//------------------------------// // Helping Hoof // Story: Rainbow Dash Gets Turned Into A Moai // by IAmAVeryRealPerson //------------------------------// CHAPTER 1 Helping Hoof There's a time period where absolutely nothing drastically bad happens. Usually, it lasts a month or so and if one of those days hits the first day of the week, anything bad just doesn't happen. It has had a significant effect all over Equestria, and many ponies and alike have noticed this phenomenon among centuries of generations. For over a thousand years, no evil forces have ever touched this specific day, for reasons unknown. There have been some myths as to why this day was always so peaceful that some ponies claimed to be fact. They say that on the Eastern side of Equestria, there was an incident that resulted in some powerful spell that Star Swirl The Bearded himself manifested in order to keep Equestria and beyond, safe from all danger for one day every one hundred moons. Though, there hasn't been an explanation for the few days before and after where nothing too bad also happens. Many tried to theorize more on the fact that for at least a month's worth of time around said "Easter Sunday," have also never had much happen. But due to lack of information, the "Eastern Event from the East" theory, is allotted to everyone so that it can try and explain the yearly phenomenon. So they worked around that to create the holiday that everyone all knows as, Easter. You may know how things changed from the original Easter event celebrations, from that to collecting chocolate eggs from a rabbit that shits out those eggs. Well, the story you're about to read might be the second weirdest change for the Easter holiday. Because this Easter was about to change the lives of one of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. It's been a few months after defeating Queen Chrysalis, Cozy Glow and Tirek. Though the fight was tough, every creature came together and helped in saving Equestria, hopefully, for the last time. After Princess Twilight Sparkle's coronation, her request to stay with her friends in Ponyville were at first, a little preposterous, but since Celestia has no control over her former student's choices, she agreed that it may be best to do so. At some point, during the same conversation, Twilight mentioned something about why Luna had to retire. It just made little to no sense to her and she explained why she felt that Luna didn't need to retire yet. It ended up being a funny little interaction and that somehow convinced Celestia to have her little sister rule alongside Twilight, much to Luna's dismay. It is now an Easter Sunday afternoon, Twilight is in her castle doing spell tests using some book with the cover; "Special Magic Spells" that she believes are not as "special" as they claim it to be. She has doubts that these spells have nothing to do with anything "special," and so, to prove her hypothesis is correct, she invited one of her best friends to help with confirming it, Rainbow Dash, a mare who would rather not be doing whatever that is with Twilight on Easter. But Dash was the only one available to test out the "special" spells with. Not because Twilight forced her into it using some very persuading vocabulary. While waiting for Rainbow Dash, Twilight does some last minute adjustments to her workplace, a.k.a. the guest bedroom. She, who is mostly just getting prepared for the testing, is skimming through some of the spells just to see which ones she can do for the day. Spike, on the other hoof, was only staying until Dash gets here so that he can go do his own thing. Starlight Glimmer, who could've been chosen as the role for Spike today, was on vacation with Sunburst and Trixie, somewhere far, far away from Ponyville. She was already gone by the time Twilight woke up, and when she did, she found a note on Starlight's bed talking about her yearly Easter week break. Twilight understood and made Spike be the stand-in for Rainbow Dash. "So, when will she get here?" Spike asks Twilight. "Soon, Spike." she answers. "What's in that book anyway?" Spike asks another question. "I don't know yet." she replies. "How much longer do I have to be here?" Spike asks her a third question. Twilight sighs as she leaves the spell book open on a podium that she has in the room with her. "Not much longer, Spike. She'll be here in a minute." It's as if Twilight predicted exactly when Rainbow Dash would arrive. The pegasus arrives outside bedroom door, she knocks on it. "Perfect, just in time." Twilight says as she walks over to the bedroom door and opens it. "Happy Easter, Rainbow Dash." Twilight greets with a smile. "Wish I could say the same." she replies joylessly. "Come in, come in... we have plenty of spells to test." Twilight says as she goes back to her