“Something just occured to me,” said Aria, spinning slowly in her office chair. She was busy working on a Patreon reward commission, and she really needed to get her eyes off of the project for the time being. When doing this, she had a habit of staring at Sonata, who was sitting upside down on the loveseat they kept in the office. Sonata looked up from her phone, her focus shifting from Instagram to her wife.

“Hm? What’s up?” asked Sonata.

“How exactly are we supposed to have a kid?”

Sonata was, as usual, confused. She tilted her head and bunched up her eyebrows, which Aria instantly recognized to mean “Huh?”.

“Do I seriously have to explain what I mean by that?” asked Aria. Sonata slowly nodded, then turned herself right-side up. “Okay, babe. You and I are both girls, right? As a couple, we’re lacking about half of the hardware required to do the whole reproducing thing.”

“Ohhhh! Well, I dunno, I never really thought about it,” said Sonata with a shrug. “I guess we could adopt?”

“Yeah, but then we’re not really having a kid together. We’re kinda just picking one up,” Aria pointed out. “That’s cool and all, but I don’t want to have to deal with explaining to the kid that he’s ours, but not really.”

“And I suppose you’d rather explain to them that we’re magical fish monsters from another dimension?”

“Touche.”

“But I see what you mean,” said Sonata. “Hm… What about a whatsit bank?”

“A whatsit bank?” Aria had to seriously think to figure out what the heck Sonata was talking about. When she did, it took all of her resolve to prevent herself from bursting into chuckles. “Do you really call it ‘whatsit’?”

“I don’t like saying the word,” said Sonata flatly. “It’s icky.” Aria really did chuckle this time.

“Sonata, it’s just a word. You’re a grown woman, you can live with the word sp—”

“Bah! Stop it!”

“You’re being silly,” said Aria. “It’s just sp—”

“I swear to God, I will divorce you right now,” said Sonata, only mostly joking. “Anyway, we could use a whatsit bank.”

“I don’t know I feel about that. Doesn’t that seem kinda invasive to you?” asked Aria. Sonata pondered it for a moment, considering how she would feel if either of them went with that path. It wasn’t terrible, but there was something admittedly gross about it.

“Well, I’m hearing a lot of things that won’t work,” said Sonata, teasingly. “Why don’t you come up with something, huh?”

Aria tapped her foot in thought for a moment. She knew that Sonata was just jabbing at her, she genuinely put some thought into it. After a few minutes of careful consideration, she pulled out her phone and dialed Sunset’s number.

“Yo,” said Sunset when the lines connected.

“You remember that time your toilet flooded and you slipped and twisted your ankle, so you made me come down to your place to help you clean up and wash the piss off?” asked Aria. “And you asked me never to talk about it?”

“Well, you sort of broke that agreement just now, but yeah,” said Sunset. “Why?”

“And you remember the time you left the trashy fanfic of you and Twi that you were writing out and I read it and you made me swear not to talk about it?”

“Y-yeah, I guess. Why?”

“And you remember that time we all went to the beach, and I caught you and Twi behind the rocks—”

“And I asked you not to talk about it, yes, I remember,” groaned Sunset. Aria could hear the blush through the phone. “Where are we going with this?”

“Well, I need a favor, and it’s kinda really important,” said Aria. “Just wanted you to remember that you owe me one. Are you busy?”

“I’ll be over in five minutes,” said Sunset. “Is it cool if Sparky tags along?”

“Yeah. Actually, she’ll be a lot of help. Get over here whenever, and be prepared for this favor to be kinda… personal.”

“Oh boy. This’ll be fun.”

“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” said Aria, sitting down across from Sunset and Twilight. Sonata was just to her right, just as curious as the couple across from them as to what Aria’s plan was. Aria herself didn’t seem too comfortable with the situation, but there wasn’t much to be done about it.

“No problem. You know, we weren’t busy anyway,” said Sunset. “You could’ve gotten us here without the blackmail.”

“Sorry. Right, you guys know me, I don’t like dancing around the point,” sighed Aria. “So I’m gonna cut to the chase: I need your help to knock up Sony.”

Everyone in the room heard what Aria said, and everyone understood what each word meant separately. But, when strung together in that particular sentence, it was nothing if not confusing. There was a stunned silence for a moment before Twilight decided it’d be best to interject.

“Um… What exactly do you mean?” asked Twilight.

“I need your help to somehow impregnate my wife,” said Aria plainly. Sunset chuckled nervously.

“You know, Aria, I’d love to help, honest, but I’m kinda missing the materials for that particular job,” snickered Sunset. “Plus, I don’t think Sparky here would be okay with that.”

“No, you idiot, I meant magic,” groaned Aria. “Doesn’t Equestria have some sort of magic to help us have a kid?”

“Don’t be silly, Ari,” said Sonata. “Of course not, that’d be ridiculous.”

“Actually, yes,” said Twilight. “We do. Equestria has a skewed ratio of mares to stallions, about six to one, so we’ve evolved to be more susceptible to homosexuality. But, to keep the species alive, a unicorn who was exceedingly clever—”

“Horny,” Sunset corrected. Twilight blushed bright red.

“Er… Well, yes, perhaps that played a part in it… In any case, a unicorn very adept at physical transmogrification ended up finding a way to cross mare and stallion anatomy.”

Aria and Sonata shared a confused glance before Sunset filled them in.

“She can give you dude parts for a while,” she supplied.

“Oh… Is that… Is that safe?” asked Sonata.

“Perfectly safe and only as permanent as you want it to be,” answered Twilight. “If you give me a chance to head home, I can have the potion ready in a week.” Aria and Sonata looked at each other, silently communicating their reservations through eye-contact alone. This couldn’t be more bizarre than the alternatives, could it?

“Would it make you feel better if I told you that we’ve used the potion before?” asked Sunset. “Cause we have. If Sonata is anything like Twilight, by which I mean if she has a pulse and a heart, she’ll enjoy it.”

“Well, Sony, it’s ultimately your decision,” said Aria. “What do you think?”

Sonata sighed. This was a bit on the stranger side of things. In fact, this was likely the most abnormal thing she’d ever considered within her marriage. But, as she’s said countless times before, she didn’t agree to marry Aria for normalcy. She married her for her.

“Alright. I’m game. If you think it’ll work, let’s do it,” said Sonata, with a small smile. “Let’s get Aria a whosit.”

Aria glared at her wife impatiently. How were they supposed to have kids if Sonata was afraid of the words necessary to make babies?

“See?! I’m not the only one who hates that word!” said Sunset. “It’s disgusting!”

“How are you both so immature?” asked Aria. “It’s not just that, Sonata also hates the word sp—”

“Gah! Stop it, stop it, it’s icky!”