Cookie and Hondo reached into the chest and withdrew a riotous mass of different colored fabric. They shook out the strange garments, revealing them to be knit, multicolored, hooded robes. The two older ponies donned the robes and stood before the girls, their expressions solemn. Rarity recoiled from them, her nose wrinkling. “Ugh, what are those atrocious things you’re wearing?”
“They’re the venerable robes of our order, the Cult of Hug-Snuggoth, hon,” said Hondo, itching at the wooly cloth.
“We must wear them when discussing Cult business, don'tcha know,” added Cookie with an uncomfortable smile.
“Wait, you’re part of a cult?” said Applejack, ears folding back.
“That’s super weird,” murmured Rainbow Dash.
Hondo raised a hoof, “Not weird, necessary! When an elder snugglegod from the edge of the cuddleverse demands fealty or the sacrifice of your second-born daughter, you do what you need to do.”
“Now, hold on one minute!” Rarity snapped, stomping her hoof. “You’re part of a cult? And it requires sacrifices?! How could you have kept this from me for so long?”
Hondo and Cookie glanced at each other before regarding their daughter solemnly. Hondo said quietly, “We’re sorry, Rarity, but we didn’t want to burden you with something that was never supposed to be your load to bear.”
Cookie patted Rarity on the shoulder. “And it doesn’t require sacrifices as long as we follow the rules and rites passed down to us!”
“You were never supposed to be involved, dearest, but with the Platinum Curse passing to you, well… I’m afraid the snuggly tendril of He-Who-Must-Be-Cuddled has marked you as chosen.”
“Chosen? Chosen for what?” asked Rarity.
“Well…” Hondo hesitated to speak.
“Y’all ‘ve been awfully cryptic,” Applejack said, “and I know that y’ just want what’s best for Rarity. I understand being protective of your kin. But I’ve also know that sometimes you’ve gotta let go, too.”
“Rarity is a very strong pony, and I’m sure she won’t blame you for anything you’ve done to protect her from this curse,” said Fluttershy.
“Besides, she has all of us to help her! We’re super-duper good at getting things like this figured out in, like, twenty-two minutes,” added Pinkie Pie with a grin.
“Plus, if there’s some way we can help, we’d like to do what we can,” Rainbow Dash stated, grinning.
Cookie’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Oh, you have the most wonderful friends, Rarity!”
“Yeah, we’re awesome like that,” Rainbow Dash preened.
Hondo sighed and placed a hoof on Rarity’s shoulders. “We told you of the origin of the curse… but the reality is that we don’t really know much about it. You see, for generations, the second branch of the Platinum family has always been able to avert the final stages of the curse. All we know is that the curse causes the second-born mare of the line of platinum to fall into the thrall of the curse, and the only way to prevent that is for them to… well… find a special somepony before they come of age and cuddle with them daily.”
Rarity frowned. “I don’t understand, though. If I’ve been chosen, I came of age long ago. I got my cutie mark when I was ten!”
“It’s more complicated than simply receiving one’s cutie mark. You see, the curse was made as part of a pact with Hug-Snuggoth—”
“Praised be his snuggly embrace,” interjected Cookie Crumbles in a droning intonation.
Hondo continued speaking as though he hadn’t heard his wife, “— and with it came rules. The chosen mare was to be pure… and adorable. As adorably pure as possible. Uncorrupted by the woes of life, she is to remain as such until her twenty-fifth birthday…”
“And then, what?” asked Rarity.
“Well, then you’d be expected to get married to a special somepony and cuddle them every day,” Cookie said.
“And then the curse would pass on to your second female child in due time,” Hondo finished.
“So… that’s it? The only way to break the curse is to get married and pass it on?” Rarity said, her ears flattening as she recoiled away from her parent’s declaration
“That’s not really breaking the curse, dear. We’re simply maintaining the cuddly pact, don'tcha know,” Cookie said, making a placating gesture at her horrified daughter.
“Nothing like this has ever happened in the long history of our watch! We’ve been training your sister all this time to be able to fulfill the expectations of Hug-Snuggoth, but with the curse passing to you instead of her, we don’t know what to expect!” said Hondo, looking to his wife worriedly.
“We’ve never prepared for the curse to be placed on the unready!” Cookie added.
“You’ve been training Sweetie Belle?!” Rarity said, her voice reaching a fever pitch.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. We’ve been keeping her pure by making sure her every action and thought is as cute and cuddle-able as can be, so when her time comes she can easily find a special somepony!” said Cookie.
“It must have been those friends of hers! They could have corrupted her!” said Hondo, stomping a hoof down.
