Why Do All These Thumb Drives Look So Similar Anyway?
Sunset Shimmer sat down on her bed, drying her hair. The shower had been very much welcome after a long, stressful day: having to deal with Pinkie Pie’s exuberance all afternoon had been extremely exhausting. They were paired for a literature project, and the party girl had come over to Sunset’s place to work on it together. It was very hard to get Pinkie to concentrate, and even though she was obviously trying her best to stay focused, throughout the session she had been constantly going off on tangents that weren’t relevant to their assignment.
Fortunately, it looked like the project was almost complete, and Pinkie had volunteered to go home and finish it on her own computer since Sunset had done most of the work. They had saved the project onto a little USB thumb-drive and shared a quick snack together before Pinkie went home.
Once her hair was properly dried, Sunset tossed the towel into the laundry hamper. She then lay on her bed and turned on her laptop to check her email, scanning the subject headings.
Spam… spam… no, I don’t even have one to make bigger, stupid. A couple of lame forwarded jokes by Snails – why is he still sending me email? More spa– Oh!
It was what she had been secretly hoping for. She excitedly clicked on the message, and opened the accompanying attachment.
There it was, in all of its perverse glory. Lovingly constructed to her exacting specifications, and after more than a week of anxious waiting it was finally complete and delivered.
Sunset took a moment to consider her surroundings. The walls of her home were not exactly thick, and she didn’t want to be disturbed. She stood up and swiftly locked her room door before gleefully settling back into bed and letting her eyes fall over the picture again, her mind quickly weaving an elaborate fantasy to go with the salacious image…
***
Sunset washed her hands thoroughly. There was forty dollars well spent. She felt much, much better now, even though her diversion had been very quick and her finish wasn’t exactly spectacular. It was meant to be a simple ritual to relax, and in that role the picture had proved perfect.
But before she went to bed there were a few things she had to take care of. First of all she saved the picture to a discreet cloud-storage website. Then she deleted the email and the attachment, making sure to clear her trash folder in the process. Opening pictures from cloud storage was inconvenient, so she always made a copy on a thumb-drive that had no other type of content which could identify her as its owner. She picked up the computer peripheral from her desk and…
Wait.
It looked too new. Her precious was years old and had become worn from long use and age and occasional mishandling after forgetting to wash her hands immediately afterwards. This one looked only a few weeks old.
Oh no oh no oh no…
Panicking, Sunset plugged the thumb drive into her laptop only to see her worst fears confirmed. The directory contained some cat videos, backups of phone photographs, and a lot of school assignments or projects, the most recent of which was for a literature assignment to be done in pairs and which was due the very next morning.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
She started hyperventilating a little, but quickly got a grip on herself and deliberately slowed her breathing into long, deep intakes.
Okay, okay. Don’t panic. Maybe Pinkie went home and watched a TV show or something before she started finishing up the project. I just have to call her RIGHT NOW and make sure she doesn’t start.
Sunset picked up her phone.
Right, right. If she opened the files she would probably call me right away. It’s still pretty early, so I can run on over and get my thumb drive back and give her the right one – luckily she doesn’t live too far away.
Thus reassuring herself, she looked up her contacts list for Pinkie and-
The words ‘Incoming Call’ flashed across the smartphone’s screen, and a familiar song began playing:
My name is Pinkie Piiiie, and I am here to saaay:
I'm gonna make you smile and I will brighten up your daa-a-a-aaaay!
OH HORSEAPPLES.
She closed her eyes and buried her head in her pillow in horrified anticipation of the impending humiliation. The song continued for another five seconds before she flicked the “accept call” symbol.
“Hi, Sunset!” came Pinkie’s usual and inappropriately chipper voice.
Sunset briefly wondered if it was possible to smother herself with her own pillow. It would probably be less painful than talking to Pinkie. But instead she turned her head just enough to be able to speak into the phone. “Uhm. Hi, Pinkie. Look, I know what you probably saw, so-”
“Don’t worry about it! I think I must have taken the wrong thumb drive from your desk! And I was thinking, ‘maybe I should give this back to Sunset tomorrow at class’, but I figured I might get in trouble for bringing this stuff onto school grounds because it’s totally against the rules or you might get in trouble if one of the teachers or Vice-Principal Luna found you with it, so I thought I could give it back to you after school, but it would mean having to make another trip home to get it because of course I wasn’t going to bring it with me in the morning, and then I realized that I have to get the unfinished project from you anyway which you could totally email me but since you need your thumb drive back we could totally swap them today!”
