Lyra looked through your written request, her eyes narrowing with every line. "Well, uh, Twilight, that certainly is something."
"Haha, yeah. Something. It's for an unnamed third-party. I'm just helping-"
She looked at you with a look of distain. "Twilight, I'm not stupid. You just happen to pick up a 'client' right after you come in to a lot of money?"
Her face turned smug. "Feel free to lie to me about your secret desires, but we both know who this is really for."
"I-" You know that you were suppose to keep the whole thing a secret, but you just couldn't let Lyra think of you like that.
"I tried to summon a familiar but the spell went wrong, and the human is teaching me really complex math and he wants me to pay him back by doing this because he's selling it to his friends."
Lyra was laughing so hard that she was tearing up. "Listen, I think it's best that admit it to yourself before you leave today. I don't want to waste time LARPing in your fantasies."
You sank into the floor, defeated.
"I- I'm a filthy monkey-fucking degenerate and the porn is for me."
Lyra stopped laughing long enough to wipe her eyes with a hankerchief. "There, was that so hard? It'll be done by Wednesday, I promise. Good thing ponies find it so hard to vomit, otherwise I'd have to skip dinner."
Then you heard Mike's voice in your head. "You know I heard the whole thing, right?"
Just when you thought your face couldn't turn any more red, it did.
========================================================================
It was Thursday, and you feel sick. The fact that there were ponies- people out there who would get off to this filth... This is what Lyra thinks you're in to. With magic, everything truly has a cost. And the cost for being the rising star of mathematics in Equestria, it seemed, was your very soul.
You've been spending more time in the shower lately, trying to wash out the filthy feeling from your coat.
It hasn't been working.
"So, Twilight, I really want to thank you for dictating the story to me last night. I think we need to work out a code system that substitutes words or something, because as much as I love making a week's pay typing for a few hours, it still felt really really gross."
"Uh, thanks for your concern, Mike."
"Speaking of degenerates, do you have a, what did you call it? Special somebody?"
You looked down at your hooves and spoke softly.
"I've never had a special somepony. Nopony has show that type of interest in me. I don't know if anypony ever will."
You expected Mike to snicker at your overuse of the word 'pony', but he just sighed.
"Don't worry, kiddo. We're all going to make it. There's someone for everyone, and you honestly don't have a bad personality."
"Thanks, I guess. Does that just mean it's my looks?"
"At least that's easier to change. Listen, a friend once told me that if you wanted attention from the opposite sex, you needed to be funny, nice, and interesting. That, or just attractive."
"Is that suppose to make me feel better?"
"Actually, yes. They both sound easy to achieve, do they not?"
You thought for a moment. "Well, yeah, when you put it like that."
"Anyways, the reason I brought it up is because my long-distance girlfriend is coming over later tonight, and we might be uh, a little loud."
"I would ask you to get some noise-cancelling headphones, but I'm not sure they would work for this, so go to a metal concert or something, alright? At least the screaming wouldn't be out of place."
============================================================================
You were in a white room. The walls were a lot lower than the ceiling, which was just plain weird. You could see a strange creature there, in what looked like pajamas.
"Ah, Twilight, I see that we're dreaming again."
"Mike? Is that you?"
He nodded, looking up only briefly from his manilla folder and coffee.
"You know, we've had this conversation more than once, but you never seem to remember. I suppose that's just the nature of dreams."
"If we're in a dream, doesn't that mean Luna should be here?"
His head snapped up.
"Luna? The Dreamwalker? I thought she was just a legend."
"What? No. I actually know her personally."
"Right, you're a pony princess or whatever. And what type of information can she access exactly? Not as much as I could, hopefully?"
You pondered for a moment and shook your head.
"I honestly am not too familiar with that."
"You know, you were a lot less freaked out by an alien digging around in your head than I would be. So I assume that mind-magic is a common thing in your world?"
"That's going to take a long time to explain."
He shugged. "Well, actually, let's talk about something else for a moment."
He put on what looked like reading glasses.
"Since we're here, is there anything you want me to look at for you? Crushes, unresolved feelings of abandonment, stuff like that?"
You were taken aback. "You know that I never gave you permission to look at any of that, right?"
