P. Rainbow Dash—Equestria, Junior Flight Camp. Late afternoon of Day One.
The completed test form hit Rainbow Dash’s desk with a “wham!”, propelled by the hoof of a stern Professor Flattery. It was a multiple-choice test, with only a few answers filled in, and all of them circled in red ink—the same ink used to put a large “F” at the top.
Rainbow Dash winced.
The professor sighed. “This is your fourth ‘F’, Rainbow Shy. Your fourth! Do you know what happens to you when you get five ‘F’s in Junior Flight Camp?”
“Expulsion,” Rainbow Dash said weakly, her eyes seeing only the grade on the paper.
“That is correct—you get expelled! What is wrong with you, Dash?! Everypony knows how good you are out in the field!”
Rainbow dared to look up. “So why isn’t that enough?”
“Because you cannot have practice without theory!” Flattery barked, stamping his hoof once more upon the paper-covered desk. “Do you think those Wonderbolts you adore so much even begin to practice for one of their routines before hours of preparation on paper to be sure it can work and that it will be safe?!” He emphasized those two words by two more stomps of his hoof, startling Rainbow. The professor turned to look out the window, watching as pegasi flew around each other in loops. “And I should know, as I helped them design a couple of them, back in the days when I was almost a Wonderbolt.”
Rainbow’s mouth went wide. “Wow, you were almost a Wonderbolt? Did you get to meet Wind Rider?”
“Focus, Dash!” Another stomp. “That is your problem, right there! You can’t focus on anything other than flying! This material is not that challenging! I have in all my years as a teacher never seen anypony so thoroughly waste such excellent potential.” He sighed in disappointment. “Now get out of my classroom.”
Rainbow Dash meekly tucked the test under her wing and made her way for the door.
“You’ve got a week, Ms. Dash,” Professor Flattery warned her. “A week until next Friday, until your last chance to show me, to show the world, that you have this one last piece necessary to be more than a weather lackey.”
“Yes sir,” Rainbow mumbled, her eyes on the cloud floor.
The professor turned away in disgust. “Just get out of here.”
# # #
Rainbow Dash emerged from the classroom into the light of day. The school day was now over, but she sure didn’t feel like celebrating. After depositing the test in a nearby trash receptacle, she looked slowly around her, taking in the elaborate setting of Junior Flight Camp as if she had already received that final “F”, and would never see this place again.
Her eyes settled on an odd little room, constructed of wood instead of cloud, and suspended in place by the use of magical charms embedded in each corner of the structure. An ambulance carriage was parked outside. Nodding to herself in determination, she flew over to the structure and knocked on its solitary door.
On the desk inside the room was a pile of blank checks with the flight camp’s logo on it, and next to that a canceled check. The unicorn at the desk was looking frequently at the canceled check as he copied its signature onto the blank checks.
At the sound of the knock, he quickly moved a pony racing form on top of his work.
“Come in,” a voice within the room answered, so Rainbow Dash opened the door and flew in.
Inside was a modest medical clinic, specialized to deal with the frequent injuries of rambunctious pegasi—splints and bandages were the most common supplies on display. As Rainbow Dash hovered in place, she took in a medical degree on the wall, as well as a modest bookcase containing not only pegasi medical texts, but also popular magic books on famous artifacts and unicorn wizards of the past, including a thick biography of Clover the Clever. Those particular books had all been written by the regular occupant of the room (and the owner of the degree), the unicorn Doctor Tarbell.
At the moment when Rainbow Dash had entered the room, the Doctor had been sitting behind his desk. He was absorbed by a pony racing form, carefully examining each name and choosing which ones to circle with a pencil held aloft in his magical field. It took a few seconds for him to notice the visitor. “Well, well, well!” he exclaimed. “If it isn’t my favorite and least-complaining patient, Rainbow Dash!”
In another couch on the opposite corner of the room sat Spitfire, the unicorn’s designated flier for today. She put down a magazine with Princess Celestia’s face on the cover and stood up. “Do you need me to step out, RD?” she asked.
Rainbow Dash shook her head.
