Revan curled under her blanket as she tried to go back to sleep, yesterday had been so nice, she had finally gotten the sling and brace off her arm. Then, after helping out around Applejack’s farm, she had wandered through the Everfree Forest for hours, climbing the trees and slipping through the brush for the sheer joy of being able to use both of her arms. With a sleepy smile, the Jedi reached up a hoof to scratch her muzzle.
…
…
The stream of half-coherent blasphemies that followed could be heard all the way to the edge of Sweet Apple Acres, disturbing the early morning calm of the local birds and woodland critters as Revan spewed vitriol into the air.
Having vented her anger for the moment, Revan struggled to her hooves, only to have one of her wings suddenly snap out, sending her stumbling as she tried to regain her balance, ‘Wings? Oh for frell’s sake! Changing species wasn’t bad enough, I had to get extra limbs while I was at it?’
Revan slowly made her way over to her fold-out desk, her progress hindered by the wings that flared and flapped from random muscle twitches. Finally reaching her goal, Revan reached out with a hoof to grab her eyepatch, ‘Okay, I’ve seen the ponies do this hundreds of times. Just … grip it … somehow … it’ll work.’
It didn’t.
After several more futile attempts, Revan was gritting her teeth in frustration. Out of patience, she reached out with the Force and yanked the eyepatch to her telekinetically, ‘Why didn’t I do that to begin with?’ she wondered, as she banged her face into the desk in exasperation.
Eventually, Revan got her eyewear in place and sat considering her situation, as she ignored the pain in her muzzle, and the matching ache in the back of her head (courtesy of somehow smacking herself with her own wing), “Okay, I’m a pegasus, now. The only reasonable explanation is magic -- and that’s one line I never imagined saying -- so I need an expert on magic to figure this out. I hope Twi’ is up to this …”
After using her telekinesis to cycle the hatch, Revan sent out for Golden Oaks Library, although her progress was slowed as the random flailing of her wings frequently caused her to stumble or even fall. Eventually, Revan determined that she could control her wings if she concentrated hard enough, but the required focus did nothing for her speed, and distracted her enough that she still staggered over stones and uneven patches in the path.
As she finally arrived at her destination, Revan’s battered pride took comfort in the belief that it was too early for anypony to have seen the spectacle of her drunken-looking progress through the town. ‘I really hope Twi’ can fix this,’ Revan thought as she raised a hoof to pound on the library door.
________________________________________
Her eyes still heavy with sleep, Twilight staggered down the stairs, “I’m coming!” she yelled in irritation at whoever was beating on her door, ‘At least Spike is sleeping-over with the Crusaders, or this racket would already have woken him up.’ “Yes?” Twilight asked, having remembered her manners at the last moment, as she opened the door to confront a black-maned, cyan-blue pegasus with an eyepatch.
The dust-coated pony pushed past Twilight, “I know its early and your pissed, Twi’, but this is an emergency,” the strange mare said in an oddly familiar voice, as she turned to face the unicorn.
“Revan?” Twilight asked uncertainly as her sleep-fogged mind combined with the oddness of the situation to confound her usually quick wits, “You’re a pony?”
The pegasus looked herself over, “Yes, yes I am.”
“What happened to you?”
“I was hoping you could tell me!” Revan snapped, before she took a few deep breathes to calm herself, “Sorry, sorry, I’m a little on edge, you know?”
Twilight waved aside the Jedi’s apology, “You’re upset, I understand.” Sitting down at her desk, the unicorn pulled over a sheet of paper and levitated a quill, “So, let’s go over everything you did yesterday, and hopefully we can figure out what happened.”
“Alright … I got up at 0700 and did my normal morning routine. Left for Ponyville at 0830 so I could make my appointment with Dr. Horse at 0900. Got a clean fit-rep and headed over to Applejack’s, arrived around 1000. I was doing farm work until about 1300 --”
“Did anything unusual happen at Sweet Apple Acres?” Twilight asked, interrupting Revan.
“No, it was just manual labor, hauling wood, helping check the roofs for leaks and weak-spots, that sort of thing. Let’s see … after I left AJ’s I went into the Everfree to do some exploring and work some more of the kinks out of my arm --”
“Wait,” Twilight broke in again, “The Everfree? Did you come across a blue flower with large leaves?”
“Yeah, I did, a whole clearing of them. Kinda pretty, actually. Why?”
“Poison joke,” groaned the unicorn as she reached up to pinch the bridge of her muzzle, “Of course. Well, at any rate it’ll be easy enough to cure.”
