A Pie by any Other Name

The past unabridged. The old pain's true form. A ravenous reluctance. A devious mind concocting innocence. A deal that you simply can't refuse. A road paved to the future.

Twilight wasn't truly happy. She walked about Ponyville with a smile, but inside that smile taunted her. It leered and sneered at her, knowing full well that it was a prop complacent in the lie. It was a lie dictated to be necessary for the day's events, but it was a lie nonetheless.

Eventually Twilight made her way home to the castle. Above the door was a space that seemed annoyingly empty. It could use a banner, or any decoration really, but it lay there bereft of anything that might tie together the castle in a pleasing way.

Twilight sighed, entering the castle and quickly deposited the few items she had bought on the counter. Her duties at Canterlot getting cleared out by her dedication had allowed this trip, and now that she was here she was encountering issues. She wasn't having second thoughts, certainly not. She was, among all ponies, the most determined about what needed to happen.

There were no two ways about it, and that was that.

Bringing out her chalkboard she fished about a draw for some chalk while bringing out a journal-like book from her saddle bags. Opening up to a particular page, she read over the spell again. It was a devilishly simple spell for creating a self-rebuilding mind control spell. It was particularly tenacious among spells of that category, requiring only its restructuring seal to remain to completely reappear.

She sketched it out on her board, drawing the lines not in the perfect circle they appeared in in her journal, but it a broken arc. She stared at it for a long moment, reading over the lines of the spell as they appeared now.

"That seems quite a bit more complicated than when you first passed it off to me to use, Dear." Rarity said from behind her, lounging - as was her wont - across the plush couch that sat in a corner of the room.

"I see you let yourself in, Rarity." Twilight said without turning as she began to sketch out the possibilities. "And it looks that way because it is. Honestly it already has enough chaff in it that I'd have been surprised if I had found this spell and was told that it isn't naturally a part of a larger spell."

"Have you chosen what spell to hide your magnum opus in?" Rarity asked, standing up from the cushioned sofa.

"Not yet, I first need to figure out what spell I would want to cast in the headspace I wish to inhabit by the end of this." Twilight muttered. "Are you sure Pinkie won't arrive early?" She asked, briefly casting a glance over her shoulder towards Rarity.

"This is Pinkie we're talking about." Rarity pointed out. "I can tell you that I don't believe that she will arrive too soon, but I can't guarantee anything." Twilight nodded sagely before returning her attention to the board.

"That just leaves tricking myself." Twilight mused as she looked over the board once more. "It already looks and reads as a cosmetic spell - perhaps I tried to give Pinkie a magical hair treatment?"

"Too forward for you, Twilight." Rarity noted. "How about a spell you wanted to cast on yourself but ended up missing and hitting her with? Would that work?"

"Possibly..." Twilight murmured, looking over the lines. "I would have to draw out the lines of course." She noted. "If I tried to hit myself with a spell and instead hit Pinkie, it could only be because she stepped on a coincidental axis of a physically drawn circle - otherwise I'll certainly smell out how fishy it is that I missed myself."

"I suppose missing yourself with a normal spell would be quite difficult." Rarity nodded. "So what sort of spell would you use on yourself if you were to do such a thing? There has to be something that you would use into which the spell can be snuck. Some relatively harmless spell that for some unknown reason contains the lines that make it into a mind control spell when it discharges incorrectly."

"That's the thing, I don't usually use spells on myself." Twilight noted. "Unless I'm testing something, but this can't be that. I can't tell myself I failed at basic experimentational safety - it just doesn't make any sense and would raise to many flags against myself. I'm smarter than that." Twilight answered, giving Rarity a look.

"I see..." Rarity mumbled, looking over the board. "How exactly were you intending on getting yourself into the right frame of mind either way?" Rarity asked, walking up beside Twilight, looking over the spell. Twilight cocked an eyebrow and turned back towards the blackboard.

"I was going to have you use a memory alteration spell on me. I thought I told you? I can't do it on myself otherwise I'd have to alter the spell fundamentally. If I cast it I'll remember how to cast it, which will make it obvious to me that I cast it on myself.

"I have to remove my memory of the memory alteration spell itself so I don't get suspicious as to why I know a memory alteration spell, but basically any memory alteration spell worth its weight in arcane infused chalk has clauses entwinned in its basic functionality that make it so you can't alter your memory about the spells casting. I'm sure I told you all of this." Twilight said, failing to see where Rarity was trying to go with all of this.

"Why not have a memory alteration spell to work as our little trojan?" Rarity said, looking over the spell. "Why not make it so you think you were trying to cast a memory alteration spell on yourself and Pinkie stepped on the circle at the wrong point and was hit by a mind controlling spell. We can even have a neat little Terosastines built off of that Astines right there. It might not make grammatical sense in the spell as of yet, and we might need to flub our way through building the rest of the spell out - unless of course we had somepony so skilled in ancient languages that they could alter sentences in spells in their sleep - but it could throw you for a loop at least until you sit on Pinkie's face." Rarity said with a sly grin.

