9th June 1922

Twilight floated in the pulsing brown darkness. She felt like a pony again, and her six close friends, including spike, were floating in the darkness around her. Perplexity she could see all of them, from all angles, despite their orientation around her. She, however, could not see herself.

"You alright Twilight?" Rainbow dash asked, nudging her "All those times I joked about you over-stressing yourself and getting a heart attack... I didn't mean for you to actually do it!"

"It's not a heart attack" Rarity said, daintily, raising a dainty slipper shod hoof to the air in perfect poise. "Poor Twilight was simply overcome with emotion and fainted daintily into the arms of Miss Fluttershy over there."

"Hey!" Dash shouted at Rarity "Ponies like Twilight do not faint!"

"Oh? Then what pray tell, happened?" Rarity demanded, waiving her snout in the air dismissively, hoof still raised.

"She passed out, stoically passed out, like Darring Doo." Rainbow Dash responded smugly. "My hero training must have paid off"

"uhh, Rainbow Dash, I don't think randomly crashing into Twilight and shouting things like 'Giant spiders attack! What do you do? TOO SLOW' really counts as training." Applejack said, rubbing the back of her head with her hoof.

"Pshaw. As if that matters. Twilight is just that awesome" Rainbow Dash declared, proudly.

"I think I know what happened" Twilight's voice echoed through the brown. "When I impacted with Fluttershy, I believe I stuck my nasociliary nerve. This is a lot like hitting your funnybone in your face. I believe that the sensations from this are what caused me to lose consciousness."

The gathering shuddered collectively. "Jeez Twilight, that was as cold as ice" Spike said "You're pretending like you don't have any emotions. Relax, don't try to hide your heart from yourself. It's time to wake up."

"It's time to wake up?" Twilight asked, confused.

"Please wake up" Fluttershy's voice said. "Hello? Hello?"

"Hi Fluttershy, I can see you right there you know...." Twilight droned, confused.

"You really need to wake up now." Fluttershy repeated, a bit more firmly.

A strong stench filled Twilight's nose, causing her to jolt forward, and sneeze. She was an elf again. And sitting on a table. A hand was putting a cap on a putrid bottle right near her chest. She looked around.

"Oh good, you're awake" Fluttershy said, face right next to hers. Twilight squeaked in surprise, falling backwards. A long thin hand darting behind her caught her head before she could accidentally slam it against the table.

"I'm not that scary, am I?" Fluttershy asked gently, her soft thin face so close to Twilight's that Twilight almost thought she was going to be kissed. This was almost utterly contrary to Fluttershy's behavior back in Twilight's home. Twilight was flabbergast.

Instead of answering she glanced around again to see her surroundings. Spike was the first thing she located, the little dragon was laying next to her on the table munching on a biscuit. Next to him the small, vaguely lapin imp nibbled on its own cookie. It gave Twilight an incredibly toothy grin, and shook a tiny reflex hammer at her.

They were indoors, but they were no longer within the bounds of the cathedral. The walls were a muddy whitish brown, with wooden paneling. From the ceiling hung a simple, smokey, oil lamp chandelier. Nesting in Fluttershy's abundant pink hair was a odd looking creature. It had a very wide and red face, and long ears, with sharp pointy yellow horns. From its tiny hands emerged four sharp yellow claws, and three more from its toes. From it's back emerged a short spiked tail.

Fluttershy noticed the direction of Twilight's gaze. "Oh. That's just Angel Bunny. He's perfectly harmless." She said, gently lifting the impish creature down from her head. Angel stared at Twilight, then stuck his tongue out and razzed her, spittle landing on Twilight's face. Twilight scrunched up her face in displeasure, then her eyes widened again as Fluttershy got out a yellow tissue with an embroidery of butterflies and wiped the spittle gently, almost intimately, off of Twilight's face.

"I hate to be rude, but you still haven't told me your name. Is there something wrong with your voice?" Fluttershy asked gently.

"Twi...li" Twilight sparkle croaked her voice barely intelligible. A glass of water was efficiently pressed against her lips, and she gratefully took a drink. The glass was efficiently withdrawn, and the tissue came up once again to wipe Twilight's lips. The light touch sent small electric shudders through Twilight's body.

