That's The Night The Lights Went Out In Canterlot

A couple of days later, he came out of the shower wearing a towel only to walk into an apparent argument going on between the two pegasi friends of Pinkie Pie.

"No, Rainbow Dash!" Fluttershy was saying, barely above her normal barely perceptible whisper.

"Oh, c'mon!" the boisterous one was yelling at her usual volume, several magnitudes above the timid one. "It'll be awesome!"

"It would very rude and I won't do it!" Fluttershy responded, slightly more forceful.

"He won't mind! Will you, Reggie?" Rainbow countered, finally addressing him.

"Won't mind what?" he curiously asked.

"Ya see? He's willing to give it a try!" Rainbow crowed triumphantly.

"Wha—?" Reggie exclaimed, instantly worried about what he just got roped into.

"RAINBOW!" Fluttershy exclaimed at a normal person's speaking volume, which to the timid pegasus, must be the equivalent of screaming her lungs out. "He did no such thing!"

"What are you guys talking about?" Reggie demanded, starting to sweat despite the coolness of the air.

"I bet that with your blindness, she can't use—" Rainbow was saying, but then Reggie heard her voice cut off in a mumble.

"RAINBOW DASH!" Fluttershy exclaimed again, this time with real evident horror in her voice and there was what seemed to be the sounds of a struggle, but in midair, it was rather muted. "You stop this and apologize to Reggie right now!"

"What's going on?" Reggie asked, totally puzzled by what was going on.

"I—I'm s-s-sorry, R-Reggie!" he heard Rainbow Dash robotically tell him. "I—I sh-shouldn't have brought it up."

"Can someone please tell me what the fuck? Over!" Reggie demanded, getting irritated. He heard the timid pegasus gasp.

"Gya-ah-ah!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed. There was the sound of something that greatly resembled a Warner Brothers' cartoon character shaking its head.

"There! Ya see?" Rainbow asked. "You can do it if you want!" The quite whimpering indicated this wasn't being addressed to Reggie, and it did nothing to clarify anything.

"Uh—guys? What's going on?" Reggie pleaded. "I just got out of the shower and I'd like to get dressed."

"So what's stopping you?" Rainbow Dash's voice carried over Fluttershy quietly saying, "We're sorry about interrupting you."

"Ri-i-ight!" Reggie sighed, dropping the towel.

"Oh, my!" Fluttershy whispered in exclamation.

"That right there was what was stopping me," Reggie muttered, pointing at them with his free hand as he picked up the set of briefs he had previously laid out for getting dressed.

"We're very sorry!" Fluttershy was saying, but whatever else she was going to say got lost when Rainbow Dash spoke up.

"Oh, so you've suffered from the Mange, like most humans," she said. "It's not like it's catching, is it?"

"RAINBOW DASH!" Fluttershy exclaimed, again with real evident horror and the sounds of a midair struggle resumed. Reggie snickered, imagining what was going on between the two of them as he finished dressing.

"I—I'm s-s-sorry, R-Reggie!" Rainbow Dash robotically said. "I—I sh-shouldn't have mentioned it."

"Gya-ah-ah!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed again, once more accompanied by that cartoon headshake sound effect.

"Guys, as entertaining as this must be for anyone seeing this, I'm afraid I'm missing quite a bit," he said, sitting down on the bed to face them. He patted the mattress beside him and said, "Come on and tell me what this is all about? And don't worry about me getting offended because I'm blind."

There was silence for several moments; the only sounds in the room were the slow beating of their wings.

"It's okay," Reggie said, repeating his patting on the bed beside him.

"You see?" Rainbow asked, and Reggie could feel the air pressure change to his right as she moved over to hover beside him. "He's cool with it!" she said.

"Uhm," Fluttershy groaned, still hovering somewhere in front of him.

"Really, I am," Reggie agreed. "I might not be willing to do whatever weird experiment you two are concocting, but I'm certainly willing to talk about it. Just discussing it won't annoy me. And if it's not harmful, I might even go along with it."

"Uhm, okay," Fluttershy finally said, and the air pressure change signaled that she was coming over to his left. "If—if you say so," she added.

"Well, I won't know that until we talk about whatever it is you're planning," Reggie responded.

"As you just saw, Fluttershy has this weird ability to make anypony do whatever she wants," Rainbow Dash began. "We call it—'the Stare'," she announced with dramatic effect.

"Uh, as you can see, Rainbow, I couldn't see her doing anything," Reggie said, turning to her to give the pegasus a deadpan look.

