‘From all of us together, together we are friends. With the marks of our destinies made one, there is magic without…’
It was as Twilight Sparkle had recited the last few words of her chant to Starswirl The Bearded’s unfinished masterpiece and her quill hit the page of his book, that the incident happened.
So intoxicated was Twilight with the thrill of casting the spell that she tipped her head forward just a little, and with the unicorn being in such a rush to restore Ponyville to normal, she’d put her crown on in a rush so it wasn’t on quite enough…
First, it slipped just a little…
Then, inch by inch it began sliding off all the way…
CLUNK!
The heavy impact would usually have alerted the studious unicorn to its missing presence on her head, but still in the deepest throes of her enchantment as she was, her eyelids didn’t even flicker.
The same went for the rest of her friends who were all fully involved in the mystical incantation too. Fluttershy, Applejack, Rainbow Dash… even the usually very distracted party pony Pinkie Pie was too caught up in events to be alerted to the slight bang caused by the decorative headwear falling on the ground.
Not Rarity, though. For some reason, her mind was still dwelling on that awful business with the clouds earlier engulfing Ponyville with rain and thoroughly drenching my favourite dress, so she had ample enough distraction to open her eyelids just a smidge at the sudden noise.
Oh dear. The poor dear’s dropped her tiara, hasn’t she? How’s she going to save the day without that on her head? I better let her know what’s happened…
But despite all her best efforts of calling out ‘Yoo-hoo, darling!’ and waving like a windmill to attract her attention, Twilight remained blissfully unaware of both Rarity’s actions and the absent crown, even as her spell was about to apparently reached its ‘epic’ conclusion.
No! No! No! This will never do! I can see I’ll have to be more proactive than usual. I’ll have to physically go over there, pick up the crown and deposit it back where it belongs. Don’t worry Twilight, as long as I’m here nothing will go wrong! Well, here goes. I hope it’s not too heavy…
A foolproof plan, you might think. After all, what could be easier than retrieving a meagre piece of head jewellery off the floor, and placing it on the top of somepony’s mane? Easy, right?
But you forget about Rarity's penchant for all things gleaming and shiny… and that’s what led to her best laid schemes going awry.
Ooh, would you look at that… Rarity gazed in awe at the magical crown in front of her with multiple beams of colourful light emanating into it from the other Elements Of Harmony, including her own. I just can’t resist it. I have to try this beautiful thing on for just a moment, then I’ll put it straight back where it belongs.. Honest. It can’t do any harm, right? Oh, I wish I had a mirror right now…
…END!
Suddenly, there was an almighty flash, and Rarity found herself surrounded by an intense light as white as her fur. All around her, she could hear gasps of amazement and surprise; apart from her fellow unicorn who seemed to be wondering out loud “Hey, where’s my crown gone?!”
No time for that, though. For as her friends’ voices rapidly faded and the intensity of the light increased fiftyfold, Rarity could only close her eyes for protection in preparedness for what lay ahead as she felt herself floating… floating… floating…
Until, she wasn’t there at all.
At that precise moment, a merrily whistling Spike came back into the treehouse unannounced, wiping his claws and looking with bewilderment at five of his best friends (including Twilight) stare down with anguish at a burnt-out patch of the floor where Rarity used to elegantly stand.
“Sorry, just had to pop out for a minute. So, what did I miss?”
****************
“What the…? What’s happening to me? Excuse me, but where am I? Well, wherever it is, they really need some new wallpaper…”
Rarity found herself unaccountably hovering around some kind of featureless starry-blue limbo, extremely confused as to how she got there and desperate to see a familiar face.
If this is a punishment for taking what doesn't belong to me, consider the lesson well and truly learned! Even if it was intended to only be temporary. I can’t hover round here all day; I have a town to help save! A shop to run! A little sister to tease! And anyway, it’s nearly dinnertime…!
Suddenly though, just as Rarity began to despair that she’d ever return home or see her loved ones again, the ‘familiar face’ she craved did appear out of nowhere to greet her…
…And a more majestic figure living on Equestrian soil you’d be hard-pushed to find.
“Congratulations, Twilight!” Celestia gushed, looking as happy as she’d ever been.”I knew you could do… wait.”
Celestia's mile-long grin froze on her face when the approaching Rarity trotted up to her full of questions. “You’re… not Twilight Sparkle.”
