*Poof!*
"Really, Sunburst..." said Twilight to the shaky, cloaked stallion next to her, her eyes half-lidded.
"That genuinely scared you?" asked Rainbow Dash, sprawling out unfazed on the luxurious Crystal Palace couch.
"But, but of course, dear mares!" answered Sunburst, still recovering. "How was I to know that knife-carrying bandit would emerge suddenly from the closet? Or that claws would materialize through the floor and swallow up that poor mare?"
"You... haven't had as much experience with these movies as we have, have you?" asked Rainbow Dash. "Thing is, Sunburst, jump scares aren't scary."
"Th...they aren't?" said the magician, surprised (but not in the way that made him jump behind the couch in terror).
"It's just a staple of horror movies by unimaginative producers," explained Twilight. "Because of all the films Rainbow and Pinkie make me watch, I've become pretty desensitized to sudden-"
"I AM THE GIVER OF ALL THINGS CUPCAKE!" announced Pinkie, jumping from behind the TV where she'd been hiding and up onto it, holding a platter of cupcakes.
"See? That's not scary. I didn't scream once," Rainbow stated, folding her forelegs. "Those of us who've known Pinkie as long as we have are used to sudden things like that she pulls."
"A good movie attempting to be scary should build up its creepiness factor gradually," Twilight went on. "That makes all the difference between something that might startle you just for a moment, and something that stays with you for a-"
She stopped when she felt a hoof tap her. "Uh, Twi?" said Dash, gesturing at Sunburst quivering and hiding his face in one of the cushions.
"Ohhhhh..." said Pinkie in realization. "I... shouldn't have done that."
"No, Pinkie, you probably shouldn't h-"
"I knew he wouldn't like sarsaparilla cupcakes." Pinkie threw the platter away, without regard for wherever it would land. "Back to the drawing board, then."
"Shining Armor and Cadance should be home tonight," Twilight told her friends, putting the royal telephone back.
Rainbow started to clear up the mess of chip packets she had left while watching the movie. "Sure has been nice staying in the Crystal Palace. Eating Royal food, watching the Royal TV, sleeping in the Royal beds-"
"And looking after the place for them?" added Twilight pointedly.
"Oh, uh, yeah... of course," her friend said promptly, rubbing a hoof behind her head.
"Oh guuuuuuuyys!" came Pinkie's voice as she waved an envelope.
"Hey, what's that?" asked Rainbow. "Did they die and leave the palace to us?"
Twilight had the most intimidating glare fixated on Rainbow as she levitated the envelope over to her. She opened it and read it out:
Dear Twilight
May we please seek out your assistance? Fluttershy's cutie mark has glowed, along with mine. We are arguing over where the map is telling us to go and would be ever so thankful, as we know how skilled you are at reading them.
"Ooh, who's that from?" asked Pinkie.
"Really, Pinks?" questioned Rainbow. "I'd have thought it was pretty obvi-" She noticed the bottom of the letter:
Yours sincerely
Applejack
Well, now Rainbow was at a loss for words. "But - how -"
"Ponies don't typically use their accents in written form," Twilight reminded her. "In any case, I suppose I'd better go over and help them."
"Good luck with that, Twi," Rainbow told her, getting back onto the couch. "You can count on me to l-"
"And you are coming with me," Twilight stated, in no uncertain terms. "If I hadn't been with you and Pinkie this past week, the place would be in disarray by now."
She turned to Sunburst. "Sunburst, I know I made the right choice in inviting you, like Shining and Cadance said I could. Are you okay looking after the place until tonight? And I think Flurry will be awake by now."
"Why, sure, Princess," answered Sunburst proudly. "T'would be an honor."
"Now, Sunburst, Flurry might get a bit... spontaneous, with her magic," Twilight warned him, putting together a note for Cadance and Shining.
"I'm sure I'll be able to have it all under control, your Highness," said Sunburst, at which Twilight gave a small breathe through her nose at such formalities.
"Really? The way you coped with all those jump scares suggests otherwise," put in Rainbow.
"What? Nothing of the sort," Sunburst replied indignantly. "How can we compare such an adooorrrable little filly with the sheer monstrosity found in that abomination you call a movie?"
"They are two very different creatures," Pinkie chimed in. "I mean, one of them is something that causes loooaaads of ponies to panic and fear for their lives."
"Why, thank you, Pinkie, that's very-"
"The other is a horror movie creature."
She got a few confused expressions, which then turned to ones of (albeit still slightly doubtful) understanding.
