Ponyville Station wasn’t a particularly busy train station; it was hardly even a train station at all. So getting body-checked was a big surprise, especially considering that there wasn’t even a crowd to necessitate somepony abruptly running into another.
“Oof!” cried Cranky Doodle Donkey as he crumpled, his luggage landing in a heap around him. With an angry grumble he began gathering his things. His knapsack, his briefcase, his frilly suitcase, his pinstriped hat box - wait a minute!
“This isn’t my junk! Hey, you old nag!” Cranky Doodle Donkey barked and lifted the hatbox over his head to throw at his assailant, but froze when he caught sight of her. “Uh, lady? Are you okay?”
“No white … no white after summer…” she mumbled, her eyes far away, glazed over.
“What in tarnation are you babbling about, lady?” Cranky demanded, although it had dropped to an angry mutter again; it was hard to stay mad at someone who looked like, well, that. “Are you alright?”
“NO! And I shan’t be alright ever - never again!” the unicorn wailed, and grabbed hold of his shoulders suddenly, very nearly shaking the donkey out of his ears. “I have been neglecting the most important law of our land!”
“Uh,” Cranky Doodle Donkey began tentatively, “friendship is magic?”
“No!”
“Treat others as you would yourself?”
“Wrong!”
“Never trust a fart?”
“NON! The holy warning to all of those who call ourselves fashionistas!” the mare wailed, and lifted her hoof, intoning the phrase as if she was repeating a holy prayer. “No White After Summer’s End.”
Cranky Doodle squinted at her. “Now wait a dadgum minute, ain’t you that Pinkie kid’s friend? Rarity?”
“Yes! Rarity, the fashionista! Rarity, the fashion maven! Rarity, the mare-about-town!” Rarity wailed, and thick tears began to roll down her pale cheeks. “But now I shall be known as - as - Rarity, the fashion DISASTER!”
Cranky Doodle Donkey didn’t consider himself good with mares. Heck, he didn’t even consider himself good with other stallions. So he squinted at Rarity and tried to puzzle out what she had to wail over, in Ponyville Station of all places, and came up blank. “Alright, well … why’s that? Don’t you own a fashion, uh, store or something?”
“The Carousel Boutique is no mere store, it is a shoppe! With an extra ‘p-e’ on the end, because it is trés elegant!!” Rarity snapped through her tears. “But I have committed the most - the most grievous of fashion sins! I have worn - white. After summer’s end.”
Cranky squinted at her even harder. “Well, uh … what’s wrong with that?”
“Everything! Fleur De Lis explained it all to me - how white is a summer color, how anyone who knows anything knows that it is only for certain times of the year, and we shan’t wear it in the cooler months - oh, and to wear white makes one look so boorish! As if we are from - from -” Rarity was working herself into a full tantrum, but at that moment, dropped into a breathless, ashamed whisper. “A backwater.”
Cranky Doodle paused. “Isn’t Ponyville kind of a backwater?”
“Perish the thought, you shan’t speak those words to me again!” Rarity huffed, and batted at Cranky’s hooves as she pulled herself upright at last.
“Those tears dried up awful quick,” Cranky grumbled in an undertone.
“Oh, I had to leave Canterlot under a cloud of shame that had enveloped me. I was so proud of my white chiffon caparison, with the robin’s egg blue underskirts, and the cutaway that revealed just a tasteful amount of -”
Cranky Doodle Donkey’s throat-clearing became so loud that Rarity affixed him with a scowl.
“I had to leave under a cloud of shame, is my point. Ooh, I don’t know how I shall ever show my face there again! They must think me some kind of - of - fashion donkey!”
“Hey!” protested Cranky Doodle Donkey.
“Oh, it’s fine for you, wearing your tawdry dish cloth -”
“Shawl.”
“ - and the dead animal you wear as a hat!”
“Toupée,” Cranky ground out between clenched teeth.
“It’s all well and fine for some, but how am I supposed to ever show my face there again?” Rarity wailed, and draped her foreleg over her eyes. “Or in polite society, for that matter! I shall have to become a hermit! A cave-dweller! I shall have to dress only in - polyester!”
“Well… why don’t you just dye your white clothes a different color?”
“What?”
Cranky Doodle Donkey hadn’t been prepared for the possibility that Rarity might actually listen to him; he found himself tongue-tied for a moment. “Well, uh, if your white clothes aren’t fashionable … make them not white?”
“What an idea,” Rarity marveled, and she stared at him long enough that Cranky began to wonder if she might be slipping into another catatonic state. “Turn my white clothes not-white.”
“That’s, er, what I said, missy.”
“Brilliant!! Oh, Rarity, you are a genius! I’ll simply dye my white wardrobe a different color! Oh, it shall only take a jif!”
