Ponyville. Golden Oaks Library.
September 4. Saturday. Two days after “A Dog and Pony Show”. The day of “Sisterhooves Social”.
"I sent off another Friendship Lesson!” Spike exclaimed as he entered the library. A quiet—yet perfectly coiffed—Rarity and Sweetie Belle followed behind him.
“That’s great!” Twilight said from the kitchen. “Go ahead and get yourself a seat. I’m making popcorn!”
Rarity sniffed the air. “That doesn’t smell like popcorn…”
Sweetie sniffed the air. “No, it smells more like my popcorn.”
“Rarity?” Twilight asked, walking out of the kitchen. A waft of black smoke followed above her head.
Spike walked around her and pushed her completely out of the kitchen. “I’ll make the popcorn,” he said. “Rarity and her sister Sweetie wanted to ask you about something.” He opened a cabinet to remove a fire extinguisher.
“Oh,” a disappointed Twilight said, removing an apron and hanging it up. “I was only trying to help.”
Spike poked his head out of the wall of white smoke created by extinguishing the blazing fire on top of the stove. “And I appreciate it. Really. Now let me do this while you do your friendship thing.”
Twilight put on a wavering smile. “Thank you, Little Brother.”
Spike smiled confidently. “No problem, Big Sister.”
There was a loud “fwoosh!” behind him as the fire re-lit.
“Oh no you don’t!” Spike cried, diving back into the smoke.
Twilight cast one spell to open the kitchen window and vent out the smoke—unknowingly making the fire even bigger—and another to keep all the smoke from contaminating the library. After all, smoke damage is very bad for books. “So, was the friendship lesson regarding you two?” she asked as she led the two white unicorns into the main reading room.
“Oh, we had some sibling issues,” Rarity said, suddenly self-conscious about airing her mistakes for yet another pony’s ears. “Now did I hear correctly?” she then asked, trying to change the subject. “Are you and Spike sister and brother now?”
“Yes,” said Twilight, floating over a couple of cups of tea for her two guests. “It’s done wonders for our relationship, although your example points to ways we might have to work on that relationship. Rarity, did I get your cup right? I can always add more lemon.”
“No, this is fine.” Rarity said after a polite sip.
“Could I have some more sugar?” Sweetie asked.
“Of course,” Twilight said, floating over the sugar bowl.
Sweetie tried to take it with her own magic, but faltered. Rarity calmly caught the falling bowl and floated it the rest of the way over to her sister without showing any sign of disapproval or disgust with Sweetie’s lack of expertise.
Twilight sighed, not sure that she would be as nonchalant with Spike in a similar scenario, even with them now as siblings. “So was that why Spike invited you two over to visit?”
“Well, no,” Rarity said, still hesitant. “I’d be happy to tell you what happened at the Social today if you’d like, but this is different.”
“Different how?”
“It’s sort of complicated.”
Sweetie frowned, seeing how Rarity was trying to drag this out. “We want to know if you can use your magic to fix my memories,” she said.
“Your memories?” Twilight asked in confusion.
“Rarity stole some of them,” Sweetie said. She deliberately waited a few seconds to see the looks of shock play out across both of the mares’ faces before adding, “Accidentally.”
“You didn’t do that!” Spike exclaimed, walking into the room with a big bowl of popcorn.
“No, Spike. I did,” Rarity said, her head bowed. “It’s the fatal flaw of my cutie mark.”
Spike put the bowl down on the table that was located between the sitting ponies, then climbed up on his own cushion. “What do you mean?”
Rarity stopped and took a moment to look around her. Sweetie knew exactly what she was talking about, because she had lived it. Twilight had at least half of the story. But Spike…
“Applejack at our sleepover two months ago asked me why I even design clothes. Now don’t work yourself up about it, Spike, she actually had a good point: Most of the ponies with clothes are nobleponies, who use their clothes to lord it over the common ponies. And…much as I hate to admit it, most of the fashionistas in Equestria work for those nobleponies, working to make the clothes as dominating as possible.
“I’m not like that. I…try not to be like that. That’s what I explained to Applejack, after she apologized for asking the question. What I do in my job is bring out inner beauty. My cutie mark gives me visions: the ability to look at a down-on-her-luck pony and see what she needs to wear, in order to become the pony she deserves to be. My mark allows me to create the Perfect Moment. I live for the Perfect Moment.”
Rarity paused. “That’s where I stopped at the sleepover. That’s the line I give to anypony who asks me what I do: ‘I live for the perfect moment’.” Her voice got very quiet. “But I never see those moments anymore. I find a way to cancel every invitation I get—and I get a lot of invitations. Because when I witness a perfect moment…I steal it.” She sighed deeply before nerving herself to look into the wavering eyes of her number one fan. “My cutie mark reaches into their minds, and steals that perfect little memory from their minds, so that it’s mine and mine alone. I remember it forever, while they…” She gestured towards Sweetie.
“Rarity organized my whole fifth birthday party after the old plans fell through,” she said. “The dresses for me and all my friends, the cake, the games, even the prizes!” She pulled a photo album out of her saddlebags and opened it. “And this is the only way I have of knowing that it actually happened! I went to sleep after the best birthday ever, and woke up the next morning thinking that it hadn’t happened yet.”
“I didn’t believe it at first,” Rarity said. “I had just gotten my cutie mark, and it had worked so well for me. And Sweetie and I had a rivalry going, competing for our parents’ attention. So even something as nice as that party was also me trying to impress Sweetie’s friends and their families. So I thought she was lying. And those new memories were my imagining what it must have been like for Sweetie. And”—she winced in anticipation—“I did it to her a couple more times before I finally realized what I was doing.” She pulled Sweetie into a reluctant hug. “And I haven’t been able to reverse it. So, is there anything you can do, Twilight?”