"There you go. Try again?" Fluttershy asked, cheeks dimpled innocently as she projected warmth. Twilight was surprised how uncomfortable it made her feel. It almost felt like Fluttershy was seeing her as a pet, or a wounded animal, instead of as a person.

"Twilight Sparkle." Twilight said, ear twitching in mildly irritated gratitude. Fluttershy's eyes widened. "Oh my. It is a very good thing I asked." The smile on Fluttershy's face turned wicked, teeth now flashing mischievously between her lips, making her look far more evil and impish than the lapin demon clinging to her arm. She saw Twilight's surprised twitch, and reached down to pat the other young woman's tummy gently. "Don't worry, dear, it's nothing bad. I'm only here to kidnap you."

The kidnapping had been fairly simple. Fluttershy had unbuckled four of the many tan belts holding her robes together, wound two of them gently but firmly around Twilight's wrists, and two around Twilight's ankles with both speed and remarkable gentleness. She leaned forward softly to give Twilight a light peck on the cheek that was probably meant to be comforting, but had simply made Twilight feel uncomfortable. Her cheek still tingled where Fluttershy had kissed it, and she suspected that some lip-gloss had been left behind.

Then Fluttershy had attached the belts on Twilight's wrists to one another, and hoisted Twilight over her head, letting Twilight's arms drop down around her neck. Then Fluttershy had pulled Twilight's ankles forward and attached those belts to one another, turning Twilight into some sort of backpack with such speed that Twilight hadn't even managed to get any sort of objection out, nor managed to react in any way other than staring shocked at the smooth efficiency of the operation.

She wound Spike gently around Twilight's wrists, and gave him a soft "Stay there" pat. Angel Bunny jumped up her sleeve, and Twilight saw him scurrying around under her cassock. Finally the tiny demon popped up at her collar and hopped into her hood to glare into Twilight's face.

Fluttershy's arms reached down and gently lifted Twilight's hams past her ankle. "We're all ready to go" She told Twilight cheerfully. "If you get tired back there, you can just press your head against my shoulder and take a nap, O.K?"

That was how Twilight had found herself nestled between this giantess version of Fluttershy's soft feathery wings, being carried like a child out of the small room that she had awoken in. Looking around over Fluttershy's shoulders, she could determine that there were other identical rooms in the narrow hall. Fluttershy quickly glided out of the hall and to a desk. She placed a handful of coins on the table in front of the worker.

"Thank you" She told the person behind the desk with a smile "She's feeling much better now, but I think she's a little sleepy, so I'm taking her home."

"And thank you, Mrs Flitterby. We always appreciate your patronage" the woman behind the desk said with a nod, pushing the coins off the desk and into some sort of drawer. "Please come again."

"Oh, don't worry, I will" Fluttershy said cheerfully as she walked out the door to the tinkling of the bell.

It had been one of the most gentle kidnappings Twilight Sparkle had been subjected to. Her ears twitched as she assessed her life choices. Being kidnapped once? Sure, could happen to anypony. Twice? Bad luck. Three or more times though... And then there were the times her friends had gotten foalnapped as well.

Twilight wondered if she was maybe doing something wrong. Maybe after she got back to Equestria, she would take Celestia up on her offer to provide Twilight with her own personal branch of the guard, much like the day and night guards. They could be called "The Twilight Brigade". She pondered what they'd wear for a uniform. Lunar guards were dark coated, and Solar guards were light coated so maybe she'd go for more energetic coats, the colors of sunrise, sunset and the aurora. A grin spread across Twilight's face as she planned. Planning was her favorite activity, after all.

She was beginning to design their imaginary uniforms when a voice cut through her thoughts. "Oy! Wotcher keister pretty cheeks. Iffen I hadn't had been all friendly like, you'd be guzzling muck outta the gutter right around now, don't cha know. Aye, muck and worse, the gutters here smell right ripe with the effluvium of human waste." The voice spoke at a rapid, yet even cadence. Fluttershy had gone stiff under Twilight's weight, and Twilight craned her ears and neck to search for the source of the sound from her perch on Fluttershy's back.

"Oh, well, I would have been paying more attention if I didn't know that someone I trusted as much as you was watching me. You are very good at protecting people." Fluttershy's warm voice responded.

