Rainbow Dash agrees to help Twilight with something on Easter day.
Rainbow Dash agrees to help Twilight with something on Easter day. She was hesitant at first, but Twilight somehow persuaded her into coming over. What could Twilight be planning to do with her? Why was Dash the first pony she asked? These questions may be answered as we venture through this bizarre pile of randomness.
There's a time period where absolutely nothing drastically bad happens. Usually, it lasts a month or so and if one of those days hits the first day of the week, anything bad just doesn't happen. It has had a significant effect all over Equestria, and many ponies and alike have noticed this phenomenon among centuries of generations.
For over a thousand years, no evil forces have ever touched this specific day, for reasons unknown. There have been some myths as to why this day was always so peaceful that some ponies claimed to be fact. They say that on the Eastern side of Equestria, there was an incident that resulted in some powerful spell that Star Swirl The Bearded himself manifested in order to keep Equestria and beyond, safe from all danger for one day every one hundred moons.
Though, there hasn't been an explanation for the few days before and after where nothing too bad also happens. Many tried to theorize more on the fact that for at least a month's worth of time around said "Easter Sunday," have also never had much happen.
But due to lack of information, the "Eastern Event from the East" theory, is allotted to everyone so that it can try and explain the yearly phenomenon. So they worked around that to create the holiday that everyone all knows as, Easter.
You may know how things changed from the original Easter event celebrations, from that to collecting chocolate eggs from a rabbit that shits out those eggs. Well, the story you're about to read might be the second weirdest change for the Easter holiday. Because this Easter was about to change the lives of one of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony.
It's been a few months after defeating Queen Chrysalis, Cozy Glow and Tirek. Though the fight was tough, every creature came together and helped in saving Equestria, hopefully, for the last time. After Princess Twilight Sparkle's coronation, her request to stay with her friends in Ponyville were at first, a little preposterous, but since Celestia has no control over her former student's choices, she agreed that it may be best to do so.
At some point, during the same conversation, Twilight mentioned something about why Luna had to retire. It just made little to no sense to her and she explained why she felt that Luna didn't need to retire yet. It ended up being a funny little interaction and that somehow convinced Celestia to have her little sister rule alongside Twilight, much to Luna's dismay.
It is now an Easter Sunday afternoon, Twilight is in her castle doing spell tests using some book with the cover; "Special Magic Spells" that she believes are not as "special" as they claim it to be. She has doubts that these spells have nothing to do with anything "special," and so, to prove her hypothesis is correct, she invited one of her best friends to help with confirming it, Rainbow Dash, a mare who would rather not be doing whatever that is with Twilight on Easter.
But Dash was the only one available to test out the "special" spells with. Not because Twilight forced her into it using some very persuading vocabulary.
While waiting for Rainbow Dash, Twilight does some last minute adjustments to her workplace, a.k.a. the guest bedroom. She, who is mostly just getting prepared for the testing, is skimming through some of the spells just to see which ones she can do for the day. Spike, on the other hoof, was only staying until Dash gets here so that he can go do his own thing.
Starlight Glimmer, who could've been chosen as the role for Spike today, was on vacation with Sunburst and Trixie, somewhere far, far away from Ponyville. She was already gone by the time Twilight woke up, and when she did, she found a note on Starlight's bed talking about her yearly Easter week break. Twilight understood and made Spike be the stand-in for Rainbow Dash.
"So, when will she get here?" Spike asks Twilight.
"Soon, Spike." she answers.
"What's in that book anyway?" Spike asks another question.
"I don't know yet." she replies.
"How much longer do I have to be here?" Spike asks her a third question.
Twilight sighs as she leaves the spell book open on a podium that she has in the room with her.
"Not much longer, Spike. She'll be here in a minute."
It's as if Twilight predicted exactly when Rainbow Dash would arrive. The pegasus arrives outside bedroom door, she knocks on it.
"Perfect, just in time." Twilight says as she walks over to the bedroom door and opens it.
"Happy Easter, Rainbow Dash." Twilight greets with a smile.
"Wish I could say the same." she replies joylessly.
"Come in, come in... we have plenty of spells to test." Twilight says as she goes back to her testing area.
"So, Dash..."
"Yeah?"
"Are you ready to help me prove that I, Princess Twilight Spar-"
"Can we please just get this over with, Twi..." Dash interrupts.
"Okay then." Twilight clears her throat. "Spike, you can go now."
"Finally..."
Spike gets up from his bean bag chair and starts to leave. On the way out, he says to Dash,
"Have fun."
Dash looks at Spike with a jealous face, Spike snickers to himself as he exits the room.
"Close the door on your way out, Spike!" Twilight shouts out, he does so.
"Alright, let's get started!"
"Great... This is going to be the most boring Easter of my life." Dash ends.
Dash really wishes she could be somewhere else right now. Maybe, enjoying the view from somewhere up high, or somewhere in the meadows where she can feel the grass skim through her coat, or at the beach, feeling the sun and sand around her. But no, she had to be here, at Twilight's castle, in a bedroom, being tested on.
"Hey, thanks for coming, Dash." Twilight opens.
"Yeah, well, they don't call me the Element of Loyalty for nothing."
"True." Twilight agrees.
"So, uh, how long did you say this was gonna take again?" Dash asks her.
"Uhm... about five hours."
"FIVE HOURS!?" Dash shouts. "I'm gonna miss half the day!"
"But isn't it one o'clock?"
"You know what I meant."
"Not really..." Twilight comments. "Now, Rainbow Dash, I need you to cooperate, okay? Then we'll get this done quicker."
Dash sighs.
"Fine."
"Good. So, just sit over there and I'll call you when I need you."
"Alright..."
Dash walks over to the bean bag chair that Spike was sitting on and plops down on it as she awaits Twilight's word. As Twilight continues on her experiments, Rainbow lays down and thinks about what life decisions brought her here. Even through all the battles and friendships that she and her best friends won, she still feels a little moody about things.
You know, being promoted to The Captain of The Wonderbolts, and a friendship teacher can get a little exhausting. Easter was supposed to be one of those holidays where she can go off and do whatever she may please. Instead, she's helping a friend of hers make themselves feel better by testing out how "Special" the spells are in some "Special Magic Spells" book. I guess she is the Element of Loyalty though, so maybe it's not too bad.
It's been about four hours since the two mares started testing the spells in the "Special Magic" book. Some spells seemed interesting at first, but they turned out to be so far up the "Next level special" scale that it looped back down to "Oh, it's special alright...".
They aren't even halfway done with the book, there are still so many more pages until they reach the end. Pages filled with whatever kind of "Special Magic Spells" were listed within the covers of this Celestia-forsaken spell book. Twilight didn't know what majority of the contents of this book even were. It almost seems like she was just winging it from the beginning.
Everything they just tested were "absolute bullshit", in Twilight's words. Twilight thought it was weird that this single large book of spells was hidden within Celestia and Luna's old castle's chambers. Now she thinks it was rightfully justified that this book stayed in the chambers to be left to get taken by time.
Anyway, the two mares are tired after four hours of testing Twilight's "Special Magic Spells" book. They almost fell asleep just an hour into it because of how boring the spells were.
"Twi?"
"Mhm?" Twilight turns to Dash.
"Do you ever feel like life just isn't going the way you wanted it to be?"
"What do you mean?"
"Y'know like..." Dash pauses. "I mean don't get me wrong, I think being Captain of The Wonderbolts is awesome and all, but like... Everything just seems to get so... stressful..."
"I know what you mean..." Twilight says understandingly, "And this "Special Magic" stuff is total bullshi-"
"Did you even hear what I just said!!!" Dash interrupts angrily.
Twilight jumps at Dash's outburst and turns towards her before sighing heavily and walking over to her as she tells her,
"Look, I have been listening carefully to everything you've just been saying, and I completely understand how you feel."
"You do?"
"Now, I'm no expert therapist like Fluttershy, but, all I can tell you is maybe you should try to have someone to talk to about your problems."
"..." Dash lays silent, "Really?"
"Yeah, you do have Tank though, right?" Twilight inquires.
"Yeah, I mean... I do talk with him a lot and stuff. But sometimes I feel like there's something else missing that could help more."
"Hmm..." Twilight expresses, "Let's say maybe you could need someone who can tell you things that Tank can't?"
"Like who?" she asks
"Oh I don't know..." Twilight sighs, "I actually want to have some kind of therapy done for myself... I just never have the time for it all."
"I see..."
"Anyway, if it makes you feel any better, it seems we both need to open up about working so much. And I'm sure the rest of us also feel the same sometimes."
"Okay... But how am I supposed to find someone who can understand me as much as Tank does?
"Well, I don't know but like I said, I'm not an expert. And it seems to me that you could use a little free time for now, don't you think?"
"I guess..." Dash reluctantly says.
"I got an idea... Come here, Dash." Twilight calls over Dash to stand next to her.
"So, do you like art?" she asks.
"Only if it's something cool looking."
"Then I think you'll like this."
Twilight pops in a medium sized mirror for the artwork that she will make.
"I read on a page somewhere in that book that can turn some glass objects into art."
"Ok, cool."
"Hmm, maybe there will be something "Special" in that book after all." Twilight says.
"We'll see."
As Twilight searches for the page where the art spell is and quickly reads it off the book, she readies up her horn so that her expertise can turn the mirror into some art. Twilight's horn starts glowing as she conjures up the magic. After some time, the glow gets bigger until a beam of magic shoots towards the mirror at a high speed.
The thing is, the beam of magic is supposed to hit the mirror and turn it into an artwork. Instead, it bounces of the surface and because of the angle that it was at, the beam hits Rainbow Dash square in the face and flings her back a bit. Thus beginning her slow transformation.
"Ow, what was that?." Dash says, dazed.
"No no no, that wasn't supposed to happen."
"What do you mean?"
"Hold on for sec..." Twilight turns back to read the spell and upon further inspection, she realizes what she had cast on one of her best friends. "Oh no..."
"Oh no, what? What did you do?"
"Well..." Twilight flips through two pages of the book where the right spell and the one that she just cast on her as she prepares to tell her the unfortunate accident, "I miiiight have just done the wrong spell..."
"Twilight, what did you do?"
"I miiight have read the wrong page of the book..." Twilight continues sheepishly.
"Twilight..." Dash says, now frustrated.
"It was an accident! I didn't mean to!"
"What did you just put on me?" Rainbow asks, more frustrated.
"Uhhhhmmm," Twilight says worriedly, "Come see for yourself."
Rainbow Dash walks over next to Twilight and reads the first page on the left.
"Mosaic spell?"
Twilight turns to the other spell's page.
"Moai spell?" Rainbow Dash puts the pieces together in her head and says, "Wait... are you telling me..."
"I must have confused the two somehow, I'd never do that on purpose, I'm sorry Rainbow Dash." she says quickly.
"TWILIGHT!" Dash yells, annoyed at the fact that Twilight unknowingly put a possibly dangerous spell on her.
"Please... read the description of that one..." Twilight asks her to do.
"The target who was hit with this spell will become a big... stone... head." she reads.
Rainbow gets confused all of a sudden,
"Twi, What the fuck is this?"
"It's... not my book of "Special Magic"..."
"That's not the point, Twi..."
"Well... what do you mean, then?"
"I'M PROBABLY GONNA DIE, TWILIGHT! WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME!?"
"I DON'T KNOW, I'M SORRY! I DIDN'T MEAN TO!"
The two mares start screaming at each other due to the fact that Rainbow Dash is now slowly turning into a Moai statue. They scream about how the spell isn't one of the limited to one day spells, and over the course of three days, Rainbow Dash will eventually fully turn into a Moai statue. What they don't know is, Rainbow Dash won't die at the end of her transformation. She will be preserved for as long as she stays as a statue.
This is implying that when somepony gets turned into any statue, Moai or not, they don't die. They are preserved in between the stone cast and when it's time for them to be released, they will stay in perfect condition as long as they don't break apart at some point. As for Rainbow's Moai predicament, the outcome is no different to turning the villains into statues using the power of friendship and whatnot.
Now, for some reason, as they were going through these spells, only most of them had reversion spells in case anything devastating happened. Some spells were listed as "limited to one day" so the technical curses could just disappear after the individual targeted reached the twenty-four hour mark. Twilight skipped these ones due to them being too risky.
Some had nothing listed on the pages after, meaning if somebody had one of the spells that curse them, that had no spell to reverse it, they would be stuck with whatever was cast on them for the rest of their life, or until someone else finds another way to reverse it with something else.
That being said, there was probably no way to reverse Rainbow's Moai curse situation. Although, if there was a way to break it somehow, Twilight would find it eventually.
After a short back and forth tantrum of the two mares, they eventually start addressing the situation.
"Yes." Twilight says, "You only have three days to live..."
"Can you say that one more time?" Dash says frantically.
"Dash, I've been saying that one more time for the past seventeen times already."
"Ok.. but can you say that one more time?"
"Rainbow Dash, you only have three more days to live until you turn into a Moai Statue."
Rainbow Dash starts breathing heavily after she finally realizes the unfortunate truth.
"Ohhhhhh no..." she says with a long breath as she almost calms down, "Three days? Really?"
"That's what it says."
"What am I gonna do in three days?" Dash asks.
Twilight replies with a question, "Do you... have anything on your mind?"
"No...? I didn't see my weekend going like this." she confesses.
"Okay... well," Twilight sighs, "I, uh... I was... actually planning to do something with you after we were done."
Perhaps there was another reason why Twilight Sparkle decided to test these "Special Magic" spells with Rainbow Dash. Perhaps not just because Rainbow was the only one available on Easter holiday. Perhaps there was something that she was keeping from letting out. Perhaps she just felt like being alone with another mare for the day.
"What. What were you planning to do? Kill me?" Dash asks Twilight.
"I already said I didn't mean to use that spell!." she answers, "Besides, no. Absolutely not, why would you think that?"
Rainbow Dash sighs.
"I don't know, alright. I'm just... worried now."
"Well don't be, okay? We'll get through this."
Dash smiles lightly.
"Thanks, Twi."
"No problem. I'll try to find a way to reverse the spell and you'll get back to normal, okay?"
"Okay..." Dash ends. "So... what were you planning to do?"
"Well... after we get about halfway through, I would have actually fell asleep probably, but I wanted to..." she goes silent, thinking carefully about her next words.
"What? What did you want?" Dash asks wanting to know the answer.
Twilight takes a deep breath and continues,
"It kinda... you know, gets lonely in here when we don't have the cutie map going anymore... So, uh... I wanted to ask you... if it would be okay with you... if you stayed the night."
"Here?" Dash questions.
Twilight nods.
"Really?" she questions again.
Twilight nods again.
"With you...?" Dash raises an eyebrow as she looks deep into her eyes.
Twilight starts blushing a little and says,
"Yeah, well... maybe..." Twilight gets flustered, "I thought maybe there would be something with these "Special Spells" that I could pick out before we finished but, everything in there is nonsense."
