“... And a new chapter of my life begins?” Twilight asked, with the power of hope kindling in her eyes.
“More like the final chapter,” Rainbow responded, with the power of we-didn't-start-the-fire, aimed at her close friend.
“Yeah; well," Twilight sniffed at Dash, "your face smells like poop.”
“And your poop smells of faces,” Dash sniffed back at Twilight, lazily defecting the insult.
There was always the option to join in with the fun. Fluttershy knew this, of course she knew this. She had discovered just shortly after Twilight Sparkle's move down the mountain to Ponyville, that the book loving pony thoroughly enjoyed 'Squabbling That Obliterates Ponies'. Or STOP, as it was commonly known.
This STOP activity was a kind of unnatural selection process. To weed out, in the pony species, any who thought that they could squabble with another, but were in fact woefully inept squabblers. It was the defining trait that put ponies in the unique position to form a utopian society. Only the bravest most talented ponies would dare to squabble amongst themselves. The rest were either obliterated or kept their silly squabblious views hidden.
Fluttershy actually wasn't the bravest, but she had other reasons for not taking part in STOP. One reason was that she was afraid of acronyms. That's why no one calls her 'FS'.
The other reason for Fluttershy not joining in with the STOP, was a bit of a misunderstanding. She was in the practice of vanquishing OC alicorns that plagued the land with their sudden and impolite appearances. And was, some might even say, good at this vanquishing. But really she just tried her best. The point is that she thought she should just keep to what she knew. What if she tried to branch out into squabbling and lost her alicorn vanquishing abilities.
That wouldn't be good.
It was however unknown to Fluttershy that the magic that so effectively caused the OC alicorns to be vanquished, was the very same that powered STOP.
Okay. Exiting the place of exposition and world building…
Now.
Fluttershy was exiting the place that was positioned between the outside world and the building she called home. Or she moved through the doorway to leave. One or the other. It didn't matter. Such things didn't bother her. Nothing could possibly bother her today.
Or so she thought. Reaching the pond she heard something most unusual. It came in the form of a very large, and very ugly duckling that said, “Quack.”
“Tehe,” Fluttershy laughed a little at the creature, “you'd certainly have to be quackers to think I'm a gay pony." She paused for a moment, before unintentionally letting some anxiety slip out as she added, "Um, none of you think I’m homosexual in nature, do you?”
She looked around for an answer. Trying to stay strong for her animal friends. But just how could she be tough enough to take care of all the wild animals, if they answered in the affirmative?
“Yessssssss”
“Sorry, I’m not a parseltongue, so I don’t know what you just said Mr Snake-Eyes." She gently reminded the aptly named reptile. Snake Eyes slithered away to play the hit mobile game 'Snake'. Without any hands he had to implement the use of a camera that could track his eye movements, and use that as input for the game.
Snake Eyes the snake got so good at the video game that the body of the virtual serpent could spell out short words. Words like 'YES'. Though one might wonder why the snake would bother as it owned the top place on the game's leader board and could spell out three letter words there.
Fluttershy however did not wonder that particular wonderment. Instead she wondered something troublingly different, which led her to her speaking her thoughts out loud, "Oh I wouldn't want to be a badger about this. It's just that I really couldn't bear the thought of any of my animal friends hating me.”
A bear and a badger looked on with ‘hating a Fluttershy’ levels of offence, as their respective species names were being taken in vain.
But what were they gonna do? Fluttershy owned them, their freedoms, their destinies, their secrets. She was like a little pony version of an unreformed Sunset Shimmer strutting through the high school like it was her kingdom. But Fluttershy's subjects didn't have to learn stuff with their tiny brains. They just had to eat, grow, and depending on whether death is cannon or not for pets, retire to that infamous farm upstate.
So they ate when Fluttershy released their food from her secret storage. And grew when the animators made sizing mistakes in their work. They generally lived in fear of the legends they were told of the farm upstate. It's not a magical place. Don't believe their lies!
----------
Soon enough, though not too soon (never too soon) Fluttershy had completed her jobs for that day. As the number one animal caretaker in Equestria, she was content that her animal friends were loved and cared for to at least an adequate level. But as sure as day follows night, tomorrow would be another day. When that day comes the animal of Ponyville would need her help once more.
