Adopted by a Mad Motherly Matchmaker

Rainbow awakened in the middle of the night from a distant knock on the door. Her clock said three AM. The pounding downstairs was measured rhythmically in quick beats of two followed by a long pause before the next pair of raps, almost like a slow heartbeat but strangely mechanical. She rolled out of bed with an immediate sense of uneasiness. Anyone calling at this hour, it couldn't have been for anything good. But who would knock like that?

Airborne now, she zipped quickly past Pickle and Barley’s closed door, hoping that the disturbance wouldn't interrupt their sleep. Out here the banging seemed to shake the whole house. Thud, thud.

Her heart was beating anxiously in her throat as she neared the rattling door. She didn't know what to expect when she opened it but it certainly wasn't nothing. She peered out into the cold darkness of night confused that the knocking had stopped and there was no one in sight. A stupid prank?

A soft breeze ruffled a piece of paper at her hooves. She looked down to see a discarded show bill. Stepping on it to keep it from fluttering away, she took a closer look in the porch’s dim light. At the top it read, in bold black letters, The Washouts Present: The Amazing Barrel Twins. Beneath it was a dynamic illustration of who could only be Pickle and Barley chained with their backs strapped to a large TNT barrel that was floating down an alligator infested river toward a towering waterfall.

“What the fuck?” she whispered in breathless trepidation. “This doesn't-” Her stomach dropped.

Rainbow spun around and dashed back upstairs. She flung open the door to the twins’ room and switched on the light.

“Barley?” she cried in panic. “Pickle?” Their bed was empty and cold. She did a lap around the room looking in the closet and under the bed. They were gone but where?

Rainbow rushed back to the porch and looked down over Ponyville, terror welling within her. The whole town was dark as expected for such a late hour except for one structure which shouldn't have been there. A great big glowing circus tent stood tall in the park.

She sprang urgently from the porch and swooped into the silent town below. She rocketed straight to the great striped canopy and right through the open flaps of the entrance where larger show bills depicting the twins' incredible exploits hung on display. Inside she touched down on what felt like carpet, skidding to an abrupt stop as she lost her sight completely. Although the exterior was lit up brightly by a ring of skyward facing spotlights, the inside was almost as dark as a cave.

“Pickle?” she called desperately into the silence. “Barley? Are you in here?” She was now on the verge of tears.

Nearly blind, Rainbow was feeling her way around. Suddenly she felt something lash around her neck. It yanked her backwards, her flanks slammed down on a bench where several snake-like ligatures slithered around her every limb, crisscrossing over her body. She grunted in surprise, attempting to leap from the seat but she'd been virtually cocooned to it by unseen forces.

There came a drumroll accompanied by bombastic applause all around from ponies that seemed to appear suddenly from thin air. Symbols crashed and the house lights illuminated the interior allowing her to see an audience of hundreds seated in a circular array around a tall column in the center of a large cement clearing.

Rainbow looked down at her body to see that she'd been completely wrapped up inside long tapes of red admission tickets. Despite their assumed fragility she could not break them.

Her eyes shot up, playing over the crowd and a new discovery shook her to the core. She gasped in horror. Every single pony in attendance was a Scootaloo. Not only that but each one had sustained a different gruesome bodily injury and disfigurement. They even appeared to be in different states of decomposition, some freshly deceased, others with pale, withered skin, and some just skeletons. On her right sat a Scootaloo without a head. To her left was a Scootaloo with a wooden fence post lodged in her eye socket and bursting through the back of her skull. The dead filly did not seem to mind this detail in the slightest as she clapped in exuberant anticipation of the show.

Triumphant fanfare erupted from an invisible band and a soaring pegasus exploded into the tent, captured in the aura of a racing spotlight. A series of rings suspended in the air ignited with flames in succession as she did a lap around the tent through classic fiery hoops. The audience below her burst into raucous cheers. It wasn't until the mare finished her run and set down on a short pedestal in the center arena that Rainbow recognized the one pony she'd never forgive, Lightning Dust. The ex Washout captain wore a white tophat and tails like a ringmaster. She bowed, smirking to the audience of applauding, dead Scootaloos.

