In Somepony Else's Horseshoes
Author's Note
Not all the mane six get a POV in this part (sorry). But, we get our second swap, and the others get this whole mess explained to them. When Pinkie/Twilight explains everything, the pony's name that is called is the form of the body they're in (for example, Rarity is in Rainbow Dash's body, so the name Rainbow Dash in the story=Rarity in Rainbow Dash's body).
Day 2: Twipie Explains
I took a long, deep breath. Okay, Fluttershy. Nothing to be afraid of. Yesterday was slightly terrifying and really, really strange, but everything will go back to normal today, as soon as you decide to wake up and open your eyes. You're going to open your eyes, and everything's going to be fine...
Slowly, I opened my eyes. In a slightly more conscious state, the first thing I noticed was the obvious aroma of...
Apples...
"Hey, c'mon, sis! You're gonna miss breakfast again if ya keep sleepin' in!"
I jumped, screamed, and got myself tangled in the sheet covers. As I struggled to free myself, Applebloom entered the room. "Are ya okay, Applejack? Ya were actin' weird all day yesterday, and now today? Are ya gettin' sick or somethin'?"
"Ah'm fine, Applebloom," I said, although in a voice that was definitely not mine."Ah'll be down in just a second."
"Okay..." After a long look, Applebloom went downstairs.
So now I'm Applejack? Oh, when is it going to end? This is a little scary now...
I snapped my eyes open as soon as Celestia's rays hit them. I leaped out of bed, ready to continue Twilight's get-in-shape training, and....
Well, this isn't Twilight's castle. The walls were painted in gag-inducing rosy pink, andd a purple desk was lines with fabrics and ribbons in all sizes and colors. Oh, Celestiadamnit, this just keeps getting better and better.
Suddenly, my ears perked up when there was a knock at the door. I went downstairs to go see who it was, but was blocked by Sweetie Belle. "Hi, Rarity! Are you feeling better? You were kinda acting...weird yesterday. Not like you usually do. You didn't finish any of your orders...at least I don't think you did."
"Actually, Sweetie Belle-um, dear-I think I may be coming down with something." I faked a cough and Sweetie Belle took a step back. "So, um, maybe you don't want to hang around here too much. Not because I'm somepony else and not Rarity, though, because that would be just strange! Right, kid?" I said, laughing nervously.
Sweetie Belle raised an eyebrow. "Rarity? You never call me 'kid.'"
"Oh-well-that-is-strange-I'll-go-get-the-mail-now-so-go-play-with-the-Crusaders-or-something!" I said extremely nervously, racing to the door.
There was a simple note on the doorstep, but it was printed on paper I recognized. I reached down to pick it up with my hoof and then I remembered something. I concentrated on the note and lifted it into the air so I could read it more clearly.
To whichever of my friends is here right now,
Meet me at Sugarcube Corner at noon today. Magic Mishap. I'll explain as best as I can, but you may not like the outcome.
From,
Twilight (I guess)
Well, that was...weird. I'd definitely be there, though; if anypony could explain what was going on with this body-swapping problem, it was Twilight.
I was exhausted. If Pinkie had told me what sort of Tirek-spawned monsters of customers she had to deal with before I got swapped into her body, I could write a whole friendship report on her cool temper in the face of idiocy.
I could almost sense Pinkie's (my?) pink mane deflating the longer I talked with them, but at least I got a bit of free candy out of it all...oh, who was I kidding? The best part, probably, was the free hour I got to walk around town and explore how Pinkie's Pinkie Sense worked first-hoof!
Results: Inconclusive.
I had one tail-twitch the whole afternoon, and that was because Rainbow Dash-who-wasn't-Rainbow-Dash dropped half a lightning bolt on me. If I had thought Pinkie's mane was frizzy before, it had nothing on the fork-in-a-light-socket look.
When my friends came through the door, I waved at them as enthusiastically as the real Pinkie Pie, if not more, I was so eager to finally see them. My smile dropped, however, when I took a good look at them.
Applejack's hair was full of chunks of apple and hay, and Fluttershy seemed to have attempted to make her own mane into a nest for a group of birds, or perhaps they did that on their own.
Rainbow Dash was covered in bits of cottony cloud, and Rarity's hair hung stringy (Rainbow Dash gave Rarity a horrified look at this).
As for...er, me, she looked not too much worse for the wear, although-I did a double take as I saw the end of her mane-was that chocolate?
As if to answer my unspoken question, she looked up at me, grinned happily, and proceeded to chew on her mane as if it was a candy bar.