And I’m sorry, but can we stop for a moment to notice how well Rainbow Dash was holding it together in the presence of the legendary Spitfire? That mare was only a few years older than R.D., and already she was a legend! Not only was she the obvious top-of-the-list to be the next Wonderbolt as soon as one of the current ones retired, but was there ever a race she didn’t win? Well, there was the Cloudsdale Circuit of two years ago, but everypony knows how she single-hoofedly rescued like, an entire five-story orphanage from a cloud rot chain reaction the night before. She could have sat out the race the next day, knowing that she wasn’t at her peak, but she entered it anyway! She even said before the race, “I might not win this time, but I want to send a message—I’m not a mare that gives up...for anything!” Wow!
So, anyway...Spitfire (!) was in the room. And then Dr. Tarbell had to drag everything down with the first words that came out of his mouth: “So, what have you broken this time?”
My head’s the only thing that’s broken right now, Doc, Rainbow thought to herself, suddenly reminded of her string of failures in the classroom. And not even you can fix it. “I’m not here for any medical stuff, Doc,” she said.
“Would you like to borrow one of my books?” Tarbell asked eagerly, turning around to gesture at his collection.
Spitfire smiled on seeing the grimace that Rainbow Dash made as Tarbell’s back was turned.
“Uh, no, Doc,” Rainbow Dash responded. “I just wanted to ask you something.”
“Oh,” Tarbell said, his spirits dropping—nopony ever wanted to read any of his books. “What do you want to know about?”
“Gilda said that you knew the horizontal flight speed record for pegasi. Do you know what it is?”
The doctor blinked for a moment as he took in how enthusiastic Rainbow Dash was for a simple number. “Sure. It’s 98 ponylengths-per-second at regulation cloud height, set by Fast Clip one hundred and eighteen years ago.” He looked over at his racing form. “Oh, wait! Fast Clip!” He circled the name. “I’m feeling good about this one!”
Rainbow Dash quietly waited for him to finish before jumping back into her pitch. “98, is that all?” she bragged. “I can beat that easily. The Wonderbolts will have to let me in after that.” She turned in place and prepared to fly out the door.
Dr. Tarbell sighed. “No you can’t,” he told Rainbow, causing her to stop in place.
“Huh?” Rainbow turned back to confront the unicorn. “You know I’m the fastest pegasus here!”
And Rainbow Dash wasn’t lying. She knew that she could go faster than any other pegasus alive, maybe even any pegasus ever. The reason why Spitfire won all the races was because she had incredible endurance.
Spitfire watched the conversation in silence. She didn’t seem to be offended by Rainbow’s claim.
“That doesn’t matter,” Tarbell said to Rainbow Dash as he sat back on his couch. He gestured for Rainbow to stand instead of hover, so she did. “At regulation height, 98 plps is the limit. There are no faster speeds.” He pronounced “plps” as “pulps”.
Spitfire rolled her eyes.
“What are you talking about?” Rainbow asked.
“100 plps is the speed of magic traveling through the material plane,” Tarbell explained patiently. “Sure, unicorns can bend space or route magic outside the material plane to give the appearance of faster speeds, but they can’t move faster than that. Nothing can. That’s why it’s an absolute limit.”
“What about the sonic magi-boom?” Spitfire asked with a snide grin.
Dr. Tarbell pointed angrily at Spitfire. “Don’t go confusing the filly with old mare’s tales,” he warned.
“What’s a sonic magi-boom?” Rainbow Dash asked eagerly.
Spitfire walked up to Rainbow Dash, her eyes alight. “A sonic magi-boom is a legendary act performed by pegasi in great need. It’s when you fly so fast you blast right through that magic barrier that the Doc was talking about, creating this huge spray of color and a big boom! And after that, there’s no limit to your speed. Also every pegasi ever will become your slave.”
“Woah!” Rainbow exclaimed, picturing what this sonic magi-boom might look like and completely ignoring the creepy last thing Spitfire said. “That would be awesome.”
Tarbell sighed, signaling for Spitfire to back off. “My enthusiastic friend here used the word ‘legendary’ in her description, because there has never been a documented instance of a pegasus or even Princess Celestia breaking the magi-sonic barrier. Ever. It’s just something that desperate pegasi authors sprinkle into their barely-reputable popular history texts whenever they’re desperate to prove their tribe’s superiority.”