"Well, let's get going, girls. If we hurry, we can catch the next train out," Twilight told her companions, as she fastened her suitcase closed. "We're counting on you, Sunburst!"
"Tell Starlight I wish her well!" Sunburst requested. After more farewells, the three mares had departed the area, and Sunburst was there alone, the imposing walls surrounding him like a snake about to coil its prey.
"Whew..." he sighed. "Now then, how's Flurry, I wonder?" So he followed the guest map he had been given to get to Flurry's bedroom.
After some brief greetings between him and a few guards on the way, Sunburst reached where he had been looking for. He opened it up and the center of the room had a crystally crib, above it dangled a mobile. He went through the room, decorated with various foal-related stuff, arriving at the center to see Flurry with her eyes half-open (or half-closed for the pessimists of you. Or is that optimists...?), before she opened then fully and smiled, gurgling a bit as she saw Sunburst. He lifted her out, unable to hide his heart beginning to melt at the adorable sight, and it only intensified as she nuzzled him.
Flurry began to wiggle in Sunburst's hooves before she escaped them, flapping her wings, before she hovered through the air over to the door.
"Ah ah ah," Sunburst told Flurry, getting there before her and locking the door. "We'd not want anything bad to happen, now, would we, little princess?" He got her back in his hooves, and she returned to nuzzling him. "Shall we go ge-"
Sunburst had received no kind of foreshadowing as to what happened next. One might consider it a "jump scare". A blue light had flooded the room near-instantaneously, seemingly from Flurry. It temporarily blinded Sunburst, the wizard only being able to see white before the surroundings faded back in.
Where Flurry had been, there was now a pink adult mare with a purple and blue mane, but it certainly wasn't Cadance.
And where Sunburst had been, there was now an amber baby foal with a white streak on his muzzle.
"Mister Sunburst!" called one of the guards frantically from outside. He'd heard what had sounded like a jolt of energy. "Is everything alright?" He tried to open the door, but the handle wouldn't budge.
Meanwhile, the mare that had mere moments ago been a tiny baby looked around the place. She then laughed and clapped her hooves in excitement.
Sunburst seemed to be facing the worse end of the equation. A mirror before him, he was gaping, frightened, as reality had well and truly sunk in. He was now trapped in the body of a foal, and looked no different from his appearance in many photos from the photo album his parents kept.
"Fwiend!" he heard from behind him. The voice sounded like a mare speaking in the most childish voice possible. Next thing he knew, he was swept off the floor and picked up and squeezed hard. When he was let go, his hunches were confirmed - this was Flurry Heart.
"Whoooaaa-ho-ho!" he exclaimed rather simplistically in a foalish voice, as Flurry spread her wings and took off, heading towards the window. *WHACK!* Now, had Flurry been in her ordinary form, she would have simply bounced right off that, thanks to the babyproofing. But the rotary window flipped round from the impact of Flurry's larger form.
Sunburst was now clinging onto Flurry for dear life as the artificially-grown mare giggled happily, zigzagging about through the skies.
"I spy with my little eye..."
Duartr the Royal guard impatiently waited for Orthros to pick something out. So it'd come to this. Playing I-Spy. Sometimes being a Royal Guard could get boring when nothing was going on... although the Princesses would surely have Duartr thrown in the dungeon for having such an attitude towards wrongdoing.
"Duartr?" asked Orthros, tapping his colleague on the shoulder and pointing up, for Duartr to see something that would've made his jaw drop if he hadn't been wearing braces under the orders of his doctor. Far off in the sky was a pony looking remarkably like Flurry Heart soaring and zipping around without a care. Duartr spread his wings and prepared to fly up straight away...
"Fellas?" said Norward. "That pony's too big to be Flurry."
Duartr stayed put where he was and raised his eyebrow, then slowly nodded.
"I really wish Shining Armor and Cadance would outlaw ponies looking like that..." suggested Norward. "Its not as if those ones can't dye their fur right?"
I TOLD Rainbow that window needed to be locked! thought Sunburst in a rage. But nooo-ooo! We ALL know Flurry can't get through it anyway, right? RIGHT?!
He'd been so busy cursing Rainbow Dash into an early grave (only metaphorically. He wished he could do so literally, if only he still had his magical prowess), that he had almost forgotten all about the whole clinging-on-for-dear-life thing, which he was quickly reminded of by Flurry making a sudden sharp turn downwards. "Pwark!" he heard her say. Sure enough, from this height, the park could be seen that Sunburst and the three mares had gone to with Flurry a few times over the week. Flurry started laughing as she sped down through the sky towards the area, Sunburst being forced to cling onto her mane tight if he had any hope of living to tell the tale.
