“Ponyfeathers!” Sunset cursed, fighting to button her jeans and failing miserably. “Of all the moon-banished, hydra sucking—“ Her words twisted into a sound of pure anger and frustration as she flopped back on the bed. “Now what do I do? I can’t exactly go out with no pants on!” The redhead had found herself at the unfortunate end of a problem she’d been ignoring for over a month: she was running out of clothes that fit properly.

For most of the time she’d been here, even with the effects of human adolescence on the human body she wore, Sunset had remained fairly thin. It was a feature that she had appreciated to an extent—having breasts permanently prominent so close to her face had been hard enough to get used to, but she had always been thankful she didn’t suffer from quite as much some human women did. The same went for her hips and rear—they had shape, but lacked the...added size humans had so many unflattering terms for. She had realized at some point that she had her diet to thank in part, since she wasn’t prone to eating the greasy, fat rich meats and horrifically processed foods that most of the denizens of the human world seemed so fond of (except for the occasional pizza and soda binge, of course, and her love of desserts), and she preferred to walk places that were reasonable distances from her home instead of always taking her bike.

However, in the past few months, her diet had improved drastically, with Velvet catering to her tastes in seafood, dessert treats, and even breakfast items, often making “more than anyone here will eat, so here, take the rest home with you, sweetie...” Her frame had filled out more, and she found herself not just with an even curvier figure that was starting to draw more unwanted attention from the male demographic, but with an ever shrinking wardrobe. First to go had been her favorite pair of dark jeans and most of her skirts, followed slowly by a bunch of her tops, and now her remaining jeans either wouldn’t fit over her hips or, when they did, she couldn’t button them. About the only things that still fit were a few baggy sleep shirts, one well worn hoodie, the sweatpants that doubled as winter sleepwear, and her various pairs of boots. Even her beloved jacket couldn’t be zipped up over her chest anymore.

“Now what am I going to do...?” Sunset moaned aloud. “I’ve got to meet the girls in a few hours...” The idea came to her as an epiphany, and she grabbed her phone, scrolling down her contacts and hitting the call button. “C’mon...c’mon...pick up...” The former unicorn found herself pacing next to her bed.

“Sunset, darling, is everything alright?” Rarity’s voice on the other end was a relief.

She ran a hand through her hair. “No,” she admitted irritably. “I need your help, Rarity. None of my clothes fit, and I’m not showing up for our lunch and gift exchange in my underwear and a hoodie.”

There was dead silence on the phone for a few seconds before the designer responded. “Nothing at all fits? Or just nothing that would be considered presentable attire for a trip to the mall?”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “I suppose I could show up in a hole-filled Metallica t-shirt, a hoodie that started out black that is now a medium gray, pajama pants, and my boots, but if I don’t want to look like a hobo raided the lost and found of CHS after Spirit Week, then I need your help.”

“I see your point, darling,” Rarity replied, unruffled by Sunset’s sarcasm. “I’ll be right over.” The designer paused again, before asking, “Where do you live?”

For a minute, Sunset froze, realizing that something she had been avoiding was happening. She had done her best to keep the girls away from the loft, partially to prevent them from showing up when she had Twilight over, but also because she hadn’t entirely trusted anyone with the location of her personal haven away from the world. Was she ready to take that step, that risk?

Then her mind thought back to the battle against the Sirens, to the magic they had all conjured together, to the feeling of the Elements and the Rainbow, and she had her answer.

“Okay, so you know where Old Main Street meets Snaffle Avenue...across from the park...?”

When Rarity arrived at the address Sunset had given her, she sat in her car for a moment with a slight frown on her face. Intellectually, she and Applejack had realized that their friend from another world was surviving on her own, without family or guardians, and the two of them had conversed several times on just how the former bully could possibly make ends meet on the kinds of jobs available to a full time high-schooler, but to see the well worn building wedged between a dry cleaners and a shabby looking apartment building with a pizzeria on the ground floor was still something of a shock. It wasn’t the worst neighborhood in the area, not by a long shot, for which she was very glad. It would have been upsetting to find the newest member of their group living in a slum—or worse, squatting in some abandoned structure. As her eyes took in the facade, she determined that it looked worse at first glance than it truly was. The front door and the windows showed evidence that they were much newer than the building, and a dozen other little touches and spot repairs suggested that the whole thing was well maintained with the emphasis on functionality and not appearance.

