I snorted awake and wiped my eyes. Twilight Sparkle was no longer beside me. "How long?" I asked.

The Princess was standing near one of the bookshelves, going over the catalog list and triple-checking every label with a dull expression on her face. She levitated a pocketwatch from her bag and looked at it. "About half an hour. Your internal clock is pretty accurate."

I performed a sarcastic fist-pump and pulled myself up to a half-sitting position at the edge of the slab. "Where's the drone?"

"The 'machine assistant?' I put it back in Starswirl's puzzle box. I left the letter to Clover the Clever out, but I'm fine not studying that thing for a while."

I nodded in agreement. Who knew if my little magic bullshit even worked the way I imagined? Would I even have enough mana to do it a second time if needed? Better to leave well enough alone for now. "Any interesting finds?"

Twilight frowned. "No. We're not any closer to figuring out why the Map sent us here."

I took a deep breath and stretched my arms. "Well... what have we learned, all in total?"

"That the Masters were not just supremely powerful arcanists, they possessed advanced technology as well," Twilight rambled as she went down the line of bookshelves making checks on her list. "That their leader looked irresponsible and lazy to his fellow humans. And that in the last days, humans and ponies were in open conflict."

It was all very significant, but also kind of a small list in retrospect. "That's... it?"

"Until we get a team of professional archaeologists and linguists to spend years studying this material... that's as much as you and I are going to get in a day's work, I think."

I pouted thoughtfully. "Maybe there's a thing there anyway? Maybe we can show Celestia that Chad was kind of a jerk to everybody, not just her...?"

Twilight paused and looked back at me with an unconvinced expression. "I don't think–..."

"No, you're right," I muttered in defeat. "It's not that she doesn't know he was a douche, it's that she blames herself for falling in love with him, for attending to his every desire out of loyalty and affection. When she was literally created to do that and didn't have a choice in the matter." I groaned up at the ceiling. "This is literally an abusive ex-boyfriend scenario."

The Princess finished with her checks and rolled up the parchment, setting it down on a nearby crate. Then she walked back over to the slab where I was sitting. "So the question is, how do people normally get over that?"

I threw up my hands. "Heck if I know. I'm not exactly a real psychologist." And I didn't have access to Google anymore.

Twilight passed her chair and sat up on the slab a short distance away from me, looking around at the vault we had just explored and catalogued. "You should probably invest in some education. I've got some books I can recommend that might help."

Part of me wanted to roll my eyes and go Sure, of COURSE Miss Twilight Sparkle has a book for everything, but on second thought... "Yeah, I think I'm gonna want to check those out, actually."

We sat there, not quite side-by-side, as an awkward silence settled between us. Both of us thinking, grasping at straws.

"So..." Twilight spoke up after a moment or two, "how... how are you manifesting magic all of a sudden?"

I raised my right hand in front of my face. I flexed it, and imagined that blue glow of my power... and a moment later, my hand gained a blue aura in front of my eyes, which surprised me. "...Well, this is more control of it than I've had all week," I began, "but, uh, it's been kinda growing in strength the more I've practiced with it. Especially when I use it for enchantment." I shook my hand, and the blue aura disappeared like an extinguished flame. "It's like... I have to use my hands in some way, describe something out loud, and my power kinda makes that happen."

Twilight was watching my hand too. She had a hand on the chin of her muzzle. "Verbal and somatic focuses rather than concentration and mental imaging... That's very, very interesting."

"I take it that's not how a pony does it?" I asked curiously.

"No, not since Starswirl the Bearded's time," she replied, sitting up a little straighter as she settled into that all-too-familiar 'lecture mode.' "Magic is in the mind, in the heart, in the spirit, and in the world all around us. The earliest wizards would make grand gestures with their hands and shout magic words to cast their spells. But it was just a way to focus and express the will within. As the study of magic progressed, it was discovered to be more efficient to train spellcasting as a mental art, rather than a performative one."

I glanced down at my hands again. "So you're saying... at some point, I'll be able to do this in my head?"

"Maybe. Your magic is... a little different overall. Which is surprising. When I cast that spell to give you that cosmic concept of normality, I understood it as putting pony magic inside of a magicless human."

"It was," I confirmed. "That pony magic tried to turn me into the most normal pony in existence."

Twilight's shoulders slumped when I said that. "I never really apologized for that, did I? For putting you in danger. I'm sorry; if I had known at the time..." She put her face in her hands and groaned, "Ugh, you actually told me it was resurging, didn't you? And I was concerned for all of two minutes."

It took me a moment to think back. When I had visited Twilight on the second day... Oh, right. "Well, I kinda distracted you with the whole... surgery request."

The Princess furrowed her brow and made a little whine from her throat. Her horn lit up, and a wave of blue washed down from her head to her feet. She shook her head and whined again. "Nnngh..."

"You alright?" I asked.

"I keep getting headaches," she muttered. "Really bad ones. They usually stop once I cast the immunity spell but... lately... it's not... going away..."

My mind flashed back to Moondancer last Saturday. This sounded really familiar. And that realization prompted another, much larger line of thinking.

"Hey, Twilight..."

"Ugh, yeah?"

I looked around, taking in where we were sitting. "Is it just me, or... did the Map call us to the most remote, secret location in all of Equestria? A secret vault hidden deep within the tallest mountain under everypony's noses..."

