“Ahhh…” Princess Twilight sighed, leaning back in the beanbag chair on Pinkie Pie’s floor. “This feels nice.”
“We’re all real glad you could come an’ visit us,” Applejack said. She was kneeling on the floor, wearing her blue, apple-print pajamas.
“Especially since there isn’t any dark magic around this time, threatening to take over the world,” Fluttershy added. A few feet away, Sunset Shimmer coughed awkwardly.
“Yeah,” Twilight said, nodding happily. “After the past few weeks of Friendship Summits and the whole Griffonstone Treaty that Princess Celestia and I have been working on, I really needed a vacation. Someplace far, far away from anything to do with princesses. Speaking of which, thanks for letting me stay at your place, Pinkie Pie.”
“Abso-tota-lutely!” Pinkie Pie said, with a big grin. “Though, now that you mention it, hadn’t you stayed with Sunset Shimmer when you visited us last time?”
“Well…” Sunset Shimmer said, scratching the back of her head and blushing a little bit, “That’d been our plan this time too. But then we realized…”
“It probably wasn’t the best idea…” Twilight said, also blushing, “...for Sunset to be seen with a girl who looks exactly like her girlfriend. Staying over at her apartment. All alone.”
“Unsupervised,” Sunset Shimmer added, desperately avoiding eye contact. Five pairs of eyes widened all at once.
“Oh…” the other girls all said, in unison.
“Where is your nerdy girlfriend anyways?” Rainbow Dash asked. She held up a video game controller. “I totally wanted to kick her butt on Pinkie’s Gamestation.”
“She went on a camping trip with The Shadowbolts,” Sunset Shimmer said.
“I’m surprised she agreed to go,” Fluttershy said, hugging Pinkie Pie’s stuffed aligator close to her chest as she spoke. “I thought she was looking forward to seeing Equestria’s Twilight again.”
“Well…” Sunset Shimmer said.
***Earlier that day
Sunset Shimmer picked up her ringing phone, noting the picture of the purple-haired girl with glasses that came up as the caller’s icon, and answer. “Hey Twi,” Sunset Shimmer said, “What’s u-?”
“Sunset!” Twilight yelled on the other end of the call, “You’ve got to help me!”
“Help you? Sunset asked. “Help you from what?”
In the background of the phone call, Sunset could hear a group of girls singing, “Will you be lost by time or be part of history? Will your story be told or remain a mystery? Will they sing your song, tell-”
“Hey!” Sour Sweet’s voice broke from the rest, bringing the song to a stop. “Twilight’s trying to call for help!”
“Gimmie that phone!” Indigo Zap said. There was a crash, a scream, and the line went dead.
“Oooookay…” Sunset said, hanging up her own phone. “Guess I’d better tell Pinkie Pie there’s one less tonight.”
***
“-so I guess The Shadowbolts kidnapped her or something?” Sunset Shimmer said, giving an awkward smile.
“Uh…” Applejack said. “Don’t ya think you should...do somethin’ about that?” Sunset Shimmer shrugged.
“It’ll be good for her to get out and enjoy nature for a little bit. She’s been spending too much time cooped up in that lab of hers.”
“I hope she’ll be alright,” Fluttershy said, gently petting the stuffed animal in her arms.
“She’ll be fine,” Sunset said. “I mean, how much trouble can she get into a camp, anyways?”
“Is everyone else seriously just going to skim by the fact that Sunset’s got a nickname for her girlfriend?” Rainbow Dash asked. Sunset’s face suddenly flushed red. Very, very red.
“Uh...did I say that part out loud?” Sunset asked.
“That’s RIGHT!” Pinkie Pie said, springing over to Sunset Shimmer and grinning. “You call her, ‘Twi’ now?”
Sunset looked down at the floor, cleared her throat, and muttered, “...only when we’re alone…”
“She got her the most darling necklace, too,” Rarity said, in a tone that somehow seemed both refined and teasing. “I do think things are getting rather serious with those two…”
“I...I wouldn’t say THAT...I mean, unless she would…” Sunset said.
