As I looked down at my ponified self, I realized that I was not gasping from fear or passing out in shock. At least, the myths-and-fairy-tales-and-all-that-other-crap-is-real part of me wasn’t. My logic centers, however, had completely shut down from the utter disbelief that was currently failing to pass through my head. That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Oh well.
“What? No horn or wings?” was all I could say. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.
“Twilight Sparkle! How goes the Treatment?” The voice was gruff and somehow familiar. It put me in the mind of a nightclub bouncer.
“Oh, um, it goes, uh, well,” stuttered Twilight. She poked me in the side with her horn.
“Ow!” Thank God my voice was the same.
“Very well. Iron Will shall take his leave,” said the voice outside. The footsteps receded.
Iron Will! The minotaur responsible for creating Flutterfemaledog. I couldn’t believe it. Well, I could, actually. Working for a tyrant seemed like his dream job. Or did it? I was still disoriented from the transformation.
The ‘Mane 6’ gathered around me. “Bravo, Twilight,” said Rarity. “A work of art. Almost as perfect as my dresses, in fact!”
“Will you quit it about your dresses?” snapped Rainbow Dash. “We get it! You design clothes!”
“Would y’all just shut up?” Applejack said. “This pony here looks like she’s got somethin’ t’ say.”
I stared around at them all in wonder. “Hey, aren’t you guys all supposed to be friends? Isn’t that why the subtitle of the show is ‘Friendship is Magic?’”
“What are…friends? What’s friendship?”
Then I passed out from shock.
* * *
I shot up like a rocket forty-two seconds later, consciousness generously granted back to my head.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” replied Fluttershy. Then she turned away timidly. “I-if that’s okay with you, that is.” Then I saw her cutie mark--or rather, a lack of one.
“Oh, my God!” I forgot all about friendship once I saw her flank.
Fluttershy gave a start. “Oh, no. I-I’m sorry for disappointing you. It’s just—”
“No, it’s not that! What happened to your cutie mark?” I pointed at the spot where the symbol of talent was supposed to be. That spot was utterly and completely blank.
“Oh, that. Thank goodness. I thought you would be mad at me,” whispered Fluttershy. “Well, when we were fillies, you see, um, we, uh, we didn’t get a chance to—”
“Ooh! I want to tell her!” piped up Pinkie Pie. She sprung over to where I was still sitting. She plopped down in front of me and started talking so fast I could barely follow her.
“Well, you see, when we were little fillies, Equestria was all nice and colorful! I like colors, don’t you? You can’t have a party without colors! Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a party, more like a room filled with boring! Boring isn’t very good; it’s all gray and yucky. Ponyville got really, really, really, really boring after Princess Celestia came along and sucked all the color out of nearly all of Equestria! After that, everyone was all bored and sad, so I decided I needed to make them smile! So I threw a huge party for everypony everywhere in Ponyville! I had some ponies come down from Filliedelphia, Baltimare, and Detrot City, but they didn’t have very much fun, I don’t think, and when just a couple ponies aren’t having fun, well, that just about makes everypony else un-fun! So nopony liked my party except me. I don’t know why they didn’t like my party. I mean, I made good cupcakes for everypony, but I guess they wanted to be sad or something. So then after my party Princess Celestia came in with a bunch of mean-looking guards and used my own party cannon to shoot me to Canterlot! Then I ended up here in the dungeon. It’s a really science-y dungeon, you know.” Pinkie beamed at me. “Did that help?”
“Uh…” Honestly, I was so confused by now that I had no idea what I had just heard.
“I…don’t think that helped, Pinkie,” Twilight said. She looked as confused as I did. “Basically, Celestia can see the future. She changed events in the past to prevent the circumstances in which foals got their cutie marks, even for older mares and stallions.”
“Oh.” Now I understood. “But wait, doesn’t that mean none of you have cutie marks?”
“Unfortunately, it does,” said Twilight. She turned so I could see her flank. The other ponies did the same.
They were all blank. Not a patch or splotch or even a dot broke the perfect continuity of the ponies’ fur color.
I couldn’t believe it. Then I remembered that I was a pony too, and quickly looked at my hip. Nothing was there. What kind of awful tyrant would do something like this to these poor ponies?
I was getting madder and madder. I burst out, “We have to stop Celestia!”
The rest of the ponies looked at me blankly. “Uh, jus’ why would we do somethin’ like that?” said Applejack. "We aren't exac'ly friends, ya know."
I didn’t hear her. I was already running out the door. The good news is, the door was open. The bad news is that it was opened by a certain minotaur.