Okay, again I've been burned out. But I am going to find the will to keep this story going in the direction that I want it to. And I have created an outline of content that I want to include so that I don't miss it and ruin the chance to go back and change it. So, let's see where things go from here...
Kyle had to, once again, head off to school for his third year, and like always, he was anxious with how much homework he was given, having to take full-time classes in order to have any chance of graduating within four years. Really, the only reason he was going to school was so that Ed wouldn't get up on his case about being lazy.
Even when I do get my degree, what's the point? It's not like I'm gonna be able to use it for something... Kyle thought. ...I mean, really, what can do you with a fine arts degree?
In any case, he just decided to head to class, and take a seat in the spot he would usually sit in. A little bit later, a girl sat next to him; the same girl who had been sitting in the same spot since the beginning of the semester.
"Hi, Kyle." the girl said.
"Hey, Naomi." Kyle responded.
Once class began, the instructor gave directions for the project they would do today, and that they would each select a partner.
"Guess it's you and me again?" Naomi said.
Kyle nodded. "Sure." he said.
While they both worked to create a variation of a painting that each of them had previously done, one using the other's for a base, Kyle was constantly stopping and watching Naomi as she worked. She was pretty attractive, Kyle thought, and fairly nice.
Once class had concluded, Kyle decided to catch back up with Naomi just before she left.
"Hey, Naomi... uh, so... I was just wonderin'..." Kyle began. "...would you like to... um... grab a bite to eat with me sometime?"
Naomi looked quite confused. "Uh... what?" she asked.
"Or just a cup of coffee... maybe catch a movie..." Kyle said. "...I mean, it doesn't have to be today... and it's only if you want to... I'm not trying to pressure you or anything..."
The confused look on Naomi's face became one of deep disgust. "Get the hell away from me, you creep!"
"What? Why?" Kyle asked.
"Just go, before I call the police!" Naomi said.
Kyle sighed. "Okay... I'm going..." he said, just before quickly leaving the area.
He walked briskly back to his car, and drove off from the campus.
Okay, seriously... WHAT DID I DO WRONG? Kyle thought. I was nice to her, I've known her long enough to develop some rapport, and I wasn't forcing her to go out with me... so, WHY did she get all panicked when I tried asking her out...?
He could not help but have flashbacks of similar scenarios enter his mind as he drove. Throughout his life, it always ended like this with women for him.
Doesn't she know I'm a human being with emotions, just like her...? Kyle thought.
(XXXX)
Kyle decided to go out for a bit of a walk just to help himself calm down after he arrived at home. Thankfully, neither Ed nor Danny were around to pester him.
As he walked down the block, he could not help but constantly reminisce about his repeated failures with women. No matter who he asked, they always seemed to find a reason not to openly accept him. It was frustrating, not because of the constant rejections, but because of the fact that Kyle did not know what he was doing wrong.
If I'm going about this wrong... then what IS right? Kyle thought.
As he walked, he began to hear voices from a house he was passing. He looked at the second-floor open window with a light, where he assumed it came from.
"You are not going, and that is that!" came the voice of a very stern man.
"But pleeeeeeease, Daddy!" a teen girl responded. "Prom's a once-in-a-lifetime thing!"
"You should've thought of that earlier and studied for the exam! You don't deserve to go after you fucking flunked!" the father shouted.
"YOU'RE SUCH A FUCKING DICTATOR!" the daughter retaliated.
"YOU ARE NOT APPLYING YOURSELF!" the father snapped.
Kyle chuckled a bit as he continued his walk, the sound of the argument fading as he got further away.
He did not feel bad for the girl one bit; he had never been to Prom, but it was for multiple reasons. He thought it was overrated, it cost too much money, you would probably only wear the suit or dress one time, and the main reason... he could not get a date.
In any case, he decided to head down to the drugstore not far from where he lived, and pick up something for Lyra. He was, like always, looking forward to having her around to cheer him up.
(XXXX)
Kyle returned from the store to the house drinking a vanilla milkshake, and holding a mint chocolate-chip one in his other hand. He knew that mint chocolate-chip was Lyra's favorite ice cream flavor, since it was the one she requested most often whenever he took her out for a drive to get something to eat.
He made it back down to his room, and just announced the "all-clear" code without bothering with his laptop. At this point, it really did not matter when Ed and Danny were not around, let alone close by.
"Hey, Lyra." Kyle said. "I brought you a milkshake."
"Oh, thank you!" the young mare said.
While Lyra sat sipping her shake at the other end of Kyle's bed, Kyle himself was doing a bit of online window-shopping. He was browsing through the NewEgg website, looking for a laptop that he would like, and that had good specs.
"Ooh... what kind of power's this one got?" Kyle asked himself as he clicked on the link to a new Acer gaming laptop.
"Watcha doin'?" Lyra asked.
"I'm looking at getting a new laptop to work on my artwork." Kyle said.
Lyra raised a brow. "What's wrong with the one you already got?" she asked.
"Well..." Kyle began. "...it's condition is really deteriorating. I've tried running diagnostics, defragmenting the hard drive, cleaning the junk files, but the problem is that its hardware is just too old. It used to belong to my stepdad, and after he got a new laptop, he gave this one to me as a present for my thirteenth birthday... along with having to give him a bit of cash in order to have it."
"So... you want a better one?" Lyra said.
