//------------------------------// // Seriously. WHY??????? // Story: Why, dear Celestia, why? // by Stormy Night //------------------------------// Night had fallen on Canterlot High, and the school was silent. Not a light so much as flickered in the abandoned halls. Security cameras situated high in the corners panned back and forth, constantly watching for intruders. Out in front of the school stood a large ornamental statue depicting a rearing stallion, a statue which some students claimed was anatomically correct if viewed from the right angle. These same students also claimed to have seen a demon hypnotize the entire student body and a trio of magical horse-dragon-monsters use mind-controlling music to attempt the same, so nobody took them particularly seriously. Anyway, parked at the edge of the sidewalk in front of the school was a car. The gleaming black vehicle was painted with large golden lightning bolts along the sides, and was adorned with a significantly less badass accessory as well. A sign, magnetically affixed to the roof, read “Flim-Flam Brothers' Authentic Italian Pizza” and, in smaller text “Real edible food at low low prices!” with an even smaller disclaimer that nobody without a powerful microscope and expensive legal degree could ever hope to make out, so we won't bother reading it now. The driver, a young man with slicked back blue hair, stepped out and retrieved a large insulated package from the passenger seat. He looked up at the school and scratched his head. “Who gets a pizza delivered to the school at three in the morning?” He asked himself as he locked the car door and made his way to the building. “Ah well, it's a living.” He sighed. He glanced at his cell phone, the screen of which displayed a number of special requests. According to the customer, who his bosses insisted was always right, ALWAYS, he was to make his way to the library without setting off the alarms. He slipped a pair of earbuds on, allowing the theme from a popular spy movie to play in his ears, and pulled a set of lockpicks from his jacket pocket. Carefully setting the pizza down, he got to work on the door. After a moment, it opened with a soft click and Flash Sentry slipped inside. Meanwhile, across the school, a single light was glowing. The library, normally almost deserted even at peak hours, was playing host to one very nervous young woman. She paced back and forth in a back corner of the room, her movement actually beginning to wear a bald spot into the carpet. Her fingers toyed with the strap of her outfit, one much less modest than what she was accustomed to wearing. Forsaking her usual button-down blouse and skirt, Twilight Sparkle had donned a set of silky, nearly transparent, lingerie. It seemed simultaneously to float like vapor around her and cling tightly to her every curve. The cool night air brushed against her skin, sending shivers up her spine. She wished she'd worn something else, something more “her” for lack of a better word, but Rarity had insisted. The fashionista would hear none of Twilight's arguments. As soon as Twilight had told the other girl about her plan, she had lost all control of the situation. She sat down on a nearby chair, dreading the creak as her weight settled on it. Every sound in the library seemed magnified a hundred fold, and the last thing she wanted was to give herself away too early. Her nerves were on edge, so much so that it seemed her very perception was heightened to superhuman levels. The cold metal of the chair against her thighs sent another shiver up her spine, but this one was born less of the cold and more of anticipation. After months of planning, months of communication across the barrier between worlds, she'd decided to go for it. The young man who had been on her mind since her very first foray into the human world, who she couldn't stop dreaming about night after night, was finally going to be all hers. She adjusted the straps of her underwear once more, the feel of the lacy garment against her delicate skin almost too much for her frazzled nerves, and settled down to wait. Across the school, another drama was playing out. Flash Sentry crouched atop a locker, his precious cargo clutched to his chest. Beneath him, a figure moved along the fall with jerking mechanical steps. It looked for all the world like a robotic fox, of the sort one might see in a tacky kids' restaurant on stage. The mangled automaton was missing several parts, exposing the robotic endoskeleton within. One hand was entirely gone, replaced with a cruel metal hook. The nightmarish thing clanked its way around a corner and disappeared. Once he was sure it was gone, Flash continued along his way. “How on earth does this school have the funds for patrolling security robots?” He asked himself as he landed silently on the tiled floor. “And why do they look like rejects from a Disney acid trip?” He rounded a corner and nearly walked straight into another cliché. In front of his eyes was a long straight hall. Each side was lined with lockers and classroom doors. It looked for all the world like any other hallway in any other school. Except most school hallways aren't filled with countless