“Sunset, you need to hide me!” Dash gasped, slamming Sunset’s office door behind her. “Does this door lock? It’d be really great if this door locked!”
Sunset Shimmer had been in the middle of typing a resignation letter. She typed one at least once a week. She hadn’t actually sent any of them yet, because something always dragged her back from the brink. Her paycheck had been a wonderful lifeline several times already.
Sunset saved the draft in the same file as the dozens of others. She was getting really good at writing resignation letters.
“Is the building on fire?” Sunset asked.
“No.”
Sunset pointed. “You can hide in the closet.”
“Thanks!” Dash ran into the closet, slamming the door shut.
Sunset got back to work, going through resumes. She stopped at a particularly qualified young woman and tried to decide if she should send her an offer letter or warn her away so she could do something fulfilling and non-bean-related with her life.
“Aren’t you gonna ask me why I’m in the closet?” Dash asked, her voice muffled by the door.
“Dash, you have rainbow hair and you’re in a relationship with Fluttershy. You haven’t been in the closet for years.”
“I meant this closet. Why I’m hiding here.”
“I wasn’t gonna bother.”
“Okay, okay, so, you know about that Couch that we have, right?”
“I said I didn’t want to know- yes, Dash, I know about The Couch.”
“Okay well once I found out that there was porn on the internet, I was thinking that I should totally surprise Fluttershy by sending her some. I watched like, at least a hundred videos trying to get ideas and there was this really awesome one where this girl, like, okay, have you ever seen one of those underwater cameras?”
Sunset took a deep breath. “Wrong details, Dash. Just skip ahead.”
“I decided to send her a picture of my dick. And, uh I sent it to the wrong address.”
“So?”
“I maybe sent it to the Beanis Inc mailing list. There are about a thousand people on it.”
“You sent a picture of your dick to a thousand people.”
Dash was silent.
“If you’re nodding I can’t see it, Dash.”
“I’m nodding!”
“And all of them are our customers. Great. This is a PR disaster!” Sunset perked up, smiling. Maybe, finally, the stupidity had reached its peak and she could stand aside and say it wasn’t her fault and also she told them so.
“You don’t understand, Sunset! They saw my dick!”
Sunset’s expression fell. “Oh no. You can’t mean-”
“There was already a riot at my house. Dad said he was holding them off with albums of my baby pictures, but I don’t think they’re gonna just give up, and when they get frustrated this is gonna be the first place they come!”
Sunset put her head in her hands.
There was a sharp knock at the door.
“The second place they’re gonna come involves my dick! They’re gonna chafe me to death!” Rainbow wailed.
“The door’s open!” Sunset yelled, without looking up.
“Oh good, you’re here,” Twilight said. “Sunset, I want you to meet Mrs. Spoiled Rich. She’s from the bank.”
That got Sunset’s attention.
“Good afternoon,” Mrs. Rich said, looking down at Sunset in the way that someone with a respectable job would look at someone in Sunset’s position. Behind all the nice business cards and ergonomic office furniture, they still made sex toys. Spoiled looked like the kind of person who only experienced sexual pleasure when she was foreclosing on an orphanage.
“She’s here to examine our facilities and business practices as part of our newest loan application,” Twilight explained, as Spoiled and Sunset shook hands with all the friendly demeanor of a pair of tigers circling each other and looking for weaknesses. There was something about her that reminded Sunset of how she’d been in the bad old days, but with a lot more money and experience backing it up.
“As you are the head of accounting, I felt you would be better positioned to answer my questions,” Spoiled Rich said.
“Is she here for my penis?” Dash asked, from the closet.
“I’m so sorry, Twilight isn’t always the most socially aware when it comes to boundaries,” Sunset said.
“She tried to bribe me with an offer of sex from the employee hiding in your closet,” Spoiled Rich snapped. “I have grave concerns about this business. It’s clear what money we’ve already invested has been squandered.”
Sunset laughed nervously. “Why don’t we start over here?” Sunset led her down the hallway, quickly.
“R&B?” Mrs. Rich asked.
“It’s kind of like an inside joke,” Sunset said. “Are you sure you want me showing you around? Twilight is usually the one who does tours.” And Sunset hated having to explain things.
“The amount of money involved is no joke,” Rich retorted.
“How much is this loan even for?” Sunset asked.
“You should know, you’re the accountant.”
“You’re right. I should. I really, really should. People keep doing things without asking me.” Sunset pulled the doors open. The handle was unpleasantly sticky. “Is this about that idea Twilight had to open a retail-”
Before she could finish the question, a jet of queso shot past them from deeper inside the lab like a pepperjack firehose.
“Oh God! Daddy, harder!” Tempest screamed.
Sunset slammed the lab door shut.
“How about we go look at the hydroponics bay?” she suggested.
“Y’all shoulda known to knock before ya came in,” Applejack admonished. “Genetic engineering is delicate an’ detail-oriented work.”
“Bean-tentacles, Applejack?” Sunset sighed. “Really?!”
“Havin’ a bit of trouble with th’ test strains,” Applejack admitted. “Ah think Dash thought th’ CRISPR was a refrigerator an’ stuck her sushi in it again. Ain’t the first time. Octopus an’ string beans is a bad combination on th’ best of days.”
Spoiled Rich adjusted her clothing. “I was molested by plants! You should be thankful I’m not pressing charges!”
“Aw, they didn’t know what they were doin’,” Applejack said. “If y’all had just listened and stopped strugglin’ they would’ve gotten bored and let go sooner!”
“I will be reporting these massive safety violations to my superiors,” Spoiled Rich growled. “I assure you, you will not be getting this or any other loan application approved.”