“Woah nelly, are you talkin’ ‘bout mah sister?” Applejack interjected, stepping forward and frowning at Hondo.
“Yeah, no offense to your creepy religion or whatever, but I sure hope it was Scoots that helped Sweetie Belle get free of this mega-lame curse!” said Rainbow Dash, scowling and stepping up beside the incensed Applejack.
“Sorry, girls,” Hondo said, blanching away from the glares turned his way, “I’m just trying to understand what went wrong!”
Just at that moment, Sweetie Belle came running into the house, bawling uncontrollably. “Mom! Dad! S-something terrible happened! I made a mistake and spelled something wrong!”
Hondo and Cookie glanced between Rarity and Sweetie Belle for a moment, as Sweetie danced anxiously in front of them, before Cookie held a hoof up, quieting her daughter with a gentle stroke of her mane. “There, there, dear. That’s okay.”
Sweetie’s eyes widened. “Okay?! How can it be okay? I have to be perfect all the time!”
“Well, honey, that… is complicated,” Hondo said, looking to his wife for support.
“You see, honey, for some reason, the curse passed on to Rarity, probably because you were a terrible child who couldn’t maintain her purity and failed miserably at the destiny that was set in motion for you a thousand years ago,” Cookie said placatingly, though her words seemed anything but.
Sweetie Belle’s ears lay flat. “W-wait, what?” she stammered, her voice cracking as her tear-filled eyes moved looked to her big sister, Rarity.
“Afraid that your failures have caused the curse to move to your sister, Sweetie. You… just couldn’t be cute enough,” Hondo said, rubbing Sweetie Belle’s back soothingly.
“Mother! Father!” Rarity barked, appalled.
“But how? I thought if I failed, the world would come to a cuddly end!” Sweetie Belle asked, wiping the tears off her face as she reflexively re-adjusted her slightly mussed mane.
“Well, we’re not sure, but can you think of anything you did that would have made you horrifically impure and un-cuddleable in the eyes of He With A Thousand Fuzzy Knit Appendages?”
Sweetie looked down at the ground, “N-no…”
Rarity spoke up quickly. “Frankly, I cannot believe you’re blaming her! She’s a child! She doesn’t need to have the burden of such responsibility placed on her, and the fact that you have been burdening her with all this… this ‘training’ and ‘purity’ nonsense is simply—”
Before Rarity could really get going, Sweetie Belle leapt up and shouted, “Wait, Rarity!”
Rarity paused in her diatribe, hoof raised mid-vehement stomp. “Sweetie, it’s rude to interrupt!”
“But I think it is my fault! The other day, I came over to your house and you weren't home, and… well… I did something really bad,” Sweetie said, sniffling slightly.
Rarity’s hoof lowered slowly, and she took a step closer to her sister. She smiled at the tearful little filly. “I’m certain it wasn’t that bad, Sweetie.”
“W-well, mommy and daddy had sent me over because they were watching hay-per-view… and I wanted to watch, too, because they like watching the Equestrian Wrestling Federation so much!” Sweetie paused, hiccuping as she tried to take in a steady breath. “So, I snuck into your den and I… I o-ordered WrestlePonia Fourty-Seven… and I watched the whole thing!”
“WrestlePonia Fourty Seven?!” yelped Cookie.
“The whole thing?!” shouted Hondo, aghast.
Sweetie nodded. “The whole thing.”
“Bah gawd!” gasped Hondo.
“Even the part where… where the Hock threw Stone Colt through the Sphaynish Announcer Table?” asked Cookie, stepping back from her daughter.
“The whole. Thing,” Sweetie confirmed.
“Bah gawd!” gasped Hondo, again, before he scooped Sweetie Belle up into a hug. Sweetie Belle squeaked in surprise, but soon was crying again, and Cookie joined in. Within moments, all three were crying and hugging.
Rarity stared at her parents and younger sibling, and then looked to her friends, who were in varying degrees of confusion and shock. The only pony that seemed to understand what was going on, oddly enough, was Rainbow Dash, who simply frowned at Rarity. “Rares, your family is weird.”
Rarity sighed, her head hanging in defeat. “Yes, they are…”
“Maybe once they’re done crying and hugging, we could ask them more about the curse!” Pinkie Pie said brightly.
Rarity nodded to Pinkie Pie, before awkwardly sidling up to her sobbing family members and daintily patting her father on the head. “I’m sorry to be a bother, father, but I’d be ever so appreciative if you’d explain to me anything you know about the curse, now that it’s my problem.”
Hondo sniffled and nodded, stepping away from Cookie and Sweetie, and addressed his daughter. “Well, dear, we’ve never heard of anypony failing before, so we don’t exactly know the consequences. All I can say is that the easiest way to deal with it would be to find a special somepony and get to snugglin’ as fast as you can… though, in your impure state, it might not be enough.”
