Twilight had to resist the urge to laugh as soon as she closed the door to her study. She knew keeping her friend tied down in her private study was a bit … well, extreme; but she knew it would play merry hell with Rainbow Dash’s mind if she were left to stew over the possibilities long enough. What made it better was that the longer she took deciding and planning out exactly what she wanted to do, the more that her feathered friend would have to psyche herself out.

Though there was another edge to that sword. If Twilight left her alone too long, then then whatever torture eventually occurred would be too tame to compete with whatever wild and crazy fantasy Rainbow Dash came up with. There was the possibility she could calm down and be prepared for whatever was thrown at her. Those instances would spoil the punishment altogether.

This thought jerked the unicorn to a halt on the last step of her staircase. There was that word again. What Twilight had in mind for the next few minutes she’d only seen described as a punishment in a few of her more …. “indelicate” books she’d read in her free time. To think that she would do anything depicted in those stories to a friend on a whim (a very much not-a-colt friend, no less) would be an outrageous suggestion at the very least.

‘But …. But I didn’t suggest it, did I?’ she thought. ‘I’m not even the one who called it a ‘punishment'.’ Now Twilight could feel her heart hammering in her chest. Her face began to heat and her ears started ringing, both indicating a sudden spike in her own blood pressure (almost as if her body was set on proving that this was all real, and thus worth worrying about).

‘SPIKE!’ her mind shouted in desperation, ‘ask him. He’ll talk some sense into to you.’ Her head whipped back and forth so her eyes could scour the library for that wonderfully wise and well-meaning number one assistant ….

… whom she’d just sent out with an oversized list of office supplies that would likely keep him out until the shops’ were all closed.

At that point she laid herself on the ground and covered her head with her hooves in an attempt to shut out the world so she could think. ‘There has to be SOMEpony who can keep a secret who I can talk to.’

As an solution popped into her head Twilight sprang to her feet. ‘CELESTIA!’ her mind exclaimed, as she ran to retrieve a parchment and quill from the nearest end-table. ‘If I send her a letter marked ‘Urgent: Please Respond’ she’ll send a reply-’ That was when she realized Spike’s absence had eliminated that confidant as well.

Now she was back to laying on the floor, worrying her hooves through her mane while she tried to think. ‘I can’t just go back in and say ‘Never mind.’ Not now that Rainbow is expecting SOMETHING.’

That was when it hit her. ‘Wait a minute. I can do whatever I want,’ she told herself. ‘She doesn’t know what I’m going to do.’ Now she was up on all fours again, pacing her thoughts out into the room before her. ‘She just knows that I’m going to do SOMETHING. So I’ll just keep it in my own boundaries and I’ll be fine.’

With this reassurance Twilight gave herself a metaphorical scratch behind the ears as she headed to the bathroom to get her hoof-i-cure kit.

~~~~~~~~

Rainbow Dash found herself squirming with nervous adrenaline as she awaited Twilight’s return. ‘When I offered to take a punishment I didn’t REALLY think she’d do it,’ she thought to herself. ‘Well,’ she corrected, ‘okay, maybe I did. But I didn’t think she’d do it right NOW; much less that she’d feel a need to keep me TIED UP for it.’

She tried taking deep breaths to calm herself down. ‘Twilight’s my friend,’ she thought, ‘she isn’t going to do anything to HARM me…. Right? It’s just an elaborate prank.’ Unfortunately her mind didn’t seem to be doing a good job of convincing her body of this. In fact her body seemed to be convincing her imagination of all manner of monstrosities that could be trotting around in that unicorn’s mind. Perhaps some ancient text of torture taken from the ponies back in the paleo-pony period was teaching her how to be terrible. She was taking deep breaths so fast that now her head was feeling lighter and lighter, not an easy feat for a species of pony built to breath at almost any altitude.

She closed her mouth and held her breath for a few moments and that seemed to do the trick. Though her heart was still thumping like it was auditioning for a piece in one of Vinyl’s Dubstep Albums, her head started to come out of the clouds and her body relaxed … sort of. Twilight might be weird, and her sense of humor may seem a bit off at some times, but she wasn’t by any means sadistic or cruel. ‘Tying me down was just to freak me out and get in my head,’ she assured herself. ‘So long as I stay calm everything will be fine.’ Inwardly she laughed at herself for nearly going Smarty Pants crazy over something so simple.

‘Nowadays ponies only talk about tying each other down for-’ Rainbow Dash felt her heart suddenly leapt up into her throat and stopped her breathing. ‘No…. No,nonononono no,’ she told herself, ‘Twilight’s not like that. She’s … not a … She’s not a fillyfooler.’ Once again she found herself swallowing hard, trying to get her heart back down where it belonged. ‘Of course she’s not ….’

‘Is she?’

Author's Note

So ... both Twilight and Rainbow are freaking each other out ... or rather they're freaking themselves out

I'm beginning to wonder if i should make this "teen" rated or not ... i've never really understood these subjective maturity ratings because there are some 10 year old children i know who are way more mature than some middle-aged "adults" i know ...

Actually i'm going to make this Teen-rated just to be safe for the next chapter but If you all could help me out a bit i would greatly appreciate it

As always, Likes, Questions, Comments, and Critiques will be greatly appreciated