Rob Haddington checked his phone yet again. He had previously checked it 30 minutes beforehand. And 30 minutes before that 30 minutes. And before even that 30 minutes, he had checked it 30 minutes prior. "Come on!" he said, more out of worry than frustration. "Why won't you pick up, Sara?"
Rob was a Canadian fellow of reasonably young age, a fellow with brown hair and eyes. He was of average build, as a lot of people are, and was dressed fairly casually as he stood there, in a complete tizzy over something that was happening. As you're probably all aware, the world was, at that time, in a bit of a mess, what with a pandemic creating chaos in communications and suchlike. One such issue was the travel bans that constantly came in and were relaxed repeatedly. Rob had chatted with that about a British relative of his, and had been appalled at the news that the British had tried to shut borders to prevent covid getting in, and then they had let people fly overseas on their holidays, allowing them to bring it back to the country and start the cycle all over again. Admittedly, a person he was close to had been flying about, but he wasn't mad at her.
Which brings us onto his current source of worry. Rob's girlfriend, Sara, had been marooned in Britain after the second round of travel bans and had no way to get home. He had tried to call her (several times, if his answering machine was anything to go by), but most of her phone calls went unanswered (which made sense, as she lacked an international call plan, and phone calls across the seas are extremely expensive). What was odd, however, were her texts in response. They were extremely vague and cloaked in mystery, giving little clue as to her whereabouts or indeed what she was doing. In Rob's opinion, they gave Sir Humphrey Appleby a run for his money in terms of being hard to understand. He sighed again, and looked out into the vast open plains. Alberta was in the middle of nowhere, so there was little chance of him going near water. Besides, the people of the town of Calgary certainly had plenty in their home territory that they could visit and enjoy. There was Drumheller not far away, for instance.
Rob suddenly stopped his internal rambling, realising his thoughts were beginning to sound like an advertisment for Canada, and turned his attentions back to his worries for Sara. As you'd expect, he loved her dearly, but he had a nasty suspicion at the back of his mind that he somehow just couldn't shake. Something here wasn't right, and his Pinkie sense was tingling. It rather goes without saying that Rob was a brony, just nowhere near as devoted to the show as his cousin Tom, or a person he vaguely knew online called 'Jimmy', who got up to a lot of crazy antics in his hometown, posting regular blogs about the virtues of North Carolina.
Rob decided he needed to get moving, and find alternative locations from which to brood about the current situation. He decided to come off the mountain on which he currently stood and go into the valley to see if there was something to see or find. Down below lay Calgary, which even in February was a pretty warm place, noticably warmer than say British Columbia, and as he strolled into town he suddenly noticed something strange on the ground, particularly in the texture of the paving tiles that made up the pavement (or sidewalk, as it's called in some places where they call the road the pavement). These were made of concrete, and featured a variety of different patterns so as to break up the monotony of the road surface. But the problem was that this one looked very odd indeed. There was something about it that looked less solid and more squishy, as if the ground was melting. "This looks like an M C Escher Painting," Rob noted, as he bent down to take a closer look. Any minute now, he expected melting clocks to fall from the sky and all of time to start slowing down around him. He took a closer inspection, and realised that rather than this being an odd piece of painting or some sort of strange practical joke, the tile itself seemed to be bubbling weirdly below the surface, like it was the concrete itself that was the cause of the confusion. Rob then touched it, accidentally, briefly, carelessly. It was this one touch that caused all the trouble.
The floor suddenly collapsed, opening into a gaping maw that seemed to stretch on into infinity (and beyond). Rob, naturally, was pulled into the hole and flew down it, falling faster and faster as he did so into an epilepsy inducing kaleidoscope of rainbow light, the world progressively falling further and further away from him as he flew through the air and was suddenly spat out at the other end, landing on a hard floor with a bang.
"Ouch!" he observed, as he got up within the confines of the strange room. "Where is this?" Far from the dull and grey sheen of his home dimension, everything here was extremely bright and full of colour, almost unrealistically so. The walls and the floor seemed to be made of crystal, and the windows glowed a pale blue, as for some reason they had decided to use blue tinted glass for the windows, which made the interiors of rooms feel very odd indeed. Nearby was a bed, indicating this room's purpose as a bedroom of some description, and some other fittings sat around, including a bedside table, lampstand, and various other implements that helped to keep the place in order. The desk, in particular, was a tresure trove of items, most notably of which was a large hairbrush, filled with bristles. So he touched it. Big mistake.
