"Wait, Rarity," Twilight Inquired, "You listen to Redbone?"
"Why yes, Dear, I do. Why are you so surprised?"
Twilight held the offending cassette player in front of her, which contained the tape Potlatch within its angular folds. "Well, I mean, they're kind of obscure. Most ponies only know their one hit, "Come and Get Your Love". What hooked you?"
"Well, Twilgiht not to surrender my fashionable hipster persona, but I do confess I had some assistance in picking such an obscure band to listen to. The Ponyvillage Voice did a retrospective on various bands that were featured in the 'Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mixtape Vol. 1', highlighting many of those bands' long lost albums outside of their one hit wonder status. And Redbone was one of those bands, but on Allicorn Music, an earlier album than the one containing 'Come and Get Your Love' was the highest rated, and that album was Potlatch, which I felt to be a fine mix of funk and rock and jazz and pop and the right touch of indigenous flavoring. Thus, I bought it, and now have it in the cassette player you just played."
Twilight rolled her eyes. "Fucking hipsters, I swear to Goddess."
Rarity playfully whacked Twilight with her tail. "Oh hush, you. Jealousy is no pretty outfit for you to wear."
Twilight rolled her eyes even harder. "Right, well, I did ask to borrow your cassette player for a reason. May I?"
Rarity smiled warmly. Of course, Deary. Just make sure to have it back to me by Thursday Night.
Twilight saluted her friend. "You have my word, Miss!" She maintained the serious scowl with which this command was delivered, but could only hold it for a second before both mares cracked up, giggling.
Rarity embraced her friend. "Oh Twilight, yet us never take our selves too seriously."
Twilight smiled warmly and reciprocated the embrace. "Of course not, friend. I'll see you tomorrow."
Thus concluding their interaction for the day, Rarity trotted into her boutique and Twilight turned to walk back to her castle. Huh, she had gotten used to that term, "castle". She even dared consider the fact that to utter the phrase "my library" was at this point equivalent to uttering something unabashedly alien. That was the past, and now she lived in the future. This was a future of science and magic and friendship and glory, and in this brave new world, Twilight trotted back not to a library, but a Castle. Yes, the Castle of Friendship. It had a nice ring to it.
Twilight smiled, this series of thoughts sustaining said smile until she reached her abode.
Twilight stepped into the main foyer, where three fillies sat tied to three chairs. Yes, it is true, I'm sorry to report. Twilight had kidnapped the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
"Cheesy fucking crust, what the actual fuck, Twilight," Applebloom spat with sour anger. Being a teenager, she was currently at the stage of life where she thought making every other word an expletive was the fucking tits to do. Her bound compadre's had similar sentiments, and threw up similar expletive-soaked invective tirades in their captor's direction. But Twilight Sparkle was nothing if not prepared, and soon she had recorded several minutes of the CMC's increasingly terrified and genuine whining, producing the ideal atmosphere in which the three pubescent fillies would be genuinely scared, fearful of the very real possitbility that Twilight Sparkle had lost her fucking shit and was currently mentally ill, or at least running on several times as many bath salts as any respectable pony ought to have consumed in a thirty-six hour period. Don't do drugs, foals.
Twilight, having collected the desired samples she so scientifically craved, used her exquisite alicorn magic to loose the ropes from the bodies of the Crusaders. "Shoo, kids," she requested as she rendered their ambulatory aspirations no longer addled.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders did not need to be asked twice, and scrambled out of Twilight's Castle like Scooby Do and Shaggy would scramble away from the hallucinations of ghosts and ghouls and Gabby Gums after each having a 500mg edible. They skedaddled the fuck out of there and ran off to tell their parents (Sweetie Belle), siblings (Apple Bloom), or adoptive older sister (Scootaloo) that Twilight had completely lost the plot and was, in a word, bonkers. Nay, let us emphasize her lunacy in the lurid descriptions the three fillies provided. She wasn't just bonkers, she was fucking bonkers. Yes, that's indeed better. Thusly in swift time the trio communicated the dire nature of the situation to parent/guardians, and inasmuch Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Big Macintosh, Magnum, and Betty Bouffant or whatever her name is all simultaneously charged Twilight's castle, eager to establish just what fucked up fuckery was aspiring at the castle.
Twilight meanwhile absconded over to one of the multitudinous guest rooms sprouting all over the castle in many a location suitable for a guest room. In this particular guest room, she had the Cake Twins, also bound such that the bulk of their bodies was constrained from significant motion. They too cried a most distressed and volumous cry, and Twilight again recorded this wail of unhappiness. This she accomplished again with Rarity's trusty cassette player, though with a blank tape, not the one Rarity had previously had in there. She thus had her two data points, and teleported down to her lab, where she began to play back the tapes and crunch the numbers.
In short order, the CMC, their parent/guardians, and also Cup Cake and Carrot Cake (since their children were also missing) all descended upon Twilight's fortress of science and questionable data entry. They rushed into Twilgiht's castle, quickly overwhelming the sparsely stationed guards and breaking down the door to her laboratory. Twilight turned as they leapt for her. "Oh good, you are here. I have just determined that a toddler's crying is more annoying than a teenager's crying. I thus deem toddlers more annoying than teenagers. That is all I borrowed your children for."
This was a fucking aweful excuse for Twilight's clearly libertarian behavior (Hey, I had to sneak that joke in somewhere!), and the afformentioned ponies made this clear to Twilgiht by thoroughly pumbling her, breaking two ribs, one leg, a collar bone, and a horn.
Twilight totally deserved it. Rarity turned in the offending tapes to the police, and then burned the cassette player. She could buy a new one that wasn't definitely cursed.
And Twilight now is at the San Palamino institute for the criminally insane. Real shame, really. I don't know how she ended up this way. Bummer.
Author's Note
You have any idea how much tickle fetish pictures I had to shift through to find this, even in safe search mode?
Fuck this is definitely one of the top five weirdest stories I've written.