“That is correct darling… I-I mean, your majesty, but that’s beside the point! What possessed you to transport me to this ghastly astral wasteland of emptiness and loneliness? Surely Luna would feel much more comfortable here than I. After all, she was the one who spent a thousand years on the moon…”
“T-The plan was supposed to be foolproof. N-Nothing was supposed to go wrong…”
“Oh, I know all about that, dear. Just yesterday, I was knitting this charming chiffon scarf, until I must confess I got a tad carried away. It became a jacket, then a dress, now I have an all-over furry bodysuit for the winter! You just have to make the best of things when plans go amiss…”
“You don’t understand! This… is inconceivable! For years, for literal years I’ve been planning this ascension, and now… those plans lie in tatters! And this powerful enchantment only works once, so I can’t start from the beginning again. Oh, what to do, what to do…?”
“O-Oh dear your majesty, I fear I might have, that is to say, goofed a tad. Whatever you had in store for Twilight, must’ve had something to do with that crown. F-Funny story actually: it slipped off her head during the climax of the spell we were about to cast, then I…”
“What did you do?!” Celestia’s expression suddenly turned from one of confusion to outright anger, and Rarity felt herself backing away at the sight of the smouldering alicorn’s glaring reddish eyes. Sorry, Applejack. I do admire the Element Of Honesty, really, but I’d tell a thousand lies if it meant I didn’t have to perish in a depressingly desolate black-hole of a void such as this.
“N-Nothing, your majesty. I-It’s a complete mystery, just like you said.” Rarity gave Celestia her most ‘truthful’ of grimaces, hoping against hope that the sceptical ruler might be convinced of her innocence and not potentially blast her to another galaxy there and then.
After all, she did have form in that regard.
Eventually, Celestia seemed to take the trembling unicorn at her word, and stopped gazing downwards with suspicion to slump her head down in defeat. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. All this effort since her birth… to enrol her in my school… making her my personal student… sending her off on those countless Friendship quests… all for nought. Now, the world might not have enough power to sustain it in the future if diabolical threats emerge, and all is lost. Unless…”
A thoughtful Celestia now looked back at an increasingly baffled Rarity, who was currently trying to put together the individual pieces of what she’d just heard, but without much success.
“...’Rarity’, was it? Would you like to take a short walk with me, please? I’d like to have a little discussion with you about your future..”
********************
“W-Where could she be? She just up and…vanished.” Applejack left the treehouse as dusk began to break with a huge metaphorical rain cloud over her head.
“I don’t like this, I don’t like this at all. Will we ever see her again?” An equally gloomy Fluttershy followed soon after, and she wasn’t exactly the height of optimism either.
“Until we find her…I-I… I’m never telling another joke! Not even if anypony asks me r-e-a-l-l-y nicely!” Pinkie’s mane was about to flop down once more, and unlike last time, nopony looked ready to cheer her up.
“Sometimes I fly so fast you can’t see me for cloud-spray, but this is ridiculous! What could’ve happened to her?” Rainbow Dash was never a great thinker, but this time she was just as stumped as the rest of her friends.
“I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out… even if it means searching the town and the entire world twice over!” Twilight had already got over the initial shock of her friend disappearing without a trace, and was now ready to do anything she could in locating her. “ Rainbow Dash, you try looking in the south… Applejack, you take the north. Pinkie, the east, and Fluttershy… I know you have to get back to feed your animals, but after that I’d like you to start searching for her in the west. I’d better go and inform Sweetie Belle her sister is missing, and then their parents. Rarity does have parents, right? I ask because I’m not too sure I’ve met them before. It’s a shame Spike is too distraught to help out right now, but I know together we can find her, and… hold on, what’s going on up there?”
Twilight paused her impromptu rescue mission to stare skyward, where a very strange occurrence was unfolding in the sky just above them.
Minuscule at first, but gradually getting bigger and bigger as it approached, was a giant diamond-shaped symbol surrounded by five other smaller jewels of a similar appearance, and the power generated by this phenomenon was enough to make the five remaining ponies squint and shield their faces until it gently ensconced itself on the dirt-road.
“Wow, have we been invaded? This is just like in my sci-fi comics! I’ll go get my Alien Kit…” His grief at apparently ‘losing’ his crush forgotten at least momentarily, a suddenly animated Spike watched this unknown entity arrive from an upstairs window.
