Gale Force and Flash Thunder methodically made their way through town, the light grey Pegasus leading the way by a body length. Through the square they went, making their way towards where Gale thought the Carousel Boutique was.

They had no immediate luck, and the in the center of the square near the fountain, they stopped.

"You're leading us in circles," complained Flash, leaning against the marble walls of the fountain's exterior.

"I know it's around here somewhere."

"Split up?"

"Yeah," responded Gale, "I'll take the east half you take the west half."

"Roger that Cap," said Flash, his customary response to orders.

They parted ways, and Gale found himself alone on the outskirts of the square, searching for the high, pointed roofed building he was directed to earlier.

He searched for the better portion of twenty minutes, but only found himself drawing farther and farther away from the square.

Just as he was giving up, Gale felt a tingling sensation over the entirety of his skin, and he lifted his hoof to see it encased in a sparkling blue haze. He shook, but the aura went nowhere.

Suddenly, he felt his body involuntarily lift up off the ground, and he floated off through the street. He squirmed in the air, but to no avail.

Gale rounded the corner to see the building he had been seeking, and two mares in its doorway. One, Fluttershy, he recognized from the meadow earlier, but the other, a white unicorn mare with a glowing horn, was a stranger to him, as well as the origin of his involuntary relocation.

He oriented his body to be able to look at them, and as he was about to let the unicorn know just how much he disapproved of being transported in such a fashion, he caught a good look at her; she was beautiful, and suddenly, her handling him around wasn't such a bad thing.

He was levitated inside the boutique, where, bewildered, he was set down on some sort of pedestal. Before he could say anything, she coaxed him to his hooves, and produced a tape measure and a pair of red-rimmed glasses.

Hastily, and without speaking, she proceeded to measure the dimensions of his rear left leg; its length, girth, and circumference at several points. Then she switched sides with him, paying no attention to him as a being but only as a body that had found itself in her shop.

Humming to herself, the mare began to measure the spaces between what was left of his rear right leg and the ground, and Gale turned a confused glance back at the room's other occupant. The yellow mare was standing off to the side, watching innocently with the picnic basket in her mouth, the pups no doubt somewhere within judging by the cat's interest in the basket.

Suddenly, Gale heard a bell ring at his rear, and he turned to look, but was scolded and pulled back to a proper position by the mare measuring his dimensions.

"Hold still," she said, not angrily or gently, just plain and professional.

Rather than seeing, he heard and confirmed the shop's new visitors.

"Found him Rarity," said the first, a high, raspy voice, and he recognized it as being Rainbow Dash's.

Silence and an absence of hoof beats followed, leading Gale to believe that whoever had come in with the mare had stopped.

"What are you doing Gale?" asked the anonymous baritone, and the sound of Flash's voice registered in Gale's ears.

"I don't know, ask her."

Flash, without hesitation, approached the pedestal, and stood where Gale could see him peripherally off to the side.

"Ms.?" began flash, petitioning for the unicorn's attention, but he didn't receive anything in return.

"She won't answer until she's done," said Rainbow Dash, hovering above the ground with her forelimbs crossed, "Rarity does that. She gets in her head when she's designing something and doesn't come out for anything. I could set the shop on fire and she probably wouldn't even notice until she was done working."

"And what's she working on if she's a designer?" asked Gale.

"I told you I was trying to get someone to make a new prosthetic for you."

"How does a clothes designer make an artificial leg?" asked Flash, his gaze still glued to the alabaster mare.

"The same way a pegasus can work on a farm," the mare said suddenly, revealing her accented feminine tone for the first time.

Flash recoiled suddenly, but then leaned forward, his mahogany eye holding with her sapphire stare as his brow stayed firm and a smile crept across his face.

"Now how did you know that, Ms. Rarity?" he said, his low voice finding a smooth quality.

"Gossip spreads fast in small towns such as these. Applejack came by for a visit with a Pinkie Pie earlier today."

The mare suddenly forgot about her previous work, and was captivated by the jet black stallion looking up at her from the floor level with a confident, devious smile on his face.

