“So, as you can see, children...” Ms. Cheerilee spoke as she flipped a large poster board before the Ponyville classroom, displaying a hovering cloud of pastel colored miniature equines. “From a combination of famine, genetic deficiency, and an overabundance of natural predators, the very last remnant of the flutterpony civilization died nearly three thousand five hundred years ago. Thus ended the legacy of a noble class of equines whom Starswirl the Bearded himself described as, and I quote: ‘really damn stupid.’”
The young foals in attendance would have listened, only most of them were too preoccupied with keeping their listless eyes open while simultaneously avoiding headbutts with their shiny, drool-slick desktops. There was one jubilant exception, however. A bright-bright soul sat up straight like a pale shadow glinting in the middle of the lethargic group. With a rambunctious squeal, she rocked back and forth in her tiny chair, waving a hoof like she was dramatically swatting an invisible swarm of bees.
“Any questions?” Cheerilee’s eyes swam over the group, the redheaded foal, the rest of the group, and back. “Any questions whatsoever?”
“Oh! Oh! Mith Cheerilee! Right here! Right here!” the filly within the nucleus of the classroom blurted like an asthmatic assault rifle.
The ruby red corner of Cheerilee’s muzzle twitched. Keeping a geometrically perfect smile intact, the mare swiveled her expression until it reflected doubly across the exuberant foal’s glossy, thick spectacles. “Ahem. Yes, Twist?”
“Squee!” Twist squee’d. She sat back and folded her forelimbs in a prim and proper fashion while uttering, “If the flutterponieth had wingth, and the pegathi have wingth, then how come the flutterponieth are dead and the pegathi are not?”
“Uhm... well, it doesn’t quite have anything to do with the ponies’ wings, Twist,” Cheerilee said, her voice cracking as she rounded each awkward corner of verbal syntax, avoiding eyesight with the foal’s pale face at every swivel of her head. “There isn’t necessarily a correlation between their flight and their extinction. Much rather, a combination of environmental hazards and natural competition is to blame for their disappearance from the face of Equestria. If you had listened to the lesson just now—”
“Or maybe they couldn’t hold onto their cooking theethts!”
Cheerilee blinked. “Buh?” the adult buh’d.
“With tiny gothamer wingth, how can you carry any sort of baking utenthilth?!” Twist smiled proudly, as if she had just immaculately conceived the pony messiah. “Thometimeth, when the kitchen ditheth aren’t wathed in time for Thaturday Night Baking, I juth feel like thlitting my writhth! That’th jutht like extinthion, right?”
“Fyeeeeughhhhuuuu,” was all Scootaloo had to say before colliding her forehead with the edge of her desk and making love to the wooden finish.
“Uhm...” Cheerilee’s eyes bounced across the foalishly decorated walls of the room before she ultimately jerked with a spastic grin. “Oh! Would you listen to that? That’s the bell, my little ponies!”
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle collectively hopped up in their seats. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon exchanged numb glances.
From behind her thick-thick glasses, Twist bore a confused expression. “What? But the bell doethn’t ring for another two hourth!”
“Oh, uhm... sure it does!” Cheerilee gritted her teeth, sweated, and reached over for the Equestrian flag. She yanked the banner off, hoisted the pole over her shoulder like a spear, and launched it violently into the ceiling. A loud crunching noise echoed across the room, followed by the liberal spray of plaster and mortar. At last, the schoolhouse tower imploded overhead, and the huge hulking bell plunged down from above, crushing the edge of Cheerilee’s desk, resonating with a prophesied gonggg! “See? School’s over for the day!” Cheerilee sing-song’d, her eyes as wide as her teeth. “So long, Twist... and class. But mostly just Twist.”
The room clamored with clopping noises as everypony still alive got up, gathered their saddlebags, and made hastily for the exit. Twist blinked, sitting absolutely still within the retreating maelstrom of young pony life.
“Huh... funny... that’th the third time thith month Cheerilee let uth out early after I athked about the lethhon.” Her eyes blinked like magnified pink headlights, and she shrugged. “Oh well! If the clatth ith happy, then tho am I!” She got up and smirked rosily to the nearest table. “Ithn’t that right, Thilver Thpoon?”
“Don’t talk to me, you walking raspberry stain.”
“Hee hee hee!” Twist smiled a crescent moon. “Thilly pony! Rathpberrieth don’t attend clathhroomth!”
T W I S T C L O P S
A cool spring breeze blew through the schoolyard as Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon trotted down the front steps of the school building. They talked snobbishly over the sounds of giggling, playing foals on either side of them, happy to have the rest of the day to scamper and play.
“I swear, elementary school is such a waste of my time!” Diamond Tiara grunted with a roll of her eyes. She punctuated her terse speech with dainty girlsteps across the springy grass. “Once you get your cute-ceañera, it’s nothing but a lame waiting game until high school... then college...”
“What’s after college?” Silver Spoon asked.
“Pffft. How should I know?” Diamond frowned into the afternoon sunlight. “My dad’s always going on and on about something really miserable... some stuff called the ‘ninety-nine percent!’”
“Oooh! I love numbers!” Silver Spoon said with a little bounce. “I could marry one, it'd be the number 'three,' cuz then it could hug me all day!”