Ordinarily, Sunset would have stopped Pinkie midway through one of her incredibly long run-on sentences, but the sheer awkwardness of the situation had silenced her.
“O-okay. I’ll head on to your house right now,” was all she could manage.
“Oh, no need for that! I’m already on my way over.”
Sunset exhaled resignedly into the pillow. “Tell me when you get here.” At least it would give her some time to mentally prepare for the explanations regarding the drive’s contents.
The doorbell rang instantly.
PONYFEATHERS!
Groaning, Sunset got up from her bed and headed over to the door to open it. She was greeted by a widely grinning Pinkie Pie.
“Oh, uh- hello, Pinkie.”
“I’m at your place now!” Pinkie chirped.
“Yes. Yes, I can see that,” said Sunset.
“I know. But you literally just asked me to tell you when I got here, so I did! By the way, you can hang up now.”
Sunset just stared for a second, and then glanced at the phone still pressed to her own ear. She sheepishly pressed the little red symbol on the screen.
“Here’s your thumb drive back!” continued Pinkie, thrusting the tiny object towards her friend. Her grin didn’t falter even for a moment. It wasn’t like Rainbow Dash’s smug ‘haha, I know your secret’ grin, or even Rarity’s nervous ‘let us never speak of this again’ grin. It was the exact same grin that Pinkie wore every day at school, completely devoid of subtext or implications; an infectious radiance that could brighten up the darkest of moods and was practically supernatural in its sheer exuberance. It was a grin that seemed to have been forged by the gods of joy as a weapon against the forces of melancholy.
Never before had Sunset considered how terrifying that cheerful grin could be.
She handed over the thumb drive containing their assignment. “So, about the stuff that you might have seen on the other drive…”
“I said don’t worry about it!” replied Pinkie. “We’re all perfectly healthy young ladies and it’s a totally natural thing to do!”
“Okay, yes, it is porn, but I was a little more worried about-”
“-About the kind of porn it is?” finished Pinkie for her.
Sunset just nodded.
“Oh Sunset, there’s no need to be bashful! It’s wrong to judge a person just because they have a different fetish! In fact…”
There was a momentary pause as music inexplicably began playing from an unknown source.
“Wait, are you actually gonna…”
It was too late. She was.
My friend, I must exclaim
There’s no need for any shame
And nobody else has any right to scoff!
Even if you think it’s lame
All fetishes are fair game!
Cause only you will know what gets you off!
Cuz we all like smut!
And what you like is unique!
What you need to bust a nut
Doesn’t make you a freak!
Cuz we all love porn!
And whether gay or straight
There should be no scorn
Over how you masturbate!
You see, you shouldn’t be disgraced
Over on what your kinks are based
Or what you think of when you touch yourself at night!
And no matter how debased
There’s no accounting for taste!
So go on and flick the bean with all your might!
Cuz we all like smut!
And what you like is unique!
What you need to bust a nut
Doesn’t make you a freak!
Cuz we all love porn!
And whether gay or straight
There should be no scorn
Over how you masturbaaaaaaaaaaaate!
It took a full minute after it ended for Sunset to retrieve her jaw from the floor.
“Did you come up with all that on the way here?”
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a work in progress,” affirmed Pinkie.
“Please don’t sing it to me where anyone else can hear it.” The sound of several doors in the hall opening made Sunset panic. “Look, you better come in. I think the whole building now knows what I do at night.”
She quickly pulled Pinkie into the room, slamming her door shut as several of her neighbors narrowly missed seeing the pink-haired girl in the hallway. Pinkie seemed unfazed. “I told you Sunset, there’s nothing to be ashamed of! There’s way worse stuff out there than your cartoon plushie porn!”
Sunset cringed.
“Wait, wait. Let me make this very clear to you. I do not have a plushie fetish!”
Pinkie raised an eyebrow. She took out a tablet from her bag and turned it on. The screen showed what looked like a brightly-colored quadruped with stumpy legs blatantly engaging in extremely not-appropriate-for-polite-company behavior.
“I dunno, that looks a lot like a plushie to me.”