testing area. "So, Dash..." "Yeah?" "Are you ready to help me prove that I, Princess Twilight Spar-" "Can we please just get this over with, Twi..." Dash interrupts. "Okay then." Twilight clears her throat. "Spike, you can go now." "Finally..." Spike gets up from his bean bag chair and starts to leave. On the way out, he says to Dash, "Have fun." Dash looks at Spike with a jealous face, Spike snickers to himself as he exits the room. "Close the door on your way out, Spike!" Twilight shouts out, he does so. "Alright, let's get started!" "Great... This is going to be the most boring Easter of my life." Dash ends. Dash really wishes she could be somewhere else right now. Maybe, enjoying the view from somewhere up high, or somewhere in the meadows where she can feel the grass skim through her coat, or at the beach, feeling the sun and sand around her. But no, she had to be here, at Twilight's castle, in a bedroom, being tested on. "Hey, thanks for coming, Dash." Twilight opens. "Yeah, well, they don't call me the Element of Loyalty for nothing." "True." Twilight agrees. "So, uh, how long did you say this was gonna take again?" Dash asks her. "Uhm... about five hours." "FIVE HOURS!?" Dash shouts. "I'm gonna miss half the day!" "But isn't it one o'clock?" "You know what I meant." "Not really..." Twilight comments. "Now, Rainbow Dash, I need you to cooperate, okay? Then we'll get this done quicker." Dash sighs. "Fine." "Good. So, just sit over there and I'll call you when I need you." "Alright..." Dash walks over to the bean bag chair that Spike was sitting on and plops down on it as she awaits Twilight's word. As Twilight continues on her experiments, Rainbow lays down and thinks about what life decisions brought her here. Even through all the battles and friendships that she and her best friends won, she still feels a little moody about things. You know, being promoted to The Captain of The Wonderbolts, and a friendship teacher can get a little exhausting. Easter was supposed to be one of those holidays where she can go off and do whatever she may please. Instead, she's helping a friend of hers make themselves feel better by testing out how "Special" the spells are in some "Special Magic Spells" book. I guess she is the Element of Loyalty though, so maybe it's not too bad. It's been about four hours since the two mares started testing the spells in the "Special Magic" book. Some spells seemed interesting at first, but they turned out to be so far up the "Next level special" scale that it looped back down to "Oh, it's special alright...". They aren't even halfway done with the book, there are still so many more pages until they reach the end. Pages filled with whatever kind of "Special Magic Spells" were listed within the covers of this Celestia-forsaken spell book. Twilight didn't know what majority of the contents of this book even were. It almost seems like she was just winging it from the beginning. Everything they just tested were "absolute bullshit", in Twilight's words. Twilight thought it was weird that this single large book of spells was hidden within Celestia and Luna's old castle's chambers. Now she thinks it was rightfully justified that this book stayed in the chambers to be left to get taken by time. Anyway, the two mares are tired after four hours of testing Twilight's "Special Magic Spells" book. They almost fell asleep just an hour into it because of how boring the spells were. "Twi?" "Mhm?" Twilight turns to Dash. "Do you ever feel like life just isn't going the way you wanted it to be?" "What do you mean?" "Y'know like..." Dash pauses. "I mean don't get me wrong, I think being Captain of The Wonderbolts is awesome and all, but like... Everything just seems to get so... stressful..." "I know what you mean..." Twilight says understandingly, "And this "Special Magic" stuff is total bullshi-" "Did you even hear what I just said!!!" Dash interrupts angrily. Twilight jumps at Dash's outburst and turns towards her before sighing heavily and walking over to her as she tells her, "Look, I have been listening carefully to everything you've just been saying, and I completely understand how you feel." "You do?" "Now, I'm no expert therapist like Fluttershy, but, all I can tell you is maybe you should try to have someone to talk to about your problems." "..." Dash lays silent, "Really?" "Yeah, you do have Tank though, right?" Twilight inquires. "Yeah, I mean... I do talk with him a lot and stuff. But sometimes I feel like there's something else missing that could help more." "Hmm..." Twilight expresses, "Let's say maybe you could need someone who can tell you things that Tank can't?" "Like who?" she asks "Oh I don't know..." Twilight sighs, "I actually want to have some kind of therapy done for myself... I just never have the time for it