Got Bored, Wrote A Thing

by Rinnaul

Getting Results

The five mares sat around the crystalline table awaiting the arrival of their host. It was hardly uncommon for them to meet this way, ever since Twilight found herself in possession of a giant crystal tree castle thing and the forces of Destiny apparently decided to put them to work taking a more active role in ensuring the wellbeing of Equestria. However, the Cutie Map remained still, and not a one of them had experienced even the slightest tingling in their flanks to suggest they were being summoned for that purpose.

Well, beyond the flank-tingling that Pinkie felt, but she assured her friends that those tingles were simply her Pinkie Sense alerting her to when she was being watched.

She did not find it strange that the watching ponies were almost exclusively stallions and older colts, and Rarity soon gave up on her attempts to explain that this was less “Pinkie Sense” and more an intuition every mare had.

The ensuing debate where Rainbow Dash and Applejack inevitably questioned the idea that every mare had this supposed sixth sense was fortunately cut short by Twilight’s arrival. The young alicorn did not take her seat along with her friends, but instead placed her front hooves on the table and looked over the group.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. “Girls, I have some… news.”

Dash perked up at that. “A new adventure?”

“It’s not going to be something dangerous, is it?” Fluttershy asked, shrinking back.

Applejack scratched her chin. “Guess I can fit some more travel in, now that Apple Bloom’s old enough to help out with the apple buckin’…”

“And in the middle of my busy season.” Rarity groaned. “And half of the time we do something like this, I go without a proper bath for a simply unreasonable length of time.”

“Ooh, are we going to face some new peril that forces us to give up our rainbow powers and get all-new character designs?” Pinkie Pie said, rounding out the cast check-in, but was ignored because fourth wall gags are so overplayed.

“No, no, nothing like that.” Twilight shook her head. “Just that I… um…” She shrank back slightly. “I’m kind of pregnant.”

Her declaration was met with four cries of “WHAT?!”, four shocked faces, and Pinkie Pie jumping up and down in her chair, cheering and throwing blue and pink confetti in precisely equal measures, just to cover her bases.

Rarity took a deep breath and shook her head, the first to recover her senses. “I must say, Twilight, this is quite the shock. Who's the father?”

“Ah, well…” Twilight trailed off, and then gave an awkward smile. “I don't actually know.”

“Wait, wait.” Rainbow Dash leaned forward, putting her hooves on the table and fixing Twilight with an incredulous look. “You're telling me that Twilight Sparkle — stay-at-home egghead Twilight Sparkle — has seen enough action lately that she's not sure who it was?”

“Yeah,” Applejack added, letting her hat fall back to run a hoof through her mane. “That's a mighty big change, isn't it Twilight? How did you even wind up in this kinda situation?”

Twilight took a breath and relaxed. Explanations were easy. She could handle explanations. They were just like lecturing, really, and that was practically a leisure activity. “Well, it all started when Pinkie Pie asked me if I liked mares or stallions more, and—”

“She did what?” Rarity interrupted, turning to the pink pony. “Pinkie, why would you ever ask somepony such an invasive question?”

“Cause I wanted to know.” Pinkie shrugged, and blue and pink confetti tumbled from her mane and shoulders, somehow landing perfectly separated in single-color piles to either side of her. “But then Twilight said she wasn't sure, so I offered to help her find out.”

“You two… Really?” Rarity sighed. “Just like that? Where’s the romance?”

Twilight shook her head. “No, no, I had to take an aromantic approach. Adding in the question of romantic attraction on top of physical attraction would have muddied my results, as well as greatly extended the scope of the study.”

“The… the study?” Fluttershy glanced back and forth between Pinkie and Twilight.

“Yes, because despite Pinkie’s very enthusiastic — and very appreciated — help with my conundrum, the problem remained that I had only ever experienced one partner,” Twilight explained, finally slipping fully into lecture mode. “I could hardly claim to know for certain whether I liked one or the other without experiencing both. And since I was experimenting, I felt it only appropriate to have a proper representative sample.”

“Proper repre…” Rainbow Dash lost the word around there, but soon got the gist of it. “Oh! Like having mares and stallions, but also earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn!”

“Exactly, Rainbow!” Twilight gave her friend a congratulatory smile.

For some reason, that actually made Rainbow Dash proud for a moment before she had another realization, and she glared at Twilight. “Wait, does that mean when you and I…” She paused, suddenly aware that four sets of eyes were on her, and settled back into her seat. “I mean, nevermind. Nothing happened. Nothing at all.”

“Still, Twilight. Six partners!” Rarity exclaimed. “I didn't know you had it in you. At least it gives us a place to start from…”

Twilight shook her head. “Oh, Rarity, don't be ridiculous. There weren't six.”

“Oh, thank Celestia.” Rarity ran a foreleg across her brow. “For a moment there I was afraid—”

“Everypony knows that a statistically viable sample size is at minimum thirty.”

Author's Note:

This originally started as the opening scenes of a longer comedy/slice of life story where Twilight is pregnant with the foal of an unknown stallion, as we see here. The continuing plot would follow her attempts at figuring out just whose child she's carrying, and being generally cranky and snarky in response to the difficulties of pregnancy, largely inspired by my wife's reactions to that very thing, as my wife's personality isn't too far from season one Twilight.

I never really felt the drive to write the ongoing story, and this opening was tossed aside in my "do eventually" folder. I recently decided that there's no reason to let this particular joke go to waste, so here it is as a standalone gag.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Well, I can't fault her methodology.

Always nice to have another goofy collection to watch. I look forward to any and all further installments.