A siren blared.
“What does that mean?” Spoiled asked.
Sunset pulled a sheet of laminated paper out of her pocket and looked at the guide there. Twilight had taken inspiration from the so-called ‘beep codes’ that were used in the computer industry and applied it to the alarm system.
“Three short bells repeating…” Sunset muttered, then groaned. “It means there’s an angry mob outside. Again.”
“Again?” Spoiled frowned.
There were about a thousand people outside, a surprising number of them men, beating on the doors. They looked like angry, horny ants from the roof of the building.
“I tried asking them nicely, then giving them ten percent off coupons,” Twilight said. “I’m out of ideas since we’re no longer allowed to rent construction equipment for crowd control.”
“Construction equipment?” Spoiled Rich gasped.
“I just wish I knew why they were here,” Twilight groaned.
“I, uh.” Sunset frowned. “I think I know, unfortunately.”
“You do?”
“Dash sent a picture of her dick to the mailing list.”
“Oh. Oh!” Twilight looked down. “That explains why some of them look familiar. And the signs they have.”
“’Gib Cocc,’” Spoiled read aloud. “And they’re rioting… why, exactly?”
“Rainbow Dash’s penis is irresistible, possibly because of magical properties,” Twilight explained. “We’re still studying the effects. It’s difficult, because anyone who sees it ends up having sex with her. Now we know what happens when a large sample size sees it at the same time.”
“We could just let them have her,” Sunset suggested.
“Don’t be silly, Sunset.” Twilight looked at her, annoyed. “How could you even suggest that?”
“Sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t talk about throwing a friend to an angry mob like that-”
“What? No. I meant that you don’t increase sales by satisfying people. Clearly these people need relief. We should run off some order forms and throw them into the crowd!”
“Twilight, capitalism doesn’t solve all problems.”
“The invisible hand is real, Sunset.”
“What about calling the police?” Spoiled suggested.
“Oh,” Twilight coughed. “They don’t like coming out here. Sunset, could you get Mrs. Rich to safety? The bank probably wants their loan officer back safely.”
“I have just the place.”
Sunset opened the closet.
“Get in,” she said.
“Woah, occupado!” Dash said, holding up her hands.
“If the mob gets here, throw Rainbow Dash at them,” Sunset suggested, helping Spoiled into the closet with a hand on her back. Really less helping and more shoving, to be honest.
Spoiled frowned as she was shut in the closet with a leather jacket, a labcoat, and a girl several decades younger than her.
“You’re the one the mob is after?” she asked.
“Yeah. My dick is just too awesome. It’s a hazard.”
“It can’t be that good.”
“Bad news, Tempest isn’t available,” Sunset said. “She won’t even be able to walk straight for a few hours.”
“How was I supposed to know product-testing and security guard work were so incompatible?!” Twilight groaned. “I swear between this and the assassins it’s like she’s never around when I need her.”
“I’m sorry, but… assassins?”
“It was nothing important.”
“The word ‘assassins’ makes it sound important.”
“They were less hired killers, and more extreme anal fetishists. Don’t give me that look, I tried to avoid the topic but you made me explain it! If you say anything else about it, it’s a dollar in the jar!”
Sunset folded her arms. The jar was too full already.
“Now we just need to figure out how to sexually satisfy hundreds of people at the same time,” Twilight said. She put her hands on her hips. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but I suppose we could offer them the Black Friday coupons.”
“I don’t think coupons will work, Twilight.”
“But the buy-one-get-one coupon is over a fifty dollar value!”
“I have a better idea.”
“It’s like something out of one of my Japanese animes,” Twilight whispered, entranced.
Below them, in the parking lot, Applejack’s over-eager bean plants were hard at work.
“I can’t believe we did that,” Sunset mumbled. “It has to be a crime.”
“They seem happy enough,” Twilight said. “Maybe we should get some seeds from this strain and sell them…”
Sunset looked up at Twilight. Twilight was recording everything taking place below them on a handy-cam.
“Do you want me to list all the problems with that idea?”
“You’re right, shipping seeds has all sorts of additional regulations. They’d probably need to pass FDA approval for GMOs, too…” Twilight sighed. “That’s too bad. Unless we had a public greenhouse and charged admission…”
“Twilight, no.”
“Beans as a Service might be the new paradigm!”
Sunset reminded herself that she had bills to pay.
Also, Twilight was her friend.
Either way, she shouldn’t throw her off the roof.
Spoiled took a long drag on her cigarette.
“I haven’t been fucked like that since my second husband,” she said, after a few moments of silence.
“Yeah.” Dash smirked, leaning back in the small area allowed by the closet. “I’m pretty good-”
“I hated my second husband.”
Dash winced.
“But he had a great dick.”
The door opened.
“Okay, the mob is gone and- oh Celestia why?!” Sunset shielded her eyes. “What the hell is wrong with you, Dash?!”
“She saw my dick,” Dash explained.
“Get some clothing on!”
Spoiled stepped out of the closet, not bothering to get her discarded clothing. “I’ve changed my mind about the loan,” she said. “I’ll send you the paperwork in the morning.”
She walked out, still smoking and nude save for high heels.
“So did I save the day?” Dash asked.
Sunset slammed the closet door closed.
Author's Note
Kilo-
A metric prefix meaning one thousand.
Gram
(Noun)
1.(in the East Indies) the chickpea used as a food for people and cattle.
2.any of several other beans, as the mung bean, Vigna radiata (green gram or golden gram), or the urd, V. mungo (black gram).
-Gram
A combining form extracted from telegram, used in the formation of compound words that have the general sense “message, bulletin”:
