On the Fine Art of Giving Yourself Advice

by McPoodle

Chapter 5: The Alien (P. Rarity, H. Rarity)

Author's Note:

I suppose I should warn you that this chapter gets serious in the middle. Like, punch-you-in-the-gut serious. So brace yourself when a certain truck shows up.

After Trixie had walked out with her purchase, Prim decided to close the store a few minutes early.

“You’ve got a way home, right?” Ms. Hemline asked her.

“Yes,” Rarity replied with false confidence. She knew that she had pushed her employer in this world way too much over the course of the afternoon, and she feared what might happen to her career if she accidentally pushed her too far.

After Prim had locked up the store, she walked over to a covered carriage. Rarity positioned herself so she could watch Prim remove a straight key from her purse, similar to but not the same as the jagged key used to lock the building, and used that to unlock the vehicle. She had then sat herself down inside the carriage, closed the door, and used the same key to activate the artifact, for that was surely what this vehicle was—it moved all by itself! Prim had then directed the carriage to drive away, onto the street.

Rarity immediately began to regret the decision not to ask for help in getting home. There were men and women everywhere, many of them in carriages, and none of them looked like they would be helpful. She saw a bench, with a covered enclosure. She quickly walked over to it and sat down to collect herself.

After a few minutes of not getting anywhere mentally, she remembered her purse, and began to dig through it. She found a wallet containing a large number of flat cards, like business cards but bigger and made of a smooth, stiff substance she had never encountered before. One of the cards was a “Canterlot Metro Bus Pass” and as she craned her too-short neck around to check, this very bench was designated a “bus stop”. Rarity had a vague recollection of the term “bus” being used by Doctor Hooves, to refer to some kind of thingamajig to move electricity back and forth. So either buses zapped you from one place to another via teleportation, or else it was just a bigger carriage for moving lots of men and women around.

Rarity wiggled her toes around in her shoes. Men and women had squishy feet, and shoes could only do so much to compensate for the flaws of the individual hoof (or foot). Therefore, men and women were less likely to just walk to get where they wanted to go. Also, this explained why shoes were so much bigger in this world. The boots, for example, reached way higher on the leg than the vast majority of pony boots.

Another card was a student identification card, which told Rarity that she attended “Canterlot High School”.

Equestria had general schools for fillies and colts, and professional schools for mares and stallions. Rarity didn’t know what a “high” school was for. What she knew was that she, Trixie and Mirror Applejack attended that school, and Mirror Cheerilee was part of the staff at either that school or some other one.

“Whoa!” a men-or-women said, interrupting Rarity’s thoughts. “I like the way you sit! You do you!” The alien was a female, of an aqua green color scheme that Rarity didn’t recognize. She held her hand out, fingers curled in, thumb up.

Rarity mirrored the gesture, a weak grin on her face.

The stranger walked away.

Rarity cautiously looked around her for other aliens sitting. She found a few children sitting on the edge of the street. All of them were sitting upright, their backs nearly vertical, an angle that ponies could not comfortably sustain. Rarity experimentally got out of her pony posture and matched what they were doing, and felt an immense relief in her back.

Resuming her purse examination, Rarity found a number of “credit cards”, identical to ones she had seen Mrs. White and Trixie use to buy their purchases. Another card had her name, a painting of her face, and what must have been her address on it. This discovery made Rarity a lot more confident that she could get to her home on this world.

Trixie sat down on a neighboring bench, a bag of candy in her hand. She looked over at a schedule on the wall of the enclosure, then started eating some peanut butter brittle.

Just then a tinny sort of music started coming out of Rarity’s purse, which was also faintly vibrating. She dug through her purse until she had removed the small flat rectangular object that was making the noise. It looked similar to Trixie’s toy from earlier. The device instructed her on how to “answer the call”. Once she had done so she heard a familiar voice come out of it. “Rarity? It’s your mother.”

Rarity was startled, but not too startled—unicorns had devised all sorts of strange ways to communicate with each other. Holding the rectangle before her in both hands she said “Yes I hear you, Mother.” It had been in what was perhaps too loud a voice, judging from Trixie’s reaction.