Diamond Tiara glared daggers at her. “Sometimes, I wonder which way the spoon is bent with you.”
“Huh?”
“Did your great grandmother—like—swallow a bunch of polluted seagulls when she fell off the boat at Manehattan harbor?”
“Neigh York! Ooooh! I love Neigh York!” Twist chirped, suddenly hopping down the steps so that her portly self was sandwiched forcibly between the two gawking fillies. “Hey, have you two girlth ever been to Thaten Island? That’th where they caught the Clopthey Killer!”
“Eeeeyugh...” Silver Spoon groaned, trying her darndest not to plow her drooping expression into the dirt.
“What?!” Twist frowned. “He wath a bad thtallion! He worked at thuper evil thanitarium until Giraldoath thhut the plathe down!”
“Twist, just because you like talking a lot in class doesn’t mean you have to talk anywhere—like—close to my ears,” Diamond Tiara muttered. “You know, the ears on my head, far away from your mouth?”
“Well, if I talked thomewhere clothe to your bellybutton, thomepony might get the wrong idea!”
“Listen, girl,” Silver Spoon sputtered, glaring at her through the corner of her wide-framed glasses. “You’re into sweets, right?”
“Am I ever!”
“Why don’t you drink a tall glass of buzz the heck off?!”
“Yeah!” Diamond Tiara choked on a snicker. “With extra lemon!” She and Silver Spoon bumped rumps. “Chhyeah! Celestia, we own this town!”
“Heehee! Own it like a two bit horse!”
“Heheheheh...” Diamond Tiara blinked and went deadpan. “I don't get it.”
Meanwhile, Twist was frowning, more out of confusion than anything else. Her round eyes went rounder behind quivering lenses. “I don't get it! You guyth and I never hang out anymore!”
“We never—like—hung out ever!” Diamond Tiara grunted. “In fact, the only time we’re likely to hang out with the likes of you ever is if changelings take over and swing us from the gallows!”
“Oooh! I love thwingthetth! I can totally do a backflip if I’ve got two ponieth to puthh me!” Twist bounced and grinned and bounced. “Thoooo... when do you guyth wanna do it?”
“Hmmmm...” Diamond Tiara smirked in the direction of Silver Spoon. “I’m thinking on the first Saturday of Buckcember.”
“Heehee... yes...” Silver Spoon winked back. “Right after recess, at 11:75pm.”
“Huh...” Twist skidded to a stop, scratching her double chins in thought. “I’ve never heard of that month... or even theventy-five minuteth in an hour!”
“That's because... uhhh... Princess Celestia just invented them!” Silver Spoon said with a phantom light bulb over her gray head.
“Yes!” Diamond Tiara rang forth as the two marched on without the redhead. “Just like she invented the leap day you were born on! Which makes you zero years old! That’s—like—not even negative baby!”
“Well, okay!” Twist smiled nervously, digging her lonesome hoof into the ground as she watched them trot ahead. “I’ll meet you two at that time, then! Tho long as Printheth Thelethtia declareth it!”
Once the two uppity fillies were out of the four-eyed pony's earshot, they exhaled heavily. “Whew! Thought we’d never get rid of that talking radish,” Silver Spoon whispered to Diamond. “So, what do you want to do today?”
‘Well, like I said earlier, I’m sick of waiting to grow older,” Diamond grunted. She tilted her haughty head up with a devilish smirk. “I know just the thing to find out exactly how pretty and popular I’m going to be years from now.”
Silver Spoon’s pink eyes darted back and forth like ocular ping pong balls. “You’re going to pay respects to the Griffon Triad?”
“Huh? What?!” Diamond gave her a gawking expression. “No!” She smiled. “I’m going to the Everfree Forest. I hear there’s a zebra shaman living there who’ll tell your fortune for twenty bits!”
“I’d be careful about that...” Silver Spoon shivered as she said, “All I know about zebras is that they rhyme a lot and always carry shivs with them.”
“Silver Spoon! That’s so equinist!”
“But that’s what my dad says!”
“Your dad couldn’t buy his way out of a paper bag in the middle of a rain shower. With hungry possums circling around from the bulwarks!” Diamond Tiara cleared her throat as she guided the two of them towards the hazy green line of Everfree in the distance. “Now, if you wanna be cool, then you’re gonna escort me there so I won’t look stupid going alone.”
“Escorts...” Silver Spoon thought aloud as the two left the edge of the schoolyard. “That’s another thing my dad keeps complaining about. Apparently they’re super expensive.”
“You’re super expensive. Now let’s go.”
Across the front yard, several feet away, three foals were gathering around a bright scooter and an even brighter wagon affixed to the rear.
“A shovel cutie mark, huh?” Scootaloo grinned back at her friends as she strapped on her helmet.
“Yeah!” Apple Bloom pumped her hoof and grinned from where she squatted in the wagon alongside Sweetie Belle. “First, we earn our talents, and then we can rake in gold for the rest of our lives!”
“I don’t get it,” Sweetie Belle squeaked with a confused look to her face. “What do shovels have to do with gold?”
