Broken spines
Twilight Sparkle had led a short life, but it had been incredibly busy.
She couldn't even stop to take a cup of tea, most days, without some tentacled monster swarming from the teapot and snatching the clotted cream from the scones tray.
She had been shocked, at first, as she gently set the teapot down back down on the table before her, being careful not to disturb the doily she set it upon more than necessary, and swore to never, ever, under any circumstances, cast that Tempest in a Teapot spell again. Except maybe for future inter-dimensional research, so long as she made the proper preparations and precautions and, if Pinkie Pie asked very nicely, party tricks, because the look on Rarity's face would just be far too good to pass up.
Well, that was a relevant point, anyway. In Twilight's short, though industrious, life she had grown so desensitized to eldritch horrors beyond mortal ken that, currently, she kept an extra butter knife near the tea set should the tentacled monstrosity, recently dubbed 'Wiggles', feel the need to have a scone with his cream as well.
Being a gracious host is imperative to being a good friend.
Even with that skewed sense of perception, however, and a perpetual sense of childlike wonder at the world, and ponies, around her that allowed her to make friends even with abominations in her kitchenware, Twilight Sparkle found herself staring in naked, undisguised horror and revulsion at the pony before her.
Disgust. Hatred. Loathing. Sorrow. All of these words were entirely insufficient in conveying Princess Twilight Sparkle's emotions at that present moment as she looked upon the victim of the horrific, inequine crime before her.
"Sorry it's a bit late," the stallion awkwardly chuckled, rubbing the back of his scruffy mane with a hoof, "and, uh, messy. I totally forgot I even-"
"A bit messy." Twilight spoke evenly, building a mental dam to keep her raging torrent of emotions in check, "You call this a 'bit messy'?"
The stallion, for his part, looked at the floor, whether out of shame or fear it was impossible to determine.
"Princesses above, which I suppose I am now included, if you call this a bit messy what in Tartarus would qualify for-" Twilight snarled, forcing the stallion a step back.
He heard a plink in his head, a phenomenon Twilight would have been fascinated to observe firsthoof. It has been said that, when enough mental effort in particularly powerful unicorns is expended, the force of it can cause nearby observers to 'resonate' in sympathy.
Twilight, however, was preoccupied with being the source of that plink, a chip giving way under the burdens of an ocean of roiling emotion.
"Sir," she spat the honorific coated with dripping venom, "The pages are torn, what pages still remain-"
"At least half of them are still in there!" he protested, "Last time I checked, anyway!"
"That may, then," Twilight's voice was calm once more which, Caramel decided, was somehow infinitely worse, "explain the quite literal paper trail you've left behind you."
He glanced behind him and gulped. He hadn't noticed that, apparently.
"Well, err, at least it's all in a nice, organized line, I can go pick them up and-"
"Assuming, one, that the breeze hasn't picked up, which I sincerely doubt because you delivered this back to me during a scheduled electrical storm, and two, aforementioned storm," Plink, "hasn't reduced the pages into an amorphous grey mush."
"Not a fan of papier mache, then, I take it?" Caramel grinned weakly, his chuckling dying in his throat as he gulped it back down, caught as it was as a large and obstinate lump there.
*Crunch*
"This is not a thing that is okay to joke about my little pony." Twilight boomed in her new-found royal voice, indeed whipping the few dry pages behind Caramel inside the library into a frenetic frenzy in the blast. It also had the pleasant side-effect of giving him a rather fetching new mane style.
'At least,' he thought, 'I'll leave a wicked corpse.'
"This is a reference book. It's been overdue for months." Twilight drew a hoof to her chest and pushed out, as her foalsitter and fellow Princess had taught her many, many years ago. "I hope you realize how much this will cost to replace, let alone the late fee."
Caramel gulped.
"It says here," Twilight glanced at the library card, "that this was a book on... Organizational abilities?" She glanced up, expression deadpan. "Really?"
"Err... I guess the lessons didn't quite sink in, huh?" Caramel started backing slowly away to the door, to freedom, to continued living if Twilight could remain distracted for just long enough for him to-
His butt pressed against something large and furry. He hadn't even heard her teleport. He whipped around and came face to face with two candles at face height and-
'Those aren't candles, those are her eyes!'
*PwooooooCRACK*
"Tell me, Caramel," the formerly-purple-now-flaming-alicorn gazed into his very soul, burning his retinas in the process, "How do you plan on paying for this?"