“Gee, what a great idea that you came up with all by yourself,” Cranky grumbled, his standard scowl returning to his face.
“Oh, thank you, Cranky Doodle! I couldn’t have come up with it on my own, not without your unfashionable presence to bring me back to my senses! Say ta-ta to the old, unfashionable Rarity, and hello to modern fashion maven Rarity - the star!”
“I’d rather just say ta-ta,” Cranky growled, and watched the overburdened Rarity speed off into the town with the speed of ten ponies.
[***]
“Why, Granny Smith! As I live and breathe! It’s so nice to see you here in the market!”
“Thank you Rarity! It’s awful nice to see you too!” the green mare chuckled good-naturedly. “Are you here to buy some apples after your trip to Canterlot?”
“Oh, you could say that!” Rarity smiled, but it was a smile that made the fur on Winona’s back stand on end, and the dog hid under the apple stand with a growl. “I was just thinking that if we want to rehabilitate the image of Ponyville as, well, not a backwater, we really can’t be wearing white after summer’s end, now can we?”
“You believe in that fiddle-faddle they talk in the cities? Pfft! Lucky for me, the Apple Family Plaid is evergreen!” Granny Smith chuckled, and gave her neckerchief a fond little pat-pat.
“Oh… I wasn’t talking about your rustic little cravat,” Rarity murmured, and the pair stared at one another.
Applejack only became aware of any problem when she heard Granny’s panicked screams from the other side of the wagon. “Granny?! Granny, hang on!” Applejack galloped the short distance and found Granny Smith lying on the ground behind the stall, a line of kicked-over ponies showing where the assailant had escaped into the crowd.
“Applejack!” Granny Smith cried, and pushed herself up onto her forelegs. “Applejack, what’d that cotton-picking pony do to me?!”
“It’s …” Applejack whispered, and stared at Granny Smith - or rather, just above her, to her previously-white mane. “It’s puce.”
“I’ll hang that Rarity by her pantyhose!”
[***]
“Twilight, you have to talk to Rarity! She’s gone mad with - something!”
Applejack hadn’t expected to see other ponies lined up in front of Twilight Sparkle’s crystalline tree when she went to complain about Rarity, but it seemed that Rarity’s reign of terror was not localized to apple matriarchs.
“Look what she did to my apron!” Pinkie Pie cried, and shook a lump of fabric in front of Twilight’s confused muzzle. “She turned it tartan! I don’t even know how she did it, but it’s not even a tartan that I like!”
“You think an apron is bad? Look what she did to my poor Angel Bunny!” Fluttershy sniffed, and lifted the misanthropic pet up for the others to see. “He’s ombré.”
“She tackled poor Granny Smith in the middle of the marketplace and dyed her mane puce!!” Applejack shouted, and slammed her hat into the dirt, enraged. “She’s gone too far!”
“Well, now I feel bad complaining about my volleyball,” Rainbow Dash muttered and scuffed her hoof in the dirt.
“Twilight, do something!”
“What am I supposed to do? Why doesn’t anyone go talk to - I dunno, the mayor? Isn’t a public nuisance more of her purview?” Twilight Sparkle frowned, and tried not to let the thoughts of her neglected reading time color her expression.
“Oh, you just want to get back to your books, you nerd!” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes.
Rainbow Dash can read minds, Twilight Sparkle realized with a thrill of horror.
“We tried going to Mayor Mare! She’s locked up in her bathroom, weeping! I guess Rarity hit her with some kind of dye removal spray, and she says her mane is really bad.” Pinkie Pie frowned, and jabbed Twilight Sparkle’s chest insistently. “We’re all her friends, but she’ll listen to you!”
“Why me?” Twilight Sparkle asked, carefully keeping her thoughts blank. She was sweating.
“You’re the princess of friendship! Can’t you tell her it’s against the law, or something?” Rainbow Dash huffed petulantly.
“Rainbow Dash, did you think that assault was not against the law?” Applejack drawled.
“Well, I -”
“Twilight, darling!”
The group turned as one. There, cresting the horizon, was Rarity. She carried two saddlebags loaded down with bottles of dye.
“There she is!” Pinkie Pie snarled.
“Let’s turn her into pet f - erm, the pet authorities!” Fluttershy amended quickly.
“Darling, I heard that you had a whole library full of books with white pages!” Rarity called brightly, and as she came closer, they could see her carefully playful tone was contradicted by the severe rictus of her grin. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but white after summer’s end is a no-no!” she sang the last words, but they came out discordant.
“Rarity! What’s going on?” Twilight Sparkle trotted to meet her, her ears flat with dismay. “What happened in Canterlot? You’re going around town harassing ponies, this isn’t like you!”
“Oh, darling! I had my heart broken by fashion - but I won’t allow that to happen to any of my friends!” Rarity replied, her head tilted at a sharp angle as she grinned. “I’ve come to help!”
