This Little Piggy Went to Therapy
"And this year's award for Smartest Female Scientist Originating From a Horse Dimension goes to..."
A woman in a glittery gold dress stands before a podium with an envelope. The studio audience falls into a tense hush as she fiddles with the parchment, unfolds it, and breathes once again into the microphone.
"Sunset Susannah Shimmer for her Dissertation on Quantum Mechanical Hoofie Kicks!"
Almost immediately, the crowd erupts into cheers and whistles. Heads turn and the orchestra blares as a spotlight falls on a teenage figure at the back of the stadium.
Grinning from ear to ear, Sunset Shimmer straps on a helmet and kicks the pedals of her dirt-bike. With a motorized roar, she speeds down a ramp, speeds through a loopty-loop, and then propels her vehicle through a burning hoop. There's an explosion from... somewhere, and in the end Sunset is landing neatly in the middle of the stage to uproarious applause and multicolored confetti. She takes a breath, does a twirl, and her jumpsuit expands into a poofy cocktail dress.
"Thank you! Thank you!" Sunset accepts a gold trophy handed to her and steps before the podium, struggling to contain her gleeful heart palpitations. Tapping the microphone a few times, she smiles cheekishly, giving a little princess wave. "I would like to dedicate this moment to all the starving children in Yugosyria..." She blinks awkwardly, then squints off stage. "It is 'Yugosyria'... right?"
Laughtrack. Penguins clap. A walrus gives a thumb's up.
"Right. Ahem." Sunset faces the audience once again as she cradles her newly awarded trophy. "I wouldn't have gotten on this stage if it wasn't for the support of all my dear friends at Canterlot High. If you don't mind, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to a few of them from the bottom of my heart." Clearing her throat, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a notecard. Unfolding it, Sunset Shimmer smiles and reads: "Twilight Sparkle's hallux, which—although huge—resembles the baby toe in its minuscule size and... adorable daintiness..." Sunset's turquoise eyes blink in confusion. "Uhm... Twilight's... long toe which—although two spaces from the ring toe—is something that I wouldn't mind adorning with a pretty golden band so that it could shimmer in the bathwater as we soak together, playing with rubber duckies..." Her face twists awkwardly. "What the fuzz...?"
Another laughtrack. The audience is full of high schoolers all of the sudden. Most of them point fingers and cackle hysterically at the award recipient fumbling on stage.
"Uhhhhhh..." Sunset swallows dryly and waves the notecard around. "Actually, I can't read a single word from this thing. It's all a bunch of indiscernible squiggly lines to me. But for some reason I automatically know that it translates to 'the lusciously supple contours of Twilight's ticklish instep and how it closely reveals strawberry purple ice cream sculpted from the finest sugars'... gah!" She tosses the notecard away like it's on fire. The parchment explodes in a burst of doves that fly out the bus window. "Uhhhhhh..." Sunset Shimmer blinks, suddenly sitting on the bus route to Canterlot High. The vehicle is four thousand aisles long, and every intersection they pass by is flanked by shoe stores. "Okay. This is definitely a dream."
The laughter reaches a louder tempo. The bus seats have formed a circle with Sunset in the center. Every student is laughing and pointing at her.
"Aaaaaaaand..." Sunset stares down at herself with a sigh. "...I don't have any pants on. Great."
"Sunset!" Twilight Sparkle's voice ripples across a flower field.
"...!" Sunset looks up, wincing. The blooming roses and Spanish moss part ways like a curtain. Twinkling with sequins, Twilight Sparkle scampers adorably across the pasture, grabs a chair from homeroom, and slides to a stop in the middle of the bus aisle. "Let me help you!"
"Uhhhhhh..." Nervously, Sunset peers out the window. Every storefront has big billboards featuring petite lavender feet cutely adorned in diamond-encrusted sandals. "No thanks, Twilight, I'm fine—"
"Of course you're fine! Sweltering hot, even! But...!" Twilight Sparkle slaps the chair down right in front of Sunset. "But but but—!" Bright violet eyes glisten behind wide-framed glasses. "Your dirty pillows are showing!" That said, Twilight squats down in the chair, kicks off her shoes and socks, and plants her naked feet over two spots above Sunset's abdomen. "Here! I will cover them for you!"
As the laughter drowns out, Sunset squints at her brave little heroine. "Twilight... I'm no longer a pony." She points at where Twilight's feet are making contact. "My nipples are no longer there. In fact..." She brazenly hoists her shirt up. "They'd be up here—" Two cute little lavender toes stick out of her chest, wriggling. "Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa—" With wide eyes, Sunset lowers her shirt and lies down on her back, pale as a sheet. "Iwantoffthebusnow."