"Well, I don't have many bits-"
"Not the bits. How do you plan on atoning for harming a poor, defenseless book like this you monster." Her voice wasn't loud in the conventional sense, in fact it broached upon being a loud whisper, but it was deep and harmonic.
Indeed, somehow Twilight had managed to boom at the precise resonant frequency of Caramel's skull, which I can assure those of you not as versed in physics as she, is far worse than conventional decibels.
"I-I'm sorry?"
"That's a start, of course," Twilight nodded, sending a few errant embers airborne in the process, "but I'm afraid you're going to have to atone better than that, vile fiend."
"Vile fiend?" Caramel shuddered, too terrified to do anything about the parts of his mane that had just caught fire other than hope his panicked shivering somehow caused them to extinguish out of pure pity, "Is that really necessary? I mean, it's just a book!"
The dam broke. Well, that's a rather mild way to put it. Rather the dam ceased to be in the most fantastical possible way. The dam didn't merely crumble as it released its emotional burden, oh no.
It glowed white hot, momentarily, then vaprourized in a puff of plasma, boiling the seething and frothing flood behind it as it poured out and-
Caramel blinked. Twilight Sparkle was gone. Where the pony had stood before her were four black hoofprints and nothing else.
"Just a book?!"
Oh. That's where she was. Twilight Sparkle's rage has obviously made her, for the moment, omnipresent.
Today was not a good day to be Caramel.
"Well, y-yeah!" Caramel stuttered, "I mean, don't you think you're just overreacting? I mean, sure, I might have broken the spine, lost most of the pages, forgotten about it for months and once, when I ran out of toilet paper, it was-"
"Caramel, please, step outside." the voice rang in his ears.
"W-why?"
"Because I wish to do horrible, unspeakable things to you now and I wish to do it somewhere less flammable."
"Oh." Caramel murmured sadly as he shuffled to the door.
"Wait," he said, stopping momentarily, "does that mean that if I don't go outside you won't-"
Pop
"-do horrible... Oh, I forgot you could teleport me." he said as he was suddenly aware of the fact he was now standing somewhere where there were no witnesses that, for some reason, happened to have a bubbling bog.
"Caramel Apple, I would like you to meet a good friend of mine. Wiggles, care to meet our new guest?"
"Celestia," Luna murmured as she stared at the fleurescent mushroom cloud erupting from Ponyville, "Did you, at any point, remember to mention the mood swings attached to the Ascension?"
"It appears it slipped my mind in all the excitement, sister." Celestia gently put her tea back down on the saucer with a gentle 'clink' of fine porcelain on porcelain, "what's got you thinking of that now, of all times?"
Luna sighed a long, weary sigh.
"Send Spike a package of the Darjeeling, sister, and pray that it gets to her in time."
Celestia raised an eyebrow. "My student is most capable, Luna, I'm sure she's-"
Luna turned and shook her head, slightly, wordlessly cutting her off, "It's not her well-being I'm concerned for. Let's just pray that she doesn't do anything she regrets..."
"Now, what have we learned?"
"Treat literature with the amount of respect it deserves, Princess."
"Very good, little pony. I'm also very, very sorry I reacted how I did."
"It's uh, well... Nurse Redheart said I should be out by the end of the month!" He turned slightly green, visible even under all the bandages, "Though I'm never, ever going to eat calamari again..." Caramel chuckled before paling considerably.
"Oh... Oh no..."
"What? It's okay, Caramel, I'm truly sorry, I'm not going to-"
"I forgot, I never returned the cook book I borrowed the year before."
There was an almost imperceptible eye tic on the Princess, gone before you could even see it if you weren't looking for it.
Caramel, however, was looking for it and tried vainly to scoot to the opposite side of the hospital bed.
"I'm sure," Twilight said evenly, "if you-"
"I accidentally deep fried it. Twice."
"Twice?"
"Well, the first time made it catch fire, then I tried to put it out and dumped it-"
"I get the picture." Twilight sighed. Then she chuckled. The chuckled grew to a laugh, then to cackling.
Caramel just stared, chuckling nervously.
"Spike!" Twilight called as she trotted out of the building, "I'm going to have a bubble bath. Bring the tea. All of it."
"Wouldn't that make it taste like soap?"
"Oh, Spike, haven't you ever heard of bubble tea?"
