How Does it Work Here?

by PonyUpYourBits

Rating: teen
Tags: Starlight Glimmer, Equestria Girls, Sunset Shimmer, Slice of Life
Length: 2190

Starlight Glimmer discovers there's more to adjust to being human than just waking on two legs...

Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer are on their way to meet Sunset's friends in the Canterlot Mall when Starlight is hit with a familiar urge in an unfamiliar place. Fortunately Sunset's been there before...

Takes place during the third Equestria Girls - Magical Movie Night special, "Mirror Magic", but no spoilers.

TOILET USE WITHIN. Don't read on if you have a problem with that.

Published 2017-05-31 18:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2017-05-31 18:20:01 UTC

How Does it Work Here?

Starlight Glimmer was finishing off the one scoop of ice cream that didn't fall off her cone as she and Sunset Shimmer casually strolled through the Canterlot Mall. Starlight Glimmer was spending her first few hours walking around the human world and was already enjoying her time on two legs.

"Well, at least you made it through one scoop," Sunset said with a chuckle.

"Yeah...I wish I got to have more of that green one," Starlight responded, slightly dejected. She was eating into the ice cream cone at this point. "What was it called...'green tea'?" she tried to recall what she ordered. She stopped herself when she realized she had taken two bites out of the cone. "You are supposed to eat this thing, right?" she asked Sunset.

Sunset nodded then pulled out her phone again. "You know, it's unlike any of them to leave their phones off but I can't seem to get a hold of anyone," Sunset said, miffed that her attempts to reach her friends were going unheeded. "Guess I'll just try texting Applejack..."

"So where is this theater?" Starlight asked. She downed the rest of the ice cream cone.

"It's on the second floor of the mall," Sunset explained, pointing down the line of stores along the upper deck with her phone. "We can take the escalators up." She directed Starlight's attention to the moving staircases that led to the top floor.

"Those look like fun!" she exclaimed, having never seen such a thing in Equestria before.

"I have to admit, there's a lot here that you don't see in Equestria," Sunset said, indulging Starlight's wonderment. "In Equestria you can do a lot of stuff using magic but the people in this world seem to have gotten around their lack of magic through construction and technology." She showed Starlight her smartphone. "In some ways it's better. With these we don't need to communicate through letters and wait for written replies through the mail. You can just type up messages and send them to someone else's phone instantly or call them up and hear their voice on the other end, as if you were having a conversation in person."

"Would sure make getting a hold of Twilight easier," Starlight said, slightly frustrated at her lack of options when it came to reaching the Princess of Friendship. "Then again at least I can see her directly. You have to write in your journal and wait for her to see it."

"It has its ups and downs," Sunset said with a shrug.

The two girls approached one of the escalators and Sunset was about to step on to head upstairs when Starlight tapped her on the shoulder. She glanced back over her shoulder at the other girl.

"Uh...do you guys like...um...have toilets in this world?" Starlight asked with an awkward shrug and a nervous grin. It was clear she didn't feel entirely comfortable asking such a question but the circumstances left her with little recourse. "I...kinda need to go."

Sunset turned around fully to face Starlight and smiled. "Sure, they're over there. I can show you."

She guided her inter-dimensional companion over to a small hallway that led away from the main avenue of shops in the mall. The hallway led back a fair distance before turning to the left and leading to two doors marked "Men" and "Women". Sunset pointed Starlight to the door marked "Women". Starlight pushed the door open and went inside while Sunset leaned against the wall and read her phone.

After Starlight had been inside for a minute or so, the door opened again and Starlight peeked her head out at Sunset. Her blushing face conveyed a mixture of confusion and helplessness. Sunset's eyes widened and she quickly put her phone away.

"Oh my gosh, I'm sorry!" she gasped, immediately understanding Starlight's plight without her having to say anything. "I guess when you live here as long as I have you just take these sort of things for granted!" She followed Starlight back into the restroom. She took a quick look around upon entering. Along the wall there five empty toilet stalls facing three sinks with mirrors above each. "Looks like there's no one in here besides us," she said. Sunset's eyes were quickly drawn to a sign leaning on the wall that read "OUT OF ORDER". She picked up the sign and hung it outside the door before locking it from the inside. "There, that'll give us some privacy," Sunset said, realizing that this was going to be something that would require discretion.

"Sorry, Sunset," Starlight said, still mildly blushed. "These look kind of like the toilets we have in Equestria but..." she looked down at her human legs. "Everything just feels so unfamiliar. I kind of feel like I need to be sitting but I'm not sure if I'd even be doing it right..."

"Don't worry about it," Sunset reassured her. "I had a lot of the same trouble when I came to this world too and I had to figure it out myself! It's not that hard, I can walk you through it and then you'll know how to deal with it in the future."

Starlight walked into the stall closest to the exit and pushed the door closed behind her. "Okay, first you need to lock the door behind you," Sunset explained. "You see that small metal slide on the door? Just slide it over into the little hole it lines up with and that'll keep it closed." She heard the metal slide locking into place.

"Sooo...what do I have to do?" Starlight said, still unclear on the procedure of relieving herself in a human body.

"So one of the biggest differences between being a pony and a human is humans wear clothes all the time so you need get those out of the way first," Sunset told her. "You didn't come through the portal wearing a belt so you just need to pull down your pants. You should have a button at the front and center of your jeans. Pop that out and then pull the zipper below it and after that you should be able to lower them."

