“You spoil that niece of yours Twilight, you really do. She’s gonna grow up thinking the entire world belongs to her! Aren’t you worried she might be becoming a bit of a spoilt brat?”
“Look at that adorable face, Spike! How can you not want to buy her the whole toy store every time you see those chubby cheeks and little mop of hair on her head? Once upon a time, you were cute too.”
“...That’s a low blow, Twi. Just because I’ve suffered a bit of dragon acne recently, it doesn’t suddenly mean I’m some kind of freak! I’m actually pretty self conscious about it, if you must know.”
“Apologies Spike, I was only kidding! I had no idea you would take me so seriously…”
“Ha ha, so was I! And now you’re feeling sorry for me Twilight, d’ya think I could have the rest of the day off? My back is killing me, and the room is always such a mess when Flurry Heart visits.”
“Nice try, Spike. But you promised to help clear up before she left, and all this wrapping paper isn’t gonna put itself in the garbage can. In the future, maybe you’ll think twice about volunteering before realising what you’ve let yourself in for.”
“Darn me and my selfless nature, Twi. Don’t worry, I’ve learned my Friendship Lessons for the day: always look out for number one, never help anypony else in need, one good turn deserves diddly squat…”
“Very amusing, Spike. Now if you could just grab a broom and get ready, Shining Armour and Cadence will be here any second.”
In case the situation wasn’t already apparent by the previous conversation, the rulers of the Crystal Empire had fobbed off their one and only daughter (again) to one Twilight Sparkle in Ponyville while they attended to ‘official business’ elsewhere (really, a day of dating, dancing and fine-dining).
Twilight didn’t seem to mind being duped too much though, judging by the great enthusiasm she engaged her young alicorn relative in countless bouts of peekaboo and aerial loop-de-loop around the castle. Cadence and Shining got to save bits from the sagging royal coffers for not hiring a foalsitter, whilst Twilight had the opportunity to spoil the infant equine rotten and make stupid faces at her all day. Everypony wins!
...Except poor old Spikey-Wikey as per usual, forced to endure babyish noises echoing around the hollow walls for hours and now even pressed into a major clean-up assignment. The sole saving grace of this entirely joyless experience was that Twilight was on diaper duty. If she’d tried foisting that particular ‘honour’ his way, he just might have to contact his union.
...That is, if he’d bothered to renew his membership fees. That limited edition comic book with the holographic spine was just too tempting to pass up, dagnabbit.
“...Whatever, Twi. I just hope I can do the same for you someday, mumble grumble.” Spike continued to complain in vain as he made his way upstairs to retrieve his patented broom, which by this point had begun to feel almost like a fifth limb to him.
“Don’t listen to ol’ sourpuss Spike. You oughta have seen the little messes he left behind as a hatchling, he makes you look as presentable as Rarity whenever Fancy Pants comes into town!” Twilight let her gurglingly happy young charge know his hidden secret with a candid wink. “Now, is there anything I’ve forgotten about before you go? You’ve already eaten, judging by all the masses of green mush splattered on the walls. You had your bottle, the growing lump on my head when you threw it back tells me that. Hold on, I think there might be one more thing…”
Upon hearing this news, Flurry stopped cooing to herself and listened intently with widened eyes as Twilight divulged details of what exactly she’d meant. “If you fly upstairs to my bedroom and check the drawer to the left, you might just find something I was gonna wait and give you when you were a little bit older. Your mum might not be too happy about it, and who knows what your dad will think, but I really feel this is the right time to give you this very special gift. She helped me through some of the hardest periods of my life, and I’m sure that if you held her close and shut your eyes while she worked her charms, she’d give you the same benefits… wha? Where did Flurry Heart go?”
All it took was a single mention of the magic word ‘gift’ for Flurry to be away, her wings flapping fifteen-to-the-dozen as she swooped upstairs, almost knocking Spike over en route to the cleaning closet if his disgruntled hey! was anything to go by.
In the meantime, Twilight could be seen reminiscing about her favourite toy and what a wrench it would be parting with it. I’ll miss dear Smarty Pants, but if I can trust anypony to look after her, it’s my darling niece. Besides, it was difficult enough getting her back from Big Mac. It took all of my magical might to prise her from his strong hooves, and when I left the farm he wouldn’t stop sobbing like a newborn. I should speak to Applejack about him, the poor stallion is obviously missing something in his life…
Her daydreaming was abruptly cut short by the return of Flurry, excitedly goo-gooing away and firmly clutching an item in her hooves she seemed very attached to. Upon seeing this ecstatic reaction, Twilight’s grin stretched a mile long and she gazed up at her young relative with a look of complete vindication.
“See? I knew you’d like it! Those Crusaders don’t know what they missed out on, when they refused my present. I know you’ll take very good care of her, stroke her, let her sleep next to you, and make sure you keep her all to yourself. If certain ponies found out I gave her to you, I could be in a lot of trouble! Now let me see her one last time, before I…”
Twilight’s sentence was abruptly cut short, when she saw exactly what lay in Flurry’s innocent little pink hooves.
For starters, it wasn’t an inanimate cuddly doll.
Twilight should’ve known, her tiny wee niece was far too young to distinguish the difference between ‘left’ and ‘right’. Not every pony was a child prodigy like the older alicorn had been, especially when said equine hadn’t even been properly toilet-trained yet.