“Cure?” Revan leaned forward as she stared intently at Twilight, “You can fix me?”
“Definitely. It’ll just take some time to gath--” Twilight found herself being the one interrupted this time, as the pegasus lunged across the room and kissed her full on the mouth.
Taken completely by surprise, Twilight was left red-faced and gasping for breath when Revan finally broke the kiss. “If you can get me back in my right body, Twilight Sparkle,” the pegasus said, her own face a bit flushed and her wings poofed out, “I swear I’ll do anything you want. You want it of me, you get it, no questions asked.”
“Eep!” was all the response Twilight’s overheated brain could come up. Flustered and out of her depth, Twilight fled to her basement laboratory, where she brought a hoof to her barrel and started in with her breathing exercises in the hope of regaining her composure. ‘She didn’t mean that the way it sounded,’ the agitated librarian thought, ‘Revan is just very affectionate, and her transformation has her disconcerted and overreacting, that’s all. She couldn’t actually be serious … could she?’ Twilight shook her head at the notion, ‘Revan was overstating her gratitude in her enthusiasm, nothing more. Yes, just some harmless exaggeration, is all, nothing to get worked up over.’
Her self-control firmly back in place, Twilight headed back up the stairs, only to pause as a thought occurred to her, ‘What do I do with Revan while I’m out collecting the materials for the cure?’
________________________________________
“Really, darling, it’s fine. You need something to keep yourself busy while Twilight is away, and you are overdue for some relaxation and pampering,” Rarity, Ponyville’s authority on fashion and semi-professional soprano, said as she used her tail to brush the dust off Revan’s coat, “Just give me a moment, after all, we don’t want to look like a ruffian, now do we?”
“I am a ruffian,” the cyan pegasus countered with a roll of her eye, prompting a prim sniff from Rarity and quite giggles from Fluttershy, “But seriously, girls, thanks for letting me tag along.”
“Think nothing of it, Revan. Once Lotus and Aloe get done with you, you’ll feel like a new pony,” Rarity gave her a last inspection before deciding that the Jedi-turned-pegasus was, barely, fit to be seen in public, “There we are, a little spa time and you’ll be a proper dashing hero again.” The unicorn chose to ignore it as Revan rolled her eye again.
As the three mares made their way through Ponyville, Revan’s stiffly measured walk caught Fluttershy’s notice, “Um, are you alright, Revan?”
“It’s these frelling wings,” Revan grumbled, not noticing the way her two companions frowned slightly at her crudity, “trying to keep them under control has my back cramping up.”
“Control your wings? Oh! You’re thinking about them too much,” the yellow pegasus explained in her soft voice, “It’s just like with your legs, all you need to do is let your instincts guide you, and then you’ll be able to handle them fine."
Revan just looked at Fluttershy for a moment, before she sighed and put a hoof on the timid mare’s shoulder, “’Shy, I’m not supposed to even have these wings, I don’t have any instincts for dealing with them.”
“Actually, you probably do,” Rarity disagreed, as she gently herded her two friends towards the spa, “That horrible poison joke gave you everything else you needed for your wings to work, I’d be surprised if it didn’t give you the instincts as well.” She smiled at Revan, “I understand that telling somepony to not think of something is the surest way to get them too, but if you cleared your mind, I believe the instincts that Fluttershy is talking about would surface.”
Revan pondered her friends’ advice while Rarity held open the door to the Ponyville Day Spa and waved the two pegasi inside.
________________________________________
Rarity and Fluttershy giggled like fillies as they made their way back to Golden Oaks, while Revan walked beside them with a look of discomfited annoyance on her face. “I’m sorry, Revan,” Fluttershy managed to say through her titters, “But who would have expected the brave knight to have such ticklish hooves?”
The Jedi tried to maintain her vexed manner for another few steps, but Fluttershy’s apology pierced her irritation and left Revan with a small, sheepish grin of her own, “Fine, maybe it was a little funny,” she glanced around, then leaned closer to her two friends, “Let’s just keep this to ourselves, okay? I have a reputation I’d like to maintain.”
“Honestly, Revan,” Rarity interjected, having finally gained control of her own laughter, “There’s nothing wrong with showing your softer side on occasion, no matter what foolishness Rainbow Dash insists on clinging to.” Turning slightly, she gave the cyan pegasus an approving smile, “And the spa was exactly what you needed, darling, you look like a gallant cavalier from a romance,” Rarity gushed.
