Everything is Certainly Fine, or "Magical Mystery Cure in three parts"

by Kaj-Nrig

Part 1, Chapter 1: Morning in Ponyville

Everything is Certainly Fine
or
Magical Mystery Cure, in three parts

-_-_-_-

Part 1
Chapter 1 – Morning in Ponyville

-_-_-_-

Morning in Ponyville is wonderful, Twilight thinks. Today feels like a good day, like everything's shimmering and shining. She slings on her saddle pack and makes for the door, humming a cheery little tune to herself as she greets the sunny, cheerful world. She's not sure exactly what she needs to go do at this early hour, but whatever it is, she's certainly going to have fun doing so. She's so happy she might even break into song; and as much as that thought should perturb her, the Ponyville morning is just too fine to warrant perturbation.

Can things ever go wrong? She doesn't think so.

“Hello, Mayor Mare,” she greets warmly as she begins down the street. “Hello, Davenport!”

“Mornin', kid,” he returns.

Yes, today is a good day. Gentle, and still, and can things ever go wrong? She doesn't think so.

She passes by the new fancy restaurant that just opened up, and even there the patrons are warm and courteous. Soon she allows herself to be pulled into an impromptu dance with a stallion she's never met, but he has such wonderful skill with his hooves that it hardly matters.

Yes, she confirms again as she continues down the street, everything is going to be just fi—

A short deluge of rainwater later, and just like that, everything is not going to be fine. She glares at the cloud. “Rainbow Dash, that's not funny!”

The voice that answers isn't Rainbow Dash. “I'm terribly sorry, darling,” Rarity says humbly. Twilight turns to the voice; the white-coated pony stands on a bridge that surely was not there when Twilight last looked. She should be shocked by this, but she's more taken by the fact that Rarity's horn is glowing.

Then she notices the clouds in the sky. They are, all of them, elegant, like... dresses, almost. Dresses? Why dresses? she mumbles to herself. Certainly they're odd-looking, even for clouds, and there is an unmistakeable air of intelligent fashion to them, but why does she get the feeling that there's more that she should be seeing here?

Rarity, seeing that Twilight's attention has turned elsewhere, promptly returns to her work. She would have expected some sort of response to her apology, at the very least, but perhaps Twilight isn't feeling very well today. The normally studious girl was dancing, after all, and with strangers at that. And more importantly, she was dancing well, which Rarity has learned to recognize as a sign of Very Strange Things to Come.

Still, as she arranges the errant thunderclouds into a neat checkerboard pattern, Rarity makes one more attempt at pacifying her purple friend. “I'm afraid I'm not very good with the thundery ones...” Maybe you'd like to help a girl out? she adds silently.

Several moments later, Twilight still hasn't responded, and isn't that just rude? But, Rarity chides herself, perhaps Twilight is just worse off than she initially thought. It's obvious something is bothering her. And it's not likely due to the errant raincloud that very nearly literally rained on her sunny day; Twilight's never been shy around water before, and besides, Rarity already explained herself.

She swirls the rainclouds into a pretty little bow-tie formation. Confident that this will keep them in line for at least a brief moment, she turns to more properly express her concern for her friend—

Twilight is staring, mouth agape, at her flank. Or, more specifically, at her cutie mark. What's so strange about her cutie mark? Certainly the girl's seen it dozens of times before. Rarity glances down and back, twisting her body to get a better look.

A white cloud with a rainbow-colored bolt shooting from it. Same as always.

“Twilight?” she asks with a hint of concern. “Twilight?” She walks up slowly to the other unicorn and repeats the name. “Twilight?” Now she's worried; Twilight's eyes are wide and uncomprehending, and she hasn't moved from her spot. Rarity waves a hand in front of her eyes. “Are you awake, darling? Twilight?”

Then Pinkie Pie reaches down and pulls as hard as she can. “TWIIIIIIIII—”

---

“—LIIIIIIIGHT!”

“Aaagh!”

Twilight has never been woken up quite so abruptly before. It takes her a moment to realize she's on the floor, tangled in her bedsheets and Pinkie Pie's erstwhile limbs—no, wait, those are her own. She groans and sorts her legs from her bedding, blinking away the remnants of sleep. What a dream...

“Are you alright, darling? We knocked on your door, but you weren't answering. When we let ourselves in, you were sleeping so soundly that we could hardly wake you,” Rarity says, looking at her with concern; Pinkie hops around the room, very much pleased with herself at a job well done.

“I-I'm sorry, girls,” she says sheepishly. “I've just been—” She stops to yawn. “—been really tired lately. Thanks for waking me. What time is it?”

“Time for BREAKFAST!” Pinkie shouts, and suddenly there is a table in her room with three stools and a veritable feast of food and drink. Twilight does not question Pinkie's resourcefulness.

Soon she is munching on a sandwich of roses and jelly with a delicious salt lick next to it and hot tea steaming away in a small cup. “I had the strangest dream,” she says without preamble. “I woke up feeling so happy and excited, so I started singing and dancing in the streets—”

“You had a dream, woke up, went dancing, and then came back to sleep before we could wake you? Why would you do that?” Pinkie asks. She is eating a muffin. Where she got a muffin... Twilight does not question Pinkie's resourcefulness.

“She means she dreamed that she woke up, Pinkie.”

“Ohhh. So then what happened?”

“I... I'm not sure. I turned around and all of a sudden you were there, Rarity, standing on a bridge. I think you were... Yes! You were most definitely controlling the rainclouds with your magic.”

“You mean like Rainbow Dash?” Rarity laughs at the possibilities.

Twilight nods. “You even had her cutie mark,” she continues, then quickly lifts a napkin to protect her face from Rarity's spit tea.