all." "I see..." "Anyway, if it makes you feel any better, it seems we both need to open up about working so much. And I'm sure the rest of us also feel the same sometimes." "Okay... But how am I supposed to find someone who can understand me as much as Tank does? "Well, I don't know but like I said, I'm not an expert. And it seems to me that you could use a little free time for now, don't you think?" "I guess..." Dash reluctantly says. "I got an idea... Come here, Dash." Twilight calls over Dash to stand next to her. "So, do you like art?" she asks. "Only if it's something cool looking." "Then I think you'll like this." Twilight pops in a medium sized mirror for the artwork that she will make. "I read on a page somewhere in that book that can turn some glass objects into art." "Ok, cool." "Hmm, maybe there will be something "Special" in that book after all." Twilight says. "We'll see." As Twilight searches for the page where the art spell is and quickly reads it off the book, she readies up her horn so that her expertise can turn the mirror into some art. Twilight's horn starts glowing as she conjures up the magic. After some time, the glow gets bigger until a beam of magic shoots towards the mirror at a high speed. The thing is, the beam of magic is supposed to hit the mirror and turn it into an artwork. Instead, it bounces of the surface and because of the angle that it was at, the beam hits Rainbow Dash square in the face and flings her back a bit. Thus beginning her slow transformation. "Ow, what was that?." Dash says, dazed. "No no no, that wasn't supposed to happen." "What do you mean?" "Hold on for sec..." Twilight turns back to read the spell and upon further inspection, she realizes what she had cast on one of her best friends. "Oh no..." "Oh no, what? What did you do?" "Well..." Twilight flips through two pages of the book where the right spell and the one that she just cast on her as she prepares to tell her the unfortunate accident, "I miiiight have just done the wrong spell..." "Twilight, what did you do?" "I miiight have read the wrong page of the book..." Twilight continues sheepishly. "Twilight..." Dash says, now frustrated. "It was an accident! I didn't mean to!" "What did you just put on me?" Rainbow asks, more frustrated. "Uhhhhmmm," Twilight says worriedly, "Come see for yourself." Rainbow Dash walks over next to Twilight and reads the first page on the left. "Mosaic spell?" Twilight turns to the other spell's page. "Moai spell?" Rainbow Dash puts the pieces together in her head and says, "Wait... are you telling me..." "I must have confused the two somehow, I'd never do that on purpose, I'm sorry Rainbow Dash." she says quickly. "TWILIGHT!" Dash yells, annoyed at the fact that Twilight unknowingly put a possibly dangerous spell on her. "Please... read the description of that one..." Twilight asks her to do. "The target who was hit with this spell will become a big... stone... head." she reads. Rainbow gets confused all of a sudden, "Twi, What the fuck is this?" "It's... not my book of "Special Magic"..." "That's not the point, Twi..." "Well... what do you mean, then?" "I'M PROBABLY GONNA DIE, TWILIGHT! WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME!?" "I DON'T KNOW, I'M SORRY! I DIDN'T MEAN TO!" The two mares start screaming at each other due to the fact that Rainbow Dash is now slowly turning into a Moai statue. They scream about how the spell isn't one of the limited to one day spells, and over the course of three days, Rainbow Dash will eventually fully turn into a Moai statue. What they don't know is, Rainbow Dash won't die at the end of her transformation. She will be preserved for as long as she stays as a statue. This is implying that when somepony gets turned into any statue, Moai or not, they don't die. They are preserved in between the stone cast and when it's time for them to be released, they will stay in perfect condition as long as they don't break apart at some point. As for Rainbow's Moai predicament, the outcome is no different to turning the villains into statues using the power of friendship and whatnot. Now, for some reason, as they were going through these spells, only most of them had reversion spells in case anything devastating happened. Some spells were listed as "limited to one day" so the technical curses could just disappear after the individual targeted reached the twenty-four hour mark. Twilight skipped these ones due to them being too risky. Some had nothing listed on the pages after, meaning if somebody had one of the spells that curse them, that had no spell to reverse it, they would be stuck with whatever was cast on them for the rest of their life, or until someone else finds another way to reverse it with something else. That being said, there was probably no way to reverse