"Actually, we think thou couldst use some sun," said a regal voice over the sound of crashing waves.
Sunset Shimmer blinks, squinting into a bright night's sky. "Uhm..." She squirms her one-piece-clad body into the beach sand. "Isn't that the moon?"
"Oh?" A blue face peers down at Sunset. "If thou art such an expert on celestial objects..." A young woman in a modest pantsuit resumes pacing around the beached teenager. "...then perhaps thou canst tell us what thou seeth in the lunar visage."
"Errrr..." Sunset grimaces, seeing wriggling toes formed by the dark gray maria. "I think I'll pass." Just then, she squints—"Wait a second..."—and sits up just in time to avoid a wall of ocean water and seagull feathers crashing behind her. "Vice Principal Luna?"
"Thou addresseth us?"
"What in the hay are you doing here?" Sunset frowns, folding her forelimbs. "The Luna from my homeland is the Princess of Dreams. Not you."
"Verily, that is correct." The woman peers down at her from her ancient oak desk. "What art thou? An idiot?"
Sunset sighs, squatting in the center of the office. "Okay... so my dream is manifesting Equestrian archetypes in order to make sense of this."
"Make sense of what, dear child?"
"Here. I'll give you a hint." Sunset shoves her hand deep into the carpet of Luna's office and pulls out a lavender ankle. Every adorable little toe waves in turn. "Okay." Sunset moans. "Five little hints."
"Hmmmmm..." Vice Principal Luna strokes her shimmering beard with a protractor. "We sense that thou art disturbed by the content of this vision and that thou wouldst desire to bring about its end as soon as possible."
"Well... duh." Sunset stands up on the chair to be even-faced with Luna. "Twilight Sparkle is my friend. It's outright wrong and... icky to have any sort of unhealthy fixation on her petite little girl feet."
"Mmmmm..." Luna flicks a switch and the rocket jets on her desk lift her skyward. "We see..."
"And... y'know..." Sunset blushes as she climbs twelve giraffe necks to keep up with the vice principal. "...I wouldn't feel right doing homework and friendship lessons with her..." She swallows a lump down her throat. "...meanwhile harboring this unquenchable desire to nuzzle the inner sole of her foot and lick each tiny lavender line in search for the hidden vanilla flavor."
"Thou speakest one truth," Luna says, now mounting the bow of a space shuttle as they collectively soar past galaxies and truck stops. "But thine subconscious singeth another."
"I know... I know..." Sunset Shimmer whimpers, lassoing an interplanetary dolphin and holding on for dear life. "But for real, Vice Principal Dream Harpy Luna! I value Twilight as a friend and I want to treat her with respect." She grits her teeth. "How do I exorcise myself of this stupid... stupid fantasy?"
"Perhaps if thou wert to focus on a specific moment—a real life scenario in which thou first acquired these unsavory desires to sucketh thine friends' toes."
"I never said I wanted to do that," Sunset slurs. Milliseconds later, her hair lifts off her scalp, morphs into a bacon-colored "nose," and grows so long that it pierces the Andromeda galaxy. Naturally, the teenager winces in the wake of the cosmic afterblast. "Did I?"
"Let us both find out for ourselves." Vice Principal Luna reaches into her bra and produces a window. Opening it, she points inside. "Behold... a midsummer night's sleepover at the house of Sparkle."
"Oh Starswirl in a bonnet!" Sunset curses, pulling at her cat ears. "How could I forget?!"
Through the window, both women peer.
"Golly jee, Sunset!" Twilight Sparkle jumped and bounced on the bed in her adorable two-piece lavender pyjamas. She smiled aside, her glasses glinting in the starry nightlight of her outrageously purple room with astronomical motifs. "Thank you so much for helping me study advanced quantum physics! This is the best sleepover ever! Well—eheh—it's the only sleepover I've ever had ever... but hey! Who's counting?! Teeheehee!"
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." Sunset Shimmer squirmed, her shoulders scrunching up against the backboard of the claustrophobically twin-sized bed.
"Here! I've got our textbook!" Twilight scooched over. "But it's super small so you and I have to scrunch in suuuuuuuuuuuuper close if we both wanna read the page at the same time!"
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." Sunset Shimmer's teeth started to chatter.