Twilight glared at me. "What are you implying?"

I realized a second later that she suspected I had sex on my mind. Which – okay, to be fair, I always did, but – wasn't exactly the case. I stood up to give her some space and started pacing. "I mean... this is a place where we can talk without anypony in the world listening. What's said here stays locked up here." I turned back to Twilight nervously. "Maybe the Map's friendship problem isn't Celestia... Maybe it's us."

Twilight didn't like the idea of that at all. She rolled her eyes and kept her hand on her temple. "But the Map went off after Celestia scheduled that all-day appointment."

A decent point, but... "Fact is, Twi..." I folded my arms and lowered my gaze slightly. "I can't fully help Celestia without you."

That shook her up. "M-Me...??"

"She is so worried about what she did to you. How she lied to you, stonewalled you, set you up for failure. All because of her own inability to confront this or tell anypony else. You're... important to her, and you know that." I looked away. "So I won't be able to convince her she's not a bad pony if... if you aren't there to say it. To forgive her."

Twilight digested that for a few silent moments, and then lowered her hands to her lap and took a breath.

I shrugged gently, nervously. "I need you on my team tomorrow. I think that's becoming more clear by the hour. But... we're not going to be able to do this if we're still at odds. I think that's why."

Twilight pinched the bridge of her muzzle and sighed. "Why the Map called us here?"

"More or less, that's the theory."

The purple alicorn looked completely tuned-out. "So, what are you going to do?" she asked flatly. "Hypnotize me? Convert me to your way of thinking?"

Spreading out my hands slowly, I replied, "I was thinking we could just taaalk...!" I had to resist the urge to add 'biiiiiitch' at the end.

She scoffed. "You're going to be my psychiatrist now?"

"Well, you're having headaches!" I pointed out a little forcefully. "Probably brought on by some kind of cognitive dissonance..."

"Oh, please."

"Look: Am. I. Wrong?" I let the question hang in the air for a few seconds. I took a couple of steps closer. "I know you don't want to talk about this. I know– I know it hurts."

"Don't... Don't– Just stop." Twilight stood up from the slab. "You can't be my psychiatrist... You're the person who caused the problems I'm having! Why should I open up to you?"

"In normal circumstances, I wouldn't!" I admitted out loud, gesturing around at the vault. "But even a psychiatrist would tell you that... that we'd need to have a dialogue at some point! So... no, I'm not going to give you therapy." I couldn't find my words for a second. "But... I'm willing to... to hear you out, help you through it. To take responsibility. I promised to do that." I pointed at her. "And you promised to give me a second chance. So I'm calling it in. Not indefinitely later, not a whole town away where you can ignore all this. Right here and now."

Twilight slumped and grumbled and glared at me for a few long seconds, balling her hands into fists. Then she put her hands over her face and groaned into her palms, then finally – finally – let out a weary exhale. She sat back down on the slab at an angle and folded her arms, keeping her eyes closed. She didn't say anything for even longer. Twilight just sat there, angrily thinking.

Weirdly, I considered this progress.

Eventually, she opened her eyes and glanced aside at me. "I'm scared," she admitted with a firmness in her voice. "Scared of becoming a different person every time I speak with you."

Talk about opening up... "That's not quite what my power does," I said as I went towards the chair.

"Y-Yes it is!" Twi insisted, slightly appalled at my response. "And I have first-hand experience! The restaurant, the surgery, the topless party...!"

I sat down and put my hands up defensively. "Y– N– Okay. You made decisions you wouldn't have otherwise made without my power. And to the extent that we're all the products of our decisions, yes, fine, I agree that you acted like a different person."

Twilight rolled her eyes and grimaced in an 'oh for fuck's sake' fashion. Fair enough; that sounded very weasel-y out loud.

"But – I mean, I explained this at the big meeting – that's not what my power does. It doesn't knock someone's personality out and remote-control them. It doesn't rewrite brains. It..." I gesticulated awkwardly in a spherical manner. "It alters the social context around a thing. Removes all the negative, improper stuff around what I'm saying and doing. So when your mind goes out, thinks outward to assess the situation, it doesn't get reminded of all that... that negative societal stuff, which opens up a lot more different decisions and rationalizations." I thought back to Rarity and Donut Joe and Hoity Toity and many others. "But outside of the societal things, if you have reservations or values deeply held in your own mind... especially if they relate to your cutie mark... they still apply."

The Princess waited for me to finish, then raised an eyebrow once I was done speaking. "There's one other thing, though, isn't there?" She leaned forward, folding her arms on her lap, beneath her bust, with a look of half-accusation and half-'gotcha' on her face. "It feels like a faux pas to say 'no' to you. Doesn't it?"

My mouth opened before I had any words to answer her. I had a habit of doing that when I was caught, I realized.

"Remember Applejack and Rarity? When they felt guilty for not being able to literally erase from their minds a thing that had just happened, because you asked them to??" Twilight yelled. "Sure, sure, you don't plant thoughts in ponies' heads! You just make it socially easy to say 'yes' and socially difficult to say 'no!'"

Holy shit. She had me there. And this was something I had already discovered and taken note of. But somehow, I had forgotten because... because...

"And I bet you forgot because everything's been hunky-dory for you."

