"Title"

by cunning_linguist

Chapter 2: Frankenpony

After an evening of make-up sex that rivaled the infamous “refrigerator door boogie board” incident, Vinyl Scratch and Octavia awoke as they normally did: One with nary a hair out of place and positively radiant, and the other choking on her marefriend’s bowtie. Practiced hooves plucked the article of clothing from Vinyl’s throat and set it on the nightstand.

“Gaaah-hak, aaaaaahck-blarg. Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiif… thanks Octy.”

“You’re welcome, Vinyl.”

Neither spoke throughout breakfast; they didn’t have too. They knew what today’s mission was and what was at stake: Octavia’s sanity. Dramatic close-ups and sharp movements cued to a theme of legendary importance accompanied each scrub of a dish, the placement of Vinyl’s shades on the bridge of her muzzle, Octavia tying her bowtie, and two swipes of a jar of matte camouflage paint on either of Vinyl’s cheeks.

“… Vinyl, where did you get that from?”

“Oh, Rarity has a basement full of the stuff.”

“… All right then.”

They stopped in front of the door, one hoof on the knob. They shared an intense moment of focus as Vinyl made a silent vow to protect her very special somepony from the horrors of air quotations, while Octavia could only see her reflection in Vinyl’s purple rave glasses. It weakened the moment, to be sure.

“Destination?”

“Twilight’s library,” Octavia replied.

“Mission?”

“The utter annihilation of air quotations without quarter or compassion.”

“Hey, that was a nice touch, Octy.”

“Oh, heh heh, thanks. I love watching old Vietneigh films.”

“Armaments?”

“Four fragmentation grenades, sixteen belts of five point five six milli— Wait, what?”

“The guns, Octy! How are we gonna fill air quotes with lead if we don’t have any lead?”

“Vinyl, we do not own a firearm.”

“… Well that’s dumb. Two mares living alone in a dangerous neighborhood, all squishy and vulnerable?”

“Ponyville is a dangerous neighborhood?”

“Octy, this place gets attacked by rogue gods on a weekly basis. Don’t you think it would be smart to have some kind of defense?”

“I will not harbor a firearm under this roof Vinyl, and that is final.”

Vinyl sighed and opened the door. “Fine. When we get mugged or sent to the moon, you’ll just have to smash their hooves against tables.”

“HEY!”

Ponyville was not a particularly large town. Vinyl and Octavia’s loft was only a block away from the market, which connected to the central thoroughfare and to pretty much anywhere in town you might want to go. They passed Sugarcube Corner and Roseluck’s newly opened floral shop and could immediately see the library. It was a very large tree, after all, second only to city hall in size.

“This is convenient,” Vinyl mused as they trotted toward the library. “I needed to get my synthesizer back from Spike anyway.”

“You loaned Spike your synthesizer?” Octavia asked incredulously. Vinyl was very possessive of her disc jockeying equipment. What shift in the stars occurred that she would loan it to a baby dragon?

“Heh, yeah. He snuck into the club the other night and made it make fart noises. He promised to show me how if I let him borrow it for a few days.”

“And I’m sure you told Twilight about his abuse of curfew, like a responsible adult?”

“No pony likes a snitch, Octy.”

---

Twilight tended to numerous boiling beakers, culturing petri dishes, popping electrodes, and a long-dead pony carcass strapped to a reclining metal table. For whatever reason, it was strapped in. She wore a pair of tinted welders glasses and a white laboratory coat with her cutie mark emblazoned on the back. Spike was just outside of the makeshift perimeter of science-y stuff, sitting behind Vinyl’s synthesizer.

Whenever Twilight would take a step, a ponderous tuba was played. If she reached for a beaker to observe how the fluids were mixing, she would hear wind chimes. Spike was even observant enough to note her teeth grinding in anger at his antics, which he punctuated with the sound of a saw cutting wood.

“SPIKE! I will ground you for a month, I swear to Faust!”

