Teamwork is Magic Chapter 4

Leave it to Rarity to find a place for fashion  in a war zone. The elegant unicorn couldn't let her friends just waltz onto the battlefield without looking the parts they played. While the weapons were being modified, she took it upon herself to modify some spare clothes to create uniforms that matched the classes. Everyone matched with some differences necessary due to differing biologies, but she was proudest of her work with Pinkie, turning Ponyville's Premier Party Pony into a spitting image of the Russian Mercenary.

Which is why Rarity was flustered when Pinkie respawned wearing a black, badly kept hairpiece

"Where in Equestria did you get that garish thing?"

"Dunno. Things just keep appearing on my head when I get back here"

"Things?" She asked incredulously. Pinkie pointed across the room to the cubby where Pinkie was keeping a large pile of hats. Rarity stood, mouth agape at the pile. The heavy let out a hearty laugh

"Horosho! Tiny Pink has discovered hats!"

"Hats?" Both said in unison, exchanging a glance

"Is greatest honor warrior can find! Hats show skill! Show Power!"

"Show luck" The Spy stood in the door, leaning against the wall.

"Bah. Tiny spy is jealous cause he has no hats"

"I don't need hats, you nitwit. I'm invisible or disguised ninety-nine percent of ze time. So why would I want somezing that is meant to be seen?"

The two started getting into a fierce argument, but by that point the two ponies had left. Pinkie ran toward the enemy base, shouting until she was out of earshot.

Rarity tried to do her duty, but found her mind keep drifting back to hats. 'Focus, Rarity' She chastised herself after yet another time getting caught by those dreadful Pyros.

She started out of respawn, but stopped. Heavy and Spy were gone, and nopony was around. she took out her disguise kit and looked at herself in the mirror she used to replace the cigarettes.

"The Spy is right. Why would I need a hat? All it would do is mess up my mane" She kept trying to convince herself, but a nagging voice in the back of her head made her unsure. "Maybe Twilight will be able to help convince me" She trotted off to find her.

On her way, though, she started noticing all her friends had hats that were not made by her. Dash rushed past wearing a milkpony's cap, Derpy wore a propeller cap, and Trixie wore a Pair of goggles on her forehead. Even Angel hopped across the bridge wearing a Horned helmet. She sighed and continued her search

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She found her in the intelligence room, grateful that she was Twilight was still wearing the hat she had made. True to form, the purple unicorn was reading some files. A pile of sticky bombs surrounded their briefcase of intelligence. Twilight looked up briefly.

"Oh, Hey Rarity." She went right back to reading. Apparently not finding what she was looking for, she threw the papers back in the nearby filing cabinet and withdrew a new set.

"Hello Twilight. Are you okay? You seem a little... distraught"

"Just looking for some information" She sounded annoyed. "Why are you down here anyway?"

"Have you noticed all the hats our friends seem to be finding?" Twilight tensed at the word hats.

"Hats? Nope, no hats. Haven't seen any. Nope, just the one Applejack always wears. Why, have you found any?" Twilight was almost frantic, talking very quickly.

"No I haven't, and I need to-"

"FOUND IT!" Twilight threw a folder out of the cabinet. It's contents spilled out, showing dozens of pictures of hats. A few Rarity recognized from her friend's heads, many she didn't.

"Oh Twilight, not you too"

"What! Just because I want a hat makes me a bad pony!?" She stopped herself when she realized she was yelling at the top of her lungs. She laughed sheepishly, blushing.  "Uh… I mean… Okay, I have seen all the hats, and yes, I don't have one. No matter how hard I try I can't make them. It's like their Cutie marks: you have to find them. And I want to get one"

Twilight shifted through the folder, finding a sheet of paper with writing on it. She read the contents aloud:

"Easy Ways to Earn Your Hat"

"Throughout history, men have worn hats as a way of showing how much better they are than other men. "I buy hats," a behatted man seems to say. "I am better than you!"  Rarity lowered her head.

"In wartime, hats were a useful way of conferring rank, and ensuring that casualties were confined to the lower classes (hence the famous command of "Don't fire till you see the tops of their heads" at the Battle of Bunker Hill by William Prescott, a general renowned for only shooting enemy combatants who were poor). During peacetime, hats have been instrumental for men to let the non-hatted know just who is wearing the hat around here."

"Now it is your turn to earn your hat. The easiest is the method known as idling. Simply stand around for a long period of time, and allow yourself to die every once in a while. With Patience, a hat will soon adorn your head. Of course, the only surefire way to receive a hat is-"

BOOM!

An explosion went off next to them. They jumped up, turning to see a RED Soldier firing wildly. Twilight fired bombs at their attacker, hurting but not killing him. He fired a rocket at point blank range, and it glowed brilliantly. All three were destroyed by the blast.

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Rarity dusted herself off. She was getting quite tired of constantly finding her sent back to the white room. A bright flash to he right and Twilight stood there. "Stupid Crockets! I was at full health!" Rarity looked over and gasped. "…What? Did I say something wrong?" Rarity sighed, lowered her head. She shook it no, then pointed to her horn. Twilight felt the area and found, perched upon it, a stove pipe hat.