"Are you asking me to sleep with you?" Dash questions.
Twilight starts blushing even more.
"Well... "
"Geez Twi, I don't know what to say..." Dash thinks about her friendship with Twilight for a second. Was there something more to it than she thought? "How long were you planning on telling me this?"
"Not that long, really... I was mainly thinking of a good reason to bring you here." she answers honestly, "It was until I searched through Celestia and Luna's old castle that I finally found a reason."
"Wait... why were you there in the first place?" Dash asks.
"Oh you weren't there?"
"What?"
"Oh yeah, that was just me, never mind..."
Twilight looks over to Rainbow, she looks confused and motions her to continue.
"Oh, right... Well, Luna wanted me, personally, to search through her and her sister's old castle to see if there were any old leftover stuff that I could salvage for her."
"That's a weird request." Dash comments.
"Well, I took it. And there was some old stuff in there that I brought to her afterwords, including the book."
She points to the "Special Magic Spells" book on the lectern.
"She said she doesn't remember ever seeing it before, so she asked if I could look through it and see if anything useful was in here."
"So you said yes?" Dash asks.
"Not at first... you see, I wasn't thinking about your help until I realized that I may need somebody else to accompany me through this big book of "special" spells."
"Oh okay, so you thought that by asking me to help you with this, it would be a good enough reason to get me here." Dash says in order to try and solve the mystery of Twilight's intentions.
"Not exactly, you see, before that, I was thinking about what could be in this book that make these spells so "special." So, I wanted to see if maybe you and I could really hit it up if we found something that could truly be something "special"."
Twilight's voice sounds like she's been longing for somebody to fill in the void in her life. Her face starts getting hotter as it gets noticeably more red.
"Twilight?" Dash interrupts.
"Yeah?" she says as she imagines some scenarios that she could be having with her friend.
"You're turning red again..."
Twilight's lips fold into a scrunch and her blush slowly fades away from her face as she recollects herself.
"Oh... Well, I think you get what I mean."
"Not... really?" Dash says, understandably so.
"What?" Twilight tries to remember what she was talking about, "Oh, right... Well, remember when I said I understand how you feel about being stressed out?" she asks.
"Yeah, you said I needed someone to talk to." Dash replies.
"Yes, exactly. What I'm trying to say is, there's actually another reason why I brought you here..."
"Wait, didn't you say you wanted to ask me to stay the night and whatever?" Dash brings up.
"Umm, yeah that too, but... the reason why I thought of that in the first place, was after thinking about what could be inside this book, i-it..."
Twilight lets out a breath as she struggles to find the words to tell Rainbow Dash the truth about how she feels.
"It gets a bit lonely in here... All this Princess work really gets to me. I've been so stressed out by all of it that I wanted you specifically to come by and maybe see what would happen if we stayed together for a while. You're one of my closest friends and I really don't know what would happen if you weren't there for me since the beginning. Over time, our friendship has grown so much and I felt inclined to try something new with you. But I couldn't just ask you out of nowhere on any normal day. Sure, I could've gotten another one of the girls to come but I wanted you. So that's why I invited you here." she finally tells her everything she feels.
"Wait, wait, wait... so, you're telling me that after all this time you've been hiding your true feelings about me 'cos you didn't know how I would react."
"Basically..." she answers as she nods her head.
"But you also wanted me to stay here and comfort you because you feel stressed out?" Dash asks, thinking she finally understands Twilight's problem.
"Yup." Twilight says as she nods once more.
"So... you're attracted to me?"
"Mhm." she folds her lips and starts blushing again.
"Wow..." Dash says, "I gotta say Twi, great choice. I mean, me out of all of us. Out of all stallions even."
Twilight goes silent as her face gets more red in color.
"Just, wow, Twi." Dash breathes out, "Damn. That is one awesome thought, huh? 'Cos I do feel like we have been pretty close lately."
"So... what do you say?"
"I-I mean... I have problems too, especially this "Moai" spell you just put on me now but..." Dash contemplates for her answer.
Twilight awaits the final answer that will give her the result to her plan to not be alone anymore.
"I mean... I guess it's okay with me if we talk more about our feelings towards each other." Dash says finally.
"That's great! I can do that." Twilight says with excitement. "Oh yeah, by the way... I had something else prepared in the dining hall just in case."
"You did what now?" Dash asks, confused.
"Oh, just a little surprise I wanted to show you when we were done."
Twilight and Dash make their way to the dining hall as Dash gets ready for whatever Twilight has done within it. Before Twilight opens the door to the dining hall, she make a remark,
"I just want you to know, I put this up a few hours before you arrived, so I don't think it looks too good in there."
Once Twilight opens the door, Dash looks around the hall that is now filled with a few stunningly placed decorations. Some depicting the colors of their mane and body. In the center, the dining table had a meal of Dash's favorite fast food items.
Dash has her jaw dropped from the amount of effort Twilight put in to make one night look great.
"It's not much but, I tried." Twilight says to her.
"A-, huh?" Dash seems flabbergasted because how well everything was put together.
"So, shall we?" Twilight asks.
"I guess we shall..." Dash finally talks and looks towards Twilight who is next to her, smiling.
Twilight lets out a giggle and walks to take a seat. When seated, she holds her hoof out to a seat next to her to invite Dash to dinner.
"I mean, this might be one of the last things I do..." Dash thinks to herself. "Might as well make it interesting, right?"
Dash walks over to the seat next to Twilight. As she sits down, she notices her own face starting to heat up as some sweat drips down her forehead. Twilight, who was watching her the whole time, lets out another giggle as she prepares the meal to be eaten.
Though you may say that Dash forgives Twilight too easily for basically putting an irreversible curse on her, nothing can stand in between the pair of mares' friendship. You could say this Easter wasn't the best day for the two because of the events that occurred. While that may be true, they both got something truly amazing out of it at the end of the day.
The sun rises on a new day, Monday. Princess Twilight yawns as she slowly wakes up next to the warmth of the rainbow-maned pegasus she had dinner with the night before. She opened her eyes and saw Rainbow Dash, asleep with a faint smile on her face. She also notices both of their arms loosely wrapped around each other.
Rainbow Dash slowly maneuvers her way closer into Twilight's embrace. Twilight blushes slightly as she watches the pegasus' face make it's way closer to her chest. When Dash's mane gets in the way of Twilight's face, the latter takes in a whiff of the other's mane. She giggles quietly as the smell of Dash's ambrosial scent tingles her senses. It reminded her of the events from last night.
Rapid thoughts make their way to the front of her mind. She starts thinking of the dinner that she and Dash had had the night before, the conversation they had, up until the point when they drank all the alcohol, but shortly after, the strands of Rainbow's mane causes her to sneeze.
Dash gets startled awake due to the sound, making an audible "Gah!" as she's suddenly woken up. When she opens her eyes, she sees Twilight on the opposite side of the bed, staring at her whilst holding her in an embrace.
"Oh, good morning, Rainbow..." Twilight awkwardly but positively greets.
"Morning, Twi..." the puzzled pegasus replies as she pulls away from the embrace after realizing who her arms are wrapped around on.
She asks, "Uh... what were we doing?"
"I think we were cuddling... Well, before you woke up and pulled out..." the princess answers.
"O-Oh... huh." she remarks, before awkwardly looking into Twilight's eyes.
"So..." Dash says, trying to spark up a conversation, "How did we get here?" she asks.
The two of them try as hard as they can to recall what happened the night before. Due to some intoxication from all the drinks they had had, they don't remember much from the dinner. But through the blurred vision and memories, Twilight manages to remember most of what happened after their little drinking party.
Twilight begins reminding her partner in bed something she said during the night prior. She had always wondered what it was like to sleep with another mare but she didn't want to say it directly due to the thought that she wouldn't feel the same way. Then, she got the idea to ask Dash to stay the night through finding the "Special Magic Spells" book.
Upon coming to the realization of the spell book, they both start thinking about the Moai spell.
"Oh yeah, that..." Dash says, downheartedly.
"Hey, cheer up. We'll find a way to fix it." Twilight says.
"You promise?" Dash asks.
"I promise." she answers.
"Well... if you say so, then... I trust you Twi." Dash remarks.
Dash tries to move her hind legs to step out of the bed, but she can't. She felt that something under the blanket was preventing her from moving her hind legs. She struggles to slide out of the bed under the weight of the mysterious object on her hind legs. When she was eventually able to successfully get her hind legs out through the foot of the bed, she immediately fell to the floor.
"Woah!" Dash yells.
Twilight hops out of bed and inspects Dash's predicament. She recognizes the material on Dash's legs, volcanic tuff. The both of them now knew that it was the Moai spell that caused the rock piece to grow out of nowhere. All of a sudden, their natural reaction to finding out about the rock was to start screaming.
"AHH!" Dash screams first.
"AAHH!" Twilight follows second.
"AAH!"
"AAAH!"
The two gradually scream louder and louder as the they follow a back and forth screaming session, until they eventually run out of breath. The two hyperventilate to get some air back.
"Oh no... It's happening already." Twilight says.
"What do I do, Twilight?" Dash asks, worried.
Twilight thinks of a solution to move Rainbow for a moment. Then she perks up and says,
"Ah-ha! Stay right there. I have an idea."
Twilight teleports away and Rainbow stands up with her stone-based legs. She tries lifting her hind legs up to walk, but to no avail. Then she tries flying, but the weight of the rock attached to her legs is too heavy, even for her.
"Great..." she comments, frustrated.
Then Twilight returns with a wheelchair type apparatus in her magic grasp.
"Where did you get that?" Dash inquires.
"Oh, I have it in storage in case of emergencies." Twilight replies.
"What kind of emergency supplies do you even have?" Dash asks.
"Pretty much everything, really. Everything you'll ever need is in my storage room just in case." Twilight answers.
"Oookay..." Dash says.
"Now, I need you to straighten your back so I can fit this in." Twilight orders.
"Y'know, I could probably do this by myself, Twi." Dash complains.
"Oh really? Try putting it on then." Twilight backlashes.
"Wait, no! I need you..." Dash whines.
"That's what I thought." Twilight says triumphantly.
After a few seconds, Twilight gets Rainbow into the wheelchair.
"So, how's that?" Twilight surveys.
"I feel disabled." Rainbow Dash answers.
"Well I guess... Technically, you are now." Twilight comments.
Dash looks at her in a disgruntled expression before saying,
"How am I supposed to run The Wonderbolts if I'm stuck in a wheelchair?"
"Can't you just take a few days off?" Twilight asks her.
The two go silent for a moment.
"You're right, fuck it. I'm dying in three days anyway right?" Dash says out of nowhere.
"Woah... where did that come from?" her mare-friend asks, surprised.
Dash sighs and says, "Well, look... This is a lot for me to deal with right now... It's just getting to me, don't worry about it."
"Well, it seems like I should worry, you'd usually try to do something about it first." Twilight says, concerned for her friend.
Dash sighs again and continues, "You wanna know something, Twi? I'm scared, okay? But if I act like I just don't care about it, I can't be afraid of this whole thing."
"Oh..." Twilight says before Dash continues,
"Plus, I'm tired, Twilight... the least I could do for myself is just relax like I was supposed to do yesterday. But instead, you asked me to come here and help you with something, then you cursed me with this Moai shit, and now I don't know what to do other than wait for my inevitable death from being consumed by rocks."
"Okay... wow... um..." Twilight says, too stunned to speak.
"Look Twi, I know you mean well, you're trying to help me... And sure, last night was great and all... But... this mess happened all because of you..." Dash unveils the truth of their situation.
Twilight thinks to herself for a bit before sighing.
"Rainbow... I know this is a lot to handle, and even though this is all my fault, I promised you earlier that I'll try my best to fix it. And even if you just need somepony to talk to, I'm here for you, Dash." Twilight reveals.
They both sit in silence for a few seconds before Dash starts tearing up. Twilight offers her friend a hug to cheer her up. Gladly, Rainbow Dash allows herself to be taken into the princess's embrace. She cries onto Twilight's shoulder while she comforts her. They stay in that position until Dash's emotions finally calm down.
Eventually, Dash pulls away from the embrace after a few minutes. She then says, with some sniffling,
"You know, you're right. I'm sorry..."
"It's okay, Dash. Just as long as we can still be together after I caused all this." Twilight says.
"Well, I think I'll be staying with you for the next three days anyway." she says jokingly.
"Uhm, it's two days actually." Twilight corrects.
"Already!?" Dash shouts.
"And A Half!... I meant to say two and a half days." Twilight corrects herself.
"As if that makes it any better, Twi."
Twilight sighs, "Look Dash, we don't have all day to complain, okay? We need to find a remedy for this, quick."
"But who's gonna look after Tank while I'm down here? He's not gonna be all good up there, alone." Dash asks.
"Oh, yeah... Hmm..." Twilight says as she tries to come up with a solution for Dash not being able to see Tank for the whole two and a half days.
"Well, we can get Fluttershy to bring him down to you, right?" she suggests.
"Good idea." Dash agrees.
"Great, we'll go to Fluttershy's and we can tell her about our problem."
"Okay." Dash says.
They sit in silence for a bit, thinking of something else to say.
"Can I use your shower?" Dash asks.
"Oh, well, I usually go first..." Twilight responds, "but, I guess you can go first."
"No no, it's ok if you go before me." Dash says.
"O-oh, no, you can go first..." Twilight awkwardly responds.
"Twi, it's fine." Dash snickers, "It's your castle."
"O-okay, sure thing." Twilight says before making her way to the bathroom with Dash following behind her.
Twilight uses the shower first and Rainbow waits patiently out in the hallway. From the outside, she could hear Twilight humming while showering. She chuckles slightly as she hears the great humming voice of Twilight. About twenty minutes later, it's Rainbow's turn to use the shower.
As soon as Twilight opens the bathroom door, Rainbow sees her newly established partner wearing a towel around her waist and holding an unopened box of soap in her magical aura.
"Here's a new box of soap, so you don't have to use mine." Twilight says while blushing slightly.
"Okay... thanks, I guess?" Rainbow says.
A slight blush creeps across Dash's cheeks. She notices this and walks into the bathroom while Twilight is still standing inside. Dash then realizes, she still has the wheelchair on.
"Oh, um... could you take this off." she asks Twilight.
"Yeah, yeah..." Twilight answers.
She awkwardly undoes the strap around Dash's waist while she's in the small shower space and removes the apparatus, letting the pegasus' hind legs drop onto the shower tiles. She leaves the wheelchair in front of the sink before exiting the bathroom herself and closing the door so the Dash can shower in private.
About thirty minutes pass, the mare in the shower has finally finished freshening up. She looks for a towel to use and notices a dry one on the rack next the the shower. She extends her wing to reach for the towel, but it's too far away and she tries to move her body closer to the rack.
Unfortunately, she falls over due to forcing her body to move with the seemingly unmovable stone on her hind legs, causing her to lose balance.
"Twilight!!!" she yells for help.