"Haw. You're such a bludger. You bum around so much, you'd be half dead already were it not for that Angel Bunny of yours. You wander with your gourd far too far up other people's arses. It ain't safe." The other person responded. Twilight wasn't really paying attention, her attention drawn away by the surroundings.

The first thing she noticed was that they were no longer in a nice part of town. Most of the passerby were studiously ignoring Fluttershy and Twilight, with the cringing aura of a people who knew something was none of their business and that prying into it would bring punishment. The walls here were more wood than stone, and largely cheap pine as opposed to nice hardwood. The gutters were indeed full of human waste, both in literal sense, in the form of the collection of wastes produced by human habitation, and in a metaphorical sense, in the form of a couple of filthy figures that appeared to be unconscious in them. Twilight tried not to consider the possibility that they were dead with about the same success as one trying not to think of pink fluffy unicorns who dance upon rainbows. She grimaced at the unavoidable thought, and hoped that those people were O.K.

"I already had to hit a couple of arse clowns over the head with a lump o' brick in a sock." The other person kicked one of the figures in the gutters, causing Twilight's ears to flinch with disquiet. "Worthless slime didn't even have any flash for me to steal. Pigs need to stop expecting stupid chavs to do a real person's job."

Her attention returned to the figure, she began to inspect it in depth. It had long thin wispy ears, much like Twilight's own, and It wore upon it's head what had probably started life as a very tall stovepipe hat, much like Twilight's own. It even wore a pair of brass rimmed glasses that would have initially not looked out of place on Twilight's face. From there, however, the divergences began.

The ears sported several notches as though they had been sliced into with a knife, causing Twilight to wince in sympathetic pain, some of them even appearing deliberate, with sharp edges and defined shapes, as well as a variety of garish battered earrings and chains. The petite nose in the center of the face had a crooked look to it, as though it had been broken once or twice, and the wide mouth below it was missing a top center Incisor. The glasses were broken, the right lens cracked, and the left one so shattered that only a few shards of glass remained glued to the brass wire frame.

"So, you bringing in another of your little lost ragamuffins?" The figure asked Fluttershy

The figure was wearing several layers of motheaten, slashed, puked on, and otherwise abused clothing. The top most layer being a yellowing frilly shirt of some variety, worn under a bright blue military frock coat, with tweed patches on the elbows, and a pair of kid leather riding gloves missing random fingers. Slender hands poked through the holes in the fingers, with cracked, filthy, nails. A pair of stained brown stained pants, far too long for the owner, and rolled to cover the ankles, over a pair of boots with soles so thin that they were translucent finished the ensemble. Under all of that, the owner was probably female. She did possess Rarity's unmistakable hair, though matted and so filthy as to appear grey as opposed to Rarity's natural blue. Twilight turned her attention to the final part of the woman's couture. Her hat.

"Well, yes and no. She's certainly lost, and she clearly needs some tender love and care, but this is Twilight Sparkle." Fluttershy responded. The figure's grin widened unsettlingly.

The hat was a thing of holes and patches, some of the patches being made out of uncured mouse hide. A raggedy cat with long matted fur and crooked whiskers was sticking it's face lazily out of one of the holes. It noticed that Twilight was staring at it, and turned around to present it's anus, then it farted loudly, with a high pitched whine. The owner chuckled a horrible laugh as the sound of her cat passing gas went on, and on, and on. The horrible noise eventually stopped, as did the laughing, but the figure continued to grin rakishly. Twilight opened her mouth the speak. The cat started to fart again. The laughter began again soon after. Angel Bunny poked his head out from the front collar of Fluttershy's cassock, probably standing on her breasts. He began to raz the horrible farting cat back. Spike, the little traitor, wound around Fluttershy's neck, hiding his head in her hair.

Twilight was fairly certain that there was a section of Tartarus like this. Abruptly the noise stopped. Twilight opened her mouth to speak again, suspiciously. The cat's barrel expanded as though it was prepping another round. Twilight slammed her mouth shut. After a minute or two Twilight cautiously opened her mouth to speak once more. This time the crazed owner began to fart, with a low pitched rumble, while the cat snickered loudly. Twilight's lips twisted in frustration and disgust. "Will. You. Please. Stop. Farting."

