Meatball Marinaraby DEn-eaRPChaptersThe Twilight CalzoneThe Cash CowThe Deadly ProblemThe Malformed GatheringThe Plot ThinsThe Twilight CalzoneWhat if it never did occur to her that some things break? Surely she would forgive herself and pick up the pieces if she knew that everypony did it. Ponies messed up all the time. That must mean that Spike, Gilda, Tank, Discord, and anything else that wasn't a pony was absolutely perfect in any way. And indeed that is the way things were. Discord's devilishly handsome high school yearbook pictures upon fliers floated around outside. Fantastic flier flyer Rainbow Dash was collecting them outside. Not only were they litter, but they were handsome litter. "I can't hold any more!" exclaimed the cyan flying flier holder. "I sure could go for some spinach right now!" On cue, a giant, flat-looking spinach can entered the screen, and Rainbow's jaw opened wide to eat it. The metal was good. No wonder goats dug it! Using her newfound strength, she collected all the fliers and went to the bank to start a trading card company, which would convert the fliers into trading cards which she could then sell for enormous profit. She could finally pay off the debt to her house and have season tickets to see the Wonderbolts this year! No more one-or-the-other for her, no sir-ee! Elated at the money she expected to be rolling in by the end of the week, she decided to pay one of her friends a visit. Pulling a dart out of her ear, she aimed it at the crowd in the middle of town, piercing the ear of a purple-colored pony. She would go visit her purple friend Twilight, then! The two ponies thanked each other for the wondrous event and moved on. AT THE LIBRARY Twilight opened the door, but to no effect. Then she realized that she had opened a book, not a door! How silly of her to open a book instead of a door. Whatever would she do when opportunity knocked on the door? Unfortunately for her, it was not opportunity knocking on the door, but rather, her "good friend" Rainbow Dash. She opened the closet door before remembering to let her friend in using the front door and so she went and opened that one instead. "Rainbow, 'Daring-Do and the Rainbow Aliens in Vegas' doesn't come out until Friday!" She then closed the door before anypony could dash in. "But it is Friday!" protested the blue buddy. Twilight shot a magic bomb and blew a hole in the ceiling, making Spike fall down to the ground floor. "Spike, what day is it?" "Yesterday was Thursday, and so today is Friday and Sunday comes afterwards!" The dazed dragon spun around clockwise exactly 7 times before spinning counterclockwise 4 times, which teleported him to the moon. "1 PM, huh?" Rainbow Dash dashed through the door, daring to destroy the now-damaged door with a dash of disaster. "It is so Friday, Twi!" "Oh yeah." Twilight blushed. Ever since her big freakout, she had overcompensated about the whole "don't get concerned over schedules" thing. "You smell like spinach." "I know..." Rainbow Dash knew. "...I hope you don't mind, I was gathering a lot." "I don't mind, Rainbow Dash; I love spinach!" "Really? Why?" "My mother always used to make me a special sub... she'd go to Subway in the morning..." Rainbow Dash groaned. This was going to be another one of those stories again! "...my mother went to Subway in the night..." Suddenly, Rainbow Dash felt a strange sensation in her body. She started curling up into a ball, only to find that it wasn't making her feel better, it was making her feel worse! And was her color fading to red? Say it isn't so! "...Oh please don't forget my large meatballs..." That was it! Now Rainbow Dash knew what was happening to her! Now she knew how a meatball feels. Twilight repeated something about meatballs for half an hour before stopping to telekinetically pick up the meatball Rainbow Dash because picking things up with hooves was gross. She had no idea where she had been stepping. "Uh, Twi? You're not gonna eat me, are you?" Twilight chuckled. "Of course not!" Somehow, the inch-tall meatball breathed a sigh of relief. "YET." Twilight's addition had very cleverly turned around the situation. Again, SOMEHOW, Rainball Dash displayed the emotion of shock and terror. "I need bread," said Twilight, the logical unicorn she was. "I do not get to have a sub if I don't have any bread! If I don't have any bread, I don't get the sub!" She brought the poor meatball uncomfortably close to her face. "Do you realize what this means!?" "I go home free?" stammered the dashing little meatball, ignoring the implications that her longtime friend had a thing for what could very possibly be red meat. "NO! It means I have to look!" Twilight started crying because not only was she in despair, but the plants outside her windowsill needed watering. Rainbow, feeling sorry for her predatory friend, tried to comfort her by rubbing her saucy self on Twilight's cheek, though being careful to avoid the mouth altogether. "It can't be that hard, man!" Rainbow thought for a moment wondering where bread could be acquired. "Why don't you ask Celestia for some bread?" Twilight wiped away her tears. "Last time I did that, she showed me a home movie starring my parents!" "Hmmmm... Keldeo, then?" "Kelde-who?" "Who?" Owloysius butted in. Remembering that his existence was tangential at best, Twilight turned him into a meatball too, to create in the room- meatballs two. Owloysius was now Owl-licious. Getting back on track, Rainbow answered, "Y'know? Ol' breadnose? That guy who is always hanging out with those weird dudes?" "Keldeo?" "No, he's called Breadnose, but his actual name is Keldeo." "He can provide us with bread?" "Yeah, because he's Breadnose! His nose is bread!" "OH!" The logical unicorn finally had the logic click like a Lego brick. "Of course!" She began to pack her bag, but couldn't decide on what to bring and what to bring behind, so she just shrunk the whole library and jammed it in her bag, shaking around the borrowers still inside. "Hopefully nothing is broken." She said to the tune of things breaking inside the bulging bag. "So what do you say, Twi?" "Thank you Rainbow Dash, you are a true bro!" And so she set off. Her mission: Find Breadnose! The Cash CowSomething's waltzing through the village; Ponyville is in a bind. Twilight Sparkle's after Breadnose; can she find the dude in time? Rainbow Dash is made of meat; will the sandwich be complete-? "Kellllllll-deo, where are you?" Nopony answered because the town was deserted. It turned out that everypony that day had deserted the town to hit the Dessert Desert for their just desserts. Actually, that was a lie because Applejack was in town, Element of Honesty she was. "Ya'll lookin' fer that darn tootin' Keldeo?" "Yes, in fact I am, Applejack! Do you know where he is?" Applejack activated her honesty powers. Although she did not know the location of Keldeo, she could not tell a lie and therefore the location she said would turn out to be where he was. Eyes glowing orange, she answered, "He's at the 100 Hotel in Canterlot, floor 1, room 5." She tipped her hat. "Hope that helped!" It did indeed help as Twilight began a mad zip to Canterlot. Rainbow Dash, the meatball she was, struggled to hold on as meatballs do not have limbs. The library in the unicorn's saddlebag was having a rough ride too. Truly, only the dead would know peace from Twilight Sparkle's wild ride. Now completely alone, Applejack activated her honesty powers again. "I am at the Dessert Desert with everypony else!" And because that was the truth, she was. It was too bad that Twilight and Rainbow Dash would be missing out on the Taffy Pit and the MMMMountain. AT THE HOTEL "What do you mean, you haven't had it since 1969!?" The room service pony, depressingly named Room Service, gulped. He wasn't quite sure what to do. He had literally never worked in a situation