Sunset buried her face in her hands. She was starting to wish she had suffocated herself earlier. “First of all,” she said, her voice muffled through her palms, “did you copy all my porn into your tablet?”
“Uh-huh! It’s not exactly my thing, but it’s pretty well drawn!”
Sunset sighed. “Okay, fine. But that is not a plushie. That’s an Equestrian pony.”
Pinkie’s eyes widened. She turned the tablet back to face her and stared incredulously at the picture for a few seconds.
“You mean you used to look like that?”
“Yes,” said Sunset, nodding slowly. “Well, my coat is a different shade of yellow, and I had a horn instead of wings.”
“So why is all of your porn cartoons?”
Sunset sighed again and sat down on her bed. “Because Pinkie, there’s literally nothing in this whole world that looks anything like an Equestrian pony. And before you ask the same question that human-Twilight Sparkle asked me, no, horses and ponies from this world are not my thing.”
“Of course not, they don’t look like plushies!”
“We don’t look like plushies either!”
Without another word, Pinkie swiped the screen and another image appeared, this time of two mares engaged in what could be described as the most adorable depiction of tribadism ever.
“Okay, so maybe we do look a bit like plushies,” admitted Sunset.
“Glad you realize that. Well, except for this one,” noted Pinkie, swiping to another picture. “She’s really tall, and looks a bit more like a horse than the others. Why does she have both a horn and wings?”
“Err… that’s an Alicorn. That one is supposed to look like Cadance, the Princess of Love,” explained Sunset, completely unaware that she was discussing Twilight’s sister-in-law. “I had a bit of a crush on her when I was younger – she was considered one of the hottest mares in the whole country while I was staying at the palace.”
“You mean like Dean Cadance from Crystal Prep?”
Sunset nodded. “Yep. I think there’s a version of every one of us in both worlds.”
“Dean Cadance does kind of have a supermodel’s figure.” Pinkie thought for a moment and then frowned. “Uhh wait, why is an artist in this world drawing porn of a pony in Equestria? Is there some kind of cartoon show that happens to mirror the inhabitants of your home dimension?”
“Of course not, that’s ridiculous,” said Sunset dismissively. “There are tons of independent artists online who will draw whatever you want if you pay them. I have to be very specific in my description and check the preliminary sketches to make sure it looks right, but after a few years of doing this there are a few artists who are more or less used to what I am looking for.”
“That’s awesome! So you don’t have a cartoon fetish at all?”
“No, I don’t.” Sunset smiled. “I just can’t get hold of any real porn of Equestrian ponies.”
“Hmm…” Pinkie’s pensive expression made Sunset a little worried. The concept of Pinkie having ideas regarding the subject matter was somewhat terrifying in its possibilities. But the question that emerged was surprisingly reasonable.
“Why don’t you just ask Princess Twilight to get you some?”
Sunset snorted. “Pinkie, I can’t possibly ask a Princess of Equestria to bring me pornography from… home…”
A realization suddenly dawned on the former unicorn. It was childish in its simplicity – she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before.
“Oh my gosh," she said. "I think I can!”
Pinkie’s grin returned in full force. “That's great! Does this mean you won’t have to pay for people to draw it for you any more?”
“Probably not! Thanks a lot, Pinkie!”
“AWESOME!” she practically bounced off the floor. “You know what this calls for?”
Sunset froze. She was well aware of exactly what the other girl had in mind. “Pinkie, I do not need you to throw me a ‘Sunset has found porn that she likes’ party.”
“Aww. This is like that time I found out what Rainbow Dash’s and Fluttershy’s fetishes were at the same time, and they didn’t want me to throw them a party then, either!”
“What- uh, how did… but-” gibbered Sunset. She shook her head to clear the half-formed images from her mind. “You know what, never mind. That statement conjures up way too many questions that I don’t want answered. Anyway I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention any of this to our friends either. I’m not comfortable with them knowing that I… y’know.”
“Y’know?”
“Don’t play that game with me,” she said, to Pinkie’s complete obliviousness. “I mean that while masturbating is yes, perfectly natural, I’d still really rather that other people, our friends included, not be told that I do it.”
Pinkie nodded, and then followed that nod with a series of complicated but incomprehensible gestures.
Sunset stared at her, puzzled. “I presume that’s a yes.”
