Sunny Flare calmly sat down on a bench as she waited for her friends to arrive. Five minutes later, she was bored out of her mind.
To distract herself, she pulled out her phone and started texting her friends. Unfortunately, all it showed was error. Sunny frowned, then pressed sent again. That didn't work either. Sunny groaned and powered it off, hoping it'll receive signal after restarting.
So occupied she was in trying to fix her phone that she didn't even notice the spark hitting her. It was a fairly bright day, and she was preoccupied as she waited outside Crystal Prep for her friends to show up. Although it was the weekend, there were no other obvious hangouts, and she was waiting here by choice.
The brief shift in light did not affect her eyesight too badly, as she was preoccupied with her phone, as she was about to send a text. However, something touching her leg suddenly caught her attention.
She glance down, and saw that her boots were starting to shrink down her legs. "Wait, what?"
She blinked twice, and then pinched herself to check she was not dreaming. It turned out she was not, and as she looked the fabric of her boots began to melt away, shrinking and dropping downwards. Eventually, they looked more like normal shoes, and even then the process was not done. Her heels opened up, although stayed set at the same angle, leaving a bigger gap between them and the rest of the shoe, and the tops opened up to expose her socks whilst the section around her toes narrowed.
"Ow! These are too tight now!" Sunny Flare attempted to reach for the heels, only to discover to her horror she was stuck in place. "Somebody! Help!"
Her socks suddenly began to grow up her legs, slithering like snakes up them, over her knees, up her thighs, and then under her skirt, where they morphed into a pair of tights, thankfully not too tight on her.
A circle of some sorts formed on the floor, that seemed to be about six feet around her. Seconds after the circle had formed, fabric burst out of the ground in a dome shape and attached itself to her skirt, which had folded down slightly in order to connect with the other fabric properly, forming a very large dome. Sunny Flare felt something metallic appear under that, and then heard the rustling of more layers of fabric beneath that one. Parts of the skirt bulged out whilst others sank inwards, producing a very odd look to the skirt.
"Hey! I know what these are!" Sunny Flare said, her fear changing to a grin. "It was some posh French word, or something. Something to do with horses or something like that."
Her skirt turned white and became dotted with black dots as her shirt merged into her skirt, forming a dress in the process. Moments after that, her jacket vanished as her shirt turned white as well, the sleeves and upper section shrinking away to form a bodice with two straps over her shoulders, but a full back at the back which helped to keep the body in shape.
To her absolute surprise, Sunny felt extremely cool despite the several layers of fabric she was wearing. "Sweet!" she said, doing a quick spin, and walking forward to the edge of the school. "I can't wait to show my boyfriend this!"
"Sunny Flare!" called a voice. She turned, and saw it was none other than Twilight, a former Shadowbolt.
"Ah, Twilight, how nice to see you!" Sunny Flare smiled. "I see you're playing dress up too!"
"There's no time for jokes," Twilight said, moving to one side as otherwise her skirt was blocking the path. "Rarity- you know, you met her at the Friendship Games- has had a magic malfunction and everybody is getting their clothes changed! I see they've already got to you, but we need to get everybody together and try and reverse it."
Sunny Flare looked with a mock look of horror. "But I only just got this dress!"
Twilight took her completely seriously. "OK, so that's two people who don't want their dresses changing back. Right, not a problem! Can you get the other Shadowbolts together?"
"Already done, Twi!" shouted Lemon Zest, speeding across the road with Sour Sweet. "Gang's all here!"
"We're here also!" Indigo Zap called, who appeared with Sugarcoat tailing along behind her. "Come on, little miss grumpy! You're gonna miss out!"
"Something I certainly will not miss will be getting out of this ridiculous frock," Sugarcoat grumbled. "I'm getting sick of people asking me if I'm a princess or getting married, the answer to both of those questions being no."
"Do you know of any other Crystal Prep students who have been affected?" Twilight asked.
"I suppose we could go look for Suri and Coco," Lemon Zest suggested. "Suri will probably be selling coffee, and knowing Coco she'll be designing some clothes."
Suri had been working on the beachfront when it had happened. Customers had wanted coffee, and she was more than happy to supply it to them. It seemed that, after her failed venture into the fashion market, that she had finally found an area of business where she could make some income to support her family and generally show that she was not the nuisance a lot of people assumed her to be. Besides, what's one failed business venture? Most people's first attempts at forming a company and selling a product go wrong, so what was the deal here? Some people were too harsh.
Suri had stepped temporarily out of her hut to let off some heat. As nice as it was today, the inside of the building was not air conditioned, and with all the machines for making hot drinks nearby it produced a lot of heat. She quickly wiped the sweat off her brow, and looked about to see people frolicking about on the seaside, generally enjoying the hot weekend day.