“Hay if I know.” Apple Bloom shrugged. “I was just listenin’ to my sister talk about yer sister one night, and sayin’ that on account of all the gifts stallions are givin’ Rarity during her visits to Canterlot, she should be sportin’ a shovel made of gold on her flank!”
“Heehee, yeah—Hey!” Sweetie Belle’s giggle fractured into a growl as she frowned at her companions. “Somehow, I think that was supposed to be mean!”
“Will it matter once you’re drownin’ in showers of gold?”
Sweetie Belle scratched the surface of the sky with her eyes, then shrugged. “Nope! Shovels it is!” She pumped her hoof with a jubilant grin. “Let’s get to digging!”
“Yeeehaa!”
“I feel like I've heard this joke before,” Scootaloo muttered. Then, with a lazy shrug, she fastened her helmet tight and bucked at the ground beneath her scooter. “Oh well, you only scoot once. Cutie Mark Crusader Shovel Knights!”
“Yaaaaaaaay—”
Just then, an obese deer with a fluffy red mane and a peppermint strip cutie mark frolicked out into the middle of the road in front of them. “Thhovel Knightth!” Thud. “Thpectacular! Can I dig for golden thhowerth too?!”
“Gaaaah!” Scootaloo swerved, jerking her scooter hard and grunting as the wagon caught up and bumped into her lower limbs. “Ow ow ow ow... Gosh darn it, Twist, you... smelly... uhm... mole cricket!”
“Even better!” Twist beamed. “Mole cricketth are good at digging trencheth, right?”
“Uhm...” Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom exchanged nervous glances as each of the three crusaders fidgeted, avoiding the sight of the spritely pale organism in front of them.
“Come on! I’ll make it worth your while!” Twist leaned forward, winking, before performing tiny little jumps of joy around the fillies and their wagon. Mounds of sand shook from the tiny tremors that were produced. “I’ll tell you awethome thtorieth the whole time! Like thith one time an oven blew up in my fathe! Or how my father got his parole! Or how I developed an incurable denim jeanth phobia!”
“Denim... jeans...?” Scootaloo dripped.
“What?” Twist beamed blissfully. “They ride up the plot like nopony'th buthinethh!”
“Yeah, uhhhm, about our crusading...” Sweetie Belle nervously smiled. “This is kind of a blank flank thing, Twist...”
The four-eyed pony stood in place and blinked. “Oh?”
“Yeah...” Apple Bloom smiled sweetly. “It’s nice of you to be all helpful and stuff, but we’re fixin’ to get our cutie marks from this, and... uhm... gul-durn it...”
“You’d suck up the cutie karma with your tattooed butt!” Scootaloo grunted.
“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle nodded. “What she said!” She instantly blushed. “Though... maybe a little less gross-gross.”
“Meh,” Scootaloo meh’d.
“Oh... well...” Twist smiled nervously as she dug a hoof through the pliable edges of the dirt road. “That maketh a whole lot of thenthe...”
“Really?” Apple Bloom blurted with a raised eyebrow.
“Good enough for me!” Scootaloo’s wings instantly started blurring, and soon she and the wagon soared over the hill like a scarlet missile. “Gold ain’t gonna shower itself!”
“See ya later, Twist!” Apple Bloom waved dramatically from the madly speeding vehicle. “Don’t worry! We’ll hang out another time! Isn’t that right, Sweetie Belle?!”
“I have bugs in my teeth!”
The sound of their voices dwindled in the distance. Twist coughed as the dust following their exit settled. She waved into the sloping horizon and spoke to everypony and nopony all at once. “Well... well, we can thertainly rethchedule! Okay?” She stood with a smile locked in the center of her face. “Guyth?” Interminable silence lurched by like a funeral dirge across a river of molasses. “Thuper!”
The filly turned around, finding the schoolyard utterly vacant. A tumbleweed may or may not have been possessed with the ambivalent need to roll by.
“Anypony elthe wanna hang out?” Her voice echoed into the far reaches of buzzard-space, unanswered. “We could do thome thweet baking!” Her grinning teeth reflected the open void. “Maybe even roll thome thinnamon thwirlth?!”
A few crickets, woken from their daytime slumber, spontaneously began chirping several hours early. She finally took it as a clue.
“Well, alright! I guethh I’ll be trotting on home!” Twist waddled about. “Alone!” She twitched and twitched until her ears drooped on their lonesome. “...again..”
She walked the space of about ten meters until she actually came upon movement. Gasping, she slapped her grin back on in time to greet two coltish figures.
“Thnipth! Thnailth!” She waved ardently as the two stallions-to-be trotted by. “Wanna go tothh a batheball?!”
“Go jump off a cliff, Twist,” Snips yawned.
“Yeahhh...” Snails belched. “Crawl back into your mother’s womb and pull a Silvia Plot! Heheh!”
They both trotted away, becoming a pair of testosteronical dots along the distant horizon.
Twist looked after them, her grin unceasing.
“Tho is that a ‘yeth?’”
Across town, inside a blissfully air-conditioned confectionery...