The pony she called for rushes into the bathroom immediately after. She uses her magic to lift her partner up from the bathroom floor and quickly puts the wheelchair on her again. She then, grabs the towel Dash was reaching for and uses it to wipe off the dirt in the fallen mare's wet mane.
"Are you alright?" Twilight asks.
"Yeah..." Dash says before clearing her throat. "I'm good, thanks..."
"Are you sure?" the concerned princess asks for mare-friend, "You just fell..."
"Yeah, I'm okay, Twi. The fall wasn't that bad." Rainbow says nonchalantly.
"Okay, if you say so..." Twilight says while still drying her partner's wet mane.
The Princess keeps drying the rest of Rainbow's face before she realizes what she's doing when the both of them looked at each other lovingly, and she felt the warm blood spread across her cheeks. What's strange is, she didn't feel that weird about it anymore, she actually liked it.
She knew that even Dash liked it too, she wasn't pulling herself away from the interaction. She was just standing there waiting to be dried by her new mare-friend. Of course, after a while, they had to move on with their day. After having fully dried Rainbow's body, Twilight put the towel on the rack it was originally on for it to dry.
"So, do you need anything else before we go?" Twilight asks nervously.
"Well, I gotta brush my teeth..." Dash says as she walks towards the sink and mirror-cabinet.
"There's spare toothbrushes in the cabinet." Twilight informs her.
"Wha-..." Dash starts saying, "Why do you have spare toothbrushes?" she tries to ask.
"Just get one..." Twilight simply says.
Twilight watches Dash open the bathroom cabinet before grabbing her own with her magic because she will brush her teeth too. The two of them start to brush their teeth together. At some point, Twilight jokes about an ad that she saw about dentistry.
"Hey Dash, you know that advertisement that says Brushing alone isn't enough to prevent cavities and tooth decay?"
"Yeah, why?" Dash asks as they brush their own teeth.
"Well, we aren't alone..." Twilight says.
Dash stands still with a toothbrush in her mouth for a few seconds before looking at Twilight with a raised eyebrow. After they're done, Twilight and Rainbow head out of the bathroom, into the hallway, and out the front door.
"So, what else do we do after we meet with Fluttershy?" Twilight asks her.
"I don't have anything new on my mind, other than this wheelchair." Dash replies.
"Okay, well... I'm bringing the book with us, I have a feeling that we might need it."
"Okay..." Dash breathes out.
Dash struggles to walk with the weight of rock behind her on the wheelchair. And without even having the ability to fly properly, she will have to stay grounded for the next two and a half days. This day could've gone much differently if she had declined Twilight's invite the day before. She knew it was a strange request, even for Twilight, she could've moved it to a different day where anypony of her choosing would be the one to get tested on.
Unless we haven't been paying attention to the story, we know by now that Twilight chose Dash on Easter day for a little "sleepover". However, the outcome wasn't as perfect as Twilight pictured it would be. In her attempt of cheering up her Friend, she had cast a possibly permanent and life-threatening spell on her because she got memory dyslexia for some reason.
Oh well, anyway, the couple of mares make their way to Fluttershy's cottage to tell her about their dilemma. When they get there, they knock on her front door and she answers.
"Oh, hello girls." the somewhat timid pegasus greets.
"Hey, Fluttershy." Dash greets first.
"Hi, Fluttershy." Twilight greets second.
"What brings you two here?" Fluttershy says as she welcomes them in.
Twilight speaks up first, "Well, me and Dash are kind of having a little issue... We thought that you might wanna help us with something."
"Oh, what is it?" Fluttershy asks them.
"Well... it's kinda complicated..." Dash says in response.
"What do you mean?" Fluttershy asks.
Twilight and Rainbow look at each other, wondering if they should really tell her or not. After a few seconds though, they bring their friend to her living room so they can sit and talk about all of the events that happened in the past twenty-four hours. Twilight and Dash silently agree to tell their friend everything.
"Okay, so yesterday..." Twilight begins explaining.
"...and so, we wanted to ask you if it would be okay with you if you brought Tank back down for us?" she asks after telling her everything that happened in the past twenty-four hours.
Fluttershy sits there stunned by everything they just said. After a few seconds of thought, she eventually speaks up,
"Oh wow... um... That's, a lot to take in..."
"I know... and it's all my fault." Twilight says.
"You're damn right it is..." Dash says, leaning on the couch's armrest beside her.
"Hey, I thought we were done arguing about this." Twilight says to the resting mare.
Dash grumbles to herself before saying, "Whatever..." she then turns to look at her longest surviving friend, Fluttershy.
"Yeah anyways, Fluttershy, is that alright with you?" she asks as if she wasn't just upset with Twilight.
"Oh, I'm not so sure if I could find the time to fly all the way up there." Fluttershy explains.
"But Tank won't know what happened to me if you don't get up there and bring him down for me." Dash says.
They all go silent for a few seconds. Until, Fluttershy reluctantly says,
"Oh, alright... I think I can do you girls a favor."
"Oh, Thank you, Fluttershy." Twilight thanks her friend.
"Yeah, thanks Shy..." Dash thanks also.
"Oh, and one more thing..." Twilight speaks up before leaving,
"I would appreciate it if you didn't tell the rest of the girls about, well, us." she says while gesturing between her and Rainbow Dash.
"That'll just be our little secret." she continues.
"Oh, of course. I wouldn't reveal such a thing if you aren't ready yet." Fluttershy says wholeheartedly.
Dash pushes herself off the armrest of the couch as Twilight stands up from where she sat. They prepare to leave Fluttershy's house because they plan on telling the rest of their friends about their little situation. Before they leave they say goodbye to Fluttershy and thank her for keeping their relationship a secret to the others.
As the couple head out of Fluttershy's house they whisper something to each other,
"You're sure keeping us a secret is a good idea?" Dash asks her mare-friend.
Twilight sighs thinking of a good response, "Well... I-I don't... know if I'm ready to tell everypony yet..."
"What, that we're not just filly-foolers? That we're full on mare-maven-mushers?" Dash questions as they close Fluttershy's front door behind them.
"Wh-..." Twilight says with a chuckle, "What did you call us?"
"I-, um... nevermind..." Dash ends off as they now head back to Ponyville.
When Twilight reached the meeting room where she and Dash had had dinner the night before, she contacted the rest of her friends and called them in for a surprise council meeting. She knew it would be intervening with their week off from all work, but she needed every one to know what was going on. Well, you know, except for Spike... he's off dicking around somewhere.
As the rest of the Mane 6 approach the castle's meeting room, they are conversing with each other as to why Twilight suddenly called them in for a council meeting out of nowhere. For them, it's been a while since the last time they needed to have one for serious reasons. Twilight seemed pretty serious.
"She seemed pretty serious." Rarity says.
"I know, right?" Pinkie said, "She sounded like she really wanted us to come here."
"It's almost as if, something terrible must have happened." Rarity remarks.
"What if... somepony died?" Pinkie asks, shocked.
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, darling. I'm sure it's not something as serious as that." Rarity says to her.
"Yeah, seriously Pinkie, don't think of that stuff." Applejack tells her.
"Anyway, y'all know where Rainbow Dash's been?" the farm-pony asks afterward.
"Nope." Pinkie answered.
"But the last time I saw her, she was in a wheelchair, walking with Twilight heading to Fluttershy's." she continued with a smile.
"Huh." Both Applejack and Rarity react discernedly.
"Speaking of which, where is Fluttershy?" AJ asked before the three of them approached the meeting room.
As soon as the three entered the room with the circular arrangement, they notice Twilight and Rainbow Dash next to each other, watching them as they came closer to the table. And since Spike still wasn't there, his chair was put off to the other side of Twilight's chair and Rainbow Dash's chair was in place of his.
"So, you finally made it..." The Princess welcomes them sinisterly.
"Thanks for coming, guys..." RD follows second.
"Uh... yeah, what's up with you two?" AJ questions the two.
Twilight and Dash glance at each other with an indifferent expression before staring back at the trio aloofly. The three ponies being stared at look at each other, worried about the two who continue to look at them while they try to walk to their assigned chairs to take a seat.
"Alright, now that you're here. We need to talk..." Twilight starts off.
She looks towards Rainbow Dash's direction, hinting for her to continue. She does look back and for a moment, she doesn't know what she wants her to do. It's until Twilight nods her head slightly downward with a quick movement in order to signal that she wants Dash to say something.
"Oh," Dash says as soon as she realizes and then clears her throat, "Yeah, we need to tell you guys something... about what happened yesterday." she continues.
Twilight nods her head in agreement as she starts talking again,
"Now, before we reveal anything, I'm sure you're all wondering where Fluttershy is."
"Yeah, is she sick?" Pinkie asks her.
"Um, no, not at all... She's-" Twilight says before being inadvertently cut off by the usually happy-go-lucky party-pony.
"Why, did she die?" Pinkie asks, scared and worried, "Did you kill her?"
She glances at Pinkie, confused before the alicorn responds,
"Um... no... No, absolutely not, Pinkie. Why would you think that?" Twilight says, bothered by her friend's thought process.
"Oh, nevermind then." Pinkie says before smiling like nothing happened.
"Ookay..." Twilight says before continuing, "Well, anyway, Fluttershy's going up to Rainbow's house to retrieve Tank for her."
"Why can't Rainbow get him herself?" Aj asks, confused.
"Ah yes, well... you probably haven't noticed, but..." Twilight says before continuing, "I would like you all to take a look at Rainbow here... Show them Dash."
Rarity, Pinkie, and AJ all watch as the newly grounded pegasus walks around them with a wheelchair on her hind legs that have also been surrounded with volcanic tuff. She circles around the entire table before returning to her spot and stands in front of her chair.
"So, why exactly is Rainbow Dash in a wheelchair?" AJ asks.
"Ooh, is it because-" Pinkie begins, before being cut off by Twilight, clearing her throat.
"In case you didn't see it, her legs have been wrapped in stone." she says.
Dash walks away from her spot again and stands in view of everyone to show them her legs once more.
"Hmm, and what might be the cause of that?" Rarity asks.
"Okay, so yesterday..." Twilight begins explaining again.
"...and that's when I called you girls over here so we can discuss this whole thing." she concludes.
Applejack and Rarity sit there with an understandably confused expression on their face. Pinkie on the other hoof, was understanding the confusing events and analyzing everything that they said.
"Huh, I was thinking something completely different was going on." Pinkie says out of nowhere.
"And what was that, Pinkie?" Twilight asks, unwillingly.
"Oh, I just thought you were having a threesome with Fluttershy." she answers cheerfully.
Rainbow Dash and Twilight's eyes widen as soon as they hear her say that.
"WHAT!? NO! Pinkie!... What is up with you today!?" Twilight lashes out, "A threesome!? Really!?"
Dash tries holding back her laughter, but ultimately fails. She bursts out laughing as loud as she could. Meanwhile, everypony else ignores her laughter outbreak, and AJ and Rarity watch as Twilight stands on top of the table to get closer to Pinkie. Pinkie asks in her usual giddy way of talking,
"So... you aren't into BDSM?"
"Pinkie, please! Stop assuming we're doing weird stuff!" Twilight yells, begging her to stop saying increasingly more insane synopses.
"But-" Pinkie starts before Twilight finally puts her hoof over her mouth in order to shut her up.
"Pinkie, stop." Twilight says.
Dash stops laughing as soon as the silence begins creeping in. A few moments later, Fluttershy opens the door of the meeting room and walks in on Twilight holding her hoof over Pinkie's mouth. They all look in her direction as she enters the room.
"We were just talking about you." Pinkie says as she lifted Twilight's hoof off of her mouth.
Twilight forcefully puts her hoof back over Pinkie's mouth as Dash chuckles a bit in the background.
"Anyway, were you able to get Tank for us?" Twilight asks.
"Oh, of course. He's out there waiting for you." Fluttershy answers, pointing to the door.
"Aw, thanks so much, Fluttershy." Dash says to her before walking out the door to meet her pet tortoise.
All the mares in the room look at each other, wondering what to talk about next. A few seconds later, they all hear the front doors of the castle open and close shut before the room goes silent once more, but Twilight speaks up,
"Um, Fluttershy could you check outside."
The only pegasus left in the room opens the door behind her slightly and peeks out into the halls. She observes the area and neither Rainbow Dash or Tank are able to be seen anywhere around. She pulls her head back in and closes the door and looks at Twilight. She remarks to her, "Um, I think they left."
"Alright then... I guess we should just continue without her." Twilight says before continuing,
"So, let's get back to the spell that started all this. So far, we don't know of a counter-spell or cure..."
"So, does that mean there's no way we can reverse that Moai thing?" Applejack asks.
After Applejack's question, Twilight tries to come up with a response that will not worry the rest of her friends even more than they are now. She wants them to think that their situation isn't as bad as it actually is, even though not a single one of them know of a way to reverse the Moai spell.
"Well, I'm hoping there is one. But I just... can't find it anywhere." Twilight explains.
"Wait, so there's nothing we can do?" Pinkie asks from under Twilight.
"What I mean by that is, I was hoping you girls could find your own way to cure to curse." she tells the gang.
"..." Everypony went silent again, before Twilight says,
"Fluttershy, do you have any ideas on how we can stop the Moai from taking form?"
"I, um... don't know what that is..." the animal caretaker answers.
"Moai's are apparently giant stone head statues." Twilight explains.
"Fuckin' weird spell to make in the first place, don't you think?" AJ whispers to Rarity before Twilight continues,
"If you're referring to the spell itself, it didn't say there isn't a way to reverse it, but it also didn't say there is..."
"Can't you and Dash figure it out first?" Fluttershy asks,
"There might be a way for you two alone to find out how stop it." the gentle mare continues.
"I guess I haven't actually tried everything with her yet..." the princess responds.
"Ooh, you mean sexually?" the hyperactive pink pony asks, still under Twilight.
"No!" Twilight yells as she puts her hoof over the over-share-asking pony under her's mouth.
"... mmph!" Pinkie yells, muffled by the hoof in her mouth.
"Not that way..." Twilight says as she calms down and removes her hoof from Pinkie's mouth.
"Even if that were the case, she'd probably still be affected by the Moai spell I put on her." Twilight continues.
"There was to be a way to remove it with just the two of us right?" she asks to no one in particular.
After Twilight sits back down in her chair, she starts thinking of multiple scenarios with Rainbow Dash in her head. She starts off thinking of ways she can help Dash get rid of the spell by herself, then it slowly that's getting into the smutty territory. She gets pulled away from her thoughts when Pinkie puts her hoof in Twilight's drooling mouth.
Twilight makes a muffled surprised noise before looking at Pinkie with an enraged expression. Twilight uses her magic to pull Pinkie's tail away from her so that she'll get Pinkie's hoof away from her mouth.
"Pinkie..." Twilight says hoarsely.
"What? You did that to me." Pinkie replies.
"Alright, that's enough out of you." Twilight says, "Everypony out! Meeting's over!"
"Oh, is it my fault that you're single?" Pinkie says while being pushed out the room by Twilight.
