//------------------------------//
// Part 2 
// Story: A Monument to Fashion 
// by Llyander 
//------------------------------//


“A Monument to Fashion”
Part 2.


Long seconds of silence ticked by as the five friends stood in stunned, disbelieving silence, broken only by the soft lapping of the water against the bank by their hooves.
“Did… Did she say anything to anypony?” Twilight whispered, “Fluttershy?  Did she even hint at the spa that there was anything wrong?”
The yellow pegasus shook her head mutely, her one visible eye glistening with unshed tears as she turned away from the floating tomb, letting her mane fall down over her face. “Not a word.” She brokenly whispered. “Nothing. W-Was she sick, m-maybe? I just… She seemed fine to me.”
“She came by the farm a couple of days ago.” Applejack admitted, sweeping her hat from her head as she rubbed between her ears, a little frown furrowing her brow. “An’now I think on it, she seemed a mite out o’sorts. Ever since that business with Sombra  she’s seemed a lil…”
“Distracted.” Pinkie Pie chipped in to everyone’s surprise. “ Really, really distracted! She came to Sugarcube Corner yesterday and I gave her one of my special muffins by mistake. I mean they all look the same, how was I supposed to know that one of the special superduperspicy ones had got mixed in with the normal batch!  I smelled something funny about it but she took a bite before I could even stop her and I thought her head would just EXPLODE or something but instead she just…” The pink pony’s stream of words faltered. “She just ate it. She didn’t even seem to notice.”  She began to pout as she went on. “She didn’t-even-NOTICE.” She stamped a hoof on the ground as her voice began to rise, her normally fluffy mane starting to go straight and limp, the curls drooping little by little over her neck, “There was enough chilli and pepper in those to send half the royal guard screaming for the nearest trough and she didn’t even MMPH!” Her voice rose with very word, shrill and outraged until Rainbow Dash clamped a hoof down over her mouth to stifle any further outbursts.
“Uh, Pinkie?” Rainbow Dash interrupted. “You want to tell us why you’d even make a muffin like that?”
The pink pony’s eyes darted left, then right, as she suddenly clammed up and pulled back, miming pulling a zipper across her mouth and violently shaking her head, her mane promptly poofing back out. “Nuh-uh. Sworn to secrecy. Pinkie Promised and everything that I wouldn’t tell!”
“Riiiiiiiiiight.”  Rainbow and Twilight exchanged glances and those quick little shrugs that everypony had come to recognise as code for “It’s Pinkie, don’t ask”. “So we know that she went out to the farm, where there’s dirt and mud, bugs and leaves and everything she hates, that in itself is pretty weird.”  Rainbow did a lazy backflip in midair as she mused out loud. “And she was so distracted at Sugarcube Corner that she didn’t even notice she was eating one of the special muffins…”  She stifled a little, disgusted look, remembering the worm-filled muffins that had graced the menu really not-long-enough-ago for her to not be able to still taste them in the back of her throat. 
“Maybe she had some big commission on?” Twilight ventured. “You know how she gets when she’s creating things.”  She sighed. “But weird behaviour aside, that still wouldn’t explain this!” She glared at the mausoleum, one hoof pawing at the grass and then abruptly stopping as a terrible thought slipped unbidden into her head. “She… You don’t think she would have done anything silly, do you?”
Pinkie’s head cocked to one side like a curious puppy. “Silly? Like what? Like trying to eat liquid rainbow? That’s pretty silly. Oo! Ooo! Did she maybe try and go tap-dancing through the Everfree Forest in the glass slippers she wore to the Gala? That’s REALLY silly!  Maybe she…”
This time it was Applejack that pressed her hoof down over Pinkie’s mouth to cut off the stream of consciousness. “That ain’t quite what Twilight means, sugarcube.” She said quietly.
Pinkie stared blankly at Applejack for a long, long moment, understanding slowly dawning in those big, innocent eyes. “No.”  The party pony whispered, her denial barely audible, “She wouldn’t have done that. Not Rarity.”
“Done what?”  Asked a new voice from behind the small group of sombre ponies. “Well now, what’s this we’ve got here? Some new project? I don’t recall seeing anyone asking for planning permission for a new building on the river.”
The girls turned to find Mayor Mare standing innocently behind them, peering at the new addition to Ponyville. “Oh my.” She blinked, peering at the group over her glasses. “Is something the matter? This isn’t anything… Dangerous now, is it? Another of your projects, Twilight?”
“Well, we don’t really…” Twilight started out.
“Did somepony say it’s dangerous?” A new voice chimed in as, much to Twilight’s horror, a small crowd was beginning to gather around them, ponies muttering to themselves as they looked uneasily towards the river. 
"Has somepony died?” Another voice piped up. “Who’s died? Somepony got killed?”  A third voice added towards the back of the now quickly growing crowd that was surging forward toward the bank to get a better look at the mausoleum, ponies jostling against ponies as each tried to clear view.
“Killed? Murdered? Everfree… Diamond Dogs… Discord… Muffins.”  The louder the voices got, the more fanciful the speculation got, the ponies arguing amongst themselves even as the girls stared at each other in amazement at the sudden escalation.
