Title:           Saddled – Chapter 10
Author:          Anonymous
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/griQiUus
First Edit:      Saturday 31st of October 2015 02:51:28 PM CDT
Last Edit:       Saturday 31st of October 2015 02:51:28 PM CDT

        Rarity blinked a few times and shook her head to clear her vision from the abrupt teleportation. "You could at lea– *whoa!*" She flailed her legs as she abruptly found gravity pulling her in the correct direction.
        Twilight sprang into action almost instantly, grabbing Rarity with her magic, quickly righting her, and slowing her descent. "I've got you!" she assured her friend as she landed on the floor, not softly or gracefully, but more safely than she would've otherwise.
        Rarity took a few deep breaths and shook her head to reorient herself. "Th–Thanks…" She cleared her throat. "Anyway, you could've at least warned me before teleporting me."
        "I know, and I'm sorry…" Twilight apologized halfheartedly. She stepped towards the basement stairs and motioned with her hoof for Rarity to follow. "Now, what were you doing last night that you didn't want Sweetie Belle to hear about?"
        Rarity blushed as she carefully made her way down the stairs, closing the door behind her. "Why didn't we just teleport directly into your laboratory?"
        Twilight cleared her throat and responded curtly. "It's magically shielded to protect sensitive experiments, which prevents any teleportation in or out. Now, you were saying…?"
        Rarity blushed. "Well, after the party, I was feeling rather… 'worked up', so I used a 'toy' to… satisfy my urges, so to speak."
        Twilight nodded. "You were sexually aroused, so you masturbated with a dildo." She looked at Rarity inquisitively. "Is that all?"
        Rarity's ears went back slightly at the blunt language. "Well, also, I kind of… fell asleep… with the toy still… inside me."
        "You must've been pretty exhausted." Twilight chuckled. "And you couldn't've told me that in front of Sweetie Belle?" She turned the lights on at the bottom of the stairs.
        Taken aback, Rarity shook her head. "She's just a filly! I'd rather not expose her to that sort of thing until she's older." She followed Twilight past the rows of desks and tables, with miscellaneous experiments and pieces of equipment strewn about atop them. By the purposeful manner with which Twilight walked, Rarity could only assume there was a method to the madness, much like the "organized chaos" of her own Inspiration Room.
        Twilight chuckled jovially. "In all likelihood, she'll be beginning her first estrus within the next month or two, or maybe next year. You can't shield her from sex." She stopped at one of the desks and began searching through the drawers.
        Rarity bit her lip. "Actually, I was thinking about that recently. Sweetie Belle told me that she heard one of her classmates was foalnapped by a pegasus for… mating purposes. I was wondering if you had any idea how to keep Sweetie safe."
        Twilight sighed. "So you just have hearsay to go on, then? That's a nasty rumor, Rarity, nothing more. The chance that something like that happens on a regular basis is next to zero."
        "So even you admit that it's possible! A probability that's 'next to zero' *isn't* zero. Given what it is we're talking about, doesn't it make sense to err on the side of caution?"
        Twilight stopped what she was doing and turned to face Rarity, a literal twinkle in her eyes. Rarity knew that look, and braced herself accordingly. "That's a common mistake, actually. It's called the availability heuristic. Ponies tend to overestimate the odds of rare but dramatic risks and underestimate the odds of commonplace but mundane ones. No probability is going to be exactly zero, but once something's unlikely enough, you can basically ignore it."
        Rarity sighed inwardly; ever since Celestia had told Twilight to improve her rational thinking skills, she'd become just shy of insufferable. "How can you be so sure about that? How do you explain all the the fillies who go missing every springtime?"
        "Confirmation bias…" Twilight replied, without even turning to look at her friend. "Ponies are going missing all the time; you just pay more attention when a filly disappears during the spring than when a colt disappears or a filly disappears at some other time. There's no statistically significant change in the data that's correlated with the average estrus cycle."
        She pulled a long implement from the desk drawer. "Aha, here it is!" The instrument appeared to be a long metal rod with a large colorless gemstone at one end and a handle at the other. Twilight used her magic to hold it by the handle, keeping her grip away from the other end. "Alright, hold still for a moment."
        Rarity stepped away from the desk to give Twilight room to maneuver, and then stood as still as she could as Twilight brought the wand closer to her. "What do you mean 'nothing' has a probability of exactly zero? Obviously, *some* things have to be impo–"
        She was interrupted when the tip of the wand started to glow a bright white. "Hmm," Twilight said, "I'm picking up some magic from you, well above what is expect as background noise, but I'll have to do a more detailed scan to know more." She set the wand back in the drawer. "Follow me." She started leading Rarity towards the far side of the room. "Sorry for interrupting you, but to answer your question, you can never be 100% certain that something is impossible. There's always the possibility that you're dreaming, or you're just completely wrong about some fundamental fact of reality."
        Rarity nodded as they approached a large apparatus against the wall. "Alright, that makes sense." The machine was semicylindrical in shape and an iridescent white in color, with thick walls and a cavity in the middle just large enough to fit a pony.
        With a loud rattling sound, Twilight pulled a large tray from the core of the machine. "This is a magical resonance imager, or MRI; it'll help me precisely measure the distribution and concentration of magical energy in your body. If you'll climb on, I'll strap you in, and we can figure out what's going on with you.
        Rarity nodded and climbed up onto the metal tray, which seemed to have a fine ivory coating. "Twilight, why are you in such a hurry? You teleported me without warning, you interrupted me when I was speaking, and you've just seemed generally impatient. Is something wrong that I should know about?"
        Twilight sighed. "I'm just concerned for your safety." She helped Rarity get into position and strapped her in, making sure the straps were tight and secure, but not uncomfortable. "It seems like something's been has been disrupting several fundamental features of reality in your vicinity. Time, space, magic, gravity, electromagnetism. If the weak nuclear force is affected, you could be subjected to radiation and other effects that could be carcinogenic. And if the strong nuclear force is affected, well… your whole body could violently disassociate into a diffuse cloud of quarks and leptons."
        Rarity swallowed. "That sounds… bad. I'm guessing there's no coming back from that?"
        Twilight frowned, shook her head, and slid the tray, with Rarity now strapped onto it, back into the machine. "I'm afraid not. Entropy is a harsh mistress."