Revan blinked at the unicorn, and then held out a hoof, “Hi, we apparently haven’t been introduced, I’m Revan Vao, I kill people and break things. If you’re looking for chivalry and refined behavior, I’m afraid you’ll need to try elsewhere.”
“Oh hush!” Rarity commanded as she put her hoof on the Jedi’s shoulder, “You are not the brute you insist on thinking yourself to be, and one day we’ll get you to realize it.”
The one-eyed pegasus snorted coarsely, and Rarity was certain that Revan had been as uncouth as possible on purpose, before she shoved the library door open and barged in with a shout, “Twi’! We’re back to pillage your archives and plunder your pantry!”
“Keep it down!” the librarian admonished the noisy Jedi, “This is a library!” Turning to the rest of the little group, Twilight’s face relaxed into a smile, “How was the spa?”
“Oh, it was very nice,” Fluttershy assured the purple unicorn.
Rarity nodded in agreement, “It was quite relaxing, and don’t let Revan bother you, Twilight, she’s taken it into her head to be difficult, even if she does look fabulous.”
Finally taking a real look at her transformed friend, Twilight blinked at the magic Aloe and Lotus had wrought on the normally rather indifferently dressed Jedi, “Wow. Uhm, I mean, Yes! The spa did a wonderful job. Not that Revan didn’t look nice before! I-I mean, oh, what did I mean? Yes! I have the cure ready! That’s what I meant.”
Rarity considered Twilight’s babbling with amused interest, while Revan ignored it in favor of eagerly descending upon the librarian, “You got it? All right, Twi’! Where is it? Do I drink it or inject it? How fast does it work?”
“Whoa, whoa,” Twilight interrupted the barrage of questions as she tried to calm down her friend, “The cure is topical, it’s in the red bottle on the counter in my bathroom. We need to fill the tub half-way, pour in the entire bottle, and then you’ll need to soak in it until the medicine can counteract the poison joke’s effects.”
“Half fill the tub, use the full bottle, and soak until I change back, right, got it. Where’s the bathroom?” Twilight pointed a hoof, and then shared a giggle with Rarity and Fluttershy at how enthusiastically Revan rushed for the tub.
The bookish unicorn gestured towards the coaches scattered about the library’s main room, “We might as well get comfortable, this might take a while.”
Settling themselves on the couches, the three mares whiled away the time as they exchanged the anecdotes and bits of news that they would have normally shared during their time at the spa, while the faint sounds of sloshing water could be heard from the second-floor bathroom.
After a time, the splashing water quieted, but the three ponies’ sensitive ears could hear the moans that replaced it, and then faint words, “Oh fingers, how I missed you. Oh, yes…”
Exchanging embarrassed glances, the mares slowly walked up to the bathroom’s door as the moans continued, “Revan? Is everything alright?” Twilight called out nervously.
The bathroom went quite, then there was the sound of splashing water before the door jerked open and a wet, naked, and herbal-smelling twi’lek glomped onto the surprised unicorn, wrapping around her in a tight hug, “Thank you, Twi’! Thank you! Thank you! I’m me again!”
Rarity grinned widely as she watched Revan’s behavior, as well as at how red Twilight’s cheeks were getting, though the librarian’s erratic breathing was becoming a bit worrisome … “Revan? Darling? Would you let Twilight go?”
“Don’wanna,” Revan pouted, cuddling closer to her captive unicorn and breathing into her twitching ear, “Twi’ is all snuggly.”
“I’m sure she is,” out of the corner of her eye, Rarity could see that Fluttershy was torn between how adorable the scene before them was, and a mounting concern for Twilight’s well-being, “But she cannot breathe, darling.”
“Oh, sorry,” Twilight waved away the Jedi’s apology as she brought a hoof to her barrel, and then slowly pushed it out as she tried to steady her breathing, her face still burning enough to light a fireplace.
“Well, I guess I should be getting back, thanks for everything, Twi’, girls,” Revan reached out to take Twilight’s face in her hands, pulling her into a short, but intense, kiss, “And you remember my promise, Twilight Sparkle, because I meant every word.” Revan smiled at the unicorn, as she gave her a second, swift kiss on the nose, before she rose to her feet and casually sauntered down the stairs and out the door.
Turing away from the departing Jedi, Rarity fixed Twilight with a scrutinizing gaze as a wide smirk adorned her muzzle, “And what promise would this be, Twilight?”
“Meep!”