Schrödinger's Sweetie Belle
Rarity bit her lip. Back and forth the needles moved, ever increasing the length of the scarf in steady, rhythmic fashion. Her eyes were narrowed, and she focused solely on the garment in front of her. She paused a moment to wipe a bead of sweat from her brow, then returned to her work, muttering under her breath, “A stitch in time saves nine, does it? I bet I could save ten.”
For years, she worked. Decades and centuries passed by in the blink of an eye as she worked the needles, spooling more thread as it was needed. After a millennia, she stopped. She placed the scarf on a mannequin and took a few steps back. A small smile spread over her face, and she let out a contented sigh.
Just then, a knock came at the door. She turned around. The door opened slowly, and a little filly entered the room, her eyebrow raised in confusion.
“Uhh…” said Sweetie Belle, a frown on her face, “what’cha doin’, Rarity?”
Rarity’s small smile grew into a large one as she ran across the room and scooped her sister up. Holding her in the air, she spun around.
"Oh, Sweetie Belle! It's been ages. I got so caught up in my work. I'm sorry." She nuzzled Sweetie's cheek with her own.
"It's been less than an hour..."
"Nevermind all that. It's in the past now." She set Sweetie down and skipped over to the newly-knitted scarf. Lifting it delicately from the mannequin, she held it up for Sweetie to see. "It's my greatest creation," she explained. "I call it... the möbius scarf."
Sweetie Belle cocked her head to the side slightly. "It's just a scarf with a twist in it. I don't get it."
Rarity's eyes sparkled with excitement. "Oh, but it's so much more than that. If you placed your hoof at one point, and then followed the path the scarf makes, you'd cover both sides without ever crossing over."
"Okay..."
Her eyes, now wide and deep, sparkled even more. "Do you know what this means?"
"No."
"I've developed a completely new dimension of fashion!" She jumped into the air, twiddling her hooves like a ballerina. Floating the scarf over to Sweetie Belle, she set it about her shoulders. "See how amazing it is? Never again shall the fashion-savvy among us have to worry about inside or outside. It's all one in the same now. The beginning flows uninterrupted into the end, and vice versa. This is the dawn of a new era in design aesthetics."
Sweetie Belle admired the scarf hanging off her shoulders. "It does feel pretty nice, and I like the dark purple color you used—"
"It's violet, dear."
"—but I don't really see how it's that special." She twirled the scarf around absentmindedly. "I mean, it's just a scarf, isn't it?"
Rarity never got to answer Sweetie's question, because at that moment, a sphere of light appeared where she had been spinning the scarf, and sucked the unsuspecting filly in without warning. Standing dumbstruck and open mouthed, Rarity was silent for a full minute before her senses returned to her. It was like watching someone go through all the stages of grief in an instant. She shook her head, then fumed while at the same came up with deals she could make before she fell into despair and then ultimately nodded her head firmly.
"Well, that happened," she said matter-of-factly. "I suppose I should probably, er, do something." She reached her hoof out, brushing at the air where Sweetie had been moments before, hoping that she had somehow spontaneously learned invisibility magic. Her hoof flopped around fruitlessly. "Nope... definitely gone." She glanced around the room, then nodded again. "Definitely gone." Walking calmly to the door, she opened it, then ran screaming into her foyer, and then, still screaming, out into Ponyville. "Twilight! Twilight! Twilight!"
Meanwhile, a dimension away, Sweetie Belle floated through the void with her hooves crossed and a frown on her face.
“Why am I always the one getting flung into different dimensions?” she asked the universe.
The universe decided it’d be best not to answer that.
“So, what kind of book where you looking for, exactly?” Twilight said as she stood on the tip of her hooves and shoved a book on the top shelf back into its place.
Fluttershy watched as Twilight grabbed another book and moved the others aside so she could stuff this new one in there. “Oh, umm, you know… anything you have on the use and application of quantum particles as weaponized structures would be great.”
“I think Spike may have—” she grabbed another book and placed it next to the first two “—come across one or two quantum theory books yesterday while he was cleaning.” She stepped down from the stool she’d been on.
“Where is Spike anyway?”
Twilight scooped up some stray books. “Oh, he’s out buying some new lampshades,” she said, jamming a few more books onto the overstuffed shelves. As she tried to force just one more book in, she stopped suddenly, turning back to Fluttershy. “Wait. Did you say weaponized?”
“Angel can be so precocious sometimes.”