The farting stopped. "You only had to ask" The voice responded playfully. "Though I appreciate that you didn't' interrupt it earlier. Sometimes a woman just needs to relieve her pressure. Isn't that right Flutters?"

"If you say so, Rarity" Fluttershy responded in a patronizing fashion.

Rarity grabbed a wooden shoe from one of her pockets and slung it easily at Fluttershy, who readily sidestepped. "Don't you patronize me" Rarity yelled.

"Oh, I would never patronize you." Fluttershy Responded. Rarity huffed, and looked pointedly back at Twilight.

"Sorry you have to put up with that condescending slich" Rarity told Twilight with some unusual warmth. "I'm Rarity, which is a good thing 'cause I have it on some pretty highfalutin authority that the world wouldn't survive two of me, could I even count to such lofty standards, and this is my cat the Supreme High Mugwump Opalescence, or as I call her, Scat. Short for Rarity's cat, don't you know."

It sounded like the two were insulting one another, and even fighting, but Twilight noticed something strange. Where most people would tighten up at both the insults, and the throwing of the wooden shoe, Fluttershy had relaxed gently. "I love you too, Rarity" Fluttershy murmured softly.

Rarity turned bright pink. "Now what was that? What did I tell you about saying things like that! Insult me right proper, you hear? Don't say such silly fru-fru things like that."

Fluttershy's laughter sounded like musical bells, and once again the cat snickered along. Angel Bunny joined with the sound of a saw grinding nails. Spike nestled in deeper, reaching a tender claw out to take Twilight's chin in his claw. Then he brought her face close against Fluttershy's hair, using her cheek to block the sound. An overwhelming smell of grapefruit in Fluttershy's hair drowned out the local miasma, and made Twilight flush embarrassedly.

"You traitor!" Rarity tried to shout at her hat "Jezibelle! Turncoat! When we get back on the boat, I'm giving you a bath!" The cat shut up, but after a few moments a smug look crossed the cat's face. Rarity's eyes crossed. She tore the hat off of her head and threw it to the ground, revealing a stump of a horn hidden by the hat. The stub of a horn looked like it had been sawed off near the base.

"YOU FERRET SUCKING, POPE SCHLICKING, BEAST! YOU WIDDLED ON MY HEAD! IF IT LEAKED INTO THE BOOZE...." here Rarity paused, her volume returning to a more normal, pensive tone, "well, it won't taste any worse but that's besides the point..."

Fluttershy, still grinning began to walk off as Rarity continued to shout at her smug cat. As they passed out of sight, Twilight saw Rarity pick the hat back up, cat, pee, and all, and place it carefully back on her head.

Twilight had found the whole event both horrifying and amusing. It had made her uncomfortable, just like meeting Fluttershy, but in a very different way. She imagined how her friends would react to this. Hovering upside down in the air besides her Imaginary Rainbow Dash was clutching her barrel and laughing uncontrollably, while Imaginary Rarity sat on the ground ripping apart one of her own fancy hats with her teeth in a bout of uncontrollable emotion.

"It's a travesty! A travesty!" Imaginary Rarity shouted, before pressing the scraps of her feathered hat against her face to sob uncontrollably into it.

"Oh. My. Gosh! This is the BEST POSSIBLE THING" Imaginary Rainbow dash laughed from her vantage point. "A Rarity who isn't afraid to act like a real person from time to time! This is awesome!"

"Um... I don't really mind how forwards my counterpart is" Imaginary Fluttershy said gently "I kinda... wishiwasmorelikethatmyself" She flushed pink at this admission, and at the eyes of the imaginary pony brigade now directed at her. "I don't think Rarity's acting like a real person!" She squeaked, trying to change the subject.

Twilight crooked her head to the side, wondering if her subconscious was trying to tell her that she thought Fluttershy wanted to be more forward, or if she thought Fluttershy had feelings for her. As the later had implications that she did not feel like pondering while strapped to the back of a large, strong, very forwards version of Fluttershy, she decided that it was the former. She unpaused the conversation between her imaginary friends in her head while wondering if, maybe, she had gone a little crazy.

