"You drove me crazy every time we touched, now I'm so broken that I can't get up."
The voice, high and clear, rang through the house.
"Rarity?"
The melody died.
"Yes, Sweetie Belle?"
"Applebloom and Scootaloo want to come over for a sleepover tonight....you know, Cutie Mark Crusaders?"
"Why don't you ask Applejack if you can sleep in the club house? I'm sure she'd let you."
"That's a great idea! Thank you, Rarity!"
Rarity heard the door close quietly. Then hoofsteps fading away from the Carousel Boutique.
Smiling, Rarity crossed the room towards the picture Sweetie Belle had drawn for her. She'd framed it, and the blue gems which were so hard to find really set it off. The little foal sure had her taste in gems.
Sliding it to the side, she revealed the secret compartment, which she had locked and thrown away the key. Nopony would know her secret.
Pinkie Pie bounced along the road. Maybe Rarity would be up for a little fun today! Maybe she could even invite everypony else for a PARTY!
No, she chided, that wouldn't happen. Rarity was a delicate pony. She didn't throw parties! As her tail gave a slight twitch she stepped to the side to avoid the plant pot she knew would be dropped. "Twitcha twitch!" she whispered.
She knocked on the door of Carousel Boutique. There was a lot of clinking and a crash. The door opened.
"Hi, Pink-"
"HIYA, Rarity! I'm in the mood for FUN! What are you doing? Is it fun? Can I join in?"
Rarity nodded slowly. "If you wish."
Pinkie Pie bounded into the Boutique, looking around. "Are you in a fun mood today, dear?" Rarity asked.
"Yeah!" Pinkie replied. "Whatcha doin'?"
"I'm designing an outfit for a punk-rock-pop star."
"WOW! Sounds fun! Can I see?"
Rarity used her magic to lift a mannequin up off the ground. This mannequin had a purple fake mane and tail, and blank, staring eyes.
"Wow..."
Its mane and tail had been done in lots of messy curls and streaked with pink and violet. It had a half- leg spiked purple patterned top vest, and a frayed skirt that rode very high on the mannequin's flank.
Rarity smiled. "Fun enough?"
"That is really super-fun-awesome-tastic! Like, twenty-percent-cooler-ten-seconds-flat-super-fun-awesome-tastic! Is that where Sweetie Belle got her awesome costume making talents? I gotta tell Rainbow Dash! Be right back!"
And she zoomed off. Rarity smiled. She knew it wouldn't be long before Pinkie came back.
She turned around to find some more purple mane dye.
"Rainbow Dash!!! Come quick!!"
"Pinkie Pie?" Rainbow cranked an eye open. She squinted upwards...I don't want to move...
"Rain! Bow! Dash!"
She took a deep breath, turned over on the cloud and said, "What, Pinkie Pie?"
"It's so awesome! Super-duper-fun-tastically-cool!!"
"What?"
"Come on! I'll show you!"
"But I'm supposed to be meeting Fluttershy, Applejack and Twilight-"
"They can come too! Let's go!"
About half a minute later, four extremely confused ponies were standing next to Pinkie Pie at the door to the Carousel Boutique.
"Y'all sure yah okay, Pinkie? Ah haven't seen y'all this excited since thah whole Mirror Pool who-hah." Applejack said.
"Yeah, maybe you should go calm down, Pinkie." Rainbow Dash added.
"Rarity? Rarity?" Pinkie Pie called into the Boutique.
"Yes, Pinkie?"
"I'm back!"
"Yes," Rarity said, "you are."
"Where are you?"
"In my bedroom, dear."
The ponies on the doorstep seemed to teleport, the speed that Pinkie carried them all up there. Rarity opened her door, and she smiled at them all. "Hello."
"Hi, can I see the punk rock pop star costume? Please?" Pinkie Pie asked excitedly.
"O-of course!" Rarity brung the mannequin over and Rainbow Dash gasped.
"That is so awesome!"
Rarity smiled again. "Well...thank you, Rainbow."
As all six ponies talked, Fluttershy noticed that Rarity seemed to subconsciously be moving in front of the drawing Sweetie Belle had made of herself and Rarity. Almost protectively, she thought. What was behind the drawing? It was a very big piece of paper. It could even hold a small safe!