“Of course it is! That’s why I took the secret from my mouth and tied it inside a bag, and then locked the bag inside a safe deposit box at a bank, and then hid the key and account information inside my purse!” declared Pinkie, repeating the exact same series of gestures.
“Riiiiiight,” said Sunset. She looked at the clock. “Well then, unless you have any more questions, I think we’re done.”
Pinkie nodded, realizing that she had stayed longer than she was expecting and that she still had to finish their project before the next morning. They exchanged a quick goodbye and Pinkie reaffirmed that the events of the evening would remain a secret between them.
Sunset smiled as she left. Pinkie was sometimes random and bizarre, but the one thing that she could be counted on was to keep a secret. And even if it had been awkward and uncomfortable, opening up about the matter had let them both bond just a little.
She went over to her satchel and pulled out a thick hardback journal with her cutie-mark printed on the cover. Opening it to the last page, she took up a pen and began writing.
Dear Princess Twilight,
There’s a sealed box of my old things in Canterlot Palace that I haven’t seen in years…
***
Twilight Sparkle heaved as she pulled the wooden box through the portal. It wasn’t very heavy, but she wasn’t used to carrying things with her hands, and the box was large enough to be unwieldy even without considering the lack of handles.
Sunset happily ran over to meet her. But as soon as she saw her fellow Equestrian, she realized there was something not quite right.
For starters, Twilight was blushing furiously.
“Hi Sunset. I found what you wanted me to bring, but uh… there was a problem.”
Those words made Sunset’s blood freeze instantly. She glanced down at the box, and as she feared, the lock had been obviously broken.
Twilight followed her gaze. “Yeah… it turns out that your old stuff had been packed into your cabinets by the maids. When I tried to pull it out, it crashed onto the floor and everything sorta… spilled out.”
Sunset was suddenly feeling very, very small in front of the pony princess. It had seemed foolproof at the time: her old porn collection had been kept securely in an old trunk that only she could open. Twilight should have been able to bring it over none the wiser, but apparently the entire plan had been defeated by a simple matter of poor product quality and bad luck.
“Uh… I guess… you saw everything then.”
Twilight nodded, avoiding eye contact and blushing harder than ever. “There were a couple of palace maids with me, since I needed their help to find it.”
Sunset let out a pained whimper. Considering how fast gossip spread amongst the servants, half the palace was probably aware of her collection by now.
“There’s something I really need to tell you, Sunset,” continued Twilight. “About… what I found inside.”
It was almost more than Sunset could bear. Twilight had been the one who had saved Sunset from herself at the Fall Formal ages ago and seen her at her worst, even through the ultimate humiliation of groveling in front of the school. But those magazines in the trunk had been owned by a Sunset Shimmer who had been in early stages of puberty, when she had begun discovering her sexuality in earnest. The revelation of just how perversely sex-obsessed that Sunset was before Twilight’s perfect scholarly princessdom was absolutely crushing.
“I… I can explain…”
“No, don’t… Look, it’s really none of my business, but- but I just wanted to say…”
Twilight paused, as if reluctant to continue on such a distasteful subject. Wincing her eyes shut, Sunset got ready for the disappointed lecture she knew was coming.
“-that I’m a really huge fan of Fillyfoolers Fortnightly too. I have every issue.”
Having squeaked out the admission, Twilight hurriedly ran back through the portal.
Sunset stood at the school courtyard, mind completely blank.
It took her a few minutes to come to her senses and realize that she was standing in front of the school building with an unlocked case of pony porn magazines.
She left for home with immediate haste.
***
Sunset pulled the trunk into her room and quickly locked the door. She rubbed her hands excitedly at the thought of finally having her little treasure-chest back in her possession, even if the horrifying awkwardness earlier had marred the triumph just a little.
Throwing open the trunk, she gleefully snatched up the first magazine. It had a plain wrapping, to avoid traumatizing curious foals, but the title puzzled her. She didn’t recall owning a magazine called Bisexuals Bimonthly.
She pulled it from the plastic, and her face instantly fell.
On the cover was a pair of attractive human ladies. A pair of fully-clothed human ladies.
Author's Note
I've added that last bit in because even though I didn't think of it while writing the fic, people keep saying they were expecting it. So here you go. I'd like to credit everyone with the idea, but there were like ten people who posted in the comments, so I guess I'll just credit Rhulain for being the first to post it.
Thanks all!
Lotsa love,
Sporktacles.
