Wherein Twilight Sparkle Continues Fixing Things
“Come on Angel, just eat your salad. Then you can have dessert.”
Angel crossed his arms and turned his nose up. Because he was a jerk.
“Don't just do it for me, do it for yourself! You don't wanna grow up with weak muscles and bones like your uncle Limp-Along, do you?”
Angel glared at Fluttershy. Seriously? Uncle Limp-Along limped because he was a war vet, not because of his irrational fear of fresh spinach. Sometimes Fluttershy was the jerk. The ignorant jerk.
“Please, Angel? Pretty please?”
Nope. Definitely not. Not after she'd (accidentally) insulted his family again.
“Please, I'd really rather not have to use the, um, you know...”
She wouldn't.
“The stare, I mean.”
She wouldn't.
Fluttershy cleared her throat. “I said, I'd reeeaallly rather not have to use the stare again...”
She wasn't convincing in the slightest.
“I can't let you just starve yourself, Angel.”
She couldn't do that even if she wanted to. He was a rabbit. If it came down to it, he could just hop outside and eat pretty much anything that was green.
Fluttershy sighed. “Very well, then. You leave me no choice.”
… Crap.
Someone knocked at the door to Twilight's house/library thing. And kept knocking. Enthusiastically.
“Ugh.” Twilight looked up from her book just long enough to roll her eyes. “Spike? Could you go see who it is?”
Spike opened the door to find Angel in mid-kick. He quickly hopped inside and stopped in front of Twilight, waving his arms frantically until the alicorn looked up.
“Oh hi, Angel! What's going on?”
Angel crossed his paws and waved them in a quick little fluttering motion.
“Huh? Something about... Butterflies? Fluttering?”
Angel nodded, then drooped his ears back and made a show of staring at the floor, paws behind his back.
“And you're... Shy?”
Angel nodded enthusiastically.
“So, something about butterflies and being shy...”
Angel planted his face into his paw.
“Hmm, so... You want to talk about something to do with butterflies, but you're shy about it and can't think of anyone else to talk to?”
Angel planted a second paw on his face.
“Uh, Twilight? I think he's talking about Fluttershy.”
Angel pointed at Spike and nodded frantically.
“Oh yeah! Good thinking, Spike!” She petted the dragon's head with her hoof, then turned back to the rabbit. “So what's going on with Fluttershy?”
Angel opened his mouth wide and raised his paws to make little finger-teeth, thought for a moment, then sighed. He hopped towards the door while motioning for Twilight and Spike to follow him. So they did.
“Oh, hi Miss Rarity!” Aloe beamed as the unicorn walked in. “I'm terribly sorry, but we're running a little behind on getting the mud bath ready.”
“Oh, don't worry my dear. I'm still going to be waiting for Fluttershy. You'll have plenty of time to-”
“I'm here!” Fluttershy exclaimed as she burst in through the door.
“Oh! Well hello there Fluttershy! You usually get held up a little, aheheh...” Rarity turned her head to Aloe and loudly whispered, “Let's start with the cucumber facials this time.” Aloe nodded and headed into the back to help set up.
“Oh I know, but Angel was so well-behaved today.” Fluttershy happily bounced around the room. “And I'm so full of energy all of a sudden! I have no idea why.”
“Well, let's cool off that energy a bit, shall we? And get your fur smelling all nice and not like a zoo.”
“Mhmm.” Fluttershy continued bouncing around while Rarity headed for the spa rooms. The pegasus did another lap around the lobby and stopped in front of a vase of flowers. She sniffed and smelled them, then ate them. Then happily hopped along after her friend and flopped down onto one of the spa's beds.
Fluttershy squirmed and fidgeted as the spa ponies applied that mysterious pale green stuff to her face. A random kick knocked a tray of cucumber slices out of Lotus's hoof.
“Oh my goodness! I'm so sorry!”
Lotus just smiled. “Oh, don't worry about it,” she said as she began picking up the mess.
Fluttershy looked around nervously while still fidgeting. Then she shook her head rapidly, sending the green spa gunk splattering all over everything. “Oh, I'm sorry!”
“It's fine!”
She looked over to Rarity. “Um, I'm sorry Rarity, but I don't think I can sit still long enough to relax today. I don't know what's wrong!”
Rarity telekinetically lifted a cucumber from her eye. “Darling, if you're not feeling comfortable, I understand. I'd never want to force one of my friends to do something they didn't want to.” Except for that one time with the bats.
“So you would be okay with it if I, um, canceled for today?”
“It would be perfectly okay with me, Fluttershy. Just do take care of yourself.”
“Oh, thank you so much!” With that, the pegasus planted a squishy kiss on Rarity's cheek before hopping out. She shook off the spa stuff around her mouth as she did so.
“Hmm. I'm starting to feel a little concerned about that mare.”
She reclined back on the bed and put the cucumber down over her eye again. Fluttershy was certainly acting strange, but not exactly scary strange. And if it was serious, she would've asked for help. Or her friends would suddenly come bursting into the spa. So she just tried to relax and not worry about it.
“Rarity!” Spike exclaimed. Rarity sat up and flung off the cucumbers. Spike, Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Angel had suddenly burst into the spa. “There's something wrong with Fluttershy! We followed Angel to her house but she wasn't there so we started looking for her and we found Rainbow Dash and she hadn't seen Fluttershy but she said she would be with you and so we ran here but Fluttershy's not here!” Spike took a few moments to catch his breath. Then a couple more. “So where is she?”
“Why, Fluttershy was just in here a minute ago! And acting a bit peculiar, I must say.”