"Fuck off," I muttered back. First of all, this week and the three days before it had been a fucking rollercoaster. Secondly: "I forgot because that's what my aura changes were supposed to try and start fixing. Y'know, the spells that nearly burnt through my vitality, back at the big meeting? No murder, no assault, no rape. Turning me down is perfectly acceptable."

"And like I said before," Twilight replied firmly, "it doesn't matter much when you can just turn all those privileges back on in private. And even putting that aside, that's just a few extreme scenarios! In every other one, for every other request, you've still got everypony bending over backwards to say, 'Yes, Pascal,' don't you!"

That... gave me a lot of pause. I had completely, utterly forgotten about the whole 'faux pas to say no' aspect of my Acceptance aura. The stick to complement the carrot. And in a way, she was right – I had forgotten because I hadn't really encountered it in a while, because I hadn't seen anything wrong in the ways regular ponies acquiesced to my odd requests. I had seen it before, I had put it out of my mind for the sake of survival, and I had failed to recall it once I had found safety and comfort at long last.

Now, almost a week after securing this power for good... it didn't feel right for that to still be a thing anymore.

Twilight was still lecturing me, but I looked down and placed my hand on my chest. A faint blue glow appeared where my palm and fingers touched my shirt. I took a breath. I swallowed.

"It is not socially unacceptable or shameful to say no to me." Immediately, I felt a pang of dizziness and... for lack of a better term, spiritual tearing. It was too close to the core of this power – I felt I had to mitigate it somehow. "M-My actions and requests are still normal and acceptable, it just... There can be good common-sense reasons to say no and it'll be just fine."

Twilight pulled back, watching me in shock and confusion. "P-Pascal...? You're doing it again...?!"

I looked down at my other shaking, glowing hand. "Except... if I will that social pressure to happen." That would keep it as a tool in my arsenal instead of cutting out the power entirely, and... I wondered if I might need it someday. I stood up from the chair, glowing hand still on my chest, and turned weakly towards the open vault door. I raised both of my hands and said, "This goes... for Derpy and Moondancer too!"

I reared back and thrust my hands forward, sending two blue trails of light out that flew through the vault doors and slipped through the narrow crevices of the cave wall on the other side.

"That's fuckin' cool," I whispered with a slight grin on my face. I fell to my knees and didn't really feel my face hit the floor.

A rush of tingling like electricity filled my body, and I woke up with a start.

I was laid upon the stone slab in the vault. A soft sheet had been laid out underneath me, and most of the books and documents had been moved to the shelves. There was only a book beneath my head like a pillow. Twilight was sitting next to me in the wooden chair, her horn cooling down from a spell cast moments ago. I asked, "How long this time?"

"About five minutes," Twilight mumbled. She sounded... tired. Kind of defeated.

"Oh. Surprised you didn't let me rot there for longer," I weakly joked.

Twilight sighed and glanced away. "I... gave you an infusion of some of my mana. It's based on a spell the other Princesses used on me before I faced Tirek." She sighed and looked back at me. "Why? Why'd you do that?"

"'Why'?? Because you made a good point! Because it was the right thing to do." I tried to sit up, but my body still felt drained and weak, so I just rolled a bit to my side. "Because it's not about the power," I muttered. "It's about how I'm making ponies feel. Even if someone's going along with my kinky shit, I... I want them to be genuinely happy doing it, I dunno. Not scared. Not... ashamed. Not hurt."

She sighed again and shook her head. "Then why even have this power? Why not just... let go?"

"Torches and pitchforks, Twi," I growled. "And because it's helping to keep Celestia sane. ...And because I can use it to tackle Equestria's systemic repression. To make Derpy feel better about herself." I took a breath. "Because this is where I've been pigeonholed."

"Pigeonholed?" Twilight echoed skeptically. "Into a sexual harem fantasy?"

I gave her a flat look. "If I'd landed in a version of Equestria with normal ponies, or anthros with regular proportions..." I waved my arm around at the room. "This is kinda the stuff I'd want to be doing. Adventuring, solving mysteries, going through tons of data to find patterns... This is who I wanted to be when I grew up, y'know?" I laid on my back and stared disappointedly up at the ceiling. "But because I landed in a world designed by an asshole who happens to have my exact fetishes... All I could be was the town pervert. And now, my highest calling is to be history's most useful pervert." I glared at her again briefly. "So get off my back a little."

Finally, Twilight didn't seem to have an immediate retort for that. She just looked away and down at the floor, sadly contemplating.

My feeling of minor victory didn't last. None of this bickering was solving the problem at hand. Twilight was scared of me and my power, and she was fighting something about our interactions that was giving her headaches. Those had to be connected, and it looked like it was up to me to broach the subject.

I sighed again. "Look, Twi..." I thought for a moment about how to begin. "The reason why I said what I said in the hayburger joint... I was freaking out."

Twilight looked at me, her expression attentive but forcefully neutral.

"I... I had been having the craziest morning that day. I had... accidentally exposed myself to Lyra and Bon Bon, which should've gotten me evicted, but nothing happened. I went out into town, and everypony just acted like I was just another citizen on just another regular day. Then I got caught staring at Pinkie Pie's chest, but she didn't get mad... She even shimmied her fucking shoulders at me. And then I went to the flower trio, who... not only agreed to live and let live, they said I could jack off in their garden whenever I needed."

The Princess's mouth fell open. "Wha-What?"

