“Hey girls- uh, I guess nopony’s here. Well, Whiteout, here we are: the Cutie Mark Crusaders clubhouse.”
The door closes behind the white pegasus version of Sweetie Belle without anypony to push it shut, though Apple Bloom seems not to notice. Apple Bloom goes about the room, showing her all the fun stuff they’ve done to the clubhouse. She does gloss over some of the burns.
Whiteout ruffles her wings gently. She had run behind the other alicorn earlier, to intent upon her curiosity about these ‘Cutie Mark Crusaders’. Now that she’s in the clubhouse, she gets to learn about exactly what they are.
She’s excited- though she can’t help but notice Apple Bloom’s ‘bed feathers’.
“Sure, I’d love to join, but, uh… Can you fly?”
The yellow earth pony stares at her for a second. “Earth ponies can’t fly,” she states.
A raised eyebrow is her response. “Well duh. You’re not one.”
Clop.
Apple Bloom’s raised hoof falls solidly to the floor. “Huh?”
Sigh. “Yes. I can tell-” She pauses, tapping a hoof to her chin, and considers for a second, before she lets out a small sigh. “Zeus helped me, made me… weird.” She looks up at the disguised alicorn in front of her. “Because of that, I can see things ponies can’t.” She stands up, stepping towards her new friend with a friendly smile. “I can see that you’re like me- wings… And horn.”
Apple Bloom hangs her head. “I knew I couldn’t hide it for long,” she mutters, dropping her disguise.
Whiteout laughs almost openly. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
Ears perking up, the yellow alicorn in the room raises her head, glancing at her wings. “You don’t happen to have any pointers on preening, do you?”
Three hours later, a white pegasus and a yellow earth pony sit next to each other on a cloud, high in the sky above Ponyville.
“How’s your day been?” the earth pony asks.
“Pretty good,” the pegasus responds. “I woke up, talked to Zeus a little, and met you. It’s… about four hours before he said my first memories should be coming back.”
“Pretty sure the memories don’t make the cutie mark, though.”
The answer is a smile. “Is that a challenge?”
“Nah, you’re too good with wings. Thank you, by the way.” She looks back at her neatly preened wings, fading them in and back out. It had taken her a couple hours- even with Whiteout’s help- to get used to her wings enough to make it up here. Being able to stand on a cloud, of course, is new to her- or had been, fifteen minutes ago. “Though, I’m curious to see how you look with your horn too?”
Whiteout raises an eyebrow. “Sure.” She drops her disguise.
Her whole disguise.
Apple Bloom falls on her haunches, her jaw articulating open and closed a couple times.
“F-” She raises a hoof slightly. “Flurry Heart.”
The alicorn blinks. “Huh… that does feel like my name, yes.”
“Princess Flurry Heart.” Applebloom’s hoof comes back down as she proceeds to bow.
“Uh, you can stop that now. I’m pretty sure I’m not a princess.”
Apple Bloom rises from her bow. “I’m pretty sure you are,” she replies, “even if you can’t remember it. A princess, in fact, that’s been missing for a week.”
Flurry stands in place for two seconds. “A whole week?”
“And a day, I think. But we’ll probably want to let Twilight know- I’m sure Princess Cadence will want to hear about your return, even if you can’t remember anything.”
Her disguise goes back up, her coat and wings bleaching back to white. “Is it okay if I stick around as Whiteout for a little first?”
She raises her eyebrow. “Sure, but I’m an Apple- and apples don’t lie.”
Whiteout nods. “Not askin’ ya to- just don’t volunteer it and let me introduce myself, and we’ll be fine. Besides, it’s only for a couple days.”
“Oh hey! Apple Bloom, and… you’re not Sweetie Belle, right?” It’s Scootaloo, who had been rocketing up to that cloud, intent upon using it as her rest spot, alongside Rainbow Dash.
The white pegasus shakes her head while the orange and cyan pegasi make their landings. “No, I’m Whiteout.”
“Ahh… Well, I see you’re missing your cutie mark- wanna join the Cutie Mark Crusaders?”
The earth pony sitting on a cloud with no unicorns in sight begins snickering.
“You’re a few hours too late for that,” Whiteout comments. “Apple Bloom here already offered, but I’d love to join!” Her last four words mirror her response to Apple Bloom’s question back in the clubhouse, once she understood what it was all about.
“Awesome!” Scootaloo yelps, and turns to Apple Bloom. “Have you seen Sweetie Belle anywhere?”
Apple Bloom shrugs. “Nope,” she scowls. “I was gonna start lookin’ for her in a minute.”
Rainbow clears her throat suddenly. “Uh, Apple Bloom?”
“Yes?”
“How’d you get up here?”
Scootaloo blinks, and looks expectantly at Apple Bloom. That is a good point- they’re well above the point where the hot air balloons stop climbing, and are well into the ‘upper climbs’ where earth ponies simply can’t handle the thin atmosphere. Yet here she is, taking it just like the new pegasus next to her. And standing on a cloud to boot- though she’s aware there is a spell to make that possible, given a willing unicorn.
“Uh,” Apple Bloom mutters. “I flew?”
Rainbow raises an eyebrow. “You flew? An earth pony?”
Scootaloo looks to the white pegasus- who still looks strikingly like Sweetie Belle, though she can confirm she doesn’t have Sweetie’s voice. She does notice that Whiteout seems amused by Rainbow’s question.
“Uh…” Apple Bloom hesitates.
Scootaloo raises her eyebrows. “You got it too, didn’t you?”
Apple Bloom blinks but, when Scootaloo pointedly flares her wings, eventually nods. “Please don’t tell anypony.”
