The coin remained for few seconds in the air, before landing on the floor with the typical sound of gold hitting a hard surface.
Twilight picked up the coin with magic, then put it on her hoof, and finally looked at the result. The coin showed tails.
"So be it," whispered Twilight while grasping tightly the diskette made of gold.
Twilight announced the result of the coin flipping to her anxious friends.
"Alright girls, the result is tails. As I decided before flipping the coin, this means I am going to vote for going along with my mother's wishes of age play, here in my house and later on in Ponyville." Everypony nodded in understanding. "So, let's recap: who voted for stun my mother? And who wanted to satisfy my mother's wishes?"
Pinkie Pie quickly listed the ponies' votes with an excited and cheerful voice.
"Applejack, Applebloom, Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash voted for stunning Twilight's mother. Twilight, I, Sweetie Belle, Fluttershy and Rarity voted for bringing Velvet to Ponyville. It's four votes versus five. Do you know what it means? It means that today we are going to act like cute fillies!" Then Pinkie Pie, after taking the diaper boxes and the pacifiers on her shoulder, skipped towards the room where the nine ponies had left Velvet. The other four that voted for bringing Twilight's mother to Ponyville walked behind Pinkie Pie. The ones that voted for stopping Twilight Velvet's insanity rolled their eyes and sighed in defeat, walking with their ears lowered behind Pinkie Pie.
The eight ponies, by following Pinkie's lead, reached a locked door down in the hallway
"Just a minute, it has been a while since I've opened this room," said Velvet while unlocking the door.
When she finished the phrase, the lock produced a clicking sound, a sign that the door had been unlocked, thus allowing Velvet to swing the door open, revealing a big room. The room, unsurprisingly considering the circumstances, appeared to be some kind of big cameretta, one that appeared to have been furnished and supplied very recently with toys, furniture and other stuff. Namely, there were a (clearly old) low table with crayons and pieces of paper atop of it; some brown boxes labeled as "building blocks"; a scaled-up changing table; and some wicker baskets by the walls of the room.
"Come in," said Velvet with a huge smile, while gesturing with her right hoof.
The nine ponies nodded at each other to confirm among themselves that they were really doing that. They were entering in Twilight's old cameretta and act ab mater cupidita, without any chances of getting out of that room before sunset. Earning that confirmation, they entered in the cameretta, and when they were all in, Velvet closed the door.
While her mother closed the door and opened the window, Twilight gave a quick look at the room, trying to remember what was the original function, before the start Velvet's madness and the following preparations for an eventual homecoming of Velvet's precious "filly". The train of Twilight’s thoughts were immediately crashed when Velvet spoke up, and declared something to the nine ponies
"So, now we are all in. Shall we start to play?"
The phrase, one that was both to be expected and sudden, upset seven of the nine ponies, who were unsure about what to say to Velvet.
Sweetie Belle on the other hand, sprang up in excitement, and jumped on the wickered baskets, toppling them and scattering dolls, peluches and other toys on the floor of the room. Pinkie Pie soon followed, when she managed to put down the diaper boxes and give the pacifiers to the legitimate owners.
"When you are done, remember to put everything back in the baskets!" said Velvet with a falsely stern voice.
As for the other five mares, after seeing Sweetie Belle and Pinkie Pie running head-on, they decided to follow their lead.
Applebloom and Scootaloo, in front of the race of the mares towards Pinkie, decided to use the occasion to solve the question that bothered them since Sweetie Belle had found pacifiers in her box, namely, why Sweetie Belle appeared not only undisturbed by the idea of acting like a foal and being considered as such, but also eager to do so. The two friends of Sweetie Belle knew that she had always been more immature compared to the others and a sucker for younger fillies and related things, but they didn’t think that Sweetie Belle could or wanted to reach such levels, and they could not believe that those two things were the only motives driving Sweetie Belle to do that.
And so they embarked in their quest to find out the answer to their question, by walking towards Sweetie Belle, sitting down near her, and getting her attention with a light poke.
Sweetie Belle put down the dolls which she was playing with.
"Oh, hey there," she said, "wanna play?" Sweetie Belle pointed at the small pile of dolls that was lying near her.
Applebloom let out a suppressed chuckle and crossed her front legs, while Scootaloo looked unamused at Sweetie Belle.
"Actually... we wanted to ask you a question..." said Applebloom, while she sat with a crinkling sound. Scootaloo soon followed
Sweetie Belle nodded and grinned.
