//------------------------------//
// Flanks For the Memories (Trotcon 2018) 
// Story: Speedfics R Us 
// by cogwheelbrain 
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“You want to do what?!” Rainbow Dash looked down at the small pegasus before her. 

“I need a photo of Princess Luna’s cutie mark.”

“Kid, her cutie mark is all over Equestria. Everypony know what it looks like.”

“Yeah, but that’s just a replica, it’s not the real thing. I want a photo of her actual cutie mark.”

Rainbow cocked her head, puzzled. “Why?”

“Well,” he adjusted something on the camera rig around his neck, “Photoshot Magazine is running a contest that I want to win. I need to take an amazing picture of an exotic location. And I can’t think of any place more exotic than Princess Luna’s flank.”

Rainbow Dash just started at the foal. There wasn’t a hint he meant anything illicit with that statement. The kid either honestly too young to realize how twisted it was or was the world’s greatest poker player. Amused at the prospects, she decided to play along for the moment and see where this was going. “Any why would a photo of Princess Luna’s flank win you that competition?”

“Because it’s a photo of the moon!” RD blinked in confusion. Featherweight rolled his eyes. “Can you think of a more exotic locale? It’s perfectly reasonable!”

Rainbow couldn’t decide if this was foal was seriously out to lunch or had just been hanging around the Cutie Mark Crusaders too much if this was his idea of “perfectly reasonable.”

“Why not just ask Princess Luna to send you to the moon to get a real photo?”

“That seems a bit invasive, if you ask me.”

“And taking a picture of her flank isn’t?”

“She is the moon! She was trapped there for a thousand years! I can’t ask her to send me there. It wouldn’t be right. Besides, she’s got better things to do.”

Cocking an eyebrow, Rainbow Dash asked, “...and asking Princess Luna to pose so you can get a photo of her rear-end isn’t a waste of her time (or weird)?”

“Well, I didn’t want to do that either.”

“Well, what did you want to do and how do I fit into all of this?”

“Simple, you help get me close to her and I’ll get the photo without her even knowing I’m there.”

RD’s other eyebrow went up. “Where did you even get an idea for something like this?”
“From my hero, Midnight Star, I just read his auto-biography about his life as a photo-journalist for the Equestrian Inquirer.”

“A ‘photo-journalist’?” she said flatly. Rainbow new of who Featherweight talked about and “photo-journalist” was the last term she would use to describe that pony.  She’d had her own run in with Midnight Star and he was hack at best, a pest at worst. In fact all of the Elements had had run-ins with him; enough run-ins that he had been kicked out of Ponyville with a strong encouragement to not come back outside of normal business hours. 

“Yeah, the Equestrian Inquirer, the largest newspaper by volume in Equestria. He’s gotten them some of their biggest stories in the last few years. Like how Princess Celestia is a secret cake fiend or that Prince Blueblood secretly wears Rarity designed dresses.” There was a twinkle in the kid’s eye. The kind that said the kid was star-struck.

“...and what ideas did you get from this book?” She asked, wearily.

“Find the subject of your stories in their natural habitats, take pictures when they least expect for a more natural experience, never let them know you’re there. It lets you tell the truth as you see it!”

Rainbow Dash hung her head in hooves. How did a pony go about explaining to a foal that their hero was nothing more than a paparazzi for the biggest trash rag in Equestria?