That was a day for another day though, so she went all the way back to her cosy little cottage to rest the rest of the current day away. What other option was there? Time traveling forward to tomorrow? No. Nothing fancy like that, she was content to keep it simple.
As per usual, she had gone all over Ponyville to do her job. After all you can't just expect everycritter to come to her. What a naïve thought. What would ponies do if they were led to believe that a saviour of the world was so inconsiderate?
Many of the potential pets she looked after needed subtle, yet important differences in ecosystems to thrive in their little lives. She knew this was an absolute fact because she had read that in a book from Twilight Sparkle's library.
Twilight had tried to read the book aloud to her but Fluttershy hadn't wanted to be a bother. Who knows what might happen as a result of her reading aloud? Even if Twilight had a Tara Stronger voice than most Ponies, the thought of a princess starting to lose her voice was a scary one.
Just before arriving at her own front door Fluttershy began to hear, a little hoarse, little horse voices from inside. She didn't pause and listen in to the conversation though, as there was no reason at all for her to act that way, so the thought simply didn’t enter her mind.
“Yeah well your mum weighs less than a duck,” Fluttershy heard as she gently barged into her own home, which all evidence suggested was still partially full of friends. That was probably Rainbow Dash's voice; filled with her typical anger, but some uncharacteristic tiredness was also audible.
“It’s pronounced ‘mom’ actually, and nopony gets your strange Monty Python quotes!” Yes and that was Twilight Sparkle's voice because Fluttershy looked up in time to see her friend's mouth moving as the words were made. The fact that the wheeze she uttered was still full of lots of arrogance and even more tiredness, was useful in confirming that it wasn't some kind of imposter alicorn. Still, that didn’t rectify the issue at hoof, they were starting to lose their voices. Oh, no no no.
“Nah, it’s totally mum, like as in short for mother,” Rainbow was just being silly now.
Fluttershy made slow work of the short remaining distance between herself and her friends. “Knock knock, er, if that’s okay with you…”
They debating duo looked to her in shock. A Fluttershy, here of all places?
But that shock could not keep their curious minds from commanding their respective voices to both answer at the same time, “Who’s there?"
It was working, Fluttershy thought, she allowed herself a small smile. Not too large as she didn't want to get caught up in the hilarity of her joke. “Interrupting cow,” she said.
“Interrupting cooo ouch!” They both cried out.
She got caught up in the joke.
Suddenly Fluttershy's rage that is usually directed at terrible alicorns was directed at her nearby pony friends.
Fluttershy had no secrets from her friends. except from her big gay one, and her smaller one that was gay too. So naturally they both knew of her random rage time of happiness.
Fluttershy’s rage subsided and she stopped seeing red when she glanced from her purple friend to her blue friend. Her little Dashie was giving her the secret signal for ‘you’re going kinda too far here’. It was a little bit off though, like something dark had been transmitted to dash while she was giving the signal.
Letting her friends drop to the floor didn’t seem to help much, they just kept coughing and gasping for breath for some reason. Concluding that they must have rather parched throats, she left her friends there on the floor and wandered into her kitchen.
Oh, it was an epic journey into the kitchen. She had to punch paiharas, spit at snakes, hug hedgehogs, befriend bats, and love Lunas. It was the stuff of legends, but it was also all wrapped up in nineteen seconds and therefore it got cut for time. Mostly.
Prying herself out from Luna’s dreamy eye contact, Fluttershy started to create some refreshments. The routine of helping her friends stay hydrated brought her mind back to relative comfort. This comfort was shattered when she heard a set of hoofsteps, and accompanied flapping of wings heading in her direction.
There was only one explanation for these noises being paired together. Her oldest friend must be showing off again, in all probability trying to fly upside down while walking on the ceiling. Fluttershy had to admit staying near the ceiling was no picnic.
Unfortunately she could not join her friend as the umbrella she had stolen from Sherry Bobbins, had been stolen by Mary Poppins to complete the cycle. The mere thought had the power to make her cry a single tear of maximum drama.