“And that's when the glass ladder of oligarchical musical hierarchy fell on my horn like all the piled-up regrets of this starving universe,” Lyra droned, frazzled and bleary-eyed as she stood before the counter with a bag of bottles slumped over her flank. “The head of the music theory research department fired me like a sack of rotten meat, and I've been festering within the dark recesses of my apartment ever since. Over the last few days, the city has cut both my power and water. My landlady tells me that I have less than twenty-four hours to move my bony carcass out of the third floor, or else she's going to start calling the repo ponies, or worse: the dog catcher.”
With a grunt, Bon Bon lifted a carton of sloshing red liquid onto the counter and bagged it with a glinting smile. “Whew! Well, look on the bright side! At least the weather is good!”
“Pearlescent blue, like the jaded edges of my soul once were,” Lyra murmured. “Drowning me in the depths of remorseful truth, to which I have been blind and naked all this time.” She vomited a pair of bits onto the counter and limply lifted the bag of cartons onto her backside with limp teleknesis. “My dreams, my aspirations, like an ocean of plankton before the gaping maw of a soulless leviathan of fate and—”
“Whew!” Bon Bon fluffed her mane and chuckled. “You poetic ponies are always way over my head! But hey, whatever floats your boat!”
“Like a splintery wooden ferry caught adrift in a tempestuous monsoon of purple waves and—”
“Yup! Sounds like a great song already!” Bon Bon squinted. “Curious, though, how will three bottles of arsenic and a huge carton of fruit punch assist in the lyric-writing process?”
“Oh, you know...” Lyra shuffled around, trotting liquidly out the door. “...magic.”
“Heehee! You bet!” Bon Bon wave. “Good luck with your brain juices, Miss Heartstrings! Have a great afternoon!”
“Good bye.”
The bell rang before Lyra could reach the door. Twist trotted in, bouncing between each springy step. “Hello, Mitth Heartthringth! How are the thtringth plucking today? Hmm?”
“We are born from death and we return to it, whimpering.”
“Thoundth thuper! Lemme know when you have a new record out!” As Lyra disappeared into the ether, Twist rolled up to the desk, grinning like the peppermint bowling ball that she was. “Thweet tidingth, Mithh Bon Bon Bon Bon Bon Bon! Heehee! I jutht made a rhyme!”
“Oh... uhm...” Bon Bon's smile fractured like Stone Colt Steave Oatsen's neck vertebrae after a botched piledriver. “Hello... you...”
“My daddy and older thithter thay that you can't make a rhyme by blatantly repeating thingth.” Twist's lips made a raspberry as she smiled proudly. “They obviouthly never lithtened to Radiohay!”
“Is there something I can get you...” Bon Bon twitched before drooling, “...t-to do outside of my store?”
“Thilly filly! I can't buy thugar candieth from you outthide your thtore! Funny, you make the thame joke every day that I thtop by!”
“Yeah... the s-same joke,” Bon Bon said, her pleasant voice unraveling like a kitten's intestines as she fidgeted behind the counter. “Are you actually going to buy something today, y-you?”
“Funny that you thould athk that!” Twist reached deep into her saddlebag.
“I'm afraid I'm all out of floor lint today...”
“Look what I got!” Twist lifted a pair of bits littered with red splatters. “Snipth and Snailth bet me during recetth that I couldn't take a buck to the fathe! Well, turnth out I could take two... and three... and even five!” Twist's head jerked slightly as one eyebrow twitched above the other. “It hurt at firtht, but after the theventh punch, it wathn't tho bad! Now it only hurtth in the part of my brain that rememberth vintage grunge songth!” She grinned, then suddenly spasmed from head to heel. “Unnnngh... 'Rein Me.' Why did 'In Uteroatth' have to be thooooo pretentiouth? Ow ow ow ow...”
“Wow...” Bon Bon's pupils shrank as she stared disdainfully at the pair of splattered golden coins. “That's a lot of blood...” She gulped. “And mucus.”
“Hahahaha... yeah.” Twist smiled. She smiled some more. With a jerk, she said, “Tho, how much for the thinnamon thwirlth? I'll take two thtickth, pleathe!”
“Uhhh... uhm...”
“Thothe two, right there on the counter, right in front of you, Mithh Bon Bon...”
“Yes... allow me to... get them...” Bon Bon smiled. She then turned, galloped, and dove straight out the window. Blood and glass shattered across the floor, casting the confectionery into grim silence beneath a rotating ceiling fan.
After a few seconds, Twist blinked, then leaned forward. “Do the thinnamon thwirlth come with a free mint?”
Silence.
Twist swooped up both sticks and a grasped a piece of green candy in a happy hoof.
“Thankth!” She trotted gaily through the front door.
Stepping out of Bon Bon's candy's shop, Twist entered Ponyville's Main Street. A mother and her foal trotted by. Upon first sight of the filly, the mare gasped, hugged her child dearly, and dove into a dirty alleyway with a clatter of garbage cans. Granny Smith slipped past, writhing in the shadows, until she found a strategic horse trough to dunk her wrinkly head in. A barking squirrel darted across the dirt road, barely avoiding an oncoming stagecoach. Once it saw Twist, the rodent’s tail went stiff, and it crawled robotically back to the curb, lying itself in the path of the incoming wagon wheels.
