Twilight Sparkle Requires Belly Rubs

Twilight sat at her desk, papers scrawled on, models made and the wall in front of her marked with times, dates, and places going back up to a month ago. Little red strings connecting them all into what could be conceived as a spider's dream. Her eyes were becoming sore from staring at the same material for over two hours. The walls and floor were decorated with her experiments on how far this sickness ran. The circular scorch mark four feet to her left was the result of her teleportation spell, the various shards of plates and cups embedded up to three inches into the ancient wood was her attempt at setting very simple table decorations, and the shattered broom handles in the corner covered in soapy water was her failure to weave a simple cleaning companion out of a broom and bucket. The last one was the worst of all, with the broom endlessly replicating as she tried to destroy them (quite ineffectively) with an old hoe that she borrowed from Carrot Top. Twilight let out a heavy sigh and fell face first with a poomph onto the book of magical anomalies in front of her. "Nothing's working!" she moaned into the dusty pages. As she breathed in the scent of both ancient ink and paper she heard a light, but rapid knocking at the front door. "That must be Celestia!" she said, perking up from the book, she shifted from her seat and trotted briskly down the oak stairs, the knocking seemingly growing more brisk as she got closer. She opened the door, with much trouble, since she never learned to work the metal handle with her hooves. As she finally managed to open the door, she expected to see the very large, very imposing, Princess of the Sun, but what was really there was an old Earth pony with a singular book on her back.

"Ms. Sparkle is it?" she said, wheezing ever so slightly.

"Yes ma'am." Twilight replied, "can I help you with anything?"

"I have a book to return to your fine library. I needed something to teach my niece some things about knitting, but now that she sells her wares at the market I feel that it has served its purpose well and is in need of returning."

Twilight motioned her in and closed the door behind the old mare. "Well, lets check that in for you and..." Twilight stopped as she heard the familiar crackle of a disguise spell being dropped. Twilight whipped around, almost ready to face whatever threat had slipped under her muzzle.

"It would be unwise to use your magic Ms. Sparkle, with it working as erratic as you said in your letter. I know my sister taught you better than that." came the demanding voice of Princess Luna.

"Princess Luna!" Twilight said, "Meaning no disrespect, but I thought Celestia was going to help me."
"My sister is occupied at the moment," Luna said hanging the old tattered cloak she was just wearing, "some idiotic guard tried to peek into the royal baths this morning. I'll admit that I might of overreacted. Celestia is waiting in the infirmary for him to recover so she can give his punishment. Now then, onto the task at hoof." she said, placing the book she was carrying on the table in the center of the room. The novel before, which looked ancient and deeply in need of repair, now had transformed into a brilliantly violet covered book with golden accents on the cover and the spine. "Describe your symptoms to me Twilight", Luna said curtly, using minuscule amounts of azure magic to open the book to its index.

"Well..." Twilight started, " picking at some papers that had migrated downstairs due to the broom incident, "I woke up today after a long night of revising my notes on Spike's growth and metabolism development."

"Riveting," Luna said, with a sleight air of boredom in her voice. "go on."

"I woke up and Spike asked me if I wanted anything to drink, to which I said that I wanted coffee, he brought it up to me and I tried to grab it with magic. Then the aura became spiky of sorts, like something about it was mutating, and the color was especially weird too, some sort of deep magenta."

"Hmmm..." puzzled Luna, finally stopping on a singular page in the massive tome. "Aha!" she cried, motioning Twilight over, on the top of the page in bold lettering were the words "Stomachum Fricantur". Twilight tilted her head quizzically, she was fluent in over twenty languages, some even dating back when Luna and Celestia were first on the throne. Yet for some reason this language was unknown to her. Luna looked down at her and saw the look of desperation on Twilight's. "Ah." she said "I nearly forgot." her horn lit up once again and the ink on the pages responded, dissolving and then reforming back into traditional Equestrian.

"Stomach Rubs?" Twilight said, putting to rest what doubts she had in he mind about an unreadable book (The horror!)

"Yes," Luna replied, "or as the non-Latin speaking population says, tummy rubs. Usually used as a basic massage for relaxation, but for your sickness this is the only cure."