Rainbow must have been getting light headed from the immense concentration required for her trick, so it was Twilight who comforted her in this, her darkest hour. Twilight teleported over to Fluttershy, or rather she tried. But teleportation is both an artistic form of science and a scientific form art. Therefore, even the most seasoned teleporters, will at one point send a part of their own consciousness into another for exactly twenty seven hours.
So that happened, and for now Fluttershy’s mind is part Twilight Sparkle. While Twilight’s mind is only mostly Twilight’s mind. And Rainbow doesn’t mind at all because she is not involved in this occurrence whatsoever, and she is the pinnacle of not getting involved sometimes (hope you're remembering all these key facts for later).
The Shy and Twi minds were, rather surprisingly, mostly compatible. While Twilight's inner voice had a tendency towards making lists, Fluttershy's inner voice had a tendency towards making lisps. When Fluttershy set her mind truly to something she made it done, when Twilight set her mind truly to it she made dung. Fluttershy was a winged pegasus in tune with nature, Twilight was a winged unicorn freak of nature. Twilight was a mare whose life was full of science, Fluttershy was a mare whose life was full of nonsense.
Twilight had a Rainbow Dash fall into her lap, Fluttershy had a Rainbow Dash fall into a nap. Thankfully it was the same Rainbow. No double rainbow here.
Rainbow Dash made a casual habit of defying the expectations that many would have set on her. This trend began moments after her mother had given birth to her. Dash's immediate response to seeing the world for the first time had been to go "Sup?"
Her parents had thought that it would be all downhill from there. That she would never do anything as cool as that again. But in the weeks to follow she both leant to fly and punched a rainbow in the elbow. The rainbow had been so impressed by this daring move, that it had given her most of the seven colours of the rainbow to her to have as hair. And decided to mostly follow her around when it could. Thus she gained a rainbow trail when the rainbow was in the mood.
There were too many other instances of Dash defying expectations to list. So many in fact that it makes all the times that Rainbow Dash fans on the Internet had to come to her ‘rescue’ and defend her actions in the show, look few in number.
At that moment Rainbow began talking in her sleep, she mumbled, “Tell me a story."
Twilight was shocked by the audacity of the sleeping pegasus. "Well that's rude, not even bothering to say a proper 'thank you'."
Rainbow just repeated herself. "Tell me a story."
"Um Twilight don't you mean please?"
"Tell me a story." The mumbling once more occurred.
"Fluttershy, I think that as the princess of politeness I can accurately judge the necessar-"
"Tell me a story."
The interruption was the last straw for Twilight. Sure they had tried to obliterate each other with their STOP, which had lasted most of the day. But they were both largely immune to obliteration, so the squabbling only ever left them a little tired.
Twilight decided she hated Rainbow. Now with her foe weakened, asleep, now she could strike. Hehe, just like catching a Pokémon.
But rather than throw a Poké ball, she was about to throw-down.
Seeing Fluttershy look at her sceptically gave her pause. Did Fluttershy not think that she could do this. Well time to murder two pegasi with one blast (metaphorically speaking). She would defeat Rainbow in single combat, and show Fluttershy just how impressive she could be.
Focusing on the most happy memory she could recall at the moment. The satisfaction of being able to overcome her fear of snakes enough to play three whole seconds of the hit mobile game 'Snake'. The power went to her horn, given it a visible wavy aura.
Fluttershy interrupted the process, holding out a hoof she said, "I think those are the only words she knows how to sleep talk." Fluttershy looked at Rainbow, who was indeed asleep. "Do you know any stories Twilight?"
Did Twilight know any stories?
As the resident Twilight Sparkle expert, Twilight spoke up to answer, "I have been known to read from time to time."
"Hello, we read like all the time, it's how we get ponies to do what we want!" Shy said to complete the well cultured reference.
"Oh, well in that case how about a love story called 'Blimey Bloody or Choice'."
(The complete 'Blimey Bloody or Choice' story parody could not be included in this fic as the story parody has yet to be created.)