"Right?! So then I go over to the hayburger joint, and see if I can get a free meal. Turns out I can. Now I'm really freaking out. And then you arrive, and... and..."

"Why didn't you tell me then??" Twilight asked.

I felt guilty, but I sighed and said, "Because... of the night before. After all that danger..."

Even Twilight got it quickly. She closed her eyes and nodded. "...you got one moment of safety, and you were worried I... I would've taken it away."

"Would you?" I couldn't stop myself from asking.

"If I knew you were affecting everypony's minds? Yes. I would've fought back," she replied with little hesitation.

Well, that was depressingly expected. I looked back up at the ceiling. "So yeah. I didn't want to say it out loud, but I was still freaking out. I was kinda scared of how much corruptive power I potentially had. So... I figured if there was anything that could 'break the spell,' it... it was making a lewd request to my warden, Princess of Magic Twilight Sparkle." I looked directly at her. "And then you said 'okay,' and we were off to the races."

Twilight kept her eyes closed and took another long, deep breath through her nostrils. "So that's why?" she eventually asked.

"Yeah. It was a Hail Mary." As soon as the words left my mouth, they didn't feel true. "Well – okay, I knew what would happen if the pattern held. But I didn't do it out of revenge, or... anything like that. It was... panic."

Another long pause. "And the surgery?"

"I was worried about the resurgence. I had a dream the previous night where I woke up like a pony. It terrified me. After I had just met Derpy and... had an intimate moment with Lyra. I figured, if I might 'die' in my sleep the next day, I had to see if I could get a dick that could better please ponies. That's why I made the request. The rest... kinda spiraled out from there."

"The topless party?"

"Literally not my idea. I just explained to Pinkie that my staring was the reason I had been a pariah... and she was off like a shot. I didn't even see her again until that evening at Sugarcube Corner."

Twilight opened her eyes to half-lidded. "My parents?"

I half-glared back. "The Normal was trying to eat me alive where I stood. I needed a big distraction. I told the crowd I wanted a married couple, so that I wouldn't end up forcing two strangers together. Your parents were literally the first volunteers, and I didn't have enough time to go through the whole process again. Even at the time, all I could think was, 'Wow, Twilight's going to murder me, Normal or not.'"

That managed to get a weak chuckle out of her, at least. But her mood soured again and, after a long moment, she whispered, "...Celestia?"

I looked back at her solemnly. "I wanted answers. About humans. About everything I'd been through. I was owed that at the very least. And maybe, just maybe, she knew of some kind of third way out of the resurgence problem that didn't involve transforming into a pony or corrupting the entire world. Either way, my only way out was through her." I narrowed my eyes. "And she blocked me every step of the way. The only reason I went on a 'rampage' through Canterlot at all was because she sent her most loyal guards to delay me until sunset."

"Because she was afraid of you. Of what your mere presence would do to her, Normal or not," Twilight murmured.

"Yeah, well... She'd hidden the truth so thoroughly, I couldn't have known for sure until it was too late," I grumbled back. "Even then, before things turned for the worse, she nearly got me. Geas'd me for answers and then locked me in a bubble to... to– ugh." I couldn't even finish the sentence.

Twilight was silent for a very, very long time. I had run out of things to say, too, so I just laid there on the slab and looked around at the vault. With nothing else to make sound, it was very quiet.

When the Princess finally opened her mouth to speak after many moments of hesitation, her voice was much calmer and more vulnerable. "What I don't understand is..." She paused and raised her hands to her temples. "...why I went along with any of it. I should have said no. Or– Or fought back harder."

This felt like progress but on very delicate terms, so I waited for her to continue.

"Even if it works like you say, where it doesn't actually add thoughts... There's... nothing about myself that explains the way I did those things. The little decisions I made." She rubbed her head and squinted – it seemed like the headaches were returning. "I don't know, I just don't know. I'm not that kind of pony. I was a virgin for Celestia's sake! I was taught etiquette by the Princess herself! I idolized her and her example of chastity!" She shook her head over and over again. "I'm... I'm not the kind of pony that would do that. To just... do what I did, in that way."

I was beginning to understand. "But the evidence says you are. And that's where the cognitive dissonance..."

"I can't explain it," Twilight said with more finality, looking up at me with a tired, very tired look in her eyes. This was what she had been fighting, ever since she learned the truth. "I'm not that kind of pony, Pascal. Y-You've got to believe me..."

For her, it was literally easier to believe she had been totally mind-controlled, turned into a puppet, than to accept that she'd taken some perverted actions of her own.

At the restaurant, I had never specified that I wanted her to jack me off with a magicjob. (To be honest, for the record, I had been imagining a titfuck at the time.) I certainly hadn't asked her to taste-test my semen for study. When I'd asked her for penis-enhancing treatment, she didn't even seem to think about saying no, instead looking at all the obstacles in the way of getting it done. And although she'd had probably a couple hours' warning beforehand, she hadn't blinked at expanding her tits and letting me ogle them for an entire night, alongside all of her other topless friends. Not to mention everything that happened during and after that party.

Even though I bore responsibility for all of those actions, Twilight still had to have met me halfway somewhere, somehow. And there had to be a reason that she crossed that distance... so easily, frankly.

The more I thought about it, the more strange I realized it was.

