Sweetie Belle wasn’t exactly sure, but she could swear the moon hadn’t moved in hours. It was still hanging right at the peak of its journey across the sky, as if it had stalled out or just refused to go on. She couldn’t help but empathize.
“Whut’s the matter, Sweetie Belle?” Applebloom tilted her head quizzically. “Yer face is so long it looks like it’s gonna slip right offa ya like melted ice cream or sumthin’.”
“Thanks for that image I didn’t need,” Scootaloo commented sarcastically.
“This is all my fault,” Sweetie Belle lamented, hanging her head. “I should never have even brought Shipshape up in the first place. Now everypony is stuck here until they admit stuff they might not feel comfortable admitting.”
“It’s not your fault,” Scootaloo tried to smile, but the sudden approach of an object she couldn’t identify obliged her to flutter her stubby wings and kick herself out of the way. The three crusaders watched two mares – a unicorn and an earth pony, tangled in each other’s legs and smooching wildly, roll down the street. Applebloom kicked at the dirt, testing the grade.
“How d’you s’pose they do that?” The farm filly observed.
Scootaloo blushed. “Geez, somepony get a room or something.”
“Cain’t. Ain’t none of them are real.” Applebloom’s heart warmed a bit as she noticed her comment bringing a smile to Sweetie Belle’s lips.
“Really it’s more like this is all my fault,” Scootaloo sighed, “I should have left well enough alone.” She looked as if she had more to say, but instead, the little orange filly lifted her eyes to the sky and fixated on the moon, just watching it hang there for a time.
“Bit fer yer thoughts?” Applebloom nudged. “You okay?”
Scootaloo didn’t reply. It wasn’t the most dejected expression the remaining crusaders had ever seen from their friend, but something in the eyes of the pegasus gave away that more was on her mind then she was letting on.
“Rainbow Dash, huh.” Sweetie Belle surmised. Scootaloo’s ears went up and the color in her cheeks deepened.
“What about Rainbow Dash!? I didn’t say a word about Rainbow Dash!!”
Applebloom giggled a bit, “Like ya ever needed to before.”
“It comes through loud and clear!” Sweetie Belle declared loudly. “Everypony at school knows!”
Scootaloo glanced in every direction and tried to pull her head down into her neck like a turtle. “Kn-knows what!? There’s nothing to know!” She bit her lip and lowered her voice to a hissing whisper, mortified by even a simple oblivious glance from a few passersby. “Rainbow Dash and the Headless Horse…a-am I really that easy to read?”
“Uh-huh!” Both her companions sang together. When Scootaloo didn’t chime in on the ribbing, Applebloom frowned, trotted over, and touched her shoulder.
“We’re only funnin’. Ah’m sorry it didn’t work out for ya.”
Scootaloo tried to shrug her feelings off. “She’s like the most awesomest flyer in all Equestria, and I’m just a blank flank filly that can’t even get air for ten seconds. She probably never saw me like that anyway.”
“Ah think she cares a lot about you,” Applebloom countered. “Yer like her little sis that she ain’t never had. And its normal that pegasi our age cain’t fly, ain’t it?”
“Mister Cake’s son can fly and he’s like a month old,” Sweetie Belle commented. Applebloom shot the unicorn filly a ‘you’re not helping’ glance, and she backpeddled. “B-but I’m sure he’s like a savant or something! Totally not normal! He’ll probably grow up with all sorts of social problems, and be like Rain Pony or something, and he’ll just hang around all day eating muffins in the bathtub and making spooky sounds, and…and…and I’m gonna stop talking now.”
“What about you?” Scootaloo glanced up at Applebloom. “Who’s your very special somepony?” Before Applebloom could open her mouth, the pegasus straightened and was on the offensive. “And don’t even tell me you don’t have one! It’s only fair I get to know if you both know, and I’m not kissing anypony at all around here until you both go first, so I’ll find out one way or another! I heard Princess Celestia talking to Princess Twilight earlier, an’ she said if you really don’t have a very special somepony, Shipshape can’t take you. So even if you don’t know who it is yet, you’ve got to have one, or else you wouldn’t be here!”