Shaking that off, I motioned for everyone to follow me into the Sugarcube Corner pantry. They did so, and once I locked the door I turned to my friends. "First of all, everypony, I'm sorry that you've all been going through this. I'm sure it was hard-"
"Tell me about it!" Fluttershy interrupted uncharacteristically. "I don't know how Fluttershy deals with those varmints...er, no offense meant, Fluttershy, I'm sure they're perfectly lovely with you, wherever you are."
Applejack shook her head. "None taken, Applejack. Your farm work is so hard, though-mah legs ache from all those bucking trees!"
"Er-ME!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY-er, your-HAIR?!?"
Rarity touched it and looked offenders. "You try to get fabric out of your hair after it somehow sewed itself in!"
"I-don't-HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT?!?"
All my friends started talking at the same time, voicing their complaints with their new forms, except for Twilight-me, who exclaimed, "Your hair tastes really good, Twilight! You ever try a chocolate transformation spell before?"
It was all too much, so I did something very spur-of-the-moment, especially for me: I reached into my hair, took out Pinkie's party cannon, and blasted it. They all froze and looked up at me.
I took a deep breath before letting it out. "Thanks, everyone. As I said, I'm sorry you've had trouble adjusting. Believe me, so have I. So I'd like to apologize, because this was my fault."
Rainbow Dash gasped. "Do you have a fainting couch?" she asked Rarity, who rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"I somehow cast a transformation spell unconsciously with my mind, and so now we have to cycle through each others' bodies before we complete one cycle and return to our natural forms."
This time it was Applejack who gasped, albeit quietly.
"I can't perform the spell without my full powers, which is why we have to complete the cycle. I apologize again for the trouble."
Rarity spoke first. "Hey, it's okay, Twi. We've all done stupid things to each other before. Besides, it may be kinda fun! You know, if you think about it the right way."
My friends made a few sounds of agreement, and my face sagged in relief. "Thanks, you all. Believe me, if I could get this solved sooner, I would."
We crowded together for a quick hug before my friends dispersed to their strange new-but luckily temporary-lifestyles.
In Somepony Else's Horseshoes
Day 1: Mistakes Have Been Made
Author's Note
So, I'm doing a probably-overused trope to introduce myself to this website. Yay? This isn't supposed to be a serious fanfiction at all, it's really just the mane 6 living days in the lives of their friends, As you probably already know from the summary, so...let's begin.
Day 1: Mistakes Have Been Made
I woke up with a pounding headache, and my bed feeling different than usual. Maybe I was just crazy, but had it always been this...soft? It felt almost as if I was sinking into its surface, and my pillow was made of the same sort of material.
My head throbbed, and I felt around for a bump, but there didn't seem to be any sort of protrusion...
At all.
If I had been a pegasus, or an Earth pony, then that wouldn't have been unusual. But I was an alicorn born unicorn, and I was accustomed to waking up with a horn on top of my head...but it wasn't there.
Come to think of it...was I in Rainbow Dash's house? Instead of my normal crystallized ceiling, I was looking up at solidified cloud matter above my head. And this bed...I sat bolt upright and scanned my surroundings. I was definitely in Rainbow Dash's room. Wonderbolts memorabilia crowded the shelves and walls...how did she hang posters on cloud? Not now, Twilight, I mentally scolded myself. Daring Do books and miniature statues and trophies were scattered haphazardly along tall shelves, and there was a small nightstand next to the bed decorated in lightning bolts and every color of Rainbow's namesake.
What in Equestria...?
I leaped out of Rainbow Dash's bed. There had to be some logical explanation for this, right?
I opened the first door I came across. It turned out to lead to a bathroom with polished cloud-tile floors, a toilet, a bathtub and shower, and...a wall mirror. I raced to it. Instead of the purple alicorn that normally stared back at me in the mornings, there was a blue pegasus with heptacolor hair and bright magenta eyes. I stumbled back from my reflection and shrieked, and so did the Rainbow Dash lookalike in the mirror.
Think, Twilight, think! It could be a prank of Rainbow's...no, how could she make me look exactly like her, and how would she have gotten me all the way up here in my sleep? A hallucination, a dream, a....oh, no...
A sick feeling grew in my stomach as I recalled the events of last night. I had been looking over my copy of Tier Three Transfiguration and Mind Transportation, and I had stumbled upon a spell that allowed a pony with an other group of ponies in close proximity that she shares a close bond with to switch bodies, creating a ripple effect through the group. After reading through the spell, I had closed the book to go to sleep...or so I thought. Could the spell have somehow activated itself while I was asleep? I knew I was powerful, but not that powerful. There was only one way to find out; I had to find the others and tell them what was going on.