Why the hell had Twilight motherfucking Sparkle, when asked to give the human an orgasm, just said 'Okay' and done it right there in the middle of the restaurant?

Ponies reacted to my powers in different ways. Some ponies raised logistical problems. Some ponies raised objections based on strong personal values. At the restaurant, Twilight – the last pony in Equestria to be okay with that kind of request – just said 'Okay' and gave me a magicjob right then and there.

No objections about being a Princess. No concerns about doing it in public, no requests to take it somewhere private. Just a smile and right to it. Like she was helping out a friend with any other task.

Now my head was starting to hurt. The answer was so close, I could almost feel the words climbing up my throat.

"Why... Why did you just say 'Okay'?" I asked finally.

"W-What?"

"I mean, what were you thinking at the time? The moment I said 'A fucking orgasm would be nice.'" Those had been my exact words, nothing more.

Twilight struggled to answer and gesticulated wildly. "Well– That's– That's just it! I didn't... think. I just– It just– Sorta– It just– It just made sense, somehow... I don't know." She hung her head. "It just made perfect sense for some stupid reason. 'Oh, Pascal needs an orgasm. Of course. It will help with his sexual tension, calm him down, break the ice...' At the time, it just..." She sighed. "It just seemed so simple. So obvious."

That was not quite the answer I was expecting. She gave me a magicjob because it 'made sense' to do so? For... admittedly helpful reasons?

"And– And the surgery!" she continued, sitting back in the chair, switching between waving her hands around and rubbing her head. "'Of course Pascal needs a better penis. He's probably feeling inadequate and if he's having sexual relations with others, it can only help.' And the topless party? 'Of course I should grow my breasts and go topless with my friends. Pinkie Pie's reasoning works as exposure therapy and she's got a powerful sixth sense for those kinds of things.'" She threw up her hands and slumped against the wooden chair. "And I have no idea why I thought like that. I've never thought like that. Ever. In my life."

I digested all of this new information for a few moments. "So... my power showed you a new side of yourself," I hedged aloud. "One that's... reeeaaally comfortable with all this."

Twilight took a deep inhale and nodded. "Yeah. And it kind of scares me. A lot."

I sat up slowly and rapped my knuckles against my forehead. What was the common element? It 'made sense,' it 'made sense,' it 'made sense'... The only way all those things would make sense is in some kind of casual sex world where–

Holy fucking shit.

The way I slapped my hands to the sides of my head slightly alarmed Twilight. "Wh-What now?!"

I couldn't answer at first. How could I? It should have been impossible. And yet...

"I think..." There was no way she was going to believe me. "...you..." But it had to be. "...you might have a fetish."

"WhhhhhhaaaaaaAAATTT?!" she yelped.

I was just as surprised as her, to be honest. "It's... kind of an obscure one. And, y'know, fetishes – they're not always a thing that is 'on' or 'off' or... even starts out perverse, for that matter. Sometimes it just arises from... a way of thinking. A deeper desire..."

"What in the world are you talking about?" Twilight asked. There was actually a bit of fear in her voice. "I-I already told you, I'm not that kind of pony."

I stared straight ahead, raising my hand to my chin. "I'm not calling you a pervert. But. You do have... a desire. Of some sort."

Twilight looked at me like I was crazy. "What desire? And how could you possibly...?"

I clapped my hands together and braced myself. I had one shot at this and I really hoped it was a bullseye.

"You... might have a desire... for..." I gesticulated a bit. "...'casualness.' 'Informality.' All the benefits of a sexual relationship without any of the trappings of courtship, of... any sort of formal agreement whatsoever."

Twilight stared at me, rubbed her eyes, and stared at me again like I had grown a second head. "What?!"

I shrugged sheepishly and soldiered on. "Most of the time it's talked about in a context of, like, alternate dimensions – an alternate universe where people have sex with friends and strangers as casually as talking about the weather! But in a more mundane sense, it's like... If you're up for it, and they're up for it, then you can just fuck, have a quickie, and then put your clothes back on and get on with your day, no strings attached. And no one else minds either."

The Princess stood up from her chair and gestured at me. "You mean... exactly what you can do?"

"Sooorrrt of. In my case, it's more called 'universal acceptance.' That's when everyone agrees to whatever you say, even if they wouldn't normally. And then, on the non-consensual end of the spectrum, there's 'free use'..."

"So now you're a walking encyclopedia of obscure fetishes?!"

I tilted my head and gave her a wry look. "Internet, man. It's a hell of a drug."

Twilight just groaned and walked a few steps away, pressing her knuckles into her forehead.

"But between 'our current status quo' and 'universal acceptance,' there's... for lack of a better term, 'extreme casualness.' Where, so long as consent is respected, anything goes! At any time! With anyone! At the drop of a hat!"

The alicorn turned around and pointed at herself. "And you're saying I want that."

"Well, why not? After all–" I couldn't believe this was the clincher. "–it lets you 'do boyfriend and girlfriend things without being boyfriend and girlfriend.'"

Twilight's eyes went wide, and she swayed like she'd been struck in the head. She cupped her hands around her eyes and stared at the floor, trembling. It had all just clicked in her mind, at last.

