• Published 31st Aug 2012
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PonyFall: Leather and Lace - Dusty the Royal Janitor



It was another one of those days. You know the type... the kind where an omnipotent tomfool decides

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Ch.3 Suspicious Minds

There are few places in this world where I ever really feel truly relaxed. Most of the time, my mind is abuzz with a constant stream of hectic thoughts. Whether it be general worrying about the future, fussing over something unimportant like the intricacies and/or stupidities of a story, or otherwise just random inane trains of thought about nothing in particular, it’s a rare moment that I ever feel truly relaxed. There are specific places, though, that I can go if I ever find myself needing a break from all the random noise that makes up my brain. Places that make it easier for me to rope my thoughts in and achieve a greater state of calm. My bed is one place. As I previously said, there are few people as dedicated to the art of sleep as I. Another is my car, assuming that nothing crazy is happening on the road.

But probably the best place for me to go when I need to feel relaxed is my shower. There’s nothing quite like hot water and fresh-smelling soap to ease tension and relax the mind. There were some times in my life when things got particularly chaotic that I would shower twice, or even three times a day in an attempt to get my head in order. And the refreshed, clean feeling that I have when I get out of the stall always leaves me feeling restored and ready to face anything.

...at least, that’s how it usually worked.

I leaned against the shower wall, water cascading over my face as I pondered over the events of the day so far. What had I been thinking, bringing a strange woman into my house like that? One that had been naked in the middle of the street, no less! It should have occurred to me then and there that she was completely off her rocker. All those things I had considered when I found her lying in the middle of the road and ‘just plain crazy’ wasn’t one of them?

I groaned, massaging my temples with my fingers. Except that doesn’t add up either, I thought to myself. The body tends to reflect the mind and, like junkies, crazy people would probably have a certain look to them. I’ve run into a few while walking the streets of Chicago, and most people that suffer from mental disorders tend to have more distinctive faces. They’re all worry lines and matted hair. And as I observed before, this woman was physically perfect.

Unless... unless she only recently went crazy? Maybe that’s it! I thought, scratched my head, pondering the idea as a scenario began to form in my mind. What if, and admittedly this was a long shot, what if she was just a regular brony? A regular brony who went and styled her hair to look like Rarity’s for a cosplay or something at a convention. What if she ended up hitting her head somehow and it scrambled her brain a little bit? While she was unconscious, somebody came along and decided to rob her perhaps, and the thief left her naked. The blow to the head made her forget who she really was and when she looked at herself in the fireplace window, she recognized Rarity’s hairstyle and assumed that she was Rarity, only to remember that Rarity wasn’t human and that, by extension, something must be wrong with her body. Then when she looked at me, she noticed that I had hair similar to Caramel’s and she simply assumed that I was the hapless farmhand. It all made sense.

Well, compared to anything else it did anyway. It was still more than a little bit farfetched, and the whole “bonk-on-the-head-makes-you-think-you’re-a-completely-different-person” thing was generally more reserved for fiction than anything else. Compared to anything else, this was the first scenario I’d come up with that explained everything about the girl. After all, real life has spawned crazier scenarios than that before. Do a Google search for ‘Emperor Norton’ sometime if you want to see a life story that’s hilariously unlikely and insane.

I couldn’t be sure if I was right about the scenario, of course, but at least I had a way to make sense of the girl’s predicament. By extension, I had a good idea about how to act around her. Maybe I could even help her to remember who she was if I didn’t let her delusions fester for too long. Nodding to myself and with a renewed purpose, I turned off the water; my body freshly cleaned of ice cream puke, and stepped out of the shower to dry off.

Finishing up in the bathroom, I took a few minutes to shave and comb my hair after my shower was done. I threw on some clothes in the form of a pair of khaki pants and a new t-shirt with the Avengers logo on it and wandered downstairs to confront the girl about her delusions. Imagine the look on my face, then, when I realized she was nowhere to be found.

I checked the family room where I had left her to stay on the couch, and she simply wasn’t there anymore. The kitchen and the dining room were empty, the laundry room was busy taking care of my pukey clothes, but was otherwise empty, as was the downstairs bathroom. I dashed back upstairs to check the other rooms, but my room, the guest room, and the master bedroom were all completely empty as well. I knocked on my sister’s door, hoping that the girl would be in there, but only my sister answered the knock.

“Yeah?” Dani asked me, her eyebrow cocked.

