Part 2: The Eternity of Fluttershy
When Rarity awakened from her undesired sleep, she found that her arms were tied together by a rope that was hanging from the ceiling, and she was no longer wearing her hat or sunglasses. On her chest laid some crumbs, and on the floor, laid some wrappers and a large platter. She looked down in horror, and saw that she was wearing the same type of gray sweatpants Fluttershy was wearing. Underneath that, (unbeknown to her) was a pair of underpants that said "Celest-I mean, Luna was here." on the rear.
"Grrrrr...Fluttershy!" Rarity shouted in rage.
"Oh good Rarity, you're awake," a relieved Fluttershy said from the restroom. "I was worried about you when you passed out like that."
"Get your desecrated donkey behind in here now!" Rarity shrieked.
"Okay...okay, Rarity, sorry for keeping you waiting," said Fluttershy as she got out of the bathroom that had Rainbow Dash's symbol on it.
"Wait a second..." Rarity thought in her mind. "Could it be...Fluttershy's a guy?"
"Fluttershy," Rarity said furiously, "how much have you been hiding from me you homicidal troublemaker? First you murder my friends, then you disrupt the symmetry of your own house, and now you dare commit a crime against fashion? Have you gone mad?"
"Wait-murder?" a shocked Fluttershy replied. "Rarity, it's true that I tore off their skin, hung it on my ceiling and killed them, but Twilight and the others are alive."
"You murderous delinquent!" Rarity yelled. "If they aren't dead, how come I can see their bodies up on your ceiling?"
"That's because I resurrected them..." said Fluttershy as she pulled a phoenix feather out of her pants pocket, "with this."
Rarity gasped. It was the same feather that Celestia's phoenix, Philomena, had left in Fluttershy's hair during their last encounter.
"There is more to the phoenix feather than meets a horse's eye," Fluttershy explained. "Thanks to its power, I have now become immortal."
"You can't possibly expect me to believe that, Fluttershy," Rarity replied, refusing to believe her. "You're about as eternal as a vampire being burned at a hot dog stand!"
"Oh really, Rarity?" Fluttershy said as wise and deadpan serious as a cross-eyed owl. She then took a knife out of her pocket and stabbed herself in the heart with suicidal intentions, while still holding on to the feather.
"Wait no, you can't die!" Rarity said in a scared voice as Fluttershy collapsed to the floor dead. "Who will untie me? I'll be stuck here forever after I die of starvation!"
Just then, Fluttershy's corpse turned to a pile of ashes, and the knife fell out of where her chest was and onto the floor. The ashes then slowly started to assimilate. Once they had all formed together, Fluttershy stood there in front of Rarity, as if nothing ever happened to her.
Rarity's head spun around in a 360 degree angle, like a nauseous exorcist who had just seen a ghost. She was in complete disbelief of what she had just seen.
"Fluttershy...," Rarity said, "are you...a zombie?"
"No," Fluttershy replied ominously as she picked up the knife, "just a believer...in the supernatural. And the existence of mares on the moon."
Rarity remained silent. The immortal Fluttershy was a member of the occult who had converted to the Lunar Republic!
"And if you need any further proof...I mean, if that's alright with you," Fluttershy said as she cut her forehead open, "check this out!"
Fluttershy took off her clothes, grabbed her skin from the forehead, and pulled it off all the way down to the horseshoes! Rarity was almost as disgusted as she was with the lack of organization in her body then the lack of symmetry in her home.
"Fluttershy, stop flashing me!" Rarity shrieked as her body was too exposed for the standards of common decency. "Put your skin back on, you nudist rogue!"
"Wait-rogue?" Fluttershy said as her skin regenerated back on her body as if nothing happened. "Rarity, I haven't been breaking the law, you know I'm too weak and helpless to do that!"
Rarity's mouth hung open wider than the door of an oven that had just been used to bake a dozen long loaves of black bread.
"Fluttershy," Rarity said in anger, "you kill my friends, kidnap me, dress me in this heinous mule anus attire, show me your inner disorganized self, and now, you choose to deny it? You're evil!"
"Do you really...think that, Rarity?" Fluttershy replied as tears started to swell in her eyes like a robot who just realized that it couldn't experience pain. "Am I-evil? I just wanted to help the world! Celestia told me I was doing a good job!"