“Any idea where she might have gone?” Twilight asked.
“Not even the faintest.”
Twilight took a deep breath and exhaled while doing that stress-relief thing with her front leg. “Okay. Spike and Angel, you go grab Pinkie Pie. I'll go get AppleJack. Rainbow Dash, you keep looking for Fluttershy. Rarity, you help her look. Now let's go!”
“On it!” Rainbow Dash gave a salute before disappearing in a gust of wind.
“And what do we do when we find her?” Rarity asked.
“I have no idea.”
Twilight paced back and forth around her library/house thing with a book floating in front of her face. In the center of the room, Applejack and Rainbow Dash were struggling to hold down a tied-up Fluttershy. Everyone else was sort of standing around and watching as they waited for Twilight to figure out why Fluttershy suddenly had adorable whiskers, long ears, very oddly-shaped hind legs, and a propensity for raiding people's carrot patches.
“Oh! Carry the thaumazerk, or else the Starswirl particles get all... Ah-ha!” She snapped the book shut. “I know exactly what went wrong and how we can fix it!
“You see, when I first cast that spell to mind-control the vampire fruit bats while Fluttershy was using her Stare on them, I didn't accidentally reflect the bats' essence onto her, I reflected an incomplete portion of the spell itself. Which seems to have combined with the Stare and is now causing her to absorb the essence of anything she uses the Stare on. So I removed the bats' essence from her, but the spell was still there, and then she used her Stare on Angel, and that's why she's a rabbit now.”
Fluttershy squeaked adorably and wrinkled her nose.
“And how do we fix it for good this time?” Applejack asked.
“Simple. First, I remove the rabbit essence from her. Then, I remove the incomplete spell. Then everything will be fixed.”
“Like last time?” Rainbow Dash asked without a single hint of sarcasm whatsoever.
“Exactly.”
Twilight then floated a mirror directly in front of Fluttershy, who predictably became fixated on her reflection. She closed her eyes, concentrated, and her horn glowed with magic. Magic that shot into the mirror, then into the rabbit pony. Applejack and Rainbow Dash rolled off of her as glowing purple light swirled around and enveloped her.
“Hmm...” Twilight said to herself, eyes still closed. Fluttershy's ears started to shrink, her whiskers shortened and disappeared, her legs warped themselves back into a more normal pony shape, and her tail stretched out to its original length. Less than a minute, and she was back to her regular pegasus self.
“There we go!” Twilight opened her eyes again as the magic faded away. “Good as new.”
“And you're sure you completely removed the spell this time?” Rarity asked.
“Nope! I actually couldn't remove the original spell because it's too tightly bound to her Stare, so I just added another spell that blocks out other spells, so that way she can't absorb any other essences. Or spells.”
“So, if she tries to use her Stare again...” Rarity thought for a moment. “The Stare is going to try and absorb her target's essence, but the new spell will block it.”
“Exactly.”
“Aaaaand what happens if she Stares into the mirror again?” Rainbow Dash this time.
“Hmm, well her Stare would basically be trying to absorb the essence of something that can't absorb the essence of something. Why do you ask?”
“Because she's still doing it.”
Sure enough, Fluttershy was still lying on the floor and staring at herself in the mirror. Pinkie Pie waved a hoof in front of her face.
“Hello-o, Equestria to Fluttershy, do you re-AUGH!!!” A sudden burst of lighting shot out of the mirror and knocked Pinkie Pie across the room.
Eyes still fixed on her reflection, Fluttershy slowly sat up. She turned her head to look at Twilight, but the mirror split in two, like a dividing cell, with one still sitting directly in front of the empty-eyed pegasus. She turned her head the other way, and the mirror split again, keeping another reflection directly in front of her. She stood up, slowly turning in a full circle, the mirrors splitting and multiplying to form a complete ring of mirrors around her, each one reflecting the reflections of all the others.
She sat back down and began to vibrate.
Everyone sat and stared in confused silence. Rarity was the first to break the silence.
“Um, Twilight dear? I know you've spent your whole life studying magic, but have you ever actually graduated and earned a degree of any kind?”
The mirrors started to float up off the floor and rotate around Fluttershy.
“No ma'am, I have not.”
Fluttershy herself started to float up off the floor and rotate in the opposite direction of the mirrors.
“Ah.”
There was a sudden, deafening BOOM as the mirrors shattered, spraying splinters of wood all over the room, the actual reflective glass shards staying in roughly the same shape as the original mirrors. Then they began to slowly spread out, over and under, forming a slowly-turning sphere of shiny glass around Fluttershy. Each piece created a new reflection, no, a chain of reflections, as it showed the image of every other piece around it. Fluttershy's eyes were now completely white.
The ground began to shake. The sounds of shouting and confused ponies filtered in from the town outside. The whole house/library/tree/what do we officially call it/seriously/I would like to know creaked, the walls slowly splitting open.
Gravity disappeared. Everyone was lifted, legs flailing, off the floor, rotating around the sphere of broken glass. The top of the tree thing opened like a giant flower, the sides peeling away, as everything rose through it. The clouds above swiftly faded away and the sky was filled with the image of Fluttershy's staring face, framed by the reflection of the world below it.
Outside, other houses were disintegrating, their remains floating aimlessly. Ponies screamed and flailed as they floated towards the pegasus and were sucked into an orbit around her and her friends.
Inside the sphere, Fluttershy spread her arms and all six of her wings. Her feathers parted, revealing a great, unblinking eye on each wing. Then she opened her mouth, and all the noise around her was drowned away.
“ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR.”