"YES! Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes" She bounced around in a circle, like she had when her cutie mark had appeared.
Rarity walked away, shaking her head. She passed Applejack in the court, muttering under her breath and repairing the damage the soldier had done to her buildings. True to Twilight's word, the orange pony only had the hat from her pappy on her head. But in one of her saddlebags sat a teddy bear, dressed like an engineer. The unicorn fumed and trotted away.

'It's not fair!' She thought to herself. 'I'm Rarity! Fashion-pony extraordinaire! I'm not supposed to be behind in trends! I make the trends!'

She tried to put the thought out of her mind, but they wouldn't leave her thoughts. Time and time again her thoughts would wander away from the task at hand and cost her another life. And every respawn she put a hoof to her head, but nothing new was ever there.

"After a particularly brutal death at the hands of a Sniper, she'd had enough. "That's it!" She yelled, sitting down and refusing to move. Her friends would pass by every so often. At first they tried to persuade her back to battle, but gave up eventually and stopped trying after a few respawns.  She sat for almost an hour, but boredom got to her, and soon she fell asleep.

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"Idling, Mon petit poney? I would think you would be better than that"

The Spy took a drag from his cigarette. He had nudged her awake after an hour or two. She had ended up explaining her day to him, while he sat quietly. At the end he had spoken up.

"You should be out there helping your friends, not pining for useless headgear"

"I am so sick of everypony telling me it's no big deal when they all celebrate when they get their hats. How would they know how it feels! They've found theirs already! I'm not going anywhere until I get one!" she was starting to tear up, until she realized how foolish she must look.

He sat next to her. "This is ridiculous. You have let the talk of a man who is convinced that his sandwich can speak get to you. You are no less a person… Er, pony for not having one. And the payoff for getting one isn't that satisfying"

He tossed his finished cigarette bud away, lighting a new one. "Smoking's bad for you, you know" her voice was a little weak.

"So is obsession. Look… Rarity, was it?" She nodded. "I know how you feel. Do you know how long I've been here?" She shook her head. "Neither do I. I've lost track of ze days. But in all zis time I have found only one thing that is considered a hat. Do you want to see it?" She nodded, and he went over to his cubby, pulling something out of a box. He put it on and turned around. It was a large fake beard with a camera sticking out the bottom. "Ze Camera Beard. I found it one Christmas. Needless to say, I wasn't happy. Ze payoff isn't worth ze hype. So get the thought of hats out of your head before you're disappointed"

Rarity stared at the floor deep in thought. After a while, she stood up. "Thank you, Mister Spy. I think I understand" She had more confidence. She didn't need a hat. Especially if that Garish thing was what could be considered her 'prize'. She put a medic disguise on and ran out. He watched her leave. Once she was gone, he took the beard off and put it back in the box, next to the beret he prized. 'Who said Spies have to tell the truth' he thought as he put the lid back on.

----

The pseudo pep talk gave her all the energy she needed to focus on the work, successfully pushing the thought away. She'd sap engineer buildings and even got a few kills on Heavies, Soldiers, and even an oblivious Pyro once. That kill had made her laugh a little. She was in the middle of wreaking a little havoc when Pinkie came in and decimated the team. With all of RED incapacitated at the moment, they chatted a little.

"Feeling better, Rarity?" Pinkie had an umbrella hat on, but the unicorn didn't let it bother her.

"Much. I don't need to validate myself with some silly hat"

"That's goo- Whoa-a-a-a" Pinkie's tail started twitching violently. Rarity covered her head, waiting for a soldier or worse to fall from the sky. "Well, at least I know that still works" Pinkie took a step towards the spiral stairs. A gunshot rang out, and she fell to the ground. Rarity screamed and turned to see the enemy's Sniper throw a jar of something. It broke and covered her. After a second she realized exactly what it was.

"EWWW!!! YOU VILE DISGUSTING HORRID AWFUL-" Her tirade was cut short from a single swing of the man's kukri.

"Eweweweweweweeeewwwww!!!!" She was still yelling as she respawned. She'd closed her eyes and violently shook out her mane to get the feeling off of her. "If that never happens again it'll still be too soon" She shuddered and walked out. Pinkie looked back to see the source of the yelling.

"He got you too?" Rarity nodded. "I think I'm gonna stay away from him. I mean, I don't really wanna get close to any of them, especially that spy, and I guess it doesn't matter if I'm close because I mean that gun can hit everything from really far away right." Rarity kept walking, pushing the memory as far back as she could. Pinkie looked back and did a double take. "Waitaminute Rarity!"

Pinkie plopped something on the unicorn's head. Rarity pulled out the hand mirror and looked at it. It couldn't be… but… it was!

"A hat!" Atop her head sat a simple Fedora, it's color matching her suit's. She adjusted it to fit correctly, a smile plastered on her face

"It fell off when you were shaking from the… wait. That's it? That's what I sensed? A hat falling off someone's head? Well that's not much fun. Or was it that the hat was going to drop? But I suppose…"  Rarity didn't hear much after that, as she trotted triumphantly out of the spawn, her Fancy Fedora taking it's place upon her head.