“Ah, the classic standoff of relationships,” Rarity said, smiling. “Neither side wants the other to think that they’re more invested in it than the other.”
“Well, I’m sort of an expert on how telling how she’s feeling,” Twilight said, flashing a grin that prompted Sunset to roll her eyes, “but I’m pretty sure we can figure this out based on social cues. Hold on, I’m pretty sure there’s information about this online.” Twilight sat down in Pinkie’s desk chair, kicked against the ground, rolled over to the desk and started to type on the computer. “We just need to see how human courtship-AHHH!” Twilight jumped back from the computer and pointed at it with one hand and shielding her face with the other. “What is this?!”
“Huh?” Sunset Shimmer asked. She walked over to the computer, leaned in to look at the computer and read, “‘You may also be interested in: A Brief History of Gymkhana.’” Sunset looked down at the quivering Twilight, and gave her a confused look. “Well? Would you be?”
“I WOULD,” Twilight said, swinging forward and grabbing the computer monitor with both hands. “But how does the computer know that?”
“Oh, that?” Rainbow Dash asked, waving her hand dismissively. “That’s an easy one. Were you using that computer earlier?”
“Well...yes,” Twilight said.
“That’d do it,” Rainbow Dash said. “These sites use cookies to track what you’ve been doing, and target ads towards you.”
Twilight’s eyes widened with horror. “They’re using COOKIES to spy on us?!”
Pinkie Pie’s hair sprung in surprise and she broke down crying next to a plate of chocolate-chip cookies. “I KNEW YOU WERE TOO DELICIOUS TO BE TRUE!”
“No, no, that’s not what she meant,” Sunset Shimmer said. “Cookies are small pieces of code that are stored in your computer. They keep track of usernames, passwords, and sites you’ve visited. Advertisers use them to target you with products that they think you’ll like. And, well, buy.”
Twilight’s eyes darted between Sunset and the computer. “Okay…” she said, her voice still trailing with suspicion. “Okay...so, if I just change machines, I should be fine.” Twilight picked up her cell phone, started tapping at it, then screamed, recoiled, and dropped the phone on the ground. “WHAT IS THAT?!” she yelled.
Confused glances jumped from pair of eyes to pair of eyes around the room, until Fluttershy picked up the phone and looked at the screen. “‘You may also be interested in: Proper Silverware Placement, An Agonizingly Detailed History’,” she read. There was a pause as the girls exchanged another look of confusion.
Rainbow Dash was the one to speak up. “Well, would y-”
“Yes, I would!” Twilight said, cutting Rainbow Dash off. “I would be VERY INTERESTED. But I haven’t searched for anything like that on this phone!”
“Well, did you search for something involving silverware on this computer?” Sunset asked, pointing to Pinkie Pie’s desktop computer. Twilight nodded anxiously. “Well, that’d explain it then. You signed into your email on this computer, did a search for silverware, then used your phone. Your phone’s synched to the same email account, so advertisers know it’s the same person-er...pony. Whatever.”
Twilight’s eyes went wide and she stared at the phone with an expression normally reserved for when someone finds themselves in a room with a bomb. “How...how can it DO that?!” she asked. Sunset Shimmer gave a shrug.
“It’s just Big Data,” Sunset Shimmer said. Twilight jumped up, snatching at this new bit of information, a word to put with the phenomenon she was now experiencing.
“‘Big Data’!” Twilight said. “Who is that? Some kind of evil sorcerer? A spy?!”
“What? No,” Sunset said, waving her hands to dismiss the idea. “‘Big Data’ isn’t a person, it’s-”
“I will find him and stop his reign of terror!” Twilight yelled. Before any of her friends could interrupt her, Twilight grabbed her cell phone and ran out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.
“I, uh…” Sunset said, then shrugged. “Oh well. She’ll figure it out.”
***
“So, it turns out ‘Big Data’ isn’t a person,” Twilight said, furiously tapping away at her laptop.
“I tried to tell you,” Sunset said as she took a sip of her coffee. The two were seated in a booth at the Sweet Shoppe, which Twilight had managed to turn into a makeshift workspace, filled with papers, notepads, and enough technical books to fill a section of a very small library. “I really wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s just advertising, it’s not like it can hurt you.”