Many of the park's occupants turned their attention to the new arrivals; a luminescently-colored mare looking as happy as a lark, with a baby on her back, clinging tighty, looking frightened for his life. "APPALLING parenting!" exclaimed one. "I don't know how you can put an innocent child through all of that!" Flurry didn't understand what was actually going on, so she just hung her head low and leaned back.
Pleasedon'tcrypleasedon'tcrypleasedon'tcry... Sunburst was thinking in even more of a panic.
"And the little one's not even wearing a diaper! Are you saying a month-old or something baby is already potty-trained?" asked one mare.
Sunburst was appalled at such a remark. He opened his mouth and attempted to make a retort... but all that he could do was foalish yelling and babbling.
I... I didn't talk properly when I really was a month old...
"Here," said the mare, reaching into her bag and taking out something soft, and white with pink frills...
Sunburst was now more scared than he had been during the whole fiasco in the Crystal Empire. He'd got to escape... but being on Flurry's back, it was a long way down from there to the ground, given his smallness now. He didn't have a lot of time to think about that, because he was swept right up, flailing aggressively but not putting up much of an opposition to this stranger sliding the foalish garment under his rump and fastening it tight.
"See? Not so hard, is it?" the mare stated, giving Sunburst back to Flurry. "Why not let him play in that sandbox over there?" she said, pointing.
Flurry became ecstatic at the idea. "Yay! Pway!" She jostled over to the sandpit, Sunburst having to keep a grip on her, before she leant down, giggling, causing Sunburst to roll off her and land in the pit, his new diaper crinkling. Oddly, there was a bit of shade over him suddenly...
*FWUMP!*
Flurry had taken it upon herself to flutter and land on top of Sunburst with much enthusiasm, and the foal felt like a vacuum storage bag being emptied of its air.
Once Flurry was off him, he looked up at the other residents of the sandbox - a group of foals, much like himself looked.
"...His mommy's weird," said one of them, watching Flurry roll around throwing sand.
Sunburst leapt back in surprise. Now foals could talk?! Wait...
He made another attempt at speaking, concentrating. "No, you don't understand. It went like-"
"You look-a-lot-"
Sunburst felt it was worth noting the way these foals pronounced their words. "-like the amber pony... but where's da cape?" asked one.
"I dun think he IS the amber pony..."
"Wait!" said Sunburst. "I really am teh 'amber pony'... I'm Sunburst..." There was a bit of a lisp to his voice than took away from his credibility, but hey, it was better than nothing.
"MAGICIAN Sunnyburst?" a foal said.
"It was a magical mishap with... I'm sure you've at weast heard of Fwurry Heart, weah?"
"Who doesn't?" asked one.
"Well..." And so Sunburst gave his long-winded explanation on why he and Flurry were in the positions they were in with an impeccable level of detail even with his new voice.
"...You're weal good at making up stories."
"I beg your pardon?! Why else do you think I just happwen to haff the EXACT same cowor scheme and the SAME white stweak on mah muzzle? And that mare happens to be a sewies of bwinding neon cowors?"
"Wook, mister, we may be foals, but we not dumb."
"I know. Ask me something only an adult would know," demanded Sunburst.
This made the group of foals really think. What was it they'd always wanted to know...
"Hmm... where do babies come from?" asked one of them.
So much color drained from Sunburst's face that he didn't deserve to have "Sun" in his name. "...Nothin' else you wanna knoe?"
"Tewwus, mister. Tewwus where babies come from and we'll bewieve you."
Two words to sum up Sunburst's state of mind right now. WHAT! DO?!
"...Do you know whatta stork is? It's wike a long-legged bird dat carries babies to their mommies and daddies."
"Yes, but where do da babies COME fwom?"
"Uh... yes, ah... ... ...the stork vomits dem up."
"Ew..." The babies were being very vocal about their feelings.
"Yep. Except..." said Sunburst... "The stork's mouth is... well..." He could take this no longer. He dropped his head to the sand and drove it in, burying it as much as he could. He could hear the foals on the surface giggling, but he didn't care. This was at least SOME way of distracting him from the hell he was in...
Until he had to come back up for air, having forgotten about the whole sand-doesn't-let-you-breathe thing. "...Can you kids help me in any way?"