where the guest was not 100% satisfied. "S- s- sir, unauthorized cornflakes are unauthorized in Equestria! They're too dangerous, but I assure you, our authorized cornflakes are just as good!" The guest of honor, an ambassador pony by the name of Keldeo, snorted. "Authorized cornflakes are not my idea of delicious! Go get me some unauthorized cornflakes for my brunch, or I will see to it that your boss fires you." "Sir, no, please!" "GO!" Room Service, uniform drenched from the immense sweat this spoiled swordspony had induced from him, scrambled out, to go meet the illegal request. As he dashed out, our hero Twilight, Dash in tow, dashed in. The 100 Hotel was known for being a nexus of time and space warping, so naturally Keldeo did not find the intrusion of a complete stranger to be worth batting an eyelid at. "Breadnose! I request your bread nose!" Breadno- I mean Keldeo blinked, flustered. "No." He shook the feeling off. "I am about to go on what could quite possibly be the most important ambassadorial trip in history, and I would not have the time to go through plastic surgery to take care of my charmingly bulbous nose." "There's a knife right here!" exclaimed Twilight, picking up the knife on the currently empty food tray. "It is not silverware time, miss." Keldeo tapped his hoof, remarking how late his unauthorized cornflake brunch was. "What do you want my nose for anyway?" Twilight put on her best "official business" voice. She loved doing this voice; it made her sound awesome, in her opinion. "I am hungry for a Meatball Marinara, just like mom used to make. I need bread, and your nose is bread. Therefore, I request your nose." Room Service burst in with the contraband cereal. Seeing what he assumed to be Ol' Breadnose's mistress, he quickly poured two bowls and ran away. "While I cannot help you, I can offer you some delicious cornflakes instead for you to eat." Keldeo ate his meal in a sophisticated manner. To his dismay, his guest was not grazing on the wonderfully cholesterol-and-fat-soaked unauthorized cornflakes. "I'm sorry, Breadnose; it's just that... only a Meatball Marinara will do." Twilight fidgeted around nervously. "It's what I'm hungry for." "I am sorry to hear that," sighed the actually-not-sorry-at-all swordspony. "Oh well, more cornflakes for me!" "I have never seen anypony so into cornflakes before; does this hotel really make them that good? Oh! I get it! I'm so smart! These are the delicious, yet, dangerously unhealthy unauthorized cornflakes!" "What's it to you? Sometimes one might want to take in the finer pleasures in life!" "I know." Twilight checked in her saddlebag to see if there was a book in the miniaturized library to set aside for later about the history of Equestrian cornflakes. There wasn't. "By the way, I am Princess Celestia's number one student, please!" Keldeo's eyes opened in shock. Said shock also allowed the clogged-by-cornflakes cardiovascular system to fail, and so the musketeer died, hoist by his own petard. "How rude!" Rainbow Dash piped up. STILL AT THE HOTEL, BUT IN THE EVENING The glowing and shining princess, Celestia, trotted over to her number one student. She intended to question her about what happened at the time of Keldeo's death, as the purple unicorn had been there for some reason when it happened. "What kind of business did you have here, anyway, my faithful student?" Twilight and Rainbow (Celestia was not able to recognize Rainbow in her baleful form) looked at each other nervously. They weren't entirely sure if the death would be considered a sinister shock or a stupid suicide. "It is a matter of a Meatball Marinara, Princess Celestia!" stated the nervous student. Her mentor eyed her oddly, as she was an immortal being, she never had a mother who would buy her Meatball Marinaras from Subway, and thus she felt a sad pang. She would never truly understand, like her student did, the true significance of a Meatball Marinara. However, that was not important at the moment; what instead was important was the implications the death of the ambassador would bring. "We need to discuss this matter, Twilight; Keldeo was a very important pony." Celestia spun around clockwise 3 times, did 8 backflips, spun counterclockwise 4 times, did a frontflip, and then spun around clockwise 2 more times, which teleported them all to her private quarters. Even the police were present. The Deadly ProblemWhen Celestia realized that she had bitten off than she could chew, that is, she teleported too many ponies into her private chambers, she had to decide on the next course of action. Either she could just go make a different chamber her private chamber, or she could figure out a way to make sure none of these police ponies would divulge it. "Policeponies! I will give you all tickets to Disneyland if you leave and promise never to tell what happened!" The lead investigator guffawed. "We've done less for larger bribes, your majesty!" "Very well." The white princess turned to her favored student, Twilight Sparkle. Leaning in close, she whispered, "What should I do?" "Meatballs?" suggested Twilight, her mind continuously becoming dipped in marinara sauce. "No, I'll teach 'em something... romantic." "You could teach them the funky-" "NO!" The sudden loudness made everypony jump. Even Rainbow Dash jumped despite being a former pony. "I don't think that was the best thing to teach you, my student, so please never, ever bring it up again!" she quickly said. Twilight just stared blankly while Celestia regathered her wits. This allowed her to remember that she was in fact, a princess ruler with jurisdiction over every pony (and meatball) in the room. "Policeponies!" she said, breaking out the royal Canterlot voice for the first time in 432 years, 3 hours, 6 minutes, and 58 seconds. "I ORDER you to take the tickets to Disneyland and promise never to divulge anything pertaining to this room, or you are all FIRED!" The police force collectively gulped. "F- F- Fired?" "By which I mean hurled into the sun instead of simply losing your jobs!" Though technically, that would still constitute as the "losing one's job" type of firing because ponies on fire in the sun cannot possibly hold jobs on Earth. And so they all left the chamber so hard that their fast motion smears left residue. Twilight had stars in her eyes. "Wow, princess, you're the best teacher ever!" "Twilight, we've wasted enough time already, but I need to tell you what the big deal about Keldeo is." "Huh?" Rainbow Dash broke into the conversation. "Isn't it just bad whenever anypony loses a life?" "No, that's not it," replied the princess. "He was going to be a cash cow for my clients and the country." "But he's not a cow," explained Twilight, who was always right. "Our economy is bad right now, and so when some foreigners came in and asked if we had a citizen they could exploit, one that could star in movies, merchandise, and generally whore himself out to make a lot of money, I put our star diplomat to be the one. Then, once he made these clients enormous profit, Equestria would receive a cut of it, thus helping to fight our deficit!" "And so the problem is...?" Twilight started. In her mind, that statement ended with "...I still do not have bread for a Meatball Marinara.", but she wondered what her mentor felt was the problem with everything. "If he's dead, he can't act in the movie or go to photo shoots or anything! My clients and I will have no profits! Our beautiful land is doomed, Twilight Sparkle, unless we can do something fast! I already had to sell this county once; it's going to break my heart if I must go so once again!" The cool meatball whistled. "Well princess, I'm about to come into some big money real soon..." Even as a small ball of meat, she had a feeling she could save the world... or at least Equestria County. "...I'm starting a trading card