Rainbow's Moai curse situation. Although, if there was a way to break it somehow, Twilight would find it eventually. After a short back and forth tantrum of the two mares, they eventually start addressing the situation. "Yes." Twilight says, "You only have three days to live..." "Can you say that one more time?" Dash says frantically. "Dash, I've been saying that one more time for the past seventeen times already." "Ok.. but can you say that one more time?" "Rainbow Dash, you only have three more days to live until you turn into a Moai Statue." Rainbow Dash starts breathing heavily after she finally realizes the unfortunate truth. "Ohhhhhh no..." she says with a long breath as she almost calms down, "Three days? Really?" "That's what it says." "What am I gonna do in three days?" Dash asks. Twilight replies with a question, "Do you... have anything on your mind?" "No...? I didn't see my weekend going like this." she confesses. "Okay... well," Twilight sighs, "I, uh... I was... actually planning to do something with you after we were done." Perhaps there was another reason why Twilight Sparkle decided to test these "Special Magic" spells with Rainbow Dash. Perhaps not just because Rainbow was the only one available on Easter holiday. Perhaps there was something that she was keeping from letting out. Perhaps she just felt like being alone with another mare for the day. "What. What were you planning to do? Kill me?" Dash asks Twilight. "I already said I didn't mean to use that spell!." she answers, "Besides, no. Absolutely not, why would you think that?" Rainbow Dash sighs. "I don't know, alright. I'm just... worried now." "Well don't be, okay? We'll get through this." Dash smiles lightly. "Thanks, Twi." "No problem. I'll try to find a way to reverse the spell and you'll get back to normal, okay?" "Okay..." Dash ends. "So... what were you planning to do?" "Well... after we get about halfway through, I would have actually fell asleep probably, but I wanted to..." she goes silent, thinking carefully about her next words. "What? What did you want?" Dash asks wanting to know the answer. Twilight takes a deep breath and continues, "It kinda... you know, gets lonely in here when we don't have the cutie map going anymore... So, uh... I wanted to ask you... if it would be okay with you... if you stayed the night." "Here?" Dash questions. Twilight nods. "Really?" she questions again. Twilight nods again. "With you...?" Dash raises an eyebrow as she looks deep into her eyes. Twilight starts blushing a little and says, "Yeah, well... maybe..." Twilight gets flustered, "I thought maybe there would be something with these "Special Spells" that I could pick out before we finished but, everything in there is nonsense." "Are you asking me to sleep with you?" Dash questions. Twilight starts blushing even more. "Well... " "Geez Twi, I don't know what to say..." Dash thinks about her friendship with Twilight for a second. Was there something more to it than she thought? "How long were you planning on telling me this?" "Not that long, really... I was mainly thinking of a good reason to bring you here." she answers honestly, "It was until I searched through Celestia and Luna's old castle that I finally found a reason." "Wait... why were you there in the first place?" Dash asks. "Oh you weren't there?" "What?" "Oh yeah, that was just me, never mind..." Twilight looks over to Rainbow, she looks confused and motions her to continue. "Oh, right... Well, Luna wanted me, personally, to search through her and her sister's old castle to see if there were any old leftover stuff that I could salvage for her." "That's a weird request." Dash comments. "Well, I took it. And there was some old stuff in there that I brought to her afterwords, including the book." She points to the "Special Magic Spells" book on the lectern. "She said she doesn't remember ever seeing it before, so she asked if I could look through it and see if anything useful was in here." "So you said yes?" Dash asks. "Not at first... you see, I wasn't thinking about your help until I realized that I may need somebody else to accompany me through this big book of "special" spells." "Oh okay, so you thought that by asking me to help you with this, it would be a good enough reason to get me here." Dash says in order to try and solve the mystery of Twilight's intentions. "Not exactly, you see, before that, I was thinking about what could be in this book that make these spells so "special." So, I wanted to see if maybe you and I could really hit it up if we found something that could truly be something "special"." Twilight's voice sounds like she's been longing for somebody to fill in the void in her life. Her face starts getting hotter as it gets noticeably more red. "Twilight?" Dash interrupts. "Yeah?" she says as