“Somewhat special delivery!” called out a a familiar voice. Wincing in preparation for the pain that she was sure was about to come, Sunset went over to the door and opened it.
“Do I want to ask what makes it somewhat special?” asked Sunset.
“Nope!” said the mailmare, who promptly gave her an envelope and flew off.
Sighing to herself, Sunset took the envelope and went inside. She then opened it and found a letter inside. Actually, a whole lot of letters were inside, but those letters then made words, which together made up a letter under a different definition of the word ‘letter.’ “I know this is going to lead to pain, but I have to open it anyway,” she muttered to herself as she read it.
Dear Sunset Shimmer,
The spell contained on the last page of this book is some secret unfinished masterpiece or something like that. I don’t know; I wasn’t really paying too much attention when it was explained. In case you’re wondering, I found the whole thing when doing the laundry. At any rate, it was by some guy whose name was something like Starswirl the Barbed, but I don’t feel like looking it up. Anyway, apparently he never finished it or anything, so I guess it’s up to you to finish it. I was going to have some of the really knowledgeable unicorns handle it, but apparently they had a drinking game last night over how many times they found someone whose name somehow perfectly fit their personality and/or job description despite it being given at birth before such a thing could be figured out, and they’re expected to be passed out for the next few months. So I guess it’s up to you to try to figure it out. Or something like that.
Sincerely,
Queen Chrysalis
P.S. No, this is not some roundabout way to make you learn about friendship. Probably.
P.P.S. Why am I doing my own laundry? I need to speak with someone about that.
“Well, it’s something to do, I guess, and if I succeed maybe I could get some recognition or something,” Sunset said to herself. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
A short time later…
“Okay,” said Sunset as she observed the chaos around Ponyville, “I guess some really bad stuff can happen.”
Gilda landed next to Sunset. “Hey, you seem sane… by the current standards of Ponyville, at least,” said Gilda. “You have any idea what’s going on?”
“I think I may have inadvertently cast a spell that caused all this commotion,” said Sunset.
“Well, gee, maybe you shouldn’t have cast such a commotion-causing spell?”
“It’s not my fault!” said Sunset. “How was I supposed to know that just reading ‘From one to another, another to one. A mark of one’s destiny singled out alone, fulfilled’ would actually cause this? Incidentally, what is going on?”
“Enh, apparently everyone’s cutie marks got switched and that made them convinced they should be doing different things than they’re normally doing. I, not having any of those silly-looking things, am thankfully immune.”
“Why should having their cutie marks switched make them act so differently?” asked Sunset. “I mean, mine is a cool-looking fireball, but it doesn’t mean I look at it and decide that it means I have to do fire magic.”
“This is why I don’t bother with those stupid things,” said Gilda. “Anyway, how do you plan to fix this? It’s so annoyingly noisy.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“How would I? You’re the expert on magic!” exclaimed Gilda. “Besides, I’m tired of constantly being the one who has to save the day. I was the one who got that Crystal Heart delivered, and I was the one who destroyed that Alicorn Amulet. I don’t want to have to go through something like that a third time in a row.”
“Hey!” said Sunset. “I helped in all of those cases, and that was after I went through all that stuff at the wedding!”
“You mean the wedding where your interference was ultimately completely irrelevant beyond getting Cadance out of her prison a little earlier? But anyway, if you need some kind of possible solution, I’d suggest just hitting everyone on the head.”
“How in the world would that fix anything?”
“Well,” said Gilda with a shrug, “maybe it would rejigger their brains and restore them to normal. Or maybe it would just make them fall unconscious. Either way, it would do something.”
Gilda went up to a nearby pony. “Hi!” she said. “Do you feel like you’re not really that good at what you think your destiny in life is?”
“How did you know?” asked the pony.
“Don’t worry! I have the fix!” declared Gilda as she pulled a large hammer out of nowhere and hit the pony on the head with it, causing them to spontaneously collapse. “Well, just wait a while and we’ll see if that worked.”
