//------------------------------// // The Plot Thins // Story: Meatball Marinara // by DEn-eaRP //------------------------------// The highway glistened in Celestia's glowing sun. It was such a marvelously distracting sight that the road boasted a whopping 39 driver deaths per month, the highest of any road in the county in the state. An innocent car with an innocent family inside passed the bush that the couple, Lyra and BonBon hid in. Giggling, they pressed a button that made a section of the highway spring up, launching the poor group into the sun. Everything went well, so they high-hooved. Unfortunately for them, the next car was driven by Twilight Sparkle, who was a notoriously shitty driver, and as a result, she unknowingly swerved off the road and ran them over. The left front tire took care of Lyra's throat while the right front tire splintered BonBon's spine. That kind of detail was rather pointless because no one cares. Rainbow Dash hung on for her dear life. "Twi! Maybe I should take the wheel instead!?" "Don't be silly, Rainbow Dash!" Twilight said as she uprooted a cactus. "You're a meatball now and meatballs can't drive!" "Oh yeah." Rainbow Dash had not been reminded in a while that she had been turned into a meatball, so it was very kind of her good friend to remind her. Good friends always leave each other reminders. Just then, a pegasus swooped down and ordered Twilight to pull over. As the speed blurring was on a high scale, Twilight mistook the mailmare hat for a policemare hat and obediently sped down, grinding to a halt mere inches away from a surface-level gas pipe. "I have mail for you, sir!" Twilight chortled at the mailmare's boner. "I am not a sir, my good mailmare, I am female. You can tell by how my snout is not angular." The mailmare attempted to get a better look at Twilight's nose, but it was no use. Her googly eyes simply could not converge enough to bring it into focus. "I'm terribly sorry, ma'am, I just don't see it. Anyway, so I guess that means this mail's not for you, then, which means..." AT MANLYVILLE LIBRARY Dusk Shine, apparently the name for Twilight Sparkle's manly male doppelgänger, checked his manly mail, only to find out that the mail wasn't actually his. Suddenly, a streak of gray and yellow zoomed past, and when he finished blinking, the incorrect mail he had been levitating was replaced with the mail that was actually his. "Hm." He shrugged and went back into his library, which promptly caught on manly fire. BACK ON THE ROAD The mailmare returned with the correct letter for Twilight. "Here you go, ma'am." Twilight responded by singing the "we just got a letter" song. Met with weird glares from her friend and the derp-eyed mailmare, she explained that her foalsitter from back before she was genius and self-sufficient taught her all sorts of things that normal society would consider embarrassing to do in public. After a lengthy explanation for why she did not have such preconceptions of things that were and were not appropriate to do in public, she opened the letter to find that... it was a check! "Woah!" said Twilight. "How much is it and who's it from?" asked her meatball companion. "It says that it's from Mr. Studios. It's uh... this Mr. Hasbro Studios apparently owed me 2700 in U.S. dollars this month because- hm- let's see... Oh! It says this is a royalty check!" "So Mr. Studios pays you for being the royal student?" "No, 'royalty' here refers to usage-based payments made by one party (the "licensee") to another (the "licensor") for the right to ongoing use of an asset. I read it in a Free Encyclopedia, see? Anyway, what this means is that obviously some asset of mine is being used by Mr. Studios that he has to pay me to use it!" One of the mailmare's eyes caught the top left corner of the screen. "Wow, that really was both educational and informative!" Rainbow Dash slithered over to look at the number written on the check. "Let's see... $2700... that equates to... Wow! That's a lot of bits, Twilight! It's not enough to the save Equestria, but it's easily enough to get a swimming pool!" A lightbulb emerged from Twilight's head, leaving a rather sickening-looking hole. "I just got an idea! We'll go and figure out what my asset is, and then we go find Mr. Hasbro Studios and demand that he pay more for my asset, and in short, we'll use him to pay Equestria's debts!" "Alright!" exclaimed Rainbow Dash. "So how are we going to figure out your asset?" "I know a friend who knows more about this kind of stuff." Twilight smugly explained. "It's just a matter of finding him, and finding some bread for a meatball marinara!" "Who knows? Maybe your friend has some bread at his or her house!" "Even better! Let's drive!" Twilight sped away, leaving the mailmare in the dust. She wasn't too concerned, though. She has a smile on her face as the strange gears in her head turned. It seemed that in their political correctness, neither the unicorn or the meatball looked at her eyes, because if they had, they would've noticed that her pupils had become dollar signs. BACK IN MANLYVILLE The fire that originated from the library spread throughout the whole town. Everyone was pointing hooves at each other but only Butterscotch, the male counterpart to Fluttershy, was actually using his other, non-pointing at somepony else, hoof to hold a hose to put out the fire. There was a strange man who continually claimed that the whole thing was the fault of someone named Decade, but he caught fire too and died. "We need to think of a way to put out the fire." Dusk Shine said, as if no one else had suggested it yet. "As long as it's not something barbaric like sacrificing other ponies, I'll gladly help!" pitched in Elusive, Rarity's doppelgänger. "That's it! Liquid extinguishes fire! Blood is liquid! Therefore, we need lots of blood to put out the fire! Ponies have blood in them! Elusive, you're a genius!" "No no! I said we don't do that!" Elusive was nearly ready to pull out his hair, but then remembered that he quite liked his hair and so instead, he opted to run away. "You're not pinning this on me, Dusk Shine! I'm out of here!" Following in Elusive's hoofsteps was Butterscotch, who, frustrated that logic was being spat upon this whole time, stopped his more sensible idea of hosing down the fire with the just as liquid, but not as pony-harming, water, and left too. Electing to not have to describe the horrors that Dusk Shine underwent in order to save Manlyville, the focus of the story hurled into a nearby garbage can before going back to Twilight and Rainbow's less deadly mission to save Equestria.