And it finally all made sense to me, too. The Normal had inadvertently revealed a side of Twilight even she had never known: The kind of person she was when sex was an acceptable activity. Turned out, she was the kind of pony who wished she could just fuck someone and not have it be anything but a pleasant diversion. A happy activity shared between friends. Not even 'friendship with benefits' – the obvious joke – because that required a kind of formal agreement. No, just being able to jack someone off at the drop of a hat, because it would help cheer them up real quick and that was a good enough reason... Pursuing penis enhancement because hey, why not? Growing huge and going topless with your friends because hey, why not? So long as it helps.

That was the mystery of Twilight Sparkle under the influence of the Normal.

Twilight herself... wasn't handling this well, if the periodic shaking of her head and murmuring under her breath was any indication. She was running out of ways to deny this part of herself. She was scared of it, didn't know what to do with it. But I needed her to accept it, preferably on her own terms.

"Twi?" I asked hesitantly.

The alicorn sniffled and glared up at me, lips pursed. But the anger quickly faded, and she looked down and to the side sullenly. "So that's it, then. I'm a... a... a pervert?"

I tried to shrug it off, though I was nervous still. We were balanced on a precipice here. "Not... really? I think the definition of a pervert is... well, if you've been masturbating to the same idea for years, addicted to it without ever experiencing it..." I coughed not-too-pointedly, trying and failing as always not to glance at Twilight's breasts and the line of buttons that withheld them. "For you, we can safely call it a 'kink'? Everybody has 'kinks' without being perverts about it."

Twilight looked up at me like she didn't believe me, and I was beginning to intuit why. That just wasn't how she was raised in Celestia's world. The standard was 'missionary position with your spouse with the lights turned out.' Everything else was considered getting freaky. And letting one's freak flag fly was practically rebellion, or at least counterculture.

"Look, it's..." I struggled to find the right words. "...it's really just a matter of how your brain is wired, y'know? It's not a judgment on you, it's an extension of... just who you are. What makes you you. And knowing that is not a bad thing!"

The purple unicorn tried to fix me with another glare, but it just came across as tired and sad. "Really?" she said flatly. "You, of all people, have never regretted the fetishes you're stuck with?"

...Fucking really?

"I never expected to end up in a world literally catered to them, and I never– Gaahhh. Even through all of that – all of that, Twilight! – I never– well, rarely beat myself up for having those fetishes. Even I understood that it was just how I was wired! How I grew up! And trying to act or pretend like they didn't exist wasn't the right way to handle it. That's why things turned out the way they did!!"

Twilight actually recoiled from that last statement and turned away, scooting her chair at an angle. She held her arms around her stomach and looked down at the ground, like the room was spinning around her. She was breathing a little heavier as well.

At this point, there wasn't much more I could say. The rest was up to the stability of Twilight's mind. "I know it goes against everything you've ever known," I said, laying back down on the slab. I still felt tired, even more so after having this argument for what felt like forever. "But what's healthier: Ignoring it, or accepting it and dealing with it?"

I swear, if that wasn't the theme of my whole time in Equestria thus far...

Twilight said nothing for a while. I laid my head back and waited. In my head, I feared the worst – Twilight would reject this idea and flee, and I'd be stuck with one less ally for my 'plan' tomorrow with Celestia. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed Twilight with me. I was drained after, what, three strong uses of magic? And I was planning on putting the most complex, ageless mind in Equestria under my ultra-special-hypnosis, to test a procedure no one's ever tried on her? Did I even have enough mana for that? But Twilight... She had more magical power than me. And she'd just demonstrated that she could share it with others... Maybe she was the pony that made this plan at all possible. That, and her connection with Celestia, if it could be repaired from its current state...

"Pascal?" Twilight asked weakly.

I sat up and looked over at her. "Yeah?"

The bookworm opened her mouth a few times and struggled to fill it with words. A thousand questions had to be running through her mind, and the more she failed, the more visibly frustrated she became.

"I-I still don't understand," she finally admitted. "Chalk it up to me... being a virgin, I guess... O-Outside of– of what we did."

In a way, that was unfortunate. That the option to ease into this on her own terms had been taken away from her... "You can ask me anything, Twi." I chuckled and said, "I'm not here to try and, like, tempt you to the dark side of sex or anything like that, haha. But, uh, I guess I have a fair bit more experience than you at this point, so... Y'know, feel free to let me fill in the blanks."

Twilight sighed. She stood up abruptly, and walked a few paces away from me. "I'm a Princess," she stated. "Before that, I was Celestia's student... and a unicorn who didn't have a lot of friends growing up. Or, at least, I never appreciated the ones I had. And now I'm the Princess of Friendship." She looked back at me over her shoulder, her tail swaying nervously in quick circles. "But you... You don't care about any of that."

I moved my legs over the edge of the slab and watched her. "Nah," I replied with a grimace. "Kinda resent it, really... I mean, I respect your responsibilities, but..." I leaned my head back and let out a heavy breath. "God, you can be so up your own ass about it sometimes."

Twilight let out a flat "Ha" and thought for a moment. "And you..." She gestured at me. "You're a human. Ripped from your homeworld. Stuck in a world that constantly arouses you. Now you have a power that lets you do anything you want, and you mostly use it for sex with your... stable of marefriends. You just don't want to feel like you're hurting anypony in the process."

Okay, a fair assessment, but where was this recap going? "Sure?"