Kyle nodded. "Yeah. If I'm gonna be painting high-resolution pictures and doing intensive Photoshop work, I need a powerful computer. I've been putting money aside for it, so I think I can afford something good. It's gotta have a fast processor, high RAM, a good graphics card, and preferably a nice solid-state drive to give it some good speed. This piece of junk I've got only has 4 gigs of RAM, 500 gigs of disk memory, and the processor and graphics card suck!" he said.
After thinking and browsing for quite a bit of time, Kyle settled for a refurbished 15.6-inch 2015 Lenovo IdeaPad Y700 gaming laptop. It had an Intel Core i7 6th-gen quad-core CPU, a 1TB hard drive, a 128GB solid-state boot drive, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M GPU/VPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and preinstalled Windows 10 Home, which he would wipe off the hard drive and replace with Linux Mint v18.1 "Cinnamon" (constantly disabling background apps such as Cortana, repeatedly rebooting after update installations, and altering registry to disable telemetry felt like too much of a hassle for him).
The laptop cost Kyle a little under $900, which he paid via from his debit card. It was definitely a bargain, since even today, the same laptop, brand-new, would go for about $1,200 or more. Plus, it came with a free one-year warranty.
He opted to have the laptop dropped off at the local FedEx office, which he would pickup once it was delivered. He did not want Ed or Danny's sneaky fingers on the package if it arrived at the front door.
Once the new laptop arrived about a week later, Kyle decided to let Lyra have his old Lenovo ThinkPad T430. It was a bit outdated, running Windows 7 Home, but she still liked it. She mainly used it for light purposes such as web-surfing and picture-viewing, as well as a few online flash-games. Her magic was agile enough to use the keyboard, trackpad, and even the trackpoint.
He was successfully able to boot Linux Mint from a USB drive, and make it the primary operating system for the computer. Kyle was more than happy with his purchase (it blew his mind at just how fast it booted up and could smoothly run multiple tabs of Firefox).
Of course, he was working on his artwork (he was used to drawing/painting with a mouse), and it worked excellently, as there was no lag, and especially no crashes, which happened quite often on his old ThinkPad, causing him to lose his work, forcing him to save often.
One night, he decided he wanted to take a break from artwork. It was pretty late, a little past eleven o'clock, and both he and Lyra were still wide awake.
Lyra sighed. "I'm bored."
"Me too." Kyle responded.
Thinking for a moment about what they could do, Kyle happened to recall something in just about every romantic drama he had ever seen...
"Wanna go lay outside and look at the stars?" he asked.
Lyra shrugged. "Sure, why not? Be nice to get some air."
The human and young mare crept up from the basement door that led outside, and both lay on the grass in the back yard. Looking up at the sky. At first, it didn't seem like much, but after looking at the unending sky long enough, both of them became entranced by it.
"Wow... it's beautiful, isn't it?" Lyra said.
"Yeah, it is." Kyle answered. "It's really clear tonight; I've never seen this many stars out before..."
Lyra let out a sigh. "...Do you ever wonder what could be up there? If there could be other alien cultures? If there's anything beyond our universe...?" she asked.
"Hmmm..." Kyle pondered. "...I can't say. I think it would make sense; our planet can't be the only one with intelligent life."
They did not say too much more, and just continued to stare at the sky. Lyra scooted herself closer to Kyle at one point, and he could feel her shivering a bit.
"I'm a bit cold..." she said.
"Here..." Kyle said, lifting her up onto his abdomen and wrapping his arms around her.
"Thanks." Lyra said.
While she was laying on his stomach as they looked up at the stars, Kyle decided he wanted to take advantage of physical actions.
He placed his hand on Lyra's belly and started rubbing it. She leaned her head backwards and let out a pleasured sigh. After a minute, Kyle start rubbing her stomach a bit faster, and he could feel her loosen herself all over.
"Ahh... this feels... sooo good..." the young mare commented. "...ah, I just... looove the feeling of your... hands..."
Hearing this, Kyle subtly stretched his fingers farther apart so that she could get a feel for the spread. He continued to do this until they got bored with the stargazing, and just decided to head back inside.
It was about twelve o'clock, but Kyle was already on the verge of passing out for some reason. So, he decided to go to bed, and just let Lyra do what she wanted... quietly.
Once he was asleep, Lyra took out the diary Kyle had bought for her, and she levitated one of Kyle's pens off of his desk to use for making her first entry:
Dear Diary,
I really need to get it all out—coming to this world is just about the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It's a bit like eating a pomegranate; it's a little bitter on the outside, but once you get past it, it's nice and sweet. The human Kyle Schaeffer has been one of the greatest friends I have ever had... even more so than Bon Bon, I dare to say.
He is such a nice, sweet human. He's given me a home to live in and food to eat while I'm in this world. We've been spending our free time watching movies, playing games, and doing other fun things. And I am surprised that he's as humble as he is, given what he's had to put up with.
Other people in this world... they are SAVAGES. It's just like the legends of humans back in Equestria... but Kyle is different. He is just a lone soul in this cruel world, seeking love and acceptance, which has only been given to him by his family, who is now gone. It's all the fault of these self-centered humans Kyle is forced to serve. They all stop at NOTHING to make life miserable for my angel!
Yes, as weird as it may sound, and while this could be heavily frowned upon back in Equestria... I must admit to both you, and myself, that I have fallen in love with Kyle.
I know that some of these chapters seem like a bit of filler material, but I am trying to set up a series of events to age Lyra so that she will be of... proper age for a romantic relationship with our brony protagonist. XD Anyways, thanks for your patience, everyone! I do plan to try and finish this fic before spring. Keep holding on...