"So I just need to go to the spa for a simple massage and I will be fine?" Twilight asked hope rising in her voice.

"No." replied Luna. The hope that was attempting to rise in Twilight's heart was speared with dread.

"What do you mean?" she said, staring at the words, them mocking them with the somewhat bland history of Tummy Rubs.

"The way that the disease has spread through your body is a specialized strain, brought on by either too much stress with less than normal sleep, or by eating a very abnormal plant found in the Neighigra Falls area, so unless you have been traveling lately, then I think that you have been researching a bit too much on Spikes growth and metabolism development."

"So how do I fix this? Twilight said, sensing a small amount of sarcasm from Luna when she said "metabolism development."

"There is only one creature that can administer a Tummy Rub at the magnitude that you need." Luna flipped another heavy page revealing an anatomy section of a bipedal creature, unlike Spike at all, since it possessed neither scales nor any features that Twilight had seen develop in her dragon friend.

"What are they?" Twilight asked inquisitively, analyzing the anthropological data inscribed on the parchment, some of the more prominent features included things called hands, toes, and one specifically bolded and underlined called Aposable Thumbs.

"They are called Humans," Luna suddenly tilted her head lightly.

"What's wrong?" Twilight asked.

"Somepony here in Ponyville just fainted from excitement, but I have no idea why. Anyway, humans inhabit a rather new planet on an arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, and as you can see they are quite different from us in major ways. However, our two worlds are connected by magic, most colonized planets have some form of sorcery," she continued," however our planet's bonds are very much stronger than normal, so strong in fact that we can travel in between our worlds."

"Princess Luna?" Twilight asked, one question nagging at her. " Where did you even find such a detailed book on these Humans?"

"My dear Twilight." Luna cooed, turning over the book to show her a title inscribed in gold on the back cover. It read "A Detailed Anatomical and Ethnographic report on the Human world by Princess Luna. "I wrote it." A coy smile drew onto Luna's face as she basked in her own glory.

"Kind of a long Title for a report isn't it?" Twilight asked.

The smug look on Luna's face was wiped clean and was replaced by one of anger and near defeat. "Starswirl made me do this report on the culture on a world that could come into contact with Equestria in case we needed a diplomat from the royal family. Celestia's haunches he was a hard flank, every time I turned it in for a review he read it, and then rejected it for some minor detail that I had missed. So I made the title as long and as small as possible so that his old eyes would hurt every time he read it."

Twilight stared at Luna for a second, drinking in the shock of how troublesome she had been before Nightmare Moon raised her ugly head. "So is there still a way to get to the humans world?" Twilight asked, returning to her normal question-firing self.

Luna shut the book her eyes puzzled in concentration, "I still think I still know the spell, it is of a rather simple variety of transportation spells, but I'm going to mix in a locating spell to properly identify the human that would fit what you need. It will take me a couple of minutes to prepare both of us for travel."

"Both of us?" Twilight asked.

"My sister would murder me if I let her previous prodigy explore an unfamiliar world without guidance." Luna cleared her throat slightly with a look of embarrassment, "Also, I fear that my report may be slightly outdated since when I visited the human world, they were in the process of a cultural breakthrough from the bleak lives that they were living."

Twilight turned from Luna to organize her notebooks on Spike, when she heard Luna cough slightly. "Twilight, one more thing, humans most of the time will not do anything without a fee attached to it. They also were infatuated by the bits that I brought with me on my documentation journey, I would recommend bringing some what of a large amount of bits in case this specific human is greedy."

"Sooo," Twilight said, tapping her hoof on her chin, "would about 500 bits work?"

Luna sighed, "Yes that will be an excellent bargaining chip just in case."

"Ok!" Twilight said, dashing to the secret door in the farthest wall of the tree. When she finally managed to pop it open, she started pulling a fairly large sack by her teeth. She set it down and Luna's eyes widened. Twilight dashed back off to make preparations and after she was out of sight, Luna hoisted the book again onto her back and began channeling her spell. "Celestia needs to teach her about the dangers of having too many bits." was the though the thought that Luna ran through her head before she focused entirely on weaving her spell.