Despite what many tabloids, rumours, or derivative works of fiction might suggest, none of the princesses of Equestria were known for having any difficulty getting up in the morning.
There were many who might suggest, in varying levels of jest depending on how close they were to the system in question, that Celestia might face the day ahead with trepidation or horror. The noble class was hardly something that anypony ever wanted to deal with for any length of time, and the idea of coming up against them day, after day, without pause or break for not only years but millenia…
But Celestia did so, without complaint or so much as a visible twitch in that serene visage. Oh, she might grow frustrated or playful occasionally, and those who worked in her court long enough could often tell when her seemingly innocuous mandates were possibly the beginning of a joke, a prank, or a master plot that might completely shake up the nobility in ways that they could barely comprehend…
But never did she shirk her duty.
Luna, never one to be outshone by her sister (at least metaphorically) faced the nights with no less determination, and though her court was not nearly as busy, her time was equally taken up by learning the strange changes in culture and technology of the modern world.
She was slightly less subtle than her sister about complaining about things which drew her ire, in much the same way as Canterlot Castle was slightly less subtle than a birdhouse, but regardless of how she might gripe, she was never late without good, Equestria-threatening reason.
And of course, ever-cheerful Cadance thrust herself into every day with gusto, seemingly indefatigable. Shining Armour had once confided in his sister that the most valuable thing he’d ever taken from his military training was the instinct to get up at the crack of dawn without fail, regardless of the events of the night previous - a lifesaver when dealing with a wife as playful as Mi Amore Cadenza.
Take that however you will.
However, the fourth and newest princess, Twilight Sparkle, had neither the patience learned over many mortal lifetimes, nor a dangerously cheerful, energetic outlook and dutiful and loving husband. Instead, she had…
…an incredibly strong desire to never get out of bed again.
She had curled up tight by instinct, already happily facing away from the rising morning sun. Her wings were amazingly comfortable, for once, tucked just right inside the covers and without so much as an itch. Her bed conformed to her body exactly, supporting her perfectly from hooves to horn.
She was the perfect temperature, and in the perfect state of mind, drifting softly along that wonderful line between awake and asleep, without the slightest desire to move a single limb, and where nothing could possibly be wrong with the world.
There was nothing that made sleeping in so wonderful as knowing that whatever happened yesterday, whatever might happen today, it would not happen to her in this bed.
But sadly, even with the majority of the malicious forces that had yesterday evicted her from her sleep now turned to her own defence, the checklist was incorruptible and stood firm against her ideals of an eternity in repose. Slowly but surely, the reminder that she had things to do this day coaxed her awake.
As her mind slowly rebooted, she remembered rather suddenly what it often implied when she had such trouble escaping her sleep.
Now with the balance tilted significantly more towards awake, though still far from willing to actually extract herself from between her sheets, she lit her horn and groped out into the room with her magic, the pinkish-purple glow alighting on various surfaces until it finally found her dresser…
Makeup… brush… everything as it should be… check.
I’m home.
She smiled, snuggling down into her blankets all the deeper…
…Before sighing and lighting her horn again, checking her own body…
And still a mare. Well, that was relieving…
Lazily, she felt around her room, but everything appeared to be in place. Admittedly, she was fairly sure at this point that she hadn’t had anything else happen - she’d never had incidents two days in a row before, and for some reason the idea of sleep-casting never actually occurred to her normally until she found the new issue…
But just because today was incident-free, didn’t mean she didn’t have to get up, though.
The sun was well and truly above the horizon by the time she finally coaxed her sedentary limbs into movement - perhaps with a little self-levitation to assist - and staggered over to the bathroom to get ready.
Her friends would be coming over soon, she knew that… and she still wasn’t sure how ready she was to face them. While she was by this point fairly certain that Dusk Shine would not have done anything too untowards, she was still expecting that she’d still have to make some apologies for his behaviour, or at the very least get some strange looks - if not from her friends, from those in town who were convinced that Dusk had been her…
But she could deal with that later, she determined. Today she just wanted to put the whole mess behind her, and there was plenty to do today to take her mind off it…
Once her ablutions were complete and she was ready to face the day, she walked over to the stairs, pausing as she trotted past the neatly folded pile sitting on the chair. The spell had taken her several hours to reverse-engineer, and the energy requirement was far from low, but she had been able to take things along with her without difficulty - and thus, lying before her was Elusive’s dress, along with a small sketchbook he had left behind with a note asking her to pass it along to Rarity.
And sitting atop it all, a framed photograph.