business. Kids love trading cards. Soon I'll be in the money, and I could give you some to defeat our deficit!" She somehow put on sunglasses that were somehow her size. "Problem solved." "Problem not solved, mysterious talking meatball." Princess Celestia was in despair. Her history of money troubles had left her in despair. "We don't know for sure if your plan will work." "What do you mean!? Kids love trading cards! There's a 120% chance that it'll be a big hit!" "If it's not 100%, it's just too risky for me to put all of my- I mean- my county's hopes on!" As Twilight was currently out of the conversation, she was checking on the state of the library in her saddlebag. Surprisingly, the borrowers inside were still alive, and only all of the books were intact. To her horror, though, she discovered that the shrunken books would be too small to read, and the magnifying glass was broken. It wasn't fair! She had all the time in the world to read those! Time enough at la-actually, she then remembered that she could just re-enlarge the library later and so closed the bag to rejoin the others. "Who in their right mind would frost a cake with her flank?" "Excuse me," interrupted Twilight. "So what do we do now?" "I don't know!" cried a despondent Celestia. Her typical brave face in the face of anything bad could still not hold up to the power of financial crisis. Twilight was shocked and did not like seeing her wonderful mentor in this state, so she laid an egg in her mind and made it hatch into an idea! "Why don't I go to another state and go find some fortune?" she suggested. "That's what happened in the old times; the poor went to new lands to search for riches, so as long as I can go find riches, I'll bring back enough to save Equestria!" Celestia, too dignified to wipe her tears, instead briefly intensified the sun so that her tears instantly evaporated. "Your idea sounds crazy, my faithful student, but I suppose sometimes there are plans that are crazy enough to work. Besides, you're of very sound mind..." The look on Twilight's face suggested that her meatball fantasies had buried any vestige of soundness in the poor mare's mind, but Celestia wasn't a face reader. "...and so I trust the fate of Equestria in your hooves." Twilight, Rainbow, and the borrowers saluted, and the purple unicorn spun around some odd amount of times in whichever directions to teleport them back to Ponyville. IN PONYVILLE "That's so cool of you to be helping the princess save Equestria." Rainbow Dash had to hand it to Twilight. For an egghead bookworm, she sure could pull through in the toughest of situations. "I... don't actually have a plan yet and I'm starving." "We could gather the other Elements and we'd all pitch in to help!" "That's a great idea, Rainbow Dash." Twilight aimed her head to the sky. "HEY EVERYPONY! I NEED THE ELEMENTS OF HARMONY TO REPORT TO THE LIBRARY IMMEDIATELY!" A random pony responded, "But the library is missing!" "Oh yeah..." Twilight really had to dig deep to find out the answer for this. Eventually, she settled on conjuring up a 2D image and compositing it over where the library once was. And now, it was a waiting game. The Malformed GatheringPinkie Pie pounced over, so that was good sign. Rarity too, even better! Applejack eventually showed herself, while Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle were never seen converging towards the faux-library. However, Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle then remembered that they were already there, so of course that's why they weren't arriving. "Elements of Harmony..." started Twilight. "Equestria needs our help once again!" "What in the hay are we waiting for then? Where's the enemy to blast?" Applejack was sure excited to get to blast something with the powers. "The enemy is our county's money troubles!" announced Twilight. "We need to raise a lot in order to save all ponykind!" "I'll go sell some apples then!" exclaimed the orange earth pony as she disappeared from the scene. Twilight was actually kind of hoping they'd get more brainstorming in... maybe with cheese and toasted bread... mmmm... bread. "So what can I do?" asked Rarity, her beautiful mane shining. As the Element of Generosity, her idea was to step up the gains on her personal fortune to then donate to the cause her great friend had told her about. As long as nothing sidetracked her, she felt she could easily fix this pinch. It was then that a strange, parachuting, trio landed in the scene. Spike, Princess Luna of the Night, and a strange being in white had appeared. The being in white flipped a switch and the parachute disappeared. "Thanks for bringing Luna and me back from the moon, Kamen Rider Fourze!" said Spike as he attempted to enter the 2D image that occupied the library's former space. He crashed. Luna laughed. "No problem! That's what friends are for!" Kamen Rider Fourze posed dramatically and then flipped another switch, this one red. RAVIOLI ON Suddenly, a tin can appeared on his legs and launched some lights that hit Rarity. Her perfectly coiffed mane and tail had metamorphosed into ravioli! She cried in panic as she began dripping sauce. "MY HAIR! WHY? WHY-HY-HY!?" She then ran away because Ravioli Rarity, Rarvioli, was not as beautiful as Regular Rarity. Fourze looked a bit twitchy. "Oops!" He switched the Ravioli Astro Switch off before he could accidentally turn anything else into delicious Italian packets. He then pushed the button on the correct switch, the one he had actually been intent on using, an orange one. ROCKET ON "Sorry!" he finished as he used the rocket that somehow appeared to blast off. "SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!" "Wow!" Pinkie Pie admired the sweet sight. "Friendship is cosmic!" "What's Rarity so upset about? My whole body is food and you don't see me whining!" Meatball Rainbow Dash would have crossed her forelegs but didn't because she no longer had those. "Some ponies are more dramatic than others, I guess." Twilight shrugged. "Ooh, who's the talking meatball?" asked Pinkie. Twilight changed the subject because not only did she not want Pinkie to worry about Rainbow Dash, but also because she wasn't really thinking on the same page as anypony else anymore. "Do you want to come with me to go find fortune in strange, new, lands?" "I'd love t-" "PINKIE PIE! GET IN HERE AND CLEAN UP YOUR CHERRY MESS!" Whether it was Mr. or Mrs. Cake yelling was unclear, but either way, Pinkie winced and changed her mind. "I'd love to, Twilight, but it looks like..." She ducked to avoid a rolling pin that was being thrown in her direction. "... I have stuff to do here..." Her Pinkie Sense had luckily alerted her to the fact that a butcher knife was headed in her direction, so she avoided that, too. "... butyoucanborrowmycarheresthekeysbye!" Speeding off in the direction of Sugarcube corner, all that was left behind were the keys to Pinkie Pie's RC Car. Oh, and that knife ended up hitting Luna, who crashed into Spike, sending the two of them spinning clockwise 9 times, counterclockwise 23 times, and frontflipping once, which sent them to Mars. However, that is not important, so the focus shall now return to Twilight picking up the car keys. "Well let's go, Rainbow!" She jiggled the keys to show off her unicorn levitation skills. "What about Fluttershy?" "Oh yeah, I forgot! Let's ask if she wants to ride with us." She climbed into the automobile, and, after making sure Rainball and the Library were with her, she drove towards Fluttershy's place. AT FLUTTERSHY'S PLACE Fluttershy's place was indeed a place that belonged to Fluttershy. Surely one who could competently manage finance well enough to own the cottage and its land could give good advice on proper fiscal responsibility! Twilight, who did not know which switch activated Magic Hand, thought pragmatically and