"Enough, Pinkie!" Twilight says irritated.
"Well, I guess that's that." AJ concludes, ready to walk out of the room.
"I guess we'll have to wait for Twilight to announce something in the future." Rarity says, following suit.
"Oh, I guess I'll go too." Fluttershy says, already near the door.
"Goodbye, Twilight." they all say before exiting the room.
Now, Twilight stands alone in the meeting room. She walks back to her chair and sits down, frustrated. She leans over and puts her hooves on her head, trying to calm down again. A few seconds later, she hears the front doors of the castle open and close again. She thinks that's because the four of them left and that's it. A few seconds later, she hears the familiar sound of hoofsteps and rolling wheels, then the doors to the meeting room open.
Twilight doesn't lift up her head to see who entered the room and instead, just takes a deep breath and sighs. She knows who entered, she's just too agitated to look at her.
"You alright, Twi?" Dash speaks up.
"I'm fine..." she responds.
Dash makes her way beside Twilight and hugs her carefully. The Princess sniffles a bit, before she tears up and shivers while breathing out. Dash keeps her position when she finds the right way to hold the embrace without breaking her back because of the weight on her hind legs. She breathes out before asking,
"Whats wrong, Twi?"
"Nothing..." she responds, trying to not acknowledge that anything's wrong.
"Twilight, you're crying." Dash worriedly says as she puts her wing around the other mare's body.
The Princess breathes faster as more tears run from her eyes. She sucks in the snot coming out of her nose, before catching her breath.
"It's nothing, really..." she says, "Anyway... where did you go off to?" she asks, trying to change the subject.
"Okay, fine... I got you a little something..." Dash reluctantly explains. "But, you're gonna have to come with me to the dining hall to see it."
"The dining hall?" Twilight asks, confused.
"Yeah... the dining hall." she replies, nervously.
"Alright, but if you just put my decorations up again, I'm probably not gonna be very amazed by what you got."
"Oh, just get up and see it at least." Dash insists.
Twilight has calmed down a bit and she stands up from her seat, getting ready to go to the dining room with Rainbow Dash. When Twilight and Rainbow reach the doors of the dining hall, Dash says,
"Now, before you take a look at this, I just want you to know that I didn't prepare for this at all, and the decor is definitely not looking good in there if you expected any change." parodying the words that Twilight had said the night before.
"Oh, you!" Twilight says as soon as she realizes the mimicked sentence.
Dash opens the door to the dining hall and reveals to Twilight the surprise that she brought back. When Dash invites Twilight to a second dinner date, Twilight was definitely shocked by the gesture. She noticed the food on the table was her favorite menu items from The Hayburger Place, and she certainly knew now, that their love for each other was real.
"Oh, Rainbow... you shouldn't have." Twilight says with glee.
"Eh, what can I say, I'm awesome." Rainbow Dash gloats her successful surprise.
Twilight was now cheered up and had already began eating her hayburger, and Dash joins in beside her.
"Like I said, this was just a last minute idea." she says.
"I understand, but why did you do this for me?" Twilight asks while enjoying her second hayburger.
"Because, Twi... I-..." Dash begins saying, "I think I love you."
The lavender mare goes wide-eyed again, this time, chewing on a piece of hayburger and holding the rest of it in her magic aura. She looks towards where Rainbow is and stares at her as she finishes swallowing the food in her mouth. Dash was already looking at Twilight, and they continue to stare into each other's eyes.
"A-are you serious?" Twilight asks, flabbergasted.
"Y-yeah... I mean, sure, you did put this spell on me..." Dash says, knowing there's no turning back from this,
"But that doesn't mean we can't work on our relationship in the meantime, right?"
"I... I guess so..." Twilight replies as she puts down the hayburger that she was eating.
"So... what d'you say?" the other mare asks.
"Oh, wow..." Twilight says as she tries to come up with the best response.
"If you really mean it, I mean... All I can say is, I love you too." she finally says.
The two share a romantic hug for a few seconds, until Twilight switches it up with a kiss on Rainbow's cheek and the latter does the same to her. After that, they release themselves from the embrace so that they can eat their meal together. During which, they talk about the evening of the previous day, how they probably shouldn't have drank all the alcohol and made love while drunk.
Sure, they may have started their relationship by doing that, but they still have their morals. Like, they may seem like the most problematic couple dynamic, but together they just... work. Meaning, if they got through even the hardest of obstacles in a relationship, they have a chance to get through the curse of the Moai spell.
Over the next two hours, they finish conversing after their delicious fast food dinner. They know they're wasting time not trying to fix the spell, but they didn't care at the time. Their amount of love for each other was strong enough to make them feel as if there was no volcanic rock gradually forming on Rainbow Dash's hind legs.
And so, after their meal, they both felt pretty sleepy from the eating and talking. The pair of mares agreed to sleep in the room where they had slept with each other before. Although this time, they would only allow themselves to take it easy, due to the stone growing from Rainbow's hind legs. When they get to the bedroom, Twilight puts on the radio and turns the dial to a station that she likes listening to.
As they crawled into bed, they knew that they didn't have enough energy to stay awake for much longer, and they gradually fell asleep in each other's arms. Over the course of the night, they try to get comfortable with multiple positions in their sleep, causing them to move a lot in the bed. For Dash, it was hard for her to turn over or bend her legs to get in comfortable position, and for Twilight, she had to deal with the rock scraping against her body as the pegasus shimmied around next to her.
Eventually though, the tired pair found a position where they could both feel comfortable in the bed. The classic spooning position, where Twilight had her arms wrapped around Rainbow's waist, and her legs were shaped behind the stone on Dash's legs. They wouldn't realize that they were doing this, though, as they fell asleep to the music on the radio.
It's been almost two days since the incident. Twilight and Rainbow Dash have yet to reverse the Moai spell, and time is quickly running out. Several hours from now, Rainbow Dash will have already become a fully-sized Moai head statue, and if they don't start resolving on their situation, she will soon do so.
After another amazing night with her mare-friend, Rainbow slowly wakes up to Frank Sinatrot's 1964 hit cover of "Fly Me To The Moon" a.k.a. "In Other Words" originally written by Bart Hayward in 1954 and first recorded by Haye Balelard, softly playing on the radio that Twilight left on the night before they fell asleep.
She could feel Twilight next to her, still sleeping, because she could also feel the air that Twilight was breathing being exhaled towards her face. She opened her eyes slowly, and the first thing she sees is the face of the mare who she recently realized she was in love with.
Though, she felt that something was different, she needed to explain it to the mare next to her but couldn't form the right words to do it. It took several seconds, but she managed to finally open her mouth. Although, when she did, all the words had fled her brain and she only managed to say one thing to wake her up,
"Hey, Twi." Dash says.
A soft snore from Twilight as her eyes flutter open, revealing a drowsy look as she rubs at her eyes. A smile graces her lips, one filled with relief as she notices herself facing her mare-friend.
"Morning, Rainbow." she greets her warmly.
There's something important that she must talk to Twilight about, but her brain is too scattered to figure it out right then.
"Morning," she responds in an equally quiet tone as her heart pounds heavily in her chest.
"I need to-" She hesitates for a moment, trying to find the right words to say. "-to tell you something."
Twilight props herself up on her elbow. A gentle smile grows upon her lips as she gently pushes strands of her bed-head mane away from her forehead, allowing her to see every detail on Rainbow's flushed face.
"What is it?" she asks.
Flustered, a bit more nervous than expected, she doesn't respond immediately. Instead of answering directly, she shifts backward so she can dodge Twilight's attack just in case she gets upset.
"I… I think we need to talk about us," she says simply, not expecting much reaction beyond confusion from Twilight, who, indeed, looks rather confused by what she said.
"What do you mean by that?" she asks.
"Uhh... well... I know we've only been dating for like, two days... but... uhh... There's something you have to know..." Dash says.
"Okay... go on..." Twilight says with a speculative expression.
"I mean, don't get me wrong, I love you, you know? You're my best friend, and I'd… I'd like to keep spending time with you, like, forever... It's just that..."
She pauses briefly, swallowing thickly as she struggles to find words that could help her explain what she wants to say to Twilight, then continues,
"I've been thinking about the fact that... we don't really have much time to spend with each other if we don't find a way to remove the spell you put on me." she says to the alicorn.
"OH! That's what I was thinking I forgot." she responds.
Surprised by this sudden realization, Dash raises her voice,
"WHAT!? YOU FORGOT!? YOU ACTUALLY FORGOT ABOUT IT!?"
"I'M SORRY! Okay?" Twilight apologizes hastily, "I just... We were just having such a good time together... It never dawned on me that that was even happening."
"Twilight, I was literally in a fucking wheelchair the whole day yesterday!" Dash says, calming down, "Anyway... I think we should just start working on trying to fix this whole... crazy... thing."
"Oh, you're right... I'm sorry... I just forgot, okay?" Twilight says, also calming down.
"Whatever..." Rainbow says, wanting to move to a new conversation, "Seriously though, we need to do something about this."
She tries moving her left arm, but to no avail. She quickly realizes that it's because of the spreading stone from the Moai spell. She lifts the blanket covering her body with her only movable limb left to take a peek at herself and sure enough, there is the same kind of stone covering her left arm.
"Okay, well... I think I'm gonna need some help getting out of bed..." she says, signifying Twilight that she needs her help.
"On it." the latter says, understanding the message.
Twilight brings the wheelchair closer to Dash's side of the bed with her magic and lifts the other mare's almost stone body onto the wheelchair and helps strap her in. The two of them notice that Dash's elbow is slightly closer to her chest, making her newly stone-covered arm slightly shorter than her free arm, which is what's holding her up. They both know that this will make Rainbow's walking slightly more inconvenient because she now has to lift the rest of her body up with one arm.
"I'm guessing you can't fly at all now?" Twilight asks.
"Yeah, didn't you see my wings?" Dash responds, mildly annoyed.
Twilight takes a closer look at Rainbow's wings. They are also covered in stone.
"Huh... I don't seem to be very observant today..." she remarks to herself.
"Anyway, what do we do?" Dash asks.
"Hm, I'll check the spell book, perhaps we missed something." Twilight answers.
"Yeah ok... but what I do?"
The purple princess pauses, perplexed. A few seconds later she finally responds,
"You try to follow me if I have an idea on how we can get this rock off you."
"Gotcha." Rainbow solemnly accepts.
Then, Twilight makes her way out of the room to look for the spell book, Dash tries her best to follow behind her. After a few seconds of struggle, she eventually finds her rhythm, lifting herself up with her right arm, and then pushing herself forward before descending her stone-covered left arm to the ground in order to hold her up, and then repeats the process. As she walks, she leaves a trail of dents in the castle's floor.
After almost an hour of searching the castle for where the book was left, the two of them are sitting in the dining hall, catching their breath. Twilight has her head down in her arms on the table, Rainbow next to her. Suddenly, Twilight says,
"It's all my fault."
"What?" Dash asks.
"It's my fault that you're cursed..." she says with a depressed tone.
"Oh, I know..." Rainbow says like it's okay to say right now,
"But... you know, even if you don't find a way to break it in time, at least we'll have each other."
"What do you mean?" Twilight asks as she raises her head from her arms.
"Well, sure, I might not be around to grow old with you... But I think I should at least spend the time I have left with the mare I've had feelings for since the day I met her..." Dash replies.
"Wait, what?" Twilight asks, surprised.
Dash quickly purses her lips and stares at Twilight, speechless, as she realizes what she just said.
"You've had feelings for me since the day you met me?" Twilight asks her.
Dash "stands" there for a few more seconds before finally opening her mouth to say,
"I guess I never told you that before..."
"Rainbow..." Twilight chuckles a bit, "It's fine."
"Oh yeah..." Rainbow lets out a chuckle, "I just thought... you know... since I didn't tell you that before..."
"Dash, really, it's fine..." Twilight smiles sincerely, "But I guess if you told me that before we started dating, I wouldn't have been so nervous to try and ask you to dinner."
"Alright, yeah, I see why you were acting that awkward now..." Dash realizes.
"Hey! It's harder when it's one of your best friends, you know..." Twilight defends herself.
Dash laughs a bit before responding,
"That gets me thinking... There's no need for us to hide anymore, right?"
"Oh, I don't know..." Twilight replies.
"Really?" Dash asks, shocked, "Come on, Twi..."
"I don't know what to tell them Rainbow..." Twilight says, worriedly.
Rainbow Dash sighs before saying,
"Tell them the truth."
"What?" Twilight questions.
"We've been keeping our relationship a secret from them for longer than I have left until I become a statue... I think it's about damn time that we tell them." Dash explains.
Twilight sighs and says,
"I guess you're right..."
"Yeah, you know I am."
Twilight aggressively glares at Dash for a few seconds.
"I-I love you..." Dash says, nervously.
"I love you too, Rainbow." Twilight says.
Twilight reaches forward and captures the stunned, rainbow-maned mare with a kiss on the lips. She breaks it apart moments later and smiles at her in a way that makes Rainbow's heart race faster than the speed she needs in order to do a Sonic Rainboom. This, she knows, is good. This feels nice. This is the kind of feeling she wishes she would feel every day, the one she yearns for, the one she wants to last forever...
Her train of thought is broken as she realizes that Twilight has stopped kissing her, and is now watching her expectantly, as if waiting for something... Well... she wasn't. She just couldn't seem to make any further actions. Suddenly aware that she hasn't responded to Twilight at all, she gives the alicorn a small grin.
"Wow, well... that was... interesting." Rainbow remarks.
Twilight laughs a little before sighing.
"I still don't think I'm ready to tell them yet... What if they get offended 'cause they think it's a bad thing?" Twilight says, answering Dash's previous question.
"Should I be offended that you think it's a bad thing?" the pegasus inquires.
"Excuse me?" Twilight questions.
"I'm just saying... I don't think it'll go as bad as you think it will."
"Trust me, they're our best friends too, they'll surely be supportive of us. I mean, take Fluttershy for example, she didn't react with offense, did she?" Dash reassures.
"Yeah, but it's Fluttershy..." Twilight says.
"Okay, now that, is kind of offensive, Twi." Dash remarks.
Twilight suddenly realizes that she left the "Special Spells" book in Fluttershy's cottage. Upon realizing this, she gets up from her seat, then hugs Rainbow Dash and thanks her for helping her remember where the book was before kissing her again. She tells Dash to hurry up and come with her to Fluttershy's, since she now knows that that is where the book is.
Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo; The Cutie Mark Crusaders, are walking out of Rarity's Carousel Boutique, presumably after picking up Sweetie Belle, and together, they walk back into town. The three of them were just talking about the special holiday that started two days ago.
"Listen, I don't know where my sister is... and I'm not sure I wanna know..." Applebloom says to Sweetie Belle.
"Well, I don't know where my sister either..." she replies.
"Yeah, odd... You think they're doing it?" Scootaloo says to them.
"Scoot, don't make me think about that stuff..." Applebloom comments.
