The Defective Warp Pipe

by Level Dasher

Chapter 14: One More Night?

As we approached Ponyville, the first place we passed was Fluttershy’s cottage. I wasn’t completely surprised to see her sleeping outside her door, most likely waiting for our return. We decided it wasn’t worth it to pass too quietly, because whether she stayed asleep or woke up when we passed, either option would have been fine (or so we thought). The result turned out to be the latter.

“You’re back! Did you find everything you needed? Did you run into any Diamond Dogs? Did anypony get hurt?” Fluttershy’s barrage of questions had an excited tone to it until the last one: at this, her expression changed like lightning to one of dead seriousness.

I chuckled as I sauntered over to Fluttershy, Spike jogging beside me, and said rather casually, “We’re all fine. There were no injuries, but I owe Rarity an escort to the spa. Right now, apparently.”

“Oh, you can say that again, darling. I have never gotten this dirty in my LIFE! Even on my normal trips to the mines! Fluttershy, you are welcome to join us! We can treat it as our weekly spa visit! We were going to go tomorrow anyway, were we not? I wouldn’t want to exclude you from our tradition!”

Fluttershy got a good look at her and agreed that for Rarity’s sanity, a trip to the spa was necessary. She considered the offer for just a moment. “A-alright. I’ll even treat Yoshi to his own treatment. You can take part in our tradition.” She gave me a smile.

“Wonderful! Twilight, Applejack, Spike, do you mind if we part here? I need my time in the hot tub or I do believe I’m going to crust! Blegh!” Everyone laughed except for Fluttershy, who looked absolutely disgusted, and at the same time slightly confused. Rarity turned to her and said, “Believe me, darling, you do NOT want to know…” Fluttershy closed her eyes and put up a hoof in agreement.

Twilight and Applejack were fine with the idea, but Spike looked glum. “Shouldn’t I come along and translate for Yoshi?”

Fluttershy smiled and responded pretty quickly. "Don’t worry, Spike. We’ll be fine. If you don’t mind, this… this’ll be just for us.”

Spike didn’t look as suspicious as I expected he would be, but he seemed to understand something. “Oh, okay… If you’re sure… Yoshi, you should give Twilight and me the stones, though. We’ll keep them safe at the library.”

Twilight added, “That’s a good idea, Spike. I have just the place where I can put them, too.” It was fine with me— less of a load on my back. I handed the backpack to Spike, who still seemed a little depressed that he was being left out, especially out of a visit to the spa. He took the pack and started sullenly walking off to the library, but Twilight stopped him. “Wait just a second, Spike! I need you here for a minute.” Spike perked up and dashed back to her side, but his expression quickly became morose again. He seemed to know something was coming.

“Well, Ah’d love to stay, but Ah gotta head back to the farm. We’ve been gone most of the day, and them apples don’t buck themselves! So long, everypony!” Applejack said her farewell and galloped off to Sweet Apple Acres.

“I’m going to go drop my things off at the boutique, but I’ll be back in a moment so we can go to the spa together, alright dears? See you in a flash!” Rarity booked off in the other direction as well.

Twilight, however, stayed back for a moment. “Hey, Yoshi? Can you hold on a minute? I need to talk to you.” She seemed very serious. “Yoshi, now that we have the Augmentation Stones and are able to get you back home… I think it might be best if you leave soon… preferably tomorrow. Princess Celestia still doesn’t know you’re here, and I don’t know if she would be thrilled with us having kept you a secret…”

“What?” Why on Earth were they keeping me a secret? I voiced my query. “Why were you keeping me a secret from your princess? Is there some kind of problem with me being here?” I didn’t understand…

“Well, to be honest, I don’t really know the reasoning for it myself, but…” Now I was really confused. Twilight ran a hoof through her mane, sighed, then pointed behind me and said, “Ask her.”

I turned around to find Fluttershy blushing behind me. It wasn’t until now that I realized our conversation hadn’t been private; I didn’t think Fluttershy would have been thrilled to hear it, but apparently it was necessary that she did.

I noticed that this wasn’t Fluttershy’s usual blush; she was clearly upset. She was becoming the old Fluttershy through and through. “Well, I… I asked Twilight not to tell her. She wanted to so badly, but I asked her not to.”

“Why? Why would you want to keep me a secret? I would have loved to meet your Princess!” As I heard Spike translating behind me, I knew it wasn’t necessary for Fluttershy, but I figured Twilight wanted answers, so it was necessary for her to hear both sides of the conversation.

Fluttershy continued, “Um, well, you see, as soon as I started taking care of you… from that first day I wrapped up your leg… there was just something about you… I knew… So the first day I dropped you back at the library, I asked Twilight not to tell Princess Celestia about you, because I… I wasn’t sure that she would, well… approve.”

I still didn’t get it. “Approve of what? What did you know exactly?” Twilight seemed just as confused as I was at this point.

