm, hello?" A feminine voice asked.
The boy looked around, noticing a purple alicorn in front of him. From what he remembered from My Little Pony, he knew that this alicorn was none other than Twilight Sparkle. The boy looked around and noticed a tiny purple dragon as well, whom he remembered that the name of the dragon was Spike.
"Hello?" Twilight repeated.
The boy condoled Twilight, but said nothing in reply.
"Who are you?" Twilight continued.
"A friend." The boy choppily answered.
"And your name is?" Spike asked.
"Why do you want to know?" The boy quickly responded.
"It would be nice to know your name and not have to keep calling you sir, you know." Twilight told me.
"Matt." The boy lied.
"Well, Matt," continued Twilight, "who are you? What do you do? Even better, how did you get here?"
"I'm someone who draws and writes," the boy quickly said, "and I don't know."
"By the sound of that answer," replied Twilight, "I'd say you didn't have a lot of friends back where you came from, am I right?"
"I don't need friends." The boy boldly stated.
"Everypony needs friends," Twilight shot back.
"Not me." The boy stated.
"You clearly don't understand the magic of friendship then, do you?" Twilight asked.
"There is no magic in friendship." The boy spoke.
"But there is," replied Twilight, "why, the magic is working right now between you and I. It's bringing the two of us closer together, can't you tell?"
"I know who you are Twilight," the boy started, "the Element of Magic, friends with Rarity, Generosity, Rainbow Dash, Loyalty, Fluttershy, Kindness, Pinkie Pie, Laughter, and Applejack, Honesty. I know that and a lot of other things."
"Somepony's been studying their facts." Twilight praised the boy.
"Please," the boy continued, "it's pretty basic knowledge anyone knows who follows you around."
"To each their own, I guess," Twilight stated, "right, Spike?"
"You could say that." Spike stated.
The boy woke with a fright in the middle of the night to notice that it was simply a dream. He loved My Little Pony as much as the next brony, but was completely baffled and bamboozled as to why he acted like such a prick in front of one of his favorite characters. He decided that all dreams that end should be left untouched and quickly and rapidly went back to sleep, listening once more to the light snow fall and the gentle wind howling outside his window.
"Charizard, use Flamethrower!" A masculine voice shouted.
The boy was in the middle of a Pokémon battle now. How he got there was confusing him, but he found out that it was a battle between him and another trainer.
"Dodge!" The boy commanded.
The boy gave the command to dodge Charizard's Flamethrower attack, but the communication and styles between the Pokémon he gave the command to - a Venasaur - were severely disjointed. They weren't battling as one, and thus, the boy's Venasaur was struck and had fainted thanks to the super effective Flamethrower attack, meaning that the boy had lost.
The Charizard was called back into its ball and received praise for a job well done. The boy recalled the Venasaur back into its ball, simply clicking the ball back onto his belt. The trainer the boy fought approached him, having a disappointed look on their face.
"You battle out of sync with your Venasaur." The boy was told.
"So?" Replied the boy.
"So," continued the trainer the boy fought, "unless you become one with your Pokémon, you will never win again. You need to love and trust them; gain their friendship. Once you do that, you'll be a skillful trainer and may have a shot at becoming league Champion."
"Who are you?" The boy asked.
"Oak," the trainer replied, "you may call me Oak."
"Well, Oak," continued the boy, "let me tell you that you got lucky! You had the advantage using Charizard on my Venasaur, so there was no way I could've won that fairly!"
"That's no way to talk about your mistakes!" Snapped Oak. "You do not blame your Pokémon for your loss! If you had courage and determination, you could have defeated Charizard! Type match-ups don't mean anything if you believe in your partners and your friends. If you do that, then you can accomplish anything together! A strong bond and friendship built together with your Pokémon is what you lack and what separates you from great trainers, such as Red."
The boy woke once more and shook his head vigorously. He tried wondering, why was he being taken to different worlds and why was his default actions that of a, and quote, "asshole," end quote. He decided to think about it in the morning and began listening once more to the sweet, soothing sounds of Mother Nature as he tried once more to fall asleep.
"Go! Go! Go!" An army official shouted.
The boy found himself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Beside him were three other men - two army veterans and a random pedestrian. He looked down and noticed that he was carrying two Five Sevens, Akimbo style.
In front of the group of four stood a large, deadly group of infected psychopaths that were closing in on their positions. The boy and the other three men quivered and slowly backed up into a corner while continuing to shoot at the army of the living dead. The boy ran out of ammunition and immediately switched weapons, revealing a P90 sub-machine gun, equipped with a Red-Dot Sight and detachable grenade launcher. The grenade launcher was useless to the boy, seeing how he had no grenades with him any longer.
"There's too many of them!" One man shouted.
"Grenade out!" The other shouted.
The two men, the army veterans, continued fighting. As for the random pedestrian, he was currently being eaten alive by one member of the living dead. The boy shot the zombie right between the eyes, but he was too late, seeing how the pedestrian was being converted and was rising from the ground again. The pedestrian zombie targeted the boy, causing the boy to trip over backwards and crawl to his doom. The boy thought he was done for, but was surprised to see one of the veterans come in and save him.
"Get your ass up man!" He told the boy.
"You saved me." The boy stated.
"Don't sweat it," the veteran replied, "we are all friends and we need to stick together now more than ever! Come on!"
The veteran pulled the boy's arm and immediately led him to safety inside a boarded up building...or so they thought. Soon after, the zombies swarmed the building and they both tried fighting back, running out of ammunition fairly quickly. They threw their guns at the living dead and ran for it, running up a stairwell and learning that they have been surrounded.