As he did so, there was a great whooshing sound, followed by what sounded like a bang, which caused Rob to jump in surprise as it echoed through the air. His attention, however, was soon drawn to what was going on. The hairbrush he had accidentally run his hand over was now glowing like a UFO often does at the end of a bad science fiction movie, and with another series of loud pops and bang (miraculous nobody else heard them, isn't it?), the glowing energy spread outwards in a corona of, well, energy I guess. Rob, of course, was caught directly in that corona, the blast, as it were, and it consumed him. He could sense very little during the actual whirling and blazing of energy, but if there had been any outside observers (which there were not), they would have heard the sounds of clothes tearing, limbs being shifted and rearranged, and what sounded like pain.
Eventually, the light faded, along with some fabric falling onto the floor. In the place where Rob had once been standing was a rather medium sized alicorn with pink fur, dark purple eyes, and a mane coloured in interlocking strands of medium pink, cream, and purple. Her tail was exactly the same constellation of colours, and a small golden crown was lodged in her mane. Around her front was a metal chestpiece, and four holden horseshoes were attached to her hooves (well, where else would they be? Attached to her nose (or not, as she no longer had an nose!)?). She also had a symbol of a crystal heart attached to her flanks.
This being looked about in confusion. "OK, what on Earth just happened?" she asked, trying to reconstruct all that had happened in the last few moments. "So I fell through a portal, landed in the Crystal Empire, and then found myself turned into Cadence?" She took another look around, fully aware and deeply concerned about the fact she was going to have to try to fit in. "This is either a really weird fever dream, or the world's gone truly mad if people can be turned into cartoon horses at a moment's notice."
She tried to compose herself. "OK, Ro- Cadence. You can do this. Pretending to be the Princess of Love- how hard can it be?"
She was about to discover how hard it could be. She trotted forward one step- and trod on a Lego brick. The barrage of profanities that followed was most unlike Cadence, to say the least. She eventually shook it off, wondering how on Earth a Lego brick had even ended up there, considering this looked to be the parent's room.
She trotted over to the door and opened it using her magic as best she could. She then stepped into the corridor, and checked from left to right to ensure the coast was clear. She then trotted into said corridor.
"Mom, are you feeling alright?"
Cadence turned her head to see who was speaking, and her heart sank. It was Flurry Heart, a considerably older Flurry Heart than the one seen in the show, but Flurry Heart nontheless. "Oh, hello dear."
"You were yelling quite loudly and I wanted to see if you were OK."
Cadence had thought to collect the Lego brick, and so she turned it over in her hoof and showed it to Flurry Heart, not considering how on Earth that even worked in terms of physics or even biology, given that the bottoms of hooves are, generally speaking, not adhesive surfaces. "I found this on the floor of my bedroom and trod on it. It hurt quite a bit! But the odd thing is that I can't recall bringing anything in of that sort. Do you have any idea where it might have come from?"
Flurry Heart's eyes seemed to be averted downwards, seemingly out of shame. "I am sorry," she said.
"Sorry?" Cadence asked.
"The identity of the individual whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent discussion is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, but, not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun." Flurry Heart finished an incredibly long sentence and then looked back up.
"Sorry, what?" Cadence asked. "I hope that wasn't important information, as I didn't understand a word!"
"I left it there," Flurry Heart replied. "I was looking for you and you weren't there, and I must have dropped it on my way out. Quite why I didn't leave it at the workdesk I have no clue."
"Is this brick from the Crystal Empire replica you're working on?" Cadence asked. "If so, you'd best put the brick into the place where it belongs, before you forget." She paused again. "I think you may have been spending too much time with Sunburst. His sesquipidalian loquaciousness has clearly rubbed off on you."
"What's sesquipidalian loquaciousness?"
"The art of using long and esoteric words to grant verisimilitude to ones exhortations and disclosures. Basically, it's the art of using lots of big words to describe simple things. As a Princess, I have to do it a lot."
Both individuals started to head for Flurry's room, one to put the brick into place, and the other to take a look at how the model was going on. "So, are we going to mention this one to anybody?"
"Certainly not, Flurry! It is a responsible discretion exercised in the national interest to prevent unnecessary disclosure of eminently justifiable procedures in which untimely revelations would severely impair public confidence."
"You're doing it yourself, now!"
As they trotted away, neither of them, not even Rob, who was beginning to settle into the role of Cadence with a reasonable level of success turned the mind to the question of Shining Armour.
Author's Note
Well, it's Valentine's Day, so is a Cadence story really that surprising? This was part of a story trade with Moonlight Blues/Proper Noun.
Sir Humphrey Appleby is a character from the British sitcom Yes, Minister, famed for his exceptional ability to confuse a situation and render a very simple concept utterly unintelligible by virtue of describing it in obtuse and over the top language. In this story, two of Sir Humphrey's speeches are referenced.