criss-crossing laser beams. “Oh come on.” Flash sighed, eyes darting around the incredibly overdone trap. “How much money does this school have?!” He set down the pizza and eyed up the lasers. There was about a three-inch space at floor level with no beams passing through it, more than enough room to slide his cargo along. He did so, propelling the pizza along the tile floor with a careful but powerful push. The pizza safely across, he jumped up into the air. For all the school's ridiculous security systems, it had one feature that made infiltration much easier: drop ceilings. Flash slid up into the narrow space above the tiles and began to crawl. Occasionally, he lifted up a tile and glanced down. The laser grid seemed to go on and on, but he eventually reached its end. He lifted up the tile and dropped, landing with one foot on either side of the pizza. Flash picked up the box and whipped out his phone, consulting the GPS map. He was nearly halfway across the school, but the details for the next leg were lacking. He would have to proceed blind. “You are illegally trespassing on private property.” A mechanical voice boomed out beside him. He turned his head to see a positively massive machine step out of a doorway. “Vacate immediately. You have twenty seconds to comply.” Flash's brain froze for a moment. Then he remembered the pizza. He'd sworn a sacred oath, plus he still owed Flim and Flam a hundred bucks for his uniform and car sign. “Vacate immediately. You have fifteen seconds to comply.” The machine boomed, startling flash from his reverie. “This unit is authorized to use lethal force.” Cursing under his breath, Flash did the only thing he could. He pulled a can of soda from his pocket and shook it violently. Pointing it at the machine, he pulled the tab and released a violent spray of diet root beer at the mechanical monstrosity. “Offensive actions detected.” The thing said, soda dripping from its glowing optical sensor. “Initializing weapons.” Flash uttered several words inappropriate for a school setting and ran, ducking around a corner as a pair of dual barreled machine guns laid down a barrage of lead into the wall. Flash ran, holding the pizza tight as the stomping footsteps of the security tank echoed from behind him. In the library, none of this madness was even slightly audible. The school's soundproofing budget was nearly as over-inflated as the security budget, it seemed. Twilight sat nervously in her chair, glancing occasionally at the stack of magazines Rarity and the others had given her to study in preparation for the plan. Gingerly, as if afraid they would break, she picked one up. The woman on the cover was wearing nothing at all, only strategic styling of her long pink hair preventing her from being completely on display. He skin was as pale as porcelain and her eyes a soft purple. A delicate gold chain with a fleur de lis charm hung in her ample cleavage. Her gaze, even though it was only a photograph, made Twilight feel flushed and vaguely uncomfortable. Her hands trembled as she opened the magazine to a random page. The magazine fell a moment later from her trembling hands. She stared at it briefly, then without a thought grabbed another off the stack. Two warring instincts battled in her. One was a purely intellectual drive, an intent to learn about human anatomy and mating habits. The other went deeper, planted a heat deep in her body that she wasn't sure she'd ever felt before. The magazines, one or two donated from each of her Canterlot High friends, covered a wide range of subject matter. Some contained only women, some only men, some both. Some were fairly mild, nothing worse than suggestive poses and nudity, while others showed what even a bookworm like Twilight new were extremely intimate acts between partners. Some looked almost frightening, while others involved marvels of engineering seemingly built solely to enable more exotic positions for lovers. A drop of water landed on one particularly titillating image, and only then did Twilight notice that she was drooling. She put the magazine down and stood, noticing an odd, slightly musky aroma she hadn't smelled before. More than ever before, she wanted him to arrive. She didn't know how much longer she could stand the building tension and excitement. Parts of her anatomy, something she was still not entirely used to, were reacting in ways totally alien to her. She'd been through her estrus cycles back on Equestria, of course, but she'd had spells to minimize the symptoms. She'd always ignored the urge and carried on with her life. There was no such magic here, no way she knew of to deal with the drives she was feeling. Unless, she wondered, she might try emulating some of what she'd seen in the magazines. Purely as an intellectual exercise, of course. The warmth in her lower regions grew as she contemplated her first experiment. Flash Sentry, meanwhile, was growing close. Twilight was oblivious, but he was only a few hundred feet away. The library doors were set in a large open area in the building, under an ornate skylight that cast a beam of brilliant moonlight onto the tiles below. It was here that the massive security robot caught