"What's the matter?" Twilight pouted, her lips pursing. "Are you cold! Ooooh!" An angelic giggle. "I know!" With a thin wrist, she yanked up a plush pastel comforter with smiling star faces and galaxy-riding teddy-bears. "This way we'll stay warm together! Heehee!" Sunset's ears tickled with the shiff-shiff-shiff of Twilight's naked feet against the bedsheets as she curled up in a trusting fetal position against the red-haired teenager. "See?" Ten teeny-tiny digits brushed paths with Sunset's ankles before coming to a resting position with their pearl-smooth knuckles pressed gently but persistently against the side of Sunset's newly-shaved legs. "Now how's that for 'snuggly?'"
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." Sunset's voice reached squeaky octaves.
"How about some background noise so we can concentrate?" Twilight reached for the remote and switched on the television at the foot of the bed. "Only thing on at this time of night is National Geographic! Ooooh! Zebra mating rituals! How interesting!"
"UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," Sunset's skin color took on a crimson tone.
"Alright! Let's get started!" Twilight adjusted her glasses with a smile and rested her soft head against Sunset's shoulder as she raised the book up high. "'If the knowable universe existed within a metastable vacuum, then a very real existential threat to known physics could impact the quantum mechanics of future causal relationships...'" Her lavender brow furrowed as her toes flexed and unflexed against Sunset's ankle. "Wait... was this copied from a Wikipedia article?"
"Here, let me see." Sunset grasped the textbook and slammed it repeatedly against her face. Whap! Whap! Whap!
Wincing, Sunset Shimmer turns from the window. "That didn't actually happen... did it?"
"Are you certain you just don't have a fetish for plush pastel girly comforters?"
"No! Of course I don't—" Sunset blinks at the Vice Principal. "Wait..." She squints. "Why are you suddenly Jodie Foster from Contact?"
"I was given something wonderful... something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe, that tells us undeniably how tiny and insignificant and how rare and precious we all are!"
"Grffff..." Sunset rolls her eyes. "Fine. Whatever." Folding her arms, she turns and gazes across an ice skating rink filled with elephants. "Okay... if the real Princess Luna was actually visiting me in a dream... what would she tell me to do to wake up?"
"The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space."
"Shhhh!" Sunset slides left and right to avoid errant pachyderms. "How to wake up... how to wake up..." She blinks, then slowly grins from ear to shining ear. "Of course! You always wake up from a bad dream when it gets too awkward to handle itself! So all I need to do is make myself super... super uncomfortable! Brilliant!"
"Small moves, Ellie. Small moves."
"Grnnngh! Shut up!" Sunset spins with a frown. "Elysium sucked toes! I-I mean... rrrrrgh!" She angrily reaches deep into Jodie Foster's mouth and yanks with all her might. "Do something to make me uncomfortable, dammit!"
As she says this, Jodie Foster turns inside out and morphs into a vaguely asian teenager with blue hair.
"Oh!" Sunset gasps victoriously. "Flash Sentry! Perfect!" She clasps her hands together. "Please! You gotta do something super cringey so I can no longer think about Twilight's pretty lavender toes curling up as she squeaks with tear-stained pleasure!"
"Mmmmm..." Flash smiles like a jester. His fingers reach down to his jeanss fly. "So you want a 'Flash', huh?"
"Okay... here goes..." Sunset clenches her fists and braces herself. "Bring on the spaghetti."
"I got what you need right here, babe..." Flash purrs as he undoes his zipper.
"That's right. Yes... yes..."
Flash's pants part ways and a giant lavender foot flies out of his crotch, uppercutting Sunset in the chin. WHAM!
"OOOF!" Sunset flies backwards. Her body slides across the skating rink, does a twist, and barrels down a bowling alley. "Aaaaaaaaaaaah!" She shrieks at the top of her lungs as she flies into ten neatly arranged Twilight feet. Her nostrils flare with the scent of cherry-flavored toenail polish and—"DUAAAAH!"
Sunset sits up on her couch, panting.
The television broadcasts a skinny man with an afro painting lavender-purple mountains across a wet canvas.
Sunset catches her breath. She looks around at the plain, drab shadows of her living room. Then—with a heavy exhale—she swipes the sweat from her sunny brow.
"Ah... thank Goddess that's over." Her stomach gurgles. "Heh... my brain worked up quite an appetite."
So, with a contented smile, she turns up the television's volume, grabs a bowl of snacks from her couchside table, and scoops up a palm-full. As soon as she takes a scrumptious bite, her taste buds are overwhelmed with the taste of vanilla and cherry. Blinking, Sunset looks into the bowl to see a hundred thimble-sized feet—all colored with the same lavender as the half-bitten toes falling from her mouth along with Twilight's giggles.
"Mrmmmfff..." Sunset tosses the bowl across the room and slides once again across the ice. "Celestia damn it!"
Author's Note
Remember children, never write crack!fics after missing a full night of sleep