“Whut?” Applebloom balked, “You are not gonna wait fer us t’kiss somepony an’ see who it is! I’ma gonna do that!”
“No way!” Sweetie Belle cut in. “That’s what I was gonna do! Stop stealing my ideas!”
The Cutie Mark Crusaders spent the next few minutes bickering and posturing at one another. Passing ponies, many in the arms of another and just enjoying the night air, chuckled and moved on with ‘ah youth’ on their lips.
“I bet it’s you and Sweetie Belle!” Scootaloo accused her Earth pony friend jokingly. “Applebloom and Sweetie, in the Everfree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
Sweetie Belle gasped. “N-no it’s not! See!?” Caught up in the heat of the moment, the unicorn nabbed the Apple filly’s cheeks in both her hooves and planted a firm peck right on the tip of her muzzle. Applebloom wrenched away and wiped at her nose, blushing furiously.
“Eww! Cut it out! There, ya see? It ain’t neither us!”
“Ohhhh yeah?” Scootaloo sang, a sly grin turning up the corners of her lips. “I heard you’ve gotta kiss them on the lips for it to count. You’re totally hiding something.”
“Maybe you’re the one hiding something!” Sweetie Belle returned. “You kiss Applebloom on the lips and we’ll see what happens then!”
Applebloom flailed her forelegs and sputtered. “Hey! Why’s everypony only kissin’ me!? If you wanna kiss somepony so bad then y’all kiss!”
Scootaloo could feel the heat caressing her from maneline to collarbone, but she didn’t back down. She couldn’t back down. Rainbow Dash would never fly away from a challenge. Scootaloo nabbed Applebloom, spun her around, and cupped her cheeks exactly the same way Sweetie Belle had a moment before. However, suddenly coming eye-to-eye with her friend in such an intimate way made her hesitate.
“Do it! Do it!” Sweetie Belle chanted, gleefully bucking at the air. Applebloom averted her eyes down to the street and fluttered her lashes, stiffening.
“It’s just for fun,” Scootaloo encouraged softly. “Let’s show her up and get back to figuring out how we’re all gonna get out of here crusader-style, huh?”
Applebloom swallowed through a thick lump in her throat that hadn’t been there a moment ago and offered a lopsided smile. “Yeah, uh…sure. Crusader style. Ain’t nuthin’ Cutie Mark Crusaders cain’t handle!”
“That’s the spirit!”
Giggling, the fillies rubbed noses and gave each other an innocent, playful peck. Sweetie Belle shut her eyes and hopped up in the air twice, swishing her tail merrily. For the first time since the trip through the mirror, she didn’t feel either scared or ashamed. She was acting as bold as she could, but the truth was, this was all too much for her. She didn’t want to find her very special somepony…not yet, anyway. It was enough to just be a Cutie Mark Crusader, playing with her friends. Together, even in a place like this, they could all—
POOF
Sweetie Belle’s eyes snapped open. She was alone.
“…what? Applebloom? Scootaloo? Girls…?” The lone crusader glanced up and down the street and into the middle of buildings. She galloped around, poking her head into groups of ponies and checking the magic dome for any holes large enough for a filly to fit through. When she’d nearly exhausted herself, she wandered into the middle of the street and plopped down on her rump, her tail flopping in the dust.
“B-but,” she whimpered, “…what about me?”
For a time the unicorn filly just lay there in the street. Her ears spun like satellite dishes, picking up transmissions from all around her. The chirping of crickets and the rustling of leaves may not have been real, but the pleasant and even romantic conversations seemed like they were the only topic on everypony’s lips. Sweetie Belle gritted her teeth. Didn’t it even bother anypony that they were trapped in some weird magic bubble thingy, where nothing was real, there was no food to eat, and escape meant either smooching some random pony or admitting feelings you didn’t want anypony to know you have? How could everypony just go along with it?