so knocked on the door by driving into it, backing up, and driving into it again multiple times. Without opening the door, Fluttershy's voice answered. "Can I help you?" "Hi, I'd like an order of hay fries and- wait a minute! That's not what I want to eat!" Twilight begged the image of Meatball Marinara in her mind for forgiveness and promised not to visualize other food from then on. "Twilight, this is Fluttershy." "Oh yeah." Twilight then remembered why she was there. "Hey Fluttershy, do you want to come along with us? The economy is in the WC and Rainbow and I are heading out to other places to go find fortune!" "Oh dear... Twilight, I don't mean to be rude, but I do know what is going on and this whole scenario is really, really stupid. I don't want any part of it." She was silent after that, and even further knocking on the door didn't elicit any more responses from the yellow pegasus. "What a yellowbelly!" snapped Rainbow. "C'mon Twi, it's just us, then! Two amigos on the open road, searching for fortune!" "Sounds good to me!" The car roared to life as Twilight started directing it out of Ponyville Town Limits, but not before running over Fluttershy's chicken coop. UP IN THE SKY The mailmare watched as she saw a purplely-pink car head down the highway, leaving Ponyville behind. She dove, hopefully to catch it, because she had mail for the driver. It was always important that mail be on time, after all. The Plot ThinsThe highway glistened in Celestia's glowing sun. It was such a marvelously distracting sight that the road boasted a whopping 39 driver deaths per month, the highest of any road in the county in the state. An innocent car with an innocent family inside passed the bush that the couple, Lyra and BonBon hid in. Giggling, they pressed a button that made a section of the highway spring up, launching the poor group into the sun. Everything went well, so they high-hooved. Unfortunately for them, the next car was driven by Twilight Sparkle, who was a notoriously shitty driver, and as a result, she unknowingly swerved off the road and ran them over. The left front tire took care of Lyra's throat while the right front tire splintered BonBon's spine. That kind of detail was rather pointless because no one cares. Rainbow Dash hung on for her dear life. "Twi! Maybe I should take the wheel instead!?" "Don't be silly, Rainbow Dash!" Twilight said as she uprooted a cactus. "You're a meatball now and meatballs can't drive!" "Oh yeah." Rainbow Dash had not been reminded in a while that she had been turned into a meatball, so it was very kind of her good friend to remind her. Good friends always leave each other reminders. Just then, a pegasus swooped down and ordered Twilight to pull over. As the speed blurring was on a high scale, Twilight mistook the mailmare hat for a policemare hat and obediently sped down, grinding to a halt mere inches away from a surface-level gas pipe. "I have mail for you, sir!" Twilight chortled at the mailmare's boner. "I am not a sir, my good mailmare, I am female. You can tell by how my snout is not angular." The mailmare attempted to get a better look at Twilight's nose, but it was no use. Her googly eyes simply could not converge enough to bring it into focus. "I'm terribly sorry, ma'am, I just don't see it. Anyway, so I guess that means this mail's not for you, then, which means..." AT MANLYVILLE LIBRARY Dusk Shine, apparently the name for Twilight Sparkle's manly male doppelgänger, checked his manly mail, only to find out that the mail wasn't actually his. Suddenly, a streak of gray and yellow zoomed past, and when he finished blinking, the incorrect mail he had been levitating was replaced with the mail that was actually his. "Hm." He shrugged and went back into his library, which promptly caught on manly fire. BACK ON THE ROAD The mailmare returned with the correct letter for Twilight. "Here you go, ma'am." Twilight responded by singing the "we just got a letter" song. Met with weird glares from her friend and the derp-eyed mailmare, she explained that her foalsitter from back before she was genius and self-sufficient taught her all sorts of things that normal society would consider embarrassing to do in public. After a lengthy explanation for why she did not have such preconceptions of things that were and were not appropriate to do in public, she opened the letter to find that... it was a check! "Woah!" said Twilight. "How much is it and who's it from?" asked her meatball companion. "It says that it's from Mr. Studios. It's uh... this Mr. Hasbro Studios apparently owed me 2700 in U.S. dollars this month because- hm- let's see... Oh! It says this is a royalty check!" "So Mr. Studios pays you for being the royal student?" "No, 'royalty' here refers to usage-based payments made by one party (the "licensee") to another (the "licensor") for the right to ongoing use of an asset. I read it in a Free Encyclopedia, see? Anyway, what this means is that obviously some asset of mine is being used by Mr. Studios that he has to pay me to use it!" One of the mailmare's eyes caught the top left corner of the screen. "Wow, that really was both educational and informative!" Rainbow Dash slithered over to look at the number written on the check. "Let's see... $2700... that equates to... Wow! That's a lot of bits, Twilight! It's not enough to the save Equestria, but it's easily enough to get a swimming pool!" A lightbulb emerged from Twilight's head, leaving a rather sickening-looking hole. "I just got an idea! We'll go and figure out what my asset is, and then we go find Mr. Hasbro Studios and demand that he pay more for my asset, and in short, we'll use him to pay Equestria's debts!" "Alright!" exclaimed Rainbow Dash. "So how are we going to figure out your asset?" "I know a friend who knows more about this kind of stuff." Twilight smugly explained. "It's just a matter of finding him, and finding some bread for a meatball marinara!" "Who knows? Maybe your friend has some bread at his or her house!" "Even better! Let's drive!" Twilight sped away, leaving the mailmare in the dust. She wasn't too concerned, though. She has a smile on her face as the strange gears in her head turned. It seemed that in their political correctness, neither the unicorn or the meatball looked at her eyes, because if they had, they would've noticed that her pupils had become dollar signs. BACK IN MANLYVILLE The fire that originated from the library spread throughout the whole town. Everyone was pointing hooves at each other but only Butterscotch, the male counterpart to Fluttershy, was actually using his other, non-pointing at somepony else, hoof to hold a hose to put out the fire. There was a strange man who continually claimed that the whole thing was the fault of someone named Decade, but he caught fire too and died. "We need to think of a way to put out the fire." Dusk Shine said, as if no one else had suggested it yet. "As long as it's not something barbaric like sacrificing other ponies, I'll gladly help!" pitched in Elusive, Rarity's doppelgänger. "That's it! Liquid extinguishes fire! Blood is liquid! Therefore, we need lots of blood to put out the fire! Ponies have blood in them! Elusive, you're a genius!" "No no! I said we don't do that!" Elusive was nearly ready to pull out his hair, but then remembered that he quite liked his hair and so instead, he opted to run away. "You're not pinning this on me, Dusk Shine! I'm out of here!" Following in Elusive's hoofsteps was Butterscotch, who, frustrated that logic was being spat upon this whole time, stopped his more sensible idea of hosing down the fire with the just as liquid, but not as pony-harming, water, and left too. Electing to not have to describe the horrors that Dusk Shine underwent in order to save Manlyville, the focus of the story hurled into a nearby garbage can before going back to Twilight and Rainbow's less deadly mission to save Equestria.