“Just wanted to let you know that your father and I have checked into our rooms at Puerto Vallarta. How was your first day at work?” The name “Puerto Vallarta”, which Rarity didn’t recognize, was pronounced in a distinct accent—Rarity wasn’t the only member of her family good at putting on an accent.

The conclusion was obvious: Mirror Rarity’s parents had abandoned her to go to some foreign tourist resort—just like her own parents.

“It was good, Mother,” Rarity said, a bit stiffly. “I got my cutie mark.”

“Your mark?! How wonderful! Hondo! Rarity got her mark today!”

Another voice intruded into the conversation: “Your mark? Is it a football? Is it three footballs? Is my wonderful daughter finally going to embrace her future in sport?!”

“It’s not a football!” Rarity exclaimed, her Canterlot accent intensifying by force of will. What even is a football? Rarity thought. Is it a ball in the shape of a foot?

“So what is it?” asked Rarity’s mother.

“I’ll…I’ll let you know when you get back,” Rarity deflected. “Now then: where is Sweetie Belle? Am I going to have to take care of her?” Rarity considered the chances of her parents’ taking the foal with them on vacation to be approximately 0%, regardless of universe.

“Didn’t she tell you? She’s staying the night at her friend Apple Bloom’s house.”

Either her parents were even more incompetent than usual, or the mirror versions of both Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were older than the ones in Equestria, old enough to pull off a sleepover.

Rarity sighed—there really wasn’t anything she would be able to make her parents do by this point. “Alright,” she said. “So I guess I’m on my own.”

“That’s my big girl!” exclaimed Rarity’s father. “Now have fun! We’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Two weeks! What am I…” She stopped on seeing a message on the communication device, telling her that the call had ended.

Rarity looked over at Trixie, who hadn’t been hiding the fact that she had listened in on the entire call. “Where did you get that plate of yours, anyway?” she asked.

This was perhaps the wrong question to ask, as Trixie backed away from her. “The…Church?” she responded.

A long rectangular carriage pulled up in front of them. A door opened, and a few men and women walked out. Trixie seemed not to have noticed.

“The ‘church’?” Rarity asked, batting her eyelashes innocently. “Which one?”

This was an even worse question, judging by Trixie’s reaction. “The Markist Church,” Trixie said flatly.

“Oh. Of course, the Markist Church!” Rarity said quickly, trying to recover from her mistake. “I must have forgotten.”

“Yeah, you do that a lot,” Trixie said, going on the offensive and leaning towards Rarity. “Like calling your mark a cutie mark. Do you know who else uses that term?”

“Is that your ‘bus’ leaving?” Rarity said, pointing at the departing vehicle.

Trixie jerked her head to the side, to see that the bus was indeed leaving. “Not again!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet and racing after it. “This isn’t over, Rarity!” she cried over her shoulder before jumping up on a sideboard and pounding the door with her fists until the bus finally stopped and let her in.

# # #

Rarity wasn’t entirely sure how the ‘bus’ schedule worked, as ponies didn’t appear to express times the same way as men-and-women. (Actually they did; they just punctuated it differently.) But she figured she had a while to wait, so she decided to find whatever game Trixie had accessed on her communication device.

What she found, and was immediately obsessed by, was the other Rarity’s digital photo collection. Not only did she find pictures of herself and many of her friends’ counterparts in this world, but also fantastic examples of men-and-women’s fashion to examine. She was also able to confirm two things. First that her sister Sweetie was indeed old enough to spend the night over at Applejack’s sister’s house without Rarity being morally obligated to spend the night with her. And second, that the other Rarity was indeed probably obsessed by Applejack, to judge by the sheer volume of photos of her from just today. (She thought it was today. Again, men-and-women had a different system for time and dates than ponies.)

Looking around her, Rarity spotted a store with a comically-large camera in front. She got up and strode into that store with determination, declaring her intention to get a copy of her photo collection into a physical photo album. If at all possible, she needed to take these photographs home with her, and taking a mysterious artifact with her—and away from her counterpart—didn’t seem like a very good idea.

The clerk was insistent that he only transferred photos from a “USB stick”. Rarity had no idea what that was, but from the atrociousness of the name she was certain that it had been named by its nerdy inventor, instead of by a certified marketing analyst.

Rarity, even at the tender age of ten, knew what charm was, and how to use it to get what she wanted. However, she wasn’t sure if those same techniques would work in this older body. And she really didn’t want to use some of the things she had seen mares do to get what they wanted from stubborn stallions. So she settled on just a lip wibble.

That apparently was enough. The clerk produced his “laptop”, connected a cable to Rarity’s device and with her direction transferred a good deal of the photo collection. This was then further transferred into one of the “sticks”, and that was finally transferred to a machine rather closely resembling the applique machine.

A half hour later, Rarity had used a credit card to buy the resulting photo album and had returned to the bench.

She was going to look through the album when she heard the sound of laughter from across the street.

She looked to see another pair of benches and enclosure to match the one she was sitting in. There were two individuals sitting on the benches. One was the laughing male, who resembled one of Dr. Hooves’s friends, but quite younger. The other was a pink female with a puffy magenta mane, sitting pony style.

Intrigued, Rarity got up, looked both ways, and jaywalked across the street just as a bus pulled up.

“Thank you, Pinkie, I really needed that,” the male said. He got up and boarded the bus.

“Is this your bus?” Rarity asked the individual named Pinkie.

Pinkie shrugged. “Is that what they’re called?” she asked. “I have no idea.”

“Are you getting on?” the bus driver asked.

“No, thank you,” Rarity answered. She waited until the bus left and the two of them were alone. “Are you a pony?” she asked.

Pinkie raised herself up on her hands. “Are you?” she asked.

Rarity nodded.

Pinkie jumped up and hugged her. “Thank Celestia!” she cried. “Pinkie had no idea how to get us home!”

Rarity gently disengaged Pinkie, then directed them to sit down on the benches, human style. “Aren’t you Pinkie?” she asked.

Pinkie metaphorically brushed off the question with a hand. “Well, yeah. Now I’m Pinkie. So what happened to you?”

“I kicked a rather large boulder,” Rarity said, choosing to ignore for now Pinkie’s odd statement about her identity. “And then there was a rainbow explosion in the sky.”

“Yeah, I saw the explosion too,” Pinkie said. “It had an insane amount of magic in it. That was what got us here.”

“Not the boulder?”

“Was it glowing?” Pinkie asked. “Yellow or orange?”

Rarity thought back. “No. It was just an ordinary boulder…that cracked open to reveal lots of gems.”

“A geode,” Pinkie said, nodding. “But not magic.”

“Well that’s too bad,” said Rarity. “A magical boulder you might hope to find anywhere. I have no idea where magical sky explosions come from. Were you a pegasus?”

“I wish!” Pinkie exclaimed. “No, I was an earth pony filly. Rock farmer.”

“Unicorn fashion designer...future fashion designer. Also a filly,” said Rarity. “I was pretty far from home when it happened. Desolate area, with lots of rocks.”

“Sounds like my corner of Equestria,” said Pinkie. “I wonder if anypony else was caught in it?”

Rarity shrugged. “We’ll just have to keep our eyes open.”

“What do you plan to do now?” Pinkie asked.

“No idea,” Rarity admitted. “My men-and-women counterpart’s family are out of town.”

Pinkie Pie put her hands over her mouth to try and hold in a guffaw.

“What?” Rarity asked.

“‘Men-and-women’?”

Rarity blushed. “I can’t just come right out and ask one of them what their species is.”

“Human,” Pinkie helpfully supplied.

“Oh,” said Rarity. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now my counterpart’s family, if they’re anything like my family back home, would be really helpful right now, but I have no way to reach them.”

“Hold on,” Rarity said, removing her communication device—

“Phone,” Pinkie Pie supplied.

“Thank you,” Rarity said, removing her— “Hold on now, did you just read my mind?”

“Of course not,” Pinkie replied mysteriously. “Earth ponies can’t read minds. And neither can humans. It was just a lucky guess.”

Rarity gave Pinkie the stink eye for a second, before returning to her…phone. She opened up the Address Book application, and started looking through it. “I saw some pictures earlier of some human who looked a lot like you…ah, here we go. ‘Pinkamena Diane Pie’.” She looked over at Pinkie.

Pinkie pouted. “That was my old name.”

