Eternal Twilight Side Story:

Maintenance Day

        Traveler’s Note: So this was just a little fun idea that my friend helped me think of, after I told him about the “Tales From the Other Side” bit I had set up. He basically came up with the idea of having Twilight fill in for yours truly for a day, and see what would happen. We both agreed that it would end in disaster of the hilarious kind, and that I should get to work on it. I mean, who doesn’t want to live up to their loved one, and help them out when they can? So, here it is: Enjoy.

Normally, I’m the first one to say that I love sleeping in. It means I get those extra few minutes of sleep that I’ve always wanted, yet can never seem to get. Those few minutes can make a ton of difference for you in the end. It can make you wake up feeling refreshed and ready for a new day, or if you miss them, you’ll wake up feeling like you just slept on a bag of rocks.

All of that changed, though, when Twilight and I finally became a couple.

Now, I looked forward to waking up. I could actually have someone to wake up with, to hold in my arms. Someone who would want me to do that, and who would do the same for me when I needed it. And I knew she would be there for me each time.

So when I opened my eyes that morning, I didn’t think about how the sun was shining in my eyes, or how I had to go into the Vault to run its yearly maintenance check. My only concern was the lavender colored warmth that was pressed into my chest, still sleeping peacefully in my arms. Two minutes later, she stirred, and opened her eyes to meet my own. She smiled at me, and touched her nose to my own.

“Mornin’,” I chuckled.

“Good morning to you too,” she replied with a chuckle of her own.

“Feel like getting up yet?”

“Mmm...” she pretended to think about it for a minute, and answered by moving herself closer to me.

“Me neither.”

We lay like that for a few minutes more, until...

My stomach gurgled, and ruined the moment.

“...Erm...Food time?” I asked hopefully.

She rolled her eyes at me, and used her magic to lift me out of the bed. “I suppose.”

I lazily rolled in the air, and managed to land solidly, if not gracefully, on my feet. With a small smile on my face, I walked down the stairs to get breakfast going while Twilight elected to clean herself up.

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

“...How...I mean...you don’t normally...” Twilight stuttered, looking between me and the oven.

In my defense, I had only caused a small fire in my own kitchen, and managed to put it out without burning the eggs. I don’t see why she was surprised. After all, it’s not a normal day unless I cause some form of property damage. Even if it is my own.

I have my standards, damn it.

“Twilight, are you really going to ask me how I did that, when you could be asking me to pass you the sugar?”

She opened her mouth to stutter out a few more incoherent words, and finally relented with an adorable pout.

I leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “You’re cute when you’re confused, you know that?”

She stuck her tongue out at me, and dug into her breakfast, graciously allowing me to pour sugar into her hot chocolate.

After we had some idle chit-chat, I started to think about those things I was supposed to be thinking about earlier. You know, the maintenance day thing.

“Hey...Twilight?” I asked hesitantly.

Twilight looked at me from the corner of her eyes, and said, “You want me to take care of something for you today?”

I nodded sheepishly. She knew me so well. “Yeah, you could say that. See, I’ve got a bit of business I need to take care of in the Diamond Dog warrens nearby. Runt asked me to come by and help him out with a potential poisonous air type of deal. But...it’s also Maintenance Day in the Vault.”

The Vault, also known as The Place I Keep All the Dangerous Stuff. It’s basically a Fortress of Solitude on crack, and an IV of Red Bull. Extremely dangerous to those who haven’t had the years of experience with dealing with it. Unless, you know, you were me...

“Do you want me to go there instead?” she asked.

“Well...no,” I sighed. “I need to go there to establish my trust with ‘em. Let ‘em know I’ll still help ‘em, despite that...fiasco. You know what I mean.”

She nodded, remembering just as well as I was, the day she unlocked even more of her power.

“So...” I gulped, and told her, “I need you to do the Maintenance check on The Vault.”

Her eyes lit up with excitement, and she nearly smiled with a childish glee, before she reigned herself in. “Are you sure?” Twilight asked, her voice trembling a little.

I nodded. “Twilight, I love you. And part of love is trust. So I know I can trust you with thi- OOF!”

Before I could finish my sentence, she had hug-tackled me around my midsection, and cut off my oxygen supply.

Yeah. I think she accepted.

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

“Alright, pay attention, Twilight. You need to follow these instructions to the letter. Got it?”

Twilight nodded, and levitated a large scroll and quill in front of her.

“Okay. Now. The Timeless Library and Stable will take care of themselves, for the most part. Slim and Ivy are in charge of those, and they’ll keep things going over there,” I started, closing my eyes to help me see it clearly in my head. “What you really have to worry about is the Chaos Section, and the Armory. In fact, that’s the only part you’ll have to deal with today. I can help you with the rest when I get back.

“So, the Armory. Every weapon has its specific cleaning process, but your magic should tell you how to deal with all of that. Just be careful, though. A lot of that tech is automated, and could accidentally see you as a target. The last thing I want is to come home, and see you with a few bullet holes in you. Just don’t hit anything that’s bright red and button-shaped, and we should be good there.

“The Chaos Section, though,” I paused for a moment to take a drink of water. “That’s gonna be tough. Luckily, Ivy has a book on the standard procedure on how to deal with that. Just swing by, ask her for it, and follow what it says.”

“Alright, I got it. Anything else?” she asked me.