“Someone is SPYING on me!” Twilight hissed as she flipped through a book and typed a few commands into her computer.
“Well...kinda,” Sunset said, gently placing her coffee cup on the saucer Pinkie Pie had served it with. “More like aggregating the search information and marketing towards you appropriately. But, that’s the human world, for you. It’s not like in Equestria. People here expect a more customized user experience. So, Big Data is the result.”
“I should STILL be able to get out of it,” Twilight said, frantically typing at her laptop, before sighing loudly. “Okay. I’ve deleted my cookies, cleared the cache, signed out of my email, flushed the cookies and cache AGAIN, reset the computer, changed the wireless network I’m connected to, aaaaaand…” Twilight squinted at the screen and let out an exasperated sigh. “And it’s STILL giving me creepily accurate recommendations. HOW is it doing that?”
“Uh…” Sunset considered for a moment, then said, “I...guess it’s using the IP address? You’re on a public network, so that’d make it tricky, but you’re one of the only people in here who’s online right now. There’s probably some algorithm out there that can profile someone based on their physical location.”
Twilight’s eye twitched and she stared down at the laptop. “That’s incredibly creepy,” she said. “And look at these recommendations! ‘You may also be interested in: Obscure Scientific History’? ‘How to Train Your Dog (or other small purple animal)’? ‘Alternate Dimensions: The Portal Sitting Right Outside a High School That People Are Taking Surprisingly In Stride’?”
“What about them?” Sunset asked, shrugging. “Those all sound like things you’d be interested in.”
“They ARE,” Twilight said, “But I haven’t done any internet searches on them! Like, ever. So HOW does Big Data know that I’d be interested?”
“It’s a statistical modeling...thing,” Sunset said, rolling her hand in the air in an explanatory gesture. “They find people with similar search terms as you and see what else they searched for, or what else they bought. Then, they know what to market towards you.”
Twilight gritted her teeth, threw her arms up in the air and gave an exasperated scream. “Aaagh! This is INSANE! There’s, like, almost literally no privacy in this world. That’s it.” Twilight gathered up her books and shoved them in her backpack. “I’m going back to Equestria.”
“Seriously?” Sunset Shimmer asked. “Because of targeted ads?”
“I’m sorry, Sunset,” Twilight said. She massaged her temples and gave a sigh. “I just...I just need to get away from all of this right now. I’ll catch up with you later, alright?”
“Uh...yeah. Sure,” Sunset said. Twilight left the restaurant and Sunset leaned back in her chair. She took another sip of coffee when her cell phone started to ring, displaying the image of her smiling, bespectacled girlfriend on the caller id. Smiling, Sunset answered the phone. “Hey, Twi,” she said. “You just missed your pony-princess counterpart. How’s camping?” There was a pause as Sunset listened to the voice on the other side of the phone. “...why are people screaming in the background?”
***
Princess Twilight Sparkle trotted through the doors to her crystal castle, breathing out a sigh of relief as she entered her home.
“Hey Twilight,” Spike said, stepping out of an adjacent room to meet her. “I thought you weren’t coming back until Sunday?”
“Decided to come back early,” Twilight said. “Things are just...too weird over there right now.”
“Tell me about it,” Spike said. “They don’t even have hayburgers over there. Crazy world.”
Twilight nodded. “Well, at least I’m back home now. And far, far away from Big-”
There was a knock at the door. Twilight turned around, just in time to see a grey pegasus dumping a cartload of magazines, flyers, and catelogues onto the castle floor. The flood of paper products washed over the hallway, enveloping Spike in its wave. When the small avalanche had come to a stop, Spike stuck his head up from underneath it, his expression completely unamused and said in a flat tone, “Mail’s here.”
Twilight approached the mountain of postal deliveries cautiously. “What is all this?” Twilight asked. She levitated up a flyer to her face and examined it closely.
“You may also be interested in: Hiding your Electronic Footprint, Privacy For the Modern World.”
Twilight fell to her knees, lifted her forelegs in the air and yelled, “NOOOOOOO!”
