Alternative Solutions
Chapter 2
Alternative Solutions
Rarity had returned to her shop and immediately went to work on repairing the damage to Rainbow Dash’s costume in her shop’s workroom at the back of the building. She had already made the effort to purchase the fabric for this task, so she had resolved herself to at least finish the job, despite the devastating discovery she had made along the way back from the store. Once she was finished with the final sewing, she felt a bittersweet satisfaction. Such a shame this may never get to be used for its intended purpose… she thought to herself as she held up her completed work.
Knock, knock, knock!
Rarity carefully set aside the repaired costume and opened the door to the room. Standing just outside in the main area of the shop were all of her friends.
“We’re here!” Pinkie Pie cheerfully announced.
“We got your text,” said Twilight as Rarity allowed her and the others to step into the room and then closed the door behind them. “You said it was an emergency?”
“Everythin’ all right, sugarcube?” asked Applejack.
Rarity seated herself on a nearby chaise lounge and calmly replied, “Well, since you asked… the answer is NOOOO!” At that sudden outburst, she collapsed onto her back on the lounge and started loudly sobbing.
“Oh no. What happened?” asked Fluttershy.
Rarity sniffled as she explained, “Those former… Shadowbolt… girls stole our video concept!” As the others looked at each other in concern, Rarity sat up and continued, “I saw them filming over at Sunshine Plaza. They copied my design ideas and everything!” She monetarily relaxed as she remarked, “So of course they looked absolutely fabulous.” She then resumed her dramatic sobbing as she finished, “But the worst part is that they’re all incredible dancers!”
Pinkie gasped and exclaimed, “Major bummer in the summer!” She then held up a tissue toward Rarity and offered, “Tissue for your issue?”
“Ta,” thanked Rarity as she took the tissue, calmly wiped away the running makeup caused by her tears, then loudly blew her nose. As she wadded up the used tissue and tossed it into a nearby trashcan, she continued, “Everyone is now counting on me, on the video to win us the prize money for the camp.” She sighed and lied back down on her lounge. She then clenched her fists and grumbled, “Oh, how could I have been such a fool?! Of course those girls stole my concept! I practically served it to them on a platter!”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” assured Twilight. “Those girls had been living by the old Shadowbolts philosophy for years. It’ll take time for them to understand that winning isn’t everything.”
“You didn’t seem to have a problem rejecting their old way of thinking,” Rainbow Dash pointed out.
“Spike and I never fully embraced the Shadowbolts philosophy,” Twilight clarified. “It was much easier for us to cast it aside once the organization was disbanded.”
“Eh, maybe this was all for the best,” muttered Applejack.
“Hmm? W-what do you mean?” asked Rarity in confusion.
“Uh, your concept and costumes are really awesome,” Applejack carefully explained, “but, uh… our dancin’…”
Sunset smiled uneasily as she finished, “Nnnnot so much.”
Applejack couldn’t help but giggle and remarked, “We could barely get in a two-step without trippin’ over each other’s boots.”
Everyone in the room except Rarity giggled and laughed in response.
“You can say that again!” quipped Pinkie Pie.
“Nonsense!” snapped Rarity as she stood up. “You all looked great!” She hesitated for a moment before she admitted, “Okay, maybe not great, but, but… but it was getting there!” She started pacing around the room as she firmly continued, “And the point is we don’t have to let them win! That is our video concept! And I am going to find those former Shadowbolts and let them know that they have messed with the wrong girls!” She growled furiously, then raised her first and firmly declared, “Who’s with me?!”
An awkward silence filled the room as no one was willing to accept Rarity’s request.
Crestfallen, Rarity lowered her arm, then cleared her throat and sheepishly asked, “N-no, no, seriously, who is with me? I have no idea where those girls might be.”
“I’ll go,” offered Twilight with a smile. “As a former Shadowbolt agent myself, I’m familiar with all the secret locations within this city that they’re likely to use. Not to mention, as their former teammate, I might have a better chance of being able to reason with them.”
“That’s the spirit!” exclaimed Rarity excitedly. “Come on!” She immediately grabbed Twilight’s wrist and pulled her along as she rushed out the door. The rest of their friends simply watched their sudden departure in confusion.
Later that afternoon, Rarity stood with her back against a wall at a corner into an alleyway. Over her typical outfit, she was wearing a dark blue hooded cloak and a pair of sunglasses. She peered around the corner into the alleyway, then rushed over to a small crate on the other side and ducked behind it. She then hopped over the small crate and pressed her back against a taller crate further down the alleyway. She then dove and tumbled back across the alleyway to hide behind a pair of trashcans. She then removed one of the trashcan lids and used it as a form of cover as she snuck back across the alleyway to hide behind a dumpster further down.