It dawned on her as she approached the front door that she was perhaps the first of their friends to come here, and that the others still had no idea where Sunset lived…well, except for maybe Pinkie Pie, who had the uncanny ability to know things about people she had never been told and had no possible way to have found out, something that Rarity had long since learned was best not thought about too deeply. Instead of diving down the proverbial rabbit hole that was Pinkie Pie’s strange quirks, she readjusted the bag on her arm and knocked gingerly on the wooden door. "Sunset?" she called out, still a little unsure that she had that right address.

The door was pulled open a moment later by the frustrated redhead, her hair still damp from her morning shower. She was wearing the same pajama pants that she had used for the sleepovers during the Battle of the Bands week in lieu of the clothes that didn’t fit, and Rarity at once could see the problem now that she got a good look and wasn’t distracted by a visiting royal and world ending magical problems. Rarity kept her features carefully schooled into a friendly smile, but internally she grimaced at how dreadfully uncomfortable Sunset must be, wearing a top that looked like it was several sizes too small in the bust.

She beckoned Rarity into the loft quickly to avoid too much of the heat from escaping into the winter morning outside. “Hey. Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t exactly planning for company.”

The inside of the loft was quite the change from the outside—while a lot of the furniture was probably second hand, it was clean and well kept, the whole room had a cozy feel. The fashion designer could hear the heater running, and the makeshift kitchenette was simple but functional, while the hardwood floor (likely replaced at the same time as the door and the windows) was covered with several area rugs. Everywhere she looked she could see things that proclaimed this Sunset Shimmer’s space, from the guitars—two hung up on the wall, with a third resting against an amp near the stairs, to the quirky string of lights that wrapped the railing of the raised sleeping platform, to the book bag and magical book on one end of the couch and the leather jacket draped over the other. It looked lived in, Rarity mused, but it was nowhere near the pigsty that Rainbow Dash called a bedroom, or the constant disaster and origin of strange odors that was Sweetie Belle’s.

Rarity waved off the apology with one hand, before getting right to the heart of the current matter. "Now Sunset, tell me, what's happened?"

Sunset grimaced. “My clothes don’t fit,” she reiterated from their earlier phone call. “Ever since...” she hesitated for just a fraction, “...ever since the formal...I’ve put on weight. Not spending my nights plotting evil deeds or my lunch hour running the school means I’ve been eating more.” She gave an exasperated sigh. “Now I can’t button my jeans, and just about every top I own feels like it's going to rip if I breathe too hard—not to mention squishing...” One hand gestured awkwardly to her breasts.

"Well, I guess it's good to know that if I need to go on a diet I can just plot world domination," the tailor mused idly as she was rummaging in her bag, pulling out a length of measuring tape. "Now, let's get you measured, darling."

The former unicorn managed a laugh. “Yeah, nothing burns calories faster than megalomania,” she quipped, before shuffling her feet. “What do I need to do for this? The...last time I got measured for clothing, I had hooves—while I’m not exactly fashion aware, I do know that taking measurements for a mare has to be very different than taking them for a human.”

"I would rather imagine that the basic process is the same, so it shouldn’t be too different for you." She leaned back a little bit, resting her hip against the back of the sofa as she looked the fiery haired girl over. "I'm going to have to ask you to take off your pants and shirt, such as they are, so I can get accurate measurements.” Her red work glasses were already perched on her nose, and the little notepad and pencil were at hand to take down the numbers—she would need them anyway for when she made things for Sunset like she did the rest of her friends, and it would make helping the other girl clothes shop a lot easier.

Sunset stripped as instructed, completely lacking any of the expected embarrassment or nervousness most people seemed to feel when standing around in their undergarments letting the pale skinned tailor into their space with her tape. About the only response to anything was the slight shiver and the appearance of goosebumps on amber colored skin. “I happen to like these. They’re comfortable for sleeping,” she retorted.