"You know, I kinda got that impression myself" Imaginary Applejack admitted "Rarity's a mare who likes to act, and sometimes over-act," Imaginary Rarity shot Applejack a angry glare over the tattered, snot smeared remains of her hat, "and I don't think that this Rarity is any different. She might be a hair cruder than our Rarity, but I don't suppose she's any worse an actor for it."

But crazy mares didn't wonder if they were crazy right? Only sane ponies worried about that, right? How was the conversation still going when Twilight was so worried about this! Imaginary Applejack certainly made sense though, and Twilight nearly voiced her agreement when Imaginary Pinkie Pie interrupted.

"Oh oh oh! Like the way she was hiding the fact that she likes Fluttershy by pretending to be upset by her, right, right?" Imaginary Pinkie Pie said, waving a hoof in the air eagerly.

"Well, yes. Something like that" Imaginary Applejack said, "but I think it's time for us all to stop distracting Twilight. Call it intuition, but something tells me she's gonna want her wits about her pretty soon."

"Yeah, she's going to meet Rainbow Dash next." Imaginary Pinkie Pie said while bouncing.

"And how, pray tell, do you reckon that?" Imaginary Applejack returned.

"Because she's meeting them in the opposite order she met us! She met me first, then you, then Rainbow Dash, then Rarity, and then Fluttershy." Imaginary Pinkie Pie said, throwing her arms open in a rush of confetti.

"Well I'll be." Imaginary Applejack said, scritching her head as she faded from Twilight's attention. "Pinkie might be right about that."

Twilight narrowed her eyes as she pondered this tidbit of information, in addition to her own sanity, before returning her attention to her surroundings. Twilight thought that she noticed that people were watching them carefully. She also thought she noticed that some of them may have been wearing some sort of blue colored patch of fabric in a shape that might be roughly similar to Rarity's cutie mark somewhere on their clothing. But maybe, maybe, just like her friends, she was only imagining it.

Near the military shipyard, a certain light blue crystal elf in a cloak and a worn pointy hat with the faded word 'magician' embroidered into it, was sitting in a respectable officer's tavern. She was one of the few patrons neither obviously a member of the guard, a server, nor attached to a member of the guard in some way. She sat at a table in the corner, drinking. Another elf sat next to her.

"You are a very hard man to find, Mr Shining Armour" She said, not looking up from her drink.

"My people tell me you've been looking abnormally hard for a rabble rouser, Trixie." Shining Armour responded hotly, not bothering with the fiction of ordering a drink. "Tell me why I shouldn't just have you locked up on charges of sedition. After your last stunt, I bet I could get you for incitement to riot as well"

She slid a face down sheet of parchment across the bar with her middle finger towards Shining Armour. He reached for it, only for her to slap his hand away. "Ah ah ah!" She wiggled her face in his nose. "Payment first"

A bag full of coins landed on the table with a loud clatter. She opened it, and began counting, her magic continuing to hold down the note while Shining tried to pry it up. "Not enough"

"That is outrageous. This is the amount you asked for. Every last groat!" Shining hissed angrily. "What more do you want?!"

She crawled onto the bar so that her head would be higher than Shining's, then put a finger sensuously on Shining's chin, pushing it up to look into her eyes. "A kiss." Her eyes sparkled seriously.

Author's Note

Wow. Just wow. With some help from smxsonic, everything sort of clicked into place for me while writing this. It probably needs serious editing though.

Thanks to gcsmith for prereading!

<< This song is one that I listened to to help shape Rarity's personality. I used the accordion part as, basically, her lemotif. I also wanted to give her a bar because of this song, which leads into the next song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrXP5zoFxss << NSFW song that also shaped Rarity's personality (You'll get nae more tonight). Really it's more of the song that came just before. At this point in the development process I had an image of Rarity as a somewhat crass bar owner. The espionage stuff came later as I added tidbits to round out her character. Then she lost the bar because it didn't really make sense for a pirate to own a bar.

A third song that went into Rarity's personality (The Magdalene Laundries This was a minor influence. I was getting closer to who she was, and this is where her cynicism really bloomed.

one more song for rarity (Violet Hill) This is where the spy stuff came in.

(If you want to be funny, put on Mission Impossible theme)

I do recommend listening to Magdalene Laundries and Violet hill