Twilight checked to make sure that the toaster over remained on before clutching Cody's iPod. She pressed down upon the clicker, having no luck. She bounced from menu to menu as she tried to get her hooves over the finger-sized buttons. "Oh, hold on, I can get it." Frustration flashed over her features. "Wait-- maybe--" She leaned over and bit against the side of the iPod. She wiggled her head around as the teenagers stared at her, and she blushed. Spitting it out, she politely asked, "Cody, please, can you start playing the 'shuffle songs' feature?"
He nodded and clicked the small center button. Twilight watched with sheer envy burning in her eyes at how Cody's human fingers just took less then two seconds what her hooves would take hours to manage. Cody scratched his cheek before taking a nervous breath. "You want me to turn on the new speaker, the built-in-thingy?" Twilight nodded. He brushed against some sliders at the bottom of the iPod. A slow electronic tap-tap-tap of a synthesizer started to flow through the room.
"You're not actually going to cook his thing, are you?" Robin asked.
"Oh, nothing like that," Twilight said, brushing her mane to get rid of her ragged expression. "But you're still in for an interesting surprise at a moment." She slid the still playing iPod into the toaster oven and shut the door. The music seemed to somehow get even louder, the whole oven used as some kind of amplifier and speaker combo. The teenagers looked on as the electronic dial keypad on the oven flashed rainbow colors, a fluffy of white sparks popping up underneath the whole thing.
"What the hell is going on here..." Graham muttered, stepping a little back.
"Well, in short terms," Twilight said, moving over behind the toaster oven. The white sparks turned bright purple, and stripes of magic-filled electricity shot up and down the sides of the oven. "You're seeing how the electro-magnetic field created by technology from your world functions in a rather interesting way. Your bodies sort of repel magic from your bio-electric fields. But your technology that you make-- your iPods, laptops, Android phones, and so on-- all work sort of the opposite way more like catalysts for collecting and then redirecting magitrons." The teenagers paid her words about half attention, otherwise focusing on the flashing purple aura bubbling underneath the oven. It looked like somepony had a rave right inside the machine.
"Wicked," Cody remarked, feeling totally transfixed.
"Oh, you haven't seen nothing yet," Twilight said, watching as the iPod turned around in the middle of the toaster oven. "Notice, oddly enough, that I haven't even turned the oven to 'start'. I merely left it on. It's magically charged already, meaning that any close or nearly close contact creates interactions between our magitrons and the subatomic residues spouting off from your iPod-- something spontaneously erupting."
"Look, put it in English please Miss Nye the Science Girl?" Robin asked with a bit of playful sarcasm.
Twilight began, "When I--"
"The song's ending," Cody interjected as the instrumental piece wound down. He waited with baited breath right in front of the toaster oven, the purple sparks bubbling around the sides gathering more faint in tune with the music, and his compatriots gathered around his back. Their faces mashed together.
"As soon as this baby starts playing something louder, faster, and more upbeat," Twilight remarked as she wiggled her mane over her shoulders and grinned, "you're gonna see some serious--"
"Jitterbug!" screamed out a familiar-sounding British voice from inside the oven.
"Oh, dear God, no! Not the 'jitterbug' song!" Graham called out, recoling from the group in horror as sweat poured into his thick glasses. "It's like water-boarding torture in song form!"
"Yes!" Cody yelled back, popping from side to side with the finger-snaps that he knew so well.
Robin slid backwards a few inches as the toaster device seemed to light up like a Christmas tree. Waves of sheer energy mixed with an alien-like low hum coursed around the kitchen counter. Cody, for his part, closed his eyes and simply shifted to the beat. He waved his arms in the air as he skidded to the right.
"You put the boom-boom into my heart! You send my soul sky high when your lovin' starts!" sang the voice from inside the toaster oven. Cody kept on dancing with his eyes closed for a moment before spinning around and gazing at the oven. The energy seemed to coalesce into a thick purple coat of sparks around the oven, going all around its surface like a blanket and levitating it several inches into the air.
"Jitterbug into my brain," the song went on. The oven bounced up in down in the air, twirling up on the right side. Cody seemed to have flash after flash of pure joy burst over his face. Robin simply froze with his mouth wide open. Twilight clopped her front hooves in excitement, fluttering her eyes. "Goes a bang-bang-bang 'til my feet do the same!"
"Sweet merciful Jesus the oven is dancing!" Robin finally called out, folding his hands in each other and almost shivering.
"I told you!" Twilight hollered, moving in between Cody's legts as he danced along with the oven. The device hopped rightwards, and Cody leaped to the left. It shimmied in place, and Cody smacked the sides of his uniform. "Human technology catalyzes magical energy."
"Left me sleepin'," the voice in the oven sang on as it spun in the air, the oven's door slapping open and shut. "In my bed, ooh!" Twilight felt Cody gripping her left hoof, and she suddenly looked up. "I was dreaming, but I should have been with you instead!" A few small moves from left to right made things clear, and Twilight slid along the kitchen tiles, feeling more than happy to dance with Cody.
"Oh, God, it's spreading! It's freaking spreading!" Graham shrieked as he saw the same kind of purple aura around the toaster oven bubbling beneath the refrigerator. He fell down to the ground and kicked himself to the door. His eyes grew wide as dinner plates as he saw the refigerator's door bouncing open and shut to the bubbly synthpop tune as well. He shot his glance straight up, and the clock seemed to respond as well-- tapping against the wall behind it. "I'm getting the hell out of here!"