Why did her friends go home without her?
Sweetie Belle felt like crying, and maybe she would have, if not for the sudden appearance of a daisy only inches from the tip of her muzzle. She went cross-eyed staring at the thing – wondering how the flower could just float in midair like that. And then she caught its…scent? She reached out, prodded at it, and realized her hoof wasn’t going right through it.
It was real. And there was a purple, scaly fist attached to it.
“Here.” Spike, Twilight’s infant dragon assistant, was standing in the street offering the little flower. “I got a couple more. You look like you could use it more than me.”
Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes up to meet the visage of the little dragon without moving the rest of her body. “How’d you do that? Nothing here’s real.”
Spike smiled a toothy, sheepish grin. “I was watering the vase in sixth bathroom down the east hall. Twilight thought it was silly to keep flowers in there ‘cause there’s like fourteen bathrooms in the palace we don’t even use, but I thought it was a nice touch. It’s a really thin vase. Y’gotta take the flowers out to pour water in it.”
Sweetie Belle lit her horn. An aura of pale green energy surrounded the flower and slipped it gently from Spike’s grasp. She nearly dropped it three times, but with an easy pace and a little time, the unicorn managed to magically thread the daisy through her mane, around her left ear. When she glanced back and found the dragon still openly staring at her, she felt her face warm up.
“Gee thanks, that was really nice of you Spike.” She eyed him for a moment, and she wondered…maybe? She’d never really thought about Spike that way before, and she still wasn’t sure, but she’d heard the part of Shipshape’s story that claimed you might not even know your somepony – or somecreature, when you see them “Uh, so hey, um…”
“Sure, no sweat.” Spike’s eyes lit up, “Hey, is your sister around?”
The lone crusader’s bubble burst. Right. She should have seen that one coming a mile away. She shook her head and sighed. “Nope. Haven’t seen her in hours. For all I know she found her very special somepony by now. Since, you know, like everypony’s looking for one.”
“What…?” Spike’s smile wilted faster than the flowers in his grasp could droop. He shook his head sharply and snerked a breath through his nose so hard that Sweetie Belle could see embers fly from his nostrils. “Nahhhhh! She’s totally still here! She has to be!” He glanced both ways down the street, “So where do you think I can find her? I wanted to…you know…give her these flowers ‘cause she’s…such a nice friend. And all.”
Sweetie Belle got to her hooves, looking droll. “Uh-huh. How would I know?”
“Well, you know,” Spike began walking around the little white pony in a circle, stopping every few paces to examine a new street. He never once paused to look at her. “You’re her sister, so you ponies have like a sisterly bond or something, don’t you? So you know where she is and what she’s thinking, and when one of you gets hurt the other one feels it, like bad guys in comic books, right?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Sweetie Belle mused sarcastically. “She likes fancy clothes, fainting, and talking to herself like she’s the entire upper crust of Canterlot when she thinks I’m asleep at night. She always talks about how her prince, a tall white steed, is going to come for her someday. I don’t know what a ‘steed’ is, but she’s prob’ly looking for him right now.”
“A tall white steed!?” Spike was beside himself. “No way am I gonna let a tall white steed beat me to my date with dest—I mean to spending quality time with your sist—I mean to giving these totally platonic flowers to my friend to show her how much of a friend I am and how much I appreciate her friendship as a friend!!”
Sweetie Belle giggled. Spike was a little silly…and a little gluttonous…and a little greedy…and a couple other things, but his devotion and loyalty were admirable. “Spike, you know you have to kiss somepony to get out of here, right?”
The little dragon stiffened. “…yeah, so?”
“So have you been…I dunno…uh…” she’d meant to tease him, but the words were proving difficult. “experimenting?”
The filly and the dragon stared dumbly at one another for a long moment. Spike opened his eyes wide...and scrunched his noise.
“With you? Eww, no. You’re just a kid.”