Twilight blinked a few times, staring at the line Rarity had pointed to and slowly began to write in a following arc from it. The runes slotted into place as word after word made itself. Then the next ring formed and then the next around that. Within minutes, the broken arc that Twilight was going to fire was only distinguishable by the lines she had drawn between sentences that otherwise made arcane sense.

"My Dear Twilight," Rarity gasped theatrically, "are you really so skilled in the language used for spells? I would've never guessed!" Rarity said at the point of swooning.

"Rarity, I wrote a doctoral dissertation two weeks ago completely in the arcane language." Twilight answered. "You know I did, I had you proofread it."

"Did you dear? I thought I knew that Terosastines was a proper word in the arcane language because I studied it in one of my fashion magazines! Dearie me." Rarity mused, reading over the lines. "Also you have a Temas when you should have a Tekoy in line three on the second ring. Right after the disguised perpetuating clause, Dear."

Twilight looked at the board and, sure enough, Rarity was right. A quick scrub of a handkerchief wrapped in a light blue magical aura followed by a quick scratching in chalk later and the spell circle was once again complete. Twilight shook her head at Rarity who, by means of necessity, had learned the arcane language with her for her traditional princess doctoral dissertation*. Had it not been for the fashionista, Twilight doubted very much that she'd be a doctor right now.
*Twilight had been informed by Celestia that all princesses needed to complete a doctorate or be seen working on a doctorate to retain royal authority. This, of course, is a lie. Though both Celestia and Luna had doctorates - astral physics for the both of them in case you were wondering - it had never been a requirement as such. Celestia just knew that Twilight had always wanted a doctorate and wanted to, in her own special way, encourage her student to get one. Saying it was traditional and required just made it so Twilight wouldn't let her dreams waste away under the heat of royal responsibilities.

Lighting her horn once more, she brought out a bland, empty tome from her bags and carefully cast a complicated illusion spell. It would allow her to read it for the next day as some sort of treatise or expository text on mind altering spells. It wasn't the most complicated text, anypony reading it would find themselves struggling to make heads or tails of it - reading through it as if it were a book in a dream.

In the end, the only parts of the book that would act consistently and be easily deciphered would be the index, the spell circle, and the cover. After today, however, the book would not just have it's text disappear, but would find itself mysteriously leaving Twilight's collection.

Certain pieces, after all, had to be placed just so.

"Be sure to include in your casting of the memory alteration spell a prominent thought in my mind on the subject of memory alteration spells." Twilight said, making sure to clean off the blackboard before shoving it back in its place. "Not in the forefront of my mind, mind you, just a nagging little thought that can blossom into a solution - not sure what memory I'd want to alter though."

"How about..." Rarity tapped her chin a few times in thoughts as she came up with something probable, "you want to remove your memory of your love for Pinkie and you use the spell to achieve that affect. I can also ensure to put a little tick in your mind that will make you draw the circle just so that Pinkie walks across the point of serendipitous mind control."

"Perfect." Twilight smiled, but then paused, losing the expression as she thought on the future. "I'm going to need you to push me in the right direction, Rarity." She said after a moment, placing the tome into the first place she'd look for it later on. . "I can only do so much on my own. I'm not just talking about casting the memory alteration spell. I need you to watch me after you cast the spell and make sure I go after Pinkie."

"Darling, I'm certain you'll do that on your own initiative." Rarity comforted.

"I can't be sure. I really can be so irritatingly moral at times, Rarity." Twilight confessed with a disgusted sigh. "I can take the straight and narrow when its so narrow you can barely breathe while the wide path of ill conceived actions is just there waiting for me to use it.

"That's where I need you to come in, Rarity." Twilight said, turning to look the seamstress with a stare that spoke of so much emotion. "I need you to be there for me. I need you to nudge me. After you cast this spell on me, I will be the saintly pony I want to be. I will still be me, of course, but I won't be so... so filled with anger and hate.

"I want to just love Pinkie and Lil' Cheese, not hate Cheese Sandwich as I do. I can't... I can't love Pinkie properly without excising this hatred in me." Twilight said sullenly. "Because, despite all I've tried, my hate of Sandwich is tainting my view of Pinkie and Lil' Cheese. I... I catch myself despising Lil' Cheese at times because I see her father in her. I need to love them both, I want to love them both."

"I understand, Twilight." Rarity said, placing a hoof on her friend's shoulder. "I'll do my best to make your saintly self a debaucherous whore in private while remaining the stoic leader that all Equestria needs you to be." She said with a playful smirk.

"I'd prefer something more along the lines of ravenous and depraved slut who wishes Pinkie to be the same." Twilight said with a sigh and a gentle smile.

