Just because she knows what it means...
Twilight Sparkle has finally passed all her tests and gotten her license to legally transport other ponies with her whenever she teleports. Unfortunately, it was so expensive that now she's broke. So, to recoup her losses, she decides to open up an "Escort Service", teleporting ponies wherever they want to go.
It's a perfectly legitimate service... so, why are ponies acting so funny about it?
Read it here
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Tropes found in this story include:
- Almost Kiss: Twilight's final escort client attempts to kiss her while they're both prone in the snow. When Applejack and Rarity find them, Twilight has him levitated in a field bubble, her eyes have gone white, and he's bruised from where the field's squeezed him too tightly. While the stallion felt he was just starting into a paid-for opening overture, a freaked-out Twilight's treating it as something closer to Attempted Rape because in her mind, he had no reason to try it. Her friends manage to talk her down, but it's clear that the stallion was in some degree of very real danger.
- Double Entendre:
- Twilight's advertising poster. All of it.
- In another sense, the word "escort" itself, which has to carry both the meaning of "to teleport with a companion" and "to provide professional comfort, accompaniment, and sexual services". Twilight's ignorance of the second meaning, combined with most ponies being unaware of the first, is what creates all the trouble.
- Fantastic Slurs: Mr. Waddle, convinced Applejack just wants Twilight for herself, calls her a horn-sticker: an insulting term for earth ponies who are sexually attracted to unicorns. Of course, he's trying to insult her with a term which just happens to apply to him...
- Follow the Leader: An in-universe example: Rainbow Dash's reaction to Twilight's new business is to complain that it's a pegasus prerogative and print up advertisments for her own competing escort business.
- Here We Go Again!: The story ends with Rainbow Dash also angrily confronting a client who mistook her for a prostitute.
- Mistaken for Prostitute:
- The entire crux of the story in a nutshell. Ambiguous wording on the poster and Twilight's own lack of street smarts means that the majority of ponies seeking out her advertised services believe she's just admitted to having taken on a rather unexpected profession. Given that enough time has passed since Twilight's arrival that some ponies are becoming curious about her as a potential partner, the wording of the poster, and the belief that anypony that openly non-sexual is basically a dam with the water waiting to break through, there's more than enough interest to fill out a good part of Twilight's appointment book.
- It's worth noting that in this version of Equestria, the sexual kind of escorting is both legal and requires a license — the latter of which can't be acquired before going through classes, with at least one of those being in psychology.
Word Of Fanfic Author is that the ideal result is a group of mares and stallions who can sling the cider. (The worst case scenario has a name: Fleur.) Towards the end of the story, it's also stated that Ponyville's last true escort moved out some time before Twilight arrived, so ponies had been waiting for a while — and one of the last things Twilight, Applejack, and Rarity do while cleaning up after the mess is to write a number of Canterlot newspapers and get a Wanted ad in their classifieds, letting the true professionals know there's an open market available.
- May–December Romance: Mr. Waddle would dearly love to start one with Twilight, and isn't sure how much time he has left in which to do so.
- Not What It Looks Like: The first pony Twilight escorts is Mister Flankington. He's described as having a particularly urgent need and openly admits that he's embarrassed by it, along with some extra embarrassment for needing any help at all. Once Twilight teleports him away, the follow-up text spends some time presenting the illusion of a post-tryst chat — before revealing that the rather well-educated pegasus is the only pony in town (apart from Rainbow) who understood what Twilight actually meant: he needed to move some chemicals out of his test shed before the temperature brought them down to a danger zone and isn't any good at flying in the coldest weather, so he hired Twilight to teleport the vital pieces into a warmer environment. Which ultimately makes things worse for Twilight, because it's that much easier to believe that her follow-up customers got it right too...