“No idea what you’re talking about, ‘Twi,” he chuckled, his claw hovering over a particular key that he knew Twilight loathed with every purple fiber of her being.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what, ‘Twi?”

“Spike, you know what I’m talking about and I’m ord—”

Fart.

“THAT’S IT!”

Before Twilight could vaporize the keyboard with a sparkly pink laser courtesy of her weaponized horn, the door flew open and Vinyl Scratch slid in on her knees. “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MOOOOOOOOOOOOORNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING TWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!”

Octavia strolled in behind her shortly thereafter. “Hello.”

Twilight’s attention diverted from her still laughing assistant and her magical fire dissipated. “Ah, good morning you two!” She trotted over and accepted life-sustaining nuzzles from her two friends. “What brings you by?” She leaned in close to Vinyl’s ear and whispered with urgency: “Take back your devil machine!”

Vinyl grinned and nodded. “I needed it back anyway. We’re actually here for something else, though.”

Twilight closed the door behind the ponies and they followed her into the library. Octavia walked behind their host to view her science project with a mixture of fascination and confusion, and then mute horror when she saw the deceased and unnecessarily immobilized stallion. Vinyl and Spike giggled like idiots as he demonstrated the holy fart noise key.

“And what might that be?” Twilight inquired, stirring a frothing green liquid with a spoon that incinerated upon removal. She cast it into an impressive pile of handles at her hooves.

Octavia and Vinyl stared at one another for a moment, neither willing to voice their purpose. Vinyl didn’t want to betray her marefriend’s trust in case she wasn’t yet comfortable with the idea of all of Ponyville knowing about her craziness. Octavia was too ashamed to speak up.

“Well… Octy has a bit of a problem.”

“Oooh, what kind of problem? I bet I can help! After all, if I can raise the dead, I can surely help the living!” With an unnerving giggle, Twilight clipped a pair of electrodes to the dead pony’s partially decomposed ears and flipped the switch on her portable generator.

“You are going to bring this poor stallion back to life?” Octavia asked, handling the situation perhaps a bit too easily. “Isn’t that a tad… inappropriate?”

“Well, if he didn’t want to be my ticket to immortality, he shouldn’t have died so close to my shovel.”

“Now Octy, we’re not here to judge…”

The sensible, non-homicidal maniac side of Octavia wanted to argue the point, but she just sighed and nodded. “No, we are not. Twilight, I have a… problem, as Vinyl said. My problem is with something that you are probably going to find humorous. I am extending the olive branch of peace now in warning that if you do this thing, I will not be held accountable for my actions.”

“Yes you will,” Vinyl grumped, the former evening’s events still fresh in her mind.

“And… what is this thing that bothers you so much?”

Octavia scuffed her hoof on the ground once or twice, receiving a few silent urges of encouragement from her marefriend. Spike’s claw was likewise ready to push the key most appropriate for the situation. “I… I hate air quotations. Violently so.”

Twilight stared at her quietly for a second before chuckling. “No, seriously.”

“I am being serious!”

“She beat me with a paddle last night,” Vinyl chimed in, a coy smile on her lips.

“That had nothing to do with air q— SHUT UP VINYL!”

Everypony turned her head toward the sound of a rimshot, which Spike helpfully provided.

Twilight, to her credit, didn’t burst into laughter. Instead, she looked confused, like somepony was playing a prank on her. When she saw the serious expression on Octavia’s face if not on Vinyl’s, she scoffed. “Yeah, that’s… really weird. But!” She all but shouted, noting Octavia’s quickly falling face. “I can help! This sounds like a psychological problem and I have just been itching to use this book!”

Twilight cantered away, her lab coat and goggles vanishing in a plume of fire, courtesy of her horn. She walked to a wheeled cart of books not yet reordered and levitated a particularly large volume out from under a pile of primarily children’s literature. “Here we go: Psychology for Complete Idiots.”

She walked back to the group, already searching the index for applicable symptoms and their corresponding disorders.