The Twilight CalzoneWhat if it never did occur to her that some things break? Surely she would forgive herself and pick up the pieces if she knew that everypony did it. Ponies messed up all the time. That must mean that Spike, Gilda, Tank, Discord, and anything else that wasn't a pony was absolutely perfect in any way. And indeed that is the way things were. Discord's devilishly handsome high school yearbook pictures upon fliers floated around outside. Fantastic flier flyer Rainbow Dash was collecting them outside. Not only were they litter, but they were handsome litter. "I can't hold any more!" exclaimed the cyan flying flier holder. "I sure could go for some spinach right now!" On cue, a giant, flat-looking spinach can entered the screen, and Rainbow's jaw opened wide to eat it. The metal was good. No wonder goats dug it! Using her newfound strength, she collected all the fliers and went to the bank to start a trading card company, which would convert the fliers into trading cards which she could then sell for enormous profit. She could finally pay off the debt to her house and have season tickets to see the Wonderbolts this year! No more one-or-the-other for her, no sir-ee! Elated at the money she expected to be rolling in by the end of the week, she decided to pay one of her friends a visit. Pulling a dart out of her ear, she aimed it at the crowd in the middle of town, piercing the ear of a purple-colored pony. She would go visit her purple friend Twilight, then! The two ponies thanked each other for the wondrous event and moved on. AT THE LIBRARY Twilight opened the door, but to no effect. Then she realized that she had opened a book, not a door! How silly of her to open a book instead of a door. Whatever would she do when opportunity knocked on the door? Unfortunately for her, it was not opportunity knocking on the door, but rather, her "good friend" Rainbow Dash. She opened the closet door before remembering to let her friend in using the front door and so she went and opened that one instead. "Rainbow, 'Daring-Do and the Rainbow Aliens in Vegas' doesn't come out until Friday!" She then closed the door before anypony could dash in. "But it is Friday!" protested the blue buddy. Twilight shot a magic bomb and blew a hole in the ceiling, making Spike fall down to the ground floor. "Spike, what day is it?" "Yesterday was Thursday, and so today is Friday and Sunday comes afterwards!" The dazed dragon spun around clockwise exactly 7 times before spinning counterclockwise 4 times, which teleported him to the moon. "1 PM, huh?" Rainbow Dash dashed through the door, daring to destroy the now-damaged door with a dash of disaster. "It is so Friday, Twi!" "Oh yeah." Twilight blushed. Ever since her big freakout, she had overcompensated about the whole "don't get concerned over schedules" thing. "You smell like spinach." "I know..." Rainbow Dash knew. "...I hope you don't mind, I was gathering a lot." "I don't mind, Rainbow Dash; I love spinach!" "Really? Why?" "My mother always used to make me a special sub... she'd go to Subway in the morning..." Rainbow Dash groaned. This was going to be another one of those stories again! "...my mother went to Subway in the night..." Suddenly, Rainbow Dash felt a strange sensation in her body. She started curling up into a ball, only to find that it wasn't making her feel better, it was making her feel worse! And was her color fading to red? Say it isn't so! "...Oh please don't forget my large meatballs..." That was it! Now Rainbow Dash knew what was happening to her! Now she knew how a meatball feels. Twilight repeated something about meatballs for half an hour before stopping to telekinetically pick up the meatball Rainbow Dash because picking things up with hooves was gross. She had no idea where she had been stepping. "Uh, Twi? You're not gonna eat me, are you?" Twilight chuckled. "Of course not!" Somehow, the inch-tall meatball breathed a sigh of relief. "YET." Twilight's addition had very cleverly turned around the situation. Again, SOMEHOW, Rainball Dash displayed the emotion of shock and terror. "I need bread," said Twilight, the logical unicorn she was. "I do not get to have a sub if I don't have any bread! If I don't have any bread, I don't get the sub!" She brought the poor meatball uncomfortably close to her face. "Do you realize what this means!?" "I go home free?" stammered the dashing little meatball, ignoring the implications that her longtime friend had a thing for what could very possibly be red meat. "NO! It means I have to look!" Twilight started crying because not only was she in despair, but the plants outside her windowsill needed watering. Rainbow, feeling sorry for her predatory friend, tried to comfort her by rubbing her saucy self on Twilight's cheek, though being careful to avoid the mouth altogether. "It can't be that hard, man!" Rainbow thought for a moment wondering where bread could be acquired. "Why don't you ask Celestia for some bread?" Twilight wiped away her tears. "Last time I did that, she showed me a home movie starring my parents!" "Hmmmm... Keldeo, then?" "Kelde-who?" "Who?" Owloysius butted in. Remembering that his existence was tangential at best, Twilight turned him into a meatball too, to create in the room- meatballs two. Owloysius was now Owl-licious. Getting back on track, Rainbow answered, "Y'know? Ol' breadnose? That guy who is always hanging out with those weird dudes?" "Keldeo?" "No, he's called Breadnose, but his actual name is Keldeo." "He can provide us with bread?" "Yeah, because he's Breadnose! His nose is bread!" "OH!" The logical unicorn finally had the logic click like a Lego brick. "Of course!" She began to pack her bag, but couldn't decide on what to bring and what to bring behind, so she just shrunk the whole library and jammed it in her bag, shaking around the borrowers still inside. "Hopefully nothing is broken." She said to the tune of things breaking inside the bulging bag. "So what do you say, Twi?" "Thank you Rainbow Dash, you are a true bro!" And so she set off. Her mission: Find Breadnose!
The Cash CowSomething's waltzing through the village; Ponyville is in a bind. Twilight Sparkle's after Breadnose; can she find the dude in time? Rainbow Dash is made of meat; will the sandwich be complete-? "Kellllllll-deo, where are you?" Nopony answered because the town was deserted. It turned out that everypony that day had deserted the town to hit the Dessert Desert for their just desserts. Actually, that was a lie because Applejack was in town, Element of Honesty she was. "Ya'll lookin' fer that darn tootin' Keldeo?" "Yes, in fact I am, Applejack! Do you know where he is?" Applejack activated her honesty powers. Although she did not know the location of Keldeo, she could not tell a lie and therefore the location she said would turn out to be where he was. Eyes glowing orange, she answered, "He's at the 100 Hotel in Canterlot, floor 1, room 5." She tipped her hat. "Hope that helped!" It did indeed help as Twilight began a mad zip to Canterlot. Rainbow Dash, the meatball she was, struggled to hold on as meatballs do not have limbs. The library in the unicorn's saddlebag was having a rough ride too. Truly, only the dead would know peace from Twilight Sparkle's wild ride. Now completely alone, Applejack activated her honesty powers again. "I am at the Dessert Desert with everypony else!" And because that was the truth, she was. It was too bad that Twilight and Rainbow Dash would be missing out on the Taffy Pit and the MMMMountain. AT THE HOTEL "What do you mean, you haven't had it since 1969!?" The room service pony, depressingly named Room Service, gulped. He wasn't quite sure what to do. He had literally never worked in a situation where the guest was not 100% satisfied. "S- s- sir, unauthorized