Gale looked back and forth between the two, their stare still holding, and he swore he heard Rarity sigh. Then, suddenly, she broke the gaze, and turned back to her work.

She cleared her throat, saying, "Let me just go and get a few things," and trotted to a back room, gesturing to the others in the room to go with her.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Flash rumbled, "Dibs on the designer."

"What?" said Gale, checking the volume on his voice, "You can't call dibs on the designer."

"Come on, she obviously wants me."

"You just saw her for a few seconds. Don't go flattering yourself."

"She's out of your league anyway," said Flash, running a hoof through his mane.

"As if she'd be in yours. You're a one eyed flightless pegasus."

"And you're a cripple."

Gale tried to respond, but he heard the door open, and looked up to see the mares returning. Strangely, they carried nothing with them, as if they had gone into the back room for no real purpose. To prove the point, Rarity even turned around and went back into the room after taking a few steps out, and revealed her figure again with a blue roll of paper.

"So," she began, rolling out the blueprint, "when Rainbow Dash told me she broke your prosthetic, I felt awful. I simply had to do something, so I figured I'd experiment with a new field of design as well as make you another leg. After all, this field is quite open to up and coming designers."

"I can pay you for this ma'am," said Gale, trying hard to be chivalrous.

"Oh no, that won't be necessary. Rainbow Dash broke it in the first place, and it wouldn't be right of me to demand compensation for righting a wrong."

"Well that's very generous of you."

"Thank you. Now, about my design," she pointed to the paper laid on the floor, "What do you think?"

Judging by the picture, the leg was going to be, in a word, fabulous. The designs called for gemstones and intricate, twisting designs to conceal anything that actually served a purpose.

Gale and Flash both recoiled a bit.

"What's wrong?" Rarity asked innocently.

"It's a bit excessive."

"That's what fashion is all about dear," she said matter-of-factly.

"I really appreciate this, and I don't want to question your judgment, but if you could make it a bit more conservative, that would be great."

"Well, alright," she said, levitating the paper to a nearby wastebasket.

"My number one priority is customer satisfaction, so, why don't you draw something like what you would want."

Gale thanked her, and she guided him to the back room, in which was bountiful supplies as well as a desk with paper and multiple pencils. She encouraged him to take a seat at the desk, and he began a small sketch, but he cared to leave the door ajar. He wanted to keep at least an ear on what was going on outside.

Sure enough, the others started a conversation with Flash; he always was quick to draw feminine attention. Gale came to grips with the fact that if he wanted a chance with Rarity, he'd have to be on his A-game.

"So, you're working on Applejack's farm?" asked Rainbow Dash, her signature raspy voice penetrating through the crack between the door and the frame, as did all their voices.

"Yes, I started today."

"So Flash, it is Flash right?"

The silence indicated he nodded.

"Do you like fashion?"

Gale heard the hint of charm in her voice, and knew she was flirting by that alone.

"I enjoy it I suppose," he responded, his baritone finding an almost musical note.

"What designs do you have experience with?"

"Camouflage," came the answer.

At that moment, Rarity let out an extremely dramatic, theatrical gasp, and Clyde jumped a bit, making an accidental line of graphite on the paper.

"You are a soldier," she realized.

"Great," mumbled gale to himself as hundreds of questions came from the mares as if he were a celebrity, "As if the dog tags weren't a give away. He's playing that card."

He quickly finished the sketch to get out there to at least try for damage control, and decided to use the excuse that he wasn't very artistic, even though he had put every ounce of creative genius into this one, very shabbily drawn sketch of a very basic mechanical leg.

Gale went outside to see the mares all gathered around Flash, looking at him dreamily, and he placed the sketch on the pedestal.

Then, he hobbled over to the basket Fluttershy had brought in with her, lying near the wall. He took the pup he had selected from the meadow, the only one of the original three remaining that had yet to be adopted, and cradled it in his arms.

The huskie, having just been woken from another nap, yawned lazily, and its squeak prompted the maternal instincts of the mares to divert their attention to the infant-like sound.

Immediately, the trio of mares left Flash's masculinity for the adorable site of the huskie, and the obviously 'sensitive' stallion tenderly holding it.