Sunset could hear Starlight undoing the button of her jeans and pulling down her zipper before sliding her pants down her legs. Sunset glanced down under the divider and saw Starlight's jeans collect around her ankles.

"What are these?" Starlight asked from inside the stall. Underneath her jeans she discovered she was wearing another piece of clothing; a small, whitish-pink garment that only seemed to cover the front and back of her human pelvis. Until now she hadn't noticed she was wearing anything under the clothes that had appeared on her after coming out of the portal due to the large amount of unfamiliar fabric masking the sensation of what was underneath.

"Those are panties," Sunset explained. "You need to pull those down too." She smiled and shook her head as she thought about what she was explaining. Under any other circumstance it would have been extremely embarrassing to explain such things to someone in the human world but Sunset understood Starlight was in a unique situation. "Those confused me at first too...and I learned the hard way!"

From under the divider, Sunset saw Starlight's underwear fall to the ground on top of the jeans pooled on the tile floor. "Okay, uh...I guess that's everything," Starlight said uncertainly. "I'd really like to get started!"

"Okay, check the toilet in front of you before you use it," Sunset instructed. "Is that white piece that's attached to the back of the toilet with a hinge lowered onto the rim of the toilet?"

"It is," Starlight confirmed. "What does it do?"

"It keeps you from falling in when you sit on the toilet. Seat yourself on top of that and position yourself above the hole, facing away from the toilet," Sunset said. "Then you can go. I wouldn't recommend opening your legs once you start!" she cautioned.

The sound of Starlight's weight falling onto plastic seat reverberated through the empty restroom. A brief silence followed before the sound of liquid splashing onto the inside of the toilet and running into the water at the bottom of the bowl could be heard. Starlight let out a quiet but audible sigh of relief. Per Sunset's advice, Starlight kept her legs together while using her hands pressed on the edges of the toilet seat to keep herself balanced.

"This feels...odd," Starlight told Sunset through the walls of the stall. "Like I understand this sensation but it's all happening in a weird way."

"Yeah, it's something else you get used to the longer you live here," Sunset said with a coy shrug. "That's kind of why I forgot how unusual it was when I had to adapt to life over here, I've just been doing it that way for so long."

"I wonder how Twilight managed when she came here," Starlight pondered.

"Beats me," Sunset told her. "She and I weren't exactly on speaking terms during her first visit so she definitely wasn't coming to me asking for help on how to be a human. She didn't seem to have any major issues on her second trip so I guess she had it figured it out by then."

The sound of Starlight relieving herself continued for another ten seconds before the stream started to lose strength and the sound of dripping into the bottom of the toilet replaced the full flow. Sunset could tell that her friend was nearly finished.

"Guess that's it," Starlight said. She began to pick herself off the toilet and reach for her pants.

"Hang on!" Sunset interjected. Starlight paused then slowly lowered herself back onto the seat.

"Uh...was there something else?" Starlight asked. "I'm done."

"You don't want to pull your underwear back up until after you've dried yourself," Sunset explained. "I made that mistake a few times too and it gets real uncomfortable. Again, it's another one of those things that you don't have to deal with if you're not wearing clothes all day. You see that roll of paper on the wall?"

Starlight looked to her left and saw the white sheets dangling off a cylinder that was anchored to the wall of the stall. "Uh huh?"

"Pull off some of that and fold it up," Sunset instructed. The sound of the toilet paper roll unfurling could be heard before it was ripped off.

"Okay, it's folded," Starlight told Sunset.

"Use that to dry yourself off between your legs," Sunset explained. "Once you're dry then you can just toss it into the toilet and pull up your pants."

Starlight did as she was instructed before dropping the toilet paper inside the bowl and standing to her feet. She pulled up her underwear and pants and redid the button and zipper at the front. "Anything else?" Starlight asked.

"Just flush the toilet by hitting that metal rod sticking off the back," Sunset told her. The rushing sound of the toilet flushing roared through the restroom and the door unlocked. Starlight walked out slowly with a nervous smile.

"Thanks...for helping me with that," she said bashfully. "I never thought I'd have to have that explained to me but..."

"It's alright," Sunset told her. "I've been right where you've been before and it was confusing to me at first too. It's nothing to be ashamed of, you've got a completely different body than what you're used to. I'm just glad I could share what I learned that I didn't have when I first arrived."

Sunset unlocked the restroom door and pulled the sign off the front.

"What are these for?" Starlight asked, pointing to the row of porcelain sinks.

"Oh...those..." Sunset said in a slightly uncertain tone. "Humans like to rinse their hands in those after they use the toilet. I never really saw the point." She shrugged indifferently and Starlight cocked her head slightly at Sunset's lack of understanding. Sunset took a look at her phone. "Guess we better catch up with the others," she told Starlight.

The two girls left the restroom, blissfully ignoring the "EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK SIGN" attached to the interior of the door on the way out.

Author's Note

I needed a twist ending, what can I say?

So then...hooboy...this is something that took a lot of self-motivation to commit to. This isn't my first foray with indulging in my kinks through story writing but I never thought I'd be applying it to MLP.

Anyway, I've always fantasized about pony Twilight having issues in the human world. Having to cope with wearing underwear or not knowing how human toilets work, but I never actually did anything with that so Mirror Magic presented me with a chance to fulfill those fantasies in a story.

I had to make some assumptions about how ponies use the toilet in their own world (the stance I've taken is that they always stand to use the toilet, hence Starlight's confusion about sitting when she goes).

Hope it was worth reading.