“Is all of that movement really necessary?” asked Twilight, still wearing just her typical outfit, as she casually walked over to Rarity and made no attempts to hide herself.
Rarity removed her sunglasses and replied with a hushed voice, “We’re tracking down a group of secret agents. We must be very careful to not let them be aware of our presence until we’re ready to make our move.”
“Former secret agents,” corrected Twilight. She spoke in a normal voice as she continued, “And besides, Shadowbolts agents were almost never so conspicuous about sneaking around, unlike what you’ve probably seen in those spy movies. Often, one of the best ways to avoid detection was to simply blend in with the crowd and act like a random nobody. Trust me, I’ve had lots of experience with doing just that.”
Rarity immediately shushed Twilight and whispered, “Do you hear that?”
Twilight listened carefully and soon noticed the faint noise of some kind of pop music playing.
“That’s the music they were playing for their video,” whispered Rarity. She peered around the dumpster and saw a partially opened door at the end of the alleyway, and the music seemed to be coming from within the room beyond that doorway.
“Bingo!” whispered Rarity in satisfaction. She then turned to Twilight and silently made a series of hand gestures, first by going over something, then going forward, then beating her fist into her palm, then pointing towards them and then down, then pointing at herself and then behind her back, and finished off with a little disco dance.
Twilight rolled her eyes and said, “There was an unwritten rule among the Shadowbolts that, if a fellow agent was trying to overcomplicate things to the point of absurdity, then we would have to remind them of the acronym of K.I.S.S.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow and quietly asked, “What does that mean?”
Still speaking in a normal tone, Twilight sharply replied, “It means, ‘Keep it simple, stupid.’” She gestured at the door the music was coming from and explained, “The door’s wide open, so we can just walk right in and talk to them.” Without even waiting for a response, Twilight walked ahead towards the door.
Rarity sighed and mumbled, “This is just not my day…” She then stood up and followed Twilight.
The two girls walked through the doorway and, sure enough, they saw the four former Shadowbolt girls practicing their dance moves in the empty room. Just as Rarity had seen earlier at Sunshine Plaza, Sour Sweet was dancing in a disco style, Sunny Flare in a flamenco style, Sugarcoat in a street ballet style, and Lemon Zest in a hip-hop style, and all four girls wore costumes reflecting their respective dance styles.
The former Shadowbolts soon began to notice their unexpected guests, but continued their dance moves, albeit now with smug smiles on their faces. Once they struck the final pose at the end of the music track, they all had their gazes turned towards the two guests.
While Rarity’s jaw had dropped, Twilight quietly muttered, “Okay, even I have to admit that was a little impressive.”
“Hey girls!” greeted Sour Sweet with her sweet face. “So what did you think of our routine?” Her head spun around to her sour face and added, “Scared yet?”
“Don’t change the subject, Sour Sweet!” snapped Rarity.
The former Shadowbolts stared are her in confusion. “But you didn’t bring up a subject,” Sugarcoat pointed out.
“You, either!” Rarity shouted back.
After a momentary pause, Sour Sweet rolled her eyes and muttered, “Ooookay…”
“You know why we’re here!” accused Rarity furiously. “You stole my—”
Twilight cleared her throat and gave Rarity a disapproving frown.
“…our music video idea!” continued Rarity. “Now… change your concept, or else!”
As the other girls began stretching for another run of their dance, Sour Sweet switched to her sweet face and responded, “Sorry, but we can’t.”
“And why is that?” asked Twilight.
“Because we care about winning,” Sunny Flare smugly replied. “Duh!”
“And we will,” added Sour Sweet, “because we’re just about to submit our video.”
The former Shadowbolts couldn’t resist a mocking laughter at that statement.
“You’re what?” mumbled Rarity as her jaw dropped again. She then smacked herself in the face and waved her hands around as she exclaimed, “It doesn’t matter! Because we are still doing our video the way we planned!”
“Go ahead,” remarked Sour Sweet. She then switched to her sour face and added, “But there’s just one flaw in your little plan.”
“By the time you submit yours,” explained Sunny Flare, “it’ll just look like you copied us.”
“Except a worse version,” added Sugarcoat.
Rarity was about to hurl yet another accusation at the former Shadowbolts, but then Lemon Zest switched the boom box back on and the music started playing again. The four girls immediately went back to their dance routine without saying another word.