Sweetie’s mousey expression boiled over, and she thought about all those ‘other’ things that Spike was. “I never said anything about ME! And look who’s talking! You’re just a baby!”
Spike waved his claw dismissively and was already walking away, “You’re just not my type, that’s all. Sorry.”
Sweetie Belle thought about being alone again. Rather than continuing to complain, she scrambled to fall in with the little dragon on his quest. “Hey, wait up! Where are you going, anyway?”
“This is a copy of Ponyville, right? Then there has to be a Carousel Boutique.”
Spike’s gait was purposeful; his stare resolute. This was his chance – his one chance, and by Celestia, he wasn’t going to flub it. Ignoring greetings from several ponies, he plodded on towards his destination, pausing only to check the flowers in his fist and proudly smooth back his crest. Confidence began setting in, and his eyes narrowed with the bit of cunning that always seeped into his brain whenever he had an plan. There was no better time, and really, all he needed to do was be brave enough for one kiss. Just one. Shipshape would do the rest. Shipshape was always right. Even if you didn’t know it yourself.
It didn’t take the dragon long to find his quarry, but the murky, distorted image behind the transparent copy of Rarity’s home and business showed something he wasn’t expecting. There were four shapes moving about. Stopping Sweetie Belle with a wave of his arm, he paused in the street to examine them. One of them was white, and moved about on four legs the way a pony would. The other three were various shades of muddy browns and greys. Either they were rearing up a lot, or they were bipedal. The darker shapes surrounded the white one and loomed over it.
Spike’s eyes went wide, and the worst possible images filtered into his mind. In the turning of a second he was off, adrenaline carrying him at a healthy speed even for a pony with twice as many legs.
“Hey!” Sweetie Belle struggled to keep up. “What’s the matter!?”
“She’s in trouble!” Spike cried out, the breeze he was creating throwing his words back at her. “Somebody’s attacking her! We gotta help!!”
Spike narrowed his eyes. His breaths began to gain weight, and with each one he could feel the fire in his belly yearning to be set free. As he charged straight through the wall of the boutique, he took a deep breath, intending to fry whatever sorry creature would dare accost his lady fair. Sweetie Belle, confused and frightened, followed behind just because she didn’t want to be left alone in the street. The dragon was so tiny she could barely hide behind him, but his sheer determination was inspiring.
When they emerged from the other side of the building, the image before them stopped them both in their tracks. Rarity, the matron of the Carousel Boutique, regarded them from her position sitting atop a diamond dog, who was on all fours.
“Oh, Spike dear. You’re here too, hm?” She nodded at them both. “And Sweetie Belle! Well, how are you and your friends getting along tonight?”
Two more diamond dogs were flanking the unicorn mare. One of them was trying in vain to fan her with his jacket tied between his arms, while the other was fumbling to brush her tail with his bare paws. Rarity eyed them each in turn. “You there! You call this a breeze? I’m practically suffocating. And you! I could do a better grooming job with echolocation!”
“Yes Miss Rarity!” Both of them barked in unison. Rarity nudged the one beneath her with a hind hoof.
“I can most certainly say that this is the most lumpy living couch I have ever had the misfortune to rest upon. Why, I could end up with cramps! Be a dear and take care of that for me, won’t you?”
“Yes Miss Rarity!” The third dog replied before cavorting his body at what looked like a considerably painful angle.
Spike, his flowers drooping all by themselves again, held a hoof over Sweetie Belle’s eyes. Sweetie Belle, stiff as a board, held her foreleg over Spike’s eyes.
Rarity smiled and turned her attention back to her little sister and the dragon. “Better. Oh dear, what’s the matter with the two of you? Dust in your eyes? There’s far too much of that around here. If you ask me, somepony should find this ‘Shipshape’ and suggest he hire a housekeeper!”
“Sis?” Sweetie Belle finally ventured. “What’s all this…?”