"Sure you could! Didn't you see it just then? She used it on me twice!" Rainbow exclaimed, but then stopped as Reggie continued his deadpan expression. "Oh—yeah—right," she meekly muttered.

"Anyhow, a cockatrice once tried to use his stare to petrify her!" Rainbow resumed her explanation. "But she beat him with hers!"

"And you want to see if Fluttershy can affect me, even though I'm blind?" Reggie asked.

"Exactly!" Rainbow crowed. "Part of me bets she can, but part of me doubts it'll work."

"Pr-Princess Twilight thinks my ability is a form of hypnotism," Fluttershy spoke up.

"And my blindness might prevent it from working?" Reggie asked, considering the matter.

"That's the idea, yeah!" Rainbow Dash agreed.

"Sounds reasonable," Reggie said with shrug of his shoulders. "What's it like being 'Stared' at?"

"It doesn't hurt," Rainbow said. "It's just—weird—like you know you don't want to do what she tells you, but you're doing it anyhow. And when it wears off, you're—well—feeling a little embarrassed, is all."

"Especially when you're doing something you should embarrassed for!" Fluttershy harshly said which to a normal person like Reggie, sounded quite gentle. But in the few days that he had known her, he had begun to pick up on her mannerisms.

"I don't see any harm in trying," he finally said after thinking about it. But just to be safe…

"Rainbow? Can you hand me my shades?" he asked, pointing over his shoulder to the night stand on her side of the bed.

"Sure," she said.

"Wow! Pinkie really did a job making these! And heavy, too!" she exclaimed as she set them into his grasp.

"Yeah, she did," Reggie admitted as he put them on.

"Cool colors, too!" Rainbow added. "But only about 20% as cool as me."

"Okay, so what do I need to do?" Reggie asked. "And please promise you won't make me walk about clucking like a chicken."

"Oh! I—I w-would never do that!" she whispered.

There was silence for several minutes while Reggie waited.

"um—I—I'm s-sorry," Fluttershy timidly spoke up. "I—I c-can't think of anything to make you do because you aren't being mean. I mean, I can't get in the mood to apply it unless you're mean. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I guess I can," Reggie said, almost laughing at her wordplay.

"Okay, how about—how about I give Rainbow Dash a nuggie and you make me apologize to her for it," Reggie suggested.

"Huh?" Rainbow only got out before Reggie reached behind him and grabbed her, pulling her shoulders into a firm grasp in his lap.

"Well, if it's okay with Rainbow," Fluttershy began.

"But that's just it," Reggie interrupted, even as the other pegasus was begging to be let go. "If she was okay with it, then there wouldn't be any reason to make me apologize, now would there?" Then he began roughly rubbing his fist into the top of her head, messing up her mane.

"HEY! CUT IT OUT!" the pegasus victim exclaimed.

"Y-yes," Fluttershy said, considering the matter. "That probably works."

"REGGIE! YOU STOP THAT RIGHT THIS INSTANT AND APOLOGIZE TO RAINBOW DASH!" she suddenly yelled.

Instantly, Reggie relaxed his grip on the feisty mare and let her right herself.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Rainbow," Reggie said, turning and cautiously reaching out to her. "Are you okay? I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asked. He felt her sitting there and moved his hands up. "Here, let me straighten up your hair."

"Yeah, sure," the pegasus absently muttered.

When Reggie found her head, he suddenly pounced, putting her into a headlock and resumed rubbing the top of her head with his fist. "Nuggie! Nuggie! Nuggie!" he growled as he did so, over her exclamations of outrage. Then he burst out in laughter as he released her.

"Oh, God! That was funny!" he said among his guffaws. "I guess the Stare doesn't work on a blind person," he said, taking off his goggles to wipe the tears from his eyes.

The next thing he knew, he was finishing using a real brush on some pony's mane. He blinked, positive he had just been dreaming a moment ago, where he had…

"Whoa! What just happened?" he asked.

"Wow! It does work!" he heard Rainbow Dash exclaim from directly in front of him.

"I guess those goggles shielded him from the Stare," Fluttershy said.

"Wait? What?" Reggie stammered. "You mean it worked?"

"Yeah!" Rainbow spoke up excitedly. "The moment you took them off, she nailed you. You've been brushing my mane for a good five minutes!"

"I think it looks twenty percent cooler with it so neat, Rainbow," Fluttershy teased her.

"Ha! You wish! Now I've gotta bust a sonic rainboom to put the cool back in!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed over Fluttershy's giggling.

Hmf! That's so damned freaky, Reggie thought.