"Whadda we do?" asked one. "Da big ponies dunno what we're sayin'."
Sunburst breathed through his nostrils... and was grossed out at the bubble of snot he blew. His foal habits appeared to be catching on faster and faster... would his MIND be next?! No, no... he couldn't lose his mind! It was the only part of himself he had left now in this wretched form... who could've thought something seemingly so innocent could be so frightening? This made those horror movies he'd watched with the Ponyville mares over the week look tame...
"Hey, mister, you wanna pway sandcastles?"
One foal in the group held up a plastic bucket and spade, at which Sunburst decided, "Might as well..."
"Weady? Set? Go!"
This was the indicator for Sunburst and Orchid Harvest to start building their sandcastle, to determine whose would rise high above their opponents and dominate the competition. What could be so hard about that?
Well, for starters, the lack of co-ordination due to his new form. The task of filling a bucket with sand and topping it back over seemed a lot more daunting as a result, and eventually, he was left with something resembling the remains of a temple in Zebrica following the invasion all those decades ago.
Orchid, while not being co-ordinated, was used to having the body of a foal, and so was none the worse. To figuratively rub figurative salt into the figurative wound, she had already gotten to decorating it with ribbons!
"Did it!" she declared. "Better luck next time, huh?"
Sunburst was quite firm in his convictions that there wouldn't be a "next time". "Thanks foo lettin' me pway with you... but I gotta get goin'," he told them. "I... aw, cwap!" He'd been so distracted that he'd not noticed Flurry going off and doing her own thing. "Now I really gone and done it..." Perhaps the only thing he could appreciate about the situation was that the ponies hadn't noticed the presence of a horn on Flurry because of her mane conveniently draped over it, so they hadn't kicked up a huge fiasco about another alicorn.
"I got an idea," said one of the foals. "Cwy!"
Sunburst seemed aghast at this. "No way! I dun wanna cwy like a baby!"
"But it'd help you out..."
Sunburst had not much choice, looking defeated. "Fwine." He let out a loud breath, thought of the mental torture the situation was giving him...
...and bawled his heart out, complete with a cartoonishly-exaggerated amount of crying that the classic metaphor "cry me a river" might as well have been literal. To his knowledge, he hadn't even done so this much when he had been a foal for real.
The self-humiliation proved to pay off, however, as eventually, he was looking up at the face of a mare and feeling her hooves embrace around him. Wonderful! Flurry had finally come - nope, this was somepony he'd never met.
"Come on, now, what's the matter, little'ums?" she asked softly. "Can't find your momma?"
"That weird mare, whoever she was... she obviously can't be trusted to take care of her own darn child," commented a nearby stallion, heading up to them. He picked up their daughter, Orchid Harvest. "You're okay, aren't you?" He took notice of the amber foal. "Oh, hey, got a Sunburst look going on, have we?" he said, noting the impeccable resemblance the foal had to the magician he and many other residents of the Empire had caught word of.
By now, Sunburst had stopped sobbing- the two adult ponies noted that he had been rather quick to do so compared to most other crying foals.
They didn't make it Observation Of The Year, however. "What're we going to do about this, then, Harold?" asked the mare.
"Well, I'm not totally keen on this baby going back to his mom if she'll abandon him like that. Better contact the authorities on this."
"And this little foal?" asked the mare. "Maybe we could watch him until we get to the bottom of this?"
"Well... sure thing, Gina," agreed Harold. "I don't see what else to do. And who wouldn't want to have a foal looking like this around?" He held him up. "It's like having a mini-version of an accomplished magician around!"
Yes, Harold. Exactly like that.
"Dis might be a good thing..." admitted Sunburst as he was strapped into the stroller next to Orchid. "They'll find Fwurry pwetty fast, I hope."
"Yeah, but in the meantime"—Orchid continued—"you're not gonna wike the place if you dun wike bein' a foal. Still dunno why..."
"I DID say! I'm not weally one!"
"Suuure thing, mister..." It was then that the stroller stopped, both the foals were unstrapped and picked up, allowing Orchid to see something new on Sunburst's diaper - a patch of yellow, a shade rather like a daffodil. "Ooh... I wouldn't wanna be you when we get in."
"Why's that?" The door was opened, Orchid was placed down on the floor, where she stayed and looked up at the changing table where Sunburst was placed down... he knew what was coming.
Was this scarier, or the fact that he hadn't even noticed he needed the upcoming change?