***
Sunset sat at the large, circular table in the Sweet Shoppe, gently stirring her coffee. Sitting on either side of her were Applejack and Rarity, with Rainbow Dash sitting to Rarity’s left, her own chair turned backwards and leaning on the back casually. Sitting around the rest of the table were six rather disheveled looking girls, dressed in their ripped, and in some cases singed, Crystal Prep uniforms. Twilight was glaring at the other girls, through glasses that were now held together with masking tape, nursing a small cup of hot chocolate as her classmates avoided her accusing glare.
“So…” Sunset Shimmer said, finally finished stirring her coffee. She tapped the spoon against the side of the cup and placed it on the napkin next to the saucer. “I guess THAT’S how much trouble you can get into at a camp.”
“YES,” Twilight snapped, glaring again at the other Shadowbolts. “Yes, as it turns out, you can get into quite a lot of trouble at a camp.”
Pinkie Pie roller skated over to the table, carrying over a tray of small, white cups filled with a yellow custard. She placed the tray in front of Sugarcoat and smiled. “Okay, so, we let these chill in the fridge overnight,” she said.
“I think you’re overreacting,” Indigo Zap said, flipping her blue hair confidently. “We got out of there in one piece, right?”
“We were attacked by trees!” Twilight yelled. “TREES!”
“To be fair, that wasn’t really our fault,” Lemon Zest said.
“No,” Twilight said, huffing angrily. “But you know what WAS your fault? Deciding that the best way to deal with the problem was to LIGHT THEM ON FIRE!”
“And now,” Pinkie Pie said, ignoring the ongoing conversation in favor of continuing her cooking lesson with Sugarcoat, “you sprinkle on just a liiiiittle bit of our sugar mixture on the top of each cup. Make sure you spread it out nice and evenly.”
“Hey, trees were attacking us. Trees burn. Ergo, makes sense to me,” Indigo Zap said.
“Yeah, you know what ELSE burns in a forest?” Twilight asked, her eye twitching as she spoke. “EVERYTHING. Literally everything else in a forest.”
“It...wasn’t the most...well thought out plan,” Sunny Flare said, desperately trying to maintain her composure despite her burnt hair, torn uniform, and soot-covered face. “I’ll admit that. But you can’t deny its effectiveness.”
“Just once,” Twilight said, dropping her head into her hands. “Just ONCE, I’d like to go someplace with you girls, and NOT have my brother called in for an arson investigation.”
“And now we just take the butane torch, and melt the sugar on top!” Pinkie Pie said. Immediately, all eyes turned to her and Sugarcoat. Sugarcoat was holding a small, metal torch that was emitting a short, even blue flame.
Sugarcoat looked around the table to all of the girls who were looking at her now, to the torch in her hand, then back to the girls. “Maybe I should do this later?” she asked.
“YA THINK?!” Twilight snapped. Sugarcoat took her finger off the trigger and dropped the torch onto the table.
“It wasn’t like it was all bad,” Sour Sweet said, blowing a lock of messy hair out of her eyes. “We got Filthy Rich to give the camp an extension on the loan.”
“Well, that’s good, at least,” Sunset Shimmer said, hoping this, at least, would prove to be a positive spin on a less than perfect trip.
“Yeah,” Twilight said. “As it turns out, he doesn’t really have an interest in owning the charred remains of where Camp Everfree USED to be. ‘Burned-Down Ghost Town’ wasn’t exactly the theme he was going for with his spa, I guess.”
Sunset Shimmer sank into her chair and frowned. “I’m sorry you didn’t have fun, Twilight...I figured you’d at least be able to enjoy yourself a little bit.”
Twilight sighed. “I probably would have...if it wasn’t for the forest coming to life, THESE girls deciding that the rational response was to get in touch with their inner pyromaniacs, the camp counselor hitting on me, all those weird dreams I’ve been having…”
“Oh, yeah,” Indigo Zap said, turning to Sunset Shimmer. “Your girlfriend may be possessed or something. So, maybe get that checked out?”