Rainbow Dash seemed one step ahead of her. She was already behind Rarity, and since none of the other ponies warned Rarity, Fluttershy thought they must be as curious as she was. Rainbow Dash slipped her hoof under the picture. She looked surprised at the thing underneath. Rainbow Dash bit her lip. She plucked one of her shorter down feathers off her wings with a grimace and put the feather underneath the picture.
Click.
Rarity's eyes shrank and she whipped around. But it was too late. Rainbow Dash had already pulled out a poster. She had a funny look on her face as she read it.
She turned the poster around slowly so that the other ponies could all read it.
In big block letters across the top and bottom, it read:
RARITY. PREFORMING HER ALBUM "LIES" AT A CONCERT NEAR YOU.
Underneath was some dates from ten years before.
"Rarity.....what is this?" asked Rainbow Dash.
They were all absolutely frozen in shock. Rarity had hidden something from her friends! This wasn't how it was supposed to go! Friendships were about trust and truth. Not lies!
"Oh...that's nothing, dear....a...a design for.....for something...."
"Nothing, my flank!" Rainbow exclaimed. "What is this from, why is it here, and WHY IN THE WIDE WORLD OF EQUESTRIA would you need it? I bought your disguise of cleanliness and delicateness, hell, I even thought you were cute. But now that fake identity is crumbling around you! Rarity is fake! FAKE!"
"Shut yer mouth, Rainbow!" Applejack hissed.
No! Rainbow thought. I won't!
But before she could keep accusing Rarity of lots of things that didn't half make sense, Twilight stepped in.
"I'm sure we have many different opinions on this matter, but I'm going to ask you what we all want to know, Rarity: why do you have this?"
Always the cool one, thought Rarity, sighing.
"Fine...I shall tell you. But do not expect it was what you wanted. This poster reveals a dark part of my past that I hadn't wished to uncover ever again. Don't say I didn't warn you.
"To tell the story, I must first go back fifteen years."
She had been a filly then, small, ambitious and naïve. She'd wanted to see the world in all its colours and shapes. After all, when she'd finished with uni, the she could go on to do anything she liked.
And that was what the public saw: a white unicorn, shining like a star as she graduated from college. Many assumed she would go on to university. She would be in the news, in the papers, the all round top of her subject, getting awards and prizes for discovering many new things.
Unfortunately all her talent would go to waste. She was a rebel, and she wanted to sing. But the general public didn't have any respect for ponies with no talent for singing. The only group who did were....the punk rockers.
They were well known for their odd tastes in music, screaming voices with not one but two lead guitarists. She'd already been a fan of that type of music, attending all the concerts and getting all the bands' autographs, learning every word to every song they wrote, buying and making shirts and dresses that she could wear to fan expos.
And now she wanted to be one!
Her mother disapproved of it. Her father liked that kind of music too, and he supported her anyway, telling her to go and do 'whatever you want to do, no matter what the others say'.
So she released an album.
The crowd loved it. There wasn't too many punk rockers anyway. But a rebel pony who'd obviously come from good lineage throwing away their talent to be a rocker? Almost freakin' perfect.
So she released another album.
The masses ate it up. They thought she was great. She kept releasing albums which kept making money so that she could release more albums which made more money...
The spiral continued for years. She fell in love, her heart was broken, she wrote a song, she fell in love again. The crowds loved her. She was very famous, although not in the way people expected her to be.
Then, her career ended. No warning or anything, just a final album, and she disappeared.
"So why'd you vanish?" Rainbow Dash asked, interrupting the story.
"I was unhappy. I had everything a pony could want-except I hadn't known happiness since high school. I wanted to be happy again. So in a blindly stupid moment, I abandoned everything to become a small-town dress maker."
"Ah know this sounds silly, but wouldn' ponies recognize y'all?"
"No. I was a different pony. I had dyed my hair when I was a star. I used to paint over my cutie mark in black and re-paint the symbol my band used there. I do my mane in a style that old Rarity never would have done. I learnt to lie.
"I told ponies my name was White Amethyst, and they believed me. As Rarity faded from ponies' minds I changed my name to what my original name was.
"Of course, my father knew. He still supports me. My mother is happy with me now, and little Sweetie Belle doesn't know at all.