"Yeah, it's... gross..." Sweetie Belle says, "That's my sister..."
"Ah, okay..." Scootaloo says before continuing, "But you know... they are pretty much always gone at the same time..."
"Scootaloo, seriously. I don't want to think about my sister like that..." Applebloom says.
"Me neither..." Sweetie remarks.
"Okay... I can see you two aren't into that then..." Scootaloo says.
"Scoot, what are we even talking about?" Applebloom asks her, wanting to move on to a new conversation topic.
"Just saying, you know?" Scootaloo replies in return.
"Yeah, but it's weird..." Sweetie says, "I mean, do think about Rainbow Dash that way?"
"Yeah, all the time." Scootaloo replies, nonchalantly.
Her two friends next to her give her the stink eye before one of them bluntly says,
"What the hay is wrong with you?"
"Come on, guys. It's not like she's related to me..." Scootaloo says, "And another thing, I couldn't stop thinking about when I saw her walk into Twilight's castle alone on Easter. She didn't come out until yesterday... with Twilight... and she was in a wheelchair."
Applebloom and Sweetie Belle look at her in disbelief. Scootaloo, in turn, looks at them and says,
"Trust me, guys. It actually happened."
The two of her friends continue to look at her in the same expression. After a few seconds of silence, Scootaloo asks them,
"So... you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Don't say it." Applebloom says, seriously.
"Why not? It makes sense..." Scootaloo replies, "I know she can handle a lot, but maybe doing it with a princess was enough to put her into crutches..."
They all go silent for another few seconds.
"Wait, I thought you said she was using a wheelchair?" Sweetie asks, noticing the inconsistency.
"Wheelchair, crutches, same thing..." Scootaloo says.
Her friends start to think that her story is even more unbelievable and continue to look at her with the face of disbelief. The trio continue walking towards town. After a few more seconds, they see Twilight and Rainbow Dash in the distance. They notice them walking together and Applebloom and Sweetie Belle look at Scootaloo, who was now grinning at the thought that she's having after seeing them together. Upon getting closer to the duo, Applebloom greets the pair,
"Hey there, Twilight, and hey there, Dash. How was your Easter?"
"Oh, hello Applebloom, hello girls..." Twilight responds, "I wouldn't say this Easter was the best, but... well, let's just say some stuff happened..."
"Bad stuff?" Sweetie Belle asks.
"Well... Good and bad..." Twilight answers.
"Okay... what happened to Rainbow Dash?" Scootaloo questions, noticing her idol mostly covered in stone while in the wheelchair.
"Yeah, that's kind of part of the bad stuff..."
"Okay, so what exactly happened?" Applebloom asks.
Twilight turns to Rainbow and whispers,
"Should I tell them everything?"
"What?" Dash whispers back.
Twilight sighs and rephrases the question,
"Do I tell them that we're a thing or just about the Moai spell?"
"Uh... If you to tell them about us, that's fine..." Dash comments.
"Okay, you're not helping. What do I say?" Twilight says, frustrated.
"Wha-, I-I don't know!?" Dash says loudly.
"Um, what are you two whisperin' about over there?" Applebloom asks.
Twilight and Dash quickly glance at young mare's direction, dismayed, before fully facing the three young mares.
"Oh, nothing... just..." Twilight answers, think of what to say next, "Okay... Let me tell you girls the good news first..."
Dash gives her mare-friend the side-eye as the alicorn continues,
"First of all, I'm not single anymore..."
"Wow, that's great!" Sweetie Belle shouts.
Twilight giggles blissfully a bit before continuing,
"And... you're never gonna guess who I ended up with."
"Who is he? Who is he?" Sweetie Belle asks repeatedly.
"Well, he's no he... but she does kind of act like one..." Twilight explains, "And I'm sure you know her very well, Scootaloo..."
Twilight smiles smugly as she looks at the young pegasus, implying that Scootaloo should know who she's talking about. Scootaloo begins to switch her eyesight between the princess and her friends with a noticeably confused face. Rainbow turns her head to Twilight with furrowed eyebrows, as if silently saying, "Twilight, what fuck are you doing?"
"Huh?" Scootaloo asks, confused.
"Yeah..." Twilight says, "If you didn't get it by now, it's her..." she points to the disabled pegasus next to her.
The three crusaders look at Dash and collectively say,
"Ohhh..."
Afterwards, Scootaloo says to the mares next to her,
"Told ya."
The two mares next to Scootaloo look towards her with expressions that say, "Bruh.", then back at Twilight as she says,
"Anyway, that's just the good news... The bad news is..."
She takes a deep breath and says,
"Well, you can already see the bad news, but... Yeah, she doesn't have much longer to live, if that's what you're wondering..."
"Woah, wait, what?" Scootaloo says, surprised.
"Well... I kind of..." Twilight slowly says, nervously, "... accidentally... put a spell on her, that may, or may not kill her, by the end of tomorrow..."
"You did what!?" the three young mares shout simultaneously.
"Don't worry, don't worry... we're actually going to try to resolve the issue... but we need to get to Fluttershy's place first..." Twilight explains, not wanting the CMC to be so worried.
"Why do ya'll need to be at Fluttershy's, Twilight?" Applebloom asks her.
"Because... we left the book with the spell that started this whole... thing, at her place." she explains, "I'm hoping there's something else in there that might help break the curse."
The Cutie Mark Crusaders all look at each other in astonishment as she finishes her explanation. Eventually, Applebloom asks the princess,
"Can we come with you? Maybe we could help out a bit?"
"Oh, I don't know..." Twilight says as she looks to Rainbow, "Is it alright with you?"
"I mean... it's not like they're the ones in danger because of you..." Dash says, nonchalantly.
Twilight looks at her with a disgruntled expression before turning back to the CMC. She goes,
"Alright girls, you come with us... just don't distract us while we work on trying to fix this thing... Okay?"
One by one, the trio collectively input their answers before continuing with their venture.
"Eeyup!" Applebloom yells,
"Yeah!" Sweetie Belle shouts,
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, whatever, let's just go already..." Scootaloo concludes quickly.
The grown mares start walking in the direction of Fluttershy's house, again, and the young trio follow behind them. But again, on their way to Fluttershy's cottage, their route has been interrupted. This time, by encountering a new problem.
"I'm hungry..." Rainbow Dash says out of nowhere.
"Seriously?" Twilight asks loudly, "Now?"
"Well... We didn't really have breakfast yet, you know?" Dash remarks, "Didn't shower either...." she continues quietly.
Twilight sighs and says, "Okay, fine. Where do you wanna go?"
"Oh, you're letting me choose?" Dash says, "Um... I guess I could go for something a little sweet right about now..."
"Sweet?" Twilight asks.
"Yeah, maybe... some dessert after last night." Dash says, seductively.
Twilight blushes and laughs nervously before Dash suggests,
"Hey, I think Sugarcube Corner's open at this time."
Twilight's smile disappears quickly as she foresees a confrontation with Pinkie Pie and her, the over the top, relationship addicted choice of words.
"Twilight? You alright there?" Dash asks, concerned.
Twilight snaps out of her made-up confrontation and reverts back to reality.
"Uh... no, I don't think so..." she replies, "Maybe there's somepony else's shop open right now..."
"But there's not another candy shop until the other side of town... We are in a hurry, right?" Dash says.
Twilight sighs once more and says, "Fine... let's go to Sugarcube Corner..."
Dash and Twilight turn the other way, and start walking to Sugarcube Corner, the three young mares behind them notice the sudden detour and follow suit. Applebloom asks Twilight,
"Hey, I thought we were goin' to Fluttershy's?"
"Well, Rainbow here, is hungry..." Twilight answers, frustrated.
"So where're we goin'?" the young apple asks.
"Sugarcube Corner..." Twilight says, much to her dismay.
"Oh... alright then..."
Applebloom turns her attention to the unicorn and pegasus beside her. She says,
"I guess we're goin' to Sugarcube Corner now... you girls want anything?"
"Sure." Sweetie Belle answers, "I'll get some strawberry cupcakes. How about you Scoots?"
"Eh, anything's fine..." she answers.
"Alright... if you say so..." Applebloom comments.
The five of them continue to walk to Sugarcube Corner for a quick snack. After a few minutes, they make it to the front of the building and prepare their orders. As they are outside, they get jumpscared by Pinkie Pie, who was escaping something from the inside of the shop. As she jumps backwards out the entrance, she yells out,
"Dgeh!!!"
The others are rightfully confused, sharing the same look of confusion on their faces. For a few seconds, Pinkie doesn't notice the gang behind her. Eventually, she hears the familiar breathing pattern of her newly coronated friend. Making a smile, she turns around and eerily greets them,
"Ah, yes... I've expected that you would drop by..."
After Pinkie gives Twilight a finger, Twilight drops it to the ground and rightfully reacts,
"Gah!!!"
Pinkie begins to smile widely towards her before yelling out,
"Congratulations!!!"
"What the fuck is that, Pinkie!?" Twilight shouts, staring at the finger.
"It's a finger!" the sugar addicted pony happily responds.
"Why did you give me a finger!?" Twilight asked calmly.
"Oh, it's not just any finger..." Pinkie explains, "It's a ring finger. You know, for when you get married."
"Where did you get that!?" Twilight continues to ask, aggressively.
"When I have two heart attacks, that means somepony very close to me is about to be engaged." Pinkie explains, implying she has Pinkie sense.
"What!?" Twilight asks, wondering if Pinkie heard her question wrong, before responding to Pinkie's claim, "How do you even know it's me?"
"Oh, come on..." Pinkie starts, "Did you think I actually left after what happened yesterday?"
"Were you watching me!?" Twilight continues asking.
"Oh yeah, I couldn't even sleep because I was watching you be the star of an entire episode in front of me." Pinkie says.
"What episode!?" Twilight asks more.
"You know... you..." Pinkie responds to Twilight, "And whoever you were sleeping with... Sheesh, it's like you weren't even there yourself..."
Twilight gets sweaty, feels weak, air gets heavy. Then focuses her two eyes on Pinkie, cheese linguine. She's nervous, and on the surface, she looks pale already. She's not calm, Pinkie then throws confetti. But she looks down, and she frowns, groans aloud. She opens her mouth, but her words don't come out. She's choking now, Pinkie Pie starts joking, (wow),
"I was groaking out. Slept, awoke, and bounced."
Twilight snaps back to reality, then she goes,
"Actually?"
"Yup. I slept happily, though."
She gets mad, and she goes,
"You saw everything!?"
"Nope."
She won't have it, she knows she's down bad, but she hopes, she didn't catch her elope, wait no... Nap, with Rainbow. She goes stagnant, she knows, when she goes back to her home, she'll moan. Let's just get, back to the story then, end this whole parody. I won't go rap through this poem and then hope it won't clash with-
"You better prove yourself, and explain it, your antics, you name it! You better answer me, you h-"
"Woah!... I only saw one shot, the bed and the radio. My opportunity came once it was nighttime."
"Oh..." Twilight ends her aggressive outburst, and the parodical rap.
"Well, that was fun..." Pinkie remarks to herself, "We should do that kind of bit again sometime."
Haha... maybe we will... Anyway, Twilight starts to calm down again after finding out that Pinkie just saw her in bed with somepony, and she doesn't know who it was. Then she gets riled up again, remembering the finger on the ground.
"But I meant, where did you get the finger!?" Twilight asks again.
"Oh, I found it when I was making a batch of cupcakes." Pinkie says truthfully.
"What!?"
"Oh don't worry, it wasn't in the batter." she explains.
"Then where did you find it!?" the alicorn continues questioning.
"You wanna keep asking questions, or do you wanna order?" Pinkie asks with a bored expression.
Rainbow Dash suddenly speaks out from the group,
"Gimme some of them cupcakes with sprinkles."
Applebloom continues the order list,
"I'll have my usual."
Sweetie Belle orders next,
"And I'll get some strawberry cupcakes."
Scootaloo continues last,
"Surprise me."
Pinkie then turns to Twilight and asks her,
"And what will you have, Mrs. twenty questions?"
"Missus?" the princess questions more.
"There you go again with the questions..." Pinkie says, aggravated, "Just order already!"
Twilight gets genuinely terrified and does so,
"O-okay... I'll just have a blueberry muffin..."
Pinkie starts to look cheery again and brings them all inside. Upon opening the front doors, they are greeted with a line of smoke coming from the kitchen area.
The group notice this and Twilight asks another question,
"Whoa, did you leave the oven on?"
Pinkie gives her another look of boredom and answers her question and the other one before it,
"No, Twilight, it's a fire."
Twilight yells out another question,
"Fire!?"
"Yes, Twilight. It came from the portal that the finger came from... So hurry up and order!" Pinkie says, violently.
"But I already did!" Twilight responds.
"Oh..." Pinkie says as she remembers what her and the rest of the group ordered, "Blueberry muffin, right?"
"Yes..." Twilight answers, calming down.
"Okie dokie lokie!" Pinkie says with a smile as she hops back into the burning kitchen.
After a quick minute, Pinkie comes back out with five paper bags of packaged baked goods. She carefully hands them out to the ponies who ordered them.
"Cupcakes with sprinkles for Dashie..."
"Sweet. Thanks, Pinkie." Dash says as she receives her bag.
"The usual for Applebloom..."
"Thanks." Applebloom says, receiving hers.
"Strawberry cupcakes for Sweetie Belle..."
"Thank you." Sweetie thanks.
"A surprise for Scootaloo..."
"Alright." Scootaloo says before she looks into her bag and sees nothing inside.
"The shit!?" she shouts.
"What's wrong?" Pinkie asks, "Don't like it?"
"What it? There's nothing in here!" Scootaloo complains.
"That's the surprise!" Pinkie responds.
Before Scootaloo can respond, she gives Twilight her goodie bag.
"And last but not least, one blueberry muffin for you."
"Uh, thanks Pinkie... But did you put out the fire?" Twilight asks.
"Umm... nope." Pinkie answers, happily.
"Wha- Why!?" Twilight questions.
"Because I was getting you guys' orders." Pinkie explains.
"But the whole place could burn down!" Twilight says.
"So?" Pinkie asks.
"So put out the fire!" Twilight yells.
"Fine. But why don't you do it?" Pinkie says.
"Excuse me!?" Twilight questions.
"Don't "eXCusE mE!?" me. Go put it out!" Pinkie yells.
"Why me!?" Twilight responds.
"Just put it out!!!" Pinkie continues yelling.
"Fine!" Twilight shouts before asking one final question, "Where's your fire extinguisher?"
"Oh, it's in there... somewhere..." Pinkie answers.
Twilight groans and quickly rushes into the burning kitchen to put out the fire. Luckily, she uses her magic to find the fire extinguisher through the smoke. She gets hold of it before quickly putting out the spreading fire. She comes back out of the smoky kitchen to the mares who got their cupcakes, eating them as if there wasn't just a fire in the building they're in. Pinkie was collecting bits from everypony except for Scootaloo and Twilight. Pinkie then goes up to her friend,
"Payment, please!"