He smilled a predatory grin. "Aw, well, shucks. I'm not entirely lucid right now, and I have problems following instructions in my dreams. I'll probably forget about that by the time I wake up."
You just sighed. "Is there anything you can find that explains why stallions just don't... like me?"
He shrugged. "Might have something to do with your commitment issues, your lack of confidence, maybe that you have a bit of an inferiority complex relating to the fact that everyone you know is a massive overachiever?"
"You've been researching that for how long?"
He smiled and closed the file he was reading. You read the title as he turned it to face you.
'Magic Information Theory - Starswirl The Bearded'
"I didn't exactly need to read through those files to know that, you know. My interests lie elsewhere."
"Is it that obvious?"
"Yes. If you don't believe that you'd make a good partner, how can anyone else?"
Oof.
"When we wake up, can you not remind me of this conversation?"
He nodded. "That's what you said the other two times too."
====================================================================
"So, Mike, how would you improve the security of Equestria?"
"Twilight, I'm on company time."
"So?"
"So of course I'll answer your pony questions while I pretend to be productive."
"Anyways, asides from artillery and small arms, I would probably insert orbital weapons platforms all over low orbit. Since magic doesn't follow conservation of momentum, we can dip a lot lower into the upper atmosphere than on Earth. So that gives you complete real-time footage of the entire planet. Add to that some magical payloads and maybe orbital drop troops, and you can level or take over any city on your planet in hours."
"But wouldn't that require you to station ponies on those platforms? How would they be able to breathe?"
Mike paused for a long time before he spoke again.
"Did you know that it's possible to make an air-tight container?"
"No, Mike, I'm a magical researcher, of course I know that. I was just wondering how you planned to get magical Vital Energy to sustain the crew when it's depleted with every breath?"
Another pause.
"Are you talking about Oxygen?"
"Mike, please. We have the railroad. We know what Oxygen is."
"Oh, goody, I finally get to learn about magic."
You start clip-clopping to find which dusty shelf you left that magical textbook on.
It was about time you could smug on Mike about something.
=======================================================================
"Oh, alright. It's just that we had a theory a few hundred years ago called vitalism which held that living beings had a special vital force in their bodies that can't be generated from non-living things. It was dead wrong, which is why I thought you guys were just confused."
"No, Magic Vitality is very different from that."
"Are there any creatures that don't rely on magic? Bacteria possibly?"
You vaguely remember hearing that word before.
"Bacteria? That sounds weird, is the translation spell working properly? I think it's related to small creatures you find under a microscope? Anyways, I think they're a minor curiosity."
"And what do your people think cause disease?"
You pondered for a moment. You took a single medical class in your sophomore year.
"Erm, I think it results from the flow of contagious magic, at least for, well, contagious diseases. The problem is that while a few contagious magics have been identified and are treatable with the right dispells, most are proving difficult to detect or identify."
"Normally, I would say that's full of shit, but I've accepted that pony world-"
"Equestria"
"-is different from Earth. Now, in order to do good bacterial identification, you're going to need a good growth medium. Wait, do ponies have farm animals?"
"Well, yes, but we don't eat them. Remember that any word I use to describe them will just be-"
"Translated to the closest equivalent in my world, I know."
"But common ones are cows, pigs, sheep, chick-"
"Wait, you guys have pigs?"
"Yeah, I knew some from the Apples' farm. Why?"
An uncomfortable pause.
"What do you think happens to pigs on a farm, Twilight?"
"OH NO, MR. PIGGLES!"
Mike chuckled at your disgust.
"Anyways, if you can get some animal blood from the Apples, we can use that as a decent growth medium."
You were close to tears at the sudden revelation. Mike sighed.
"Listen, I know you're not comfortable about this whole thing, but you have to remember how much of a difference we can make. By eliminating major communicable diseases, my people were able to increase our life expectancy by something like 20 years."
You got hold of yourself. Those tears aren't going to help anycreature.
"I have a cousin who died of featherpox, you know. His family was a wealthy noble one living in Canterlot, and they couldn't do anything but watch him fade away."
You thought of little Starstruck and the thousands of little ponies like him who died that year.
"I'll do it. I'll wade through all the blood and guts in Equestria if I save even a single life."