up with him. “Halt. You are under arrest for trespassing.” The machine said, its optic flashing with each word. “Surrender and you will not be harmed.” Its sentences were punctuated with bursts of machine-gun fire, which shattered tiles and punched holes in walls but somehow failed to make a sound within the library itself. The guns clicked rapidly, firing mechanisms falling on empty magazines. Servos whirred as they reloaded from the monstrosity's seemingly infinite stockpile. Flash took advantage of this brief respite to case the area. It was wide open, with only a few chairs and tables scattered around. He caught his breath just in time to start moving again as the machine opened fire. Running between its legs, he pulled a small black box from his pocket. A stylized logo on it read “F&F Industries” in bright red enamel. He pressed a button on the box, holding it until it beeped. The box hummed slightly as the powerful electromagnet within the device engaged. He grabbed a protrusion on the machine's undercarriage and pulled himself up. With a clank, the box adhered to the metallic hull of the security bot. Leaping away, Flash pulled up an app on his phone. The smiling faces of Flim and Flam framed a large blue button with a lightning bolt on it. Grinning, he pressed the button and watched as.....nothing happened. The machine towered over him, smoke rising from the barrels of its guns. Frantic, Flash tapped the button again and again only to notice a small “x” on the corner of his screen. He had no wireless signal. Cursing to himself, Flash called up his phone's menu and found the WiFi settings. He tapped on “CHS STUDENT NETWORK” without a second thought and waited with bated breath. A moment later, much to his joy, the WiFi symbol lit up. He opened up the F&F Industries app again and pressed the blue button. This time, after only a short delay, a violent burst of blue sparks erupted from the box. The EMP shot out in a huge dome, actually making Flash's hair tingle and stand on end. His phone went dark, and somewhere far off in the maze of the school a laser grid and a slightly malfunctioning robotic fox shut down simultaneously. Flash walked proudly over to the library door, pizza in hand, and stood for a moment. His skin was singed, his clothes riddles with bullet holes and covered in dust, but the pizza was pristine. The job was nearly complete. He briefly fantasized about getting back to the restaurant and throwing his uniform and car sign in Flim and Flam's faces. That idea fell apart as he decided he REALLY didn't want to deal with owing the two scam artist money without having a job to pay them back. He opened the library door and walked in, pizza held proudly out before him. “Miss!” He called. “I've got a large pizza with extra sausage for you!” This was it. The moment Twilight had been waiting for. She stepped out of the shadows at the top of the library staircase and began to walk down. She was sure to use the exaggerated steps that Rarity had shown her, the seductive sway of her hips as she took each step. She smiled as Flash's jaw dropped. “Thanks so much for coming.” She said, licking her lips. “But I'm afraid I left my wallet at home. Is there any.....other... way I can pay you?” “Um...no.” Flash said. “I'm afraid it's cash only. F&F policy.” He looked at her outfit. “Aren't you cold, dressed like that?” Twilight laughed, suddenly aware of how awkward the situation was becoming. She fumbled blindly for the long coat she'd borrowed and pulled it on, her lavender skin rapidly turning red. Flash simply stood at the checkout desk, holding the pizza and looking confused. “So...” He said, setting the pizza down. “What brings you back to town Twilight?” He'd been hoping to see her again since the incident with the Dazzlings, but he hadn't expected such a painfully uncomfortable reunion. “Oh, you know,” Twilight laughed. “The usual contrived plot by some lousy writer to get cheap views of his stories by having us hook up.” She kicked the stack of magazines out of sight. They smashed into the fourth wall, already weakened by the author's inability to write convincing smut or awkward situations, and broke it into a million pieces. The two teens suddenly became even more aware of the omnipotent but not particularly talented writer directing their actions. “How was your delivery?” She asked. Flash rolled his eyes and gestured at his scorched and tattered uniform. “This idiot ran me through every cliché action movie trope he could think of. I met a platoon of delivery men along the way and rescued them from that giant crab your friend fought off last week, but then they all died buying me time to escape from the security robot that was chasing me. Poor Vasquez was only two days away from retirement.” He said, sipping a soda. “They will be remembered.” The two chatted, sharing laughs at the story they found themselves in. They shared the pizza as the night passed, and when it was finished they totally shagged right there in the library. And it. Was. Awesome. Fireworks shot off above the school, and a bald eagle carrying an American flag wiped a single manly tear from its eye and saluted before exploding. Twice.