"So..." The Princess turned around, looked at me for a few seconds, and then faltered in her confidence. "I mean, even then, there's still a bunch of stuff – you say I want 'informal' sex, but there's still a bunch of expectations and... and rules, and... all sorts of things to consider, right? There's no such thing as extremely casual sex!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Societally speaking, sure... But one, that kind of stuff doesn't really matter around me..."

"I don't want to think about that yet!" Twilight insisted rather suddenly.

I paused, then swallowed. "...Two... the only things that actually matter are consent and communication. As long as the partners agree on what they want to do in the bedroom – and I guess as long as it's not doing lasting damage – anything goes!" A little bit more quietly, I added, "I mean, surely that much isn't lost on you...?"

"I-I know that much," Twilight quietly replied, wringing her hands together with anxiety. "Just... aaagh. I can't!" She turned away quickly again. "Maybe I want it to be easy! Fine! But I don't want to be easy, you know?! I don't want to turn into a mare that will... that will just have sex with anypony!"

I was mildly confused and concerned. "You don't have to..."

Oh geez, this was the whole superstition about the slippery slope into becoming an insatiable slut again, huh? I'd seen shades of this back with Moondancer. Celestia's millennium of projection strikes again.

"Hold on," I asked, "am I just 'anypony?'"

"No... and yes," Twilight grumbled rather bewilderingly, putting a hand to her forehead. "You're... an alien from another planet. You're not a stallion like I'm... like I'm supposed to– mmgh." Saying it out loud seemed to sound ridiculous even to her.

After a moment's processing, I sort of got it.

She... felt kinda slutty for getting intimate with 'the alien,' not to mention 'the sworn enemy' of Celestia. A 'villain?' Getting tricked into it, at that? Might as well have sucked off Sombra, or stripped for Discord's amusement, or cuddled up with Nightmare Moon. Might as well have gotten railed by Tirek, or hypnotized into eating out Chrysalis disguised as her babysitter.

I was nearly on that level. And I'd gotten away from it. I'd violated the hero and all of her friends, all of her peers, without them being even cognizant of that. Sure, Twilight's other friends had chosen to mostly brush it off and come to terms with the new facets of themselves they'd uncovered... but Twilight had every right to instead take it pretty personally.

I put a hand to my head and sighed. Here I was, thinking that we were getting close, and it turned out these scars ran deeper than I imagined.

Maybe... Maybe we weren't going to get through them in a single day, no matter what the Map intended in sending us here.

Despite everything I did to get here, my big plan was going to be a flop.

After taking a moment to think and let out the longest groan of my life, I got up from the slab and gave Twilight an apologetic look. "Sorry."

Twilight glanced over her shoulder at me.

I wiped my hand down my face. I felt utterly defeated. "Sorry for pushing you." I hung my head and gestured limply. "I thought if... maybe I could help you realize that you... If I could help with that mental block and help you get over your hangups about sex, that would build a bridge towards helping you face Celestia and reconcile." I wiped my face with both hands and groaned. "And I thought – hoped – that we'd have this 'eureka' moment and..."

"And rekindle our sexual relationship?" Twilight asked evenly, raising an eyebrow.

I shrugged and let my arms bounce limply against my legs. "Yeah, best case scenario, I guess..." I sighed and lowered my gaze to the ground. "But you're right. It goes deeper than that. I put you in an altered state and made you sleep with someone you didn't want to after the fact. Someone who came this close to being a villain and conquering the world. Someone..." I swallowed. "...whose flaws and weaknesses you knew very well. Who you knew wasn't going to be his best self after everything he'd been through."

The purple Princess let out a long sigh of her own.

"So yeah," I said pathetically. "That's... shitty. That's real fucked up, what I did to you. And no amount of fast-talking and philosophizing is really going to undo those scars, not this soon. I just... I just wanted to..." I sat back down on the slab. "...get rid of the headache, help with Celestia, I don't know..." I put my head in my hands and groaned. "But I'm done. I'm done pushing you. I'm sorry, for everything."

The longest silence yet fell between us. Twilight took a few deep breaths, making pushing-out gestures from her chest with her hand. She looked up at the mural behind me, and around at the room full of books.

I just sat there, wondering what the hell I was going to do about Celestia now.

I didn't notice Twilight's movements until she was right next to me, sitting down at my side. Not even at arm's length, either – rather close, within side-hugging range. She didn't say anything for almost another minute, and we simply sat together. I was very nervous, but Twilight was just staring off into space.

"Headache's not as bad anymore," she said out of nowhere.

I wasn't sure of the best way to parse that at first.

She glanced at me, a vaguely disappointed but thoughtful expression on her face. "My hangups about sex have gotten between me and Celestia?" She nodded. "Yeah... I'd say so. That's probably the most true thing you've said all day. But it's more than that. She was my role model. She was purity, chastity, perfection..." Twilight paused, sniffled, and continued. "And now I'm realizing, not only is that image broken, it was just propaganda she projected onto everypony, including me. I never saw the real her, but I loved the fake her."

There was a lull, and I thought it wise not to speak or comment. This was Twilight's moment.

"It's never been a fetish, more of an idle thought," she said quietly, her eyes not focusing on anything, smiling softly. "There have been times where I'd get tea with Rarity when she's stressed about a project or see Celestia's facade crack a little. Every so often I'd catch myself thinking something like, 'I wish I could crawl under the table and relieve some of their stress.' And I'd feel super guilty for a minute, then forget about it."