The resulting crunch sound was fatefully masked by Twist taking a heavy bite out of her cinnamon sticks. “Mmmm... mmmm—now thith ith the life!” She smiled between powdery suckles. “Jutht like my big thith thayth! Nothing better than a thweet, thick thtick to thuck on!” Her four eyes blinked bulbously across the street. Just as a lavender shade glinted off her glasses, she snorted, gasped, and bounced up and down, waving. “Printhethh! Printhethh Twilight Thparkle! Felithitathionth!”
“...so in conclusion,” Twilight said while trotting across the sidewalk in her crown, “I learned that you can make friends with just about anypony in Saddle Arabia, so long as you attend at least one public castration.”
“Hey! Heyyyy, Printheth! Over here! With the thinnamon and the thmileth!”
Trailing Twilight with his claws dragging a pen across a scroll, Spike looked up. He instantly blanched at the tuft of red fluff bounding towards them. “Oh crap crackers on turd toast.”
“Spike!” Twilight hissed back at the whelp. “Please, I'm dictating here! And what have I told you about defecation jokes on a Tuesday?”
“Yeah, but look who's trotting up—”
“I'm a princess now, Spike. I can't afford to show disdain for any of my loyal subjects—” She looked across the street and her wings instantly drooped. “Oh... poop into my mouth.”
“Maybe later...”
“Hey!” Twist slumped to a sweaty stop in front of them, her face awash with brown sugar. “How... goeth... the kingdom-thaving!”
“Uhm, honestly, Tweak—”
“Twitht.”
“Yes, ahem, Twist, I haven't... uhm... done much kingdom-saving in months, my little p-pony.” She nearly wretched out the last three words. Taking a huge breath like a pearl diver, she resumed, “But I intend to get back to it as soon as... y'know... something horrible and evil attacks Ponyville!”
“Oooh! Oooh!” Twist hopped up and down, causing nearby mailboxes to fall off their supports. “Could I help next time the Elementh of Harmony have to vanquith thomething?! I've alwayth wanted to be a vanquither! It'th on my bucket litht! Along with kithhing a moothe and getting rid of my fear of denim jeanth!”
Twilight winced, inching away from her. “I... d-don't think I will... uh... ever need your help in vanquishing evil, Twinkie.”
“Twist.”
“Or that.”
“You sure, Twilight?” Spike looked curiously at the unicorn. “What about that one time you said that Twist inspired you to make an Adept Protection Spell for you and your friends?”
“Uhhhhh...” Twilight started instantly sweating.
“Ya know, the one you had me fetch all of those ingredients for?” Spike shrugged with a smile, then began counting off his clawed fingers. “The eye of newt from the bog, the essence of ectoplasm from Everfree, and the one bent coat hanger?” He scratched his green spines with a twisted expression. “Funny, still don't know why you sent me to Rarity's for that last one. She seemed to have an awful lot of them—”
Twilight bucked him blindly.
“Ooof!” He flew off into a newspaper stand, drowning in black and white rhetoric.
“Wow, look at the time!” Twilight grinned wider than was allowable for her jaw. “I have to go... uhm... knight somepony!”
Twist made a face. “Who?! What'th the thpethial occathion!”
“Somepony's... going to slay a dragon! Yup!” Twilight lifted Spike's dizzy body and planted him on his back as she galloped away. “Come on, Spike! Time to do mortal combat!”
“Nnnngh—Drop me off at the arcade after we're done,” he vomitously slurred.
Twist gazed at the two as they rode off in a regal dust cloud. “Hmmm... Funny, Twilight had to go knight thomepony the latht time I thaw her too. Thomething about a 'flathhing thentry' and 'de-flowerth...'” A pause. “Oh well!” She shrugged and skipped happily along the sidewalk. “I'll get to heroically lay my life down for her highnetth thomeday—”
Just then, a blue blur shot down, instantly pummeling Twist into the dirt.
“Ooof!” the filly grunted.
“A pale gila monster!” Rainbow Dash hissed. Ponies gawked at her as she flashed a snarling face around. “Don't fear, ponies! I got it!” She stomped and stomped on Twist's fluffy red skull. “Die, ya poisonous little salamander! Show your meaty little sniveling face in my town and threaten my friends?! I'll make you regret the day you're mother ever spat out—” She froze in place, hovering on numb wings as her eyes went wide. “...horseapples.”
“Unnngh... h-hi there...” The filly gurgled on her own juices as she smiled out the edge of her bruised face. “My name ith Twitht and I love you...”
“Oh... crud, I thought you were... but that pale hide and the flashing... tongue-hair?” Rainbow rubbed her ruby eyes, wincing. “Uhhh... uhhhhhhh...” She stood Twist up, dusted her mane off, and patted her shoulder. “Stay in school, kid!” Then, with a thunderous boom, she rocketed towards the skies.
Twist waved wearily. “Don't... d-don't you fret! Gonna thtudy hard. Gonna... g-gonna earn my... urp... P.H... A.T.B.I.T... C... ungh...” She limped back and forth, trotting a serpentine path towards home as her limp tongue slurped in and out like a seizure-stricken frog. “General... Educathion Dog... Tree... Catsh. Pantieth. Heheh... pepperminnnnnt...”