"There is nothing wrong with being comfortable sleeping, darling, but I am glad you made the proper decision to not venture outside in them. It would be terribly gauche." All business now, Rarity went to work, taking the measuring tape to Sunset’s form and jotting down numbers…though there was a brief moment or two of envy that coaxed a disgruntled sound from her as she took stock of the numbers that translated to a figure to die for…and the briefest pondering of whether or not it had something to do with the magic that reshaped the pony denizens of the other world.

One of Sunset’s eyebrows arched at her. “That was not a happy sound.”

Shaking her head, she finished jotting down the measurements on her notepad, with a few added notations of her own about colors and design elements that might look good on her friend. "Nothing to worry about, Sunset, I assure you. My eyes just felt a little green for a moment." Pale fingers dipped into the bag again, sorting through the clothing items she’d brought to find the ones that would fit based on the measurements, laying out a few choices for Sunset’s perusal. "Here we are. Now, I have three options for you that should fit. There’s a pair of my jeans--they stretch a bit, usually I keep them for when I have that extra piece of pie. A pair of Applejack's jeans—she’s a bit taller than both of us, so the legs might prove to be a bit too long, but the waist and seat of the pants should accommodate your new…somewhat ample hips, but the cut and style of the denim makes them a little stiffer and less flexible. And I have a dress, one of mine, which should fit fine and keep everything properly in place." The dress was one from her more casual collections, long enough to cover everything, and would stop mid calf, its fabric a dark, yet comforting shade of purple, highlighted with lighter colored accents.

"....why in the world would you be envious of me putting on weight?" Sunset sounded extremely confused by that thought. “Everything I’ve seen and heard tells me that humans seek weight loss, not weight gain...” It was moments like this that made Rarity wonder how the unicorn-in-human-form had managed to fool anyone at all, especially for so long, when she was misinformed or outright ignorant of a lot of the subtle nuances of society, culture, and human psychology. While Rarity considered just how Sunset had managed her reign of terror without tripping up horrifically, the redhead in question looked at her choices, before seeming to settle on the middle ground. "I'll try your pie-pants."

Rarity handed over her jeans, putting the other clothes back in the bag. "Sunset, it's not the weight, it's where it's distributed. There are quite a few girls who would kill to go up an extra cup size overnight."

The former unicorn looked down at her chest, then back to her friend. "...It wasn't overnight," she corrected. "And I'm not 'a lot of girls.' I'm me, and frankly, having them this close to my face and always this big is weird. Human bodies are so strange. What even is the point of having them like this all the time? They get in the way, they bounce when I run, and they stretch out my shirts in weird places." Applejack had, over the years, expressed similar complaints to her, but this wasn’t the same as her lover’s grumbling and grouching and disdain for all things the farmer deemed ‘frou-frou.’ The other girl’s tone was bordering on whiny, something so unlike Sunset Shimmer that Rarity wondered if there was a greater issue at play than just a few extra pounds and a need for new attire.

It galvanized her to help her friend as best she could, and perhaps offer the chance for Sunset to vent about whatever the deeper issue was, and she straightened with the force of her conviction. "I can see there is another reason you contacted me; it sounds like you don't know how to shop for women's clothes. We are just going to have to go out and fix that, darling." She placed a hand on Sunset's shoulder. "A woman's fashion can be so varied, not just limited to…biker boots and leather jackets."

“What's wrong with my boots?" Sunset demanded as she shimmied into the borrowed jeans and pulled her shirt back on. "They're comfortable and warm. And I can shop...sort of. I shopped for all my old clothes by myself--I'm not completely ignorant." The way her eyes refused to look directly at the tailor revealed that she knew her words were weak even as she spoke.

Rarity leaned in closer, then lifted up Sunset's shirt without warning. "So you say, but what sort of bra is this, Sunset? It's positively tacky!" she complained, before tugging the shirt back down as best she could over the other girl’s overfilled and ill-fitting bra. "Come along, darling, we are getting you some proper clothes."