“I knew that, well, um, you see… It’s just, well, I’m the Element of Kindness, and… oh, you know about that right? I don’t think we ever talked about it…” I did know about the Elements of Harmony thing; Twilight had told me about it. Though it was a big part of who they all were, it never really seemed crucial to go over everything about it, so Fluttershy and I had never brought it up. I nodded to her, still confused. “Okay, good. Well, anyway, I’m the Element of Kindness, and I never, well, I mean, nopony expects me to act the way that I have while you’ve been here…”

By this point, I was just completely lost. “Act how? What are you talking about? You’ve been the kindest pony—heck, the kindest being—I’ve ever met! What did you do that you think was so bad?”

Twilight interjected, “Yeah, Fluttershy, I’d kind of like to know myself. Is there something I should have heard about?”

“Um… well… I guess I can explain it pretty easily if I just said… well…” She looked at me squarely with her soulful eyes, running her hoof through her mane, and simply said, “You’re my first.”

Twilight and I looked at each other. We weren’t exactly sure how to respond to that at first, but the next thing that came out of our mouths (in unison, despite the language difference) summed up how we felt about it pretty well.

“…………WHAAAAAAAAT??”

Twilight and I began to alternate shouting, and I was going so fast that Spike couldn’t even translate. I knew that Fluttershy still knew what I was saying anyway, but Twilight missed my half of the barrage.

“You prevented me from telling Princess Celestia about everything that’s happened over the past month because of THAT??”

“Your princess sounds amazing! What, did you think she was going to do? Exile you for having SEX??”

“Do you have any idea how hard it’s been for me to send Princess Celestia letters and leave out all of the things that Yoshi has been DOING??”

“Did you think she expected you to be a virgin FOREVER??”

“Did you expect me to never tell Princess Celestia about him? She would have found out EVENTUALLY!!”

“And wouldn’t it have been worse if she found out about everything we did after I was GONE??”

And the last one was in bilingual unison again—

“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??”

Twilight and I stood there panting, staring at Fluttershy, who was cringing on the ground looking up at us, her hooves covering her head. At the start of the screaming, Spike had fallen backward, but he leaned forward for a better listen at the word “sex.”

Fluttershy had been cowering in front of us on the ground as we were yelling. She looked up at us with tears in her eyes and shouted, “I was SCARED! OKAY??” Then she made a mad dash back into her cottage and slammed the door. The last thing we heard was a click.

It was at this precise moment that Rarity came up the path. The first thing she saw was Fluttershy’s door being slammed shut. The next was Twilight and me turning to look at each other, simultaneously saying, “NOT GOOD,” in two different languages, and rushing to Fluttershy’s door.

“Yoshi? Darling? Does this mean we’re not going to the spa?”

---

“Sweet Celestia, I can’t believe this is why Fluttershy had prevented me from writing about you to the Princess, Yoshi. This is absurd! I mean, no offense, but as soon as she brought you back here after you saved Rarity from the Diamond Dogs the first time, we all knew she was planning to, well, you know.” Twilight shrugged her shoulders as she glanced at me with a smirk.

“Yes, darling. And to be honest, I knew it even before that. I saw the look in her eyes as soon as she really started to get to know you—”

“RARITY!”

“WHAT? I’m serious! I am the one that suggested it the first time back at the library, am I not? Still, I’d like to know— how long has Fluttershy been able to talk to you, dear? And by Celestia’s mane, why did you two keep it a secret? It certainly isn’t anything for her to be ashamed about!”

“Well, it’s been a couple of weeks. And no, she wasn’t ashamed— we decided it was better not to tell anyone at first. Spike, we were actually afraid that you, and maybe other ponies, would get jealous. You’ve been so happy having a chance to get all that attention. We thought that if ponies knew she could translate as well, they would stop asking for you and just come straight to Fluttershy and me here at the cottage.”

Spike sighed. “Thanks, Yoshi. I’ll admit, I have liked the attention. Despite being the only baby dragon in Ponyville, I don’t get a lot of it from anypony other than Twilight and the girls. And now I see why you wouldn’t have needed me at the spa…” He hung his head, but before I had a chance to console him—

“Yes, and I bet the broken language barrier has also given you two a chance to have more ‘alone time,’ hasn’t it? Hmmm?” Rarity gave me a wink. She seemed to have this idea that since she had been the first to suspect Fluttershy and I had been getting intimate, she could speak openly about it. However, it was time for this conversation to end. There were more pressing matters to attend to.

“Girls, please! This isn’t exactly what we should be talking about right now! Fluttershy’s locked herself in her cottage, won’t let any of us in, and I can distinctly hear her crying upstairs! I know I’ve only been here with her a month, but believe me, I know her by this point! This is BAD!”

“Oh, don’t we know it, darling.” Rarity shook her head and glanced up at Fluttershy's bedroom window.

Twilight, Rarity, Spike and I had been sitting outside Fluttershy’s cottage for a good hour trying to determine what to do. I had also divulged my big secret with Fluttershy along the way. I figured it was time, and it could save Spike some unnecessary translating if the occasion arose.

That was a difficult night. It took us awhile to come up with an answer, but it seemed to be the easiest way to go about fixing the situation…