cornflakes are unauthorized in Equestria! They're too dangerous, but I assure you, our authorized cornflakes are just as good!" The guest of honor, an ambassador pony by the name of Keldeo, snorted. "Authorized cornflakes are not my idea of delicious! Go get me some unauthorized cornflakes for my brunch, or I will see to it that your boss fires you." "Sir, no, please!" "GO!" Room Service, uniform drenched from the immense sweat this spoiled swordspony had induced from him, scrambled out, to go meet the illegal request. As he dashed out, our hero Twilight, Dash in tow, dashed in. The 100 Hotel was known for being a nexus of time and space warping, so naturally Keldeo did not find the intrusion of a complete stranger to be worth batting an eyelid at. "Breadnose! I request your bread nose!" Breadno- I mean Keldeo blinked, flustered. "No." He shook the feeling off. "I am about to go on what could quite possibly be the most important ambassadorial trip in history, and I would not have the time to go through plastic surgery to take care of my charmingly bulbous nose." "There's a knife right here!" exclaimed Twilight, picking up the knife on the currently empty food tray. "It is not silverware time, miss." Keldeo tapped his hoof, remarking how late his unauthorized cornflake brunch was. "What do you want my nose for anyway?" Twilight put on her best "official business" voice. She loved doing this voice; it made her sound awesome, in her opinion. "I am hungry for a Meatball Marinara, just like mom used to make. I need bread, and your nose is bread. Therefore, I request your nose." Room Service burst in with the contraband cereal. Seeing what he assumed to be Ol' Breadnose's mistress, he quickly poured two bowls and ran away. "While I cannot help you, I can offer you some delicious cornflakes instead for you to eat." Keldeo ate his meal in a sophisticated manner. To his dismay, his guest was not grazing on the wonderfully cholesterol-and-fat-soaked unauthorized cornflakes. "I'm sorry, Breadnose; it's just that... only a Meatball Marinara will do." Twilight fidgeted around nervously. "It's what I'm hungry for." "I am sorry to hear that," sighed the actually-not-sorry-at-all swordspony. "Oh well, more cornflakes for me!" "I have never seen anypony so into cornflakes before; does this hotel really make them that good? Oh! I get it! I'm so smart! These are the delicious, yet, dangerously unhealthy unauthorized cornflakes!" "What's it to you? Sometimes one might want to take in the finer pleasures in life!" "I know." Twilight checked in her saddlebag to see if there was a book in the miniaturized library to set aside for later about the history of Equestrian cornflakes. There wasn't. "By the way, I am Princess Celestia's number one student, please!" Keldeo's eyes opened in shock. Said shock also allowed the clogged-by-cornflakes cardiovascular system to fail, and so the musketeer died, hoist by his own petard. "How rude!" Rainbow Dash piped up. STILL AT THE HOTEL, BUT IN THE EVENING The glowing and shining princess, Celestia, trotted over to her number one student. She intended to question her about what happened at the time of Keldeo's death, as the purple unicorn had been there for some reason when it happened. "What kind of business did you have here, anyway, my faithful student?" Twilight and Rainbow (Celestia was not able to recognize Rainbow in her baleful form) looked at each other nervously. They weren't entirely sure if the death would be considered a sinister shock or a stupid suicide. "It is a matter of a Meatball Marinara, Princess Celestia!" stated the nervous student. Her mentor eyed her oddly, as she was an immortal being, she never had a mother who would buy her Meatball Marinaras from Subway, and thus she felt a sad pang. She would never truly understand, like her student did, the true significance of a Meatball Marinara. However, that was not important at the moment; what instead was important was the implications the death of the ambassador would bring. "We need to discuss this matter, Twilight; Keldeo was a very important pony." Celestia spun around clockwise 3 times, did 8 backflips, spun counterclockwise 4 times, did a frontflip, and then spun around clockwise 2 more times, which teleported them all to her private quarters. Even the police were present.
The Deadly ProblemWhen Celestia realized that she had bitten off than she could chew, that is, she teleported too many ponies into her private chambers, she had to decide on the next course of action. Either she could just go make a different chamber her private chamber, or she could figure out a way to make sure none of these police ponies would divulge it. "Policeponies! I will give you all tickets to Disneyland if you leave and promise never to tell what happened!" The lead investigator guffawed. "We've done less for larger bribes, your majesty!" "Very well." The white princess turned to her favored student, Twilight Sparkle. Leaning in close, she whispered, "What should I do?" "Meatballs?" suggested Twilight, her mind continuously becoming dipped in marinara sauce. "No, I'll teach 'em something... romantic." "You could teach them the funky-" "NO!" The sudden loudness made everypony jump. Even Rainbow Dash jumped despite being a former pony. "I don't think that was the best thing to teach you, my student, so please never, ever bring it up again!" she quickly said. Twilight just stared blankly while Celestia regathered her wits. This allowed her to remember that she was in fact, a princess ruler with jurisdiction over every pony (and meatball) in the room. "Policeponies!" she said, breaking out the royal Canterlot voice for the first time in 432 years, 3 hours, 6 minutes, and 58 seconds. "I ORDER you to take the tickets to Disneyland and promise never to divulge anything pertaining to this room, or you are all FIRED!" The police force collectively gulped. "F- F- Fired?" "By which I mean hurled into the sun instead of simply losing your jobs!" Though technically, that would still constitute as the "losing one's job" type of firing because ponies on fire in the sun cannot possibly hold jobs on Earth. And so they all left the chamber so hard that their fast motion smears left residue. Twilight had stars in her eyes. "Wow, princess, you're the best teacher ever!" "Twilight, we've wasted enough time already, but I need to tell you what the big deal about Keldeo is." "Huh?" Rainbow Dash broke into the conversation. "Isn't it just bad whenever anypony loses a life?" "No, that's not it," replied the princess. "He was going to be a cash cow for my clients and the country." "But he's not a cow," explained Twilight, who was always right. "Our economy is bad right now, and so when some foreigners came in and asked if we had a citizen they could exploit, one that could star in movies, merchandise, and generally whore himself out to make a lot of money, I put our star diplomat to be the one. Then, once he made these clients enormous profit, Equestria would receive a cut of it, thus helping to fight our deficit!" "And so the problem is...?" Twilight started. In her mind, that statement ended with "...I still do not have bread for a Meatball Marinara.", but she wondered what her mentor felt was the problem with everything. "If he's dead, he can't act in the movie or go to photo shoots or anything! My clients and I will have no profits! Our beautiful land is doomed, Twilight Sparkle, unless we can do something fast! I already had to sell this county once; it's going to break my heart if I must go so once again!" The cool meatball whistled. "Well princess, I'm about to come into some big money real soon..." Even as a small ball of meat, she had a feeling she could save the world... or at least Equestria County. "...I'm starting a trading card business. Kids love trading cards. Soon I'll be in the money, and