Or Things We Do For Love
Unblinking, Sunset stared at the sight laid before her. An uncontrollable tremor quaked up her right arm as her jaw dropped ever further until fully agape. With eyes rolling across the scene, a single strand of hair popped free from her perfectly sculpted, wavy hair.
“Oh, Sunset!” Twilight said with a bright, happy tone. “You’re just in time!” She glanced at the watch on her wrist for a moment and squinted. “Actually, you’re early for our date… I guess I’ll be a short while longer.”
Sunset said nothing. How could she? In the basement lab of Twilight’s home—a place she once thought like a sanctuary for her and her girlfriend to spend quality time—was an indescribable horror. All she could do was stare in abject disbelief.
“Well, come on in, silly. No reason to stand there at the top of the stairs.” Twilight motioned with the hand that wasn’t carrying a clipboard.
“Twilight?” Sunset finally managed to ask, though her eyes were still wide. “What exactly is this?”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. She turned her attention to the setup.
A metal cage roughly the size of an office cubicle erected in the center of a standard three-point lighting system bathed in an eerily sterile bluish light. Inside the said cage, Scootaloo stood in a square grappling pose wearing just a bathing suit. Opposite her was Spike, baring his teeth, ears folded back and ready to pounce.
Twilight straightened her glasses as she turned to the digital camera set atop a tripod framed on the cage and a laptop on the table next to it. “What exactly is what?” she asked, dropping her finger from the rim of her glasses down to her cheek and tilting her head.
Sunset smacked her forehead and descended the stairs. “Why is Scootaloo in a cage?” she flung the hand she just smacked herself with towards said cage.
With a wave of her hand, Twilight laughed. “Fighting Spike in bloodsport, obviously.”
The word bloodsport struck Sunset like a bolt of lightning right in the brain. Her legs nearly gave out under her, but honestly, what else did she expect? This was only marginally worse than the last thing she walked in on her girlfriend doing. While marginally worse, that didn’t make it okay by any means. “Why is she fighting Spike in—bloodsport—as you put it?”
As Sunset approached, Twilight tossed her clipboard onto the table. When she turned to face Sunset, her eyes lighting up, smile beaming. “For science, of course!” She clasped Sunset’s hands between her own.
Sunset’s eyes went even wider. She shifted her gaze between Twilight’s enthusiastic stare and the cold metal cage as Scootaloo wrestled Spike to the ground, him chewing on her leg as she pulled his tail. “What possible science requires a girl fighting a dog in a cage?” she asked, her voice cracking as she motioned towards spectacle.
“That’s not the science—” Twilight laughed again as she rolled her eyes “—This is actually the pregame show!” She released Sunset’s hands and walked over to the laptop. “The bloodsport is actually just to raise some money and give Spike some sense of hope.” Twilight smiled again. “The loser gets hooked up to a car battery.”
A cold chill ran down Sunset’s spine. The sweetly innocent tone of which Twilight spoke of such a horrible thing made her skin crawl slightly. Mostly since she imagined the voice of Twilight from her home reality nagging over her shoulder to be a good moral guide.
“Wh—”
Before Sunset could even ask, Twilight thrust a held up finger in her direction. “To answer your question, I’ve set up a stream on the dark web—it has about ninety-three viewers right now, each paying about three-hundred dollars in bitcoin.”
Sunset flung her arm at the cage once more. “I wasn’t asking who was watching or how it was raising money! I want to know—” Sunset rubbed her forehead. “I want to know a lot of things, actually. None of which are the logistics of this whole mess.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “I thought logistics were your fetish.”
“No, that’s yours…” Sunset pinched her eyes shut as she continued massaging. “How are you even considering streaming a teenage girl hooked up to a car battery.”
Twilight frowned slightly. “You actually think Spike is going to win?” she asked, turning her sights to the cage once more. Scootaloo now on her belly, screaming as she squirmed—pinned—under Spike as he scratched her back with his hind legs. “I actually didn’t account for Scootaloo losing to a puppy…”
“So you were going to hook your dog up to a car battery? Why?”
Suddenly Twilight’s eyes lit up once more. The same excited smile she had a moment earlier spread across her face again. “I need to test the electrical conductivity of dog testicles! I have a theory that we could repurpose neutered—”
Sunset held up her hand between the two of them. She then took a deep breath. “Twilight, when we started dating, I was expecting a lot. I expected some crazy experiments, wacky adventures, the occasional brush with rampant Equestrian magic—I was not expecting you to open up a dark web streaming service for impromptu deathmatches with our friends or canine cock-and-ball torture dungeons.”
Twilight walked up to Sunset, placing her hand on hers. With a sweet, innocent smile, she looked Sunset in the eyes. She giggled and pulled Sunset’s hand close to her chest. “Sunny, it’s not a cock-and-ball torture dungeon unless at least one party is gaining sexual gratification from the act.” She then rolled her eyes playfully as she stepped back.