"The more emotionally involved the humans are with their technologies, the more they can seem to control it and amplify it's power," Twilight remarked, giggling, as Cody held her with both his hands on both her hooves. She looked around at the various items from the dishwasher to the refrigerator to the blender to the food processes and more skidding about in place. It all seemed like something out of a dream-- her purple magical aura drained from her own body and rocketed out to the whole room around her.
"Wake me up before you go-go!" sang Cody, spinning Twilight over.
"Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo!" sang Twilight back, pulling Cody across the floor.
"Wake me up before you go-go!" Cody sang again, this time watching as the the toaster oven flopped like a fish and rained bright white sparks out the top like a firework.
"I don't want to miss it-- when you hit that high," they both sang together, standing up straight with their hooves and hands both out in victory poses. "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"
Cody broke from Twilight and kept on dancing in place. He got really into it, eyes shut tight as he slapped his hands rhythmically upon the counter. "Oooh, gosh, I'm surprised that Pinkie hasn't burst in here yet," Twilight remarked, panting hard. "This is like her favorite song ever. It single hoofedly made her fans of humans for life-- her greatest goal to make it to your place to meet 'the Jitterbug guys', her personal heroes." Cody seemed to melt into another zone, moving faster and faster with some kind of robotic-like energy.
Robin locked eyes with Twilight. "Something seems... wrong..."
"Ah, I think there's a bit too much emotion and a bit too much technological charging," Twilight softly muttered, walking over to Cody. Her happy face faded as she saw Cody jiggling around in place as if he had had a seizure. "Cody?" She shot a hoof into his spinning body. "Cody?"
"Oh, dear," Robin said, drawing Twilight's attention to the toaster oven. "It looks like it's ready for orbit." The toaster oven span around in place like a top with some kind of a purple vortex rippling over it.
"Oh, wow, there seems to be some kind of an audio feedback of some kind," Twilight said, stretching her hoof over to the oven's plug. Cody seemed to half collapse onto her back as she turned around and saw Robin ducking out into the door as well. She gently placed Cody down upon the floor and brushed his sweat-filled hair, the teenager panting loudly, as she saw the refrigerator seem to walk over from its spot on the wall and head towards them. "Feedback... this... is something new..."
"Feedback, doesn't that mean that-- ah--" Cody muttered as the bubbly synthpop song reached its ending climax. The refrigerator poised itself over besides the two of them, door opened wide open. Twilight kicked the toaster oven's plug away, but the device kept on spinning and hovered in the air several feet upwards. "Feedback usually ends in a 'pop'?"
*Boom!*
For a full minute, neither of them had any idea what had just happened. Finally, both Cody and Twilight sucked in huge gasps of air. They threw themselves over the piles of upturned cabinet drawers, cracked jars, bent silverware, and everything else while brushing their eyes frantically. Twilight scurried her body to the side, standing up atop the kitchen island. She slid her hooves from side to side in the thick coating of white flour and powered sugar all where she stood
"What... the... hay..." Twilight whispered. The walls of her kitchen seemed to have held up, but literally every appliance, cabinet, box of foodstuffs, and anything the least bit fragile had exploded into gooey and powdery brown mush. She drank in the damage, hoping that she'd get things repaired as soon as possible. She thanked goodness that Cody, standing behind her and breathing calmly, had made it out okay.
"Oh, God!" Cody screamed. Twilight facehoofed. She took a little breath.
Twilight spun around, and she skidded forwards to Cody's lap. Cody tried his best to wipe off his eyes, but ketchup dripped off from every last inch of his hands. The rest of the former contents of the refrigerator oozed along his body. Twilight stared at the pickles around his eyes and the layers of cold linguini coating his hair. Her eyes traveled down the slabs of sauce-covered hay fries stuck around his neck to the mustard caking his chest and belly to the lettuce sticking all around his legs. And she spotted yet another piece of food on him every other second.
"You need a... a bath..." Twilight sheepishly muttered, blushing. She looked across her clean-looking purple fur, realizing that Cody had shielded her from the confectionery explosions. She blushed even more.
"I need a day long shower and five goddamn weeks of therapy." Cody sniffed. "I can hardly feel my legs anyways. I think I had a concussion."
Twilight suddenly realized the full implications of the situation, her ears drooping down. "I'll get Nurse Redheart here right away!" Twilight called out.
"Oh, Christ," Cody moaned, his fingers going down his belt. "I have pickles down my underpants."
"No worries. I'm on it," Twilight remarked, hopping over the rubble over to the front door and picturing her set of scrolls at the end of the hallway in her minds eye. She knew she'd have Nurse Redheart there in a flash.
Cody then glared at Robin and Graham, both of them hunched besides the front door in the hallway right outside of the kitchen. The two teenagers ran their eyes up and down Cody's food-soaked body. Twilight rattled through an emergency scroll at the other end of the hallway yards away.
"Well, at least you can say 'hi' to Jack for us," Robin said finally, trying his best not to laugh.
Twilight, for her part, teleported herself right to Redheart's clinic herself rather than waste any more time. She felt bad enough losing one human. She only had two left for the rest of the assimilation process, and she didn't think she'd have any more luck moving forwards with these silly teenagers.
"I. Have. Pickles. In. My. Underpants," Cody yelled over to Graham and Robin, ketchup dripping from his teeth like blood.
"I think they have pills for that," Graham whispered, speaking so quietly that he couldn't even hear himself.
To Be Continued...