"Here." Twilight says as she teleports her entire wallet into Pinkie's hooves. "Just take whatever you need to help fix the damages..."
"Aww, thank you, Twilight." Pinkie says, now beaming with thankfulness.
"No problem, I always got your back." Twilight says, digging into her muffin.
"Perhaps I treated you too harshly..." Pinkie realizes before dropping to her knees and apologizes, "I'm sorry, little one..."
"I forgive you." Twilight says brushing off what Pinkie calls her as she finishes off her muffin.
"Okey Dokey Lokey!" Pinkie says, returning back to her normal self.
"Alright... Everypony ready to go to Fluttershy's now?" Twilight asks everypony in the room.
The three who got something, finish one last cupcake before noticing that Scootaloo was sitting sadly. They look at each other for a moment before looking back towards where Scootaloo is. They each go up to her offer her one of their cupcakes. As soon as she notices the three of them holding out a cupcake, she asks,
"Are those for me?"
"Yeah. We saw you alone over here..." Sweetie Belle replies.
"So we thought we'd at least give you somethin'... even though you're a little hard to put up with..." Applebloom says.
"Yeah, take 'em kid, they're all yours." Rainbow Dash concludes.
"Oh, thank you, guys!" Scootaloo gets up from her seat and hugs the three of them.
"Aww, This... Does put a smile on my face." Pinkie says, "How selfish of you, Twilight!"
"Wh-"
Twilight gets cut off before she could answer.
"Just kidding." Pinkie says, "I knew they would do that by the way. That was the real surprise."
"Okay..." Twilight comments before turning back to the group she was with, "Seriously though, can we get going?"
Twilight hesitates to answer at first, but eventually,
"Yeah, sure."
"WOO!" Pinkie shouts.
"Just don't distract us... that's the only rule." Twilight explains.
"Gotcha!" Pinkie understands.
Now, the six ponies exit the Sugarcube Corner, filled up and ready to get to Fluttershy's house. Pinkie Pie, Twilight, and Rainbow Dash lead the way as Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo follow behind them. As the group starts moving, Pinkie stays behind and reaches down to pick up the dropped finger outside of the store. She catches up with the group and tries to give it back to Twilight. But she says,
"Pinkie, I don't want that thing."
"But why?" Pinkie whines.
"It's a severed body part! Why would I want to have something that's going to decompose!?" Twilight exclaims.
"As long as there are those that remember what it was, there will always be those that are unable to accept what it can be."
"But I don't want it, why don't you keep it?" Twilight says.
"In all my years of conquest, violence, slaughter, it was never personal." Pinkie says.
"What are you even talking out!?" Twilight asks.
"The hardest choices require the strongest wills." Pinkie responds.
"Seriously, what do you mean!?" Twilight questions.
"A small price to pay for salvation." Pinkie answers.
"Pinkie, I don't want your finger!" Twilight says loudly.
"I know, and you'll have the chance to prove it." Pinkie says, forcing the finger into Twilight's hooves.
"Pinkie! What are you-" Twilight says, but she gets cut off by Pinkie.
"You know what you must do." Pinkie says.
"What!? What do I do with it!?" Twilight asks as she starts using her magic to hold onto the finger.
"Giving it to me will spare you a great deal of suffering." Pinkie says.
"What!?" Twilight asks.
"This universe is finite. Its resources, finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction." Pinkie replies.
"What are talking about!?" Twilight asks.
"You're not the only one cursed with knowledge." Pinkie says.
"What knowledge!?" Twilight asks.
"Reality is often disappointing." Pinkie says.
"Why is it disappointing?" Twilight asks, calming down because there's nothing to really be mad about anymore.
"Reality can be whatever I want." Pinkie explains.
"Oh really? And why is that?" Twilight asks, not believing her.
"It's my destiny." Pinkie says.
Twilight laughs and says,
"Good one! Thats was a good joke, Pinkie!"
"That was a mistake." Pinkie says as Twilight stops laughing.
"Wait, you're serious?" she asks Pinkie.
"I ignored my destiny once. I cannot do that again. Even for you." Pinkie responds.
"What?" Twilight asks tiredly.
"They called me a madmare." Pinkie says.
"Okay?" Twilight says, wanting to focus on the finger, "So do I give this thing to you then?"
Pinkie nods seriously.
"Okay..." Twilight says, giving the finger back to Pinkie.
"That is destiny fulfilled." Pinkie says, throwing it into the river next to them.
Seeing this, Twilight shouts, "Woah! I thought you wanted it back!"
"The universe required correction. After that, the finger served no purpose beyond temptation." Pinkie reveals.
"Temptation to what?" Twilight asks.
"Everything." Pinkie explains.
"Elaborate." Twilight says.
Pinkie sighs and says,
"The work is done. It always will be."
"Okay, but did that actually do anything?" Twilight asks.
"Tipped the cosmic scales to balance." Pinkie answers.
"Giving you the finger back, balanced the cosmic scales?" Twilight questions.
"Perfectly balanced, as all things should be." Pinkie says.
"So, you're telling me... that by giving you back the finger... that you got from some creature through a portal... something in the universe got balanced?" Twilight asks, trying to understand what Pinkie is talking about.
"So you do understand." Pinkie says.
"No. I still don't get where you're coming from..." Twilight replies.
"I never taught you to lie. That's why you're so bad at it." Pinkie says.
"I'm not lying! I don't know what you're on about!" Twilight yells.
"You're quite the fighter, Twilight." Pinkie says.
"Fine. I understand then..." Twilight sighs.
Rainbow Dash, who was listening to their conversation the entire time they were walking, says to them,
"I don't."
"The arrogant never do." Pinkie says.
"What was that!?" Dash says, angrily.
"Dash! Calm down..." Twilight says to her.
"Why? She called me arrogant!" Dash says.
"That's just Pinkie being Pinkie." Twilight tries explaining, "She doesn't have a filter."
"Fine, whatever..." Dash says, taking a deep breath before saying, "Just tell me we're close to Fluttershy's so we can get this shit over with."
“Your optimism is misplaced, Cloudsdale-ian." Pinkie says.
"Excuse me?" Dash says.
"Dashie..." Pinkie says, "It is inevitable."
"Pinkie, don't say that!" Twilight interrupts, "If you were our friend, you wouldn't be against us in finding a way to stop the Moai spell from killing her."
"You're full of tricks, wizard." Pinkie says.
"Of course I am..." Twilight says, "But you need to think positively. And since you're on this journey with us, you better do just that."
"You have my respect, Sparkle. When I'm done, half of Rainbow Dash will still be alive. I hope she remembers you." Pinkie says.
Twilight sighs, wanting to move on. She says to Pinkie,
"Anyway, about that portal..."
"What portal?" Pinkie says in confusion.
"The portal. Remember? The one that almost burned down Sugarcube Corner?" she asks.
"Ohh... Sure Twilight. So I was mixing the batter and a small looking portal opened on top of the counter..." Pinkie starts explaining, "So I stuck my hoof in it and felt something, so I grabbed it and pulled it through."
"And how did that cause a fire!?" Twilight asks more.
Pinkie sighs and says, "The portal was made out of sparks, Twilight, okay?", before continuing the flashback,
"When I continued pulling on the thing in the portal, it started closing. So I started to pull even harder and then I saw that I was holding onto a hand. Then, I let go... Unfortunately, the creature who's hand I pulled through the portal couldn't pull it back in time. And it cut one of their fingers clean off. I watched as it dropped onto the wooden counter with smoke coming out of where the portal had closed on it... As I was reaching to pick it up, the blood puddle it spewed started ablaze. I blew on it but it only made it worse and the fire started to spread across the countertop."
"And then?" Twilight asks.
Pinkie breathes in before she continues,
"I started to feel my chest hurt, and then I started sweating, I felt weak, and the air was heavy... But then it stopped... Then it came back again! And that's when I turned around and saw you five approaching. I quickly prepared myself, ready to meet you guys, but I felt my leg start to heat up. I turned my neck to look at it, and I saw that my tail was on fire! So I grabbed the finger and tried to put out the flame. Then, I ended up in front of the counter, then I tripped and fell outside. Then I heard you breathing so I just turned around and said, "Ah, yes... I've expected that you would drop by...", and that's when I gave you the finger. And, well, you know what happens next."
"Okay... Why did you have to throw the finger in the river anyway?" Twilight asks.
"I just told you, it served no purpose anymore." Pinkie answers.
"Okay... but don't you think it's a little bit unsafe to leave it in there?" Twilight asks.
"What do you mean?" Pinkie asks.
"It's gonna pollute the aquatic life's habitat." Twilight explains.
"Ohh... I getcha." Pinkie says before sitting down and closing her eyes.
Twilight stops walking, looks at her, and asks,
"What are you doing?"
"I'm taking care of the finger." the pink pony answers as she claps her hooves together.
"How?" Twilight asks, confused.
"I just made it go away." Pinkie explains, opening her eyes.
"What do you mean?" Twilight questions.
"It's gone." Pinkie says, getting back up.
"What?" Twilight asks.
“Gone. Reduced to atoms.” Pinkie says.
"How-" Twilight stops herself from asking anymore questions, realizing she shouldn't question Pinkie Pie.
"What's wrong, little one?" Pinkie asks her.
"Nothing..." Twilight just says, shaking her head.
"Alrighty." Pinkie says, "But if you're wondering how I did that; I could simply clap my hooves. They would all cease to exist."
"All of what?" Twilight asks.
"All the body parts in water." Pinkie answers, as if there isn't anything wrong with that.
"You disintegrated every body part in water!?" Twilight asks, concerned.
"Nope. Just the finger." Pinkie replies.
"Okay, but what's gonna happen to the creature you took it from?" Twilight asks more.
"They're not trying to stop something I'm going to do in our time. They're trying to undo something I've already done in theirs." Pinkie says.
"So, they're just trying to fix their finger?" Twilight asks.
"Yup." Pinkie answers, "If they knew what I just did over here, they wouldn't like it."
"Sure." Twilight says, finally.
The group finally made it to the front of Fluttershy's cottage, after wasting a huge amount of their day trying to just get there. Twilight knocks on the front door. Fluttershy answers it. Upon seeing the six mares in front of her, she greets them,
"Oh, hello girls."
"Hi, Fluttershy." Twilight greets, "Just came by to get something..."
Fluttershy lets Twilight inside as she looks around the living room in search for the Special Spells book. Fluttershy then talks with the rest of the group who came with Twilight.
"So... have you two tried something yet?" she asks Rainbow Dash.
"No... Not yet... That's kind of why we came by..." she answers.
"Oh... how are you by the way?" Fluttershy asks.
"Oh, you know... still cursed, I guess..." Dash replies, using her free hoof to point to her stone-covered one before laughing awkwardly.
"I see that..." Fluttershy remarks before turning behind her to see Twilight, "How's your relationship going?"
"Well... I wouldn't say it's going great... but I also wouldn't say it's horrible..." Dash answers as Fluttershy turns back to face her, "But that's mostly because I don't have that much time to be with her anymore..."
"I understand..." Fluttershy says.
"But you know, if this whole situation wasn't happening right now..." Dash continues, "I definitely would say that I'm happy with where we are..."
"That's nice..." Fluttershy replies, turning back behind her, "So, what's she looking for?"
"Uh, remember when we came by yesterday?" Dash asks, "Well, she left the spell book here..."
"Oh, the Special spell book?" Fluttershy asks.
"Yeah... that one." Dash says.
"I noticed..." Fluttershy says, "I think I brought it upstairs..."
"In your bedroom?" Dash asks.
"Well, I read into it last night... I wanted to see how "special" it was..." Fluttershy replies, "It seemed... pretty... weird..."
"Yeah well, you should have been there when we were going through the thing..." Dash comments, "A lot of those were special alright..."
"I could imagine..." Fluttershy says, "Did you get to the spell about sculpting?"
"What?" Dash questions.
"There was a sculpting spell... I just thought that might be a solution to your problem..."
"Huh... You know what page it was on?" Dash asks.
"Oh, no... I... um... fell asleep... after a while..." Fluttershy explains.
"Great..." Dash comments, "Anything else?"
"Um... I think there was one about landscaping..." Fluttershy says, "But I also don't know what page that was on... "
"Ok... Well, thanks anyway, for looking through it for us." Dash says.
"Oh, no problem." Fluttershy says, "Wanna come in?"
"Sure." Dash says as she starts walking inside, "Wait one more thing... Why didn't you bring it to us yesterday?"
"Oh... um... I didn't see on the table until after I brought Tank down for you." Fluttershy answers.
"Ah." Dash says before continuing to walk into the living room.
Fluttershy then turns to the four other mares in the group. She says,
"So... what brings you girls along?"
"Oh, I just got here." Pinkie Pie truthfully says, "I have no clue why we're here."
"Okay... Would you like to come in?" Fluttershy invites.
"Okiee." Pinkie says as she joyfully bounces towards the sofa.
Fluttershy watches as her pink painted friend hops around in her house. Then she turns to the three younger mares in the group. She greets them,
"How about you three?"
"Well, we just ran into Twilight and Rainbow Dash... she told us what was happenin', and where she was goin'..." Applebloom replies, "Then we had a quick stop at Sugarcube Corner... There was a fire over there..."
"Wait... fire?" Fluttershy asks.
"Yeah... Twilight put it out, though..." Applebloom answers, "Trust me, you don't wanna know what caused it..."
"What caused it?" the shy pegasus asks.
"It's complicated... there was something about a portal, and a... fang-gur... and Pinkie was yellin' at Twilight the whole time..." the young mare answers.
"Oh..." Fluttershy comments.
"Yeah... we didn't really expect this to be how our morning went..." Applebloom concludes.
"We were hoping maybe we could help out with the curse somehow."" Sweetie Belle remarks.
"Yeah... I'm more interested in their relationship than that "life-threatening" spell." Scootaloo adds.
"Uh-huh..." Fluttershy says, "You're welcome to come in then..."
"Thanks..." Scootaloo says, walking in first, "I'm tired..."
"It's nine o'clock..." Applebloom says, following after.
"On a Saturday?" Scootaloo asks the mare behind her.
Applebloom makes an exaggerated frown in response to her friend's awful joke as Sweetie Belle catches up with them. Back to Twilight, she has looked into every cabinet and shelf in the living room, kitchen and bathroom but still hasn't found the Special Spells book. She eventually gets frustrated and returns to the living room, so she can ask Fluttershy if she's seen it anywhere. Upon walking near the doorway, returning from the kitchen, she finds the gang laying around the furniture and taking a break from walking. A few steps later she runs into Fluttershy, who was heading into the kitchen. Twilight apologizes,
"Umph! Sorry, Fluttershy."
"Oh, it's alright." Fluttershy responds, "Oh, I was just looking for you."
"I was looking for you too." Twilight says, "Um... I was gonna ask if you've seen the spell book anywhere."