“Let’s see here. Adult antisocial behavior? No. Impulse control disorder? No. Exhibitionism?” Twilight looked at every stark naked pony or dragon present and flipped the page. “Hm… ah! Here we go. Generalized anxiety disorder. Irrational worry about an everyday thing which can lead to violence. Well, I’m not sure if that’s spot-on or not, but it’s probably the closest we’re going to get!” Twilight slammed the book shut and levitated it back to the cart.

Vinyl and Octavia exchanged glances then looked back at Twilight. “Sooooo… what do we do about it?”

Twilight snorted and turned the knob on her generator up to eleven. “I have no idea! I’m not a psychologist. Do you know what kind of damage I could cause if I even attempted to treat Octavia?”

Octavia facehoofed. “Well, can you recommend one?!”

“Oh, sure.” Twilight grabbed the junk drawer out of her kitchenette and rummaged through it for a moment before passing a crumpled business card to her guests. “I apologize for being rude but I do want to finish my little project.”

Vinyl snatched the card, passing it to Octavia, then retrieved her synthesizer from Spike, who dangled off of it before falling to the ground and pouted.

The ponies exchanged goodbyes before leaving. The last sound they heard before shutting the library’s door was a loud ZAP and a sound not too dissimilar to a watermelon exploding. “Aw, ponyfeathers.”

They stood on Twilight’s porch for a moment before Octavia held up the business card and read what was written, in elegant vivaldi script, no less. Vinyl peered over her shoulder and chuckled at the revelation.

“Fluttershy, Ph.D.”

---

As the two mares walked away, three heads poked out of the neatly trimmed hedge encircling the library. They waited until Vinyl and Octavia were out of earshot before giggling amongst themselves.

“You heard what Twilight said, right?” Scootaloo said excitedly. “This is exactly what we’ve been waiting for!”

“Yeah! We’re gonna get our cutie marks for sure this time!” Said Applebloom, practically bouncing out of the bush with anticipation.

“THE FUN COMMENCES IMMEDIATELY!” Intoned Sweetie Belle, certain that her fun capacitors wouldn’t be able to contain the amount of fun that would result from this endeavor.

“FUN FROLLICKING FILLY FUC—”

“Applebloom! We said we settled on ‘Cutie Mark Crusaders’!”

“Ugh. Fiiiiiiiiine. Killjoys.”

The three fillies took off in hot pursuit of their prey, ducking behind plants, scaffolding, and any other obstacle, each silently thankful that they had already attempted to earn cutie marks in covert infiltration. Sweetie Belle kept her mouth open the entire time, however, quietly playing a theme most appropriate for this activity.

Comments

[iconofsin]

“Well, if he didn’t want to be my ticket to immortality, he shouldn’t have died so close to my shovel.”
can't.......breath...............laughing...............to hard.

[For The Plot]

“FUN FROLLICKING FILLY FUC—”

oh god why

[muter3456]

So much laughter! Can't! Breathe! Make it stop! Stomach is on fire!

[Ebonysdagger]

Ah, 'Science! Twilight' is always a hoot. Adding to my list of faves for the humor once I can breathe.

[SgtFrog]

Um, I'm not really liking the PONY.MOV and Abridged Series thing you've got going on here. It's your story, and of course, you can do what you like, but I expecting something...different.

[Bookworm24]

can't stop laughing!!! love the theme songs!!

[PonifiedSanity]

From the beginning to the end, just
but still funny.

[looks28]

I'll be honest i didnt really like twilights behavior. it seemed a little out of character. Great story so far it's just that one part sort of bugged me. You may also want to consider putting some background information if you plan to introduce new ponies. Fluttershy M.D. kinda was random and slightly out of place in my opinion. But i digress.

[Cecildarkknight]

i dont realy care for twi in this one but spike was funny has hell and i don't think flutter could be a MD because she very shy, but hey ur story lets see how it play out shawl we?