“How old?” Rarity asked, poking the image on the contact card to bring up the photograph information. She took a moment to get a good look at the individual in the picture, and shuddered. Pinkamena Diane Pie looked like a walking corpse, a vast contrast with the vivacious alien before her. “This was from today…I think,” she told Pinkie. “And what happened to your mane?”

“That was the old me,” Pinkie said in a quiet voice. “She died two hours ago. We—I’m Pinkie now.”

Rarity quietly decided that this Pinkie Pie was not entirely stable. This was backed up by the note that the other Rarity had added to Pinkamena’s contact card: “Get help ASAP!” Pinkie not only spoke of herself in the plural, but she also used two distinct voices when she talked, one higher pitched than the other. The lower pitched voice spoke more of the past, while the higher pitched voice spoke more of the present and future. Definitely not normal. Rarity hoped that this condition was intrinsic to Pinkamena/Pinkie, and not caused by the mysterious phenomenon that had taken them to this planet—

“Earth.”

“Stop that!”

—And had put them into these bodies. But then, how could you tell if you were going insane?

With Pinkie watching, Rarity figured out how to edit the contact card, change Pinkamena’s name, and replace her photo. Only then was she allowed to tap the “phone number” with her finger and initiate a call with Pinkie’s family. She handed the phone over to Pinkie Pie, who put it up against her face. Rarity soon realized that the device lowered the volume of the other party when this was done, making it difficult for Rarity to eavesdrop on the call.

“Hello, Pa?” Pinkie said into the phone, then waited for a response. “Well…not exactly. I think you know at least part of what just happened. … Yes, it’s just like Maud said. But there’s something else, something totally unrelated to that: we switched universes. … Yes, both of us. … You know, I didn’t even think of that. Hold on.” Pinkie lowered the phone and looked at Rarity. “What do you think happened to the minds that used to be in these bodies?” she asked.

Rarity’s eyes widened. “You know, I didn’t even think of that!” she replied. “I would hope that we indeed switched, like you said. So the human Rarity’s mind is right now in my pony body back in Equestria.”

Pinkie Pie nodded. “Makes sense.” She brought the phone back up to her face. “Did you hear all that? … That’s Rarity, another pony in a human body. … Yeah, that’s what I was, and what I guess your real daughter is right now. Look, if I can get together with Maud, I’m sure both of our—” She cast a nervous glance over at Rarity. “—friends can work out what exactly happened, and how to undo it. … The switching part, not the…making friends part. So can you pick Rarity and me up? We’re in downtown Canterlot, at the bus station outside Prim Hemline’s Fashions. … Okay, we’ll see you then. Goodbye.” She handed the phone back to Rarity, who put it back in her purse.

“They handled that rather well,” Rarity said cautiously.

“You have questions,” Pinkie said flatly. She didn’t particularly look like she wanted to answer them.

Rarity thought carefully about the best way to respond. “You’re my best hope of getting back to Equestria,” she finally said. “Anything else can wait.”

Pinkie smiled in satisfaction for a brief moment, before turning serious. “I don’t want to cause you distress,” she told Rarity. “I’ve never wanted to cause anypony distress. I’m just…I just want to make you happy. If you’ll let me. I want to make everypony happy. It’s my special purpose.”

Rarity smiled. “Did you get your cutie mark today as well?” she asked. “I’m going to make ponies happy with my cutie mark as well. Make them feel good about who and what they are.”

Pinkie Pie matched her smile. “Perhaps we can work together—back in Equestria.”

“I’d really like that,” said Rarity. And she meant it, too. Getting to know this Pinkie Pie would give her time to figure out what exactly was going on with her…or them.

# # #

Pinkie Pie’s father arrived fifteen minutes later, in a self-propelled truck. The back of the vehicle was very dusty, giving off a strong earthy odor. Rarity had to stop herself from putting a hand over her nose.

“Pinkamena. …And Rarity, is it?” the tan man with the sideburns asked. (Pinkie Pie had supplied quite a bit of Rarity’s missing vocabulary while they had waited.)

“It’s…Pinkie now,” Pinkie Pie stated firmly, reaching for the passenger door handle.

The father frowned. “Is Pinkamena even willing to talk to her father?” he asked accusingly.