I could give you some to defeat our deficit!" She somehow put on sunglasses that were somehow her size. "Problem solved." "Problem not solved, mysterious talking meatball." Princess Celestia was in despair. Her history of money troubles had left her in despair. "We don't know for sure if your plan will work." "What do you mean!? Kids love trading cards! There's a 120% chance that it'll be a big hit!" "If it's not 100%, it's just too risky for me to put all of my- I mean- my county's hopes on!" As Twilight was currently out of the conversation, she was checking on the state of the library in her saddlebag. Surprisingly, the borrowers inside were still alive, and only all of the books were intact. To her horror, though, she discovered that the shrunken books would be too small to read, and the magnifying glass was broken. It wasn't fair! She had all the time in the world to read those! Time enough at la-actually, she then remembered that she could just re-enlarge the library later and so closed the bag to rejoin the others. "Who in their right mind would frost a cake with her flank?" "Excuse me," interrupted Twilight. "So what do we do now?" "I don't know!" cried a despondent Celestia. Her typical brave face in the face of anything bad could still not hold up to the power of financial crisis. Twilight was shocked and did not like seeing her wonderful mentor in this state, so she laid an egg in her mind and made it hatch into an idea! "Why don't I go to another state and go find some fortune?" she suggested. "That's what happened in the old times; the poor went to new lands to search for riches, so as long as I can go find riches, I'll bring back enough to save Equestria!" Celestia, too dignified to wipe her tears, instead briefly intensified the sun so that her tears instantly evaporated. "Your idea sounds crazy, my faithful student, but I suppose sometimes there are plans that are crazy enough to work. Besides, you're of very sound mind..." The look on Twilight's face suggested that her meatball fantasies had buried any vestige of soundness in the poor mare's mind, but Celestia wasn't a face reader. "...and so I trust the fate of Equestria in your hooves." Twilight, Rainbow, and the borrowers saluted, and the purple unicorn spun around some odd amount of times in whichever directions to teleport them back to Ponyville. IN PONYVILLE "That's so cool of you to be helping the princess save Equestria." Rainbow Dash had to hand it to Twilight. For an egghead bookworm, she sure could pull through in the toughest of situations. "I... don't actually have a plan yet and I'm starving." "We could gather the other Elements and we'd all pitch in to help!" "That's a great idea, Rainbow Dash." Twilight aimed her head to the sky. "HEY EVERYPONY! I NEED THE ELEMENTS OF HARMONY TO REPORT TO THE LIBRARY IMMEDIATELY!" A random pony responded, "But the library is missing!" "Oh yeah..." Twilight really had to dig deep to find out the answer for this. Eventually, she settled on conjuring up a 2D image and compositing it over where the library once was. And now, it was a waiting game.
The Malformed GatheringPinkie Pie pounced over, so that was good sign. Rarity too, even better! Applejack eventually showed herself, while Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle were never seen converging towards the faux-library. However, Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle then remembered that they were already there, so of course that's why they weren't arriving. "Elements of Harmony..." started Twilight. "Equestria needs our help once again!" "What in the hay are we waiting for then? Where's the enemy to blast?" Applejack was sure excited to get to blast something with the powers. "The enemy is our county's money troubles!" announced Twilight. "We need to raise a lot in order to save all ponykind!" "I'll go sell some apples then!" exclaimed the orange earth pony as she disappeared from the scene. Twilight was actually kind of hoping they'd get more brainstorming in... maybe with cheese and toasted bread... mmmm... bread. "So what can I do?" asked Rarity, her beautiful mane shining. As the Element of Generosity, her idea was to step up the gains on her personal fortune to then donate to the cause her great friend had told her about. As long as nothing sidetracked her, she felt she could easily fix this pinch. It was then that a strange, parachuting, trio landed in the scene. Spike, Princess Luna of the Night, and a strange being in white had appeared. The being in white flipped a switch and the parachute disappeared. "Thanks for bringing Luna and me back from the moon, Kamen Rider Fourze!" said Spike as he attempted to enter the 2D image that occupied the library's former space. He crashed. Luna laughed. "No problem! That's what friends are for!" Kamen Rider Fourze posed dramatically and then flipped another switch, this one red. RAVIOLI ON Suddenly, a tin can appeared on his legs and launched some lights that hit Rarity. Her perfectly coiffed mane and tail had metamorphosed into ravioli! She cried in panic as she began dripping sauce. "MY HAIR! WHY? WHY-HY-HY!?" She then ran away because Ravioli Rarity, Rarvioli, was not as beautiful as Regular Rarity. Fourze looked a bit twitchy. "Oops!" He switched the Ravioli Astro Switch off before he could accidentally turn anything else into delicious Italian packets. He then pushed the button on the correct switch, the one he had actually been intent on using, an orange one. ROCKET ON "Sorry!" he finished as he used the rocket that somehow appeared to blast off. "SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!" "Wow!" Pinkie Pie admired the sweet sight. "Friendship is cosmic!" "What's Rarity so upset about? My whole body is food and you don't see me whining!" Meatball Rainbow Dash would have crossed her forelegs but didn't because she no longer had those. "Some ponies are more dramatic than others, I guess." Twilight shrugged. "Ooh, who's the talking meatball?" asked Pinkie. Twilight changed the subject because not only did she not want Pinkie to worry about Rainbow Dash, but also because she wasn't really thinking on the same page as anypony else anymore. "Do you want to come with me to go find fortune in strange, new, lands?" "I'd love t-" "PINKIE PIE! GET IN HERE AND CLEAN UP YOUR CHERRY MESS!" Whether it was Mr. or Mrs. Cake yelling was unclear, but either way, Pinkie winced and changed her mind. "I'd love to, Twilight, but it looks like..." She ducked to avoid a rolling pin that was being thrown in her direction. "... I have stuff to do here..." Her Pinkie Sense had luckily alerted her to the fact that a butcher knife was headed in her direction, so she avoided that, too. "... butyoucanborrowmycarheresthekeysbye!" Speeding off in the direction of Sugarcube corner, all that was left behind were the keys to Pinkie Pie's RC Car. Oh, and that knife ended up hitting Luna, who crashed into Spike, sending the two of them spinning clockwise 9 times, counterclockwise 23 times, and frontflipping once, which sent them to Mars. However, that is not important, so the focus shall now return to Twilight picking up the car keys. "Well let's go, Rainbow!" She jiggled the keys to show off her unicorn levitation skills. "What about Fluttershy?" "Oh yeah, I forgot! Let's ask if she wants to ride with us." She climbed into the automobile, and, after making sure Rainball and the Library were with her, she drove towards Fluttershy's place. AT FLUTTERSHY'S PLACE Fluttershy's place was indeed a place that belonged to Fluttershy. Surely one who could competently manage finance well enough to own the cottage and its land could give good advice on proper fiscal responsibility! Twilight, who did not know which switch activated Magic Hand, thought pragmatically and so knocked on the door by driving into it, backing up, and