"And then I met you girls. I knew my past must now be kept under lock and key, for close friends can be extremely curious. That is why I never had any close friends. It was too dangerous."
"So...you ran away from fame and fortune to be a dressmaker? Jeez. You must have hated it." Rainbow Dash said.
"For a time, I hated myself. But now I see who I am, and that this is much better for me."
"Now, who wants some tea and biscuits?"
All the ponies said "ME!"
Rarity trotted off into the kitchen to fetch the kettle, but she turned at the door and said, "Look in there if you want, but don't you dare mess with Sweetie Belle's poster."
Rainbow Dash popped her hoof in and brought out a small tub of black paint. She set it down on the floor. Going in again, she brought out numerous CDs and one which looked like a live filming of a concert.
"Can I have these? This is so cool!"
"Yes of course, my dear," Rarity said, smiling at the blue pony. "Now why don't we sit down and have some tea?"
Rainbow Dash pushed the DVD into her Pony DVD player. It made a slight whirring sound as it disappeared into the slot.
A screen came up of a huge concert hall. Many screaming fans were pushing and shoving in the mosh pit, while others were in the stands jumping up and down.
A smoke maker was pumping white smoke onto the stage. One by one, compartments opened from the bottom and pushed up ponies with spiky hairstyles and painted eyes.
As the last one came up, the crowd screamed and screeched so loudly Rainbow Dash felt as if the speakers would blow. The shape was still too small to make out properly, but she could tell it was white.
She pressed Play.
The screen went dark.
In faded a logo. It was a circle with a triangle through it.
It faded out again.
In faded a screaming, the same screaming from before. A crazed fan screaming.
The stage appeared. The compartments opened up again and Rainbow Dash still couldn't make out the figure on the stage.
The camera zoomed in.
It was Rarity.
She'd done her mane and tail in the same way on the dummy she'd shown Rainbow Dash.
Her three-diamond cutie mark had been painted over in jet black paint. Over the top of it was the same symbol she'd seen before. It was hastily painted, but it was there all the same.
Her blue eyes were rebellion in themselves. With painted bloodred stripes down her face on either side, you noticed the pure blueness of her eyes. Her black eyeliner also made them stick out. But it wasn't the eyeliner and lashes Rainbow was used to. It was messy, rushed and spiky. It'd been smudged in many places, and Rainbow almost didn't believe Rarity had put it on.
Come on. She's a different pony now. She used to be a hellion.
Rarity held her front hooves up to the top of the stage, and the crowd did the same.
Grinning, Rarity took out her microphone, and yelled, "Hey, there Las Pegasus!"
"The crowd screamed and screeched, jumping up and down constantly.
"Before we all start, I wanna sing something I'm sure you all know...this one's called Equestrian Fly!"
"I'm an equestrian fly
And I don't know why
I go, 'Buzz, buzz, buzz,'
And it's just because,"
The audience, even though Rarity hadn't written the song, thought she was amazing. They sang along in the same low key as Rarity and waved tiny battery-powered glow sticks that changed colour if you pressed a button. She had one of those from the Colts Like Fillies concert.
The song ended and Rarity stood up, panting.
The crowd screamed its approval.
Rarity's own songs were much more rebellious.
"I know you always thought you'd win!" she yelled.
"I know you always thought you'd win!" the crowd chanted.
"Yeah! I hope you burn in Tartarus!
I never thought you knew I hated you
But Yeah! My love, thats a lie! Lies, lies, lies!"
The crowd chanted Lies, lies, lies over and over.
After watching the whole DVD Rainbow Dash had decided that Rarity had been awesome when she was younger.
So...what happened to make her stop...?
She was on the stage, breathing heavily. The roar of the huge creature below her was deafening.
It wanted her, her voice.
It wanted her.
She stumbled back, eager to escape, but a furry arm engulfed her into redness.
Stumbling and batting away the redness, she tried to scream, but nothing came out.
"Aaaaand good morning, fellow ponies! I'm Broadcast, and this is the morning radio chat station! I'm here with the main actor of the recently released movie, The Amazing Spider-Mare!"
Thank Celestia. It was just a dream.
But how much of it was just her overactive imagination, and how much of it was her memory?