she imagines some scenarios that she could be having with her friend. "You're turning red again..." Twilight's lips fold into a scrunch and her blush slowly fades away from her face as she recollects herself. "Oh... Well, I think you get what I mean." "Not... really?" Dash says, understandably so. "What?" Twilight tries to remember what she was talking about, "Oh, right... Well, remember when I said I understand how you feel about being stressed out?" she asks. "Yeah, you said I needed someone to talk to." Dash replies. "Yes, exactly. What I'm trying to say is, there's actually another reason why I brought you here..." "Wait, didn't you say you wanted to ask me to stay the night and whatever?" Dash brings up. "Umm, yeah that too, but... the reason why I thought of that in the first place, was after thinking about what could be inside this book, i-it..." Twilight lets out a breath as she struggles to find the words to tell Rainbow Dash the truth about how she feels. "It gets a bit lonely in here... All this Princess work really gets to me. I've been so stressed out by all of it that I wanted you specifically to come by and maybe see what would happen if we stayed together for a while. You're one of my closest friends and I really don't know what would happen if you weren't there for me since the beginning. Over time, our friendship has grown so much and I felt inclined to try something new with you. But I couldn't just ask you out of nowhere on any normal day. Sure, I could've gotten another one of the girls to come but I wanted you. So that's why I invited you here." she finally tells her everything she feels. "Wait, wait, wait... so, you're telling me that after all this time you've been hiding your true feelings about me 'cos you didn't know how I would react." "Basically..." she answers as she nods her head. "But you also wanted me to stay here and comfort you because you feel stressed out?" Dash asks, thinking she finally understands Twilight's problem. "Yup." Twilight says as she nods once more. "So... you're attracted to me?" "Mhm." she folds her lips and starts blushing again. "Wow..." Dash says, "I gotta say Twi, great choice. I mean, me out of all of us. Out of all stallions even." Twilight goes silent as her face gets more red in color. "Just, wow, Twi." Dash breathes out, "Damn. That is one awesome thought, huh? 'Cos I do feel like we have been pretty close lately." "So... what do you say?" "I-I mean... I have problems too, especially this "Moai" spell you just put on me now but..." Dash contemplates for her answer. Twilight awaits the final answer that will give her the result to her plan to not be alone anymore. "I mean... I guess it's okay with me if we talk more about our feelings towards each other." Dash says finally. "That's great! I can do that." Twilight says with excitement. "Oh yeah, by the way... I had something else prepared in the dining hall just in case." "You did what now?" Dash asks, confused. "Oh, just a little surprise I wanted to show you when we were done." Twilight and Dash make their way to the dining hall as Dash gets ready for whatever Twilight has done within it. Before Twilight opens the door to the dining hall, she make a remark, "I just want you to know, I put this up a few hours before you arrived, so I don't think it looks too good in there." Once Twilight opens the door, Dash looks around the hall that is now filled with a few stunningly placed decorations. Some depicting the colors of their mane and body. In the center, the dining table had a meal of Dash's favorite fast food items. Dash has her jaw dropped from the amount of effort Twilight put in to make one night look great. "It's not much but, I tried." Twilight says to her. "A-, huh?" Dash seems flabbergasted because how well everything was put together. "So, shall we?" Twilight asks. "I guess we shall..." Dash finally talks and looks towards Twilight who is next to her, smiling. Twilight lets out a giggle and walks to take a seat. When seated, she holds her hoof out to a seat next to her to invite Dash to dinner. "I mean, this might be one of the last things I do..." Dash thinks to herself. "Might as well make it interesting, right?" Dash walks over to the seat next to Twilight. As she sits down, she notices her own face starting to heat up as some sweat drips down her forehead. Twilight, who was watching her the whole time, lets out another giggle as she prepares the meal to be eaten. Though you may say that Dash forgives Twilight too easily for basically putting an irreversible curse on her, nothing can stand in between the pair of mares' friendship. You could say this Easter wasn't the best day for the two because of the events that occurred. While that may be true, they both got something truly amazing out of it at the end of the day.