//------------------------------// // Night Two - Saturday - Part One // Story: Three Nights At Twilight's // by lunabrony //------------------------------// Apple Bloom and Scootaloo said goodnight to Twilight, or was it good morning? Then the same to each other. They parted ways with equal yawns, each going back to their respective houses. Apple Bloom made it back to her own farm around 6:20 in the morning, dragging her hooves beneath her. She was hoping to sneak off to bed before the rest of her family could bother her, but since the sun was up, so was Applejack. The younger sister trudged blearily through the door, immediately hit with the smell of frying vegetables, cooking pancakes, and apple tarts. "Well, lookee here!" Applejack said, grinning. "How's my little hard worker doin'?" "Bed," Apple Bloom complained, shuffling through the door. "I'll have breakfast waiting for ya when you get up! Then I needja out in the barn pitchin' hay!" Applejack called. There was a muffled complaint of a reply. "No sass now! Yer the one who poisoned the lake, so now y'gotta draw water from th'well!" She frowned, pausing, tapping her hoof against her chin. "That don't sound right... um... yer the one who dug through the snake pit, now y'gotta climb out of... no... heck with it. Y'got nopony to blame but yerself!" She called. "Buck up, sugarcube!" Apple Bloom didn't hear any of this. She was already asleep. Scootaloo didn't fare much better. She managed to get home and slip into her house relatively unseen, and manged to make it all the way up to her room before her father came to check on her, just as she climbed into bed. She didn't get to sleep right away, though, as the patriarch of her family came to stand in the door. "You didn't get your cutie mark in staying up all night, did you?" he asked. "What poetic justice that would have been." "Shut up, dad," Scootaloo complained. "I just wanna sleep. We gotta do it again tonight." "Being tired isn't any fun," her dad said. "Hopefully you'll think twice next time before setting somepony's vending cart on fire." "We didn't -decide- any such thing!" Scootaloo insisted. "It was an accident! There was wind, and some sparks from our fireworks got out of control!" "Which reminds me, don't think all this business with Twilight puts an end to everything," her said. "You're still grounded for the forseeable future." "Whatever," Scootaloo said, too tired to do much more complaining, and a few minutes later, she too was out. That was primarily how the two Crusaders spent their afternoon, long naps interspersed only with extra chores. Their respective families, while loving, were still disappointed in the two young mares, and wasted no opportunity in reminding them of it. The day dragged on slowly until evening, when Apple Bloom and Scootaloo prepared for their second night with high calorie food and high energy drinks at Rock Around The Clock Diner, a rock and roll themed eatery. Scootaloo drained the rest of her soda just as their waitress returned with the bill. "Will that be all?" Maud asked. "Yeah..." Scootaloo glanced at her. "I didn't know you worked here." "You never asked," she said, taking their bits and rolled away on oversized skates. "Well now that we've got the obligatory cameo outta the way, back to work?" Apple Bloom asked, watching Maud disappear around the counter. "Yeah," Scootaloo said. "Let's do it." --- 10:00pm "So why do you think that thing looks like Sweetie Belle?" Apple Bloom whispered as they gathered outside Twilight's door. "Probably just an unfortunate resemblance. There's only so many colors a pony can be," Scootaloo shrugged. "Besides, it's probably older than Sweetie is." Further conversation was cut off as Twilight opened the door, and smiled down upon the two of them. "I'm so glad you two came back, I wasn't entirely sure you would. Working the night shift is unpleasant enough without it being court ordered." "Yeah," they both chorused. "Well, come on in. You know what to do, so get to it." Spike was already downstairs going through papers as they descended the spiral staircase, though he was more into reading than cleaning. He waved cheerfully, and the two fillies returned the gesture. It was sort of a half-hearted wave, though, as the attention of both of them was drawn to the Friendship Buddy, standing silently in the corner. "Was that there when we left last night?" Apple Bloom asked hesitantly. "I don't think it was... you think Twilight found it?" "Maybe... we never covered it back up." Spike had followed their gaze as they headed over to it, before hurrying to catch up to them. "Aw, man, this creepy thing again?" "You missed it after you went to bed, Spike. This thing got weird last night." Apple Bloom reached down to pick up the audio player. She hit fast forward out of boredom, and for a few seconds there was nothing, then static was replaced by warbled, high pitched nonsense. "Rewind, rewind!" Scootaloo exclaimed. "There's more!" Apple Bloom did, and hit play in the silence following the first message. Luna's voice broke through clearly once again, although this time it was less cheerful and more... a mixture of worry and annoyance. "Hello?" Well, if you're listening to this, congratulations. You must really be interested in Friendship! Unfortunately, there's been a little... incident. You remember how I said Friendship Buddy learns from you the more you use it? Well it turns out one of the very first prototypes was used not so much as a huggable companion, like it was supposed to be, but a combat simulator. I don't know what they were thinking. And since the microchips are all based on the first run, all subsequent Friendship Buddies might have a sort of 'memory' of being knocked around a bit, and might wind up being... more aggressive than intended. Anyway, it's probably no big deal, you should be fine. But if it any point your unit tries to death hug you, you can always turn it off either by the designated switch, or by- *static* All three stared silently at the strangely Sweetie-like unit, and all three subsequently screamed in surprise as it powered up by itself. ""Hello again, friends Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, Spike!" Scootaloo picked up the tarp from the ground and threw it over the unit, covering it. "Oh, yeah, that'll stop it. Great job, Scoots, it'll never get us now," Apple Bloom deadpanned. Spike rolled his eyes at both them and reached underneath the tarp and the unit, fumbling for a minute before turning the switch to OFF. "I thought you did that already," Scootaloo said nervously. Spike shrugged. "Well it's off now," he said. "We gotta get back to work. There's still a huge mess down here." "Yeah..." Apple Bloom said reluctantly. They gave the silent, staring robot a final glance, before starting to clean up again. It was barely 10:30.