She had not noticed when the sky had clouded over, only that there was some sort of brief burst of light that momentarily irritated her eyes. Once it had faded, she proceeded to go back indoors, only to stop.
Something didn't seem right about her jeans. She glanced down at them, and noticed to her surprise that they had turned dark blue. This was hardly normal. In fact, it was positively perturbing.
As she looked on at this strange sight, various gems and other glowing objects began to emerge from the material, rather like magma bubbling to the surface during a volcanic eruption. They glinted in the sunlight, in every single colour of the rainbow, and they seemed to be everywhere! More and more of them floated outwards. The odd thing was that Suri had not felt them underneath on her legs. They seemed to be materialising on the fabric itself.
"What's going on?" she asked, now a bit concerned.
There was a creak as more of these bits appeared on her jeans, and with a groan the legs of her jeans began to inflate. They moved sideways like the gas bag of an airship being filled up, and they soon merged into each other and upwards, until any sign of separation was gone completely, and they had become a very odd looking skirt.
The skirt continued moving sideways as more and more of the objects continued to emerge. They were reflecting so much light Suri was forced to cover her eyes. Something metallic emerged from the sands and attached itself around her waist, the vertical strips of metal soon being supported by horizontal ones.
All of this could clearly be seen under the skirt, which by now had stopped growing, and stabilised in shape by the addition of two more layers underneath. It grew forward a bit, producing a partially layered effect dotted with light, and burst backwards as a long train formed behind her, stretching out nearly a yard behind her.
Her shirt merged into her skirt as the zip, buttons, and pockets vanished from the latter, holding the skirt in place. Her sleeves shrank backwards into her shirt as the shoulders came undone and unravelled, the fabric sliding downwards and curving inwards between her breasts. The sides were now below her shoulders, producing a strapless gown. Finally the bodice, as it was now, also turned dark blue, became covered in more of the same glowing objects, and then finally stopped changing.
Suri regarded the garment in horror. "Seriously?" she asked. "How am I supposed to fit in the hut with this on?!" She felt absolutely hideous in this. This looked just as bad as some of the horrors she had made in fashion class. Luckily, she had an idea.
She opened a nearby locker which had a spare set of clothes in it, and hauled the dress off as best she could, before changing into the new clothes within another room. She watched as the dress changed back to the clothes she had previously worn, but then in dismay as her current clothes changed into an exact duplicate of the dress she had just removed.
"Can I not escape?!" she cried, frustrated.
"Erm, Suri," said a quiet voice.
"What is it?" Suri snapped. She wheeled around, and saw Coco Pommel standing there, clad in a poofy dress herself. "Oh. Hi, Coco."
Meanwhile.......
Coco had been busy designing when a sudden boom made her stop.
"What in the world?" she wondered.
Coco Pommel briefly looked up from her work station (business had been quiet) to try and establish if there were any customers today. This operation was a small thing she ran on the side, to supplement her family income, but the young designer certainly enjoyed it, despite the odd reverence that she seemed to have gained recently, with plenty of people referring to her as 'Miss Pommel'.
Not only was this overdoing it, she felt, it was technically incorrect. She wasn't eighteen, for Faust's sake! She stood up from the table, switching off her equipment, and walked over to the window to see a sky full of strange particles reflecting the summer sky. Was it just her, or was one getting-
There was a sudden flash of light as one collided with her, pushing her backwards slightly and away from the doors. "Oof! What is this?"
She was more dazed than scared, as her vision cleared, the street outside seemed to be a vision of pandemonium. Coco saw two girls whizz past. They'd been in only a few minutes ago, and not dressed like that.
Some bright reflection suddenly went in her eye. "What's causing..." she looked down in surprise. Her usual red skirt, which usually had a matte colour consistency, appeared to have gone quite glossy in shade, and as she looked closer, there was a blue patch on it. "...That." She didn't quite know what to make of it, so she ran her hand over the patch to try and clear it, assuming she'd left some fabric on it.
That didn't work. The mark was still there, and as she was still puzzled, the blue patch started to spread. It spread across her skirt, gradually consuming the former red. As it travelled, the pleated patterns were absorbed as the entire skirt became level, with the purple hat emblem on it also being consumed. The white trim faded, and soon she was left with an extremely shiny dark blue skirt that turned rainbow coloured when exposed to light.
Coco watched this process with a mixture of confusion and fascination. What on Earth was happening to her clothes?