Rainbow blinks thrice. “Are you saying what I think you’re….. Oh.”
Apple Bloom had let both her wings and horn reappear- and, after a glance at Whiteout, Scootaloo had allowed her horn to appear again. Rainbow spends a few seconds thinking.
“Sweetie didn’t do that too, did she?”
“It’s… Possible.” Apple Bloom suggests.
“And Rarity?”
Scootaloo shakes her head. “She knew nothing of it- and I returned all three damaged cubes as soon as I could.”
Several kilometers below them, a certain draconequus is chatting energetically with Pinkie Pie.
“Oh yes! Then she-” Discord breaks off midsentence, eyebrows knitting together. “That didn’t feel right,” he mutters, before unstringing the sweater from his eyebrows’ needles.
“What didn’t?” Pinkie asks.
“Felt like the first and third stages of alicorn ascension, though the second seemed replaced by something completely different- same thing as happened thrice last night.”
Pinkie takes a deep breath. Her Pinkie Sense had offered nothing. “Wherewherewherewhere?”
Discord shrugs. “I can’t tell. It’s the normal second stage that I can follow.”
Rarity yawns, stretching on her couch- CRASH!- and promptly swoons. It’s time for her to get up from her beauty sleep today anyways- and she must have just kicked the hoofrest off the opposing end of the couch. If only her massively increased strength- thanks to Zeus’ nanites- was a little easier to control. Now, of course, she stretches again- to be met with a second crashing noise… And a rather peculiar sensation she’d never had before. Not outside the nightmares she’d had before she got her cutie mark, that is.
Back in the day, she had panicked about the possibility of not being cut out to be a fashionista. The part she had never told anypony was the nightmares she’d had. The ones in which she had woken up as a pegasus with a dull weather job and a boring, generic family. Good thing that had never come to pass.
Though she hasn’t had had any of those nightmares since she’d gotten her mark, her proof that she’s meant to be a unicorn. So why does it feel like she has wings?
She sighs. If this is a nightmare, it’s already started off worse than a simple turned-pegasus nightmare. After all, she’s kicked one side off her couch and knocked the back off with her wing- all before she’s even opened her eyes. She sighs, turning to twist off of the couch as she opens her eyes- when her horn snags on the side she hadn’t kicked off. It’s been doing that since before she can remember- and another side effect of Zeus’ nanites, now her horn rips right through it instead of being deflected out of the way.
Oh well, the couch has been destroyed rather completely anyways… Wait. She rises to her hooves next to the remnants of her couch, looking between what had once been her headrest, the fabric shreds she’s levitating off the tip of her horn, and the wing folded against her side.
What in Equestria? She’d never dreamed of being an Alicorn before… But Celestia, do her wings need a good preening! Another thing she’d never actually had to do in a dream, even in those long-gone nightmares: Take care of herself. She trots upstairs, into her bedroom, and sets to work straightening feathers.
Right as soon as she finishes the last one, folding her wings daintily against her side, Zeus’ voice crops up in her ear- and she’s suddenly certain she’s not dreaming, her eyes straying to her flank.
“I do believe your magic has been fixed- and rather permanently, at that.”
A quarter mile away, Pinkie’s tail twitches during their conversation- and, after a glance into the air, Pinkie throws Discord out of the path of a falling couch… Or, the bottom of one- looks like the back and the sides have been ripped off.
Discord blinks and stares at it for a few seconds, before looking up. No more flying furniture- good.
Pinkie twists her head upside-down. “Isn’t this Rarity’s couch?”
“Maybe this time I’ll manage to stay in Ponyville this time,” Twilight mutters aloud, watching out the window of her train car from her deliberately solitary seat. She’s still trying to track down exactly what keeps triggering the teleport. She suspects it has something to do with her naming a place, but it hadn’t worked to get back to Ponyville from Dodge City. Hopefully, if it’s time-based, she’ll be able to reach Zeus and acquire a new charge of power to teleport straight back when it sends her out… Or to cancel the curse entirely.
She does manage to get off of the train without teleporting anywhere, though. She lets out a collapsed breath- and finds Bonbon in her face right away.
“Twilight! Have you heard the rumors?”
Twilight shakes her head. “Nope, been too busy running everyplace between here and Cloudsdale-”
WHOOM!
“Uh,” Bonbon blinks, staring at the spot she’d stood.
Lyra steps out of concealment nearby. “Wow,” she mutters.
Bonbon turns on her. “What’cha get?”
“It seems to be a curse… An alicorn curse, so I can’t touch it.” The two mares turn to walk back away from the train station, to the candy store. “I think it’s teleporting her to anyplace she names that she doesn’t want to go… But only when she’s within a couple kilometers of home.”
“Wow. Any clue what she did?”
“Nope. Whatever it was, it must’ve been bad- that curse is set to last for a couple months.”
Bonbon blinks, rendered speechless. In all her experience, she had never heard of something quite so… stern. Eventually, she catches up to her minty friend. “The death sentence would be less painful,” she mutters.
Lyra laughs gently. “Knowing Twilight, an eternity in Tartarus would be preferable. Especially now she knows something’s happening around here.”
“Wait, what? Something actually is happening?”
“Yep. Way I hear it, Discord almost got squashed by a couch- and there’s a new alicorn in town.”
“How do you keep doing that?”
Shrug. “By not developing tunnel vision. Several passersby were talking about it- seems it was Rarity’s couch, though the alicorn is a mystery.”
Pause, during which they both stop walking.
“Why was Rarity’s couch in the air…?” Bonbon wonders aloud, before the two redirect themselves to the boutique.