"Oh, yes. It's upstairs." Fluttershy answers.
"Ohhh... Upstairs..." Twilight says in realization.
"I think I'll go get it then..." Fluttershy says as she turns to the stairs and climbs up into her bedroom.
After a few seconds, she comes back down and hands the book over to Twilight.
"Oh, thanks, Fluttershy." Twilight thanks her.
"No problem." Fluttershy welcomes.
"Hey, why didn't you bring it to us yesterday?" Twilight asks.
"Oh, Rainbow Dash asked the same thing, why don't you go talk to her. I'll be busy." Fluttershy says as she walks past Twilight and into the backyard.
"Alright... kinda weird, but okay..." Twilight remarks.
She walks towards her mare-friend with the book in her magic, and asks her a question,
"Did she tell you where this was?"
"Oh yeah... she said it was upstairs." the stone-covered pegasus answers.
"Okay... why was it upstairs?" the alicorn asks as she sits down on a chair.
"She was looking through it." Dash replies.
"Why didn't she just bring it to us yesterday?" Twilight finally asks.
"Oh, 'cuz she found it after she brought Tank down..." Dash responds.
"Oh, okay..." Twilight says, not knowing what to do next.
Twilight opens the book and flips to the page of the Mosaic spell. She sighs and flips around to the Moai spell's page as she turns to Rainbow.
"We really need to do something about this..." Twilight says to the pegasus, "Got any ideas?"
"Well... Fluttershy did read a few pages while she had it up there." Rainbow responds, "I think she said something about a sculpting spell? And uhh... landscaping, I think? I guess she wanted to help us out a little..."
"Wait... did she say what pages they were?" Twilight asks as she turns her head back towards the book.
"..." Rainbow stays silent for a moment before answering, "Uhh... actually, no..."
"You did bring it up though, right?" Twilight asks as she flips through the pages of the spell book.
"Of course, I did... She told me she fell asleep after a bit so she doesn't remember what pages they were on..." Dash replies.
"Ugh, whatever. Let's just go." Twilight says abruptly as shuts the book and sets it aside before standing up from her seat.
"To where?" Dash asks the agitated alicorn.
"Um..." Twilight tries to think of where they can test stuff on Rainbow Dash, "Sweet Apple Acres might be open enough for what we're gonna do..."
"But shouldn't we ask Applejack permission to use her farm as a testing site?" Dash asks.
"Exactly." Twilight answers before loudly saying, "We can go there right now."
"..." Nopony says anything as they continue to lounge around Fluttershy's living room.
"Come on, girls. Get a move on, we're going to Sweet Apple Acres." Twilight announces to the rest of the group.
"Ok, fine... Lead the way, Twi..." Rainbow sarcastically says as she starts walking to the exit.
"Move, move, move." Twilight says as everyone in the living room slowly make their way to the front door.
Before Twilight shuts the door, she goes back inside and looks around again. She eventually sees the Special Spells book that she almost left in Fluttershy's house again. She takes a moment to think about something, then she goes into the kitchen and out the back door. When she sees Fluttershy, she calls for her,
"Fluttershy!"
"Yes?" Fluttershy says from the bushes.
"We're going to Sweet Apple Acres!" Twilight yells, "We're gonna go do some stuff to Rainbow Dash!"
"Okay. Good luck!" Fluttershy says loudly.
Twilight goes back inside to pick up the Special Spells book before finally leaving Fluttershy's cottage.
Princess Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo arrive at the front entrance of Sweet Apple Acres. From where they're standing, they could see that the barn looked unoccupied. Twilight speaks up,
"Applebloom, is Applejack here?"
"I don't think so... She's been goin' out around this time for the past month." Applebloom explains.
"Well, do you know where she is?" Twilight asks the young apple.
"Twilight, if I did, I woulda said somethin'..." Applebloom bluntly says, "She ain't around here... I checked."
"Okay..." Twilight says.
"Yeah, Rarity leaves her place around this time too." Scootaloo suddenly says, surprising everyone.
"Hey, don't bring up your weird fantasy, Sootaloo!..." Sweetie Belle shouts to the orange pegasus.
"Oh yeah, "Fantasy"..." Scootaloo scoffs, "Well, with my record of what I told you turning out to be true, I'd say I'm pretty confident that they're doing it."
"Uh..." Scootaloo says, choosing her next words wisely, "Listen... Dash... I've just been noticing some patterns, okay?"
"Right..." Dash says, suspicious, "And how do you know of these "patterns"?"
"Uhm... Ok, shit, uh... Look, I didn't mean to spy on you... I just-" Scootaloo says before getting cut off by Rainbow.
"Wait, wait. You didn't mean to spy on me?" Dash asks, "I thought we were talking about Applejack and Rarity."
"Oh, uhh... Yeah. We are... Just... let me finish..." Scootaloo nervously explains, "So... basically, recently, I just noticed that AJ and Rarity left around the same time me and these two get together."
"Uh-huh..." Rainbow says, "Go on..."
"Well, you know..." Scootaloo says while she gestures something unintelligible, "I just think they're off somewhere... doing it."
"Right. Yeah, I can see that..." Dash comments, "So, what was that about spying on me?"
"Right... right... uh... Well... I saw you go into Twilight's castle on Easter..." Scootaloo tries to explain.
"Okay..." Dash says, waiting for her to continue.
"That was after our hangout, right?" Scootaloo asks the two other CMC founders.
They both nod in agreement.
"Yeah. So, I was heading back home, you know, as one does. Then I saw you go into her castle," Scootaloo gestures to Twilight, "I came home thinking, "Hmm. What could you possibly be doing in there?" And well... I went to bed, woke up the next day, got ready for another hangout sesh, and then, well... You came out with Twilight... And I just thought, "Woah. What were they getting up to last night?" And well, that's about it... Except for the meeting you all had later in the day... Rarity and Applejack left together too... So that's something added to why I'm sure they're actually doing it..." she explains, somehow getting more relaxed as she went on.
"Okay... well... That's alright I guess..." Dash says, tiredly.
"Hold on a second..." Pinkie Pie speaks up.
"What?" Dash asks her pink painted friend.
"What were you doing that night with Twilight?" Pinkie asks, suspicious of her.
Rainbow Dash groans with frustration due to explanations. She turns to Twilight before saying,
"Twilight, can you just tell her what happened..."
"Okay, so yesterday..." Twilight begins explaining, "I left out a few details on purpose..."
"What details?" Pinkie asks.
"Allow me to explain..."
"... and that's why I was afraid to tell anypony..." Twilight finishes.
"Huh." Scootaloo says, "I pictured it would be a little more exciting... oh well..."
Applebloom and Sweetie Belle give her the same expression of the "Bruh" emotion. Twilight ignores this and continues talking to Pinkie. Twilight continues,
"And I would really appreciate it if you didn't tell anypony else... I'd like to tell them myself..."
"Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye." Pinkie says as she does the heart crossing then the hope to fly and the cupcake sticking in the eye motion.
"Okay... thanks..." Twilight says, "So, yeah, basically Rainbow and I, are in love..."
"Ah, the mare-friend." Pinkie says as he looks towards Dash, "I like her."
"Right... thanks Pinkie..." Dash reacts, "Anyway, I'll just say, Twilight is honestly the greatest mare-friend anypony could ever have."
"Oh, come on..." Twilight says, blushing.
"No, really! I think you're the best pony I could have possibly ended up with." Rainbow reassures, "You're pretty helpful, you try your best to do everything right, and hey, I feel like we've known each other for so long, I think it's safe to say that we were meant for each other."
Twilight giggles a bit before continuing the banter,
"Okay... Then I guess I could say the same to you..."
"Is that all?" Rainbow asks her.
"Well, for now..." Twilight answers before ending it with a playful laugh, "We'll see..."
"Ohh... Well, congratulations!!!" Pinkie says to Twilight and Dash, "If only you would've kept the finger..."
"Wh-... Look, Pinkie, Thank you. But I'm serious, we're not gonna be together for much longer if we don't start trying to do something about this spell." Twilight says after coming back to the reality of the situation.
"Yeah, come on. I thought you brought us here so we could do that something." Dash says, impatiently.
"Oh... Right." Twilight says in realization.
Twilight then walks further into the Apple Orchard, ready to test some spells that could possibly stop the Moai spell from coming to fruition. The rest of the group follow her until she stops just outside the backyard of the Apple Family Barn.
"I think this is open enough." Twilight says as she gets ready to open the Special Spells book.
"Aren't we a little close to the barn?" Dash asks her eager mare-friend.
"Well, if we go anywhere else, I might damage one of the trees..." Twilight explains, "Besides, that barn gets rebuilt all the time anyway..."
"Ok..." Dash says, slightly upset, "So, what do we do first?"
"Let me see..." Twilight says as she flips through the pages of the Special Spells book, looking for spells that seem crazy enough that it might work against the Moai spell.
She eventually finds the page of the sculpting spell, located in the art section of the spell book, a few pages after the Mosaic spell. Then she goes,
"Alright, first thing we're gonna do... is sculpt."
She readies up her horn, carefully following the instructions on the page, tells her mare-friend to "Get in position." and "Everypony out of the way", then she conjures up the magic. After a few seconds of aiming her horn, she releases a continuous beam of magic that shoots towards the volcanic rock attached to Rainbow Dash's body. This goes on for a full thirty and a half seconds, the same amount of time before the first line of Filly Joel's 1973 hit song, "Piano Mare".
After those thirty and a half seconds, Twilight stops firing the magic laser at Rainbow Dash. Soon after, the dusty smog clears up enough to where they could all see through it. From where she's standing, she doesn't see any changes made. She walks closer to ground zero, a.k.a. Rainbow Dash, to take a closer look. Apparently, she was right. She didn't make a dent in the stone, or even leave a mark. It was all still intact somehow. Twilight sighs and moves on to another page of the "Special Magic Spells" book. After flipping over to the first few pages, she tries the very first spell in the book. She gets back into position and prepares herself for another round of spell casting.
It's been about four minutes since the two mares started testing the spells in the "Special Magic" book. Some of the spells they used were the ones that were up the "Next level special" scale, and they even tested the ones that were so boring, they almost fell asleep. But they wouldn't fall asleep this time, though. This time, was a time for true testing, anything that can be tested, will be tested. No matter how obscure, obscene, or obsolete. She was obstinate, she needed to test every spell on Rainbow Dash, in hopes that it might get rid of Dash's obstruction.
They continue testing some more spells, hoping that at least one would do something to the Moai stone. But suddenly, a silhouette of somepony emerges in the window of the Apple Family's Barn's upstairs's bedroom. The shaded figure turns out to be Applebloom's older sister, Applejack, who has just woken up from all the noise Twilight and Rainbow Dash are making in the backyard. At first, she questions to herself what all the ruckus is about,
"What the hay is that?"
As tries to look out the window to inspect the cause of the noise, another somepony emerges from the bottom of the window frame. It asks in a familiar transatlantic accent,
"What's wrong, darling?"
Applejack turns the other direction to face her before she says,
"Oh, nothin'..."
"Are you sure?" the posh mare asks her, "You seem a little... distraught..."
"Alright, well... Just wonderin' what's goin' on out there..." Applejack says as she looks back out the window while squinting,
"Hold on... Is that... Twilight?"
"What?" Rarity asks as another sound of spell casting noise sparks up from outside.
She moves herself closer to the window and she sees her alicorn friend.
"Oh, yes. That is Twilight." Rarity comments casually.
"I'm gonna go have a word with her..." Applejack sighs, before getting out of her bed.
"Will you be back?" Rarity asked playfully.
Applejack chuckles a bit before answering her question,
"You bet yer pretty little butt, I will."
She grabs her Stetson-style hat before walking out of her bedroom, leaving Rarity in a playful mood. Applejack walks all the way downstairs and out to the backyard to meet the group, who has stumbled upon the landscaping spell Fluttershy mentioned to Rainbow Dash. Twilight was just about ready to begin testing the landscaping spell, but Applejack intervenes,
"What in tarnation are ya'll doin'?"
"Oh, hi AJ." Twilight says, not looking at the right-hoof mare of the farm.
"Wait, AJ?" She then asks after acknowledging that Applejack came out of nowhere.
Twilight stops her horn from producing magic and puts the book down on the ground before walking up to the southern-adjacent apple farmer. Everypony else turns their heads to look at Applejack in surprise. Twilight asks the mare,
"I thought Applebloom said you weren't home?"
"She wasn't." Applebloom defends herself, before asking her sister, "Where'd you come from, sis?"
"I was... uh..." the older sister pauses, "I just came back after..."
"After what?" the younger sister asks.
"Ah, heck. I can't do it..." Applejack says, succumbing to her morals before calling out, "RARITY!"
From the second she calls for her name, the white-coated unicorn pops up from the same window and loudly yells,
"Yes, what is it, darling?"
"Could you come out here?" Applejack asks.
"Alright." Rarity yells back as she presumably leaves the bedroom to do so.
The group stare at the empty window where Rarity was just seconds earlier in confusion for a few more seconds.
"Anyway..." Applejack turns back to Twilight, "Just what do you think yer doin'?"
"And why do ya'll need to be on my farm to do that?" Applejack asks.
"Well, we need an open area to test these spells... I hope you don't mind..." Twilight says.
"Oh, I think I mind." Applejack responds, "But, let me just ask, will these spells yer testin' damage the farm?"
"Well..." Twilight pauses, "I don't know... But so far, we haven't touched a single tree... So I guess they should be safe enough, right?"
"Sure..." Applejack says in a speculative way.
Suddenly, Rarity appears behind Applejack and greets the group. After saying her hellos, she questions Applejack on why she called her outside. The older apple sister quietly answers her,
"They're askin' where I've been. What do I do?"
Rarity opens her mouth, but before she could answer, her younger sister asks,
"What were you doing in Applejack's bedroom, sis?"
"Oh..." Rarity pauses, "Um... Well..."
As she thinks about what to say, she gets distracted by Applejack's untidy bedhead mane and tries fixing it a bit. The two of them look at each other happily as she's doing it, while the group try and put two and two together. As soon as they simultaneously realize that Applejack and Rarity are a thing, Scootaloo is the first to speak up.
"Ah-ha-ha!" she does a short maniacal laugh, "I knew something was going on between you two."
She turns towards the pair's younger sisters and says,
"And you two said they weren't shagging each other. I was right all along."
They both look at her with pursed lips, silently losing their patience with their immature friend. In that same moment, Pinkie Pie bounces her way to the dirty-minded filly.
"Insect!" she shouts, scaring Scootaloo.
"What!?" the terrified pegasus shouts in response.
"
insect
[ in-sekt ] noun 3 a contemptible or unimportant person.
" Pinkie says.
"Pinkie..." Twilight says in a grainy voice.
"What? That's what she is, isn't she?" Pinkie asks.
"Sweet Celestia, Pinkie, can you just, stop?" Twilight says, grumpily.
"Alrighty then." Pinkie says as she rotates herself to Applejack and Rarity's direction, "So... Are you guys together?"