Bruised and dirty, Twist waddled along on her lonesome. Tucking a pair of saddlebags on her obese flanks, she walked a barren path home as she hummed pleasantly to herself.
“Hmmm-hmmm-hmmm...”
She hummed to herself. She kicked at a few rocks. Then eventually, quietly, she grinned to herself and rang aloud.
“‘Oh? What’th that?’” Twist’s twitching grin widened in the wake of nothing. “‘Why, yeth! I did get it permed! What, you thought thith wath my natural mane?’ ‘But it ith tho thtriking, Twitht! How ever do you manage it?!’ ‘Well, my thithter ith the one who doeth motht of the work, even if it involveth her putting baking batter in my hair and thmacking my head againtht the oven door!’ ‘The oven door?! You mutht have a fantathtic kitchen!’ ‘Why yeth. Yeth I do. And a thick head! Why, what a polite pony you are!’”
She approached the front steps of a honey-brown painted house and paused halfway in the center of the garden.
She frowned. “‘Well, I do my betht to be polite! But nopony theemth to notithe!” She tilted her head aside and grinned. “‘That’th becauthe nopony ever getth clothe enough to find out! You thilly filly!’” She turned back and frowned once more. “‘You thould try harder to get notithed! Then you’ll be popular!’” A tilting; a grin. “‘Don’t be thtupid! Being popular and being good are two different thingth!’” She swiveled again, sighing, then smiling. “‘You’re right. I’m thorry.’ ‘Don’t be thorry! Be thweet’! Heeheehee!”
In spite of her felicitous giggles, she trudged slowly up to the door and flung a limp hoof forward.
“‘You’re thuch a good friend, Twitht.’” A breathy pause. “‘You too, Tw-Twithth...’”
With a creak, the door opened to a cramped kitchen filled with coughs, body heat, and the sound of breaking glass. A voice belched loudly over the humid bedlam. “For the last time, we can’t let this place reek of crap anymore! If we don’t keep spreading the baking flour and cake mix around, the pigs are gonna catch a whiff the next time they trot by and they’ll head straight for the lab!”
“Don’t talk to me about red herrings, you ungrateful trampworm!” a surly stallion with a five o’clock shadow grunted from where he sat, slumped at the kitchen table. A frazzled mare scrambled around him, tossing glasses and silverware out of the drawers in some frantic search. The tile floor was covered in all sorts of litter and messy bric a brac. “The only reason I ever ended up in the slammer was ‘cuz a stool pigeon told on me!” the stallion exclaimed.
“That’s no excuse for you to be putting off work on the lab, ya lazy old mule muncher!”
“Hey!” The stallion shook the lengths of a newspaper in his grimy hooves. “I’m trying to get back into the swing of things! Gimme a second or two to check out the classifieds! I’m still looking for the lady of my dreams, y’know!”
The young mare gave a splotchy grin as she pointed over the old stallion’s shoulder. “Might as well start looking for potential stallions, considering how long you were in prison, pops!”
“Why you...What are you even doing anyways?”
“Nnngh! I’d kill for a friggin’ cigarette! Been smoking nothing but shower stall plaster since I moved in to this goddess-forsaken Discord hole...”
“Hey! Whatcha talking about?!” Twist hopped into the middle of the littered kitchen, grinning at her father and sister. “The bathroom?! That remindth me. I could barely thtand thtraight in the thhower last night! Hey, Thith, when are you gonna move all those bleach bottleth out of there?!”
“Stop complaining, you little red fartball,” the mare grunted, fumbling from one kitchen cabinet to another. “You care about the shower so much, why don’t you crawl into the drain and make love to it? You’d be at home there with all the cat vomit.”
“Heehee... You and your thilly adult thlang, thith!” Twist turned and smirked at her father. “Good afternoon, Daddy! How wath the parole officer?!”
“I threatened to strangle him with his own jock strap...”
“Happy ath ever? That’th tho thuper thpethial!”
“Nnngh...” The stallion gazed lethargically aside at the mare. “Honestly, did you leave the kitchen door open? I think another raccoon’s gotten in.”
“That’s your daughter, ya breathing pizza stain!”
“Must have gotten into a fight, considering how bloody its head is.”
“That’s her mane. She inherited it from that thing you married years ago. You remember? The thing with the uterus? I think she was called 'Mom?'”
“Which thing? We talking about the Las Pegasus thing or the San Antonioats thing?”
“Give it one good guess.”
“Oooh!” Twist hopped, her eyes bright. “I love guetthing gameth! Lemme go firtht!” She cleared her throat and lisped, “Ith it animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“Ugh...” The stallion turned a page of his newspaper and muttered to the mare. “Darling, could ya? I can’t reach from here.”
“Yeah. Sure thing.” The mare took one bounding step over and bucked Twist hard in the side.
The filly went rolling like a pale soccerball before landing fluff-first against a china cabinet. Plates and silverware shattered all around her. She smiled upside down, breathing into her dangling tail. “Tho... mineral, then?” A loose frying pan flew across her muzzle from afar. She smiled past her bleeding nose. “Am I getting warm?”
