"Now just relax, this won't hurt," Twilight Sparkle said.
Standing in the scanning machine, Timber Spruce still felt a mix of confusion, worry, and happiness. They'd worked together on the scanner, performed dozens of scans, and finally had the accuracy fine enough that they hoped to see the full extent of what had happened.
In science fiction there was always a loud thunk of some kind, meant to denote the powering of large circuits at high power. In reality, there was the sound of thermally controlled fans turning on, followed by an almost imperceptible hum. There was a flash of purple light, and then nothing.
"All done." Twilight's magic flickered and danced across the keyboard before her, her mind making the jump between simple telekinesis and touch-typing with ease. She opened the datafile her scanner had made and looked at it on the display. "This is amazing. In just one day it has grown so much. Do you feel any different?"
"St-Still horny. Have any of the others felt a reduction in their—their need?" Timber pulled his shirt back on almost reluctantly.
"Uh. Okay. Would you like to—um—have sex again? Purely for science and to help with your needs, of course." When Twilight looked up at Timber, she hoped she was blushing as much as he was.
"Yes please!" While Timber Spruce's libido forced the agreement from him, there was part of him that was still worried this was making it worse. He ignored the little voice on account of the hormones rushing through his body.
Timber felt better almost immediately after his climax. A knot of need within him unwound, and he felt himself settle into lethargy with delight. The bed in the basement had been given quite a workout, but now he just wanted to curl up against Twilight and imagine the thing in his brain was just a bad dream.
"Okay! Are you ready for another scan?" In her mind, Twilight compared the second time she'd had sex to the first, though not completely favorably—to whit, Twilight hadn't orgasmed. The sex itself had been fun while it had been happening, but Timber had lost control and met his end before her.
While she'd only had sex twice, Twilight had explored herself before then. She owned a small collection of carefully gathered vibrators she'd ordered online and snuck past her parents. Masturbation had proven to be successful most of the time, whereas sex itself was now yielding just a 50% victory. But there was science to do.
Puffing, trying to get his mind back to the task of anything that wasn't sex, Timber Spruce nodded. "Y-You can stop this thing, right? I can't keep feeling like this. I need it out of my head, Twilight."
"Oh, I don't think we can do that now. With the scans I have already I can see it is so tightly connected to your brain at all levels that removal would be impossible." Twilight walked—albeit with a little pent-up desire—toward her computer and began running projections. "Besides, Rainbow Dash has turned out just fine."
"Really? So what happens, it stopped making her horny?" Shoving his need for rest away, Timber pushed to his feet and pulled on his shorts. When he didn't get a response from Twilight, Timber tried to get her attention. "Twilight?"
"Sorry. What?" Twilight asked.
"I asked if Rainbow doesn't get so horny anymore." Timber held himself together by sheer willpower. The goddess he'd worshiped from afar wasn't exactly the picture of perfection he'd expected.
"What? Oh heck no, Timber. Rainbow Dash told me she has sex like three times a day, and masturbates further besides that. Whatever this thing is, it seems to feed off chemicals given out during sex."
The news was a hammer-blow to Timber's hopes. He stared past Twilight as if she weren't there, his mind playing over the facts again. "S-So I need to find a way to have sex three times a day?"
"Well, yeah. I mean, I can help out for a little bit, but I'm going to have school in a few months, and it's not like I can just take time out of class to sex up my boyfriend." Twilight waved one hoof in a circle as she spoke.
"Hold on. Back up." Timber was angry now. Twilight couldn't remove the thing in his head, had just told him he wouldn't get better, and wouldn't help him in one short sentence. "This is crazy. We haven't even been on a proper date yet!"
Twilight was about to reply when her mind alerted her to think over what Timber had just shouted. "W-We can fix that?" Her voice was timid even by Fluttershy standards.
Righteous indignation took over from all the other emotions driving Timber Spruce. He felt hurt and abused, but also betrayed. "Oh. Now you want to date? You know what, screw this." Turning, Timber stomped his way toward the stairs.
"What?!" Twilight Sparkle felt a trickle of anger. She started to reach out with her magic to grab Timber Spruce and make him understand that she liked him, but Twilight remembered the last time she'd used her magic to force changes.
Timber unlocked the door of the basement and left the room. He'd half expected Twilight to rush after him, but the fact she didn't just confirmed that she had been using him—in his mind at least. He was so focused on getting to the front door and leaving that Timber didn't notice Twilight Velvet slipping down the stairs until he was pulling the door closed.