“That tawdry thing? Goodness!” Rarity turns to look at her rump, gazing at it for long, heartfelt moments. “Not that there's anything wrong with Dash's cutie mark, but I couldn't stand having anyone else's cutie mark on MY posterior.”

Twilight and Pinkie giggle. “Neither could we.”

“And then what happened?” Pinkie asks in between mouthfuls of cake.

“Then YOU reached in and literally pulled me out of my dream.”

Pinkie just grins obliviously.

“Why are you two here anyway?”

“You don't remember? Are you sure you're alright, Twilight?”

Twilight sighs. “I don't know. The last few days, it's seemed like I just get more tired more easily. It's probably nothing. Maybe I just need a break from my studies...” She shudders visibly at the thought.

“Maybe we should throw a party!” Pinkie reaches for her ever-present cannon.

“I think I'm partied out for the moment, Pinkie. But thanks.”

“Awww.” Pinkie quietly replaces the cannon.

“You said you were going to help me with research on Middle Age High Court Canterlotan fashions, but I'm sure I can get Spike; he knows this library almost as well as you do.”

It's true, Twilight realizes, almost jealously. That dragon can find the most obscure books, often tossed carelessly about and long forgotten by her. Almost as well as her? He might know the library BETTER than her. Well, he IS my number one assistant, she cheers with pride. To Rarity, she answers, “That's alright. I just remembered, I put all the books I could find over there.” She points to three uneven stacks of old, hardbound books in the corner by the door, all with small tabs poking out from between the pages. “I bookmarked the parts I thought might be especially helpful. Of course, you can't fully appreciate their significance without knowing the context surrounding them, so I wrote up a list of chapter summaries for each book as well.” She points to a small column of paper next to the books. Only head high, too; she's very proud of how much efficient she was with her paper usage. “And I included in the margins of each list references to other books that might relate to that particular one so that if you decide to focus on any one decade or designer, you can easily get what you need. Oh, and by author, so if you want books by the same author or authors – there are eighty-four unique authors, by the way—”

“Pardon me, Twilight, but you read through ALL of these?”

“And bookmarked and summarized with references by decade, designer, author, and—”

“It's no wonder you're so tired, Twilight. You must have been up all night for nights getting this information. How long did it take you to do all this?” Pinkie pokes the stack of papers suspiciously, as if they might come alive at any moment.

“How long?” Twilight ponders the question.

...she doesn't really know.

“I don't really know.”

“You don't really know.” Rarity scoffs. “I appreciate the effort you put into this, Twilight, I truly do, but please remember to not work yourself too hard, alright, dear?” Twilight nods absently, positively preening at her thoroughness.

“I'll try.” Oh, Rarity will absolutely LOVE reading about the origin of the Double-Twilled Satin Thread Stitch!

“Wonderful. Now, one more question.”

“Yes?”

“How do you propose we move this many books to my shop by day's end?”

-_-_-_-

With help from one of Rarity's neighbors – a brown stallion named Caramel, who Twilight recalls also graciously helped pull their cart to the Grand Galloping Gala however many moons ago – they manage to move all the books to the Carousel Boutique in only two trips.

Twilight and Pinkie spend only a few minutes lingering there, then they're off to the Everfree Forest. As it turns out, the reason for Pinkie showing up at her door that morning was to get her to help Zecora with, as Pinkie put it, “a really super-duper extra-supremely positively magnificently hiLARious practical joke potion.” How she managed to convince Zecora to even TRY to make such a thing is beyond Twilight, but again, Twilight does not question Pinkie's resourcefulness.

As it happens, all the potion does is turn Pinkie briefly into a strange, bipedal version of herself, with five phalanges on each of her hoofless legs. The whole process looks very painful, but afterwards Pinkie just laughs it off and says she had been wanting to do that for a while now.

The rest of the day goes by without incident. Twilight finishes looking through the village's building code laws and picks out several clauses which could be removed or amended, to show to Mayor Mare. The Cutie Mark Crusaders take up librarian duties for all of half an hour before leaving to try other, more fruitful endeavors. Spike and Owlowiscious clean up her clutter while she visits the Apples. Several of the villagers stop by for this and that book on this and that subject.

All in all, a good day. A fine day.

As she tucks herself into bed that night, Twilight thinks back to the dream she had that morning. It was such a nice dream, with singing and dancing and sunshine and warmth and laughter.

She smiles to herself and drifts off to sleep.

Can things ever go wrong? She doesn't think so.

-_-_-_-

Author's Note:

A/N: Disclaimers and such. I don't own MLP:FiM, Hasbro does. I'm not affiliated with them, though I sort of wish I was, because as much as I love FiM, I felt they really mishandled the Season 3 finale. It's the reason we're here, after all.

This is, in essence, a “second draft” of MMC. I've taken the general plot of that episode and reworked it to fit a longer “running time.” (To be more specific, I tried to make it fit roughly into three full-length episodes.) The changes made are rather minor up to a point, after which the plot veers far enough away from the original that, were this story canon, it would make for a very different kind of wait for Season 4. (Of course, the argument can be made that the series has been veering further and further from itself for a long while now, an argument I'm inclined to agree with.)

Anyway, that's enough from me. I hope you enjoy it.

Comments

[Pinkie31459]

I like the concept, but it feels very odd written in past tense. Looking forward to more

[Midnight Rambler]

Woo, first to upvote this!

I really like the idea - MMC was far too short and weird, and it deserves a longer and subtler treatment. Also, it's well written so far! Present tense is an uncommon choice, but it doesn't hurt the story at all as long as you're consistent.

[Starlight Nova]

"Of course, the argument can be made that the series has been veering further and further from itself for a long while now, an argument I'm inclined to agree with." What do you mean by that?