What Flurry had fetched instead was something even more personal to Twilight than Smarty Pants. It helped her out with occasional ‘urges’, you see. Stopped her from needing somepony else, when her princessly obligations made such fanciful notions impossible. She shared moments of joy, laughter, ecstasy with it, that were far better than the climax of any book.
In short, it was her electric vibrator.
A fuzzy lavender one at a crooked angle, as per requested specifications.
And now, it sat cheerfully in the hooves of her blithely naive niece, who cradled it lovingly like a kitten.
Twilight didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream or commit herself to the local nut house.
Alas, she never got the chance to do any of those things, for at that exact second…
“We’re bbaacckk!” Shining Armour called out genially, stepping into the giant map room unexpectedly with his wife. “A bit earlier than we said, but you know I can’t spend too long away from my little munchkin!”
“Don’t tell me you brought her even more presents? I told you before Twilight, you don’t have to do that! Most of them break after a couple of weeks anyway, you know how destructive she is!” Cadence glanced at the nearby mountain of gifts with a sigh, before turning her attention to her precious baby. “Anyway, did the two of you have fun? Wait, what’s that thing she’s holding onto? Is that a…”
“A tooth-cleaner!!”
Twilight didn’t even know what was coming out of her mouth at this juncture, when the lingering threat of a nervous breakdown seemed a very real possibility. So she blurted out the first suggestion that popped into her slowly frying brain, and had to be satisfied with it.
“A tooth-cleaner?” Cadence raised a skeptical eyebrow, both at Twilight’s rushed explanation and her suspiciously sweaty demeanour.
“Y-Yes, a tooth-cleaner! It’s like an electric toothbrush, but it’s designed to get to those hard-to-reach spots near the back of your throat! See that furry appendage there? It removes plaque and tartar like you wouldn’t believe! I was asked to try it out, and if I liked it, I was going to give it my Princess ‘Seal Of Approval’. You’d be surprised how much that’s worth, to a product just launching onto a crowded marketplace.” Considering Twilight was just making it up as she went along, she thought she was doing a pretty good job…
...Until Cadence shot her down with a couple of well-observed points.
“That’s all very interesting Twilight, but I have a couple of questions. First, I’ve been a princess longer than you. How come I’ve never heard of this ‘Seal Of Approval’? Lastly, why does Flurry Heart have it then? She doesn’t even have any teeth!!”
“E-Erm, well, that is to say… u-um…” Twilight had to admit, Cadence had her completely stumped. Darn the Princess Of Love and her pesky logic. I guess I’ll have to ‘fess up, and really face the music. Oh well, here we go…
With no real choice left in the matter, Twilight opened her mouth to reveal the awful truth…
But she was saved by the only pony who could possibly help her out of this jammiest of jammy jams. Her big brother, naturally.
“Isn’t it obvious, Cadence darling? Twily is the newest princess ‘on the block’, so of course she’s gonna get all the special offers! And she always was a forward thinker: by teaching Flurry how to take care of her dental health early on, she’ll save us hundreds of bits in dentist fees throughout her life! I can’t tell you the amount of times she insisted I floss, before going out on patrol! Just look at my sparkling gnashers now… if that doesn’t tell you her efforts were worth it, I don’t know what would!”
“Hurray, I’m saved! I-I mean, that’s it! Wow, how did you guess? It’s so true, nopony knows you like your big brother!” Twilight almost breathed a sigh of relief, but that would’ve given the game away. So instead she settled with just smiling at a clueless Shining Armour, silently resolving to hide her ‘flexible friend’ on the uppermost shelf in her bedroom as soon as this humiliating interrogation was over.
“That’s right! I’m the greatest! Which you’ll see for yourself, at the next big Sibling Supreme contest! You'll never outsmart me again!” Shining confidently boasted, before moving forward to pick up an airborne Flurry Heart. “Come on now, put that thing down. It’s not yours to keep! Geez Twily, anypony would think you promised it to her, like it was some kind of ancient family heirloom or something.”
“Ha ha… yeah.” Was all Twilight could mutter nervously in response.
“I see. Well, It’s true that you learn something new every day, and today I learned stuff about somepony which I’d have been quite happy never finding out about, thank you very much.” Cadence gave Twilight the evil eye as she passed her fellow princess, with a clear we’ll talk about this later undertone to her poisonous glare.
“I-I wonder who that could be. Anyway, I’ll let you both out.” Twilight was somehow able to resist her impending migraine long enough to stagger over to the front door. “Hurry back, ya hear? Always a pleasure, never a chore. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Tomorrow will come sooner than you think… right then.”
As soon as the married couple and their foal were at a safe distance, Twilight galloped like a bolt from the blue to hide the evidence, lest somepony else find it and ask her even more searching questions than the ones Cadence had flummoxed her with...
Only to find it wasn’t on the table where Shining had left it after wrestling it free from his daughter.
A certain dragon was present however, and he stared in surprise at Twilight’s aghast look of horror at what he was currently engaged in, to the accompaniment of a loud electrical hum.
“What? After hearing your long speech from upstairs about how this doohickey can take care of your teeth in places where normal brushes can’t reach, I was completely sold! I mean, if you’re gonna profit off of it, I see no reason why the Princess’s ‘Number One Assistant’ can’t earn a bit of loose change from the invention, too. Besides, it kind of tickles! I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot more of this sort of thing in the future…!”
Author's Note
Yes folks, it's 'out of my comfort zone' time again. Still, I had a lot of laughs writing this, and I hope you did too. Be seeing you! 