“Uh-huh, yeah,” Sunset Shimmer said. A cheerful smile was plastered on her face, but there was a distinct twitch in her eye. “Now, what was this about the counselor hitting on you?”
“Ugh…” a voice came from behind Sunset Shimmer. She turned around to see Princess Twilight, notably distinct from her human counterpart by her undone hairstyle and lack of glasses, slinking over to the group, sitting down, and collapsing face first onto the table. “I can’t win…” she groaned.
“Twilight?” Sunset said, then looked over to her girlfriend and corrected herself. “Er...Princess Twilight? I thought you went back to Equestria.”
“I DID,” Twilight mumbled, refusing to lift her head as she spoke. “But Big Data found me there too.”
The human Twilight blinked once as she heard this. “Big Data?” she asked.
“I’ll get you caught up later,” Sunset said.
“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle’s voice rang through the restaurant as she skipped over to her older sister, with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo in tow. “Can we have some money to get something to drink?”
Rarity nodded and produced a small wad of bills, which she handed to her sister. “Nothing too heavy, dear. You don’t want to spoil your dinner.”
“I’m doomed!” Princess Twilight said with a groan. “I’m never going to be able to beat Big Data.”
“Well...no,” Sunset Shimmer said, giving a little amused smile. “You can’t ‘beat’ it because it’s a concept, not a person. I keep-”
“Oh, you guys ‘re lookin’ for Big Data?” Apple Bloom asked. Princess Twilight’s head immediately shot up and she turned to the three, younger girls who were gathered around them.
“What?” Sunset Shimmer said, in a completely deadpan and disbelieving tone.
“Yeah, we know where t’ find ‘em,” Apple Bloom said.
“You should have just asked,” Scootaloo said, rolling her eyes a little. “We’d have taken you right to them.”
Sunset Shimmer crossed her arms. “You cannot be serio-”
“TAKE ME THERE!” Princess Twilight said, jumping out of her chair eagerly.
***
“This place is reeeaally run down,” Sunset Shimmer said, as The Crusaders led them up the winding driveway up to the house. “Are you sure this is the right place? And not, like, the lair of some kind of horrifying monster that eats children?”
“At least it wasn’t the last time ah was here,” Apple Bloom said.
“This looks like the place in every cautionary tale I’ve ever read that you just want to scream at the main characters to get out of,” Sunset Shimmer said. “If I end up baked into a pie, I’m haunting all of you.”
“You didn’t have to come,” Princess Twilight said as she eagerly chased after The Crusaders.
“Pretty sure I did,” Sunset said. “We weren’t about to let you go out on your own. According to SciTwi, ‘That’s how large, forest-destroying fires get started’.”
“Well, then, stop complaining,” Princess Twilight said, as they came to the front door. “We’re here.”
The house looked worn-down, not necessarily old, but not well-maintained either. Twilight glanced down at the door, almost afraid that she would knock it down if she knocked on it too loudly.
“So, uh...should I just-?” Twilight started, only to stop when Sweetie Belle opened the door and walked inside.
“Hey! Big Data!” she yelled. “We’re here! And we brought some friends!”
Twilight frantically followed The Crusaders inside as they casually walked through the mostly empty house. Books covered every conceivable surface, some old and worn, but there was an underlying organization to it all that Twilight could glimpse.
The group gravitated towards a room that was emitting a faint glow from beneath the door. Slowly, Twilight crept up to it. Suddenly, she threw the door open. “Ah-HA!” she yelled, proudly. “I FOUND you! YOU’RE the one following me, making out oddly-specific suggestions for what I should read next, and-and FILLING my home with JUNK MAIL! YOU!”
There was a moment of pure silence. Twilight huffed for breath as she let herself take in the sight that surrounded her. Books on all sides, large computer monitors, and an array of papers covered in mathematical equations were hanging from the walls.
And in the center of it all was a red-haired teenager, with tears welling up in her eyes.
“Oh, no,” Twilight said, immediately regretting her tone. “I’m sorry, I-”
“I’m sorry!” the girl yelled as she started to cry. She threw herself into Twilight’s chest and sobbed. “I’m so, so, so sorry!”