“Ladies and gentlestallions,” she announced in a booming voice, hopping down from her perch. “Welcome to our stunt show spectacular!”

Cheers swelled again from the crowd of Scootaloos.

“Tonight we have a very special treat for you. You are about to witness a feat never before attempted in front of a live… or dead audience. Our very own Amazing Barrel Twins will attempt to defy death right before your very eyes. Please direct your attention to the center of the big top, one hundred feet in the air!”

Lightning Dust pointed up as an array of spotlights came on to highlight the base of the central column. The concentrated circles of light quickly raced up the mighty column to the dizzying heights above where a peculiar looking apparatus stood.

Fresh terror gripped Rainbow as she spotted two tiny figures. The foals hung motionless upside down, tethered by opposite ends of the same rope which pulled taut over an enormous pulley wheel. Both Barley and Pickle were restrained in straightjackets and wrapped in chains. They looked like the dangling weights of a cuckoo clock. As it so happened, there was also a huge clock face with only one hand and gradated with second marks. It stood boldy atop what looked like a raised guillotine over the midway point of the rope.

“No,” shrieked Rainbow. “Stop this! Stop the show!”

Lightning Dust continued as she paced around the arena. “Not only must our brave escapists undo their bonds before the clock counts zero but they must do so in complete synchronicity. Should one of the twins free themselves first, the other will fall and be dashed to bits upon the cement a hundred feet below.” A pair of spotlights shown upon a couple of red and white targets painted on the hard ground far below each foal.

“Should they even become unbalanced, the very same will happen. Those in the front row are advised to cinch up those rain parkas just in case,” she added with a giggle.

“Pickle,” screamed Rainbow as she struggled to free herself.

“Hi, Rainbow,” answered the colt, unable to wave or even look at her.

“Tell her to stop the show!”

“Rainbow, you're embarrassing us,” Barley whined. “Just watch. It'll be fine. We used to do this all the time back at the orphanage.”

A drumroll interrupted their exchange.

“We have one minute on the clock.”

The audience shouted in unison, “Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”

The symbols crashed and a perilous sounding piece of music began, played by an unseen orchestra.

Pickle and Barley began to struggle and swing like butterflies hatching from their chrysalises. The mighty wheel rocked precariously back and forth as they shifted. If they offset their weights too much, they'd slip right off of the pulley. How could anypony possibly escape such a predicament?

Barley got a loop of chains off of her, allowing it to dangle in front of her face but they'd already used almost half their time.

Rainbow writhed violently in her seat, wrenching every limb to no avail. She swore obscenities to the sky in her helplessness.

The big wheel creaked as Barley slipped down while her brother ascended.

“Ten seconds,” gasped Lightning Dust. “Will they make it?” she asked in mock concern.

The excited crowd of Scootaloos began to chant, “Drop! Drop! Drop! Drop! Drop!”

Lightning Dust cackled maniacally as the clock ticked over the five second mark and the audience began to count down again with feverish bloodlust.

“Five!”

“Four!”

“Three!”

“Two!”

“One!”

The waited blade came down in indifferent finality with a thwack, severing their lifeline. The two bound foals plummeted earthward, screaming all the way.

“No,” cried Rainbow as she clenched her eyes shut. Even in darkness she could still vividly see in her mind's eye the next sounds she heard.

Thud splat.

Thud splat.

Rainbow awakened with a jerk. She shot up in her bed, panting, her heart beating so hard that it ached. Her glow in the dark clock said two fourteen A.M. She rubbed her clammy face with her hooves. What a fucked up dream. Clearly she was even less mentally stable over this issue than she thought.

Weary, she forced herself up and went to the twins' room, looking for something to put her mind at ease. She opened their door quietly and was blessed with the sound of them breathing softly in the dark. From the soft glow through the curtains she could see two little lumps under the covers. They faced each other while they snored. They were safe. But even though it wasn't real, Scootaloo’s aparant resentment and spitefulness toward the foals stuck in her mind like a bitter aftertaste.

A little more at peace now, Rainbow returned to her room and laid back down. She rustled around trying to get comfortable again. Then she shut her eyes and waited but sleep wavered just out of reach for quite a while till fear's adrenaline left her body. - - -

The shrillness of Rainbow's alarm clock dragged her grudgingly into the hell that was consciousness. Her weariness felt like being entombed under a pile of sandbags but she quickly forced herself upright in her bed just to keep from falling back asleep.