“The reason why it hasn’t been documented is that it can only be seen by true believers,” Spitfire asserted, puffing her chest out with pegasus pride.
Dr. Tarbell shook his head at the obvious belief in pseudo-magic.
Rainbow on the other hoof puffed herself up in imitation of Spitfire. “I bet I could do it. In fact, I’m going to try it right now!” She moved to walk out of the office, only to be stopped by a fearful Dr. Tarbell.
“No, don’t!” he pleaded. “Look, Rainbow, there have been dozens of documented attempts by madponies trying to break the magi-sonic barrier, and the lucky ones merely stalled out and had to be rescued before they crashed into the ground. The unlucky ones crashed into the barrier itself. Those poor ponies spent the rest of their lives in the hospital.”
Seeing the look of shock on Rainbow’s face, Tarbell decided to refrain from spelling out what happened to the poor ponies who hit the barrier: ending up in a full body wing-and-hoof cast, drinking through a straw!
Spitfire darted her head around suddenly, as if the doctor’s thoughts were echoing around her head.
Dr. Tarbell still saw some doubt on her face, some lingering desire to try to break the record anyway. So with extreme reluctance, he decided to share his own theory, formed from years of studying magic. “But in the end,” he told Rainbow, “in the end, those ponies were lucky, and so were we. Because if any pony actually succeeded in creating a sonic magi-boom, it would fracture the delicate shell of magic which sustains everything. A sonic magi-boom…would break the universe.”
Rainbow Dash flew slowly out of the office without a word, her head down.
Spitfire waited until the door was closed to say anything. “Way to break her spirit, Doc.”
Tarbell took in a deep breath, and then let it out through his teeth. “Yeah, but as a doctor I felt I had no choice but to steer her away from a wreck not even she could bounce back from.” He looked at the closed door. “But I clearly didn’t do well by her mental health. Could you keep an eye on her for an hour or two? Make sure she’s alright?”
“Sure thing, Doc,” Spitfire said as she picked up a pair of goggles and walked out the door.
# # #
Rainbow flew out of Dr. Tarbell’s office with a veritable cloud over her head. Breaking that speed limit was her last shot of getting into the Wonderbolts without having to ace some stupid test. And now she finds out that nopony can do it? She sat down on an isolated cloud to sulk.
Unseen by a self-absorbed Rainbow, Spitfire found a higher cloud to sit on and observe her.
A few minutes later, Rainbow Dash’s attention was pulled towards the sight of three pegasi ganging up on Rainbow’s good friend Fluttershy. Roused to sudden indignation, Rainbow forgot all about the speed record and Tarbell’s warnings about the sonic magi-boom, and flew down to stand up for her friend. This confrontation led to a race, and the race led to the very thing Rainbow Dash had been warned never to attempt…
Rainbow Dash had won! She had beaten those bullies against all the odds! And now she was being bounced up and down by a crowd of her admirers!
“Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!”
They were also shouting something about “the game” and “crystal prep”, but those made no sense to Rainbow Dash, so she tuned them out, basking in her victory over the laws of physics. She had broken that pesky barrier, she was certain of it. And with all of those pegasi watching the race, there was no way that this sonic magi-boom would be left out of the history books. In fact, since she was the one who did it, and since the magical explosion had her characteristic color to it, Rainbow Dash decided on the spot to re-name the phenomenon, to “sonic rainboom”.
Yeah, that sounded much cooler.
But…something felt wrong.
Rainbow was still being bounced and carried by her fans. But she saw now that she was much closer to the ground than she had ever been in her entire life. Instead of fluffy clouds, the surface below her was made of spiky little shards of green glass or something.
And what was that sound? Rainbow turned her head to see a dragon-sized gray brick on wheels rush by at incredible speed, chased by a weird blue creature with a silver mane. It was bipedal like a bird, but had spindly little arms instead of wings, and seemed to be dressed in a magician’s robe and hat. And it didn’t even have a tail? What was that thing?