"Twilight, I will make you so depraved you could hardly imagine." Rarity said with all too ladylike a smile. "Also, to ease your mind before it is altered, I've also made sure that Cheese will get a tad... sloppy shall we say? Give you just the righteous cause you need to eventually step in and take what you want for Pinkie's good."

Twilight nodded solemnly, considering the vastly overly complicated spell matrix that would be the key to all her desires. "Are we doing this right?" Twilight asked, almost to herself - though it became clear as she looked up to Rarity she was still speaking to the mare. "We could just tell Pinkie what we found and I could try to... woo her?"

"Darling," Rarity began with a sigh, "if you weren't so well-read, I doubt you'd think of 'wooing' as much more than the sound of an alarm. Also, Pinkie is chronically straight and madly in love with a stallion who see her more as a happy little fuck in a backwater that he can depend on.

"Trust me, if we told Pinkie and convinced her we weren't lying, she wouldn't do much about it. By forcing Cheese's hoof and by making her receptive to you, we are doing her a great benefit. Sure, it so happens to also be greatly in your benefit as well, but when you come down to it, we are all friends and are, therefore, here to help each other. We're helping Pinkie and so helping Pinkie help you - very in line with general principles of friendship, Darling."

"I suppose..." Twilight said finally. "Just make sure of it all, alright? Make sure to be on my shoulder?" Twilight said.

"Of course, Darling. I'll be your little shoulder devil through thick and thin. Now quickly go to the front door of the castle, I need to cast the spell while you think you are entering the castle so that it seems as seamless as possible." Rarity said, already moving off to the corridor that led out.

"You really are a true friend, Rarity." Twilight said with a faint smile. "I might not... entirely like you in the future for what I just asked you to do, but rest assured that right now - in the mind that I currently am or have - I hold you in high esteem. I might even have pursued you had it no-"

"Darling, don't say that, I might alter you just a tad to make you inclined towards threesomes between Pinkie, yourself, and I in the future; because trust me, I too am... attracted." Rarity said flashing a look over her shoulder as she walked.

"I... I don't think I'd mind." Twilight said finally.

"Well then..."

Twilight blinked her eyes in pain as she walked inside her castle, having caught some sort of glint in them from something - likely the buckles on her saddle bags. True, it had been light blue and not any color that would be reflected from a buckle, but that didn't matter.

Filing that away to never be looked at again, she wandered through the corridors of the castle until she got to the more residential sections of the building, where she sent her saddlebags over to a table before flopping unceremoniously onto a beanbag that gave a blast of suffocatingly stale dust at her sudden introduction to its plush surface. Twilight coughed for a few moments, waving the worst of it away from her face with a hoof.

As she looked at pictures which would set her emotions on edge, Rarity was walking away from the castle.

She waved a hello at Pinkie Pie who passed her. She said something to Pinkie about Twilight being in town, to which Pinkie Pie bounced in glee and shot off towards the castle.

Rarity wore a happy smile all the way to her home, thankful to Mrs. Cake for having been able to delay Pinkie just enough for their purpose. Now the pieces would fall into place without issue and - if all went well - with minimal intervention. There would be some intervention no doubt, but the smaller the amount the better.

She opened the doors to her old home and original boutique, locked them behind her, and went down to her basement.

It wasn't a dark or dingy affair, instead pristinely clean with row on row of fabric rolls that lined the shelves. Of course, there was the matter of the stallion kept in a cage that was more suited for a large dog than a pony, but that was neither here nor there. The stallion certainly didn't seem to mind.

She kicked the cage, bringing the yellow stallion back from sleep. "Wah? Huh?" His bleary eyes focused on Rarity all at once and he pressed himself against the cage's walls. "Mistress Rarity! You've returned!" He said extatically. "Please, Mistress Rarity, please let your slave cum to you again! Please Mistress!"

"Oh my dear, I'll let you do more than that soon enough." Rarity said with a smile of menace that might've in the right frame of mind, come across as the look of a temptress. "I have a deal for you; would you like to hear it?"

"A deal?"

"Yes, a deal." Rarity purred, sitting on the floor of the basement while eyeing up her prey. "If you do what I tell you, I will choke you until you slip past unconsciousness into death," she began, already gaining a shudder of pleasure from the caged stallion, "and then... well, let's just say that after you cum for me, you won't find a mare or stallion or otherwise that can be my equal. How you will try, but none of them will ever match me." She said with a haughty trill.

The stallion salivated at the bars of the cage at the thought of what he believed she meant. "I... I'll do it! Whatever it is, whatever you want! I'll do it! Please! PLEASE!" Rarity giggled coquettishly at this - it was all she could do to suppress the urge to deliver a bone chilling laughter of victory.

Oh how fun life was going to be from now on.

~ÞE END~