“Twilight, something somewhat... disturbing has come to my attention,” Princess Celestia said with a sigh, pacing around the small room that she had called Twilight Sparkle to meet her in.
“Oh dear... I was afraid it’d be something bad,” Twilight said, her eyes large and frightened. “What exactly is the issue, Princess?”
“Your approval ratings are at an all time low,” Celestia said, pulling down a large chart which illustrated Twilight’s current public opinion, which placed her right above rapists and just below week-old ham. “Even lower than when you legalized cannibals!”
“Hey, in my defense, ‘cannabis’ and ‘cannibals’ are spelled practically the same,” Twilight. “It was just a dumb clerical error!”
“One you shouldn’t have stood for!” Celestia said loudly, slamming her hoof down on her desk for emphasis. “Twilight, you’re slipping! Princess life has made you soft, and I should know! When’s the last time you even saved Equestria from a huge monster or demon?”
Twilight furrowed her brow and put a hoof to her chin. “Well, when you put it that way...” She turned and looked at Celestia, frowning. “Wait, but what about you, Princess? It’s always my friends and I who have to go take down whatever is threatening Equestria.”
“Twilight, please, I train personally down in Tartarus itself,” Celestia said, rolling her eyes with a haughty smile plastered on her smug face. “I’ll go down there, let loose one of the demons, and have a quick battle or two to keep myself sharp. I’m in my top condition.”
“Then why have we had to save Equestria all those time?” Twilight asked.
Celestia looked around shiftily, a single bead of sweat dripping down her brow. “Training. It’s... ‘training’. I let you and your friends train on the easy things so when something really awful happens, you’ll be the best fighters we have.”
Twilight Sparkle cocked an eyebrow. “Didn’t Crysalis completely kick your—”
“The point is, Twilight,” Princess Celestia said very loudly. “That you need to get back in shape. You need to test out your skills, and you need to warm up to the public again.”
“Okay then...” Twilight said with a shrug. “So are you going to send me down to Tartarus? Oh! I’ve never been except to drop Cerberus off, this will be amazing!” Her eyes gleamed with the light that one usually saw in the eyes of the deeply deranged, or in the eyes of a housemaid who had just discovered the masters of the house had left the fridge unlocked. “Oh, I can’t wait!”
“I’m sorry Twilight, but I’ve booked all the monsters through the next two hundred weeks,” Celestia said, patting Twilight on the head. “And besides, that wouldn’t garner you any public favor. No, Twilight, what the populace wants to see is that you suffer just like them! I know you’ve lived a high life through all of your years, so this may come as a culture shock—”
“Um, Princess?” Twilight interjected. “Not to be rude or anything, but what the fuck are you going on about? I help Applejack harvest apples during apple bucking season, I help Pinkie bake every other weekend, and I help Rarity clear out her closet at the end of the month, and that’s twice as taxing as everything else I do in a month combined!”
Celestia chuckled coldly. “Oh no, Twilight, you misunderstand; I don’t want you doing good, honest, labor. Most ponies in Equestria simply aren’t privileged enough to make a living off of that! Instead, I’m sending you into the inner city to—”
Celestia narrowed her eyes for evil emphasis.
“—WORK FOR MINIMUM WAGE!”
Twilight’s mouth dropped open in horror, and she felt herself grow weak in every inch of her body, especially her bowels. Sinking to the floor, she let out an ear rending, skull tearing, wall pulverizing, martini shaking “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Regidar Presents
Five Nights at Spaghetti’s
Twilight Sparkled groaned as she followed a dull beige earth pony with a barcode cutie mark down the dank, cracked hallway of Slippery Sal’s Spaghetti Space. Celestia had selected this place due to the fact that it had garnered the highest health code grade in all of Fillydelphia: a D+.
“So, on the right here is the kitchen,” the earth pony said in a monotone as he apathetically swung the door on the wall to the right of them open. His expression failed to change, the only things moving were his lips when he spoke, and his heavy, almost permanently half-lidded eyes when he blinked once every ten minutes or so.
Twilight looked through the door, and saw a unicorn chef stirring a large pot of sauce. His eyes were wide, and staring off in front of him, not even noticing that the wooden ladle he was using was on fire.
“Uh...” Twilight said, looking over at her earth pony guide.
“Not that it matters, seeing as you’ll be working as a security guard due to your extensive background as a...” The stallion sat there, staring at Twilight, and moving his hoof in a circular motion in order to prompt her to remind her what exactly her background was.
“Hero of Equestria, Princess of Magic, and Element of Harmony,” Twilight said, narrowing her eyes and scowling ever-so-slightly.
“Yeah, those things,” the stallion said, completely uninterested. “You’ll be best suited sitting in a dark room the entire night staring at screens. You simply don’t have the credentials to be a cook, so sorry about that.”
Twilight opened her mouth to argue, but when she looked back at the kitchen, she saw that the chef hadn’t moved, still endlessly stirring the spaghetti sauce. His chef’s hat was now on fire.
“You’re absolutely right,” Twilight said, nodding her head vigorously. “Now, can you please show me where I’ll be working?”