The realization slowly creeped up Rainbow Dash’s spine, that the crowd bouncing her up and down and calling her name were not holding her aloft with their backs and wings, but with arms just like the creepy creature she saw. Because they all were creepy creatures instead of ponies. Creepy creatures without wings!
And Rainbow Dash was a creepy wingless creature too!
Rainbow Dash screamed.
P. Fluttershy—Earth, Crystal Prep Academy. Early afternoon of Day One.
Fluttershy wasn’t quite sure what had happened. One minute she was getting acquainted with the large variety of friendly animals that lived on the ground, and then with a blink of an eye her sky had been replaced with a hard gray barrier, and the grass with bare dirt. There were a new variety of small animals around her, all looking at her expectantly, including a cat with a bow tied around a topknot on his head and a bunny rabbit…well actually, the rabbit didn’t change. But the other animals were all different.
Fluttershy went to rise to her hooves, but that didn’t work out. It seemed that she was no longer a pony.
After some reflection, Fluttershy decided that she didn’t have a problem with this.
Ponies could be horrible to Fluttershy. And sometimes on her worst days, Fluttershy was horrified by the things she did as a pony without thinking. Ponies were cruel, in the worst sort of way. Ponies lied to each other, and they enjoyed the pain those lies caused in others. Fluttershy had always dreamed that animals only told the truth to one another, were honest even in the necessary moments of hurting each other, while ponies hurt each other for fun.
Fluttershy was no longer a pony? Well, good riddance! (Assuming that exclamation point wasn’t going too far. Can we change it to “good riddance…?” Yes, much better.)
As for how this happened? Well, that was easy. Unicorns lived on the ground. Not just the friendly and harmless unicorns like Dr. Tarbell, but also the really, really smart unicorns. And, as every pegasus knew, really, really smart unicorns were all crazy. It was their fundamental weakness. So some insane unicorn had seen Fluttershy on his or her property, and used his or her crazy unicorn magic to send her a few hundred ponylenths away. And turned her into…whatever this is. Because crazy unicorn.
This new form was bipedal. That was obvious. So Fluttershy rose to her feet…and bumped her head on the bottom of the solid barrier.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, cutely.
She saw an end to the barrier, and made her way towards it. She needed to get back to Junior Flight Camp, or else she’d be in trouble.
Not that she really minded being in trouble, so long as nopony got upset about it. But that was the thing—ponies would get upset. Ponies like her parents, who sent her here to improve her assertiveness. And her best friend Rainbow Dash, the pony who had gotten into that crazy race to stop those mean ponies from teasing her.
Fluttershy wondered who won. She wondered if she could even see the camp, or Cloudsdale.
When she emerged from under the barrier, she realized that it was a bleacher, and a few creatures similar to her current form were sitting on it. Most of the creatures were out on a field, tossing a blue creature up and down.
That creature was screaming in fear, in Rainbow Dash’s voice.
Fluttershy ran fearlessly up to the crowd, to help her friend in need. “Put her down!” she demanded. “Um, if you don’t mind, that is.” None of the creatures heard her. “Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!” she cried out, in a meek voice.
“Fluttershy?” the blue creature replied. “Put me down! Um…please. Put me down.”
The crowd obeyed, and parted ways to allow this being to make her way to Fluttershy.
Fluttershy scrunched her eyebrows in thought. This creature was certainly colored similarly to Rainbow Dash, and the hair on her head closely resembled Rainbow Dash’s manestyle. So she must be Rainbow Dash.
“Is that you, Fluttershy?” the blue one asked.
Fluttershy nodded.
“What happened to you? To me? To everything?!” Rainbow demanded in short order.
“I think there was a unicorn—” Fluttershy began.
“Wait…oh no. Oh no!” Rainbow slapped her hands on Fluttershy’s shoulders. “My sonic rainboom! I did this, Fluttershy. I broke the universe!” She repositioned her new hands so she could melodramatically drop her head into them.
Fluttershy raised a single eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s what happened,” she declared bluntly.
As usual any time Fluttershy dared to show some aspect of her personality other than “terrified by everything”, she was ignored.
