//------------------------------// // The Emoji Short, by FoME // Story: Group Precipitation // by FanOfMostEverything //------------------------------// Sunset heaved out a breath. "Well then." Twilight looked up from the NAHTI's test computer, blinking furiously. Screen burn might not affect LCD screens, but it did a number on her corneas. "Something wrong?" Sunset shook her head and pocketed her phone. "Oh, nothing." Twilight turned her chair to face her girlfriend. "That's your 'the mortals have done something so stupid, I'm thinking of them as "the mortals"' voice. What happened?" "... It's happened often enough that I have a voice for it?" "It's the same one Mom would use when she caught me trying to use the cookie extractor I'd made out of Brickos." Sunset put her chin in her hands, beaming with the innocence of a child anticipating story time. "Oh?" "Oh no." Twilight shook her head. "You can make all the cute faces you want, I'm not sharing any more stories of Twilight Sparkle, Girl Genius until you tell me what's wrong." "Fine." Sunset rolled her eyes and took her phone back out. "It's just... This is going to sound really petty." "Consider me braced for pettiness." Sunset tapped her screen a few times. "It's alive!" cried the voice of Wild Gene. Twilight checked her new text, studiously avoiding Sunset's smirk. After a few moments to process what she was looking at, she stated her conclusion. "Your icon is an emoji." Sunset sighed. "Yup. Right next to the other religious symbols. The Tree of Harmony, the Sacred Chao, the star of Asterism—really wish I'd known about that one when people decided to start worshipping me. If I'd known there was already a religion that amounted to 'It's all being taken care of, just be nice'..." "I understand. It's trivializing the symbol that represents you on the most fundamental level." Sunset shrugged. "Well, yeah, but that's not the biggest reason I'm upset." "What could be worse than that?" "Aside from the fact that people use glorified telegrams when you have a fully functional telephone network? Memetic mutation." Twilight blinked. "Huh?" "Twilight, people don't send 'eggplant taco' because they want to swap out guacamole for baba ganoush. Now imagine what they might do to my cutie mark." Sunset shuddered. Twilight, meanwhile, scratched her head. "Why do they send 'eggplant taco'?" Sunset spent several seconds staring at her like she'd asked if hydrogen and fire mixed well. "Seriously?" "Sunset, you've seen my texts. I use proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation." Twilight waved her phone for emphasis. "Do I look like the kind of girl who makes heavy use of emojis?" Sunset got up and hugged her. "Please, never lose that innocence." Twilight squirmed in her grip. "But now you've got me curious! Is the eggplant me? Is this a chromism thing?" Sunset kissed her. Twilight's hormones decided that that was answer enough. For now.