Her whole night had been fraught with viscerally terrifying nightmares of Scootaloo, the twins and the Washouts. The Washouts… That was one thing she didn't have to worry about in reality at least. Lightning Dust and the rest of the them were behind bars for life though it did little to heal what had been done.

“Ugh,” she grunted, shambling to the door. “Gotta make ‘em breakfast.”

She smiled weakly as she heard laughter emanating from down the stairs. It was nice to hear that sound again in her house. She followed their voices to the kitchen where she found the two foals not eating but engaging in some sort of game.

Barley was laying face up on the floor, her head resting on a big wooden cutting board. An array of stuck knives surrounded her face. Pickle stood on the counter above her, dangling a knife tip down in his wing that he'd pulled from the block.

“What are you doing?” shrieked Rainbow in alarm.

Pickle winced at her interruption and dropped the knife. It stuck in the cutting board with a thud between Barley's ears. The two foals looked at her.

“Don't play with knives,” she scolded, pushing the knife block away.

Pickle hopped off of the “Oh, sorry. They didn't let us play with knives at the orphanage either. We just assumed it would be different here.”

“No, of course not. Knives are dangerous and they're tools, not toys.” She set the cutting board on the counter and began yanking blades out.

“But they have knife throwing tricks at the fair sometimes,” argued Barley.

“Yeah, well… those are… very practiced ponies,” she fumbled trying to protect the validity of her point. Stupid sensationalism setting bad examples…

“It would be cool to do that as a job though,” added Pickle.

“Yeah,” agreed Barley.

Rainbow gritted her teeth in frustration at their insatiable attraction to such things.

“Listen, I'm gonna make breakfast for everyone. Why don’t you go draw some pictures or check out the workout room… uh, but don't mess with the weights,” she added fearfully.

“Okay,” they replied, turning away.

Rainbow sighed and opened up the fridge. Why didn't they warn her about this at the orphanage? She briefly wondered before realizing that the question basically answered itself.

She checked the upper pocket on the right side door for Starlight’s special energy vial stash that she kept for whenever she had bad nights followed by an important day. Much to her chagrin, the shelf was empty.

“Shit,” she grumbled under her breath. “I forgot to restock. I can’t be this sleep deprived on my first full day of parenting. I feel like I’m gonna drop dead right now.”

Maybe she could go to the grocery store and- no… There was no over the counter replacement for those; she needed the good stuff today ASAP.

Despite her weary body and frazzled brain, she pushed through to make breakfast for the foals but not herself. “Breakfast is ready,” she called. She scooted the plates onto the table and sighed as if it had been a herculean ordeal. The twins eagerly got in their seats and dug in, excited to have good food that was made just for them.

“Okay, I gotta go get something from a friend real quick,” cautioned Rainbow. “Just eat your breakfast and stay out of trouble. Don't do anything dangerous and don't join the circus. This’ll only take two minutes.”

“Okay,” they nodded dismissively, mouths already full of food. Satisfied things would be fine in her short absence she zipped shakily out the door and toward the Castle of Friendship.

She dropped in unannounced as usual but didn't check the library first. She instead raced straight to Starlight Glimmer’s room. She raised a hoof, ready to knock on the door when she spied a piece of parchment tacked there right in front of her face.

She blinked her still blurry eyes and began to decipher the pretentiously elegant script apparently left behind by Starlight.

Twilight,

I left on a solo map mission in Appleloosa. Back whenever… You know how it goes.

Starlight

“Ugh,” grunted Rainbow in frustration. Did that mean Twilight was also gone somewhere? Spike too? How in the hell was she going to get her fix now? Right now?

Leaving the note in place she unlatched the door and pushed. Perhaps she could just find some energy potions in her room and repay her later. She must have had her own stash somewhere in there. She invented them for her own use after all.

The contrast between Twilight and Starlight's personal quarters and lab spaces was subtle but noticeable. Starlight was a stickler for regimented neatness while Twilight was a step toward organized chaos.