Twilight pulled the two sisters into a hug. (Spike wanted to hug Rarity, but thought it would come off as too needy in the moment, so he just wrung his claws.) After that, she started pulling out her spell books. “There’s not much, I’m afraid,” she said first to set expectations. “I mean, I might be able to show you the memories that were taken, but I don’t think I can put them back—that would only work for extremely-recent memories.”
“Well…seeing them is better than not seeing them,” Sweetie said.
And so Twilight got to work. The spell she ended up using was not quite the same spell as the one she used on Princess Luna, but it was in the same family. She was able to project each memory on a screen which Spike had thoughtfully set up based on her mumbling during the research phase. So they all got to see a hoof-full of significant moments from Sweetie’s life. Since all of them were happy ones, the filly didn’t mind. She was just happy to see these events from her own eyes.
For that’s what they were, memories of Sweetie’s that were embedded in Rarity’s mind. Each of them sparkled in the mindscape like black opals before Twilight dived into them. In Twilight’s amateur opinion, they were clearly unnatural and, as Rarity had stated, they looked to be permanent, just as clear and detailed as the moment when they were first experienced.
Twilight saw a distinctly satisfied expression on Rarity’s face as each memory was replayed. It made sense, Twilight supposed—her cutie mark was about creating these “Perfect Moments” in other ponies, so Rarity should get a special feeling anytime she succeeded in generating one, much like Twilight felt whenever she made a breakthrough in her spell studies. Still…
“This is a rather nasty power to attach to a cutie mark,” Twilight observed.
“I don’t suppose it’s possible to get rid of it, while keeping the ability to see how to use fashion to self-actualize?” Rarity asked, with a tone that suggested that she knew the answer.
“No,” Twilight said. “Cutie mark magic is not to be messed with under most circumstances. The only thing I might possibly accomplish is removing your cutie mark entirely, so you could try to regain it under different circumstances. And that would require the magic of twenty unicorns.”
Or one Twilight Sparkle, a snarky voice in the back of Twilight’s mind added. She merely turned her head slightly so she could roll her eyes in response to that mental remark.
“No, I definitely wouldn’t want to risk that.”
Sweetie nodded sympathetically. “She might only have the gem-finding power the second time around, and have to live in the dirt all the time.”
“The dirt I might force myself to get used to. The dungarees, on the other hoof…”
Both sisters shuddered at the thought of Rarity forced to wear one of those.
The other pair of siblings shared a look: I hope we don’t ever get that weird, it said.
Once Sweetie had been shown her lost memories and it had been determined that a more-permanent solution was not available, the adults had started talking boring grown-up stuff like “friendship lessons” and dresses. The former was kinda silly to Sweetie, since she was such good friends with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, and that had happened without any lessons. And dresses…dresses were nice, but Rarity had a habit of ruining everything good about them.
Sweetie soon became bored. Spike was hanging off of Rarity’s every word, so he was no good. The library itself had been exhausted as a source for cutie marks. (And besides, Sweetie wanted to earn hers beside her friends. It just didn’t seem right to get hers all by herself.) She wasn’t going to read a book because she could do that back in her room. That left only one thing interesting—and potentially breakable—for her to interact with. And that was the pedestal with the force field around it.
There was a stepladder leading up to a little seat for Spike when he was assisting Twilight. Sweetie Belle climbed up there, and looked down at the book. She tried to turn the pages, but was blocked by the field. She tried to use her telekinesis, and was unable to summon enough mana to do anything. So she was stuck with the current spread of pages, the ones documenting Sirens.
Sweetie was rather concerned to discover the existence of a race of monsters that could work on ponies’ emotions. She was relieved when she read the attached note written by Spike that noted that Sirens were extinct. But then she read the last sentence of the entry: “Monsters capable of manipulating other emotions are believed to exist, but nothing is known of them.”
She would end up having nightmares for a week afterwards on this sentence alone.
Eventually the conversation between Twilight and Rarity came to its conclusion, and the two sisters returned home, while Twilight and Spike retired to bed.
Late that night Twilight awoke to the sound of somepony tapping at the inside of her head.
‘I wanna go to the basement,’ her own voice thought at her.
With a sigh, Twilight got up and did as she had told herself to do. “Now what?” she said.
‘You cast Analysis spell on her?’
“Sure. It was the very first thing. But as I expected it didn’t work, because Star Swirl put an Analysis-blocking spell on the Suppressor. Otherwise it would be easy to liberate her from its effect.”
‘You cast on necklace. I want to cast on Sonata. Make a siren-to-siren link.”
Twilight thought for a moment. “Analysis has been used to create mental links with constructs. Perhaps being in stone puts her in that category. Or maybe the Siren thing might do it. Go ahead.” And she surrendered her body to her other half.
Siren Twilight climbed the stepladder, charged her horn, and then touched it to Sonata’s forehead. There was a brief flash. And then Siren Twilight descended the stepladder in confusion and hoofed control back to Pony Twilight.
“So?”
‘She gave us a spell. Nothing else. No thoughts.’
Pony Twilight searched her own methodically-organized mind, and found the new spell. “It…lets you control ponies you’ve already put under the Hate spell,” she said.
‘No,’ Siren Twilight corrected. ‘We already control with Hate. Spell changes control. Changes Hate. Makes it less nasty.”
Twilight climbed up the stairs as she heard her other half’s thoughts. “Then I’ll study it,” she said, turning off the light and closing the door. “Tomorrow. Now we go to bed.”
She heard nothing but the faint impression of snoring inside her mind.