“I must have, like outlawed wings or something when I broke the magi-whatsits barrier!” Rainbow Dash declared, working herself up into a panic attack. “What am I gonna do without wings, Fluttershy?! They’re my best physical attribute!”
Fluttershy opened her mouth to try and calm her friend down, but was promptly shoved aside as two more bipeds rushed in to envelop Rainbow Dash in a hug. Fluttershy belatedly realized that Rainbow Dash responded better to hugs than logic when she got like this, so she stepped forward to hug Rainbow as well.
“My daughter, my dear daughter!” one of the bipeds exclaimed, as she wiped Rainbow’s tears away.
“What happened?” the other new biped asked, as he raised Rainbow’s head up.
“She had a panic attack, Bow,” the first biped explained. “But that’s alright. We love and support you anyway, and will do everything in our power to help you through this!”
“That’s right!” the second biped chimed in.
Fluttershy looked back and forth between the two newcomers, focusing on the shirt the male wore, which was adorned with an image of Rainbow Dash’s new alien face. Their voices were very familiar… “Mr. and Mrs. Dash?” she ventured.
Mrs. Dash turned her head to acknowledge Fluttershy’s existence. “Oh, Fluttershy!” she exclaimed. “I’m so glad you’re here for our little Dashie!”
“Mom, stop calling me Dashie in public!” Rainbow exclaimed. “Wait…Mom, Dad? What are you doing here?”
“Well we had to be here to watch our daughter’s big game!” Bow Hothoof exclaimed. “And what a game it was!”
“I’ve got the complete video of your winning kick,” Windy Whistles said, presenting a piece of black glass. “And I’m going to upload the whole thing to Mystable tonight!”
“Eh…what?” Rainbow Dash asked in utter confusion.
“I was going to take you both out to a victory dinner, on me,” Bow started to awkwardly explain, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck. “But it looks like crowds might not be a good idea for you right now. So what say I drop you off at your friend’s place to start your slumber party a little early?”
Before Rainbow Dash had a chance to respond, Bow was the victim of a severe elbow in the ribs, courtesy of Windy Whistles. “They don’t call them ‘slumber parties’ at their age, Bow,” she explained. “They’re ‘sleepover parties’.”
“Ah, right. Sleepover party.”
Rainbow looked back and forth between the two of them. “Ah…OK,” she said, slowly.
# # #
Before they knew it, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had been bundled into a strange covered horseless carriage, which then started moving by itself down a paved road, controlled somehow by Windy. After figuring out how the window worked, Rainbow stuck her head out into the wind. She caught some bugs in her teeth, but she didn’t mind.
“This is probably as close to flying as I’ll ever experience again,” she confided sadly to Fluttershy after pulling her head back in.
Fluttershy looked down at the cat from under the bleachers that had jumped into her lap at the last possible second when she had gotten into this “car” (as Windy called it), and said nothing.
During the drive, Bow had talked into his own piece of black glass, and the glass had talked back with the voices of Fluttershy’s parents. Those voices had demanded—in a very polite way—that Fluttershy talk to them, so Fluttershy communicated in single syllables with them. Because talking to a black piece of glass containing disembodied voices was creepy.
Finally they arrived before a delicate looking two-story ground house. Well, Fluttershy supposed that it looked like a cloud house if you squinted your eyes at it, so being on the ground made it a ground house. Being stuck on the ground meant that it looked far less hospitable than a Cloudsdale house.
Two of the creatures were waiting outside of the house. Fluttershy was willing to accept that they were her parents.
When the car stopped, Bow hopped right out and pulled Fluttershy’s parents aside for a private conversation. From his gestures, it seemed clear to Fluttershy that he was referring to Rainbow Dash’s “outburst” from earlier.
Rainbow Dash climbed out of the car with some difficulty, and was then kissed goodbye by her parents, and covered with a layer of “sleepover essentials” that had been stored in the car’s trunk compartment. Once Fluttershy herself had finally exited the car, Bow and Windy climbed back in, and drove away.
Fluttershy watched them leave with mounting puzzlement: None of these grown-ups seemed to have any problem with being in new bodies. “I don’t suppose you know what’s going on, Mr. Fluffy?” she asked the cat at her feet.