driving into it again multiple times. Without opening the door, Fluttershy's voice answered. "Can I help you?" "Hi, I'd like an order of hay fries and- wait a minute! That's not what I want to eat!" Twilight begged the image of Meatball Marinara in her mind for forgiveness and promised not to visualize other food from then on. "Twilight, this is Fluttershy." "Oh yeah." Twilight then remembered why she was there. "Hey Fluttershy, do you want to come along with us? The economy is in the WC and Rainbow and I are heading out to other places to go find fortune!" "Oh dear... Twilight, I don't mean to be rude, but I do know what is going on and this whole scenario is really, really stupid. I don't want any part of it." She was silent after that, and even further knocking on the door didn't elicit any more responses from the yellow pegasus. "What a yellowbelly!" snapped Rainbow. "C'mon Twi, it's just us, then! Two amigos on the open road, searching for fortune!" "Sounds good to me!" The car roared to life as Twilight started directing it out of Ponyville Town Limits, but not before running over Fluttershy's chicken coop. UP IN THE SKY The mailmare watched as she saw a purplely-pink car head down the highway, leaving Ponyville behind. She dove, hopefully to catch it, because she had mail for the driver. It was always important that mail be on time, after all.
The Plot ThinsThe highway glistened in Celestia's glowing sun. It was such a marvelously distracting sight that the road boasted a whopping 39 driver deaths per month, the highest of any road in the county in the state. An innocent car with an innocent family inside passed the bush that the couple, Lyra and BonBon hid in. Giggling, they pressed a button that made a section of the highway spring up, launching the poor group into the sun. Everything went well, so they high-hooved. Unfortunately for them, the next car was driven by Twilight Sparkle, who was a notoriously shitty driver, and as a result, she unknowingly swerved off the road and ran them over. The left front tire took care of Lyra's throat while the right front tire splintered BonBon's spine. That kind of detail was rather pointless because no one cares. Rainbow Dash hung on for her dear life. "Twi! Maybe I should take the wheel instead!?" "Don't be silly, Rainbow Dash!" Twilight said as she uprooted a cactus. "You're a meatball now and meatballs can't drive!" "Oh yeah." Rainbow Dash had not been reminded in a while that she had been turned into a meatball, so it was very kind of her good friend to remind her. Good friends always leave each other reminders. Just then, a pegasus swooped down and ordered Twilight to pull over. As the speed blurring was on a high scale, Twilight mistook the mailmare hat for a policemare hat and obediently sped down, grinding to a halt mere inches away from a surface-level gas pipe. "I have mail for you, sir!" Twilight chortled at the mailmare's boner. "I am not a sir, my good mailmare, I am female. You can tell by how my snout is not angular." The mailmare attempted to get a better look at Twilight's nose, but it was no use. Her googly eyes simply could not converge enough to bring it into focus. "I'm terribly sorry, ma'am, I just don't see it. Anyway, so I guess that means this mail's not for you, then, which means..." AT MANLYVILLE LIBRARY Dusk Shine, apparently the name for Twilight Sparkle's manly male doppelgänger, checked his manly mail, only to find out that the mail wasn't actually his. Suddenly, a streak of gray and yellow zoomed past, and when he finished blinking, the incorrect mail he had been levitating was replaced with the mail that was actually his. "Hm." He shrugged and went back into his library, which promptly caught on manly fire. BACK ON THE ROAD The mailmare returned with the correct letter for Twilight. "Here you go, ma'am." Twilight responded by singing the "we just got a letter" song. Met with weird glares from her friend and the derp-eyed mailmare, she explained that her foalsitter from back before she was genius and self-sufficient taught her all sorts of things that normal society would consider embarrassing to do in public. After a lengthy explanation for why she did not have such preconceptions of things that were and were not appropriate to do in public, she opened the letter to find that... it was a check! "Woah!" said Twilight. "How much is it and who's it from?" asked her meatball companion. "It says that it's from Mr. Studios. It's uh... this Mr. Hasbro Studios apparently owed me 2700 in U.S. dollars this month because- hm- let's see... Oh! It says this is a royalty check!" "So Mr. Studios pays you for being the royal student?" "No, 'royalty' here refers to usage-based payments made by one party (the "licensee") to another (the "licensor") for the right to ongoing use of an asset. I read it in a Free Encyclopedia, see? Anyway, what this means is that obviously some asset of mine is being used by Mr. Studios that he has to pay me to use it!" One of the mailmare's eyes caught the top left corner of the screen. "Wow, that really was both educational and informative!" Rainbow Dash slithered over to look at the number written on the check. "Let's see... $2700... that equates to... Wow! That's a lot of bits, Twilight! It's not enough to the save Equestria, but it's easily enough to get a swimming pool!" A lightbulb emerged from Twilight's head, leaving a rather sickening-looking hole. "I just got an idea! We'll go and figure out what my asset is, and then we go find Mr. Hasbro Studios and demand that he pay more for my asset, and in short, we'll use him to pay Equestria's debts!" "Alright!" exclaimed Rainbow Dash. "So how are we going to figure out your asset?" "I know a friend who knows more about this kind of stuff." Twilight smugly explained. "It's just a matter of finding him, and finding some bread for a meatball marinara!" "Who knows? Maybe your friend has some bread at his or her house!" "Even better! Let's drive!" Twilight sped away, leaving the mailmare in the dust. She wasn't too concerned, though. She has a smile on her face as the strange gears in her head turned. It seemed that in their political correctness, neither the unicorn or the meatball looked at her eyes, because if they had, they would've noticed that her pupils had become dollar signs. BACK IN MANLYVILLE The fire that originated from the library spread throughout the whole town. Everyone was pointing hooves at each other but only Butterscotch, the male counterpart to Fluttershy, was actually using his other, non-pointing at somepony else, hoof to hold a hose to put out the fire. There was a strange man who continually claimed that the whole thing was the fault of someone named Decade, but he caught fire too and died. "We need to think of a way to put out the fire." Dusk Shine said, as if no one else had suggested it yet. "As long as it's not something barbaric like sacrificing other ponies, I'll gladly help!" pitched in Elusive, Rarity's doppelgänger. "That's it! Liquid extinguishes fire! Blood is liquid! Therefore, we need lots of blood to put out the fire! Ponies have blood in them! Elusive, you're a genius!" "No no! I said we don't do that!" Elusive was nearly ready to pull out his hair, but then remembered that he quite liked his hair and so instead, he opted to run away. "You're not pinning this on me, Dusk Shine! I'm out of here!" Following in Elusive's hoofsteps was Butterscotch, who, frustrated that logic was being spat upon this whole time, stopped his more sensible idea of hosing down the fire with the just as liquid, but not as pony-harming, water, and left too. Electing to not have to describe the horrors that Dusk Shine underwent in order to save Manlyville, the focus of the story hurled into a nearby garbage can before going back to Twilight and Rainbow's less deadly mission to save Equestria.
