As was usual for her, Sour Sweet had been out on the waterfront when the incident had occurred. One moment the sky had been this amazing, wondrous blue, the next there seemed to be this strange, flickering effect, with impermeable fog and sparks flying through the air. This had made the world incredibly dark, making things hard to see through her sunglasses.
Sour Sweet raised them and took a look at the sky. "This would be interesting... if you were a meteorologist, I guess. Twilight would probably like it."
The other beach patrons were clearing out at the lack of sun, and Sour Sweet gathered up her belongings in preparation to do the same. Only she didn't make it off the beach in time, as out of nowhere a ball of yellow and blue light crashed into her, momentarily blinding her.
It took her eyes a few seconds to adjust back to the light, in which time it was obvious to the girl that something was wrong with her. Or rather, her clothes.
Her purple open shoes, for instance, had tightened slightly at the front, and the strap that ran across the front of them had vanished from existence. As she peered at this strange phenomenon, she noticed the ground seemed to be getting further and further away from her. She eventually clicked that tall heels were growing out of the bottom of the shoes, and continued to do so for several seconds until they, of course, stopped, leaving Sour Sweet feeling quite wobbly as she adjusted to her new center of gravity.
Moments later, her socks unravelled and vanished into the ether, followed by the layers of her puffy skirt turning from their usual red and green to a dark purple at the front and back, and light purple at the sides. The layers then merged into each other, forming a flat layer, and then with the creak the skirt started to grow. It grew downwards, over her knees, past her ankles, and eventually began to pool at the floor.
Sour Sweet rubbed her eyes in confusion. "I must have had too much cheese last night."
She yelped when she felt something heavy appear on her waist, and something cold brushed down her legs before stopping at the floor. She saw the skirt bulge outwards slightly as some more things flowed down the inside of it.
Seconds later, the skirt started to expand in all directions, the fabric growing and stretching as it moved across the floor in an A shape pattern. Given she had exhausted all rational explanations for this most strange of phenomena, Sour Sweet resorted to the only explanation left. Magic had to be the cause of this!
Speaking of magic, more and more fabric poured out of the skirt as it continued to expand. But just as suddenly as it had begun to expand, it stopped, the sides pooled off to the... well, sides, and floating gently as they did so.
The bottom of the sides of the skirt became covered in odd swirl patterns, and white crystals at the bottom. More of the white crystals appeared on the central purple section, joined by white dots. Purple crystals appeared on the upper section of the side sections, locked in very close to her hips.
The sleeves of her shirt suddenly shrank into her shirt, and the tops of the shoulders unravelled and melted into her shirt, leaving her in a very odd looking barrel top as the emblem on the front vanished. What was left joined into the skirt as a bodice, and also turned light purple as more crystals appeared all over it. A pink tiara appeared in her hair, seemingly signifying that all this craziness was over.
Sour Sweet tried to walk away from the scene- and promptly faceplanted. "Ow!" She pushed herself back up, the frame helping her in this regard by popping back into shape like a spring. "Whomever invented this, know that I hate you!"
"Look out below!" called a familiar voice. Sour Sweet stared, dumbfounded, as Lemon Zest suddenly landed next to her on the sand without a scratch, clad in a dress with a gigantic skirt.
"What is happening today?" Sour Sweet asked, by this point incredibly confused.
Lemon Zest smoothed out her skirt and got it back into shape. "I've landed slightly off course," she said. "I was supposed to land at the aerodrome. Oh well, better lost than flattened like a pancake!"
"How do you have one of those ridiculous things on?"
Lemon Zest grinned as she removed her helmet. "Ridiculous? This thing saved my life!"
"How so?" Sour Sweet asked. "I can barely move in this!"
"Let's start at the very beginning, which, Julie Andrews reliably informs me, is a very good place to start."
Meanwhile......
Sugarcoat had been near the edge of the docks when it had happened. Near where the Everfree River flows out into the sea is a small harbor, and she had decided to go there in order to get away from all the noise of town, which always irritated her immensely.
Moments ago, all had been fine, and then moments after that the sky had gone weird, as a scream had echoed through the skies and strange particles had flown everywhere. One of these particles had hit her, but luckily had barely affected her.
Or so she thought. She couldn't deny her shirt felt a bit itchy, almost as if it was moving on her. She dismissed that idea as ridiculous almost immediately. And yet the itchiness didn't go away.
She glanced down to see what was going on, and saw to her slight surprise that her sleeves were shortening in both directions. The tops of the shoulders on her shirt opened up and melted away, and shortly after her sleeves stopped in line with the top of her shirt. The shoulder section joined it moments later.
It turned white, and then proceeded to merge into her skirt, both shirt and skirt suddenly forming a single garment on her body. The skirt of the now dress followed the shirt in turning white, now looking like a rather awkward sundress on her body.
Most people would have reacted very distinctly to this sort of thing, but Sugarcoat lived in a town which seemed to have the weirdness magnet permanently switched on, so she didn't seem overly concerned about the situation.
She was, however, mildly bemused when a metal frame popped out of the bottom of her skirt as her tights turned white. As the metal frame reached the bottom of the ground and stopped, her heels also turned white. A small band of embroidery appeared around her waist as the transformation continued.
As she looked at the metal contraption hanging off her waist, recognizing it as a frame of some sort, it expanded in width, growing wider until it had reached approximately four or five feet in diameter. Sugarcoat found she had to shuffle to one side to prevent one side from hitting a nearby wall, and stood roughly in the middle of the path to give it enough space.
She figured it wasn't over, and she was correct. An inner skirt flowed down it from underneath the previous one, and stopped at the floor, looking very lumpy as it had gone directly over the metal frame and the joins itself. Another skirt soon flowed down on top of that, followed by two more in rapid succession. Sugarcoat shifted her feet to try and support the growing weight on her hips, but breathed a sigh of relief when the original skirt, the one which now looked very silly on her indeed, grew down over the others, reached the floor, and stopped.
Sugarcoat adjusted her glasses. "I look ridiculous," was all she had to say.
"Excuse me, ma'am?" asked somebody else. "I hate to be a bother, but you're blocking a path."
"You try moving quickly in a dress that weighs half a ton and is half a mile wide," Sugarcoat replied, entirely in keeping with her motormouth tendencies.
"I asked nicely," said the voice, a dock worker. "Sorry Cinderella, but we all have places to be."
Sugarcoat sighed at her apparent wedding dress. She was relieved that she was nowhere near children, or else she'd have been deluged in little girls asking her if she was a princess.
Just then, she saw a familiar face floating down the river. Indigo Zap. She walked down some nearby steps and indicated to her. "Over here!"
She couldn't help but notice that Indigo Zap was dressed similarly to her, in a dress that looked like water.
Marvelous.