Rarity clenched her fists and growled furiously. She then turned around and threw a punch with her right fist against the door, throwing it further wide open as she then stormed out of the building. Twilight glanced back and forth between Rarity and the dancing girls, then turned away and left without saying anything.
By the time Twilight caught up to Rarity, they had just moved out of sight of the former Shadowbolts, so Rarity immediately started shaking her right hand around as she winced and exclaimed, “Ouch!” As she continued waving around that sore hand, she grumbled under her breath, “I should not be doing that, regardless of my temper.”
Twilight calmly placed a hand on Rarity’s shoulder as they walked back Rarity’s shop. There was no need for anything to be said, for they were both in silent agreement: that confrontation with the former Shadowbolts definitely could have gone much better.
Back at her shop and after removing her cloak, Rarity delivered the bad news to all of her friends. Her temper from the confrontation had long since faded, and now all she felt was sadness from letting everyone down.
“Oh, this is all my fault,” moaned Rarity, hanging her head in shame. “All the money we raised is gone, and now we have no music video. I should never have convinced you all that we could pull this off in so little time.”
“Are you crazy?” said Rainbow Dash with a smile and supportive attitude. “We’re great at doing stuff super-fast. I mean, look at Pinkie Pie. She just built that castle made entirely out of chocolate bars while we were talking.”
Everyone glanced over towards Pinkie Pie and, sure enough, they saw her placing the final piece onto a model castle that was made entirely out of chocolate bars — dark brown tiles and plates of sizes 1x1 and 1x2. The model stood as tall as Pinkie and bore a strong resemblance to the castle that Princess Twilight lived in back in Equestria.
As soon as her work was done, Pinkie immediately grabbed one of the chocolate bars and took a bite out of it, then offered it to Rarity and asked, “Want some?”
Normally, Rarity would have been appalled at Pinkie bringing so much chocolate into the middle of her workroom, but at this moment, she just couldn’t bring herself to even care about anything besides her failure with the music video. “What I want is a new video concept!” replied Rarity without even lifting her head.
Pinkie shrugged and took another bite from the chocolate bar in her hand.
“So let’s create one!” suggested Rainbow Dash.
“Really?” asked Rarity, her spirits already rising.
Everyone else in the room nodded and said various words of agreement.
“I’m sure if we all put our heads together, we’ll come up with something even better than before,” remarked Sunset.
Rarity sighed and muttered, “Okay, I suppose it’s worth a try.”
Pinkie Pie, having just finished the chocolate bar in her hand, immediately rushed around the room, grabbed all of her friends, and threw them together into a tight huddle with the heads in contact with each other. After a few seconds of holding the tight — and for some, uncomfortable — formation, Pinkie quietly remarked, “I think it’s working!”
“Yeah! Ah got somethin’!” Applejack spoke up. She pulled herself out of the huddle and everyone gathered around more comfortably as she continued, “Okay, so we’re in the kitchen at mah place… bakin’ some apple fritters! An’ then, a fresh batch come outta the oven… an’ everybody’s havin’ a great time!”
Most of the others smiled and muttered in agreement with the idea.
“Wait, so basically, we are just eating pastries in your kitchen in our music video?” asked Rarity skeptically.
Applejack chuckled nervously and confessed, “Uh, Ah guess Ah’m just kinda hungry.”
Rarity sighed, then turned to the rest of her friends and asked, “Anyone have another idea?”
“Oh! Oh! I do!” Rainbow Dash spoke up. She ran behind one of the clothes racks in the room and continued, “So… we’re in the middle of the jungle… and we’re being chased by henchmen who are shooting poison arrows at us!” She grabbed a few coat hangers and tossed them over the rack towards her friends, causing them to scream and dodge the flying projectiles. She then gathered up a bunch of random clothes from the rack and tried to form some monstrous shape with them as she slowly emerged from behind one side of the rack and continued, “When suddenly, out of nowhere, the shadow of a giant beast appears!”
“Wait a second!” Twilight suddenly spoke up. “Isn’t this a scene from the latest Daring Do adventure novel?”
Rainbow Dash dropped the pile of clothes and nervously chuckled before she sheepishly replied, “Oh yeah, that’s why it seemed so cool. Never mind.”
Rarity sighed in frustration and began to carefully pick up some of the discarded clothes.
“Okay! I’ve got it!” Pinkie Pie suddenly spoke up.
Rarity sighed again and muttered, “Please, do tell.”
