Fluttershy and the Janitor

“To be absolutely honest, I feel much better not worrying,” said Rarity. She was walking alongside Applejack and Twilight up a relatively calm path through the woods outside of town. It was not in the area where Fluttershy lived, but rather near one of the darker state forests that everyone tended to avoid. It was pretty, but oddly foreboding.

“About Fluttershy, or about the fact that this place is supposedly filled with haints?” asked Applejack, looking out at the trees nervously.

“Darling, of course Fluttershy. I mean, perhaps I was being far too judgmental. If I were to have a relationship that were to get physical in that way, would I want her trying to interfere with my business?” She paused. “I suppose it’s just a frame of mind sort of thing. Also, the supernatural are not real.”

“No,” said Twilight. “They are. I mean, I’ve done most of my recent research on magic and yeah, it’s there. There’s no telling what it could be used for either. I mean, just last week I discovered a gas that turns things inside out.”

“My,” said Rarity, “that must be excellent for laundry.”

“Or as a diagnostic instrument,” said Twilight. “So, yes. This place is super haunted.”

“This doesn’t make me feel better,” said Applejack.

The path grew thinner, and for a moment it vanished in a patch of ferns. Then, suddenly, the trio broke through the brush and stumbled into a small campsite.

Spike looked up from the large bone he was gnawing on. “Twilight!” he said, his little dog-tail wagging.

“Spike! There you are!” Twilight knelt down and Spike jumped into her arms. He hugged him. “See?” she said, turning to Rarity. “Talking dog. Just because ghosts are scientifically explainable doesn’t mean they aren’t going to try to do ghost things to you.”

“Like what?” asked Applejack.

“There aren’t ghosts here,” said Spike. “But I’m pretty sure I smelled bigfoot the other day.”

“Really? What did he smell like?”

“Like big feet.”

“Big foot ain’t supernatural,” said Applejack. “He’s real as the hair on Rarity’s chest.”

“Applejack! That’s a legitimate medical condition!”

“Actually, him and I have a bit of a feud going on. So if I see him, we’re gonna have more issues than Pinkie Pie’s mental health.”

“Has everything been okay out here, Spike?” asked Twilight.

“Sure. There’s plenty of squirrels to chase. And I own all these trees now. They’re mine. Don’t touch them.”

There was a rustling in the bushes, and Rarity squealed.

“It’s bigfoot!” she cried. “I don’t know if I can handle the idea of a nonstandard shoe size!”

“I’m not bigfoot,” said Sunset as she stepped into the camp.

“Sunset!” cried Twilight. “There you are!”

“I was just checking layout,” she said, dropping a box of objects on the ground. “And getting these.”

“Sensors,” said Twilight, putting Spike down and picking them up. “You’ve been making these?”

“I’ve been doing my best. That’s why I needed all of your help. There’s a lot of them, and I have to set them up in accordance with the correct schematic for the reception spell to work.”

“And how long is that going to take, exactly?” asked Applejack.

“With all six of us, and hour tops.”

“Then why did you set up a whole camp?”

Sunset looked at the tent and the fire and various empty cans of beans. “Oh. I didn’t set this up for that.”

“Then what did you set it up for?”

“This is where I live.”

They stared at her. “Come again?” said Applejack.

“I materialized in your dimension in the body of a twelve year old girl. I couldn’t exactly get a job to, you know, pay for rent. And it’s not like I have parents here.”

“So you’ve been living in the woods since- -”

“For the last five years,” said Sunset. She shrugged. “You get used to it I guess. Mostly. You never get used to how cold it gets in the winter…”

“You could have said something!” said Rarity. “I’d have been glad to take you in!”

“Me too!” said Applejack. “Any of us, really!”

“Since last year. Before then, though, I was, well, unpleasant. Nobody liked me. So I had to live in the woods.” Sunset shrugged again. “At least I didn’t have to make a bed out of books in the second story of the school library.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “I have fantasies about that,” she whispered. “Ideally with a man triple my age, also covered in icing. And tied to a table in my party basement. With icing.”

“I have fantasies about being covered in icing and getting totally baked,” said Pinkie Pie.

The others paused for a moment, each of them unconsciously wondering where exactly Pinkie Pie had been up until that point.