Jerking back from the designer’s hands, Sunset crossed her arms defensively over her chest. “No one is going to see it!” she protested. “And what about our lunch with the rest of the girls? We have to meet them in an hour!”

Pale fingers were already texting on her phone to her other half, explaining in shorthand that she knew her partner would understand the details of the situation. "Well, isn't it fortunate I just told Applejack there was the utmost emergency that I simply had to help you with. So now we have an extra hour to get you some proper clothing."

The redhead opened her mouth to offer some sort of protest, but Rarity saw it die before it began as she realized that the designer was right, that this was a bit of an emergency, and she did need Rarity’s help in navigating shopping. Rarity had long suspected that Sunset’s “fashion sense” had been derived from someone else’s work, as several of the outfits she had Rarity was certain she’d seen in various teen magazines, but now knowing Sunset Shimmer more personally—including her otherworldly and non-human origins—she knew that it was more than suspicion. All in all Sunset wasn't bad at it when she was going off someone else's idea, but this was…it would likely be the first time in the human world that she bought clothing with the purpose of comfort and enjoyment and not a particular goal in mind. It was with that that Rarity promised herself to try and impart some fashion wisdom to her friend on this outing.

With the protest stifled by Rarity’s knowing look, Sunset instead dug out her wallet, checking for her card, and then fiddled with her phone for a long minute—checking her bank balance, Rarity surmised, particularly with her next comment. "Keep in mind I do have a bit of a monthly budget, Rarity, and I still need to eat, okay?" Stuffing her feet into her boots now that she had pants that fit better, Sunset grabbed the bag that had her gifts for her friends in it. "Mind if we carpool? I had room for the gifts on my bike, but there's no way I can fit a whole new wardrobe."

Rarity watched the whole exchange with a business woman's eyes, letting each even unfold before her without commentary—it wouldn’t do to inquire too deeply on Sunset’s finances or call her out on her fashion sense any more than she already had. "Of course, darling, I completely understand; I have to do much the same when Mother and Father go out of town. Now, I will make you a deal: if you agree to trust me on at least some of my recommendations, then I will make sure you don't go over budget. Would that be acceptable?" she asked as she was grabbing her keys from her purse.

Blue-green eyes flickered with a bit of uncertainty, before Sunset nodded. "I'll do my best, Rarity, but please...nothing too flashy or 'sexy.' I don't want to draw too much attention to myself." A pause. "...and the leather jacket is not negotiable. I like my jacket." Her fingers gripped the battered leather that they both knew was in desperate need of being replaced, as if the thought of giving up the garment caused her something akin to physical pain.

A small half-smile found its way onto Rarity’s face, one that came with the beginnings of realization. "I see no problem with keeping your jacket, Sunset. At this point it's become something iconic for you. I can hardly imagine you without it." She gently ran her fingers along the scuffed and tattered leather on one of Sunset’s shoulders. "As for…‘sexy’….that isn't something we will be trying for. What you need is some functionality. Now, shall we?"

Author's Note

Yet another chapter that puts Sunset in conversation with Rarity. I don't know why, but these two just have great friendship chemistry, and some of their interactions just make me laugh. There's also the benefit that Rarity is not as ditzy as she sometimes pretends to be--under the dramatics there's an intelligent, perceptive individual and a clever business woman.

....this is an example of something that will be happening more in arcs going forward: Sunset spending one on one time with each of her friends, engaged in some activity or another. Some of those chapters will be serious, some funny, but I think they'll be nice ways to flesh out Sunset's individual friendships and make each one different.

Next week's chapter will be the actual shopping trip! Huzzah!

As a side note, I may choose to take the month of December off from editing/posting chapters. I still have a reasonable buffer, but December is...a bit of a hectic month for me, between several birthdays (including mine!), Christmas, the Solstice, New Years, and the inevitable family drama that lasts the whole frigging month, I'm not sure i'll have the time, space, or sanity to do the last bit of editing on the chapters to make them good to post. You guys won't hate me if I do that, will you?