So I was right? Sort of?

"Is that my 'fetish'? No... I don't think so. More like an idle wish from a lonely heart." There was a sad smile on her face as she said that. "But as an argument for why my mind responded the way it did when you manipulated me, intentionally or not... I suppose it holds water."

I gently shrugged with my hands. The mood felt like if I moved too much or made too much noise, I'd break this delicate train of thought and destroy all this progress.

Twilight sighed, leaned back a bit, and looked behind us at the broken stained-glass mural of faceless 'Chad.' "I hate this world he made," she muttered. She looked down at her own breasts, nearly the size of her own head. "I hate being 'beautiful' and 'sexy' the way he wants us to be." Twilight's eyes darted over to me. "The way you want me to be."

Still keeping my mouth clamped shut, I nodded.

She faced forward again, this time with a slight air of approaching finality. "Which I guess brings us to the central question, doesn't it? Do we yearn for the days we pretended to be normal, happy, chaste ponies... or do we face our hypersexuality head-on and find a way to live with it?"

I nodded slightly more vigorously. Yes, that was indeed the question at the heart of... everything.

Twilight thought about that question for all of five seconds after answering it. "I can't hide anymore," she decided gently, clasping her hands together. "Celestia is the light of my world. I need her – the real her." She fixed me with a searching, piercing look. "Six nights ago, up in that tower... Were you really going to do it? Were you prepared to sacrifice yourself for her, for everypony?"

It was a tough memory to go back to, but I closed my eyes and nodded repeatedly. "Yes." My voice was a little raspy from the heavy weight in my heart. "I had stopped fighting. My skin was turning blue right before my eyes. I felt my... 'self' shrinking away into nothing. I'm only here... because Celestia spared me."

Twilight took a short breath and nodded slowly to herself. "Okay."

Miracle of miracles, it sounded like she finally believed me.

My hands started glowing and fading, over and over in rapid succession. A blinking light shone beneath Twilight's skirt at her hips. Both of us looked bewildered for a moment, before the obvious explanation reached both of our minds.

As the glows faded, we looked at each other. In mild wonderment, I said, "The friendship problem... It was us the whole time."

Twilight nodded with a wry expression. "Yeah. We needed to hash this out."

Her cutie marks and my hands, after a short pause, started to blink all over again. I felt a little confused. "Uh..."

The Princess's horn lit up, and a ray of light from the tip cast across the floor, showing a holographic projection of the magical round table back in Ponyville. There was new activity over Canterlot. Not just a random spot on the mountain, but directly above the royal palace itself.

My little 'orb' was there in the Map projection. So was Twilight's six-pointed star. And Luna's dark cloud and crescent moon. And Cadance's crystal heart. And Derpy's bubbles? All five of them orbiting around Celestia's sun in the center.

Twilight dismissed the projection and looked at me seriously. "Looks like the Map's calling us to the real mission."

I wrung my hands a bit. "Yeah... Who knows if we're ready."

The alicorn stood up and walked a few paces forward. "So. If I'm going to be involved in this all day tomorrow... I'll have to be prepared. Prepared to see my mentor... naked." She glanced back at me. "And you... naked. And myself, being naked around all of you, and her, probably."

"Probably...?" I agreed tentatively. This was an odd set of sentences coming from her out of the blue.

Twilight fixed me with a determined, even slightly eager expression, which worried me for some reason.

"Then I guess... it's time for me to get over my hangups. On my terms."

After we closed the vault door, Twilight took me by surprise by teleporting us both back to my suite in Canterlot's royal palace. I landed on my butt on the bed from a three-foot drop.

To my further surprise, my marefriend Derpy was seated at the edge of the bed, nearly launched off by my bounce. "Wahh! Pasky?? TWILIGHT?!"

"Oh good, you're here too!" Twilight exclaimed eagerly, clapping her hands together.

While I shook off the tingling feeling, Derpy rushed to my side where I lay. "Pascal! Are you okay? I saw this blue ball of light fly into my body and I was worried that, that, well...!"

"It's okay!" I insisted, still not quite feeling stable yet. "I just... modified the aura one more time."

"Again?? Pascal...!" Derpy whined. She had every right to be concerned after last time.

"Just taking care of the whole 'faux pas' thing." I paused. "Wait... aren't you supposed to be in Ponyville, working? Why are you here in Canterlot?"

Derpy held up a royal scroll, with a sun-shaped seal already broken. "Celestia... requested my presence here tomorrow. I've got the weekend off!" She unrolled the scroll and showed it to me. "Said she wanted me to 'represent the common pony' in a 'very personal matter.' I think I know what that means, but I'm not sure why!"

Neither did I. I'd asked her to invite ponies she loved and felt loved by... which, in retrospect, probably included all the ponies she felt a duty towards in her royal responsibilities. Still, it felt like she was taking an opportunity to torture herself with those she had wronged with her projection.

"Ah," Twilight said, "that explains why her cutie mark was on the Map!" She looked... almost giddy! I was very, very afraid.

"Yeah! I was just about to... ask about that..." Derpy glanced over at the alicorn, then back at me. "Pasky... what's going on?"

I looked at her and slowly raised my shoulders in a shrug. "Um... Warmup threesome with the Princess?"

Derpy's mismatched eyes lit up.