She stormed out of the building leaving Caramel desperately attempting to try to blow out the small fire that had sprung up on his hind leg's bandage.
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Great idea you got there. Though I have seen a much darker fic about late fee before, this one's quite a fun(and funny) read.
I laughed. Nice story.
Mr. Wiggles sold it for me. Awesome job.
This. Is. Awesome! If this is what your humor is usually like I'm going to have to read your other stories.
I was worried that this would become a darkfic, but you managed the strike a good balance between dark and comedy. Cheers
Haha! Late fees! I guess Caramel is banned from the library now. No books for you!
This is probably why Dash is so careful with the Daring Doo books she checks out.
Yes. Today isn't a good day to be him.
Very entertaining, I liked it.
~Skeeter The Lurker
2933877
Mr. Wiggles is Best Eldritch Abomination.
Wow I didn't think Twilight could ever over react so much!
Hey! The same thing happened to me the last time I opened an interdimensional gateway through my kitchenware, too.
It's nice to know I'm not alone. Also, I gotta get me some of that omnipresence. Could be useful.
Hehe, poor Caramel, could have been worse though...
Mr Numbers!
Was delighted to see you had posted a story!
Totally adored it!
Twilight and I share the same ideals about books. Books are SACRED and in no way must they ever, EVER be mistreated!
As always, this was an enjoyable read infused with that whiff of comedy that is ever present in your writing!
MORE would be jolly lovely!
Tally ho!
Good characterisation.
I liked!!
Now that's a librarian you can count on.
Good narration. I liked these lines;
'She couldn't even stop to take a cup of tea, most days, without some tentacled monster swarming from the teapot and snatching the clotted cream from the scones tray,'
'and, if Pinkie Pie asked very nicely, party tricks, because the look on Rarity's face would just be far too good to pass up,'
'In Twilight's short, though industrious, life she had grown so desensitized to eldritch horrors beyond mortal ken that, currently, she kept an extra butter knife near the tea set should the tentacled monstrosity, recently dubbed 'Wiggles', feel the need to have a scone with his cream as well.
Being a gracious host is imperative to being a good friend,'
'she looked upon the victim of the horrific, inequine crime before her,'
'The stallion, for his part, looked at the floor, whether out of shame or fear it was impossible to determine,'
'"Assuming, one, that the breeze hasn't picked up, which I sincerely doubt because you delivered this back to me during a scheduled electrical storm, and two, aforementioned storm," Plink, "hasn't reduced the pages into an amorphous grey mush,"'
'It also had the pleasant side-effect of giving him a rather fetching new mane style.
'At least,' he thought, 'I'll leave a wicked corpse,'
'Caramel started backing slowly away to the door, to freedom, to continued living,'
'How do you plan on harming a poor, defenseless book like this you monster,'
'Indeed, somehow Twilight had managed to boom at the precise resonant frequency of Caramel's skull, which I can assure those of you not as versed in physics as she, is far worse than conventional decibels,'
'Caramel shuddered, too terrified to do anything about the parts of his mane that had just caught fire other than hope his panicked shivering somehow caused them to extinguish out of pure pity,'
'I mean, sure, I might broken the spine, lost most of the pages, forgotten about it for months and once, when I ran out of toilet paper, it was-"' where you forgot 'have' before 'broken,'
'"Caramel Apple, I would like you to meet a good friend of mine. Wiggles, care to meet our new guest?"'
'There was an almost imperceptible eye tic on the Princess, gone before you could even see it if you weren't looking for it.
Caramel, however, was looking for it and tried vainly to scoot to the opposite side of the hospital bed'
and
'She stormed out of the building leaving Caramel desperately attempting to try to blow out the small fire that had sprung up on his hind leg's bandage.'
Great story! I have the feeling that Caramel will, in addition to avoiding calamari, have the shakes anytime he sees the entrance to the library as well.....
HA! Take that Caramel!
I don't like him very much, he is a butt.
A tea bath. I can think of a certain beleaguered bureaucrat who would probably approve of that idea.
Wiggles is best eldritch horror.
Very nice, that was hilarious.
"Not the bits. How do you plan on harming a poor, defenseless book like this you monster."
You've left out a few words after 'on' -- something like 'atoning for'?
2937726
Cheers!
Cute story! A surprisingly believable Element-of-Righteous-Fury/Twilight!
I'm a big fan of Sonnets by the way. Be confident in your writing, you're very good at it!