"Okay, speak your mind."
"My and Scootaloo's question is: why are you behaving like this?"
Sweetie Belle lowered her ears, and half-closed her eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean... when we received the infamous pacifiers' boxes, when we revealed their contents, you were pleasantly surprised, if not happy, to receive a pacifier as gift. Once we arrived here, when Twilight's mother asked us to come over and get diapered, you were giggling and blushing with glee as if there was no tomorrow, unlike... pretty much anypony else but Pinkie. And, now, we see you pretty accepting of this whole 'pretending to be foals' thing. Is there a reason for your behavior? We know that you like to stay around younger fillies, and it was not too far-fetched for us to imagine you desiring to be younger, but this?"
Sweetie Belle apparently did not detect the underlying disgust of such statement, picking up genuine curiosity from her friend's words instead.
"I don't know, really. I just like to stay around younger ponies very much; I sometimes thought about the idea of acting like a little filly, and when Twilight’s mother said we were going to behave like foals, I could not be not excited and happy!"
"Eerr... makes sense..." said Applebloom with a large grin that expressed awkwardness. Scootaloo was a lot less delicate, in her confusion in front of the explanation.
"Ok Sweetie Belle, I can understand your liking for younger fillies. It makes sense for one that still plays with dolls and has no hesitation into blindly trusting somepony..."
Sweetie Belle fake-coughed at the "blindly trusting" part, and Scootaloo rolled her eyes.
"Meh, whatever. My point is, I can understand your immature antics.."
Once again Sweetie Belle coughed, annoying Scootaloo even more.
"ALRIGHT, I can understand that you are not all that interested in being a 'big pony'."
Scootaloo's unicorn friend coughed once again, causing Scootaloo to briefly snap and frantically move her front hooves in rage.
"Don't tell me it is not true!"
Sweetie Belle coughed two times more, bended over, then quickly raised her head.
"Sorry," she said "I had a coughing fit. Go on."
Scootaloo nodded, and did just that.
"Where was I? Ah, right, I was talking about why your liking of younger fillies is justified. Anyway, this whole regression thing, and your eagerness to get involved in it is pretty creepy and unsettling. I mean, why would you do that?"
Sweetie Belle shrugged.
"Because I like it?"
Scootaloo facehoofed, while Applebloom, still wearing an unsure look on her face, came back in the discussion.
"She's kinda right, and the justification of 'I like it because it feels right' seems legit to me. I mean, to me, going back to doing things that I've outgrew is terrifying, but tastes are tastes."
Scootaloo waved her hooves in the air in a desperate manner.
"I know, but there HAS to be a reason for this behavior, besides the pretty dry one that Sweetie Belle gave! Those personality quirks are not enough to...” Scootaloo sputtered angry and confused gibberish, in the attempt to express the concept she wanted to say. Sweetie Belle tried to end her friend's sentence before she exploded from the anger.
“Justify my behavior about this whole situation?”
Scootaloo slowed down her flailing, and nodded.
"Yeah, it doesn't justify your behavior. I don't see how the two things are connected!"
Applebloom shook her head.
"Sometimes, there is no justification for what somepony likes or does. Something might be done out of instinct or feel, not under a rational reason. And Sweetie's decision is one of those."
Scootaloo groaned in annoyance at the small lecture given by Applebloom.
"Whatever, who cares, if I cannot get a decent explanation, then I should give up," Scootaloo thought.
"Ok, ok, I understood, Sweets."
Sweetie Belle smiled. "Good." Then she resumed her doll playing for a brief moment, before asking. "So... do you want to join me?"
Applebloom put a hoof under her chin in a thoughtful manner, and after three minutes of thought, answered to Sweetie's question.
"Sounds decent enough... count me in!" She then joined Sweetie Belle's game.
Scootaloo crossed her front legs and pouted
"No way, unless I see Rainbow Dash also behaving and playing like a little filly!"
Soon after that statement, the voice of Rainbow Dash shrieked loudly. Scootaloo, surprised by the noise, looked behind her, and saw Rainbow Dash's tail getting grabbed by a giggling Pinkie, and Rainbow Dash wearing a small smile, one that made it clear she was not playing with Pinkie because she liked it, but because she wanted to satisfy her wishes.
Sweetie Belle, who was also caught in surprise by the shriek, crack shouted this question to Scootaloo:
"Does this counts? Do you want to join now?"