“You want rocks? Go bake some yourself, ya little crud.” The mare limped her bony way towards the far end of the kitchen, then gasped happily upon finding a half-full cigarette carton. “Jumping Sombra Testicles! This’ll hit the spot!” She crammed the death stick into her mouth and fumbled around for some matches. “Mmmmf... a lighter... a lighter... wh-where’s a lighter, dammit?!”
“Go fart into the oven,” the stallion grunted.
“You’re so full of it, you could vomit into a desert and bloom a field of roses.”
“I think I’ll just settle for the carpet outside your room.”
“Unngh... I hope you get arrested soon...”
“Heh heh heh...”
Twist rolled upright, shook the shards of dinner plates off her crown, and limped off to her room. “Well, I’d love to thtay and talk, but I’ve got homework to do! Love ya Dad! You too, Thith! I’d love ya even more if you guyth made my favorite Pancake Thinnamon Thurprithe for breakfatht tomorrowwwww!”
The father sniffed, then raised an eyebrow. “Did you smell something just now? Something that didn’t resemble congealed urine?”
“Mmmfff...” The sister leaned back against the only wall of the kitchen that wasn’t stained, taking a long drag of a cigarette she miraculously managed to light. “Speaking of which, I would totally kill for an Insane Colt Posse tour to come thisaway...”
“Meh...” The stallion returned to his newspaper. “I’m laying those raccoon traps first thing tomorrow morning...”
Twist sat at her vanity later that night, dressed in pajamas with little swirly peppermint stalks imprinted across the sleeves. She ran a brush through her mane with two delicate hooves, trying the whole time to stifle delicate yawns as they fluttered their way to her petite lips.
“Mmmmff... ‘Twelve pageth of math homework... all done...’” She smiled proudly as she looked into the mirror. “‘Mithh Cheerilee ith gonna be tho proud of me...’”
The redheaded reflection could only frown. “‘If that’th true, then how come the’th alwayth ending the thchoolday after you raithe your hoof?!’”
“‘Well, you know how it ith!’” The filly waved back at the mirror while brushing and brushing at her mane. “‘Thchool ith a plathe to learn and get thmarter! It’th not thome thilly little popularity contetht!’”
“‘But that’th all that the fillieth and coltth theem to care about,’” the pony in the mirror snarled. “‘Fathe it. You’re not popular, and that’th why they don’t like you.’”
Twist’s frown reflected this time. “‘Uh uh! They tho do like me!’” She upturned her nose in Diamond Tiaraesque fashion. “‘They jutht don’t know it yet!’” Suddenly, her hoof was gripping nothing. She gasped and looked up at the flouncing fluff of red curls as the brush disappeared deeply within. “‘Ohhhhhh thhoot! That’th the third one thith week!’”
“‘Look at yourthelf! You can’t even conthentrate!’”
“‘Yeth, well, I’ve had a lot of homework to do. Gotta do well at thchool, y’know!’”
“‘And what about Daddy? And big thith? What doeth homework have to do with them?'”
Twist found herself tightly gripping the edge of the vanity. The skin above her hooves turned red from rushing blood. Gulping, she stammered into the thin air around her as the sounds of fumbling and crashing kitchenware echoed throughout the household under the cadence of muffled shouts.
“I jutht... gotta be happy...” Twist mumbled into the darkness of her room. “The only reathon I have to be happy ith that I choothe it...” Her pink eyes twitched alternatively as she gazed into a deep vacuum situated somewhere beyond the glass of the mirror. “If only I could make otherth choothe to make me happy too...”
All was crickets and chaos, when at last the mirror fogged, and her voice rang out.
“You should go to sleep, Twist.”
Instantly, the filly yawned with a drunken smile. “‘I thould go to thleep, Twitht.’”
The mirror shook. “All gorgeous, self-respecting redheads deserve peace and happiness.”
“‘Mmmm... yeth...’” She deliriously limped her way towards the fluffy pink bed lying in the corner of her room. “‘All gorgeouth... redheadth... happineth... h-happineth...’”
“Free from hatred, malice, and nightmares about denim jeans.”
“‘Heeeeee... hmmm...’” Twist took her glasses off and snuggled into the warm toasty nook of her bed covers. “‘No... n-no more denim jeanth... no... thireeee...’” Her lips pursed one last time, and she was out like a light.
The room was dreadfully quiet.
The mirror vibrated in a low frequency. A reflection still lingered there, sitting on the other side of the glass, alone in a world made vaporous by the shadows that consumed the filly’s contentment on a nightly basis. A pair of lids opened, like windows to a burning world, hot ruby and full of wrath. Slowly, like a tuning fork, the vibrations of the mirror produced a low hum that grew in pitch, undulating with its otherworldly mystique. At last, there was a cacophonous sound, like a bell cracking down the center. The glowing eyes joined as one lidless orb of crimson light, a glow that swiftly consumed every square inch of the glossy pane. Then, just as quickly as the beacon began, the entire mirror shattered, littering the floor with glittering shards as a solid beam of ethereal redness wafted across the room and absorbed itself into the bed... and into the petite figure snuggled within.