Sunset narrowed her gaze. “You’re lucky that pedantry comes off as naively cute most of the time.” She turned her sights back to the cage. Scootaloo now kicking Spike as he gnawed on her opposite leg. “How did you even get Scootaloo to agree to this?”
Twilight let out a hearty laugh. “Agreed. That’s a good one.”
“Twilight…” Sunset took a slow, calculated breath.
“I blackmailed her into it, of course.”
And there it was. Sunset took a deep breath, almost feeling Twilight's Equestrian counterpart’s hoof smacking her on the back of the head. “You can’t just blackmail people into doing horrible things for you, Twilight!” Sunset cried, throwing her head back and thrusting her arms down at her side. “You could ruin her life by streaming this!”
Twilight brushed the words away with a flick of her wrist. “Trust me, she’s already ruined her life. Can you believe she doesn’t wash her hands after going to the bathroom?” Her whole body shuddered in disgust.
“Hey! You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone!” Scootaloo called from the cage, now holding Spike in a half-nelson on the ground.
“Are you serious?” Sunset asked, her jaw dropping.
“I know, right?” Twilight pointed to the cage. “So gross!”
“No—well, yes, but the fact that you blackmailed her into fighting a dog on a dark web stream over something so trivial!”
Twilight rolled her eyes again. “What’s the big deal? She's gross, gets to keep her dirty secret, and we make some quick cash? It's a win-win.”
Sunset’s face fell flat. “Twilight, there’s some gross 40-year-old man jerking off to this right now. You know that, right?”
“To a teenage girl stomping on a dog while she gets bit?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow and placing a finger to her chin. “That’s an oddly specific fetish.”
Sunset groaned. "Alright, let me spell it out. You’re making porn, Twilight.”
As Sunset’s words worked their way into Twilight’s brain, the girl’s shoulders shook. “You don’t think it’s an oily, unkempt fat guy touching himself, do you?” she asked, dread seeping into her voice.
Sunset nodded, rolling her eyes as she did. “Knowing the internet, I can tell you with one-hundred percent certainty that it’s a four-hundred pound obese man coated in acne who probably can’t even leave his bedroom." Sunset paused for a moment as Twilight's eyes went wide. She took a short breath and decided to put the nail in this proverbial coffin before Either Scootaloo or Spike ended up in one. "And hasn’t showered in months.”
Twilight’s face twisted in horror. Without even looking at the keyboard she pressed a button on the laptop. Suddenly the streaming window went blank. “That’s it. We’re done.” She closed the laptop and walked around the tripod, past Sunset. “Knock it off you two. Spike, you lost. I have to go take a shower right now to wash off this filth,” she said as her hands shook uncontrollably.
After Twilight opened the cage door and started towards the basement stairs, Sunset grabbed her by her wrist. In one smooth motion, she yanked Twilight over and pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay. He was on the other end of a computer screen, half a world away.”
“I can’t believe I did that, Sunny! I feel so dirty!” she cried out, still shaking.
Sunset petted her head. “That’s what a conscience feels like, sweetie.” For the first time since they had started dating, Sunset felt her own inner voice—manifesting as Princess Twilight’s again—give her a verbal, non-physical pat on the back. For as hard as it was to reach the human world’s Twilight, she had actually managed to get her to do the right thing of her own volition. Even if it took unorthodox methods and she wasn’t exactly doing them for the right reasons. It just took circumventing her peculiar moral compass to do so.
“I just wanted to get some money so I could take you out somewhere special! I didn’t mean to make porn for a dirty fat man to enjoy!” Twilight rubbed her face into Sunset’s chest as a small hiccup followed by a sniffle punctuated her confession.
“Is that what you wanted the money for?” Sunset chuckled. “That’s so sweet, but I’m fine just being with you, Twilight.” She petted Twilight’s head for a few more moments before finally asking, “So, are you still going to hook Spike up to a car battery?”
Twilight sniffled and nodded. "That part was for science."
Sunset nodded back as she rolled her eyes. “I guess if you can quit giving me crap over only tipping fifteen percent at dinner time, I can accept having a dog cock-and-ball torture dungeon in our basement from time to time.”
“You need to tip twenty percent!” Twilight said between sobs.
Sunset sighed, shaking her head. “And you shouldn’t blackmail people and be cruel to animals just to further your own ends, but I guess we can’t change who we are.”
“Sunset? Twilight? I think I need a rabies shot…” Scootaloo said, crawling out of the cage, leaving Spike barely breathing on the floor inside.
“Then you should probably start washing your hands after using the bathroom. If you can handle that, maybe we’ll take you to get one after our date,” Sunset said with a content sigh.