“Have you seen the girl?” I asked her breathlessly.

“Miss Eggplant Hair?” she asked before nodding. “Yeah, she stumbled up here while you were in the shower. Said she was cold so I offered her a t-shirt and pants. But Will...” she said trailing off, “I think she might be crazy. She introduced herself as ‘Rarity.’ You know, the character from Friendship is Magic?”

I nodded to her. “Yeah, I know. She said the same thing to me. I think she might have hit her head and forgotten who she really is. I’m going to try to help her remember herself, assuming I can find her.”

Dani shrugged. “Well, she asked if we had any sewing materials anywhere. I told her that we had Great Grammy’s old sewing machine and some materials in the basement, so maybe you can find her there.”

I sighed in relief. “So she’s still here then?”

“Should be.”

“That’s a weight off my mind,” I said. “I was worried she’d left the place and wandered out into traffic or something. Thanks, Dani.” I turned to leave, but before I could take two steps, Dani grabbed me by the arm and yanked me back to face her. Her face was deadly serious as she glared right into my eyes.

“Will,” she began slowly, “are you really sure it’s a good idea to keep her around? I don’t feel comfortable with a half-mad woman in our basement. Especially not in the basement, come to think about it, given that’s where dad keeps all his guns.”

I sighed. “I don’t mean to keep her around long, Dani,” I said quietly. “I just want to keep her around long enough to help her remember who she really is. It’d be cruel of me to let her go back out into the world thinking she’s actually a pastel cartoon horse. She’d get eaten alive.” I slipped my arm out of her grasp. “Besides,” I continued, “I don’t think she’s dangerous. She doesn’t seem the violent sort.”

“The bump on your head tells me otherwise,” my sister commented, her eyebrows doing a wonderful impression of Mr. Spock’s.

“Granted,” I conceded, “but she was scared. People get violent when they’re scared. And when she calmed down she was perfectly civil. Ladylike even.” I shrugged. “Besides, I don’t think it’ll take very long for her to remember who she is. She’ll probably come to as soon as I show her an episode of the cartoon.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Dani asked. “What if she doesn’t ‘come to?’ What if she’s actually insane and isn’t willing to give up the idea that she’s supposed to be a pony?”

I scratched my chin. “I’m not a professional psychologist, Dani,” I said slowly. “I don’t know exactly what to do. All I can do is take my best guess what’s best in the situation. But I guess if she holds onto the idea that she’s Rarity that hard then I guess I’ll have to take her in to a mental institution or something. I don’t think I’m qualified to take care of someone mentally incompetent 24/7.”

Dani sighed. “Alright then. I guess that’s good enough.”

I smiled. “Trust me, she’ll be out of here in a day or two. Long before mom and dad get home.”

Dani smiled back. “Okay. I’ve got to finish this history paper. You go do whatever you need to do.”

I nodded and wandered back down the stairs. Turning to the basement door, I heard a rumbling noise in the basement, as well as a faint melody coming from down the stairs. Opening the door, I recognized it as Rarity’s “Art of the Dress” from episode 14. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for my encounter with the woman and headed down into the basement.

Our basement was a pretty dingy place. We barely used it for much other than storing old junk, so most of it was piled floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes. The ever-present rumble of the water filter permeated the room and there was little room to move around between the mazes of old clothes, VHS tapes, and other long forgotten relics from our family’s past. About the only section of the room that you could really move around in was the sewing corner; a section of the basement cordoned off for my grandmother when she came to visit. The sewing corner was the only section of the basement that we bothered to keep neat and tidy. It had a patch of pink carpet and a table and chair sitting under a ceiling light. On the table was my great grandmother’s antique sewing machine, a device that nobody I know has ever been able to get to work properly save for my grandmother. Up against the wall of the corner there were several shelving units that kept some bolts of fabric, needles, thread, and other sewing junk.

Sitting barefoot at the table was the woman who thought she was Rarity. She was dressed in a white babydoll t-shirt that read “I’m not bossy, my ideas are just better” and a pair of cyan blue pants. I couldn’t help but notice that she obviously wasn’t wearing a bra, though that didn’t exactly surprise me. I don’t think my sister had a bra big enough to fit her. I quickly reeled my mind in away from the naughty places it was trying to go when I realized that she was actually using my great grandmother’s sewing machine. That was rather stunning, given that most people can’t figure out how to use Great Grammy’s old machine.