Rarity glared at her father. “Impure?”
Hondo blanched. “Sorry, hon, you just haven’t been conditioned like Sweetie has, so undoubtedly the curse will be entering into its final phase… the powers of Hug-Snuggoth will try to find an acceptably cuddly placeholder for you… and, failing that, then…”
“... then? Then what?” asked Rarity.
It was at this moment that Princess Twilight Sparkle slammed open the front door of the house and strode into the room. She had a severe case of bed-mane, her fur was rumpled, and she toted no less than two cups of coffee in an aura of magic behind her along with a massive tome. “It’s the hug-pocalypse!” she shouted, raising a hoof into the air.
“Twilight!” gasped the girls, surrounding their friend as she stepped into the middle of the room and slurped down the dregs in one of the coffee cups.
“First, before we get any farther, I just have to do one thing,” Twilight said, turning to Pinkie, and bopped her friend on the nose with her hoof. “If you ever abandon me in a compromising situation again, I swear to Celestia, I will take away your baking sugar for a week! A week!”
Pinkie gasped, “You can’t do that!”
“The buck I can’t! I’m a princess now! Who’s going to stop me?” she yelled, her eye twitching slightly.
Pinkie gasped again, her lower lip quivering. “I’m sorry, Twilight! It was the only way!”
Twilight relented slightly in the face of Pinkie’s contrite attitude. “... It’s fine. I suppose it turned out for the best, really, because it gave me a chance to talk with Princess Celestia about what’s been going on, and she told me everything she knew! We’ve spent the morning hunting down this book,” Twilight gestured to the book floating above her head, “in the archives, and let me tell you, whoever was the previous librarian needs to be arrested for dereliction of duty. But, we don’t have time for that, because we’re too late!”
“Too late?” asked Rarity.
“Yes. We’re way, way too late. When was the last time you girls were outside?”
Hondo and Cookie looked aghast. “You mean, it’s already begun?”
“What’s already begun?” asked Applejack.
Twilight moved to a nearby window in the darkened den and pulled aside the curtains, letting oddly colored light pour into the room. The ponies inside all moved to the window, and collectively fell silent.
The sun had been hidden by a swirling vortex of multi-hued pastel clouds that poured from an almost blindingly white portal. Protruding through this portal were dozens massive tentacle-like appendages that stretched from the sky to the ground, filling ponyville. Each tentacle was a patchwork of fuzzily-knit quilting that covered every inch of it in bright, happy colors, and no two squares were alike. Polka-dots, stripes, patterns of every kind imaginable—and some not-so-imaginable non-euclidean non-patterns as well—covered the surface of the intruding limbs. As they watched, the portal widened and even more of the knit limbs tumbled softly down, landing with gentle thumps on the roofs of houses and cottages far below.
Cookie and Hondo prostrated themselves, their hysterics forgotten. “The time is upon us!” Hondo intoned.
“The snuggling will have no beginning!” gasped Cookie.
“The snuggling will have no end!”
“Hug-Snuggoth’s knit appendages will blot out the sky and cover the world in snuggles!”
“All will be cuddled and none will be safe!”
Twilight drew the curtains and turned to look at her stunned friends. “This is it. The hug-pocalypse.”
Rainbow sighed. “This is the lamest threat to Equestria, ever.”
Pinkie hopped in place. “This is the best threat to Equestria, everrrrr!” she cheered.
“It d-doesn’t look… too bad,” murmured Fluttershy.
“It doesn’t look too bad?! Did you see the garish patterns and designs on those… tentacles?” Rarity shouted, her eyes narrowing as she turned to face Twilight. “We have to defeat it. Its crimes against fashion are unforgivable.”
Applejack stepped up beside Rarity. “Fashion crimes aside, Ah’m with Rarity. We gotta get rid of it.”
Twilight looked to Rarity. “I’ll explain, but we need to get to Ponyville's town square… this book told us how to stop the hug-pocalypse—”
“Lame!” interrupted Rainbow Dash, but Twilight ignored her protest.
“—and it all goes down to you. The fate of our world hangs in the balance, and you’re the only pony that can save us, Rarity.”
Rarity held her head high and struck a regal pose. “It is a burden I am more than willing to bear!”
Twilight’s ears flattened, and she blushed. “You haven’t heard how you save us, yet…”
Rarity’s regal pose faltered, and a bead of sweat ran down her brow. “Oh, dear, it isn’t icky, is it?”
Twilight scuffed a hoof against the carpet. “Not exactly...”