“I can come out when I want to,” Pinkie said in her lower-pitched voice. “I just don’t want to.”

Pinkie then turned her arm over, showing her father her wrist, which caused his eyes to go wide.

“Don’t show him that!” Pinkamena exclaimed.

“It’s why I’m here,” Pinkie rebutted.

“But it doesn’t count!” Pinkamena exclaimed. “That was from before we switched. I was out in the field. I was wishing for it—but I wasn’t actually going to do it!”

“I’m pretty sure that both of your conditions were comparable,” Pinkie countered. “We don’t choose to do this lightly.” And with “this” she used a hand to refer to her whole body.

Rarity just stood there, feeling very uncomfortable and confused. She both didn’t know what the wrist gesture meant…and profoundly didn’t want to find out.

The father opened the door. “Get in,” he instructed. “All of you. We’ll talk this out with the rest of the family.” Pink…whatever sat in the passenger seat. And Rarity got into the back seat. Behind the father…so she could continue to observe the daughter.

Pinkamena sulked in her chair. Rarity noticed that her mane appeared to be quite a bit flatter than when they first met…and her skin appeared to have darkened some in hue. It was like she was permanently in shadow now.

The father caught her eye in a rear view mirror as he pulled his truck into traffic. “So, Rarity,” she said, “tell me about yourself.”

Rarity looked around her nervously. “I don’t think anything I say would make any sense to you. Do you even have a Ponyville here?”

“It used to be its own town about a hundred years ago,” the father replied, “until it was absorbed into Canterlot. And it doesn’t really matter how much I understand. It seems clear to me that you need to open up to someone. How old were you, before?”

“Ten,” she said, tears already welling up in her eyes, “and I don’t mean to complain, but this is way too much responsibility to be giving to a ten-year old!” The story of her day so far then poured out of her at a pace almost too fast to follow, peppered throughout with her emotional reactions. By the end she was full-on sobbing.

“There, there,” Pinkie Pie said, putting an arm around her. “Let it all out.”

Rarity instantly stopped her crying to stare incredulously at Pinkie sitting on the back seat beside her. For a moment she was afraid she was going to see a second copy of Pinkie sitting in the passenger seat. “How did you get back here?” she demanded.

The father clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to that sort of thing from now on.” He looked off into the distance. “At least Maud has some restraint.”

“Different hosts have different requirements,” Pinkie replied stiffly.

Rarity filed that statement into the ever-growing mental file labeled “Please Don’t Question”.

# # #

They arrived at a house at the edge of town, which looked nothing like the wastelands where Rarity had her last memories of Equestria, and where Pinkie claimed to be from. An expressionless young woman, bluish-gray in skin and with a straight blue violet hairstyle, was waiting for them.

“Maud!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, teleporting straight from the back of the truck into pulling the young woman into a crushing embrace. She didn’t have the courtesy of faking a flash of magic to give Rarity the comforting illusion that what she had witnessed might not be a complete and utter impossibility.

“You’re showing a disturbing lack of restraint in this body,” Maud stated in a flat, emotionless voice.

“And isn’t it great?!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.

“I’ll admit, it has its merits,” Maud admitted. “Now could you stop breaking my bones?”

Rarity shrunk into a ball. She had hoped that she was mistaken when she had heard those crunching sounds.

“Oh, sorry,” Pinkie said, releasing Maud.

Rarity now knew what bones sounded like when they spontaneously mended themselves. She wished she hadn’t learned that particular piece of knowledge.

The father left the truck, and escorted his two daughters into the house.

Rarity elected to stay inside the car. She remembered reading somewhere that certain artifacts were equipped with “reset buttons”, for when they had become so messed up that they needed to return to their original, pristine state.

She wished that human brains came with reset buttons.

Sometime after sunset, there was a big flash of light behind the curtains of the Pie house’s front window. Rarity recognized that flash: it meant that Pinkamena Diane Pie had earned her cutie mark. (The making everypony happy thing must have been tied to that other entity rattling around in Pinkamena’s head.)

It was a few minutes later when Pinkie Pie finally came out to the car to retrieve her. “Sorry about that,” she said somewhat sheepishly after opening the door.