2938843
That means more to me than it has any right to. I would like to thank you with haiku.
How do I put this?
All I know is it should be...
Appreciative!
2938853
There once was a writer named MrNumbers,
Whose stories kept pushing fav numbers,
Given some time,
And some very strong wine,
I'm sure his words will make wonders!
2934205 "He who destroys a good book kills reason itself"--John Milton
Over-the-top Alicorn Twilight is quite possibly best Twilight. A most excellent read.
Reminds me of this one hilarious comic:
Rainbow Dash: "Hey Twilight, I'm, uh, really sorry about dropping this book in a puddle."
Twilight: "It's okay, you should see the smudges all over this book."
Rainbow Dash: "I don't see any smudges..."
*Twilight grabs Rainbow's head and SLAMS it onto the table*
Twilight: "How about now?"
holy gods i haven't read anything this damned hilarious in YEARS.
as a bibliophile and book collector myself boy do i get where twily is coming from.
fucking mr. wiggles. brilliant.
2940592 That sounds funny! Could you post a link?
I was feeling kind of crappy. Thank you for posting this! The one great thing about this site is that you never know when you'll find a gem.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw757_flameon.gif
Twi is pissed.
static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/squib_596.jpg Sqiub!
You misspelled 'fluorescent'.
Otherwise, great story.
Cheers
Books mus be respected.
I don't know what that means, so i'm guessing i should put some mustard on a whole buncha books.
2943406
Here you go! http://loceri.deviantart.com/art/MLP-The-Damage-Fee-327931845
2952441
You're the best! Thank you. 
I did a dramatic reading of this, if I was meant to ask permission before hand then I apologise. (and if somehow it's a problem I will erase it from existence)
I may not be very popular but I try to give great fan-fictions the recognition they deserve
Keep up the good work. A very entertaining story.
http://youtu.be/fNBPpvUMrZ8
2957412
Yeah. Her going off like that is a reference to the 1st gen Pokémon, Rapidash, the evolution of Ponyta.
Oh.
I have to say, poor Twilight! She wasn't told that she might over-react a
littlelot. Though the crime of defacing a book in that way deserves some form of punishment.2955998 you did a pretty good job. the voices were a bit too similar, but the mannerisms you gave each of the characters helped distinguish them. i am a bit curious about the accent, though. are you from Britain?
oh, and to MrNumbers: well done! perfectly in character for Twilight and the Wiggles stuff had me chuckling every time he was mentioned!
2983760 Thanks, I am in fact British.
2983804 what area? i thought Cockney at first, but that didn't seem right
2983823 Brighton, Sussex.
I normally avoid stories like this one, as they tend to over exaggerate Twilight's reaction, and forget that she is in fact, a kind pony. THIS story, however, had even me grinning in the end
The particularly destructive nature of that defacing, combined with the justification presented via the mood swings of ascension, and Twilight's attempts at keeping calm, her feeling genuinely bad afterwards, and Caramel honestly doing NOTHING to make the situation better make the situation that much more plausible. The result? The humor isn't forced, but genuine
"it's just a book!"
Oh Caramel, you should have known that you had signed your own death warrant the moment you spoke those blasphemous words
This story was a lot of fun. Really liked how you wrote Twilight. Thanks for sharing!
To quote Don Vito Corleone: "Some men are just begging to be killed." Change 'men' to 'stallions' and this certainly seems to be the case with Caramel. I mean, look at it this way:
FACT: Twilight is into books in a very special way; anyone who knows her even casually can tell you that;
FACT: Twilight was already one of the most powerful magical beings on the planet; she's now ascended to demi- or possibly full divinity;
FACT: You've destroyed at least two of her precious darlings.
Now, based on that, why would you do anything except go to her on your knees with piles of gold and burnt offerings and beg for your soul not to be cast into the infernal regions? I really think that Caramel was demonstrating that he is simply unfit for continued existence. Darwin would understand.
2934205
I didn't see any overreaction.
This was freaking hilarious
Omnipresence through rage. Dont think ive seen that one before. Neet.
2934205
As some one who has worked in a library is loves books, no, Twilight most assuredly did not overreact. Reference books are expensive.
I would have done the same thing had I been in her place(and obviously had I the required powers)
He is not the only person on this site that feels self-conscious about hitting the Submit button. Pretty much every story I've ever written was a rushed piece of shit. Even my lemons. And that fucking sucks.