Rarity was speechless at this point, like a loopy emo kid who had realized he had forgotten to masticate his Rice Krispies cereal at breakfast.
"When I first discovered immortality," Fluttershy explained while sobbing, "I was depressed. I knew that if I could live forever, that meant I would never be able to see my friends or my animals again once they passed on."
Fluttershy began to have a flashback to the dreadful day she discovered the magical power of the phoenix feather.
Three months ago...
She was sitting down at a table at Rarity's house. The two of them were having an innocent and clean tea party with cupcakes and apple tea. Suddenly, Rarity remembered that she was late for one of her unmissable gossip sessions with herself, where she would make morbid jokes about the way all of those depressed blue-blooded princes dressed. For the sake of the omnipresent entity known as "Privacy", she needed to get Fluttershy out of the house, so she prepared the most polite departure speech she could think of.
"Excuse me, dearest Fluttershy," Rarity said in a sweet British accent, "but due to the scheduling of interminable events that the venerable gentlemare Rarity contemplated in her own spare time, Rarity has decided that your presence in Rarity's household is no longer needed, and requests your immediate departure."
"So..." Fluttershy said looking confused and slightly hurt, "you don't want me around?"
Knowing how sensitive Fluttershy was, even in the recent past, Rarity came up with a plan to keep her from getting upset.
"*gasp* IDEA!" Rarity shouted as she grabbed the teapot on the table using the magic from her horn. "Fluttershy, how would you like the rest of this tea for whatever is ailing you?"
"Oh wow, of course," said Fluttershy, pleased at Rarity's kindness and generosity. "Thanks."
"You're very welcome!" Rarity replied, feeling proud of herself as she went to the kitchen to pour the tea in the teapot into a portable container designed for drinking warm beverages out of.
"Now all I need is something to make sure it doesn't go cold," said Rarity as she put a cap on the container that kept the heat from the tea inside the container. "Oh, I am so courteous!"
She went to the top of the fridge, and got a bottle of antifreeze that she had kept by her bottles of wine. She took the cap off the bottle and prepared to pour it in when she realized something.
"Oh gelatin," she muttered in frustration, "it's empty! I'll have to use something else, but what?"
Then all of a sudden, she had another idea!
"IDEA!" she exclaimed as she grabbed a box from a cupboard above the fridge.
"Moth balls!" she said triumphantly. "These did wonders that time when Opalessence had fleas and I put these in her fur. Not only did they kill the fleas, they kept her skin nice and warm through inflammation!"
"Oh, it pays to be generous." Rarity said as she took the cap off the container, opened the box up using her magic, and poured the moth balls in the tea. She sealed the container, walked out of the kitchen, and gave it to the unsuspecting pegasus.
"Thank you very much, Rarity," the unaware Fluttershy said kindly as she walked out of the door. "You're one of the sweetest ponies I've ever known."
"Oh, don't flatter me with words, Fluttershy," Rarity said humbly, "you know in your heart that it's true."
With that, Fluttershy left. When she had almost made it to the cottage, she decided to drink some of the tea, but upon doing so, she stopped dead in her tracks, dropped the container, and started to choke.
"Gleh...eh...gkk..." the weak and helpless pegasus choked as the poison from the moth balls spread throughout her body.
"No...I...can't die..." she thought as she collapsed to the ground. "I have a family of animals and friends..."
Just then, she saw a feather appear on her face, and a blinding flash of light followed. When the light went away, she was alive, and no longer felt the pain from the poison.
"I'm alive...but how?" she asked as she surveyed her surroundings and saw the feather. "Where did this come from?"
She also saw the spilled container of tea on the ground.
"Oh nice work, Fluttershy," Fluttershy said like a dumbbell as she got up. "You are such a clutz. Rarity wouldn't be pleased if she saw that this tea went to waste just because I carelessly choked on it."
There was only a small amount of tea left in the container, so Fluttershy drank the last of it.
"Guh-gaak!" Fluttershy coughed as she choked to death again. But again, she was revived by the power of the phoenix feather.
"W-what's going on?" Fluttershy said as scared as Lester the Unlikely after meeting a rocky crab that belonged to a frail snapping turtle. "I need to tell Princess Celestia about this, she'll know what to do with me!"