Rarity stared coldly at her. “If you keep going the way you’re going, I won’t have to ask you any questions.”

Pinkie took a moment to figure out what Rarity was thinking.

Which meant that she wasn’t yanking the answer right out of Rarity’s head. She was grateful for this.

“Uh, sorry,” she said. “You caught us…me, at a really bad time. I swear, if you met me a week from now, I wouldn’t be anywhere near this obvious.”

“Uh huh,” Rarity said flatly.

“Are you hungry?”

“Do you even eat?”

“Sure!” Pinkie exclaimed, patting her belly. “Food’s like the best part! Come on, Ma’s made a feast. She even left out the rock soup.”

“OK.” Rarity got out of the truck. She didn’t know if Pinkie was joking about the rock soup, and by this point she didn’t care.

She couldn’t wait to get back to Equestria.

# # #

The Pies’ plan was to wait for the morning, and then Pinkie and Maud would sweep the city looking for the device they needed to return home. (The phrase “assuming this planet even has that level of technology” was uttered, but Rarity once again pretended she hadn’t heard it.) The two girls would get out of school with the excuse of their religion.

“Which religion?” Rarity asked. She felt that this question at least was safe.

“Old Orthodox Markist,” answered Pinkie’s sister Limestone Pie. (Whatever insanity-inducing condition had been unleashed upon Pinkie and Maud, it had apparently left the rest of their family, including Limestone, alone.) “We’re the ones who actually remember that Celestia’s in charge.”

“While deciding to treat her like a normal human, being that she’s only a mortal incarnation of the Goddess,” Pinkie’s mother Cloudy Quartz added.

“Wait a second!” Rarity interrupted. “There’s a version of Princess Celestia on this planet? Why can’t she send us back?”

“Because she’s a mortal with no special powers, like I just said,” explained Cloudy Quartz. “In fact, she’s the principal at the school you’re attending. So no bowing or worshiping her, alright?”

Rarity took a few moments to take in this latest revelation.

“She doesn’t need the pressure,” Maud commented. “That’s the way she wants it. And it’s not that she has no powers—she’s the Goddess Celestia’s conduit any time she wishes to communicate with her followers.”

“So that means that Princess Celestia can talk to this Principal Celestia and tell her how to rescue us?” Rarity asked hopefully.

“Assuming She knows what happened,” Maud replied. “Do either you or Pinkie know your princess personally?”

Rarity shook her head, seeing that Pinkie Pie was doing the same.

“That’s why we didn’t include Her rescuing you when we made our own plans,” Igneous Pie said. “Sure, there could be a priest or priestess of the Goddess knocking at the door tomorrow at the break of dawn, but if that happened, we wouldn’t need to plan anything.”

“It’s like we Markists say,” Pinkie’s other sister Marble piped in, “The Goddess helps those who help themselves.” It was the first complete sentence the shy young woman had said the entire night.

“Actually, we stole that from the Christians,” Maud commented, earning a hurt look from Marble. “Sorry, it’s true,” she added in her affectless voice.

“Will you need my help?” Rarity asked, slightly changing the subject. She gave Marble a grateful smile, which Marble noticed with a blush. This didn’t really mean much—Marble blushed at everything.

“No, I think you’re stuck going to school,” Pinkie answered Rarity. “Tough luck.”

“Alright,” she said. “I’ll at least be able to work after that.”

“We’ll make sure you know everything you need to know, Rarity,” Limestone replied gruffly. Rarity believed that the true emotion being expressed was kindness—it was kind of hard to read most of the Pies.

“Mmm-hmm,” Marble Pie said in agreement.

# # #

Rarity spent the night in the spare bed in Pinkie’s room, wearing a set of gray pajamas, courtesy of Maud. Rarity idly wondered if the spare bed was for spare Pinkies.

“Don’t worry, Rarity,” Pinkie told her once the lights were out. “We’ll get you home tomorrow—two days at the most!”

“And…” Pinkamena added. “I…I won’t hold you to your promise of being friends when we get back. I know you know that I’m too weird for that.”

Rarity lay there, and broadcast the following thought: ‘If you come to Ponyville, and if I’ve managed to dismiss most of all this as an insane nightmare, then we can start over. I don’t think I can promise any more than that.’