Twist merely stirred, turning over with a yawn. Her eyelashes fluttered briefly, and at that precise moment, a piggybank on the opposite end of the room exploded like a plaster vase of hot red firecrackers. The noise cleared, giving way to eerie silence.
Twist’s pale lips smiled into slumber.
“Ugh, you still at it, old stallion?!” the frazzled mare grunted as she poured a white plastic bottle of bubbly material into another plastic bottle of even bubblier material. She squatted before the rickety kitchen table as he continued scanning the newspaper with bloodshot eyes. “You must have been really, really bored in the slammer.”
“I don’t get it!” Twist’s father grumbled as he planted his nose dead-center in the black and white classifieds. He munched on a bowl of dry cereal as he mumbled, “None of these mares mention a single thing of being willing to share a stable with two other ponies. I mean, what’s Equestria coming to?! No spice of life!”
“I think the spice mixed with the sugar while you were gone.” She squinted at her meticulous work. “Speaking of sugar...”
“Yeah, yeah... I’ll go by the store later...”
“You better, or I’m gonna shove this bottle so far up your—”
“Pleathed to be theeing the two of you thith fine morning!” Twist sing-songed as she waddled sleepily into the kitchen. She yawned and grinned into the beams of sunlight crossing her pale face. “Awww... ithn’t the thunrithe abtholutely gorgeouth?!”
“Crud!” the father instantly hissed. “I friggin’ forgot to set the traps! I knew there was something festering on the other side of the house...”
“You’re late for school, Twist,” the older sibling grumbled, fidgeting with all sorts of questionable materials. “Better get a move on...”
“Heehee!” Twist hopped up to the kitchen, her bright smile illuminating the center of that grimy house like a holy halo. “Thilly Thith! Thchool ithn’t for another two hourth!”
“Unngh... then what are you doing up so soon?” The mare frowned, not bothering to share a single glance with the filly. “Shouldn’t you be in bed... I dunno... practicing for death or something?”
“But it’th tho thpectacular being alive!” Twist chirped. “I get to thhare breakfatht with the betht family ever!” She folded her forelimbs and leaned forward, her fluffy red tail wagging. “Tho?! Where ith it?!”
“Where is what, ya little ball of boogers?”
“Pancake Thinnammon Thurprithe!” Twist grinned even wider. “You made thome, right? Jutht like you alwayth uthed to?”
Both the old stallion and the coat-stained mare chuckled dryly.
The filly merely blinked at them in the early morning light.
“Like I’m ever going to cook something for you that won’t roll over and die on its own, scampling,” the sister grumbled, licking her lips as she poured another bottle before her spasming, hollow eyes. “Now make like your mother and collapse in a gutter somewhere.”
“Yeah, what she said,” the old stallion muttered while flipping to another page. “Oooh, shemales!”
Twist stood still. Twist twitched. Twitch icily said, “I wath... under the underthtanding... that there would be... Pancake Thinnamon Thurprithe...”
“Snkkkt-Ha ha ha!”
“Heeheehee!”
“Yeah... heheh... sure thing, ya talkin’ dishrag!”
“Hah! Yeah! You’ll get some pancakes!” The mare’s twitching grin matched Twist’s quivering face. “And I’m Santa Clop!”
The two adults laughed.
Twist wasn’t laughing; twist was staring. Twin pinpricks of blood red light flickered behind her glasses as the lenses began to smoke.
“Heheheheh...” The mare laughed and laughed until she sputtered for breath. After a deep inhale, she wiped her suddenly sweaty brow and glanced across the table at her father. “Say... is it getting hot in here? Like... really damn hot?”
Precisely three microseconds after she uttered that, Twist’s older sister flew out the window. The reason for this may or may not have had something to do with the herculean stream of crimson lasers blasting her straight in the gut and propelling her limp flesh through the fresh hole in the kitchen wall. Birds flapped skyward and cats shrieked in horror as they scampered away. Moments later, the mare’s figure ragdolled a hundred yards away in another district of Ponyville, causing happily trotting ponies to freeze in their tracks, gasping at the figure lying mangled on the sidewalk at two blocks’ distance.
With a gaping jaw, the stallion swiveled to face his daughter.
Twist reflected his expression with a strobing pulse of red light.
Whimpering, the stallion erected a newspaper shield between them. A scarlet beam instantly ripped through the paper sheets, taking his head—and his body—along with it. The father flew through three walls of the house and landed somewhere in the bathroom, kicking up a cloud of dust and chemicals. “Nnngh... d-damn... atomic raccoons,” he sputtered, and fell into powdery unconsciousness.
In the center of the kitchen, the bright red pulsar dissipated, revealing Twist sitting upright in her chair as the table before her slowly rattled to a stop. As the dust settled, the contents of the pantry did too, littering all around the filly in a shower of boxed and bottled perishables. At long last, a can of pancake mix spun to a stop beside her shoulder.
She looked towards it, and smiled brighter than the dawn of time. “Oooh! Well, if you inthitht!” She grasped the container and nuzzled it like a lost dolly. “I’ll jutht bake it mythelf! Heehee! You guyth are tho thoughtful!” She grinned into the smoke wafting off her glasses, betraying the slightest twitch to her foalish grin.