Hearing her mother's footsteps coming down the stairs, Twilight Sparkle wanted to be anywhere but there. Looking around, she spotted her phone and used magic to pull it toward her. Without hesitation, she stuck her tongue out and poked Rainbow Dash's name, then the dial button.
"Honey? I just—" Twilight Velvet got to the bottom few stairs and looked across the room at her daughter. She paused.
"Hey, Rainbow? Any chance I could come and talk about some stuff?" Twilight Sparkle tried to ignore her mother's gaze. Rainbow Dash was her closest friend that she knew had relationship experience (and could bring herself to ask).
"You have reached Rainbow Dash's phone. She can't answer it because she's busy, but if there's something I can help with, I'm all ears."
Twilight Sparkle blinked a few times. "Sonata?"
"That's me! What's up?" Holding the phone up to her ear, Sonata watched the one customer she had set some things on the counter. "Actually, hold on, customer."
Blinking a few times, Twilight Sparkle heard Sonata Dusk casually talking to someone about anal beads. Twilight knew what the things were, had even seen them online, but it was something else to hear someone just casually talking about them. When she heard the phone get picked up again, she cleared her throat. "W-Where are you working?"
"Canterlot Crops," Sonata said, and then gave the address.
"I'm on my way." Twilight Sparkle floated her phone into the improvised saddlebags she'd made and finally turned to face her mother. "I'm going to see a friend."
Twilight Velvet held her daughter's eyes for a few seconds before she replied. "If you need to talk about it, you know I'm always here. Do you want a ride to…"
The world, it seemed to Twilight Sparkle, was being annoying. "No. No one will see me if I'm quick, and I think a run will do me good." She wasn't even convincing herself, but Twilight Sparkle knew what a crop was, and knew what anal beads were, and didn't want to explain to her mother why she was going to meet a friend at a shop that sold sex toys. "And if anything goes wrong, I can just use magic."
"Call me if you need anything." Giving her daughter one more significant look, Twilight Velvet turned and made her way back upstairs—but not before noticing a torn condom wrapper on the floor near her daughter's bed.
She knew Twilight Sparkle read her mother's look, and breathed a sigh when Twilight Velvet left the room. Grabbing a hoodie, Twilight slipped into it and pulled the hood up and over her head. A quick look in the mirror told her that she looked completely silly, but less exposed flesh means less light refraction.
Seven blocks. Twilight Sparkle left the house without another word to her parents. With her emotions bottled up inside, she needed someone to unload on, and the current target was Sonata Dusk.
The first block was easy—residential area. Likewise, the second and third passed by with only one call of "What the hell?" to be heard. Twilight stretched her gait, moving from her brisk trot into a canter.
Passing the halfway mark, Twilight made the transition from sleepy suburbs to commercial buildings. Being a Saturday morning, many of the shops were open, but brash ignorance of what everyone would think combined with the boiling soup of emotions Twilight needed to understand so that she just didn't care.
"Is that a horse wearing a jacket?"
Twilight Sparkle broke into a gallop. Two blocks from her target, and she turned onto the street where the shop would be. The sound of a car engine revving beside her drew Twilight's attention to the car pacing her.
"It is! Look! It has the cutest nose! Pull over, we should take it home for Megan." The woman in the car was leaning out the window now.
A simple little jolt of power from Twilight's horn pulled a glass bottle from the gutter and under the front wheel of the car. Running for all she was worth, Twilight heard a bang from the car before a lot of cursing.
Looking around for a place to get off the street that now seemed too dangerous, Twilight spotted a sign just across the road that read Canterlot Crops. She stretched out as far as she could with each strode—the fastest gallop she could manage.
Too late, Twilight realized that the shop wasn't a storefront but a set of stairs. All four hooves slid on the pavement as Twilight first braced her hooves to slide then started trying to run back the two ponylengths to the stairs she'd missed.
"Gotcha! Megan's gonna love you so much."
Twilight twisted in the grip around her middle, tossed back her hood and aimed her horn at the man holding her. "Put. Me. Down!" Twilight looked into the eyes of her accoster. They looked panicked and surprised—thankfully enough to let go.
"It just spoke!"
"What was that? Why'd you drop it?"
Ignoring the people, Twilight moved quickly up the stairs and, presented with two doors, used her magic to try both. The left door opened and she slipped inside quickly.
"Welcome to Canterlot Crops. How may I—" Sonata almost got through her normal spiel when she actually looked at Twilight. "Either I'm going crazy or a pony just walked in."