Scootaloo sighed at the blissful ignorance of Sweetie Belle of hyperboles and her insistence. But, since her hyperbole just happened, now she had to do it.
"Yes..." she said with an extremely annoyed voice, a tone of voice that Sweetie Belle picked up perfectly for once.
"Oh, if you don't want to, it's not a big deal. I was just trying."
Scootaloo looked around her. Seeing no chances to do something interesting, she decided to stick with her friend's idea.
"Alright, let's do this," she said after a rather big sigh. "I don't have much else to do, aside from staring at the walls. And, who knows, it might be fun if done with you two."
Sweetie Belle and Applebloom shouted a "That's the spirit!", before inviting Scootaloo to serve herself from the nearby pile of dolls.
Play pretend with dolls, unless you are an actor or a little filly, is a hard thing to do.
At least, so thought Scootaloo, while she tried to have fun by playing with some multicolored construction blocks and dolls made of cloth. She tried to come up with something, but Scootaloo's imagination did not take off in any way, leaving her with two masses of meaningless cloth in her hooves. This was not a case of complete stubbornness on Scootaloo's part, however; in fact, most of her brain was in favor of trying this relatively new thing. Of course, she wanted to get out from Twilight's house ASAP, but while she waited to go away, she wanted to try something that, no matter how weird it was, it was new with her two friends.
However, a small but obstinate part of her mind refused to let Scootaloo try to be a foal.
This faction would have been insignificant most of the times, but in Scootaloo's case that part of her brain, in a twist of irony, had hidden in a puerile way all the memories of Scootaloo's earlier time.
To circumvent this part's obstinacy, Scootaloo looked closely at Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, and mimicked them, as to learn how to do that. Alas, Scootaloo's mind was still locked down.
Also, as a result of this attempt to get around its restrictions, Scootaloo was forced by that stubborn part to blush and grin with embarrassment.
Since Scootaloo's behavior was very visible, it catched Sweetie Belle's and Applebloom's attention.
"What's the matter, Scootaloo?" asked Sweetie Belle.
"I-I don't know. I want to try to do this, but... something is blocking me."
"What is that?" asked Applebloom
Scootaloo lowered her ears, and looked at the ground in insecurity.
"I feel incapable to do this. I mean... even if it still creeps me out a little, I want to try it. But part of my mind still refuses to let me."
Applebloom silently nodded as a sign that she understood, but she was incapable to help, while Sweetie Belle asked.
"Part of your mind refuses to let you try?"
Scootaloo nodded.
"If you really want to do this, and at the same time you feel too weird to do so, I'd suggest you to take it slow. For example, try to build something for us with the building blocks." Sweetie Belle pointed at the build black's boxes located near the pile of dolls and in the middle of the turmoil that was the "adult" part of the cameretta. "Then, slowly integrate your buildings in our game, then introduce your dolls.. and in few minutes, you will be able to get around that restriction."
Scootaloo nodded, and grabbed the building blocks, and tried to build a wall. Somehow, her obstructive part gave no response whatsoever. Scootaloo proceeded to build even more walls, then she united said walls, her mind still calm. Slowly but steadily, Scootaloo created a couple of houses, and handed her creation to her friends, who immediately proceeded to integrate said buildings in their game. Soon enough, Scootaloo felt ready to do the next step. She slowly grabbed a cloth doll, and tried to retrieve her fantasy from its psychological prison.
Scootaloo's reactionary faction tried to stop the filly from doing so, but failed. Scootaloo, finally getting the nulla aosta from her mind, felt some kind of energy from down her spine, that made her feel good, as she left behind her concerns and some of her dignity.
She felt so absorbed, so concentrated in playing with dolls and construction blocks, that she didn't smell a faint scent of ammonia and a stronger smell of methane coming from Sweetie Belle.
However, Applebloom did perceive said odors, and, when she looked at the source, she winced. It was Sweetie Belle's diaper.
"Sweetie..." said Applebloom timidly.
Apparently unaware of what she had just done, Sweetie Belle asked back to Applebloom with a smile.
"Yes?"
Still a bit shocked, Applebloom asked.
"Did... did you just use your diaper?"
Sweetie Belle looked and touched the front of her diaper, finding it soggy; then she looked at her behind, and saw a bulge.
"Uh-oh. I didn't even feel it." An awkward silence followed.
"I guess I should call Velvet."