What was that awful smell? I groaned and attempted to stuff my face into my lavender-scented, monogrammed pillow, but got something scratchy and dusty instead. I coughed and attempted to smooth it, but all that got me was another faceful of dust.
I spluttered it out of my mouth, looked up and shrieked. This was absolutely not Carousel Boutique. Instead, I was greeted with tacky curtains, shelves full of manuals on farming, and an applewood bed with an apple-themed quilt.
I threw the quilt off me and scrambled to the corner of the bed, almost falling off in the process. What was I doing in Applejack's house, in her bed, no less? I got out of the bed when a lock of...yellow... mane fell in front of my face.
I grabbed it in one hoof and blinked at what I was seeing. I blinked again, willing it not to be true. And yet...the yellow mane and orange hoof right in front of my undoubtedly apple-green eyes did not belong to me, but to my friend Applejack.
And so, I did the only thing I could under the circumstances; I fainted.
"Hi, friends! I'm Fluttershy for the day! Fun...right??"
Apparently I as talking too loud, as the animals scattered in all directions. I sighed. Weirder things had happened to me than turning into one of my best friends all of a sudden, but being Fluttershy wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Her furry friends just wouldn't listen!
"Um....don't run away! I'll...I'll...I'll bake you a cake! Um...lemme see what Fluttershy has in her kitchen!"
I dashed to the kitchen and opened Fluttershy's fridge, to see...I gasped. It was hideous! It was horrifying! It was...
VEGETABLES!
I shrieked. "No candy? No cake? No ice cream? Not even a slice of pie? How does Fluttershy LIVE?"
"Celestia, Twi, don't you ever exercise? I mean, I kind of figured you didn't, being, ya know, an egghead and all, but don't you even do your hundred laps a day? I thought those were, like, required or something!"
I had woken up as Twilight, and my first thought (well, other than HOLY CELESTIA WHAT THE BUCKING MUFFINBAT JUST HAPPENED,) was to get Twilight into shape. It felt kind of like my personal duty as her friend or something. And then I would do magic all day long to hypnotize Spitfire into making me lead Wonderbolt or something, whatever Twilight can do with that horn on her head, and then I would fly to Canterlot and get free food. It would be awesome! Although Twilight's castle is really big and weird when you're trying to get around it for the first time. Starlight was totally right.
"Pinkie Pie? Are you in here?"
I jumped and almost forgot to reply to Mrs. Cake, but I stammered out "Y-yes, I-I'm in here, Mrs. Cake! Did you-um, did you need me for something?"
Mrs. Cake poked her head into Pinkie's room-my room?-whatever I should call it today, followed by Mr. Cake. "We baked a few extra chocolate muffins for you to say thanks for helping us with the rush hour this week!" Mr. Cake smiled at me. I blinked.
"Oh, that's so kind of you! But, um, do you think I could have a salad instead? I don't really feel like any more sugar today..."
Mr. and Mrs. Cake exchanged worried looks. "Are you sure, Pinkie? You've been acting a bit strange today. We hoped you'd enjoy something sweet..."
Oh, strawberry swirl, Fluttershy! You have to act like Pinkie Pie! Remember? If you don't, they'll ask all sorts of scary questions that you can't answer and-
I put on a big smile. "Silly me, I don't know what I was thinking! Of course I want the muffins!"
The Cakes sighed with relief and Mrs. Cake brought me the muffins before closing the door. I stared at the pink hoof that held them. I had already eaten so many sweet and sugary things today that I felt like I would burst, but I couldn't be rude...
I put a bite of the first muffin in my mouth and started to chew.
Good grief! Rarity has to start all of these today? I thought in shock as I stared down at a list of customer orders that ponies had placed for Rarity. How am I supposed to get this done? I don't know anything about fashion!
I sighed as I read through the list again, the absence of my trusty cowpony hat feeling obvious on my head. Really, my whole head felt strange-Rarity put some sort of floral gel in her mane that clogged my sense of smell and made me want to rip out my nostrils. And, knowing me, if I tried to take it out I would ruin her mane-do and she would absolutely murder me once we got our regular bodies back...as long as we did get our regular bodies back.
Don't think like that, Applejack, I mentally scolded myself. You have an alicorn as one of your best friends; I'm sure this'll all be sorted out quicker than a pig to its dinner. Besides...
I looked back down at the confusing list of fashions and styles I had never heard of.
...you've got orders to try and finish.