They cooed over how cute the dog was, and while their attention was held by the pup, Gale shot a sarcastic wink at his brother, who glared back in burning anger.

"Look how small he is," cooed Rarity, the dog playing its temporary role of mare bait perfectly as it looked up at her with its glacier blue eyes.

"He'll grow soon. I'll get you big and strong pretty quick won't I?" he said as he talked to the dog as if it were a foal in a voice unlike his natural tone.

He stole another glance at his brother on the far side of the room, who had adorned a smug grin on his face as their eyes met. Flash was writing something down, and gripped a rose in his teeth as he did so, which was slyly taken from a vase of the flowers near the windowsill; he obviously had something planned.

"So you're taking care of him?" started Rainbow Dash, talking to him like an old pal once again.

"Yeah," he explained, "I met Fluttershy in the park today, and decided I just had to be the one to adopt this guy. I mean, we just had too much in common."

"What, like your eyes. Oh, and your coats are the same color too," stated Rarity, who had apparently acquired an eye for such things as matching color schemes.

"Yeah, and we both have two brothers."

"Wait," started Fluttershy, "He has two brothers. You only have Flash."

The mares looked at him, but Gale tried to avoid his slip, and reverted to looking down on the pup. The others did the same, and Gale looked up at Flash, who was looking up at him from whatever he was doing, a somewhat disappointed expression on his face.

"Have you thought of a name for him?" came Fluttershy's question after a bit of time.

Gale smiled as he said, "Lance."

"Good one," said Dash, "After somepony?"

"Sort of."

Behind the mares' backs, Flash snuck over to Rarity's desk, laying his creation, along with the rose, in its center. He trotted back to where he had been standing previously, undetected, and leaned against the pedestal, naturally looking as cool as possible.

"Alright Gale," started Flash as if it were a P.A., "We'd better get going. Don't want to delay Ms. Rarity from her work any longer."

Gale knew he was up to something, and he regretted letting him dictate anything, but, he couldn't throw him under the bus either. so, reluctantly, he agreed, and carried Lance out on his back.

On the porch, the brothers waved and bid thanks, but on the street, their demeanor changed.

"What were you thinking Gale?"

"What?"

"Look, the thing with the pup was a stroke of genius, but I called dibs on her."

"Yeah, and I said you can't call dibs on the designer."

"Whatever," Flash said, waving a dark hoof in the air indiscriminately, "You got no chance anyway."

"What were you doing anyway that demanded we leave so early?"

"A note, complete with a rose and fancy font."

"What did you say?" asked Gale, dreading his impending loss in the competition for the beautiful unicorn's heart.

"In the note? Well, I told her I thought she was beautiful, and that I'd like to take her out to dinner or something, and if she felt the same way, to leave the rose somewhere I'd be sure to see it."

"Well, if that's all you said, then I may still have a chance," he said teasingly, adjusting his flight path to better accommodate Lance.

"No, I used much bigger words than that. Mushy stuff too, like how 'when I looked into her eyes, my heart knew I had seen the embodiment of perfection.'"

"Great," grumbled Gale, "Well good luck. Doesn't really matter to me anyway."

"What?" started Flash in partial shock, "How could not getting the hottest mare in town, and losing to me at that, not bother you?"

"Let's just say, there are plenty of fish in the sea."

Flash rolled his eyes, and they soon reached the front door to their house. On the porch, Gale reached up onto his back and snatched up Lance, who protested noisily, and handed him to Flash.

"What are you doing?"

"Are you doing anything else today?"

"No."

"Well I am, so watch Lance."

"He's your dog."

"Our dog," corrected Gale, prompting an irritated look from Flash.

"Alright, I'll be back later, probably before dark."

"That's a few hours from now!"

"You're right," Gale responded condescendingly, "good job."

Gale turned as Flash pushed through the front door of the flat. Gale looked up as he descended the few steps in front of his home, and saw what he could have sworn was another pony, a pink one by the looks of it, ducking behind a bush.

Beyond initial confusion, he paid no further thought to the matter, and began the slow easy flight through town to his destination.