//------------------------------// // Cloudy Quartz and Igneous Rock // Story: Costume Catastrophe // by PrincessEnchanteDream //------------------------------// Cloudy Quartz frowned as she stared at the logbook in front of her. Oh dear. This was not good. Not good at all. There was a huge demand for quarry from the nearby industry and they still hadn't completed it, despite the deadline. Cloudy sighed and rubbed her temples. What on earth were Marble and Limestone doing? Her musings were interrupted by the sound of her phone ringing. She picked it up and looked at the caller ID. Petunia Daisy Shy. "Hello Petunia," said Cloudy tiredly. "Um, hello Cloudy," Petunia replied meekly. "I hope I'm not disturbing you or anything." "You're not." "Oh, um okay. Listen, I might sound crazy right now, but you have to believe me, there are these magic blobs flying around which are transforming everyone's clothes!" Cloudy blinked. "Petunia, go back to sleep, you're probably tired." "You have to believe me!" insisted Petunia. "I saw Cirrus' clothes get changed in front of my very own eyes!" Cloudy Quartz sighed deeply. "Alright Petunia, whatever you say." "Rainbow Dash herself told us. Take care, Cloudy." She ended the phone call and massaged her forehead. "Sometimes I don't know what is wrong with that woman." The brief flash of light barely registered in Cloudy Quartz' eyes as her eyes adjusted back to normalcy. Truth be told, there wasn't much that phased her. The light around here were somewhat unpredictable, as they lived on the edge of the normal power grid. This meant that brief flashes and power surges were quite common, and the family had just become used to living with it. When your family runs the largest quarrying operation in the region, there are some things that need to be taken with a degree of acceptance and thought. That, and she had things to be getting on with in her day, so she simply moved on in her mind and continued filling out the accounts she had laid out in the family logbook. Something else, however, would soon catch her attention as she continued to work. She felt something present and moving on her leg. Much to her irritation, she moved a hand down to swipe it away, assuming that a fly or similar had landed there. She looked visibly puzzled when her hand came into contact with not a fly, but fabric. And not the usual feel of her skirt, which had more of a business look to it. This fabric was soft, and felt like something on an evening gown. She quickly wheeled the chair back to take a look. Large amounts of fabric was pooling on her chair, seemingly emerging from nowhere and out of the ether. She stood up, and it all rolled down her legs. Each skirt rolled down one by one, more and more, seven of them in a row, until they took up a lot of space around her. Far more than she was used to. "What sorcery is this?" she asked. "Surely providence cannot intend this for me!" She was wrong. Avoiding the chance to reference an old meme, she shivered as she felt a cold thing run down her legs, then relief as another skirt materialised underneath that to protect her legs from the metal, not to mention save her embarrassment if her skirts got blown upwards. There was another bright flash, and the skirts suddenly burst across the floor, gaining several feet in width whilst maintaining an A frame appearance. As they expanded to their full diameter, buoyant and seemingly full of air, the entire skirt turned grey, a marked contrast from the usual black and white chequerboard pattern it normally maintained. The symbols of three rocks also vanished into nothingness. "There is something dark afoot," she said. "Foul magics!" Just then, there was a great shrinkage. Her collar shrank back into her shirt. Her sleeves began to shift, with the outer layer on the end peeling away to reduce the mass on her sleeves. Her shirt was then attached into her skirt as the area around her shoulders and neck didn't move, allowing her to maintain an element of her preferred modesty. Speaking of which, they turned transparent, allowing her arms to be seen. The elaborate patterning on the bodice formed into place as the bodice turned grey, producing an evening gown that could easily have been a lot worse for the highly conservative Cloudy Quartz. To ensure her glasses were not playing up, she took them off, wiped them, and put them back on. The dress was still there. "Goodness me! Whatever caused this?" "SURPRISE!" said a voice suddenly, as Pinkie Pie suddenly appeared from nowhere. "Hi mom!" "Must you always spring from nowhere and stun us all with your buffoonery?" Quartz asked. "And what is that you are wearing?" "Oh, it's magic. Rarity got really mad because her sister and her friends borrowed her clothes and messed up her house without her permission so her magic malfunctioned and its transforming everybody's clothes into posh things and this is really weird and-" Pinkie stopped, and took a deep breath here, before continuing. "And now we're seeing if everybody is OK before Twilight can get here and fix things!" Cloudy Quartz blinked. "I see. I shall have to consult your father and decide our best course of action." Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and a voice spoke. "Excuse me, but I have an important message." "By all means." Just then, a man entered, dressed most ridiculously. "There's trouble up quarry," he said. "One of t' cables on t' winding engine has snapped." "We don't have a winding engine." "Some strange force replaced all our machinery with vintage ones!" Cloudy Quartz put a hand to her head. "This is going to give me a headache," she said. "Convey me to the quarry immediately. I must speak to Igneous at once. Pinkie, go and find your sisters. Undoubtedly they will be struck by this too." Igneous Rock had been at work when it happened. Always one for getting stuck in, he had been working on one of the excavators when the bright light had occurred. "Clearly something is wrong, and I must investigate," he said, sliding out from underneath the bucket excavator he was working on. Being the head of a quarry company did not render him immune from frontline work. Indeed, such behavior was a quick way of alienating yourself from your workers, which Igneous was determined not to do. He hadn't noticed that the bright light had hit him, as he walked back to the portable trailer he used as an office. He would rather have built a small building out of Welsh slate to house his men and office, but planning laws wouldn't let him as they had to return this land to nature after they were done. That would be rather hard given the giant holes quarrying blasts in the ground. He sighed as he stepped through the door. A brief glance in the mirror caused him to stop and pause. His normally grey shirt, well suited for the quarry, was now white, but remained otherwise unchanged. "How unusual." His black tie slid out of his waistcoat and upwards his shirt, moving upwards until it stopped around the collar. Then it began to melt, seeming to fade away and falter into nothingness, until only a small amount was left. This turned pink, and was soon wrapped and tied around his neck as some sort of pseudo bow tie. His waistcoat, now that we come onto it, remained the same, but turned a golden color with some lighter trim to offset the bright colours. It also lost its distinctive pickaxe image that he used as an identifier. Igneous frowned. "Hmmm. I never much liked garish colours, and this is altogether too garish for me." Thankfully, his prayers were answered when a black coat materialised into being atop his waistcoat. It was heavy and thick, and featured six buttons. However, only two of them actually served the function of being functional, if that makes sense. Indeed, the others seemed purely for show, as Igneous did them up out of a force of habit. His pants turned grey from their normal black, but otherwise he could not observe any changes to them perceptible to his sight. He figured it would only leave his shoes left to change to something else. Although they themselves turned totally black as opposed to the black and grey they normally were, and gained laces to hold them on rather than friction, they were largely unchanged, featuring the same gradients and features to hold them on. "Well, that could have been a lot stranger." Igneous would have come across as strangely blasé about all this to anybody else, but truth be told he was hardly one to be surprised by anything. After all, strange things seemed to happen in this town at least once a week, so there was no point in kicking up a fuss. He stepped outside his office to see if anybody else was affected, and to his surprise saw that the other staff had undergone similar transformations of their own, all wearing clothing that made them resemble navies. The machinery in the quarry was also now considerably more vintage, with the modern tech replace by steam excavators and shovels. "Sir!" called one of the workmen. "One of t' cables on t' winding engine has snapped." "Message head office and ask them to send a replacement," Igneous quickly replied, as he strode over to one of the machines. "Ho there! Why is this unit not operating?" "She's being uncooperative," the foreman replied. "I've got her up to steam, but the controls are wonky and are fighting back, as crazy as it sounds." "Let me try," Igneous said, and hopped in the cab. With a bit of gentleness on the levers, and some skill with operating mechanical marvels, he coaxed the steam excavator into life and soon got it doing a marvelous job, shifting dust and sand as well as rock into a nearby set of wagons that would be moved to the crushing plant for processing. Igneous was so engrossed in this work that he only just heard the company car pull up outside the office building. He saw it out of the corner of his eye, and hopped out of the cab, telling the foreman to keep operating the unit whilst he was away. The door opened, and his wife stepped out, looking rather overdressed for the quarry setting. "Igneous," she said. "Something very strange is happening. Fate has conspired to do strange and confusing things to our clothes, and to others too!" "I'll say," Igneous replied. "Don't you think an evening gown is overdoing it a bit for a quarry visit?" "Now is not the time for buffoonery," Cloudy replied. "I just got off the telephone with Petunia Shy. Apparently, according to one Rainbow Dash, we and our friends are to meet in the park to discuss matters." "Then we must go!" Igneous called, and both adults hopped into the car. "Canterlot Central Park, and quickly!" "Very well, sir!" the driver replied, and the car sped off, throwing up dust and dirt. The foreman turned to a fellow workman. "Well, this is a weird day." "Hey, Marble?" "Mhm?" "Why do I get the feeling that something odd is going on?" "Mhm."