I cleared my throat to get her attention but all I got in response was a wave of an arm. Raising an eyebrow I cleared my throat again, a little louder this time.

“Just a moment, darling,” she said, leaning over the rumbling machine. “I’m in the zone, as it were.”

...This was going to be harder than I thought, wasn’t it?

“Sorry,” I began, “but I think we sorta need to talk.” I did my best to get her attention. It seemed to work, as she suddenly sat up in the chair and turned to look at me. She hurriedly stood up, leaning against the table for support, and switched the sewing machine off.

“Why William, dear. Why didn’t you say it was you?” she twittered, a sunny expression on her face. She waved me over to her, enthusiasm leaking from her every pore. “Come, come, you’re just in time to try on your new suit!”

I blinked. “My what now?”

“Your suit, darling!” she said gleefully, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me over to the table. “I felt simply ghastly at how I’ve treated you today, after kicking you in the face and then vuhhh... vuhhh... vuhmmmaaa...” She clenched her eyes shut and twisted her face into a look of absolute revulsion.

“...Vomiting?” I asked.

“Yes, that,” she muttered, shaking off the look and composing herself. “After doing that all over your front. I treated you so horribly, darling, and all while you were simply trying to help me by taking me in! And I simply could not let that go uncorrected! Why, it’s my job, nay, my duty as a lady to make proper amends!”

I waved her off. “It’s nothing, really. You were frightened and I can’t really well blame you for the mess. That’s something you don’t have any control over. It’s no big deal.”

“Oh but it is!” she insisted. “Why after the way I acted, I’m surprised you can even stand to be in the same room as me!” she swooned, putting her wrist to her forehead. “And that’s why I simply must make you something in return for your hospitality, and in apology for the horrid way I’ve acted.”

“I really don’t think it’s necessary to-”

“And that’s why I’ve gone ahead and made you a new suit!” she said, grinning and motioning to the table next to the sewing machine.

I blinked. Indeed, there was a brand new dark blue suit sitting there finished on the table. It didn’t seem to have a tag or anything indicating that it came from a store of some kind, but instead on the inside under the collar had a stylized ‘R’ embroidered into it. It shimmered a little in the light, like it was lined from some fancy, polished fabric of some kind. Maybe satin or something? I know next to jack squat about fabric and sewing and stuff like that. I looked from the suit to her and back again.

“What do you think?” she said brightly.

“...You mean to tell me you made that in only the hour I was bathing?” I said, dumbfounded.

She shrugged modestly. “Well, I would have been faster, but since I can’t seem to use my magic without my horn it took a little longer than it normally would have for me. Thankfully these fingers are almost as good. Oh, and I’m almost done with your tie,” she said, pointing at the sewing machine, which, lo and behold, had a half-finished bright red tie sitting underneath the needle.

I stood there baffling at the clothes. Not only did this woman manage to properly use a sewing machine that was incredibly finicky to the point where half the time even my grandmother couldn’t get it to work for her, but with it she managed to stitch together a (surprisingly good looking) suit, and was halfway through making a tie. All in under an hour. That couldn’t be possible, could it?

I jumped a little as I felt the woman grab hold of me and start slipping on the suit. “I’ve never made a suit for this body shape before, so that was something of a challenge. Human beings are rather shaped like Minotaurs though, so I at least had an idea of how the body would move. Still, I didn’t have your measurements, so I had to eyeball some from our last encounter.”

The jacket that she slipped onto me fit like a glove, and whatever material it was made out of was by far more comfortable than most other suits I had worn. “This is eyeballing?!” I stuttered, dumbfounded.

“Well,” she chuckled, “I am rather good at guessing.”

I looked in the full-body mirror that was set up against the wall of the sewing corner. The jacket really was very nice on me. It fit well and was quite comfortable. I’d never known any other human being to be as fast and as skillful with fabric like this. And all of this was made with just estimates?

Could it be? No... No of course it couldn’t.

...could it?

“Oh that’s simply marvelous!” she said, clapping her hands together. “It seems I got the measurements right after all! And navy blue really is your color, isn’t it?”

I shook my head. “Ma’am, you didn’t have to do this for me.”

“Oh nonsense,” she said, waving me off, and going back to working on the tie. “And please, darling, it’s Rarity. Calling me ‘ma’am’ rather makes me sound like an old nursemaid, doesn’t it?”