----------
Twilight wound down her story with a brief, improvised operatic performance. This concluded with an exhausted bow from the alicorn who sat and stared at Fluttershy.
And there she stayed motionless, waiting for her friend's response.
For her part Fluttershy put on her pony analysis face and said, "Well that was certainly an, erm, interesting take on a romantic story."
The strained attempt to not insult her friend was not lost to Twilight. "The lack of any real romance, was just such a very bold choice," Shy concluded.
"Ah, but you see it was never described as 'romantic'. I in fact, called it a love story," Twilight said triumphantly. "Check the story's description if you don't believe me."
"Oh, do you mean the short description or long?" Fluttershy asked. "Because I only ever take note of one of the two."
"Yeah, same for me. Who would read basically the same thing multiple times?"
Fluttershy retrieved her limited edition Poké flute, from her bag of more than one item. With the intention of waking up Rainbow though musical intervention.
So play she did, until her purple friend spoke up uninvited.
"Hey you're really good at that"
Fluttershy paused to give the flute a critical look over, and said, "Well, it's no tambourine but I make do."
Her intense snores relaxed in volume before they ceased entirely. Then slowly awaked the Rainbow Dash from her slumber as she mumbled, "Wartortle, Mew, Tentacruel, Aerodactyl!"
There was a pause as Dash stretched as though stretching was her main superpower. All the while her two friends look at her with stunned expressions.
"Arrg, don't tell men I ended up singing the Pokerap, just as I woke up, again?"
"Well actually, you forgot to say the 'Two' in 'Mew Two'." Twilight nerderly countered. "Now go back and do it again."
"Yeah I dunno why I glitch like that and start MissingNo. Such is life, I guess?" Rainbow looked around, eyes resting on the large kitchen clock on the wall. "Anyway I'm beat from a long hard day's rest, gotta head home and sleep the laziness off."
"Well looks like it's just you and me." Twilight nervously spoke.
"Actually it's just me and me," said Fluttershy, as a subtle reminder that part of Twilight's mind was in Fluttershy's mind.
Twilight didn't seem to get the hint and certainly didn't remember the teleportational mishap. She had put a magical chip in her brain to near-instantly forget her own mistakes. Like a more narcissism inducing version of Cortana from Halo.
Well one problem at a time. Fluttershy looked up to make direct eye contact with her alicorn friend. Only to find no one there. There was nopony in view as she looked around her perfectly organised and rusticly charming home. Looking out the window she could see a sunset. Just one. No double sun power here.
Well it would seem that Fluttershy had spent so much time thinking, that time itself had gotten away from her.
Coming to think of it was time still getting away from her.
As she rushed up the stairs to her bed, it was completely dark. As she wrapped herself in her blanket, the moon was at its peak in the night sky. As she closed her eyes waiting for the dream realm, the first rays of sunlight were lighting up the cottage.
Getting up from bed, Fluttershy was perplexed by this latest oddness. But before she wrote it down in her oddness, morning diary (the one which she knew that Discord read for inspiration) she had to brush her mane.
As the brushy brush brushed away brushily, Fluttershy tried to make eye contact with her reflection in the small mirror in front of her. This remained as difficult a task as ever, seeing that the mirror shy was naturally her opposite. This meant that the non-reflection Shy didn’t have a lazy eye half open, so the actual reflection Shy did in fact have one.
Fluttershy idly wondered what mirror world was like on the whole, and whether it would be easier to ask Discord or Twilight to plan a trip there. They were both good friends. Such nice creatures, she was so lucky to have so many wonderfully good friends in her life.even if she was a, if she w-was.
The lazy eyes half open eye of Shy suddenly wasn’t crying. Meaning non-reflection shy was.
They would all hate her. Hate her. They could even get together and plan to take away her animal friends! Take her cottage. Take her job. Take back all Rarity’s dresses she had a collection of.
But it wasn't all bad. After all, no matter what everypony took from thee thou cannot taketh thine dignityyyyyyyyy. Yeah she was the second most dignified pony ever, she thought while crying into her hair filled brush.
Her hair was falling out, like how her friend's would all fallout due to her gayness confession.
Oh, what a world.