Starlight’s composite bedroom and laboratory looked spotless as if nothing was happening here despite all the books and glass lab equipment. She did just leave on a long trip but the room reminded her of when she finally made Scootaloo’s bed and it just looked… staged.

What caught her eye first was a couple of open books on her desk. She began rifling through the drawers there, one after another, thinking it the most obvious place to put such an item.

“There you are,” she gasped, a little glass clink sounding when she pulled out the big center drawer.

She picked a familiar vial of blue liquid out of a row of identical vials. Then she unceremoniously downed it. Her eyes automatically returned to the abandoned books before her. The top of the page of the closest one read Reproductive Cutie Marks Cont. Sex Work.

“What the,” she snorted with intrigue. Curious, she began flipping slowly through the book which appeared to scientifically chronicle unusual cutie marks. What was Starlight doing researching the sex cutie marks section? Rainbow chortled thinking she needed to stop and get back to the house when she came across an interesting term that she'd never heard before: Breeder Bond.

She scanned the body of text under the mysterious header, wondering if it was exactly what it sounded like.

A breeder bond is a shared, usually identical, cutie mark between two opposite sex ponies that represents their calling to rut or reproduce copiously with one another.

Breeder bonds have only been identified on ponies who are of blood relation. Chances of having a breeder bond increase in foals who have experienced trauma such as losing a parent or sibling. This is believed to be a vestigial evolutionary response left over from ancient times when ponies lived in small clans that needed to keep their numbers stable. The cutie marks have been documented to appear on foals as young as nine years of age but can only appear simultaneously on two corresponding ponies without cutie marks. The marks often appear arbitrary in meaning making them difficult to diagnose.

Chances of breeder bond occurrence also increase significantly between siblings and exponentially between twins. Eighty-three percent of all breeder bonds are shared between fraternal twins.

Before receiving their cutie marks, breeder bond siblings often display reckless or even self destructive behavior. This is a result of a prodigious pent up sexual drive. Left unchecked, their behavior will often worsen over time. This may prompt well informed parents to spur their foals’ cutie mark development by orchestrating sexual contact or even intercourse between the two destined ponies in order to cultivate a more constructive outlet for dangerous behavior.

It continued on but Rainbow stopped to furrow her brow in reflection. The twins didn't have cutie marks yet and could still be anything but this description of breeder bond behavior, genetics and predisposition was uncanny in its similarities.

The idea that they might just be destined to screw each other sounded completely insane on the face of it but also something else about it seemed strangely familiar. Why did this concept sound so… porn, she suddenly realized. She'd seen it in porn movies. There were at least a couple of pairs of opposite sex ponies with identical cutie marks that she could recall from dozens of movies in her extensive incest collection. Guess they really were related after all. In retrospect it lended a rarely seen level of authenticity to the art form.

She felt a pang of arousal in her loins that was as sudden as it was unexpected. Weird. It usually took a little more than just remembering some porn movies in general terms.

She closed the book and squeezed her hind legs together feeling a small dampness spread between her pressed thighs. No time to do anything about that, she lamented, envisioning the twins juggling power tools in an overflowing bathtub.

Looking at the cover of the other book she saw that it was also about esoteric cutie marks. This was definitely something worth looking into and Starlight wouldn't mind if she borrowed these; she wasn't even here.

Rainbow quickly snatched up a couple of other related books from Twilight's own library before departing with newfound energy from the drink in her system. She zipped home to find the foals hovering outside engaged in a shouting match. They were in each other's faces looking like they were about to throw down.

“We're not doing it, it's a waste of time,” screeched Pickle, flailing his forelegs.

“Hey, what's going on here?” shouted Rainbow, swooping up to the pair.

“Ugh! Barley is refusing to do my routine unless we add a stupid stall after the climb.”

“It looks more fluid,” she argued haughtily.

“It kills the momentum,” he shot back.

“Why don't you just make slightly different but separate routines and you can agree to do both of them?” Rainbow suggested.

“I guess,” grunted Pickle, crossing his forelegs grumpily. “But I want us to do mine first.”

“Fine,” shrugged Barley.

“See, that wasn't so hard. You just need to remember to try to find a compromise on things like that.” The teachable moment felt like it needed something else to close out. “Now give each other a little hug and kiss and then you can keep practicing together.

