There is a First Time for Everything

Twenty minutes later, Twilight and Rainbow walked out of Sugarcube Corner, the icing of Pinkie’s delicious pastries lining their muzzles. To Twilight’s immense relief, nopony had found out that they were doing something extremely taboo… yet.

Rainbow licked her lips and glanced over at Twilight and noticed that her marefriend still had a bit of icing on her muzzle. With a cheeky grin, she said, “You know, you have something on your lips; lemme get it for ya!” Without waiting for a response, she leaned over and stole a kiss from her marefriend right in the middle of the street, much to Twilight’s surprise.

Alarmed, Twilight broke away from the Rainbow and frantically looked around, searching for any passerby, but thankfully didn’t see anypony around. “Rainbow!” She angrily hissed, turning her attention back to her marefriend. “We’re in public! What if somepony saw us?!”

“Nopony’s around, Twilight!” Rainbow said confidently, gesturing around the empty street. “See? Nothin’ to worry about!”

“Still…” Twilight calmed down a little, still a little miffed that Rainbow would do something so brash. “You know I’m still a bit nervous about anypony finding out about us…” She trailed off as she started down the road towards her home, her marefriend quickly catching up to her. Not a single word was spoken between the two of them as each of them became lost in their own thoughts. A few minutes passed in silence as they trotted side by side, content to just be in the other’s presence.

“Well Twi, I think it’s about time we take these toys out; it’s already been more than a half hour,” Rainbow said, bumping her marefriend’s flank with her own affectionately as they got closer and closer to the library.

“It would look that way, wouldn’t it?” Twilight smiled as she looked at Rainbow, elated that nopony had found them out. They ducked into an alley and Twilight used her magic to pull the butt plugs out of both of them with a soft pop. She quickly sanitized them using a spell and placed them both in her saddlebag. Returning to the street as if nothing happened, she continued, “I hope Spike did okay last night... I mean, it was his first night alone, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember. He’s not a baby anymore, though; I’m sure the library’s still in one piece!” Rainbow said reassuringly, giving Twilight a quick nuzzle. “You have nothing to worry about!”

“I sure hope so...” Twilight replied, the library coming into view just down the road. Everything looked the way that they had left it yesterday, and she relaxed just a little bit, thinking that everything was going to turn out alright. The two of them made the way towards the front door and Twilight opened it with her magic, and what they saw next made them stop in their tracks, their jaws hitting the ground in shock.

Stunned, Twilight slowly walked inside to assess the full extent of the chaos, her marefriend close behind. Never before had she imagined that Spike was capable of something like this. He was always so neat, keeping the place in tip-top shape just the way she liked it. She looked about the room for her young assistant but didn’t see him anywhere.

“Spike! Spike, where are you?!?” Twilight called out, intent on giving him the lecture of his life about responsibility. She waited a few seconds and was about to call out for him again when she heard a small yawn come from behind a particularly large pile of books in the back of the room.

“That didn’t sound like Spike...” Rainbow said, confused. She flew to the rear of the library and instead of finding just Spike, she also found Sweetie Belle, Applebloom, and Scootaloo all stirring in their sleep, all sleeping on top of one another in a cute pile.

Twilight wove her way through the horrific mess and trotted up beside her marefriend, groaning as her eyes fell upon the Cutie Mark Crusaders. “I should have known Spike would have invited them over...” she muttered to herself, running a hoof over her face. She sat down next to Rainbow and prodded the sleeping dragon with a hoof to wake him up.

As the three young fillies slept on, Spike groggily opened his eyes and looked around, quickly waking up as adrenaline was pumped into his veins at the sight of the purple unicorn. He started hyperventilating as he saw Twilight staring down at him angrily. “Twilight! What are you doing back so early?!” His small head darted back and forth, as if searching for a way to escape. Climbing to his feet, he silently stared at the floor and started shuffling his feet, afraid to look at the pissed-off unicorn.

“Spike...?” Twilight started, restrained anger clear in her voice. “Tell me, in no uncertain terms, exactly what happened here.”

“Uhm...well, you see...” Spike nervously said, trying to come up with a good explanation. He nudged the rest of his friends awake to try and help him out, who quickly woke up when they saw Twilight and Rainbow.

“Twilight! What-” Applebloom started to say before Twilight abruptly cut her off.

“Applebloom, I’ll get to you and your friends in a minute,” Twilight said, her eyes never leaving Spike’s. Without skipping a beat, she continued. “Now, Spike, what did you four do while I was gone for the night?”

Spike gulped before he started his explanation. “Well...after I finished cleaning last night, I got bored pretty quickly.” Spike debated coming up with a lie to try and get out of this, but the damage was already done and they had been caught red-hoofed. “So, let’s see... I went for a walk and eventually found the Cutie Mark Crusaders hanging around the market. So, to make a long story short, I told them that I was going to be the only one home for the night, and they said that they wanted to try and get their cutie marks in…” Spike paused, knowing that Twilight was going to be disappointed in him, “in partying.”