“OK, that’s fair,” Pinkamena replied.

Rarity lay there in the dark, waiting to fall asleep. She wondered how things in the human world would have gone if this switch had never happened: Human Rarity would have met mopey Pinkamena, and the next day would have met Pinkie Pie. How would she have reacted? Rarity wondered. How would every human react?

Rarity thought about the life’s purpose given her by her cutie mark, and suddenly felt deeply ashamed. “Pinkamena, I’m sorry.”

She was answered with a sullen silence, for using the wrong name.

She went on anyway. “You scare me. I’m sorry, I don’t want to be scared of you because you don’t deserve it, but I am. It’s because, even though I totally believe you when you say you don’t want to hurt anypony, you can, in ways I’ve never had to think about before. And...and I see what I could do to make the fear go away: I’d put you in a box. I’d put you in the ‘Pinkie Pie’ box, where everything you do is just a funny joke, and I’d only let you be funny. That would be the way for me to stop being scared, but I can’t do it.

“Because I know I’m in a box too. It’s called ‘Ponyville Hick’, and I’ll never achieve my dreams if I can’t break out of it. So I have to stop myself from doing it to you. I won’t put you in a box, and if doing that means that I’m still scared of you, then I’ll still be scared of you. But I won’t stop being your friend.

“If you ever come to visit me in Ponyville… Or, if you wait until I’m an Equestria-renowned fashion designer to come visit me in Canterlot…know that I will treat you like a pony, just like your family treats the human Celestia like a normal human, despite knowing that in some way she is really the immortal and all-powerful Princess Celestia. It’s the least that you deserve…from anypony. And I think it’s what your…friend wants for you as well.”

In an instant, Pinkamena was at Rarity’s side, hugging her. “Thank you,” she said through teary eyes. “Thank you! Thank you!”

Rarity couldn’t breathe.

Pinkie suddenly released her. “Right…normal hug. Sorry. And yes, that is all that I want for her.”

“Don’t…don’t mention it,” Rarity said, panting for air. “And maybe next time…don’t teleport. Give us normal ponies less reason to be nervous.”

“Sure thing,” Pinkie said nervously, walking back to her bed and getting in. A few moments later, she looked around her and sighed. “I really need to get this room redecorated.”

Rarity nervously cast her eyes about, taking in the large poster on one wall. It was entitled Saturn Devouring His Son, and it had been altered so that the victim’s head had Pinkamena’s hair.

“I want to go home…” Rarity whined quietly to herself.

---

H. Rarity—Equestria, the desert hundreds of ponystrides outside of Rockville. Late afternoon.

Rarity was walking away from her shadow straight into the blazing sun—I swear, it seemed like a good idea to her at the time. She had been doing so for hours, and the landscape had never changed. To say that she was parched was an understatement.

“I’ve been through the desert as a horse with no name,” she croaked in a dust-choked voice. “It’s good to get out of the rain. In the desert, you can’t remember your name, because there ain’t no one for to give you no…No, I’m sorry, I don’t usually care about grammar, but that last line should be taken out and shot!” Rarity tried to sit down, but sprang back up again as the heat of the sands burnt her backside.

A chorus of burrowing owls continued the song. Well…probably not. She probably hallucinated them. But how could she distinguish reality from hallucination, in this mad place?

Like that pipe over there, spewing water out onto the cracked desert rock floor, where it was instantly absorbed before a desperate Rarity was able to lick up a single drop.

Yes, I said “lick”. As in…with her tongue! These were desperate times.

“What is going on here!” she yelled up at the heavens, for what must have been the dozenth time since she had inexplicably arrived in this place. In this body.

“I could be asking you the same question, partner,” a voice spoke into her ear.

Rarity jumped straight up a couple of feet, and then landed roughly on her hooves. “How did you get here?” she accused the strange creature. It looked roughly like she did, but was bright yellow in the head and legs, fading into an orange insect-like carapace with yellow wing covers and semi-transparent dragonfly wings sticking out behind her. There was a jagged horn coming out of her head, she had fins instead of horse ears, and her bright blue eyes were all of one color, with a faint color distinction for the pupils. She had no tail. And she was twice as tall as Rarity, proving Rarity’s sinking suspicion that not only was she trapped in the body of a cute little equine, she was maybe half her actual age in this body.