“Nonononono, it’s okay, it’s okay!” Twilight said, frantically trying to ease the sobbing girl who was now clinging to her shirt. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry, I-I just...I’m just...wait…” Twilight looked at the girl who was crying into her chest. She had not noticed it before, but her hair was not completely red. There was a stripe of purple as well. Her skin was a pale yellow, she was wearing a scruffy, black turtleneck, and a pair of glasses.
There was something...familiar about this.
“Wait...Moondancer?” Twilight asked. The redhead wiped her nose and nodded.
“Uh-huh…” she said.
“‘Big Data’’s just her screen name,” Sweetie Belle said, smiling.
“You two...know each other?” Sunset Shimmer asked. Twilight gave a noncommittal head-bob.
“Well...kind of,” she said. “I know her in Equestria...and I’m guessing this world’s Twilight knows her too...probably. It seems to work that way, at any rate.” She stepped back, letting Moondancer, who had calmed down enough to sit back in her own chair, down. “But what’s going on here?” Twilight asked. “Why are you...well, doing all this data mining?”
Moondancer sniffed, and looked up at Twilight. “Well…” she said.
***A little while earlier
Moondancer sat awkwardly in the living room, staring down at her own shoes and only occasionally glancing up to look at the three girls who were sitting across from her. She should really say something, she told herself. But what could she say? Maybe she could offer them some tea? Absently, Moondancer wondered if there was any tea in the house. She was not sure she remembered ever buying tea in her entire life, but people offered tea when they had guests over, right? At least, that was what she had read. So, maybe it just appeared when you needed it?
“So…” Sweetie Belle said, breaking the silence and distracting from the incessant ticking of the old grandfather clock in the background. “This is a...nice place you have here…”
“S-sorry,” Moondancer said, quickly adjusting her glasses. “I-I don’t have company over, often. Or, ever, really. Or, well…” Moondancer looked down at the floor in shame. “Or leave the house, unless I have to.”
“Oh, I think I heard of this,” Scootaloo said, snapping her fingers as she thought. “It’s called, um...agro-polia or something?”
“Agoraphobia,” Moondancer corrected. “I-I don’t have a particularly bad case of it. I can still leave the house, if I have to, but…” she sighed. “I know it’s a long shot. But you three have gotten a little bit of a reputation for helping people like me, recently. People who...aren’t sure what to do with their lives? I thought maybe, you could help me out somehow?”
The Crusaders exchanged unsure glances, then Scootaloo flashed a smirk and pounded her fist on the table. “We’re sure gonna try!” she said.
“Would’ya look at all these books?” Apple Bloom asked. She stood up and walked over to a bookcase, looking up at in in amazement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many. Well, outside of a library, I guess.”
Moondancer gave a little laugh. “Yeah...I don’t leave the house much, so...lots of time to read, I guess.”
“Oh, wow!” Sweetie Belle said, grabbing a book off of the shelf and reading the title out loud. “The Afflicted Eon! My sister talks about this book all the time! Shame, I think she lost her copy, though…”
“Yeah, that’s a good one,” Moondancer said. She stood up, walked over to another bookcase and ran her finger down the line of books. “If she liked that one, she may also be interested in...here.” Moondancer grabbed a book off the shelf and handed it to Sweetie Belle. “Shades of Disbelief,” she said. “It’s really good.”
“What are all these?” Scootaloo asked, pointing at a neat, orderly stack of flyers.
“Oh...well…” Moondancer scratched the back of her head, embarrassed. “I sort of...collect stuff like that. News about upcoming events, that kind of thing. I can’t really go out to see them myself, but I can sort of...enjoy them vicariously. Speaking of which,” Moondancer dug through the stack of papers and handed Scootaloo a flyer. “You like riding on a scooter, right? You may also be interested in a skating contest that’s coming to town next month.”
Scootaloo examined the flyer and grinned. “Cool,” she said.
Apple Bloom tapped her chin thoughtfully. “You seem like ya know what people are gonna like, even before they do,” she said. Moondancer shrugged.
“Well, I guess,” she said. “I’ve read enough to know what books are similar. A-and it’s not hard to tell what people are going to have fun doing.”