“Plus,” continued Sunset, “since the Elder Priests used to perform sacrifices in this forest, the magic charge is pretty good. I mean, a baby in Equestria has several thousand times the magical residue without ANY sacrifices, but this is pretty good for earth. Or wherever the heck we are.”

“If this is earth, does that make Applejack and earth earth-human?” Pinkie Pie paused. “Or…am I an earth earth-human?” She slowly dropped to the ground and laid on it. “Do I have solidary with dirt?” Her eyes went misty as she put some of it in her mouth and chewed it. “It tastes so earthy…”

“Pinkie!” snapped Applejack. “Stop being weird!”

“I’ve actually been doing magic here for a while,” said Sunset. “Actually, I can show you!” She got on the ground and crawled into her ragged tent. There was a sound of beer cans and vodka bottles rolling around, and she emerged with a stained cardboard box. “See? I’ve been harvesting whatever magical artifacts I can get.”

“Sunset,” laughed Twilight. “Magic is a field effect brought on by concentrated transdimensional energy. It doesn’t come from ‘artifacts’?”

“Says you.” Sunset reached into the box. “I’ve got everything. Graveyard dust, unicorn hair- -my own, of course- -the blood of a Black Fiend, bullets from a Carcano rifle, a shard of the Doomsword- -and this!” She pulled out something that looked like a badly cut square piece of metal covered in partial graffiti. There was a large whole in the center.

“And what exactly is that?” asked Rarity, looking somewhat disgusted.

“Well, I was trying to get a Hand of Glory, but I couldn’t find one. So I went down to the public restroom in the park and sawzawed this out of one of the stalls instead!”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “So that means it’s a HOLE of- -”

“We all know what it is, Pinkie!” snapped Applejack.

“I don’t,” said Twilight.

“Trust me,” said Spike. “You’d rather not.”

“Unless you’re a Steel Panther fan,” added Pinkie Pie.

They were all interrupted by a sound of running through the woods.

“Is that bigfoot?” whispered Applejack. “Sunset, do you have a gun?”

“No,” said Sunset.

“She does,” said Spike. “But that’s not bigfoot. It smells too much like spandex and about…oh, ten, fifteen gallons of that gross body spray that women hate.”

“Thank you!” said Rarity. “Nobody believed me!”

Rainbow Dash suddenly burst into the camp. She was covered in thorns and scratches, and quite clearly had been crying. Confused, she looked around. The others realized that she was not wearing her skirt.

“Rainbow Dash,” said Pinkie. “You do realize you’re wearing spandex shorts right now, don’t you?”

“And they’re actually rather fetching,” said Rarity. “Frankly the fact that you live such an athletic lifestyle but wear a skirt always bothered me.”

Rainbow Dash covered her crotch. “Please don’t look at me.”

“Rainbow,” said Applejack, “we have all literally seen you naked.”

“Even I’ve seen you naked,” added Spike. “And I still have nightmares. Just because I’m a dog doesn’t mean I tolerate nudity. Despite the fact that I am myself nude right now.”

“Have a skirt,” said Rarity, tossing Rainbow Dash one.

“Thanks,” said Rainbow Dash, sounding more grateful than she ever had before.

“Um…where did you get that?” asked Sunset.

“I always carry several,” said Rarity. “You never know when you are going to have a skirt emergency.”

“I just wear pants,” said Sunset. “Mostly because I don’t have a razor to shave my legs.”

“Bah!” said Applejack. “That’s for sissies!”

“And for blondes,” muttered Rarity.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rainbow Dash stepped between them and sat down on one of the logs that made up Sunset’s furniture. Twilight sat next to her.

“Rainbow, what happened?”

“I accidentally declared my lesbian love for Fluttershy in front of the whole school,” she said. “And then Discord tore my skirt off and hung it from the flag pole, and everybody saw everything. Today has been the worst day of my life. EVER.”

“For one,” said Rarity, “you are in fact wearing shorts. You do know that, right?”

“Second,” said Applejack, “everyone already knew you had a weird thing for Fluttershy.”

Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened. “They- -they did? HOW?!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve had your hair dyed rainbows since the third grade. Also, I’ve seen you looking at my butt. To be absolutely honest I would look at it too, my haunches are excellent.”

“What…you mean you all…”

“Darling,” said Rarity, sitting beside Rainbow Dash and taking her hand. “We all knew.”

“Even I knew,” said Twilight, “and I’ve only known you for like three months.”