“This?” Rarity looked oblivious until she bothered to notice the dogs again. “Ah, this? Oh don’t mind them, dear. They’re just trying to make me feel better after I was so rudely accosted and deprived of my first ki—” She cleared her throat, “…well. Let’s just say I’ve had a rough night.” She gave the dogs bedroom eyes, “But you three are my precious little puppies, now aren’t you?”
Rarity reached out and tickled the jacket-waving dog under the chin with the tip of her hoof. He panted, his tail wagging and his tongue lolling until all three of them raised their heads to bay at the moon. Thoroughly pampered, Rarity reclined on her living ottoman and glanced up at the stars. “I must say, this isn’t at all as bad as I thought at first. They have a bit of an odor, but I’m sure that’s nothing a good shampooing couldn’t take care of.” She reached out and tested some of the fabric that was being used as a makeshift fan, and made a face. “Mm…satin baldrics, powdered wigs…perhaps some hose and pantaloons. Yes, they might just even be worth keeping around!”
“They can’t stay in my room!” Sweetie Belle interjected. Rarity only laughed.
“Oh of course not dear, I wouldn’t dream of it. We’ll build a dog house in the yard. Behind the boutique, of course. It hardly matters anymore. I’m damaged goods and my prince isn’t going to come for me, so I might as well make due.”
“What?” Sweetie Belle reached out to her sister, suddenly wondering about the elder unicorn’s odd behavior. “Sis, are you okay…?”
“Yes Miss Rarity!” The diamond dogs shouted together, cutting off the little filly’s inquiry. Sweetie Belle made a gagging face. She turned to Spike to share her feelings on the whole idea, but he was nowhere to be found. Glancing around, she finally caught him walking away, his head down and his tail dragging. The flowers were scattered in the dirt. Suddenly feeling more indignant than sympathetic, Sweetie whirled on her big sister with the intention of chastising her for the little dragon’s feelings, but—
POOF
They were gone. All four of them. Sweetie Belle felt bile rising in her throat.
“…she totally did NOT just…with all three of…that’s so gross.”
Trying in vain to banish the image from her mind and wondering what could have prompted her sister to make such an image a reality, the little unicorn caught up with the baby dragon, who was sitting in the dirt near the boutique with his chin in his claws. She sat down beside him and put on her best happy filly face.
“Cheer up,” Sweetie ventured. “So my sister’s got some, um…problems lately. Don’t take it personally. It’s just…” words failed her, “…it’s just Shipshape, right?”
Spike didn’t move, and didn’t speak. Sweetie Belle got back to her hooves. A moment later, Spike found himself staring at a single daisy, floating in a green aura about six inches from his nose. Nearly going cross-eyed, he plucked the dirty, partially smooshed flower from midair and glanced up.
“There’s more ponies in the stable!” Sweetie Belle smiled merrily. “Don’t give up!”
Spike, a neutral expression on his face, stood up. His gaze passed back and forth between the flower and the filly enough times that Sweetie Belle opened her mouth to try to offer some other words of encouragement, but the dragon pinched her lips shut between his thumb and forefinger. Before she could protest he simply let go, but now his face was inches from hers and his wide gaze was hard to avoid. She shrank.
“Are you, um…are you okay?”
Spike replied by grabbing both of Sweetie Belle’s cheeks, pulling on them, and letting go until they snapped back in place. Before she could even say ‘ow’ he was prying her eyelid back with one claw while smoothing her maneline away with the other. Sweetie was beginning to wonder if the poking and prodding was some sort of bizarre dragon mating ritual until it altogether ceased. Spike spoke, but he didn’t appear to be addressing anypony in particular.
“Hmm…little eyeshadow, some mane dye, an hour with a curling iron…maybe some stencils on the flank,” he shrugged, grinning to himself. “Yeah, you’ll do. Sisters and all that.”
Sweetie Belle didn’t have time to flail before the not-entirely-coherent dragon caught her in his arms and planted one on her.
POOF
Sweetie Belle had long thought about what her first kiss was going to be like. This wasn’t what she had in mind.