"Starliiiiiiiiiiiiight...!" Trixie caterwauled. The poor mare shivered under the covers of her bed with her duvet pulled up to her pouting chin. "Helpppppppp Trixieeeeeee...!"
Starlight Glimmer burst into the bedroom, shirtless, like the beginning to A Story From North A-mare-ica. "Trix, what's all this screaming for?"
"I'm scared!" The Great and Powerful pony whimpered. Her night cap nearly slid off her horn from all her incessant trembles. "The underwear is going to get Trixie when she sleeps!" Her eyes narrowed with chiseled intensity. "The truest of scavengerssss..."
A groan escaped Starlight's lips. Nevertheless, she strolled into the dimly-lit room, channeling a motherly tone. "Now now, Trixie, you know very well that no unmentionables are prepared to ambush you! Not in our house! Not while I'm around!!"
"Then why don't you lie in bed with Trixie?!" The showmare's eyes sparkled with hope. "Then you can scare all of the pantaloons away!"
"Not tonight, I can't. I've got taxes to do. Horse taxes..."
"But Trixie is scaaaaaaaaaared!" The pony in the bed looked all around, her pupils shrinking tinier and tinier with each lace-hemmed shadow that beguiled her mind. "All sorts of lace bodices could be waiting in the rafters!"
"Trixie, our house doesn't have rafters! We don't even have an attic!"
"A pox upon your architectural assumptions!" Trixie bravely slipped a fetlock loose from beneath the covers—if only long enough to gesture demandingly across the domain. "Check the room for Trixie!"
"I mean it, Trixie. I'm not even under audit—"
"Check for Trixie!"
"Fiiiiiiiiine..." Starlight's rolling eyes brought her to the closet. "Seems the first and best place to check. Hmmm?" She kept her eyes locked with the mare's in the bed across the room. "Do we have any underwear in this closet?" With an audible schwissssh, Starlight slid the wooden doors open and shut more than once, displaying the dangling forest of bespeckled fabric. "See? Nothing but a bunch of identical sorceress robes!"
"Check the wardrobe! The waaaaaardroooobe, Glim-Glam!"
"Right. Right." Stifling a sigh, Starlight trotted over to the large oak armoire in question. "Hello in there~?" She knocked on the wooden finish a few times before pressing her fuzzy ear to it. "Anything pink and lacy in there~? Whalebone or silk~?" She swung the creaky doors open, peered inside, and shrugged at the rest of the room. "I guess all the corsets went off to pasture~!"
"Check the drawers!"
"Trixie—"
"That's where I would be hiding if I was a ravenous set of boxers, ready to sink my teeth into a sleeping pony's jugular!!"
"Okaaaaaaaaaaaaay..." Starlight pulled one drawer open. "Jeremy?" A second. "Hillary?" A third. "Boob?" She turned and shrugged. "Nowhere, mare!"
"Hrmmmmmmmmmmmm..." Trixie's teeth were grinding in the glow of her pine cone nightlight. "Trixie has a bad feeling about this. The briefs and jockstraps have obviously developed advanced cloaking technology. They care nothing for the Treaty of Algeron..."
"Oh for Celestia's sake..." Patience waning thin, Starlight galloped towards one bit of furniture after another. "Any thongs inside the easy-chair?! Nope! Brassieres hiding under the ironing board? Nuh-uh! What negligees, their time now come, slump towards the radiator to be born?!? Nada!!!"
"Check the bidet!" Trixie demanded.
Starlight's ears drooped. "Not even with a million bits could you pay me to do that—"
"Check now! Check for Trixie!"
ONOMATOPOEIA!!! A crater formed under the appliance in question, courtesy of a focused energy beam issuing outward from Starlight's horn like a Model 6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle blast. Thunder echoed across the western half of Ponyville, before settling into light rumbles that shook the foundation of the house for a lingering thirty second. Outside, crickets and owls shrieked with noise, before likewise settling.
"Jee. Look." Starlight droned, waving a hoof at the immolated remains of the thoroughly obliterated appliance. "No panties."
After a few breaths spent blinking at the scorch marks and flaming porcelain bits, Trixie folded her forelimbs with a huff. "No! Trixie still doesn't feel safe!"
"Ungh!!" Starlight Glimmer stomped her hoof. "For the love of bloomers—!"
"Eeep!" Trixie shrank partially under the covers. "Don't swear in front of Trixie!"
"I am soooooooo behind on paperwork! You just wouldn't believe the loopholes I gotta calculate before the fifteenth of this month! I mean..." Starlight rubbed her head, sweating. "Just Patroteon income alone...!"
"Trixie thought you switched to SubscribeStirrup."
"What can I do to relieve your fears and get you to fall asleep already?!?" Starlight Glimmer gnashed her teeth, eyes twitching in desperation as she pleaded with her best friend. "Please, Trixie! I'm begging you!"
"Well..." Trixie tongued the inside of her muzzle. "There is one place that you haven't checked yet."
"And that is?"
Trixie's eyes glinted in true anime fashion, summoning a letterbox from the heavenly peripheries of that moment in time. "You must check... under Trixie's bed."
"Pffffffft. That it?"
"Do not huff at this request. Trixie's future depends on it!"
"Fine. Fine. Whatever." Starlight side-trotted towards the bed. "But this is the last time I do this for you. Ever!"
"Mmhmm!" Trixie cutely nodded.
"You're a big girl, Trix. You need to perform reconnaissance for dangerous rogue underoos on your own."
"Mmhmm-Mmhmm!" Trixie nod-nodded.
"Hey!" Starlight put on her best stageplay voice as she slowly bent low to peer under the bed. "Paging all malevolent underpants!" She lifted the skirt of the bed and flattened her cheek at sea level to gaze into the shadows beneath. "Surely you aren't plotting my friend's demise—!!" She froze, blinking.
A sapient chastity belt blinked back, its razor-barbed crotch space opening like a lantern fish's mouth with each huffing word: "Shhhh! She's the juiciest when she's full of adrenaline!"
"What is it?!" Trixie asked, concerned. "What does Starlight see?"
"Uhm..." Starlight dropped the skirt of the bed, stood up, and took a deep breath. "... ... ...to Tartarus with taxes. I'm sleeping with you." And she squirrel-leaped onto the covers.
"Yaaaaaaaaaay!" Trixie caught her in a full-horse hug and the two rolled over beneath their protective duvet dome.
