Chapter 26
“Thanks for the offer, Fluttershy, but I’m a little bit in a hurry here. Besides, I’m not really hungry anyway.”
Fluttershy looked disappointed—a little bit more than one would expect, almost as if she wasn’t only sad about Twilight rejecting her offer, but also about losing something else. Before Twilight could question such a premonition any further, however, Fluttershy lifted her head up and smiled.
“It’s… fine, Twilight. I can find somepony else to try my soup o– I-I mean… somepony else to let my soup taste…”
Twilight looked at her friend skeptically. “Uhm, Fluttershy… is there something you want to tell me?”
“N-nothing at all!” She chuckled uneasily, and tried to regain her composure—whatever amount of composure a pony like Fluttershy could collect anyway. “Let’s ignore that, it was nothing. Just tell me what I can help you with, Twilight.”
Twilight’s head tilted to the side a little and she gave a questionable look, but she decided to let the matter pass “Right. I need your ability to talk to animals to… interrogate... a squirrel. That beast has stolen a valuable item I need, and no matter what I tried, I can’t get it back.”
Fluttershy kicked at the ground lightly and averted her gaze “Oh, I would love to help you, Twilight, but… I have to wait for Rarity here. And I really need somepony to test my soup.” Twilight was about to shoot her a frown, but was interrupted by a hoof booping her nose. “Heads up, Twilight, I have something that can help you! Wait here.”
Fluttershy turned around and walked up her stairs, while Twilight fell onto her haunches dumbfounded. Something was wrong with Fluttershy, that was for sure.
But her train of thought was derailed, when Fluttershy came back down only seconds later, carrying a strange, metallic object with lots of antennas on it. “This is a helmet that allows you to communicate with animals,” Fluttershy explained. “It’s a small, diamond-molecule-powered machine that works without any magic, and it emits biological, high-frequency waves which—”
“Fluttershy!” Twilight interrupted her. “What is wrong with you? Since when have you become such a… braniac? You are completely acting out of character!” a very odd-looking lampshade behind Fluttershy suddenly caught her attention.
“Well excuse me for not acting like your headcanon thinks I should, Twilight!” complained Fluttershy. “What’s wrong with trying something new for once? And since I already know so much about animals, why can’t I make a living off it?”
“A living off it? What do you mean?”
Fluttershy gasped, then sighed. “Did you really think I would give you this thing for free, Twilight? It took a lot of time to read all those books and get it to work.”
Groaning, but accepting that out-of-character Fluttershy was in her zone of being a mean pony again, Twilight nodded. “It doesn’t look like I’m getting an easy way out of this, so why not just skip the yada-yada and get straight to the point: how much do you want for it?”
“Oh, since it’s still you, Twilight, and you’re a very good friend, of course I will give you a discount.” Fluttershy rubbed her chin with a hoof for a few moments, before happily announcing, “One hundred bits.”
The agonizing pain of one thousand lampshades crashes down on you.
→ Pay the abnormally high price? Go to Chapter 37!
→ Tell Fluttershy to pull that lampshade over her head, and reject the offer? Go to Chapter 5!