“-just don’t see why I’M the one who has to be the prince!” Indigo Zap said, leaning in towards Sunny Flare and sticking her thumb up against her chest. Sunny Flare refused to be intimidated by Indigo, who the rest of the drama club was giving a rather wide berth. She just stood there, staring Indigo Zap down with her arms crossed and a rather deadpan look on her face. “I’m a girl. I could TOTALLY play the princess!”
“Really?” Sunny Flare said once Indigo had settled down a little. “You don’t remember last year?”
***One year earlier
“We have been oppressed too long, my sisters! The time for words is over! The time has come...for REVOLUTION!” Indigo Zap stood in the center of a group of girls. Her period-themed dress, designed to reflect modesty, humble beginnings, and a life of servitude and piety, was ripped at the hem and sleeves. Her face was covered in dirt, and mud ran across her cheeks in crude war-paint. What was supposed to have been a nun-in-training instead looked like a freedom-fighter from a B-rated action movie who inexplicably, despite the intended time period, was still wearing sports goggles. “We will rise, my sisters! Rise, and cast down the petty tyranny of-”
“INDIGO!” Sunny Flare yelled from her seat in the director’s chair. “For the last time, you are not allowed to start a revolution on stage.”
“But it feels so much more in-line with my character,” Indigo Zap protested. “She’s a strong, independent woman at heart! She just needs the opportunity to let it all out!”
“Your character is a nun-in-training who falls in love with the rich guy while taking care of his kids,” Sunny Flare said, a bored expression on her face. “She abandons the clergy and runs off with him and his children, saving them from significant danger and taking on the role of surrogate mother for a family that desperately needs it. THAT is the plot, THAT is what we’re going to perform, and there will be NO creating a revolution on stage.”
Indigo Zap gave a ‘pffft’ sound through blowing her lips. “That’s a lame story. Can’t I play the rich guy instead, at least?”
Sunny Flare sighed. “Maybe next year, Indigo. For now, just read the lines. AS they’re written, please.”
Indigo Zap rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. But next year, I’m playing as the rich guy. Got it?”
***Current Day
“You can’t hold me to that!” Indigo Zap said.
“You convinced a bunch of six year olds to storm Principal Cinch’s office.”
“Can’t you get Jet Set to do it?”
“His girlfriend doesn’t like the idea of him kissing me on stage. Rather shallow of her, I think, but nothing to be done about it.”
“Fancy Pants?”
“Out of town for the show.”
“Trenderhoof?”
Sunny Flare shuddered. “NEVER again…”
“Royal Pin?”
“Too busy with the archery team. Sour Sweet won’t let him out of her sight this close to a competition.”
“Neon Lights?”
“Can’t trust him to actually show up to rehearsal, or the show.”
“Bluebloo-”
“If you’re about to suggest Blueblood, we’re gonna throw down right here.”
Indigo Zap gave a ‘humph’. “Fine,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Good,” Sunny Flare said. “Now, let’s go over your-”
“Yoohoo!” The refined, accented voice came from down the center aisle of the theater. Sunny Flare turned to see Rarity coming down to the stage. Following behind her was Rainbow Dash, pushing a large rack of costumes. “Sunny, darling, I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed designing the costumes for your little show.”
Sunny Flare’s eyebrow twitched. “...'little show'?”
Rarity bit the inside of her lip. “Wha-what I mean to say, is, for your...grand production!”
The bile immediately disappeared from Sunny Flare’s face. “Why thank you, dearie. So glad you could lend a hand.”
“Better watch this one,” Rainbow Dash said, holding her hand next to her mouth and whispering to Rarity. “She’s more uptight than you are.”
“And Indigo, darling,” Rarity said, brushing right past that comment before Sunny Flare could burst a vein, “it’s been far too long. When are you going to let me take a crack at that volleyball team’s uniforms? I know you girls like purple and all, but they’re just screaming for an update.”
Indigo Zap looked at the ornate, vintage-looking costumes that Rarity and Rainbow Dash had brought with them. “Uh...I don’t think the team wants their uniforms to look like...that. It’s sportwear, it’s made for practicality, not to look fancy.”
“But darling, I’m sure I can make something that look fabulous and you can…”
“Kick but in?” Rainbow Dash added, perhaps less helpfully than she thought.
“Uh...yes, darling.”
“Oh my gosh,” Indigo Zap said, turning to Sunny Flare. “She’s as bad as you, with ‘dearie’ every other sentence.”
Sunny Flare crossed her arms and stuck up her nose in a huff. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, dearie.”
“THERE!” Indigo Zap said, pointing a finger right in Sunny Flare’s face. “RIGHT THERE!”