“Rarity, that thing about white after summer - it’s not real! It’s just a silly fashion thing!”
“I am a silly fashion thing, you brute!” Rarity snarled, and Twilight Sparkle backed up as the spittle flew from her mouth.
“Woah, Rarity! Just - just calm down!” Twilight insisted, and her eyes rolled, trying to come up with some kind of solution. (She hoped that Rainbow Dash was reading her mind, and might come up with a solution faster than she was.) “You can’t go around dying other people’s clothes, and their pets, and their grandmas!”
“T’aint neighborly,” Applejack growled.
“But - but I’m trying to help them!” Rarity cried, and some of the haze seemed to lift from her eyes.
“I know, Rarity! You have such a generous heart.” Twilight Sparkle smiled, and reached out to gently touch Rarity’s chest with her hoof. Rarity shuddered as if she’d been on a decade-long parade of slaughter, instead of a few days of fashion mania. “You’re such a good friend, Rarity, but you’ve gotten confused. You can’t just go around painting over anything white!”
“I can’t?” Rarity sniffled.
“Of course not! It’s just some fashion nonsense, you don’t need to put any stock into it.” Twilight Sparkle smiled, and gave Rarity’s shoulder a tender stroke. “You don’t need to let anyone make you feel bad about what you wear.”
“I don’t?”
“No. Why, if they did that,” Twilight Sparkle chuckled, “they’d have to tell Celestia to dye her coat every fall!”
Rarity became very still.
“And that’s just silly! Right, Rarity?”
“Oh … yes, Twilight dear, you’re right. Very silly. Ha ha.” Rarity swallowed, and affixed Twilight with a smile that was much less tight. “Well. I suppose I shall … go home, then, shall I? I suppose I have a lot of work ahead of me tomorrow. Fixing everypony.”
“I think that’s a good idea, Rarity. I’ll come help you tomorrow, if you’d like. It’s getting late today,” Twilight Sparkle agreed, casting a glance to the setting sun.
“Thank you, Twilight. Tomorrow shall be … a lot of work, indeed.”
Twilight Sparkle gave Rarity a smart little nod as she turned to go, and Twilight turned back towards the friend group, her smile broad. “Well! That was easy, wasn’t it?”
Twilight Sparkle awoke the next morning to an apocalypse in Ponyville.
She heard the screaming outside her window before her alarm even went off. It had to be very early morning, because the sunlight streaming in through her window was weak, but all wrong. Shadows danced around the room as the light source danced outside, and Twilight Sparkle climbed out of bed in a hurry. They had to be setting off fireworks, or the like; shadows weren’t supposed to dance like that! But there was no noise; silent fireworks? In the daytime? But then why was everypony screaming?
“Twilight!” Spike cried as he raced into her room. “Something bad is happening - you gotta get out here!”
Twilight Sparkle ran to the window, her mane askew, and threw the shutters wide open. In the sky above her, the sun spun in circles, dancing in random patterns, sending the shadows dancing in tandem around Ponyville. Below her, ponies panicked in the street, screaming and wailing.
“Rarity,” Twilight Sparkle hissed.
Twilight Sparkle didn’t even bother to comb her mane, she just threw Spike onto her back and took off out her window. These new princess wings sure came in handy, because she made it to Canterlot in record time - or, well, she had to assume so. The sun was dancing between ‘morning’ and ‘midday’ every few seconds, going herky-jerky around the sky as if it might be dodging a mosquito the size of Pluto. Twilight Sparkle heard Rarity’s manic shriek before she even saw her.
“Your Majesty, you simply have to let me help you! White after summer’s end - well, it simply isn’t done! You’ll be the laughingstock of Canterlot! Of all Equestrian leaders! Imagine what they’ll say about us in Seaquestria!!”
“Get away from me!”
“Princess Celestia!” Twilight Sparkle shouted, and kicked the throne room doors open. (Spike darted to hide behind a tapestry, where he remained for the rest of the story.) Frozen in time, she saw Princess Celestia shielding herself behind her throne, her horn aglow as she held the sun in sway. Rarity had her cornered, wearing twin bandoliers of brightly colored pods, carrying what looked like a T-shirt gun. For some reason, she also had camouflage face paint.
“Twilight!” Princess Celestia cried, but her distraction was all the time that Rarity needed. With a triumphant cry, she shot the princess square in the chest. The force of the impact sent Princess Celestia sprawling, and her horn went dead.
“PRINCESS CELESTIA!” Twilight Sparkle wailed, and raced to her side on swift wings. The fluttering of her wings blew away the cloud of paint that still hung over her; when it dissipated, it revealed Princess Celestia, her white coat now stained in a fluorescent tie-dye pattern.