“Well,” Apple Bloom said, smiling broadly, “maybe that’s how you can connect with the outside world! Maybe ya just need to get to know people better, and help ‘em out a little! You can help ‘em find books and events and stuff they’d be interested in, and, once yer more comfortable with ‘em, maybe you’ll be able to leave the house.”
“Huh…” Moondancer considered this, and a smile crept to her face. “Yeah…” she said. “Maybe I could set up a computer program to make suggestions based on what people are buying or viewing...or maybe send emails based on those searches! Or-or maybe even send them suggestions in the mail! I bet people wouldn’t find that intrusive or annoying at all!”
***
Sunset Shimmer took in a long breath. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. So, to help deal with your agoraphobia...you invented spam mail.”
Moondancer nodded, her head hanging down in shame.
“And because it was going so well, you got in contact with your Equestrian counterpart.”
Moondancer nodded again.
“And introduced Equestria to junk mail.”
“It sounds kind of bad when you put it that way…”
“Come on, Sunset,” Twilight said, giving Moondancer a hug. “She was just trying to help people.”
“She INVENTED spam!” Sunset said. “And introduced Equestria to junk mail.”
“Junk mail’s not that bad.”
“Not to any one person,” Sunset said. “But if you add up the small inconveniences of dealing with it across the entire population...yeah, I think that’d make her, in the aggregate, Equestria’s most successful villain.”
“I’m sorry…” Moondancer said, looking like she was about to cry again. “I really thought I was just helping people…”
“Look, it’s alright,” Twilight said. “Just...you know...tone it down? A little bit? It’s kind of scary how good you are at predicting what people want.”
“Yeah, speaking of which,” Sunset Shimmer said, “you don’t happen to have a book in here about how to exorcise some kind of magic spirit that may or may not be living in your girlfriend’s head?” Moondancer nodded, walked over to a bookshelf, and grabbed a book.
“You may also be interested in this,” Moondancer said, handing Sunset another book. Sunset picked it up and read the title out loud.
“So a Camp Counselor Was Flirting With Your Girlfriend: How to Keep Calm and Realize she Loves You, You Idiot. 5th edition. Where are you even getting these oddly specific-wait, did it just say ‘5th edition’?”
“Yeah,” Moondancer said. “Can you believe that? They changed, like, one diagram and added in two more citations, and reprint the whole book. What a ripoff.”
“Not what I meant,” Sunset said, then added, “but...thank you. Your suggestions are actually pretty good...if really, really creepy.”
“You know,” Twilight said to Moondancer, “I wouldn't have minded so much if I just knew what you were doing. Maybe if you gave people a warning, of some kind, before you started targeting them with marketing? Maybe even a way to opt out?”
***
“And that,” Sunset Shimmer said, “if how Princess Twilight Sparkle invented the end-user license agreement.”
Twilight smiled sheepishly, as the five, surrounding girls glared down at her angrily.
“Yeah...sorry about that…”
Author's Note
Okay, so, a couple of things. The first one is, I poked a liiiiittle fun at "Legend of Everfree" here, and I wanted to make it clear that I don't actually dislike that movie. I actually enjoyed it, though I personally think "Rainbow Rocks" and "Friendship Games" were stronger installments. Having said that, "Legend of Everfree" didn't really fit in with the universe I was making here, so up until this point I've just been ignoring it. Then I figured, well, I'm never going to really make it "canon" to these stories anyways, and since this is an AU it doesn't really HAVE to be, so why not play with it a little bit? So, we get The Shadowbolts, who technically resolved the plot of the movie...in a way, way worse way than the Humane Six did in the actual movie 
Anyways, just wanted to make it clear there that I wasn't actually trying to criticise the movie, just affectionately poke a little fun at it.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this story! It's an idea that's been going through my head for a while now, so I hope you like it! Thanks for reading! 
Oh, also, yes, I'm blatantly referencing Monochromatic's story, The Stolen Book here. I'm a big fan of Monochromatic, their work actually was one of the things that inspired me to start writing fanfiction, so I couldn't help but make the reference.
Thanks for reading!