“Ah, come on Indy,” Rainbow Dash said, draping an arm over Indigo Zap’s shoulder. “Let’s let these two talk about the costumes. Up for a quick game of basketball?”
A wide smile spread across Indigo Zap’s face. “You’re on, RD!” They bolted out of the auditorium, knocking over a pair of other students in a purple and rainbow blur.
“Oh my...is yours always like this?” Sunny Flare asked. Rarity’s face flushed bright red and she waved a hand defensively.
“Mine? Oh, darling, she-I mean, Rainbow Dash isn’t mi-I mean, we’re friends, obviously, and she is rather charming in her own way, but we’re not-I’m not...we’ve never…”
Sunny Flare’s mouth dropped open as she stood there, stunned as Rarity rambled on. “I...meant your Indigo Zap. You know...Canterlot High’s resident star athlete?”
“...oh…” Rarity said, blushing even harder.
Interesting, Sunny Flare thought. Best file that little outburst away for later reflection. In the meantime, she had costumes to examine. In her time running the drama club for Crystal Prep, Sunny Flare had gone through three seamstresses, two tailors, two prop creators, five set designers, and a constantly rotating array of anonymous, increasingly put upon stagehands. You could say whatever you wanted about Crystal Prep’s academics or athletics. Its archery team was second to none, they had never lost The Friendship Games, and their students were some of the highest scoring anywhere. But to Sunny Flare, the true pride of Crystal Prep Academy was its drama club. For an hour and a half they could transform the world, bring you to a place and time you would never see for yourself, and for a moment, just a moment, make you truly believe in it. Many of the alumni went on to become great and well-known, professional actors. And the price for all of this was the rather insignificant detail that Sunny Flare went through volunteers like Twilight’s dog went through biscuits. More than a fair trade, as far as she was concerned.
As such, Sunny Flare looked at Rarity’s costumes with extreme scrutiny. This was the first time she had worked with Rarity, it was time to make her standards very clear. To be honest, she would not even have called Rarity in for help, but her old costume designer, Sassy Saddles, had quit on her at the last minute, mumbling something about, “sweatshop worker” as she stormed out. Sunny Flare was pressed for time, and most of the seamstresses she knew refused to work with her anymore. Rarity was the only one left who would even take her call.
She would start with something minor, Sunny Flare decided. A misplaced stitch, a torn seam, a hem that was not quite even. Just to make it clear that she was paying attention to every detail. If you let them get lazy, Sunny Flare told herself, then the costumes suffered. And if the costumes suffered, then the whole scene lost color. It lost believability and realism. It lost LIFE. It took a lot of things going right to make a play perfect, and only one thing going wrong to break the immersion, and then the audience would just be back in a high school auditorium, watching their teenage children play dress up while bored fathers videotaped it in the back. No, there was ‘putting on a play’ and then there was ‘Performing’, and Sunny Flare fell strictly into the latter.
Well, she thought with a huff, pulling out a yellow costume and sneering. She’d find a fault with it, throw it back, and demand that Rarity redo the entire order. This suit was obviously too...well, obviously too...it certainly was…
Okay, that was a bad example, Sunny Flare told herself. She picked the one good costume in the bunch. Surely the green one was...was…
Completely period-appropriate, well-made, and accurate down to the tiniest detail. Okay, so another lucky draw. Rarity had some skills, Sunny Flare had to admit that, but no one made perfect costumes, all of the time, on their first try. The next one had to have a fault or a mistake in it, somewhere...or maybe the next one...the next one, surely…
Sunny Flare groaned, and Rarity tilted her head, an inquisitive look on her face. “Something wrong, darling?” she asked. “Are the costumes not to your liking?” Sunny Flare shook her head.
“No,” she said. “They’re...acceptable.” This was the point in the process where she was supposed to say, ‘thank you’, she was sure, but she couldn’t quite get the words to crawl their way up her throat. Sunny Flare had never thanked a stage hand, seamstress or assistant for as long as she had been running Crystal Prep’s drama club, and she was not about to start now. So, instead she said the closest thing she could. “Send me your bill.”
Rarity shook her head. “Really, darling, there’s no need.”
“But I insist, dearie.”
“And I insist not, darling.”
“I’m afraid, dearie, the matter is not up for debate.”
“I quite agree, darling.”
“Wow,” Indigo Zap said as she stood at the front of the auditorium, watching Sunny Flare and Rarity very politely and passive aggressively argue about the bill. “Yours is just as bad as mine.”
“Wha-” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, blushing furiously. “She-she’s not MINE! I-I mean, yeah, she’s pretty and awesome and nice and everything, bu-but it’s not like we’re-I mean, we never...it’s not like-”
Indigo Zap rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Sure.”