“Now,” Rarity panted, chest heaving, “she will be safe from fashion mockery.”
“What have you done?!” Twilight Sparkle cried, and twisted to face Rarity. “How could you do this? What’s wrong with you!”
“What’s wrong with me?” Rarity huffed, and touched a hoof to her chest. “Why, I’m the only one who seems to care about the Kingdom of Equestria’s standing in the social elite, thank you very little!”
“No one cares about your stupid fashion rules, Rarity!” Twilight Sparkle barked, and her voice was sharp enough that it startled the paint-fume-addled Rarity. “And if you took even a second to think this through logically, you might notice that you are also white!”
Rarity gasped, and looked down at her chest, which she still touched. Shaking, she lifted her hoof, staring at it. “I … I am?”
“What color did you think you - NO!” Twilight Sparkle cried as Rarity lifted the gun to point at herself.
“I’m so sorry, Twilight Sparkle,” Rarity whispered.
BANG
“Rarity!” Twilight Sparkle cried, and leapt from the prone body of her mentor to collapse beside the prone body of her friend. “Rarity! Rarity?”
“I’ve died,” Rarity whispered, dramatically.
“It’s a T-shirt gun, it can’t hurt you,” Twilight Sparkle rolled her eyes.
“I am a fashion martyr,” Rarity whispered, eyes still closed, and lifted one magenta-paisley foreleg to cover her closed eyes dramatically. She gave a tiny cough, and went limp.
“Oh stop that. What the hay were you thinking, Rarity? Why did you do all - this?! Over some stupid fashion rule about wearing white in the summer only? Only your stupid jerk Canterlot friends care about that junk, and they probably only said it in the first place so that they could tear you down because they feel like you’re a threat to them!”
“Well - how do you know that, Twilight? I didn’t tell you about that!” Rarity huffed, forgetting that she had ‘died’.
“Because I did some research! I had to talk to all of the ponies you painted or dyed or appliquéd or decopaged or embroidered or sprayed or whatever to find out just what happened yesterday!” Twilight Sparkle growled, dragging a hoof down her face. “I had to listen to Cranky Doodle Donkey complain endlessly until he got to the part about your friends kicking all of this off! If you felt bad about yourself, why didn’t you just come talk to your real friends? Why would you even listen to those jerks?”
Rarity was quiet for a moment, considering her answer outside of the haze of battle and fabric paint. “Well … because I wanted them to like me,” Rarity said softly. “I’ve always wanted to fit in with the créme de la créme of Canterlot. I guess I … I thought if I fixed everything in Ponyville, they’d … they wouldn’t have anything to judge me for anymore. They couldn’t call it a little podunk town.”
“Oh, Rarity,” Twilight Sparkle sighed, and stroked her friend’s lime-green hair. Her hoof came away lime-green too, but she didn’t complain. (She was only a little afraid it might prompt another meltdown.) “You shouldn’t have to change yourself to fit in. I’m sorry you felt so sad. I can’t imagine how lonely that train ride home must have felt. But if you ever feel sad like that again, can you please come talk to me first? I’m your friend. If you need to paint the whole town, well, if it’s that important then I can help.”
“You would?” Rarity asked hopefully.
“Of course, Rarity. You’re one of my best friends. But first I would make sure we had no other options. Which is why I did my research last night!” Twilight Sparkle smiled proudly. “And it turns out that this ‘no white after summer’s end’ stuff is a bunch of hooey!”
“It is?”
“It only started like a hundred years ago, when a bunch of wealthy ponies in Canterlot wanted to show off about how they could afford to have summer and winter vacations, and wardrobes to match. So the whole ‘no white after summer’ thing is just classist propaganda!” Twilight Sparkle gave a snappy little nod.
“So the real enemy isn’t adherence to fashion rules but … capitalism?”
Twilight Sparkle opened her mouth, and then closed it. She frowned at the wall. “I’m not sure if I should answer that.”
“Don’t worry Twilight Sparkle; you’ve said enough.” Rarity smiled, and laid her head back down, eyes closing. “Sweet dreams, comrade.”
“Oh no, sister. Get your rump off the floor; we gotta un-paint everypony.”
Rarity whimpered. “But I spent all night belly-crawling to Canterlot!”
“That sounds like a you problem,” Twilight Sparkle huffed, and dragged Rarity upright. “Let’s get to work, comrade.”
“Now I know why the true enemy of the proletariat is the bourgeoisie,” Rarity huffed under her breath. “This is forced labor!”
“This is none of that, stop giving Spike buzzwords he won’t understand if you don’t even understand them yet!” Twilight Sparkle snapped. “And besides, we’re both the proletariat!”
“Easy for you to say, Princess.”
Twilight Sparkle’s exasperated sigh could probably be heard all the way back to Ponyville.