“Right this way,” the stallion droned, walking a few paces down the hall, and turning to the left. Twilight followed him, and found that they were walking up a staircase with a fraying carpet, stained with what looked like spaghetti sauce.
At least, I hope that’s spaghetti sauce, Twilight thought to herself with a glance towards what looked like a very fresh stain.
When they reached the top of the stairs, the stallion pulled out a keychain from an unknown place on his body, and inserted it into the keyhole of a large iron door that blocked their path. It swung open with a loud creak, and he motioned for Twilight to join him inside the room.
“Alright, this is where you’ll be spending your nights for 5 bits an hour,” he said, gesturing to the room. It was small, barely big enough for the two of them, had no windows, and barely any furnishings. The wall to the right of them was covered with a square of twenty-five TV sets, five TVs tall, and five TVs across. Some of them each displayed grainy, slightly green monochrome video feeds of places around the restaurant, while others showed static, or simply nothing at all.
Twilight’s eyes darted over the various screens. There was one showing the outside of the building back behind with the dumpsters, one monitoring the hallway in which Twilight and the stallion had walked through, one in the kitchen (where the cook was still stirring the sauce, now burnt and blackened), two in the main eatery (where a small family was situated and being “entertained” by Slappy the Clown), and one in what looked like the mare’s bathroom.
“Uh...” Twilight said, pointing towards the bathroom cam. “Why—”
The beige stallion’s eyes widened in fear, and in the first display of emotion he had shown since Twilight had met him, quickly slammed his hoof on a button that shut that particular screen off. “Anyway! All you have to do is watch these cameras from eight PM to six AM. We close at ten, so you only have two hours of monitoring actual ponies. The rest of the time you can spend doing whatever, just as long as it doesn’t involve anypony breaking in. You can use this button here to activate the speakers of a certain TV. They’re all numbered to which one is which.” The stallion pressed number sixteen, and the TV showing the small family in the eatery getting accosted by Slappy suddenly gained audio.
“IT’S SPAGHETTI TIME!” Slappy said in the upbeat, laughing voice only heard in the darkest of nightmares. He slowly approached the foal, who was quaking in his seat, and began to rub spaghetti with black sauce all over the colt’s face.
“If anypony does break in, feel free to rough ‘em up a bit and throw them outside in the dumpsters,” the stallion continued. “The police will come by and pick them up. Otherwise, do ANYTHING in here.” He gave Twilight a dead serious look, his usually lifeless eyes betraying a hint of a spark. “And I mean ANYTHING.”
Twilight cocked an eyebrow, and turned to look at the live video feeds again. “Hey, wait a minute, that looks like—” Twilight said, pointing towards a screen that displayed the room they were in, complete with a tinier, grainier Twilight pointing at a tinier, grainier screen that displayed a tinier, grainier version of this tinier, grainier scene.
The stallion quickly hit another button, turning off that screen, and left without a word, leaving the keychain behind.
Twilight sighed, and dropped her head in her hooves. It was going to be a long night...
***
It was late at night, and Twilight was counting the ceiling tiles for the thirteen time when some movement in the eatery caught her eye.
“Huh?” she muttered out loud. She squinted at the screen. This was number fifteen, which was the first of the two cameras in the eatery. The second one viewed the tables where customers ate, as observed by her earlier, while the first one viewed the stage where four pots of spaghetti were always brewing. They were Slippery Sal’s Spaghetti Space’s official mascots: Spag, Het, Ti, and Jimmy. She had learned this when she had memorized the restaurant's brochure in the first two hours of her shift.
Upon noticing that Jimmy had flown the coop, Twilight heaved another enormous sigh and got up, grabbed the keys with one of her wings, lit her horn, and trotted down the staircase. She passed the mysterious stains, into the hallway, turned a right, and followed it down until she came out in the eatery.
It was a dingy room, with only four beaten tables and two booths with frayed and stained upholstery. The room was covered with droppings from rats and foals alike, and there seemed to be large scrape makes all over the banged linoleum, like somepony had been forcibly dragged from the room. More than once.
The walls were covered with fuzzy patches of Celestia-knows-what, occasionally moving when Twilight cast light on them. The only place in room that seemed to be in perfect condition was the stage, which was perfectly swept, polished, and smelled lemony fresh, even from all the way across the room.
When Twilight stepped forward towards the stage, she looked to the left. No Jimmy.
She looked to the right. No Jimmy.
She looked at the ceiling. A throbbing, pulsating mass of spaghetti was sitting up there, tendrils hanging down, slowly descending towards her.
She looked to the left again. No Jimmy.
Twilight turned her gaze on the stage, where only Spag, Het, and Ti were, narrowing her eyes.
“Something isn’t right here, but I can’t quite put my hoof on it...”
A drip of spaghetti sauce on her muzzle caused her to look upward once more, where she saw the tendrils descending towards her. In the writhing mass of noodles was something that resembled a mouth, with teeth made out of the bones of small foals.
“Ah,” Twilight squeaked, swallowing hard. “That would be it.”
The carpet acquired a new stain.