The cause of this mystical early-evening disturbance though was slightly more earthbound in nature. For as soon as the magic began to fade and the holographic shape began to dim, guess which dazed fashionista stepped outside looking like she’d just been through the ordeal to end all ordeals?
That’s right: Rarity.
With wings.
A new six-diamond Cutie Mark.
A longer horn, and…
An added four or five inches, to hoof.
Still the same attitude, though.
“Rarity… Is that you?” Applejack was the first to speak as her friend emerged from the light show, quite unable to believe what she’d just witnessed. “I-I’ve never seen anything like it…”
She and Rarity’s four other pony friends somewhat hesitatingly made their way over to the newly transmogrified former unicorn, as her glorious new wings were fully spread as far as the eye could see.
“Rarity’s got wings! Awesome! A new flying buddy!” Rainbow was certainly looking forward to sailing through the clouds with her pal, if her joyous reaction and subsequent hug of the fashionista was anything to go by.
“Why, I’ve become an alicorn! I didn’t even think that was possible!” Rarity seemed equally as taken aback by her abrupt transformation, alternatively examining her new adornments and pinching herself to see if she was dreaming. “First, it was as if I was drifting through time and space, not knowing where I was or what I had to do to escape. Then Celestia appeared to me and said…”
“Wait, Celestia appeared to you? What did she say?!” Twilight interrupted the freshly-forged alicorn urgently, whilst simultaneously grabbing hold of a rope Pinkie intended to swing on to celebrate an ‘alicorn party’ with confetti. This pivotal situation was too important for such filly-ish frivolities.
“Well… how can I describe it? First, she led me through a lot of flashbacks about my life. That was nice, seeing all those old memories… then she sang me a song about how my skill with a needle and yarn had ‘led’ me to this moment… personally, I don’t think ‘test you’ rhymes with ‘polyester’, but anyway…”
“Rarity, I don’t mean to sound rude, but what happened then?” It looked like Fluttershy had wanted to say something next, but the mere mention of her mentor had made Twilight a tad more brusque than normal.
“Well, she said something about ‘destiny’ and ‘changes’, she can really hit those high notes by the way. Then before I knew it, I was floating once more, this huge beam of light surrounded me… and here I am. Back In Ponyville. An alicorn. In the flesh. Not too sure how I feel about that. Would’ve been nice to be asked first…”
“Wow, you look just like a Princess…” Finally getting the chance to have her say, Fluttershy trotted over to stare at Rarity with undisguised admiration, despite the new alicorn’s somewhat underwhelmed reaction.
“That’s because she is a Princess.” Celestia (as was becoming increasingly common for her) landed gracefully from nowhere, addressing each of her little ponies in turn, whilst affording Twilight a noticeable look of guilt.
“A-A Princess?” Rarity replied, suddenly looking a bit more pleased about this whole messy ‘turned into an alicorn against my will’ business.
Ignoring Pinkie’s silly double-take with a glass of water, Celestia continued in earnest. “Since you’ve come to Ponyville, you’ve displayed the charity, the compassion, the dev… ah. I guess that speech I rehearsed for weeks on end doesn’t really apply anymore, does it? Not to worry, I’ll be sure to inform you of all the responsibilities, practicalities and cake-eating privileges being a Princess entails. For now, I’ll let you get used to your new body and see your friends… Twilight Sparkle, may I have a word?”
As Twilight followed her long-time teacher with a quizzical expression on her face, Spike rushed downstairs (disposing of his ‘Alien Kit’ along the way which consisted of a gas mask, butterfly net and a pair of tweezers) to stare in awe at the transformed Rarity, more in love than ever. “G-Gosh Rarity… you look so… well, I don’t want to tell you right now with everypony listening, so I’ll just ask you this; what do you think you’ll enjoy most about being a Princess?”
“Well, Spike…” She answered the dragon, whilst trying to fold her new wings behind her back as best as she could (and failing). “The idea of presenting myself as ‘Princess Rarity’ at the annual Galloping Gala sounds lovely, as does the chance to put ‘By Royal Appointment’ above Carousel Boutique; that’s sure to drum up a bit of extra business. But how on Equestria am I going to explain these shenanigans to Sweetie Belle, and there’s the small... or rather, big matter of…”
“What?” All of her friends (sans Twilight, who was too busy fainting with shock to something Celestia was telling her in the background) said in unison.
“I’m going to have to dispose of my entire wardrobe now, aren’t I? How am I supposed to fit into any of my old clothes, looking like this?”