To her immense surprise, Mr. Fluffy had a very good idea what was going on.
# # #
Once they entered the house, Rainbow Dash perched herself on top of a chaise lounge. Fluttershy’s parents looked about to tell her not to do that, but stopped out of a mix of timidity and seeing how depressed Rainbow Dash was.
Fluttershy used the sight of Rainbow’s sadness to steel her nerves for what she had to do. As the two grown-ups moved to pass her and go into the kitchen, Fluttershy stepped to stop them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Shy, I have a confession to make.”
All eyes settled on Fluttershy. She closed her eyes and fought down the desperate urge to escape from this confrontation. “I am not your daughter.”
She opened her eyes to see them looking at her, their mouths agape. More importantly, Rainbow Dash was also looking at her. In her eyes was a desperate need for Fluttershy to provide an explanation that didn’t involve her breaking the universe.
And Fluttershy was going to deliver that explanation. “I’m a different Fluttershy, from very far away. I’m not even…” She looked down at Mr. Fluffy, who mewed faintly at her, gesturing at her with his paws to continue. “…Human. I’m not human.”
“What’s a human?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“This,” Fluttershy, gesturing first at herself, then at the two parents and at Rainbow Dash. “This species is known as ‘human’.”
The two adults huddled together. “Fluttershy dear, you’re scaring us,” Posey Shy said. “Did you get this out of one of your games?”
Fluttershy huffed. “No, this is real. There’s been some sort of magical accident, and we somehow changed places with the human Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash that you knew.”
“A magical accident that I caused,” Rainbow Dash said, climbing down from the chair to stand beside Fluttershy. “We just need a way to reverse it, and then you can have your Fluttershy back.” She pointed outside. “And they can have their Rainbow Dash back.”
Posey and her husband Cloud Cover turned to regard Rainbow Dash. “Is this your idea of a prank, Rainbow?” Cloud asked. “And you convinced our Fluttershy to play along? Because we don’t think it’s very funny.”
“No, it’s not a prank!” Rainbow insisted. “Doesn’t this sort of thing happen to you guys all the time? You know, so you would have an easy fix all ready and waiting?”
The pair of parents shook their heads. “I’m sorry,” said Posey, and unlike the vast majority of times when somepony says “I’m sorry,” she really sounded like she meant it. “But I don’t know what kind of game you want us to play.”
“It’s not a—!” Rainbow Dash stopped herself before she could lose her temper. “Look, what do we have to do to prove that we’re telling the truth?”
Mr. Fluffy gave Fluttershy some encouraging gestures.
“Can your Fluttershy talk to animals?” she asked with a surprising degree of force.
Mr. and Mrs. Shy looked at her and blinked. “Y…you always talk to animals, dear,” Posey said.
“But can she understand what they say back to her?” Fluttershy asked.
“Well you…I mean she…pretends to,” Cloud answered. “And she’s very good at guessing what they are trying to say, because she understands them so well.”
“You lost your house key,” Fluttershy told him.
“Yes?” He pulled out his keychain. “I got another copy from your…I mean her mother.”
“Mr. Fluffy knows where that key is,” Fluttershy declared. “Mr. Fluffy, could you show us where it is?”
Mr. Fluffy nodded in an exaggerated manner, to make it clear that he was indeed responding directly to Fluttershy’s prompt. He then walked into the living room, followed slowly by Cloud and the other humans. On reaching the far corner, he used his claws to peel back a loose corner of carpet, revealing the missing key.
Cloud bent down and retrieved the key. “I…did you train Mr. Fluffy?”
“Dear, I don’t think you can train a cat,” Posey said, quite uncertain.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Cloud said, sinking into the recliner.
Fluttershy frowned, then strode over to a nearby window and opened it, looking out at a tree and the mockingbirds which were raucously saying their farewells to the setting sun. “Hello little passerines!” Fluttershy greeted them brightly. The birds stopped singing, and one of them squawked out a rather complex chirp.
