Rarity stared at the pony that tried to sneak into the boutique with shock an horror in her eyes. In her long career as a purveyor of fashion Rarity had seen a great number of ‘disasters’ that would make other ponies in her profession scream, blind themselves and commit themselves to an asylum as the world simply didn’t make sense anymore if a pony could think wearing THAT was attractive. It was no small point of pride to the unicorn that she could handle any foible of artistic expression that arose, barring one unfortunate bird’s nest a year or so prior. The pony that lay crouched near her front door put all those years of experience to the test as she approached Rarity.
From bottom to top the pony was a disaster. Her hooves were obscured by large winter work boots that were at least two season old, her body was covered in a heavy coat that appeared to have been used to paint several ponies houses, several different colors at some point in the past. The ponies face was obscured by a full face ski mask with a sizable bump underneath where the pony’s hair had been bunched up, and a surgical mask underneath concealing the ponies already mostly covered face. Add to this the enormous gaudy sunglasses and Rarity had to steel herself against fainting at the site of this miscreant in her store. It was several seconds before Rarity was able to comprehend that the pony was speaking to her at all.
“Rarity?” the pony asked for the fourth time.
Rarity blinked as she recognized the voice, then looked shrewdly at the pony, finally taking in the bright pink tail that was the only part of the pony visible. “Fluttershy?”
“Um, I’m sorry to bother you when you’re working. I mean, if you’re busy I can come back, but it’s just I kind of… um…” Fluttershy muttered, looking around the mostly empty boutique and slid the masks and sunglasses off, “I’m having a minor fashion emergency.”
The scream that ensued would have been audible in Canterlot had the pitch not been so high as to be outside the normal range of pony hearing. This didn’t help the Princesses however who. in the middle of their tea break, startled and spat tea all over. They were able to get cleaned up and figure out the source of the ear bending noise in short order before anypony noticed their misstep.
Back in Rarity’s boutique, the unicorn of note stared in incredibly high pitched horror at her friend. Fluttershy quietly stood waiting for the unicorns verdict. Bright green hair spilled limply around Fluttershy’s green tinged yellow face, as she stared forlornly at her friend.
“F- Fluttershy…” Rarity stuttered, pulling the obscuring clothes off Fluttershy to better view the damage, “What happened?”
“Oh, um… I tried to dye it,” the only half yellow pony pegasus replied anxiously.
“Oh, but this color… And your coat… Oh dear. Why Green? Green is a horrid color!”
“Ahem!” Rarity turned to find a green maned pony had just exited a dressing room with one of her dresses draped over one leg. Rarity vaguely recalled the customer from the terrible event that must never be spoken of again involving that horrid “Trixie” mare when Rarity had made similar comments.
Rarity considered the customer for a moment before speaking, “Do you hang around me all the time to catch me when I say that or do you just have spectacularly bad luck?” With a humph of outrage the naturally green maned pony marched past the fake green and true yellow pegasus and out of the boutique. Rarity blinked a moment before her mind caught up to what she’d said and she rubbed her temple with one hoof, “Oh dear, I appear to have been shocked out of my wits for a moment there. Fluttershy go sit down in my bathroom. I’m going to go fetch Lotus and Aloe. Don’t worry dear we’ll get back to your shining beautiful self in no time.”
Fifteen minutes later three ponies sat around a very nervous Fluttershy rubbing carefully measured amounts of dye remover into her main coat and onto her hooves where the green was nearly as vivid as it was in her mane.
“I just don’t understand,” Aloe said as she scrubbed gently at one of the thicker lines of dye running down from Fluttershy’s hairline, “Didn’t you read the instructions?”
“I’m more interested in why you would want to change you mane style, darling,” Rarity added, running a fine comb through Fluttershy’s mane to spread the dye remover evenly. “I mean maybe if something terrible happened like- Oh dear, you didn’t break up with Rainbow did you?”
“NO!” Fluttershy rebutted harshly before flinching and returning to her shame faced position, “I, uh, didn’t actually intend to dye my mane, I just grabbed the wrong bottle in the shower this morning.”
“You own an entire bottle of this color,” Lotus asked sniffing distastefully at the greenish locks, “Green isn’t your color at all. Next time come to me and Aloe we will help you.”
“Wait a moment…” Rarity stopped working as she looked up to think. “You don’t have a shower Fluttershy. I recall quite clearly. And didn’t you go home with Rainbow Dash last night?”
Fluttershy’s reply was lost in a torrent of panicked “um”s “oh my”s and so on, and then lost forever when the bathroom door flew open to admit a frantic Rainbow Dash.
“Rarity! Have you seen Fluttershy? I heard her scream in the shower this morning but she ran off before-“ Rainbow cut off as her brain finally identified the greenish yellow pegasus as the target of her search, and then paled as she came to a conclusion about it.
Rarity quickly came to the same conclusion. Her shrewd eye for color immediately locked on Rainbow Dash’s mane and she mentally compared the green to Fluttershy’s. Her mouth split into a wide grin and she pointed an accusatory hoof at the blue pegasus.
“It’s your dye!” she cried with excitement.
“No!” Rainbow denied.
“You’re not a natural rainbow!”
RD winced and then shouted back, “I am so! It’s just that rainbow mane’s fade really early in life! And I look stupid with eight colors of grey.” Rainbow rolled her eyes.
“I’ll admit it would be a little hard to pull off,” Rarity mused, her mind derailed by the fashion declaration.
“Fluttershy, are you alright?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I just need to get the dye washed out and I should be back to normal.”
“Good,” Rainbow nodded, then turned her attention back to where Rarity was back to giggling while staring at Rainbow’s mane. “And YOU better keep this to yourself or I’ll have to tell everyone about what you did after Pinkie’s last party!”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I would. I wonder how AJ’d feel about you two’s little adventure!”
The two ponies began to argue as the professional spa ponies worked in silence on Fluttershy’s mane. Finally, Aloe turned to Lotus, “While I like the gossip we get in this job I really wish everypony wouldn’t forget we’re here at the drop of the hat.”
“Just shutup and keep scrubbing,” Lotus replied, “I’m trying to think what we can get out of them for our silence later.”