I puzzled over this new development, leaning against the storage shelves. Getting hit on the head doesn’t impart superhuman sewing abilities, does it? Of course not, that’s just ridiculous. If I were to get beaned over the head and then assume I was a fireman somehow, I wouldn’t know the first thing about firefighting. I’d probably run into a burning building and get my ass burned off. But here this woman, who thought she was Rarity from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, was sewing up a tie to go with the suit she had made me in less than an hour, and she was handling herself at the antique sewing machine better than anybody I’d ever seen before in my life.

Okay, well... this is easy enough to explain, right? She’s obviously a seamstress. That’s probably why she picked Rarity to cosplay. Still, her work with the sewing machine was absolutely prodigious.

But no, there was no way that she could actually be the Rarity. Could there? It’s true I was starting to entertain the idea. I read comic books after all, and if you’re going to read comic books you have to be open to the weird, the insane, and the seemingly impossible.

I’ve often entertained the idea of what I would do if I met myself from the future or from another universe or something. I’ve pondered the sorts of things I would do if I were to find myself traveling through time or with some kind of superpower or with my brain suddenly implanted inside a robot or something. But let’s face it, I never thought such a thing would actually happen. Now, supposedly, I have a transformed little pastel pony sitting here in my basement sewing me up a tie.

I got to thinking again. I’ve always been of the mind that before you jump to a conclusion like aliens or government conspiracies or other wild answers that you should rule out all other choices first, and I decided that should apply here as well. At the same time, though, I’ve always ascribed to the idea of Occam’s razor: The simplest explanation is usually the best explanation. And right now, those two philosophies were at odds. The simplest explanation was that this was actually Rarity. It explained why she was lost in the middle of the road. It explained why she was naked, since ponies don’t normally wear clothes. It explained why she acted the way she did, the hair, the speech patterns, the cutie mark and everything.

Meanwhile, my “bonk-on-the-head” theory was incredibly complicated and necessitated a whole lot of highly improbable events to come together all at once. She had to be a brony, she had to be cosplaying Rarity, she had to be a seemingly supernatural seamstress, she had to hit her head. She had to be robbed - not just of her valuables but her clothes as well, and nothing else had to be done to her by the hypothetical criminal in question. Finally, all of this had to culminate in a surprisingly coherent delusion of identity. In terms of simplicity, the former seemed far more plausible than the latter.

And yet, it was crazy. That the “real” Rarity was somehow zapped into the real world and turned human. At least the head trauma theory seemed somewhat grounded in reality. The other option was a completely fictitious scenario.

I scratched my chin, pondering what to do to figure out the mystery behind this girl. I needed a test. A test to somehow prove that she was the real Rarity.

Or maybe... a test to prove that she wasn’t!

If she was just a brony who had been bonked on the head into thinking she was Rarity, then she’d have some level of brony knowledge wouldn’t she? Knowledge wouldn’t just go away, especially not if it was related to the delusion in question. At least, I don’t think it would. More likely it would just be buried, waiting to be dug up. Maybe if I asked her a few questions about brony stuff that wasn’t specifically in the show, I’d be able to prove whether or not she was really a regular ‘pegasister.’

Yes... if she could answer my questions about the brony subculture correctly, then she was obviously just a brony who had suffered an accident. But if she couldn’t...

Well... if she couldn’t, then the best explanation there was was that she was telling the truth, I suppose.

Not sure what I would do in that case.

I cleared my throat to get her attention. “So, Rarity,” I started, the purple-haired woman looking up from the tie, “How’s Nyx?”

She blinked, cocking her head to the side a little. “Pardon?”

“You know, Nyx? Twilight’s adopted daughter? Black alicorn filly?”

Rarity put a hand to her mouth and said. “Goodness, William! No such filly exists, I should say. I believe I would know if dear Twilight had a daughter. The poor dear can barely tear herself away from her books to eat, let alone take care of a child. And I would certainly know if there was an alicorn filly living in the library!”

I nodded. ‘Strike one,’ I thought to myself. Most bronies I’d met at least knew of Pen Stroke’s fanfiction, Past Sins, and its main character Nyx. The story gained a level of infamy for its popularity, despite being released somewhat half-finished with a rather Mary-sue main character. A lot of fan art and even some hate art had been released pertaining to it, and most people seemed to have some sort of opinion about it. Surely most bronies would have at least heard about Nyx in passing if nothing else.