The six of them posed together - six stallions who saved the world, the closest of friends. She stared again at the image of her own double, the only one she had yet to meet, and likely never would - but it was difficult to make the connection with the image, really…
She glanced over at her own desk, noting where very nearly the same picture had once graced a frame on her desk, but it seemed they’d shared that thought. She was okay with that - she wouldn’t have taken the picture if she wasn’t fairly certain Dusk would be alright with it - but she made a note to herself to take a new picture with her friends soon to replace it - she didn’t feel quite right leaving this one in the same spot.
She still wasn’t entirely certain why she’d taken it in the first place, really, but even with all the stresses of the last day, she supposed she’d eventually want to look back on it and laugh… or at the very least, not have to go back there when her friends started asking what their stallion selves were like.
Yeah, that was a good reason, let’s go with that.
She put it back atop the dress, and headed downstairs.
~-~-~-~
“Hey, uh…” Spike glanced around, confirming who he was talking about, before finishing with a grin. “Twilight. Welcome back.”
“Good to be back, Spike.” She grinned, trotting over to hug him. “Dusk didn’t give you too much trouble, did he?”
“Nah, barely saw him all day. Seriously, Twilight, are you absolutely sure you didn’t just turn yourself into a stallion?”
“Yes, Spike.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Still having trouble trying to imagine Elusive?”
“Elusive?”
“Rarity, only a stallion.”
He blinked, staring off into the distance for a long moment before shivering and sticking out his tongue. “I think I’ll stick to our Rarity, thanks.”
She giggled quietly, sitting down to a bowl of cereal as Spike casually moved around, tidying up various tidbits throughout the room.
“You… err, he I mean… he looked pretty stressed when he got back, though. He wouldn’t tell me why, just ran into his room and started researching...”
“Hmmmm?” That sounds… rather familiar. “Huh. Well, I don’t know. It was… different. Maybe I’ll tell you later. I don’t know exactly whether what happened to me was the same as what he went through with the girls.”
“Ah well… I think they’re coming now.” He glanced out the window.
She blinked, turning to the door, a few moments before the knock came - Applejack’s strong rap, interspersed with Pinkie’s rat-tat-tat as she playfully joined in.
Twilight grinned, quickly scooped up the last of her cereal, cleaned her face, and headed towards the door. Whatever happened, whatever problems occurred, these were her friends, the friends she’d had since she moved here, and it would be good to see them again in the bodies she knew…
She opened the door to the combined smiles of her five best friends.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as she took in the image before her.
The smiles were very different in a lot of ways. They were all different types - Pinkie’s eager beam, Rainbow’s confident smirk, Applejack’s honest grin, Rarity’s knowing look, and Fluttershy’s quiet, shy smile. They were all at different levels, from Rainbow hovering her own height in the air to Fluttershy crouching, half-hidden behind Applejack, and Pinkie’s always on the move, bouncing along the scale.
But none of that was new. What was more interesting was what all of them had in common.
All of them were focused several inches above her head for a moment before flicking down to her face, and for just a fraction of a second each smile fell just a little into disappointment.
And almost like magic (or perhaps friendship) she could just see it…
"So… is that a yes?" Rainbow Dash grinned, raising an eyebrow suggestively.
Dusk gave a strangled yelp and slammed both of his front hooves down on the cloud, dissipating it instantly and leaving them both with a drop. He caught himself almost immediately before he started falling, and immediately put on some speed, shooting away from Dash as she yelped and tried to right herself in the air.
Fortunately, she didn't give chase, but he heard her laughing behind him. "You know where my house is if you change your mind!"
The laughter did nothing to calm down Dusk. “Really?! I got this from Dash, but I thought a bit better of you!” He growled. “I thought I explained I’m not Twilight turned into a colt!”
“Well, yeah, Ah got that.” She looked confused at that. “Ah wouldn’ta done something like that to Twi’, that’d make it all sorts of creepy. But you’ve been a stallion all along, yeah? Ah’d think you’d be used to that sort of attention. Ah wasn’t kiddin’ before when Ah first saw you, y’know.” She gave him a winning grin.
He heard from behind him a long sigh, and a whisper on the wind, amplified by his still-active spell. “He’s beautiful…”
Dusk froze, and spun around as Fluttershy squeaked, her hooves flying to her mouth and her face burning red. Before he could put words together in his mind, she bolted – flashing away in a yellow-pink streak at speeds Rainbow would have been proud of, back towards the cottage.