“No, wait!” Twilight yelled, trying to make herself heard over the rising voices, “Nothing’s happened! We don’t know what’s going on or even if this has anything to do with Rari-“ She slapped her hooves over her mouth but the damage was done and after a momentary silence the voices cried out once again.
“THEY KILLED RARITY?”
“They’re coming for us next! That’s a tomb for everypony!”
“RUN!”
And with that, the crowd dissolved into running, panicking ponies galloping in all directions.  Moments later the air was filled with a chorus of slamming windows and shutters as Ponyville was battened down as if the forces of Tartarus itself were knocking at the doors demanding entry.
“Sooooo.”  Rainbow mused dryly. “That could have gone better.”
Twilight muttered something from under her hooves, her legs draped over her head as she banged it against the ground. What WAS it with ponies panicking at the slightest thing? If it wasn’t freaking out about Zecora just because she was a bit different, it was panicking about Parasprites, bunnies or a hundred and one other threats, both real and imagined. How had anypony survived before she’d come to this town? She gathered her resolve and stood back up, “Look. We need to try and figure out who put this here, and what’s happened to Rarity. Ideas?”
“Ooo! Ooo! I know! Queen Meanie!  I bet she did it!”  Pinkie immediately offered, to sceptical looks from her friends.
“Queen Meanie?” Applejack echoed, casting a confused glance at the others.
“You know. Black Snooty.” More blank stares followed, “Pokey Smokes!”
At long last, a distant memory was stirred in the recesses of Twilight’s mind. “Uhm, Pinkie.? Are you talking about Nightmare Moon?”
“Well DUH! Of course I am!  That’s what I just said! Queen Meanie!”
Twilight’s right eye twitched a little, “Pinkie… We defeated Nightmare Moon, remember? She’s just Princess Luna now.”
“Oh you silly. If that was true, then who was that scaring everypony at Nightmare Night?” Pinkie asked, seriously, earnestly, and apparently with a complete defiance of logic and reality that left Twilight speechlessly grasping for where to even begin to refute that twisted skein of reasoning.
“Ah wouldn’t even bother, sugarcube.” Applejack advised . “Just let it lie’fore you do yourself a mischief.”
Twilight took a deep breath, let it out slow. “No, Pinkie.” She replied at last. “I don’t think Nightmare Moon did this. It’s not really her style.  It’s a little too, uhm, bright.  If she’d done it I’m sure it’d be lots spookier.”
“Awww….” Pinkie Pie hmphed. “But I like spooky.”
“What about the Great and Powerful…” Fluttershy whispered, 
“Trixie?” Rainbow Dash finished, her voice oozing contempt. “That blowhard? She wouldn’t have the guts, or the skill for something like this!“
“Maybe, but it might be worth checking into. You know she didn’t take her embarrassment well.” Twilight mused. “Not well” was something of an understatement if she was honest. For the first few months she’d been the recipient of supposedly anonymous letters threatening all sorts of dire reprisals for the imagined slights. They might have been more intimidating, and anonymous, if each wasn’t signed from “A Great and Powerful Enemy”. Trixie was many things; subtle was not one of them.
“You know...” Rainbow drawled. “Instead of standing here and wondering, we could just go over there and take a look inside.  That might tell us who put this thing here, right?” She started to flap up and over the river, only to be brought up short with an indignant snort as Applejack and Fluttershy both grabbed her tail in their teeth.
“Whoa nelly!” AJ snorted. “What the hell’re you doin’, Rainbow? Openin’ up a tomb?  There ain’t no worse kind of bad luck! You touch that thing and you’ll be comin’ last in every race for the next seven years if you’re lucky!”
“I, uh, thought that was, uhm, mirrors.” Fluttershy whispered around her mouthful of multicoloured tail. “Isn’t it?”
“Mirrors, tombs, they’re both bad! Might as well fly under a ladder and say Candymare’s name five times while you’re at it! You just leave that thing alone.”
Rainbow glared at the pair staring stubbornly back at her then sighed and folded her wings, dropping back to the ground with a thud. “Fiiiiine.” She grumbled. “But I get to be the one who goes and finds Trixie and gets her to explain how she did this!”
Twilight nodded in agreement and Dash blinked, “What, really? YES!”
"Yes really. It’s a good idea, Rainbow. You and Fluttershy can go and see if you can find Trixie and ask her.” She glared at the pegasus who gave an innocent little smile, as if she would ever be anything but polite, “If she knows anything about this.  I’ve had people tell me her wagon is parked a little ways outside town, near the Everfree.   Applejack and Pinkie Pie, can  you go and find the Cutie Mark Crusaders?  I don’t think they’d have anything to do with something like this, but weirder things can and do happen around here, especially when they’re involved.  I just want to make sure they’re not trying to be Cutie Mark Crusader Morticians or something.”
“Sure thing, Twilight.” Applejack assured her. “We can take care of that. I bet they’ll be round the clubhouse already.  What about you? What’re you going to be doing?”
The lavender unicorn took a deep breath. “I’m going to wake Spike up to tell him that something might have happened to Rarity.”