Twilight groaned and rolled her eyes, knowing exactly where this was going. Spike took a deep breath and continued.

“So after getting permission from their parents to have a ‘sleepover,’ we all came back here and...well… we had some fun. We kinda went through all of the ice cream in the house, and then we got some more from the store around the corner. I don’t think I need to say this, but we all had a pretty bad time a little bit later.” He looked about the library and the chaos that he and his friends had caused. “I’m sorry, Twilight; we really meant to clean up the library before you got back, but we all got a little sick from eating too much ice cream, and we all sorta forgot about it...” Spike finished, still shuffling his feet shamefully, knowing full well that he was gonna get an earful from Twilight.

During Spike’s explanation, the Cutie Mark Crusaders had been creeping away from Twilight and the young dragon, hoping that they could get out of trouble. They had quietly made their way behind the couch and were just out of Twilight’s sight, the open door only a few meters away.

“Alright ya’ll, we only have a little bit left to go, so on three!” Applebloom whispered dramatically. “One...two...three!” The three of them jumped up and ran towards the door, but Rainbow landed in front of them, blocking their path to freedom.

“And where do you three little fillies think you’re going?” Rainbow asked as she sat down, her wings still spread. “You guys made this mess, so now you have to clean it; no getting out of it!”

“Ugh, you know, she’s right, guys...” Scootaloo said in defeat, her shoulders slumping. “We might as well get started...”

“Hey!” Sweetie Belle piped up happily, her voice cracking. “Maybe we can get our cutie marks in house-cleaning!”

The three fillies’ eyes widened in excitement and they all jumped into the air together, yelling in unison, “Yay, Cutie Mark Crusaders House Cleaners!”

After sitting around and doing nothing productive for the first half hour, Rainbow became incredibly bored watching the four troublemakers clean the library. Sidling up close to Twilight, she lowered her voice just enough so that the three fillies and Spike couldn’t hear her, and she said, “Say Twi, while you watch over these four, I’m gonna go run some errands. Since you passed our little ‘challenge,’ want to meet me at my place around seven tonight for a little fun?” She snuck a look at the troublemakers, saw that they weren’t looking in their direction, and quickly nuzzled Twilight just under the cheek affectionately. She sat back, awaiting her marefriend’s response, her ears pinning back.

Twilight glanced up into space as she thought for a moment, trying to remember if she had anything on her schedule for later that day. Thankfully, she remembered that she had blocked off the next couple days just so that she could spend time with Rainbow once she got back from her trip. “Hmm… I don’t see why not; seven it is then!”

“Awesome…” Rainbow murmured, pulling Twilight a brief winghug. She hopped into the air and flew out the door, leaving a faint rainbow trail behind her.

With her marefriend gone, that left Twilight with nothing to do but to relax on the couch and watch the four clean her home spotless. Throughout the entire process, Spike made sure that each book was put back in its rightful place, knowing that Twilight would only make him reorganize the books later if they were put up in the wrong order. And after a few uneventful hours, the library was finally back to Twilight’s high standards of cleanliness.

“Whew!” Scootaloo exclaimed as she pushed the last book into place. She hopped off of Spike’s back and collapsed on the floor, exhausted from cleaning the expansive library. The other two fillies collapsed beside them, both in similar states of exhaustion.

Seeing that the Cutie Mark Crusaders and her assistant were finished with cleaning, Twilight stood up to inspect their work. She methodically went through each and every shelf to make sure that each book was where it was supposed to be, and seeing that everything was up to her standards, she said, “Alright you four, you can go.”

“Thanks, Twilight… sorry about the mess,” Applebloom said apologetically as they all ran out the front door, eager to get on with another day of crusading.

Over the next few hours, Twilight did anything she could to make the clock go faster short of time-traveling into the future. She was sprawled out on her bed, trying to study a little bit more from her advanced teleportation spells book, but she kept getting distracted as her thoughts kept drifting back to what was going to happen later that night.

Giving up, she slammed the book closed with her magic, groaning in frustration. With what was going to happen soon, there was just no way in Tartarus that she could concentrate enough to get any real studying done. She glanced up at the clock and saw that she still had just under an hour to meet Rainbow at her cloudhouse for another night of fun, and suddenly images of what they were going to do suddenly flashed in her mind, starting to make her feel a little worked up. She thought about taking care of her growing need, but she instead chose to save herself for later that night, knowing that it would be well worth the wait. Her stomach grumbling in hunger, she got up and trotted downstairs to make herself a small dinner, pushing the temptation from her mind, eager to get to her marefriend’s place.