Just then, a black limousine being driven by Celestia's guards pulled up by Fluttershy, just like in a James Bond movie. The back door opened and somepony who happened to be the monarch of the Equestria, the teacher of Twilight Sparkle, had control of the star called the sun, and had white fur walked out of the limo. She wearing sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans and was eating a cupcake and drinking an appletini. It was...Gandolf the White! Or at least his cousin's horse counterpart, Princess Celestia!
"*gasp* Princess Celestia, what are you doing here, and where did you get that thing?" Fluttershy said pointing at the vehicle.
"Oh, that thing?" Celestia replied. "That's just my car, provided to me by Big Mactinosh Corporations, a secret company that provides state-of-the-art technology to the royals of Equestria."
"And...you're comfortable sharing private information like that with me?" a nervous Fluttershy asked.
"Of course," Celestia replied cheerfully, "Why would I feel uncomfortable sharing information with a fellow immortal?"
"W-what do you mean by that?" Fluttershy asked in a timid voice.
"You're immortal now," Celestia said with a wide smile, "thanks to my pet Philomena. Thanks to the fact that I know everything, I knew that you had died here, and had been resurrected."
"I'm-immortal?" Fluttershy asked fearfully, still confused about the matter at hand.
"Hop inside my boxy new car, and I'll tell you everything." Princess Celestia said as foxily as a free man at a square dance.
The two foals got into the limousine, ate some more cupcakes, and drank some apple cider. The emotionless and unquestioning guard drove the limo through a secret path back to Celestia's castle as Celestia explained everything to Fluttershy to the best of her unlimited knowledge.
"So this feather is almost as magical as friendship itself?" asked Fluttershy.
"Yes," Celestia replied as whimsically as a mouse in a cage, "and as long as you own it, you can not die. For real, that is. Anyone else who dies while holding the feather will be resurrected as well, but the feather will always belong to you and will always revive you when you're dead, no matter what the circumstance. This is the gift my pet wished to give to you after he died and got brought back from the dead."
"Oh Philomena," Fluttershy said sadly, "even in death, you were thinking about me..."
"Well anyways, I hope you enjoy being a member of an autocracy of higher level of beings." Celestia said humbly.
"Higher level of beings?" Fluttershy asked curiously.
"Yes, my fellow subjected sire," Celestia said in a kingly fashion. "Since the rise and fall of Discord, Equestria has been ruled by an autocracy, a single group of immortal beings consisting of me, my sister and fellow prince Luna, and my stoner friends. We control everything that goes on in this delicately fragile town with a rocky fist of iron, and we supersede all law and order in Equestria."
"Isn't that tyranny?" Fluttershy asked.
"That's racist," Celestia scolded, "I'll have you know Fluttershy that I am a proud gang of a corrupt leader who has a sister and some stoner friends who care about their free man!"
"Oh no, did I discriminate against you?" Fluttershy said remorsefully. "I'm so sorry."
"Why are you apologizing?" Celestia replied with a smirk. "You're a member of me, my autocracy, and that means you're above the law now. You can do whatever you want."
"Whatever I want?" Fluttershy asked. "Like what?"
"Anything, like arson, murder, and jaywalking just to name a few things," Celestia informed her. "No matter you do though, no man, pony, or law will be able to stop you."
"But there's no law that I want to break, or any pony that I want to hurt," Fluttershy said solemnly. "I just want to live with my friends until the day I die and go to the moon in the great beyond. I don't think I'm cut out for this immortality business."
"Immortality is indeed a business Fluttershy," Celestia said in an executive manner. "It's a business that keeps a very super famous pony like me busy, busy trying to change the world."
"Change the world?" a confused Fluttershy asked. "How?"
"I could just wave my magic horn in the air, and change the world myself," Celestia explained. "But I am very preoccupied with other matters, being famous and all, so I've decided to change the world through the actions of my disciple and her friends."
"You mean...?" Fluttershy said, realizing what she meant.
"Yes," Celestia replied, "Twilight and her friends."
"But why us?" Fluttershy asked. "We're just a group of weak and helpless teenagers."
"Wrong, you may be teenagers," Celestia said confidently, "but you are also weak, helpless, and you all have diabetes! You don't have a chance of changing the world at the moment!"
"Wait, we have diabetes?" Fluttershy replied in a nervous tone.