“Where in the world were you storing that hammer?!” asked Sunset incredulously.
“Oh, that’s a Handi-Hammer™. It actually is able to fold up really well into itself and allow you to carry it around in your pocket.”
“But… you don’t have a pocket,” said Sunset.
“Yeah, they also made Handi-Pocket™, which allows you to fold up your pocket,” said Gilda.
“You know what?” asked Sunset. “Screw it. We’re just going to find some of the idiots we know, then remind them of what they actually do, and maybe that will restore them to normal. Have you seen any of them?”
“Flim and Flam are right over there,” said Gilda as she pointed offhandedly towards Flim and Flam trying unsuccessfully to sew some clothes.
“How did I not see them?” wondered Sunset. She went up to them. “So, why are you guys trying to make clothes when you’re obviously so bad at them?”
“Well…” said Flim as an unseen orchestra suddenly started up.
“Oh, no,” said Sunset, her face falling as she recognized the telltale signs of a song about to start.
“Look–”
“No!” shouted Sunset. “We are not having another stupid song! We all have more important things to worry about than it!”
“Aw,” said Flim, “but we worked really hard on this one. It even had a rhyme so forced at the end, it was intentionally unintentionally funny!”
“Don’t care!” snapped Sunset. She pointed a hoof at them. “You idiots are going to get back to what you’re actually half competent at, which is making stuff on that farm of yours to sell to other idiots.”
“But our cutie marks are telling us–”
“Ugh,” groaned Sunset. “Come on! A stallion is more than their cutie mark! They are a master of their own destiny! Just because a cosmetic change happened to you in it being swapped for Suri’s doesn’t mean you should give up what you’ve been doing!”
“Wow!” said Flim. “I never thought about it that way!”
“There’s only one thing to do!” declared Flam.
“Use that as the basis for a cheesy self-help book and publish it and make tons of money?”
“Exactly!”
Sunset stared after Flim and Flam as they left. “Well, that worked… I guess.”
“I liked the actually rather impressively rousing speech you came up with,” commented Gilda.
“Wait, that’s it!” said Sunset. “All I have to do is come up with really cheesy speeches that sound really rousing, and they’ll be cured!” Suddenly, music from an unseen orchestra started up. “Oh, come on,” muttered Sunset.
Several seconds went by. “Uh, not that I want any singing, but doesn’t somepony normally start singing when this music starts up?”
“Maybe you’re supposed to be the one singing this time?” asked Gilda.
“I’m not going to sing! It’s annoying enough when others do it!” The music grew louder and louder. Sunset sighed. “It’s not going to disappear until I sing something, will it?”
“Probably not,” said Gilda.
Sunset hung her head in resignation as the music continued. Finally she looked up and started singing.
“A true, true friend helps a friend in need.
To see the light that shines from a true, true friend.”
She said all of this very unenthusiastically. The music, apparently satisfied, abruptly vanished. “Now can we just fix up the rest?”
“Where’d you come up with those lyrics?”
“I just tried to think up the cheesiest thing I could,” said Sunset.
And so they set about trying to cure everyone, with Sunset giving rousing speeches as to how they were more than their cutie mark, and Gilda hitting anyone on the head that wasn’t immediately affected by it; as it turns out, this actually worked as a cure as well. After enough speechifying and acts of battery that would get awfully repetitive if individually explained, they seemed to have made everyone act normally again.
“Hooray!” said Sunset. “Everything is getting back to normal. Finally, life is smiling on me. Sort of.”
“But even if they’re acting more normal-ish, everyone still has the wrong cutie marks.”
“Who cares?” asked Sunset. “As long as they’re normal-ish, my problem is done.”
“Well,” said Gilda, “if you can reverse the spell, you’d have completed it, and could patent the spell and make lots of money off of it.”
“You can’t patent spells!” said Sunset.
“Well, I’m sure there’s money to be made in that somewhere,” said Gilda.