He stamped his hoof back down, hard enough to almost crack the stage. “A wedding suit, Rarity? Really? Did you think I wouldn’t notice the similarity to my sister’s dress? Or the colour scheme?!”
“Oh, Dusk, I am sorry, I let my muse run free and…”
“I was so happy you were keeping professional… but no, it wouldn’t be about that with you…”
“I was just talking about Twilight, you, effectively, being a worthy prince—”
“Thank you, Pinkie!” He smiled as she bounced up, the small bag held between her grinning teeth.
“You’re welcome!” She grinned, bounded up to him, and pressed her lips to his.
Dusk froze.
The warm, slightly moist, pink-fuzzed skin pressed up against his own, grasping and manipulating with all the long-earned skill of an adult earth pony. His own muzzle tingled wherever she touched him, a wash of hot, sugar-laden breath tickling across his whole face.
“Really? Really?! All of you?” Twilight cried out, glaring at the five of them, and thankfully getting at least a couple of guilty looks - although distinctly not from Rainbow Dash or Pinkie, she noted.
Applejack rubbed the back of her head with a hoof. “Well, we were kinda expectin’ to be apologisin’ a bit to Dusk, but…”
“Why would you think I’d still be switched with Dusk? After everything that happened yesterday?”
“It wasn’t that bad, was it, darling?”
“Not that bad?!” Twilight stiffened. “With all my friends - and just about everypony else - hitting on me to some extent just because I’m the other gender for a day? I was terrified that Dusk was doing the same to all of you, and I find things came down pretty much exactly the same?”
“Aw, come on, Twilight.” Rainbow frowned down at her. “You telling me you didn’t do anything fun?”
“No! What possible reason could I have to want to stay switched in that world for one second longer?”
“Well… I woulda thunk you’d at least wanna see what Celestia and Luna looked like as all stallion-y Princes!” Pinkie chirped, grinning.
~-~-~-~
Silence fell over the group for a long moment as Twilight’s jaw went slack. The five of them watched as her eyes unfocused, taking in something in the far distance as her brain clearly tried, and failed, to take in the concept that she had just been provided with - her mentor and her sister, the immortal overwatching entities of Equestria, filled with millenia of wisdom, knowledge and compassion, not to mention grace and power… as stallions.
The situation seemed to have a pressure that held all of them back from actually speaking further, as a full minute passed with nothing but a slight twitch of eye, jaw or wing from Twilight, and the gentle pronk of Pinkie and wingbeat of Rainbow.
Then finally, without ever losing the thousand-mile stare, Twilight took a slow, deliberate step backwards, and shut the door in their faces.
The five of them stood there for a few long moments more before looking to each other. Uncharacteristically, Fluttershy broke the silence, although with a far more usual “Oh dear… I hope she’s okay…”
Applejack’s mouth twisted into a frown. “I think ya broke her, Pinkie.”
“That egghead really needs to get her muzzle out of her books one of these days.” Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Think I should head upstairs and drag her out?”
“I doubt she would let something like this stop her from attending today’s events… though we may have to explain matters to the Princesses, if she looks especially awkward…”
“Nuh-uh!” Pinkie, the only one of the group still grinning, had her eyes still glued to the library, staring up into the wood of the tree when a clearly visible set of shudders and twitches wracked her body.
The others all immediately turned to her. “Pinkie Sense?” Applejack queried.
“Yah-huh!” She grinned, nodding fast.
“…Which one?”
“Um… one I probably shouldn’t say out loud.” She grinned cheekily, turning to them for a moment, her face very slightly darker pink than usual. The others blinked, staring at her.
“What…?”
But her grin had come back, and focused back on the door once more, a couple of seconds before they all heard the clip-clop of hooves once more approaching the door…
The door opened again, revealing a very familiar figure. Lavender of coat and three-tone of mane and tail, winged and horned - but significantly taller and bulkier than the mare who had walked out only minutes before.
With a build well and truly on its way to matching the noble stallion look, Dusk Shine was significantly above average for a stallion in height, though without the muscled bulk of most of the larger stallions like Big Mac. His wings were larger still, settled covering most of his sides; his horn long and pointed.
His mane was cut much shorter than Twilight’s, though it had the same exacting square cut and razor precision, it was cut to near nothing down his neck.
And on his long, elegant muzzle he wore a glare that said, in no uncertain terms, that not a single one of them was to say a word.
Then, after a long, tense moment (made perhaps much less tense by Pinkie’s bouncing excitedly) he closed his eyes, took a long breath, and opened them again with a sheepish smile and a blush.
“So… um… tell me more about these Princesses?”