As Rarity set one piece of clothing back on the rack, Pinkie began, “We’ll start out on…” Pinkie quickly gathered all of the discarded clothes and all the clothes from another rack and tossed it all into a big pile in the middle of the room, then finished, “…the Moon!” She reached into the pile and pulled out a sparkling blue cape and threw it on herself as she continued, “And we’ll be wearing really sparkly costumes. No, wait!” She suddenly tossed away the cape and dove into the pile, then reemerged with a space helmet over her head. “We’ll be in spacesuits!”
The others in the room looked at each other, then turned back to Pinkie.
Pinkie suddenly rushed out of the room, then rushed back in with an armful of wedges of cheese — yellow 1x1 sloped bricks. “We’re surrounded by gorgonzola cheese!” continued Pinkie as she tossed most of the cheese wedges all over the room. “But then, an alien space midget walks over and starts to eat the cheese!” She tossed the last cheese wedge in her hand over towards Spike.
Spike caught the wedge of cheese, glanced around at everyone in the room, then shrugged and took a bite out of the cheese. “Mmm! Rich with buttery undertones,” he remarked before taking another bite.
With such an outrageously silly concept, it wasn’t long before most of the girls in the room were laughing. The only one who didn’t even crack a smile was Rarity.
“STOP!!” Rarity furiously shouted, bringing immediate silence to everyone in the room. “This will never work!”
“Aw, why not?” moaned Pinkie in disappointment.
Rarity pulled a face from frustration, then took a deep breath and calmly explained, “Because the contest is for dance music videos, and not one of your ideas included dancing at all!”
“But they were pretty funny, huh?” remarked Pinkie with a giggle. She turned to Rainbow and added, “I liked yours, Rainbow Dash.”
“Thanks, Pinkie,” responded Rainbow with a smile. “Too bad copyright laws won’t allow us to use it.”
Rarity tightly gripped her hair piece and growled in frustration.
“Are you okay?” asked Fluttershy in concern.
Rarity’s immense frustration caused her to pull a few more faces as she furiously responded. “Okay? No, I am not okay! The contest deadline is tomorrow night, and we have just been wasting time!” She then stormed out of the room and slammed the door shut on her way out.
Needless to say, everyone in the room was quite shocked from witnessing Rarity having such a complete meltdown right in front of them. Even more unnerving was the realization that their dismal efforts to help, despite their good intentions, had only made things worse for their friend.
“Maybe we should have offered her some more serious suggestions,” mused Twilight.
Rainbow Dash scoffed and grumbled, “Ya think?”
“Oh, who’re we kiddin’?” muttered Applejack dejectedly as she leaned her back against the nearest wall and crossed her arms. “Rarity’s right. With those girls stealin’ our concept, there’s practically no way we can win that prize money now. An’ since we already gave away what little we had already raised, there sure ain’t no way we can afford the upcoming payment.”
“Well, we all knew that we were taking a huge risk,” Sunset pointed out. “We didn’t want to fall into the same trap of only meeting minimum payments and decided to go for all or nothing.” She sighed and lowered her head. “And it looks like we’ll be going with nothing…”
“How are we going to explain this to Gloriosa?” asked Fluttershy sadly.
No one had a good answer to that question, and silence fell across the room for a moment.
“Is the bank-robbing idea still on the table?” Pinkie Pie suddenly asked. “I got a few crowbars we could use.”
“Not an appropriate time, Pinkie,” Sunset responded flatly.
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I loved this.
Somewhere theres a goldfish poking its head out the surface of the water through what used to be the side of the bowl?
Bank robbing? With your reputation? Pinkie, where in your mind did that sound like a good idea?
8746163
Where in Pinkie's mind? EVERWHERE!
I got a laugh out of the K.I.S.S. part. And go way for everyone to describe their concepts.
What are the Shadowbolts planning on using the money from the contest on? I know will get that answer in 2 weeks but still can't help but ask. Part of me thinks its gonna be for Indigo's virus but I don't think that can be it.
8745981 I remember that acronym was used by some of my elementary school teachers, so I figured it was something worth sharing with everyone.
8746163 If you recall in the previous chapter, Applejack had remarked that if the music video was a failure, then robbing a bank would be their only alternative. Of course, she was being sarcastic, but we all know that Pinkie Pie tends to take certain remarks more seriously than she probably should.
8746312 All I can confirm is that the answer will indeed be revealed in the next chapter.
Oh sweet Celestia it's back.
Yessss
This last part of this chapter feels like the girls are having a slumber party as opposed to the girls making plans for a music video concept.