The three other humans gathered behind Fluttershy, to see what would happen.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right, humans are very silly,” Fluttershy said, apparently in response to the mockingbird’s chirp. “How would you like to show off how clever you are?”
The birds conversed among themselves.
“The birds are conversing among themselves!” Posey declared.
The flock gathered themselves into a choir, complete with conductor. And then they started beatboxing.
Rainbow Dash laughed out loud.
“Is that the Fresh Prince of Bel Air?” asked Cloud.
“Yes, I do think it is,” Posey replied.
Fluttershy turned around, a rare look of triumph on her face.
“Alright, we believe you,” said Posey.
“Awesome!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.
“But we have no idea how to fix things,” added Cloud.
“Bogus!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.
P. Rainbow Dash & P. Fluttershy.
Plans were discussed over dinner. A vegetarian dinner, because with the exception of Zephyr Breeze, all of the members of Fluttershy’s human family were vegetarians. (Zephyr was currently at a slumber party himself—apparently the human Rainbow Dash made it a habit never to stay the night at Fluttershy’s place if her brother was going to be present.)
The primary plan was to appeal to the dean of the school that both human Rainbow Dash and human Fluttershy attended. “Crystal Prep Academy” was the name of that school, and Cadance was the name of the dean. Someone named “Principal Cinch” was absolutely not going to be consulted, because Principal Cinch was terrifying beyond all human reason. It was considered unlikely that this Cadance human would know how to fix the magical mishap herself, but as a dean she would be the most likely to know how to find someone that could help.
At first, Mr. and Mrs. Shy thought that the call to Dean Cadance should be put off until tomorrow morning. To allow the dean to get in her beauty sleep. Or because it could wait. Or basically to avoid any kind of confrontation whatsoever.
Rainbow Dash had to put her hoof down. Foot. Whatever.
So finally Posey “dialed the phone number”, which was the non-magical, technological way of putting your voice into Dean Cadance’s black piece of glass. Only she didn’t answer it. Instead, there was some sort of automated answering service.
Posey hung up.
Posey and Cloud Cover then spent fifteen minutes coming up with the message they wanted to leave, carefully designed to cause as little fuss as possible.
In other words, they were exactly like Fluttershy’s parents back home. In a way this was extremely comforting to Fluttershy. In another adjacent way it was quite frustrating.
Finally, the message was left, and there was no longer anything to do until tomorrow. So the actual slumber party began. It was spent in Fluttershy’s room, as the pair of them tried to come to terms with what had happened to them.
“Fluttershy, have you always been able to talk to animals?” Rainbow Dash asked, somewhat hurt at the possibility that her best friend was keeping a secret from her.
“No, I think I got it with my cutie mark,” Fluttershy replied.
“You got your mark? Congratulations! What does it look like?”
“I don’t know,” Fluttershy said. “I looked myself over when I took that shower, and it’s not on me anywhere. But I know for certain that I got it this afternoon when I met the animals in the forest. Or maybe when I talked to Mr. Fluffy earlier.”
Rainbow Dash nodded. “And I’m pretty sure I got mine with my sonic rainboom. I’m sorry you got caught up in it.”
“Don’t be!” Fluttershy assured her. “We’re on a great adventure, like we always dreamed about.”
“Like I always dreamed about,” Rainbow clarified. “You never were the adventure type.”
“I guess not,” Fluttershy admitted with a gentle laugh. “But we’re on one now anyway. And really, as adventures go, this one is not bad. We’ve got loving parents here, just like our own parents. And nopony hates us.”
Rainbow Dash winced inwardly. The tone of that last sentence said far too much of the pain that Fluttershy went through on a daily basis. “Yeah,” she said. A second later a new thought entered her head. “Hey, do you have any idea why this only happened to you and me? I saw two humans that must have been Hoops and Dumb-bell in the crowd at that soccer game, and neither one of them acted like ponies suddenly dumped into human bodies.”
“Well, maybe it’s because we’re friends!” Fluttershy said brightly.
“You might be right,” Rainbow said with a nod. “But if that’s the case, where’s Gilda?”
Fluttershy looked away, not daring to express her suspicions regarding Rainbow Dash’s other “best friend”.