“I don’t know how to go about completely reversing the spells! Why don’t you figure out what that whole ‘From one to another, another to one. A mark of one’s destiny singled out alone, fulfilled’ thing means?”
Gilda considered it. “Well, considering how things seem to usually work out, most likely it’s something incredibly cheesy.”
“Uh, let me think about that,” said Sunset. “Cheesiest explanation I can think of… uh, from all of us, together we’re friends? With the marks of destinies made one, there is magic without end?”
Gilda scratched her head. “I don’t get it. But it does look like everyone’s cutie marks are suddenly back to normal, so I guess it worked.”
“Well, it–” started Sunset before spontaneously disappearing.
“Huh,” said Gilda. “That was odd.”
“Gyah!” shouted Sunset as she suddenly found herself in a weird void with what looked to be stars in the distance. “What happened?”
Chrysalis raised an eyebrow at Sunset. “What are you doing here?”
“Chrysalis?” asked Sunset. “Where are we? Why are you here? Why am I here?”
“Oh, you were just suddenly transported here?” asked Chrysalis. “Ugh, great. I come here because it’s a good place to get some peace and quiet, but since you’re here… as reigning queen of Equestria, that means I get stuck with the job of explaining to you what’s going on. Wouldn’t have sent you that spell if I knew it would translate into this bother. I mean, I assume it did. You actually figured out that spell?”
“Yeah, I actually did!” said Sunset.
“Huh,” said Chrysalis. “Had no idea that thing could actually be figured out. I thought you’d just spend a whole lot of time trying to solve it, would give up, and then I’d admit to you I never expected you to be able to, and then I’d have a good laugh about it.”
“Don’t you mean we’d have a good laugh about it?”
“Nah,” said Chrysalis, “just me.”
Life is pain, thought Sunset to herself. “But why does solving it transport me to here?”
“Oh, well, I guess by solving the spell you did something that was never done before, and that inherently transports you here… or something. How’d the spell even work?”
“I just said ‘from all of us, together we’re friends. With the marks of destinies made one, there is magic without end.’”
“That sounds incredibly cheesy,” said Chrysalis.
“Yeah, I know, I was trying to come up with the cheesiest thing I could!”
“Well, apparently it had something to do with friendship or whatever, and Starswirl couldn’t solve it because he didn’t know friendship well enough.” Chrysalis paused. “Which is odd, because didn’t he befriend some guy named Scorpan who was originally here to take over Equestria? I mean, you’d think that would indicate he had a good knowledge of friendship.”
“So, I solved the whole thing completely by accident?” asked Sunset.
“Pretty much,” said Chrysalis, “but I guess it counts because you’re here.”
“How do you even know all of this?”
“Luna told me a whole lot,” said Chrysalis with a shrug. “She’s always getting on my case to learn all this stuff. Though it all does seem rather confusing. Exactly why this would trigger it is unclear, and it’s almost as if someone thought it up at the last moment as an attempt to justify a transformation.”
“Transformation?”
“Oh, yeah, that,” said Chrysalis. “Wow, I feel like I’m giving exposition in a comic book or something. Anyway, after you get transported here, you get to undergo some kind of ascension that involves a transformation. Let’s see, I think it’s on a timer after the initial transportation, so it should be going off about… now.”
Sunset suddenly found herself blinded by a bright flash of light. “Gah!” she shouted as she slammed her eyes shut. “I can’t see!”
“I like the fact you said ‘gah’ this time instead of ‘gyah’ to avoid repetitiveness,” said Chrysalis.
“Ugh,” said Sunset. “Still kind of blinded, though my eyesight’s coming back. I feel like I have wings now. Did I become an alicorn?”
“Oh, pfft,” said Chrysalis dismissively. “Alicorns are so old hat nowadays. Nah, you got turned into something way better.”
“What?” asked Sunset, confused.
Chrysalis held up a mirror to the no-longer-blinded Sunset. “Changeling! Congratulations!”
Sunset looked at the mirror, then at Chrysalis. She opened her mouth and said the only thing that came to mind.
“What.”