"Of course you had diabetes before you died," Celestia said wisely, "didn't your uncle Pinkie Pie tell you a thing about eating too many sweets?"
"I'm a year older than you. I mean my un-I mean Pinkie Pie!" Fluttershy protested.
"I can assure you you're not old enough to play with my free man," Celestia suggested, "or decide what's best for Equestria, the land of the free man. What you and the others need to do to man up is to go through a few trials and tribulations."
"What sort of trials?" Fluttershy asked worriedly as she looked down at Celestia's pants.
"Death," Celestia said as she grinned conspicuously, "Fluttershy, I need you...to kill Twilight Sparkle and her friends."
"Oh good-wait, what?" a shocked Fluttershy shouted.
"Relax," Celestia said as cool as a washed pickle in Prince Luna's jar, "you're not going to actually kill them. Tell me Fluttershy, what is the best way to get away with murder?"
"I don't know," Fluttershy said honestly, "I've never killed any pony in all the time I've been alive."
"Well Fluttershy," Celestia replied, "when you kill some pony, they pass on to either the moon or the sun, depending on the way they've behaved with me, and they leave behind only the remnants of their cruelly handled body. But...what if there were no remnants? What if the person was alive and well after you had done that?"
"*gasp* Of course, you could just use the feather to..." Fluttershy said as she realized something.
"Yes," Celestia said as intelligent as a sage who just realized what one divided by zero equaled, "with the person perfectly alive and rescuscitated, there is no way he could accuse you of killing him, as no would believe a guy who was murdered could come back from the dead! It's the perfect murder plan! And once my other disciples have experienced the pain of dying and coming back to life, they will know the power of Celestia!"
"That's genius..." Fluttershy commented on the pony's cunning abilities. "No wonder you're the ruler of Equestria, Celestia! You are so old and full of wisdom."
"Oh I'm more than just old," said the experienced princess, "I am a timeless classic that will live on inside you and monitor you even after you're dead. I...am...your...SOUL!"
"Yes, yes, I'll do it!" Fluttershy said as she acquiesced to the famous and honorable Celestia's plans joyfully. "I'll show Twilight and my friends the power of your friendship!"
Meanwhile, in present time...
"But when I talked to that marvelous ruler," Fluttershy said as she had stopped moping and started making herself decent by putting her clothes back on, "she helped me realize something important. I've always liked the Lunar Republic, but Celestia's optimism and awkward love for the world is just so heartwarming. I feel like I've found a new me!"
"Face it, Rarity," Rarity thought to herself. "Fluttershy has lost her mind along with her mortality and fashion sense."
"So I killed the others at our last rendezvous at my place," Fluttershy said as she tried to account her nonsensical story to Rarity in a rational manner, "tore their skin off, and brought them back to life straight away. Then we ate some apples and cupcakes, and they went back home."
"Wait, I never heard that there was a get-together at your place," Rarity said, jealous that a unique individual like her wasn't invited. "Why wasn't I told?"
"I had a special surprise planned for you Rarity," Fluttershy said sweetly, "because you're my best friend. I simply commanded Celestia nicely to order me to order the others not to tell anyone, including you, about the private business known as immortality, under penalty of stoning."
"You were able to order the monarch of this land to order YOU of all things?" the lawful Rarity objected. "How did you do it?"
Fluttershy began to laugh in a statistic manner, chuckling approximately five per cent louder than her normal guffaw.
"I guess it's about time to end the tutorial," Fluttershy began, "and introduce you to the first of the seven stages of your awesome surprise, seven joyous activities, if you will. And once the celestial rituals are complete, you'll be mine! MINE!"
Just then, eight lightning bolts of fire crackled around the laughing Fluttershy in a chaotic and foreshadowing manner. The sight of lightning and the chaotic Fluttershy not acting like herself at all frightened Rarity so much, that she passed out, leaving only a greenish-yellow trail in her gray sweatpants, like a snail leaving behind a trail on a lithological tablet. When she woke up, she saw a horrifying sight. Fluttershy was standing in front of her wearing a white shirt, a blue blazer, a red tie, blue pants, and had used some hair gel to make her pink hair as spiky as a dragon's back. Rarity gasped. It was one of Fluttershy's alter-egos, Phoenix Wright!