Rarity picked all of this up instantly—she had an excellent eye for detail.

The creature pointed behind her. She was hooked up to a cart containing several glass bottles. “I’ve been walking in a straight line for days,” she explained. “You just never thought to turn your head sideways.”

Rarity was mortified. The creature lapped this up like she could eat emotions. “And what is your role in this vast conspiracy?” the creature drawled.

“Well if I have my choice, I’d like to be the heroine,” Rarity replied frankly. “It would be a nice change of pace.”

The creature’s expression warmed as she looked Rarity over. “I guess I can see that,” she said. “Doesn’t change the fact that you’re a filly.”

“I am no filly! I’m older than I look,” Rarity proclaimed, pulling herself up to her full height of one foot.

The creature blinked. “Alright, I believe you. But you might have trouble convincing others that you’re not a filly with that toy in your tail.”

Rarity looked back at her bedraggled tail—it had been so beautiful when she had first awoken in this body—and the object neatly embedded within it. “Why did I pick that up again?” she asked herself. “Oh wait, I remember. There was this broken bottle by the side of the road. It was a sort of reverse ‘ship in a bottle’, in that it contained the entire port city the ship sailed from. And the lighthouse...it looked just like the one from my favorite Disney-movie-that-nobody-remembers, Pete’s Dragon, so I took it.” She looked off into the distance. “I think that’s when the random singing began...”

Rarity decided this was a good time to change the subject: “Is your name Applejack?” she asked. “You sound just like her.”

Now it was the creature’s turn to look embarrassed. “Uh…yes…no…it’s complicated. Let’s just say that I borrowed her identity back when I was a less-than-respectable beetle-pony, and it kind of…stuck. Plus I like the accent.”

“It is a really nice accent, isn’t it?” Rarity asked. “So what do I call you?”

The creature looked down at the sand. “You should call me ‘Applejack’,” she said, ashamed. “I still haven’t come clean with the villagers yet.”

“Oh, are you returning to said village?” Rarity asked eagerly.

“Yes.”

“Can I come with you? I promise I won’t reveal your secret.”

“Applejack” looked her up and down once more. “Alright,” she said, and began her walk southward.

Rarity walked beside her. “You said you’re a ‘beetle pony’. Do you happen to know what I am?”

Beetle-pony Applejack stopped and looked Rarity up and down. “Do you even remember your name?” she asked.

“Yes!” Rarity replied with some irritation. “I just got zapped into this body somehow, and I was curious to know what it was called.”

Applejack took a moment to reflect. “Well…not the strangest story I’ve heard. You’re a pony.” She tapped Rarity lightly on her horn, which she had repeatedly failed to activate. “To be specific, a unicorn.” She started walking again.

“I figured out the ‘unicorn’ part,” Rarity said, catching up. “You ever heard of a way to undo a zap-switch like that?”

“Equestria’s a pretty magical place,” Applejack said. “But I never heard of any magic like that.” She stopped then, leaving Rarity to blithely continue forward. Slowly, she turned her head to take in the sight of the large iron pipe sticking out of the ground, the only sight of industrial development visible for tens of thousands of pony-strides. “Naw, I must be seeing things,” she concluded, then quickly caught up with the strange unicorn filly before she had a chance to notice. There was an odd sort of shadow under the pipe that didn’t correspond with the position of the sun.

“Is there anything I need to know about this village of yours?” Rarity asked.

“Well, tomorrow is Thursday. That’s Miracle Day.”

“Huh,” Rarity said simply. “I look forward to seeing that.”

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

“At least Maud has some restraint.”

Well, that invites a variety of questions.

I see we’re operating along familiar lines with your Pinkies. This should definitely make for some interesting experiences for everyone around them. (And I’m just grateful that the Pinkamenas will be having any experiences at all in the future.)

The Rarities, meanwhile, have both proven quite fortunate. Though not-quite-Applejack raises questions in her own right. Still, I can see how the gang might all get together, or at least a good chunk of it. Let’s where this goes from here.

[PiMan]

Definitely a lot of unanswered questions in H Rarity's situation.