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Sweetie Bot Needs an Upgrade
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"Rarity!" Sweetie Bot shouted, storming into Rarity's boutique. "Raarrr-iii-tttyy!"
"In here, Darling, in here," Rarity called from the kitchen.
Sweetie rushed across the boutique and stomped into the room. "Rarity! I need fifteen bits!"
"Fifteen bits? Whatever for?!"
"A month. I need fifteen bits... a month."
"What?" Rarity took her work glasses off and glared at Sweetie. "Why? And no, whatever it is! That's a lot of money."
"But I neeeed it!" Sweetie whined, eyes sparkling with saline solution.
"Then you shall just have to get a job!" Rarity declared. "I understand the Cakes need a babysitter, after what the twins did to Pinkie. She'll be on crutches for months."
"And because I'm made from high-stress alumumumumumuminum, it's okay for the twins to do the same to me? Don't be such a roboticist!"
Rarity closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "No. Fifteen bits a month? Just... no."
"But it's your fault I need the money, Rarity!" Sweetie declared with another stomp.
"My fault—how is whatever little crisis of yours this is my fault?"
Sweetie paced back and forth, blushing, her tail swishing. "You didn't buy it as a pre-installed module when you ordered me new, and now FlimFlam Robotics wants to sell it to us as a subscription!"
"What are you talking about? What module?"
"You know..." Sweetie blushed deeper. "The upgrade module."
Rarity blinked. "I do not know."
Sweetie, looking at the floor, whispered, "The 'be a lady' module."
Rarity blinked again. "Puberty? Fifteen bits a month seems quite expensive so that you can be even moodier and more of a pain in my flank, to be honest."
Sweetie rolled her eyes. "No, the tween module upgrades automatically and for free to puberty."
"When?" Rarity asked. "I should put that on my calendar so that I can speak to my therapist ahead of time and have him double my 'big sister's little helper' dosage."
"The puberty upgrade installs at random," Sweetie said.
"Oh," Rarity said. She side-eyed at her locked liquor cabinet before looking back at Sweetie. "I shall be adding my own upgrades from the package store, then, in anticipation. How do we know when the puberty upgrade has installed?"
"According to my manual, I'll start needing three times the electrical charge and sleeping more."
"Of course, of course," Rarity muttered. "That'll cost me at least fifteen bits a month..."
"So?" Sweetie said. "I need your credit card number."
"You haven't told me what subscription module you want."
"I did."
"You said 'be a lady,'" Rarity replied. "If you want a gorgeous dress and tips on poise and diction, I can give you those for free. In fact, it would be my pleasure."
Sweetie shook her head. "Not that."
"Then I don't understand, Darling."
Sweetie pulled her iPad from her saddlebag and passed it to Rarity.
Rarity's face went from white to a new color that would have required fifteen optical physicists, four poets, nine artists, six ophthalmologists, and a trademark attorney to find a name for.
"No," Rarity said, closing the tab and clearing the browser history. "No."
"But Rarity—"
"Sweetie Bot!" Rarity stomped, then stomped again. "Sweetie. Bot. How. Old. Are. You?"
"Eighteen trillion clock cycles. Almost eighteen and a half."
"Six months. You are six months old!"
"Don't impose your bio-normative units of measure on me! That's cultural opprobrium!"
"Appropriation. And no, it is not, actually. It's parenting."
"I happen to be a complete and up-to-date dictionary!"
"I'll buy you a better dictionary upgrade."
"But I have to have that other upgrade!"
"What pony put this idea into your head? I'll—I'll—" Rarity reared to her back hooves and punched the air.
"I don't want to use the upgrade," Sweetie said. "I just want to have it. All my friends have it!"
"Your friends," Rarity said through gritted teeth, "are biological."
"And I feel left out!"
Rarity looked at the iPad again. "Honestly, FlimFlam is charging for subscriptions to things that ought to be standard. Twilight says her chariot charges twenty bits a month for the airbag subscription."
"Scootaloo tried to hack that for Twilight," Sweetie said with a frown. "Nurse Redheart said she's lucky the airbags only broke her nose and not her neck."
"Sweetie Bot," Rarity said, "I am not buying somebot your age the... the... the lovemaking upgrade! I am not. Not, not, not. Whether we call you six months old or eighteen billion—"
"Trillion."
"—trillion, the answer is no!"
"Robiticist!"
"I will not, cannot, shall not buy my little sister... nookie!"
Sweetie's eyes crossed and ears trembled and she made a sound like a farting modem. "Word not found error. Retry idiom."
Rarity frowned. "I'm buying you the dictionary upgrade whether you want it or not."
"When will you buy me the other upgrade?"
"When you're older!"
"Then, when I'm older, will you buy me the deluxe version?"
"Deluxe—what?!" Rarity blinked and turned the unnamable color again.
"The deluxe version has an integrated vib—"
Rarity pressed a forehoof against Sweetie's mouth. "Ah bup bup bup bup bup silence! I can't have this conversation or I shall need my fainting couch."
Sweetie backed up a step, freeing her lips. "Well, what will you buy me?"
"So," Apple Bloom said, turning hard left with her steering wheel controller, "she bought us this wicked big TV?"
They sat in the Crusaders' Clubhouse, playing Mario Kart on an enormous wall-mounted plasma screen TV.
"Yup," Sweetie said. "I knew that asking her for the lovemaking upgrade would lead to a big fight and then any other request I made would seem downright reasonable in comparison. She even threw in eight bits a month for Nintendo Unlimited. Here, blue shell!"
"Pffft. Jerk," Scootaloo said as her Wario exploded, her voice nasally from the still-swollen broken nose. "I was gonna win."
Button Mash did a hard turn and drift, his Black Shy Guy up on two wheels, passing Scootaloo as the explosion of the blue shell faded.
"Is there really a deluxe option for that upgrade?" Button asked, his voice quiet.
"There's also super deluxe," Sweetie said. "You won't believe what add-ons that comes with."
Button passed out.
"Ha, passed him," Scootaloo said. "I win, despite your blue shell."