"It's been an honor serving with my friends." The veteran said as he realized their doom.
The boy quivered and fell down the stairs, right into the arms of a zombie and felt his head become penetrated.
The boy woke yet again from this awful nightmare. He looked at the clock, noticing that it read "4:26 A.M." He began wondering, why were his dreams tonight all about friendship. My Little Pony, Pokémon, Call of Duty. Twilight told him about the magic of friendship, while Oak told him that he should befriend his Pokémon, and the veteran told him that friends need to stick together, even during the roughest of times. He decided once more to let it slide as he fell back asleep while listening to Mother Nature provide some excess background noise.
"Three...two...one...go!"
The boy found himself a car, racing against three other cars - a bus, a tow truck, and a pickup truck. He himself was in a muscle car and was in the middle of a race. His car was the fastest, thanks to all the aerodynamic perks it had, but he was scared for his life, traveling at speeds that exceeded one hundred and thirty miles per hour!
He was racing through slow moving traffic on an interstate that seemed very familiar to him. The traffic was moving at approximately fifty-five miles per hour and was heavier than the normal traffic. The boy twisted and turned, navigating his way through the slow moving traffic as best as he could.
Suddenly, he heard tires screeching against the pavement, then a fairly large crash sound. He looked in the rear-view mirror and noticed that the pickup truck he was racing against had slammed itself into the side of a minivan and, because of the speed the truck was going at, the minivan went soaring through the air, hitting another car in the process.
The boy was shocked, but soon found himself in an accident of his own. The boy slammed into the back of an oil tanker truck and shattered his windshield and completely totaled his car. He was uninjured, strange as that sounds, but he did see a large text appear in front of him that said "Game Over!" and some numbers below that, which read "$110,000."
The boy woke once more and was hyperventilating for some air. He was scared because he just witnessed the end of a life, so to say, but began wondering again, why was he seeing this. The first three at least shared a common bond of friendship, the last one - which he figured out was a race on the map Interstate from the game Burnout, a game this boy used to play on his Nintendo GameCube - didn't match the other three at all. The last one was about either being a daredevil, a badass driver, the dangers of driving, or even death, seeing how the race ended after just one crash.
The boy shook his head, going back to sleep for the night. He began listening to the heavy wind whistle outside and heard nothing but that. The wind was strong and constant; it wouldn't stop, not even for a single second. The boy liked this and fell asleep once more fairly quickly.
This time, the boy was in a dark, endless void. There was nothing here, but darkness, darkness, more darkness, and some voices. Oh, did I forget to mention that there was darkness here?
The voices the boy was hearing sounded awfully familiar. There was three masculine voices along with one feminine voice. All these voices, echoing, laughing, shouting, playing, happy, nirvana, hopeful, amazed, awe inspiring, special, magical. The boy heard each of these voices before, not too long ago, to be precise.
"Hello?" The boy wearily asked.
"Friendship is magic." The female voice echoed.
"You need to be one with your Pokémon." One male voice added.
"Hello?" The boy asked again.
"We are all friends and we need to stuck together now more than ever!" Another male voice said.
"But...friends have no use for me." The boy complained.
"Friendship is magic, right Spike?" The female voice said again.
"You could say that." The final male voice answered.
The boy figured out that these were the voices coming from those he had come in contact with earlier in the night. He realized that the female voice was Twilight's voice while the three male voices were Spike's voice, the army veteran's voice, and Oak's voice.
"Friendship..." The boy said.
"Friendship is magic." Twilight echoed.
"You need to form a bond with your Pokémon and connect with them." Oak added.
"We're friends and we need to stick together now more than ever." The veteran completed.
The boy was learning the moral between all three of these dilemmas: make some friends. Friendship, as Twilight says, is magic. It creates a bond between two people, as Oak says (sort of), and they always need to stick together and by doing so, will always find a way to overcome any challenges in the end...except if that challenge is a zombie apocalypse in Nuketown 2025, that is.
"Friendship is vital in life apparently." The boy concluded.
There was the matter of what the race on Interstate in Burnout had anything to do with what he saw tonight. Well, the text that spelt "Game Over" on the game whizzed around him and explained to him why he saw the Burnout glimpse.
"What's this?" The boy wondered as the letters started rearranging themselves.
The text finally stopped moving about and arranging itself and the boy looked boldly at it and began reading it.
The text read: Friendship will keep you away from suicide. The crash and the game over you saw simulated what millions of lonely people do. The vehicles were just fillers and common on the highway.
"Suicide?" The boy questioned.
The text arranged itself once more. Now, it read: Yes, suicide. You are depressed, so suicide was a possibility. Make some friends and enjoy life like it's meant to be.
"Friends..." The boy thought. "I don't know how to make some."
The text arranged yet again and this time, offered the boy some advice. It read now: Just be yourself and others will accept you.
"Do you understand?" Twilight asked from beyond the beyond.
"I do." The boy answered.
And with that, the voices slowly dissipated and the boy began to wake up one last time. It was morning on Christmas Eve and the boy had a different attitude. Instead of his usual quiet feelings, he expressed himself fully towards his family and was as happy as he has ever been. His motive and attitudes have performed a complete one-eighty, going from negative to positive in a matter of a night, and everyone he came in contact with loved him - his mother, his father, his sisters, his aunt, his cousins, complete strangers - everyone.
Everyone now fed off his positive attitude and energy, and he went from being one of the most isolated people anyone ever knew, to being one of the most open, accepting, and friendliest people ever.
And to think that all it took was a wild journey through the night.
"Oh, what a night." The boy said to himself at the end of a magical Christmas Eve.