It was just another day of staying in the apartment for Glamour and Coco. Coco had another big order to fill, and Glamour stayed home to help look after her friend.
Glamour usually spent days like this doing chores, but this time, she found herself completing the list of chores with still over half the day left. With nothing else to do, she went to see how Coco was doing.
“Come in,” Coco replied after Glamour knocked on the door.
“Hey, Coco. I just finished doing all the chores, and I was wondering if there’s anything else to do.”
Coco turned away from her work to look at Glamour with a frown and her brows slightly furrowed. “You’re already done with everything, and you want more stuff to do? Glamour, you know you don’t have to do all this, right?”
Glamour shrugged. “I really don’t mind, and I do have a lot of free time between shows. Come on, there has to be something that needs to be done.”
“Well…” Coco brought a hoof up to her chin as she silently thinked. After a few moments, she pointed at the closet on the other side of her room. “My closet has a few boxes full of stuff that I haven’t really unpacked when I moved here. If you feel like it, you could go through some of them and take out anything that may seem useful.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Glamour went over to Coco’s closet and opened it. Her life flashed before her eyes when she saw a tower of boxes tipping toward her. She barely slammed the door close and threw her back onto the door, narrowly escaping a cardboard demise.
“A few boxes? Really?”
“I might or might not be a bit of a pack rat.”
Glamour rolled her eyes. Still, she had a job to do. She said that she would do the chore, and she was going to do it. Her pride as the Chore Master of Coco’s apartment was at stake. It was not a prestigious title, and it might have been a title she had bestowed upon herself, but it was hers.
Slowly, she turned around and faced the door again. Placing her hoof on the doorknob, she took a deep breath and threw the closet door open. With a quick burst of magic, she made the topmost box fly out, landing safely on Coco’s bed, before slamming the door once again.
After hearing a loud crash from behind the door, Glamour shrugged and turned to quickly open the spoils of her harrowing endeavor.
“Books?” Glamour muttered as she saw the box was filled to the brim with literature. She was not sure what kind of books Coco would like to keep out, but Glamour dug through the box anyway, seeing if there were any that caught her own interest.
Halfway through the box, she found a grayish-blue book that was pretty worn out. The cover had a golden border, and in the center was a golden wreath with, to her surprise, Coco’s cutie mark above it and in the same golden color.
Curious to see what a book about her friend contained, Glamour picked it up and was surprised again to find that the book was a lot heavier than it looked. Opening up to a random page, she found pictures of what looked like to be an outdoor stage with random actors and ponies Glamour did not recognize.
Glamour noticed that most of the photos seemed to be centered on an elderly mare. She had a yellow coat and a mane with both a blue and a lighter blue shade. Behind her big, red-rimmed glasses were kind eyes, and she wore an orange necklace with her violet coat that stopped right before her cutie mark of a heart with two sewing pins on it.
Still wondering what this photo book had to do with Coco, Glamour turned the page, and her eyes widened at what she found. There was another photograph of the elderly mare from earlier, and she was holding a flower brooch that looked exactly like the one Coco wore.
In fact, it was the exact same flower brooch Coco wore, because right next to the mare was Coco, but smaller.
Glamour started to find it hard to breathe as she took in the sight of her friend as an adorable filly. Coco’s petite size was already unbearably cute, but the effect was magnified many times over when it was paired with her big, adorable eyes. Even the way her mane was tied to her side by a purple band was beyond loveable.
The words, “So cute…” escaped her mouth right before her attention was wrenched away.
Glamour’s hoof sped to her chest when she felt a sharp pain from within, and her vision started to get blurry as each breath became more and more strained. With her body losing control and swaying, Glamour’s eyes accidentally drifted to the next picture.
And that was when she saw the filly Coco’s huge, sweet smile as she now wore the flower brooch that was comically huge on her tiny, lovable body.
“HNNNNNG!”
Coco, who had been diligently working at her sewing machine the entire time, turned around when she heard a heavy thud from behind her.
“Glamour, are you al—Glamour!”
Coco rushed over to where Glamour was now lying on the floor and found that not only was she not moving, but she was not breathing as well.
“Oh my goodness, Glamour! What happened… to…” Coco’s panicked face slowly fell away as she laid eyes on the picture book next to Glamour.
Coco’s hoof rammed into her face as she grumbled, “Not this again…” With an exasperated sigh, she flipped Glamour onto her back and placed the book on the floor next to her chest.
Coco opened the book to the back to reveal that the book had been hollowed out to hold two metal plates with hoofstraps. Both plates had a wire that connected to a magic crystal in a glass case, and right next to that was a big, red button.
After strapping the metal onto her forehooves, Coco slammed down on the button, and the crystal began glowing as a faint hum filled the room.
With a deadpan face, Coco briefly rubbed the two plates together before holding them right above Glamour’s corpse.
“Clear!”
The metal plates were thrusted into Glamour’s chest, and the room lights dimmed for a moment as magical energy flooded into Glamour, causing her aerodynamic body to jump several feet into the air.
Seeing that no other movement came from Glamour, other than her body crashing back onto the floor, Coco yelled out another “Clear!” and sent another jolt into Glamour’s body.
This time, screaming could be heard as Glamour was suddenly awakened to the feeling of her body being rocketed into the air before falling back down onto the hard, unforgiving floor. Groaning from her aching body, she slowly rolled back off her back and shakily got back on her hooves.
“Ugh, what happened?” Glamour groggily asked when she stood up.
“You had a heart attack,” Coco explained as she took off the plates off her hooves.
“Oh, okay… Wait, what?”
“You looked in this book, didn’t you?”
“Um, yeah.”
“This book is dangerous because it contains pictures of me as a foal. You aren’t the first to have tried going through it. You are lucky that you’re still alive.”
Glamour silently stared at Coco. After a few moments, she repeated saying, “Wait, what?”
“Guess I forgot to warn you. I’m considered adorable in quite a few places. Too adorable, actually. There have been multiple incidents of ponies having a cuteness overload after prolonged exposure to me.”
“Cuteness overload?”
“Yes, cuteness overload. It can result in insanity, seizures, and even death. I’m actually considered a health hazard in some cities, and my foal pictures have been declared as weapons grade material.”
Glamour’s jaw hit the floor before she let out a scoff and picked up the book. “You’ve got to be kidding me. There’s no way that a pony can be dangerous just because they are too cute. It was all just a big coincidence. Maybe I overworked myself or something.” She opened the book again to a random page. “See, I’m looking at your pictures and…”
The words dried up in Glamour’s mouth as she took in the sight of the excessively adorable filly Coco wearing a plaid skirt with her mane and tail both tied into braids, and the picture next to it was filly Coco holding a paintbrush in her mouth with splotches of various paints on her mane and face.
Feeling a familiar burning sensation in her chest and darkness creeping up in her vision, Glamour managed to say, “Okay… You win…” before her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her body fell to the floor again.
Coco sighed as she restrapped the metal plates back on.
“Clear…”