The two grumbled to themselves in awkward hesitation but eventually reached out for an embrace. Pickle then leaned in slowly and kissed her woodenly on the cheek.

Even though the gesture had all the grace of someone enduring a foreigner’s weird greeting, Rainbow couldn't help but find it extremely cute.

“Do I need to kiss him back?” asked Barley.

An intrusive thought popped into Rainbow’s heah. “Yeah but try kissing on the lips this time,” she suggested nonchalantly.

The two looked at her like she'd just told them they were going back to the orphanage.

Maybe this was a little too sudden of a stab in the dark but she didn't want to back down from it now and admit it was weird. If they liked it, they liked it. And if she was wrong about this then there was no harm in trying it she supposed.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that? Make up kissing on the lips is a thing,” she blurted defensively.

The twins shared a skeptical glance but closed their eyes and pursed their lips. Their lips met slow and soft and unexpectedly sensual.

Rainbow felt another twinge between her legs. She scratched the back of her head uncomfortably. This kiss hit differently than the first one. It was… hot. When they parted, red faced, she had an immediate desire to see more, to push them further, to see their mouths open, tasting each other's tongues. She swallowed and opened her mouth but the words wouldn't come out. This avenue was completely about their safety and healthy development as foals but maybe she needed to do a little more research before committing to this strange idea. Though perhaps the seed had now been planted.

Their day got back on track as they went into Ponyville to explore. Rainbow showed the twins around their new town, introducing them to any friends that they happened to run into. They went to town hall where she picked up more paperwork to fill out about her new dependents. They went to the toy store where she treated them each to a toy under fifteen bits. They went to the park and the post office. Rainbow dropped off a letter to her parents, informing them that they were now grandparents. How surreal it would be to open that letter she thought; this would be the first they ever heard about it. They'd have to take a trip to go visit them soon but there was so much to do today.

The three went to visit their new schoolhouse and say hello to Miss Cheerilee, their new teacher. None of their soon to be classmates were around but they did get to test out the playground, much to their delight.

They capped it all off with a trip to Sugar Cube Corner.

“Some time soon I'll have to take you to Cloudsdale and show you the Wonderbolts academy,” mused Rainbow.

“That would be awesome,” gasped Pickle, fiddling with his new Rubik's cube at the table. “This has been the best day of my life since you adopted us yesterday. And then before that it was when you signed our poster. And before that it was when we performed with you at the festival.”

“And before that it was when we met you,” laughed Barley.

Rainbow's heart swelled with joy at hearing this. She would have squeezed them in a hug if they weren't sitting across from her in the booth.

A tray came down on the table. “Order up,” chirped Pinkie Pie. “Two milkshakes for the new regulars and a sundae for the old regular.” - - -

Back home Rainbow showed her new foals photo albums full of pictures of friends and family and herself as a filly. They watched a movie on TV and ate popcorn. It was a day full of firsts.

Late that evening, when the kids were in bed, Rainbow pored over her borrowed pile of books. The general message between them all only reinforced what she had begun to suspect: The twins had to be an unrealized breeder bond pair. Now what to do about it…

Though incest and underage sexual activity was generally frowned upon in Equestria, she could not glean any sort of moral guidance from the reading material. It seemed to simply present the idea of introducing unrealized breeder bonded foals to sex as a matter of fact solution to curing their destructive behavior. Rainbow could just let them be and let things play out naturally. Though frankly their behavior terrified her. Taboo aside, it was difficult to see how things wouldn't be overall better for everyone if she intervened. And what if they never figured it out themselves? And when one thought about it, if this was what they were destined for, it seemed like if they were biologically capable, then why not?

Rainbow slunk to her porn collection cabinet and ran a hoof over the first neat little row of colorful smut sleeves. The videos were organized in alphabetical order within their fetish category. By far the largest of her genres was incest. The section started off with the The 69 Twins and ended with Zebra Mama: Cunt of Darkness which dovetailed nicely into the next section which was Zebras.

Rainbow scratched her head absently, laughing weakly as she scanned across the incest titles which were mostly siblings and of those, mostly twins. What a weird coincidence that she had a twincest fetish and she'd adopted twins.