Twilight looked up at Sonata and then glanced around. A distant part of her brain took in all the sights of the shop and summed it up, Yup, this is a sex toy store. "Sonata! It's me, Twilight. You need to hide me!"
A joke was Sonata's first reaction until she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Reaching down, she grabbed Twilight around the middle and shoved her into a rack of hanging rubber shirts and pants. "Stay in there."
Her world turned to black, Twilight Sparkle heard the door of the shop open. Her ears twitched and stretched, trying to hear what was happening.
"Welcome to Canterlot Crops, where the groping never stops." Trying for bored and dispassionate, Sonata reached for one of the bargain boxes at the counter and grabbed the biggest black dildo there and set it down on the counter. "Congratulations, you are our one thousandth customer. Here is a complimentary dildo—the Ass-Assassin. It's flared tip and—"
"Did you see a little horse come in here?" Of the couple in the doorway of Canterlot Crops, both were blushing, and only the husband managed to speak.
"Horse? Sure," Sonata said.
Twilight's heart beat quickly. Sonata Dusk was technically a monster, but in the time she'd known her the siren had never done anything so nasty as rat anyone out.
Sonata stopped at a stand, the couple having followed her. "Here you'll find all our animal-shaped dildos. As you can see, we have plenty of horse—"
"What is all this?!" The woman finally managed to free her voice.
With a sigh, Sonata turned back to the couple. "Welcome to Canterlot Crops, where the groping never stops." Bored, tired, and now repetitive. Sonata was bringing out her A-game.
"No. Ugh. A little horse. About this big," the man said.
"I'll have to check the stockroom to see if we have it. Wait right here." Sonata Dusk turned and walked into the restrooms and closed the door behind her. Counting to five, she opened the door again. "Sorry. We're out of that model. We do have sheep, though."
"This is useless."
Twilight heard the couple walk back across the store and out the door. She waited, wondering if Sonata would give her a sign it was safe.
"Okay. What happened?" Sonata walked over to the rubber fetish wear and parted the "curtains" for Twilight.
Looking around the store, Twilight Sparkle was aware she was literally in a place that sold a lot of things she'd been interested in. Every time she shifted her focus, she was face-to-face with another item she'd only fantasized about using. "Do you really work here?"
Sonata rolled her eyes. "Welcome to Canterlot Crops, where you bend over and call us Rover. What can I help you with?"
Twilight laughed nervously. "Alright. Got it. You definitely work here…" Looking around, Twilight made an attempt to bring up the conversation she couldn't have had with her mother. "Sonata, what's up with guys?"
"I'll need some context." Curious as she was, Sonata could practically feel Twilight's emotions all bunched up. She wanted to let the girl—pony—work them out herself first.
"I turned eighteen two days ago. I'd planned to take T-Timber out on a date, but then I—I got a little horse." The joke hadn't been intentional, nor had her following Sonata over to the front counter. "I invited him over last night, and we—"
"First time?" Sonata asked.
"Y-Yeah…"
"Was he good?"
"The first time he was pretty good. The second, today, he seemed so focused on his own needs that he didn't even get me off." Words tumbled free of Twilight, and though she realized they were coming out in a flood, it felt good to get them out. "I guess—I guess that made me annoyed with him. He asked me something—he has the brain parasite thing that Rainbow Dash and Rarity have—and then I—"
"Brain parasite? The thing making them horny?" Sonata asked.
"Yeah. I spotted it in his head when we—" Twilight sighed. "He asked me if I could remove it, but there's no way I could. No one could. It's connected all over his brain so much that cutting it out would probably kill him or leave him in a coma."
"He thought you had all the answers." Sonata reached down and ruffled Twilight's mane. "Sounds a bit clingy to me. Got anyone else lined up?"
Twilight looked up at Sonata with a surprised expression.
"What? You thought Woody McWoodface was the only guy around? For that matter, have you tried the other team?" Sonata posed, sticking one hip out to the side and delivering a naughty eyebrow waggle that Spicy would have been proud of.
Tapping her chin with a hoof, Twilight Sparkle's mind kicked into gear and showed her an unfolding landscape of possibilities to experiment with. "I'm going to need flowcharts."
"Flowcharts? Girl, you need to find someone to bounce back with. What guys do you know who are hot? Ask one out on a date and have a good time." Sonata sat down on the floor beside Twilight to put them at a closer level. "Come on. Think of your ideal date. What would it be?"