Her attention was pulled upwards as the sleeves on her shirt suddenly started to shrink back into her shirt, soon leaving her in a strange top of sorts. The collar also vanished, and the neckline steadily dropped downwards until it was at the upper end of her chest. The red thing around her collar also vanished. The white lining on her shirt faded to nothing as it merged into her skirt, and the blue colour from the skirt soon spread all over it, with elaborate silver embroidery appearing on top of it, running from her waist to the top of the neckline, and all around the sides and back.
Coco's curiosity was turning to excitement, as she was beginning to have a clue where this was going. She squealed in excitement as a metal band appeared around her waste and on the floor, and a lattice structure suddenly emerged from the bottom of her skirt, grew down to the metal on the floor and connected to it. Another series of metal bands threaded through the others to give them structural support and hold them in shape.
An inner skirt grew down the inside of the frame as another grew down the top of the frame, followed by another three. If she had been in any doubt about what she was wearing now, she had received her confirmation. "Oh my gosh! It's a crinoline!"
Just then, the outer skirt, the one which had formally been red, grew longer, down over the other skirts, and to the floor as her heels changed to flatter, much shinier blue ones. More of the embroidery dotted itself over the skirt as the skirt started to inflate, spreading in all directions. It expanded as a giant dome of fabric, the structure curving, spreading outwards like a flower in bloom. It soon encompassed several feet in diameter, and in most places this would have been a problem. Thankfully, this room was nice and wide, so the skirt could keep growing without interruption, the amount of light it was reflecting being almost blinding as the skirt continued to inflate like a balloon.
Coco was looking on in glee at this sight. She was, however, fully aware that these things were pretty heavy, and could be quite big. She breathed an audible sigh of relief as it began to slow down once the flowing, spreading fabric reached five feet. It pushed onwards, coming very close to hitting things in the room, but then, with a grumble, it reached just shy of six feet, lurched out another inch, and stopped.
To say Coco was having the time of her life was an understatement. Ever since she was a little girl she had wanted to wear one of these, but the only ones she could find were well out of her budget. Speaking of which, this dress looked awfully familiar. She walked over to the table, making sure to take careful steps so not to fall over, and took a look at the page she had left open.
The exact same dress was pictured on the page. One she had secretly wanted to buy, but could no afford.
As was normal for residents of this world, she began speaking to herself again. "Whoever made this happen, thank you so much! How can I ever repay you?"
She headed out through the door, only just managing to squeeze the skirt through the opening, and saw that other people all around her were undergoing similar transformations, or had already completed them. She pitied anybody whose clothes had changed into this sort of thing whilst driving, and gently crossed the road to where she saw a familiar face in trouble. Suri Polomare was stuck in a giant gown as well, and seemed to be quite frustrated.
"Erm, Suri," she said.
"What is it?" Suri snapped, and wheeled around. However, her face softened considerably when she saw Coco Pommel standing there, clad in a poofy dress herself. "Oh. Hi, Coco."
"So I'm not the only one," Coco said quietly. "You need a hand?"
"Yes, I do," Suri replied. "But I bet you're loving this. You get to be a poofy princess whilst I can't even get into my place of work!"
"You could help out at the store, if you'd like," Coco told her. "Remember; take small steps and try not to move too fast. If you do, you'll only slow yourself down as these dresses absorb air like a sail."
"Miss Pommel! Miss Polomare!" called a familiar voice.
Both of them turned around to see Rarity approaching. "Oh no," Suri said. "What does she want?"
Rarity stopped before them. "My, my, you both look exquisite!"
Coco giggled. "There's no need to be so formal, Rarity!" She followed it up with a quick curtsy, which Suri tried to imitate with minimal success.
"I see it got to you too," Rarity answered.
Suri was annoyed. First that girl beats her at the fashion show, now she humiliates her with a ridiculous frock? She did her best to keep her anger in check. "Erm, yes. What, precisely?"
"I was a little frustrated earlier today and had a bit of a... ahem, magic surge which is transforming everybody's clothes."
Coco's squealed again, and pulled Rarity into a hug. "You did this? Thank you thank you THANK YOU!"
"She's excited!" Suri said sarcastically.
"Coco darling, I appreciate the... enthusiasm, but a lady does need... to be able... to breathe!"
"Sorry!" Coco said, her face flushed red with embarrassment as she let her mentor go. "But you've made my dream come true!"
"Ah, yes. I've seen you looking at that one in the catalogue I left you a while back," Rarity noted.
"I tried to make my own, but I'm really not skilled enough at this."
Rarity looked at her. "We do need to get everybody together in order to reverse this spell, but I promise you this; when this mess is over, I will make you an exact replica of the dress you currently wear. Sounds good!"
Coco's facial expression left Rarity in no doubt as to how she felt, and the three ladies set off for the center of Canterlot City, followed by a crowd of many other people.