I nodded gravely, and told her in my most somber voice, “There is one final thing. The most important, and crucial part, that could end up saving your life in this madhouse.”

I held up a small, white-and-green cardboard box, and pointed at it.

Twilight raised an eyebrow, and deadpanned, “Hot Pockets?”

“On High. Two minutes.” I held up my index and middle fingers on my right hand for emphasis. “Thou shalt not warm it to three minutes. Nor one, unless proceeding to two. Five is just out of the question. Understand?”

She rolled her eyes, but wrote it down anyways. Or, at least, I think she did. Nothing to do about it, though.

I gave her a goodbye kiss, and jogged outside, quickly shifting into my unicorn form to help me along.

Twilight was a little surprised by how easy everything was.

The TL had indeed been maintained by Ivy, just as Nate had said. The Stable was still in one piece, and Slim was just as busy as ever. And the Armory hadn’t even once tried to blast her, as much as he had worried about that. She actually managed to clean everything in half the time she thought she would be able to.

She even organized all of the weapons in order of type, damage, and ammunition. Slim had helped a little in that regards, by pointing out where everything would go, but it was mostly Twilight. Mostly.

She knew what she was doing.

Finally, she stood in front of The Chaos Section.

“This should be easy! Everything else was a snap,” she giggled. Looking on at the ominous shelves, she said, “I can’t believe he thought I’d have a hard time with this.”

Twenty minutes, seventeen seconds later...

Twilight’s tail was on fire, there was an unrealistically enormous elephant with a tent on its back charging into a wall repeatedly, and a banjo was strumming itself idly in the corner. Overturned metal barrels were spilling their hazardous contents onto the floor, while purple squid tentacles slowly reached out of them and tried to grab the poor unicorn.

She fell back against the corner with the banjo, as everything around her started to go horribly wrong. Entire bookshelves would get up and walk into a different spot, inhuman roars and shrieks would echo across the Vault, and a miniature figure in green clothes kept leaping around, a bowl of marshmallows clutched in his greedy hands.

Once more, she tried to use her magic to attempt to clean everything...but that only resulted in a pair of broomsticks coming to life, with newly acquired arms, that decided to “help” her...by dumping copious amounts of water onto the floor, and occasionally into her face. At least the fire had been put out, and Nate was-

“What the Hell happened here?” a voice asked in concern. Footsteps, achingly familiar footsteps, echoed softly, still heard even in this clamor, as The Traveler knelt beside Twilight, his face etched with worry.

Twilight met his eyes with her own, and let out a sheepish smile, her mane frayed at the ends. “Um...I can explain...”

Omnius looked around at the mess, and nodded sagely. His eyes took inventory of everything, and hardened noticeably at one particular sight. He sighed, and picked himself up, leaving Twilight to hopelessly gaze after him.

Sharp lances of fear shot through her, as she watched him with fearful eyes. The small illogical part of her brain started yammering about how she had failed him, how she hadn’t done the instructions like he had said. Tears fell down her cheeks, as she closed her eyes...

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“W-what?” she asked, surprise chasing away her immediate thoughts.

As if that were the ending cue, all of the chaos abruptly came to a halt. The tentacles pulled themselves, and their ooze, back into the barrels, the elephant’s trunk reached out to push everything back into place, and the brooms actually started cleaning. Even the banjo became mercifully silent.

Within the span of two minutes, everything had been put back into its rightful place.

Twilight looked up to see Omnius standing over her, with a plate in his hands.

“On High. Two minutes,” he somberly repeated. “The High Law Of Nerds states it clearly in section 9 part 4.”

“But...how?” she asked, looking from the plate, back to her special somepony/one.

He smiled, and sat beside her, already eating one of the recently microwaved goods. “I don’t know, actually. This is the Chaos section. You just have to do something completely unexpected, or unexpectedly expected. In this case, the randomness of my Hot Pockets was able to counteract that...thing’s...whatever, and set a series of events into motion.”

“So...why the pockets?”

He thought about if for a moment, before answering, “Well, without that law, gamers would think

‘Oh, I have plenty of time’ and microwave it longer. That longer time could mean one more minute of hunger, thus concentration would be lost, and they’d have one minute of being out of the zone! Due to that sacred rule/law, and the complete obscurity of it, I think it meets the criteria pretty nicely.”

“...And a pony doing it would be unsurprising how...?”

He wrapped an arm around her, and pulled her tightly to him.

“Because. Obviously, it was to be expected that I’d trust the one I loved to come down here. That she’d know what to do. So, it tried to come up with something you wouldn’t know how to do.”

She cringed, and whispered, “But...it still did.”

“How long did it take?”

“I...I think about...twenty minutes?”

He whistled respectfully. “Twilight, that’s seventeen minutes longer than I lasted down here, during my first time. See? You managed to think of a way to go against it. And it had to actively fight you.”

“So...you’re not mad?”

In answer he pressed his lips to hers.

“I’m only a little irritated that I didn’t get to spend the day with you, and had to deal with cleaning the air.”

She smiled, and returned the kiss enthusiastically.

“At least we have the rest of the night. And the rest of the Vault isn’t gonna clean itself.”

Twilight groaned in exasperation, but didn’t complain.

After all.

He had to deal with this every day. She felt like she had better get used to it.

And she didn’t mind that at all.

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