Twilight held up a hoof to Sonata. "Kinda hard to go out these days, what with—"
"Forget what you look like. Things change and people change. What would you want to do on a date?" Tapping at the gemstone around her neck, Sonata Dusk obliquely used herself as an example of change. At least she hoped she'd changed enough.
Closing her eyes, a little smile pulled over Twilight's lips. "Somewhere fun—in a smart way. I want to be able to make jokes he—o-or she—will get, and vice versa. Good food too, though I guess vegetarian is the way to go now. And finish it all off with a kiss." For half a second Twilight Sparkle though Sonata might kiss her. Just to be certain, she cracked an eye open to look.
Sonata grinned at Twilight. The eye sneaking open told her everything she needed to know. "I wouldn't do that without your permission. I'm a reformed evil siren, remember?" Clearing her throat, Sonata gestured to Twilight. "Would you be amenable to a kiss from a girl who—without boasting off too much—has had enough practice to be the world's best?"
As much as Twilight wanted to just say yes, she was curious. "If I said yes, what would you do?"
"How many girls have you kissed?" Sonata asked.
"Uh, none."
"And how many guys have you kissed?"
"One."
"Then, given the sample size, I'm pretty sure what I'll do will be…" Sonata watched Twilight's ears perk forward, ignoring background sounds completely. "… surprising." Those same ears tucked back at the non-answer.
"That's not an answer!"
"I asked first."
"Well, alrigh—" Twilight didn't get any further. Sonata moved faster than her brain (distracted as it was) could track, and she felt soft lips against hers. There was no hesitation or awkwardness in Sonata's touch, and when Twilight thought things were starting to calm from the initial touch, Sonata pushed her tongue forward and felt over Twilight's teeth.
Hands closed on each of Twilight's cheeks, and she found herself pressing into the kiss a little more, relaxing and letting Sonata lead. Only once Sonata's tongue had explored as far as it could did the siren pull back from her. It took Twilight a few seconds to realize things had stopped. She opened her eyes, blinked a few times, and said, "Wow."
"Still got it. So you want a kiss like that and someone who can hold up her—or his—side of the conversation? Lower your standards just a bit and you'll have plenty of people to choose from." Sonata was feeling great. Not just surviving in the human world, but flourishing. "With that said, would you like to go out on a practice date?"
Twilight's eyes widened further than ever. Her mind raced and ran calculations that didn't have anything to do with dating Sonata—mostly to keep her mind away from worrying about the fact she'd just been asked out on a date. "W-W-Where?"
"Not even a coy yes? Just where?" Sonata giggled. "I'll find us a where, you worry about getting something pretty to wear. Oh, and I'll have to run this by Rarity, too. We said things were open, but this is her first open-open. I want to make sure she means open."
"Open?" Twilight asked.
"Open. Allowed to see others. We're discussing it. Unless you want to make it a date with both of us? I could ask her about that, if you wan—?" Sonata was interrupted by the door opening. She stood up just in time to see her boss and his girlfriend. "Hey boss, Rainbow."
"Rainbow?" Twilight had to jump up and brace her forehooves on the counter to stretch her neck enough and see over it. She spotted her friend and smiled.
"Hey, Twilight. Uh, what're you doing here?" Rainbow Dash was wondering about how much stranger her day could become. Meeting Twilight Sparkle in Spicy Hot's store was a new high.
"I called her," Sonata said before Twilight could say anything. "She—uh—said she was good with nerd stuff, so I figured I'd ask her to take a look at the store's website."
Twilight looked at Sonata. "You did? I mean, you did!" Realizing it was a way out of explaining her thing with Timber, Twilight clutched to the life-raft with both forelegs. "We were just tonguing—talking—and waiting for you to arrive."
Spicy Hot kissed Rainbow Dash' cheek and looked between Twilight and Sonata a few times. "I'll be honest here. I don't mind you making out in my store so long as no customers are here. If you want to help with my website, I'd actually appreciate that." The talk he'd had with Windy Whistles was still fresh in Spicy's mind. Growing his business was now something he could actually see happening.
"Ugh. Nerd stuff." Rainbow stretched, making no effort to specifically show off her body, though three sets of eyes were on her.
The first to recover was Sonata. She looked at Twilight and winked. "I'll look into that thing for you. Go and do your nerdy stuff."
"R-Right! So. Uh, where do you have your site hosted?" Twilight, still trying to get past how good the kiss had been, forced her mind to switch gears to geek—something that was never hard. Her brain didn't even register that Rainbow Dash was still ponied up more than usual, or that Spicy was ponied up at all.