“Applejack even considered asking you to homecoming,” said Pinkie Pie.

Applejack turned several shades of scarlet. “I did not! I would sooner date my brother than I’d date Rainbow Dash!”

Pinkie Pie chuckled. “Exactly…”

“But Discord hanging your skirt on the flagpole?” said Sunset. “That seems a little extreme. Are you sure it happened that way?”

“Well, no, I just sort of…” Rainbow Dash put her head in her hands. “I just sort of saw red. I love Fluttershy. More than I love myself, and that’s saying something. What he was doing to her, I just saw red…and I pulled a knife on him…”

The entire group gasped. Even Pinkie Pie did, if only for the sake of solidarity. She had, of course, been there.

“You WHAT?!” cried Rarity.

“That- -that’s an instant expulsion!” cried Twilight. “Rule four, subsection G, one point two! ‘No dangerous weapons are permitted on the school grounds or in the school building, including but not limited to- -’”

“Rainbow.” Sunset knelt down in front of Rainbow Dash and put her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “You know how serious that is, right?”

Rainbow Dash looked dup at her and nodded slowly. “I do now. But he was molesting Fluttershy…I had to at least try…and now I’m a humiliated mess.” She lowered her head. “I guess I should just live out here in the woods like a dirty hobo.”

“Yeah,” said Sunset, flatly. “Because that’s the kind of people who live in the woods.”

They paused and all sat together for some time, occasionally talking about what Rainbow Dash needed to do next as well as some metaphysical considerations about whether actions in this world actually resulted in consequences. By this time, both Sunset and Twilight had utilized uncontrollable magic to manifest demonic forms of themselves and put hundreds of lives in jeopardy, and nothing disciplinary seemed to have been done against them. Rainbow Dash pulling a switchblade was probably far less severe than that.

As they were preparing canned beans- -Sunset’s sole source of food- -a strange sound wafted over the land. It was distant at first, but then rose to a horrible scream.

“What was that?” said Spike.

“You don’t know? You’re the dog!” cried Applejack.

“That doesn’t mean I know everything! Sunset?”

“I don’t think all that naked dancing and sacrificing was supposed to summon a demon,” she said, nervously, “but then again I don’t really know how magic is supposed to work in this dimension.”

“And you did it anyway?!” cried Applejack.

“Well it’s easier in Equestria! You just sacrifice cake to the Sun Goddess!”

Suddenly, the sky darkened as something massive and hairy leapt over the camp.

“BIGFOOT!” cried Rarity.

Instead of one big foot, though, four hooved feet landed beside her. The group stared up at an enormous elk standing over them. It opened its mouth and released the most horrible sound that any of them except Pinkie Pie had ever heard.

Fluttershy jumped down from its back, and then proceeded to hug it. “Thank you Jeremy,” she said. The elk nodded and leapt back into the brush, and Fluttershy dusted herself off.

“Come back!” cried Sunset, standing up suddenly. “Be my venison! I need protein or I’m going to die!”

“Just eat your hair,” said Pinkie Pie. “It’s made of bacon after all.”

“You’re about to be my bacon in a second!”

“So you want to pork me? Get in line.”

Fluttershy trotted over to them. “Guys!” she said. “Something really really bad happened!”

“Aside from me getting stripped in front of the whole school?”

“No, worse!”

“How can it get worse than that?!”

“Discord- -he’s been ARRESTED!”

The entire group turned their full attention to Fluttershy.

“What happened?” asked Twilight.

“The police came! They found him with Rainbow Dash’s skirt on the flagpole and twenty six students in holes dug in the ground! And then they found a switchblade and they said he was going to shake someone- -”

“But that’s not his knife!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.

“Of course not! Discord doesn’t need a knife, he’s Discord! But they took him away and…and…” Fluttershy was starting to sob. She suddenly crouched down, which was not exactly a good position for someone wearing a skirt. “And he’s going to be all alone and cold! He’ll be scared and confused, and he didn’t even do anything WRONG!”

The group was silent for a long moment.

“Well,” said Applejack at last. “He did strip Rainbow Dash’s skirt off.”

“No he didn’t,” said Pinkie Pie. “She totally did that to herself because she’s super clumsy when she’s not playing with balls.”