I gulped a little and continued. “Well, she’s shown up in all sorts of articles in Equestria Daily. I thought most people knew about her.”

Rarity looked at me out of the corner of her eye, a very suspicious look on her face. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that particular newspaper.”

‘Strike two...’

“I see,” I said, starting to sweat a little. This was completely new, meeting a brony that hadn’t even heard of Equestria Daily. I suppose it was possible that she had become a brony through real life friends and didn’t do much on the internet, but surely something about the website would have been said in passing, right?

It couldn’t be... I had to know once and for all though.

“Well that’s alright. The story is kinda half-baked. Besides, Lauren Faust never intended there to be more than a couple alicorns anyway, right?” I stammered.

“...Who?”

Damn.

Strike three.

You’re out.

I doubted there was a brony alive who didn’t know the name Lauren Faust. Especially not given that it was one of the points used to sell the show to many people outside the targeted age group. There was no way that this woman was a brony. So really, the only way she could know about Rarity was...

Sherlock Holmes once said, “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

The truth. The whole time, this woman had been telling the truth. No delusion at all.

My knees buckled as the revelation came over me. I stumbled back, slumping against the wall and slapping a palm to my forehead, my brain trying and failing to process all of the implication of this event. Here, in my sewing corner, was a being that by all rights should not exist. And yet here she was.

I have no idea how long I sat there in a stupor, my brain refusing to process what lay right before me. It was like my entire body shut down, waiting for somebody to press the reset button. I must have looked like death itself, slumped against the wall like that, my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open, giving the opposite wall the thousand-yard stare. Truthfully, I probably didn’t stay like that for more than a few moments, but it felt like hours to me as I stared blankly ahead, my mind caught in a futile infinite loop.

Fortunately though, Rarity was there to bring me out of it.

“William?” she asked, standing up and walking unsteadily over to me. “Are you quite alright?” She reached a hand down and grabbed mine, helping me to my feet and breaking me out of my stupor.

“Yeah...” I said, as if in a trance. “Yeah I think I’ll be okay.”

“Very well,” she said.

And then she slapped me across the face.

“Agh!” I shouted. “What was that for?!” I jumped as Rarity suddenly pinned me against the wall, her arms putting all of their weight down into my shoulders. She was a fair bit stronger than she looked. It probably came from fighting the forces of evil every other week.

Rarity gave me one of the worst death glares I’d ever received, her face not two inches away from my own. Her eyes spoke volumes of suspicion and fury as she looked dead into my face, promising a thousand unspeakable tortures if I did not manage to appease her. “Perhaps, dear William, you could tell me just how, if you are not a pony, you know of Equestria? How, exactly you have a shirt with Vinyl Scratch upon it? And how... just how... you know of my friend Twilight Sparkle?!”

...Ah darn.

Author's Note:

It is a dark and gloomy night in the cemetery, as the fog settles frigidly over the half-dead grass. The tombstones jut out of the ground like lonely mountains, marking the graves of the lost souls of this earth. In the eerie silence of the night, the starless sky suddenly alights with noise. A miserable, groaning sound pierces the air as the ground beneath a single grave begins to shift and churn. Then all at once, a dirt-encrusted hoof shoots out of the ground like some perversion of a young sprout. Another dirty blue-gray hoof follows soon after, pawing at the ground and forcing as much dirt away from the old gravesite as it can. after several agonizing minutes, a pale face, with sunken in eyes and a stringy white mane emerges from the ground, his dark grey eyes glowing with mischief and malice. The face suddenly twists into a grin as he pulls the rest of himself free, revealing that he's wearing a royal janitor's vest. Finally, as he pulls his cutie mark free of the loamy earth, revealing a broom and dustpan plastered on his speckled flank, he cackles maliciously, announcing his presence to all of Equestria!

"I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!"


So yes, my apologies that I took so long, but I found myself devoid of creativity after a personal tragedy. In any case, I should be back now. Chapter 4, actually, is already done, and just needs to be edited before I can put it up.

In any case, it's time we got the whole identity thing out of the way, and combined with the next chapter, I should have all the necessary exposition taken care of. So I hope you enjoyed this chapter despite how heavy on the exposition and personal musings it may be.

Anyway, the song for this chapter's title is 'Suspicious Minds' by Elvis

Have a nice day, y'all! :D