Rarity stops trying to fix Applejack's mane after struggling with one part that keeps sticking back up and answers Pinkie's question.
"I mean... I'd consider it. We've been secretly seeing each other for a month now..." she says before turning to Applejack, "It's about time they found out though, don't you think?"
"Yeah, I guess." Applejack answers.
"Oh, that's cool." Rainbow says before giving Twilight a little nudge to tell them the truth, "Twilight has something similar going on."
"Oh... um... uh... yeah..." Twilight says, getting ready to explain once more, "Okay, so yesterday..."
"... and now we're here." Twilight finishes, "You two are actually the last on the list, so now you know."
"Huh..." Applejack says, "Well that's nice."
"Not as intricate as our relationship but good for you." Rarity encourages.
"Are you trying to one up us?" Dash asks the mare with the passion for fashion.
"Oh, not at all darling. I'm just saying, it hasn't been going on for as long as ours." the seamstress explains.
"Sure..." Dash says in a suspicious tone.
"No, really. It's nice that you two finally shared your interests in each other." Rarity continues defending herself, "Happy for you."
"Okay, thanks..." Dash says, continuing to be doubtful.
A few seconds of silence go by before she asks,
"So... what were we talking about?"
They all take a moment to recall what they were doing here. Suddenly, Fluttershy turns up. She notices that nothing is going on, so she asks,
"Oh, are you already done?"
"Done with wha-..." Twilight starts asking before realizing, "Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me, Fluttershy."
Twilight then hastily walks over to the open spell book on the ground. As she resumes the testing process, Fluttershy walks up to her and asks her which spell they're at now. Twilight answers her question by showing her the page of the landscaping spell that she mentioned. Then after charging up her magic, she unleashes the blast towards Dash's direction. As you can expect, it also doesn't work, much like all the other spells before it. But even with the record of fails so far, she continues on with the Special Spell casting.
Over the course of the next few hours, they take a few short breaks in between the testing to eat something to get some more energy before they all eventually got tired. Interestingly enough, they somehow made it past the halfway point of the "Special Magic Spells" book. It was at this point that the book's spells started to take a turn into the darker side of things. Some of these dark magic spells included things like having to drink a concoction before casting a spell in order to activate it, actual deadly spells that could even potentially kill the spellcaster, and literal sacrifices. Naming a few.
These are the spells that Twilight wanted to keep in mind as a last resort if she really needed them. For now, she skips past them and continues testing out some more light ones. But then, she stumbles upon a spell with instructions that go on for five whole pages. She thinks this is where the help of her friends will be needed in order to proceed.
"Uh... girls?" Twilight asks the whole group.
"What is it, Twi?" Dash asks first as her and the rest of the ponies walk closer to Twilight.
"I think I might need a little help with this one." she responds.
She rotates the book so that the group could see the spell she needs help with. Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy collectively read the first two pages of the instructions for the spell. They react appropriately to the materials needed to do this spell, as well as the specific kinds of materials, when to put them all together, and where to find them.
"Is that all?" Dash asks.
"Apparently not..." Twilight says as she flips to the next page.
The group react in shock at the sheer amount of words that have been squeezed onto the pages. Even after they all finish the other page, Twilight says,
"This isn't over..."
"Dear God..." Pinkie reacts.
"There's more." Twilight continues.
"No..." Pinkie says.
Twilight looks at her with furrowed eyebrows before flipping to the final page of the instructions. They continue reading the long list of instructions. After they reach the end of it, Twilight asks,
"Should we start doing this one, or do we move on to something else?"
The group think hard for a moment before Applebloom proceeds to make a sound statement to Twilight and the gang, but mostly Twilight.
"If we start doin' the preparations for this spell today, and assumin' you keep testing the other spells in the book while we're at it, then you might be able to get through the whole book in time before Rainbow Dash gets turned into a Moai." Applebloom explains.
Twilight sees the plausible outcome by what the younger apple sister stated. She teleports five sheets of paper next to her and starts using the copy and paste spell to copy the five pages in the book and paste them on their respective sheets of paper. Then she goes,
"Alright, so, I got an idea of how we can do this efficiently. I will assign one page to each of you, and whatever page you get, you'll need to provide the materials listed in the instructions. It doesn't matter how you get them, what matters is that you have the right materials."
After copying and pasting the last page of the spell's instructions, she distributes the pages to the members of the group. Pinkie, Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy all get one page. The only ponies who shared a page was the CMC, since Twilight knew they'd work better as a team, not because there were no other pages she could give them individually.
"Okay, I need you girls to go search for the items on there, and when you find them, bring them in to the castle. I will continue testing the rest of the spells, but if you have any problems, come back here, and I'll try to help you." Twilight explains.
"I'm on it!" Pinkie says before speeding off in a random direction but leaving the paper behind.
But as quickly as she left, she came back to grab the page before speeding off again.
"Alright, Twilight. I'll see what I can do." Applejack says.
"Me too." Rarity says before turning to Applejack and planting a kiss on her cheek, "I'll see you later, darling."
Applejack laughs a bit before watching Rarity walk away from her line of sight. Then she goes back to her house to study the instructions Twilight gave her. Fluttershy, who arrived just after Rarity and Applejack came out, is confused about what just happened between them. But she shrugs it off, knowing there are more important things to think about, like the piece of paper she's holding, before she flutters her way out of the farm. Lastly, the CMC run off towards their clubhouse together, leaving Twilight and Rainbow Dash in the open field.
"Okay... well, let's continue then..." Twilight says as she flips to the next page after the long, drawn-out instructions, looking forward to when the madness stops.
But little does she know, it won't. It's all downhill from here. The spells will just keep progressively getting more and more off the rails. Nevertheless, she does her best to do as many of the spells as she can, even if some of them could risk the life of her or her mare-friend.
Eventually, the sun sets, and the moon rises. Rainbow Dash and Twilight are still in the backyard of the Apple Family. Thankfully, almost done going through the entire book. But, even after all that time, not a single spell has made a change to the Moai stone. If anything, they just made it spread faster.
Well, that's not entirely true, the stone has spread a little bit. But that's only because they've been there for almost half the day. After all, what else could they do? Just let Rainbow Dash slowly turn into a Moai and not try to do anything about it? That's not going to happen, not on Twilight's watch. She is determined to try and save her mare-friend from becoming encased in a Moai head statue.
So that's what they have been trying to do for the entire day. Even gathering up her friends to help her with one very complicated spell preparation. Which, by the way, they have been getting materials for, and leaving them inside Twilight's castle, for when she's ready to start doing the spell.
And as we near the end of the day, Twilight also nears the end of the "Special Magic Spells" book. And though they are tired, they need to keep going until they finally finish testing every spell in the Celestia-forsaken spell book. It only took them an entire two days because of difficulties, but they got there. But after a while, they eventually reach the last page of the book.
"Oh, gosh..." Twilight says as she walks up to Rainbow.
"What is it, Twi?" Dash asks.
"I think this is the last spell..." Twilight replies, "Oh, I really hope this one does something..."
"Hope so... If this one still doesn't do anything, here's hoping the ones you saved for later do..." Dash responds.
"You got that right..." Twilight says.
Twilight begins reading the last spell written in the "Special Magic Spells" book. It does involve a slight act of arson, however. But even though it is dangerous, she knows she needs to test it, for the sake of Rainbow Dash's life.
"What is it anyway?" Rainbow asks her.
Twilight shows her the final page of the book and Dash starts reading it. After a quick minute, she finally reacts.
"Ex-fucking-scuse me!?" she yells.
"What's wrong?" Twilight asks.
"This is gonna fucking burn me to death, Twilight!" Dash shouts.
"But we need t-" Twilight says before being cut off by Rainbow Dash.
"No! We are not gonna do this one!" she exclaims.
"O-okay..." Twilight says, "I guess we can probably save this for tomorrow then..."
"But I don't know if there's even gonna be a tomorrow for me, Twi!" Rainbow says.
They go silent for a moment, before Twilight sighs and says,
"I know... Oh gosh, there isn't that much time left until tomorrow is there?"
"Yeah, and it feels like we didn't do anything the whole day again..." Dash says, calming herself down.
"I just spent the entire day trying to help you, Dashie..." Twilight says, unknowingly, "Can't say it was entirely wasted, you know?"
"Wait, what?" Dash asks, surprised.
"What?" Twilight asks, not realizing what she said.
"Wh-... what did you..."Dash struggles to get the right works out to ask her question, "What did you just say?"
Twilight is baffled, she asks,
"I spent the entire day trying to help you?"
"No, after that..." Dash says.
"It wasn't entirely wasted?" Twilight asks again.
"No... Twi, you called me something before that..." Dash says.
"What? What did I call you?" Twilight asks, dumbfounded.
"Really? You conveniently don't remember what you said?" Dash sarcastically asks.
"Yes! Tell me what I said, Dashie." Twilight says that nickname again.
"That! That's what you said!" Dash points out.
At that point, Twilight finally realizes what she had just called her. She thought she had said something wrong, but it was just Rainbow Dash's nickname. After this, her face starts turning red, causing her to laugh a little nervously. Twilight says,
"Oh... I guess you never heard me call you that before..."
"Well, don't ever call me that again..." Rainbow says.
"What!?" Twilight asks in a surprised high-pitched voice, "What do you mean?"
"I'm kidding..." Dash says in a chuckle, "I think I like it when you call me that."
"Oh... okay." Twilight says, laughing awkwardly, "You scared me there..."
"I know... Sorry." Dash apologizes, "So... what now?"
Twilight closes the "Special Magic Spells" book as she thinks about what she and Dash need to do next. She wonders,
"Hmm... I guess we should get back to the castle now... It is getting late..."
"Yeah, I getcha..." Dash says as she stands up to get ready to leave.
Twilight takes a deep breath and sighs, thinking about how tomorrow will go as she looks up at the starry night sky. As she does this, her eyes lock on to a shooting star. With her quick thinking, she closes her eyes and makes a wish. She knows that making a wish upon a shooting star might not even do anything, but given everything that's happened so far, she hopes that at least this one wish could help her.
When she opens her eyes again, the shooting star is no longer visible. She takes another breath before sighing again. Then, Rainbow Dash calls out to her from the side of the barn,
"Hey, Twi! You comin' with me or what?"
Twilight locks eyes with her mare-friend as snaps out of her thoughts before shouting back,
"Coming!"
She picks back up the spell book and catches up to the grounded pegasus before the latter asks,
"What were you doing back there?"
"Oh... I was just thinking...." the princess answers as they both start walking.
"About what?" Dash asks.
"Well... about what you said..." Twilight responds, "If you don't make it through to tomorrow... Then, tonight's gonna be the last night we spend together..."
"Oh yeah... Damn..." Dash remarks.
"I mean it's just... I can't believe this all happened because of me, you know?" she continues, "I found this book... The one that contained the spell that's probably going to take your life... I thought it would be a fun way to ask you out two days ago... Now, I... I've cursed you... And I'm probably never gonna see you again after tomorrow..."
Twilight starts tearing up as she continues,
"I-if only I... just read the correct spell... this wouldn't've happened... You and I could've had more time together... a-and... we could've gone on with our lives together... And I wouldn't have to see you slowly turn into a statue... Basically dying by my hoof..."
She quickly stops, drops the book, and embraces Rainbow, staining the back of her mane and neck with her salty tears. Rainbow Dash is surprised by this, but not uncomfortable. As Twilight brings her head down to Rainbow's, she says,
"Oh my gosh... My time with you just isn't going the way I wanted it to be..."
"I know what you mean..." Rainbow remarks as she brings her right arm up to hold her, "And I completely understand how you feel." she says, mirroring what Twilight said a few moments before they started their relationship.
They stay in that position for a few more moments as Dash continues,
"I've had the most awesome time with you... And that even includes the adventures we've had before we started dating... I mean, if I never met you all those years ago... I don't think I could've accomplished nearly as much as I have after I did... We've both accomplished so much since then... Even being the reason why Equestria became the best place to be in the world. It's because of us... Well, the others were there too but, they're not part of this-"
Twilight stifles a giggle when she hears her say that.
"Okay, whatever, What I'm trying to say is..." Dash brushes off, "We have been through a lot together... And I'm happy with what we have now. 'Cuz even if I don't make it, I just hope you'll remember that."
After Dash says that, Twilight's sad demeanor disappears.
"Thank you... I really needed that." Twilight says to her mare-friend as they break out of their embrace.
"No problem, Twi. I'll always be there for you." Rainbow says.
"I love you, Dashie." Twilight says, confidently.
"I love you too, Twi." Rainbow replies, "Come on, let's get back to the castle."
Twilight picks up the "Special Magic Spells" book again and they continue walking to Twilight's castle. On their way out of Sweet Apple Acres, they meet with Applejack once again.
"Howdy girls." the apple farmer greets before yawning, "Are ya'll done?"
"Oh, well, done for tonight... We still have a few spells we need to do tomorrow..." Twilight responds, "What about you?"
"Eeyup, everythin' you need on this list is in the castle, waitin' for you." Applejack answers as she gives Twilight back the paper.
"Okay, good. Thanks AJ." Twilight thanks her.
"No problem, Twilight." Applejack replies, "Well, I'm gonna hit the hay, goodnight you two."
"Goodnight." Twilight and Dash say simultaneously before Applejack heads back to the farm.
After that interaction, they continue heading back to the castle, the place where they first confessed their feelings for each other. As Twilight walks with her mare-friend, she couldn't help but think about what she and Rainbow Dash could have had if she didn't curse her with the Moai spell that Easter. She even wondered about if Dash would've even agreed to go out with her if hadn't made that mistake beforehand. But before she gets carried away in her thoughts again, she turns to the pegasus and smiles as she remembers what she told her earlier.
The two of them arrive at the front of the castle. Twilight plans on starting to work on the preparation for the accursed complicated spell. Rainbow Dash plans on going to sleep as her mare-friend does all this. When they open the front doors, they see the giant pile of stuff in the lobby that Pinkie Pie, the CMC, Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy have gathered for Twilight to put together.
They go further into the castle in order to find the guest bedroom that they have been using for the past two days. When they open the door, they see that the CMC, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy, have tired themselves out, and are lying down on the bed and carpet.
"Oh..." Twilight says.
Twilight thinks about something, before saying,
"How about you use my bed?"
"Huh? You sure?" Rainbow questions.
"Yeah, you know where my bedroom is. Probably has a comfier bed than that one." Twilight points out.
"Alright... Well, Goodnight Twi." Rainbow says.
"Goodnight, Dashie." Twilight says back, before planting another kiss on her lips.
When Dash is no longer in sight, Twilight walks into the guest bedroom and collects the sheets of paper with the instructions for how to do the complicated spell preparation. Once she has them, she quickly leaves the room and closes the door behind her as she walks back to the entrance lobby. When she gets there, she starts reading the first thing she needs to do on the list. And with that, she can now start putting everything in that pile together for tomorrow.