“Discord liked playing with balls,” said Fluttershy, wiping her eyes on her skirt. “And he showed me how to do it. He said I was good at it but I think he was lying.”

“Well,” said Rarity, “what he was doing, it wasn’t exactly…well…legal, was it now?”

Fluttershy looked up at her with tear-filled eyes. She appeared as confused as she was sad. “Why would you say that? He never did anything wrong. Sure, he smelled kind of funny and could be a little weird, but he has a good heart once you get to know him!”

“It’s just that…well…what you and him were doing together…”

“What were we doing together?” Fluttershy now looked absolutely confused.

“You know…things.”

“She means you were having sex with him,” said Spike. The entire group looked at him in shock. “What?” he said. “I’m like twenty in dog years. I’ve had sex. With Rarity’s leg. Annnnd that right there is why dogs aren’t supposed to talk…”

“What?” said Fluttershy. “That’s ridiculous! Why would you think something like that?”

“Because, um, you ARE?” snapped Rainbow Dash.

Fluttershy frowned. “I think I would know if I were having sexual intercourse. One, I pride myself in my chastity. Two, I prefer women. Three, he’s like a father figure to me. And despite my biological ‘mother’s’ best efforts, I would never do that sort of thing with my dad.”

“Ha!” cried Pinkie Pie. “Generational sandwich!” She paused. “Which would make your dad the meat…”

“Pinkie, don’t be vulgar,” said Rarity. She turned wide-eyed to Fluttershy. “But we heard you! In the bathroom- -”

“When I helped him unclog a toilet?”

“Ha!” said Applejack. “I told you you shouldn’t eat those fat-free chips, Rarity!”

“But in your house- -the backdoor, your beaver- -”

“You mean my literal back door, as in to my house? And the beavers you know I rescue? And what were you even doing in my house anyway?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you! You’re all my very best friends! I thought you would know me a little better than this!”

“It’s not that,” said Sunset. “It’s just that all the things we heard- -”

“And you didn’t stop to ask me? I know I’m quiet but that doesn’t mean I don’t exist. If you had concerns about my relationship with Discord you could have just talked to me.” She pulled her knees up to her face. “Not that it matters now. He was my friend, and now I’m never going to see him again, and he’s going to have to spend the rest of his life behind bars because I didn’t clear up a misunderstanding.”

“No!” said Rainbow Dash, standing up suddenly. “Fluttershy, I believe you!”

“You do?”

“Of course I do! I’ve been a total idiot!”

“So what else is new,” said Applejack, rolling her eyes.

“It isn’t his fault! It was me! That was my knife!”

“A knife?” Fluttershy gasped. “Rainbow, why would you have that sort of thing?!”

“Because I was trying to protect you. You’re all soft and vulnerable and stuff…and kind of hot.”

Fluttershy blushed. “Oh. Well. I am certainly soft.”

Rainbow Dash turned to her friends. “I can’t just let him take the blame for something I did.”

“And I cannot forgive myself either,” said Rarity.

“For what?”

“For having such a dirty mind, of course! All those perfectly innocent things, and where does my mind go? To sex!” She tapped her fists against her head. “I might as well live in the woods with Sunset like a dirty, dirty savage!”

“Gee,” said Sunset, darkly. “Thanks.”

“I think we can still help him,” said Rainbow Dash. She extended a hand to Fluttershy, who took it. “But I’m going to need all of your help to do it!”

“I already told you,” said Rarity, standing up. “I have to atone for this! I can’t- -I just can’t process this in the present state. I just can’t.”

“I’m always in for fightin’ the system,” said Applejack.

“And if he’s not poking Fluttershy, then he can start frosting my cake!” said Pinkie, gleefully. “And I LOVE frosted cakes!”

“Sunset? Twilight?”

“It was going to be a cold night here anyway,” sighed Sunset. “I was probably going to freeze to death. Again.”

“And I’m a compulsive follower,” said Twilight, adjusting her glasses. “So I’m okay.”

“Me two!” said Spike. “I’ve barely even been in on all of this, so I figure I should get to do SOMETHING!”

“Right,” said Rainbow Dash. “Let’s do this!” She pumped her fist, but then slowly turned to Fluttershy. “Um…did you also say you dig chicks?”

“Yes. And right now, you’re starting to look pretty impressive…”

Rainbow Dash let out a nearly inaudible squeak as she screamed with joy internally. "'>