“Riiiiiiiiight,” said Twilight as she slowly turned back around. “Anyway, there's a few hidden around here somewhere. I'll see if I can dig them up for you."
"I'd appreciate that." Fluttershy smiled sweetly.
It only took few minutes before Twilight was tugging a book from tightly-packed shelf and handing it to Fluttershy. "There might be a few others somewhere, buy that'll do for now." As Fluttershy took the book, Twilight gave it a pat. "Theory of Quantum States helped me out a lot when I first got into this stuff. Should be all you need for now."
A cheery smile crossed Fluttershy's face. "Thank you, Twilight. I'm going to go home right now and read this book."
Twilight's eyebrow rose ever so slightly.
"Oh, umm... read it to Angel, I mean."
Before Twilight could say anything else, Fluttershy waved goodbye and quickly heads towards the door. Just as she opened it, she was struck head on by white blur. Yellow and white mixed together as the two ponies crashed into the ground and ended up in a heap at Twilight's hooves. Groans emanated from the pony puddle.
Twilight nudged them with her hoof. "You girls okay? Fluttershy? Rarity? You’re not dead, are you?"
She received yet more groans in response.
“Cool. Just making sure.” Leaving those two to their pony pile up, Twilight added, “I’m going out to find Spike. I’ll be in town if you need me.”
Twilight barely made it two steps before Rarity rolled out from beneath Fluttershy and grabbed her leg before she could escape the room.
“Wait!” she cried, tugging on Twilight’s back leg. “It’s Sweetie Belle.”
“Okay,” said Twilight, stopping. “You have my attention.”
Helping both Rarity and Fluttershy to their hooves, Twilight waited patiently for Rarity to compose herself before asking, “All right, so what’s this about Sweetie Belle?”
Rarity absentmindedly fiddled with her mane, clearing her throat with a gentle cough. “Well, you see, it’s all that wretched scarf’s fault.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Scarf?”
“Perhaps it’d be best if I started from the beginning,” said Rarity. She started to pace back and forth, occasionally glancing back at Twilight as she spoke. “I was working on my winter fashion line a few months ago, you see, and as I was knitting a scarf, I had a revelation. I realized that if I could create garments with no inside or outside, I could revolutionize the industry.”
“Umm,” said Fluttershy, raising her hoof, “that doesn’t really make sense. Why would it do that, exactly?”
Twilight waved her hoof dismissively. “Nevermind that, Rarity. Just tell us, what does this scarf have to do with Sweetie Belle?”
Rarity gulped. “I may have accidentally, inexplicably, irrevocably, caused poor Sweetie to, well… vanish.”
Twilight’s eyebrow rose yet higher. “Vanish? What kind of scarf was this, exactly?”
“It was a design of my own invention, a möbius scarf.”
It was as if someone had struck Twilight. She stood completely still, her eyes wide and her mouth open just slightly. She blinked a few times, then said, “Oh, Rarity, you didn’t…”
“I’m afraid I did.”
Twilight shook her head in disbelief. “This is bad. This is really really bad.”
Having dusted herself off, Fluttershy glanced from Rarity to Twilight. “Umm, I’m afraid you’ve lost me. What’s really really bad?”
Rarity bit her lip. “Well, dear, when I created the scarf, you see, I may have used a teensy tiny bit of, well, time dilation magic, which is what Twilight feared, I believe.”
“You used time dilation magic!?” Twilight threw her hooves in the air. “What in the name of all things chronological is wrong with you? This is waaaaaaaay worse than I thought. I had thought you might have accidentally cast an invisibility spell on the scarf or something, nothing like this.”
“Yes, well, that would have been the ideal scenario, obviously,” said Rarity, casting a glance at her hooves which had suddenly become very interesting to her. “But I suppose none of us are perfect, are we? I knew knitting that scarf would take at least two or three hours, and I didn’t have time for that, so I thought I’d cast a localized time spell to give myself more, well, time, obviously.”
Twilight shook her head. “You were so focused on whether you could, you never stopped to think if you should. Rarity, this is not good. We have to save Sweetie Belle.”
“I’m aware of that, yes. It’s why I came here in the first place.”
Fluttershy raised her hoof, catching Twilight’s attention.
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but won’t we need some way to save Sweetie Belle from this fourth dimension?”
“Wait, how’d you know she’d be in the fourth dimension?” Twilight asked, giving Fluttershy an odd look.
“According to the theory of Minkowski space, she’d be sucked into the fourth dimension the second she put on that scarf due to the combined effects of its möbius nature and the time dilation spell Rarity used on it while knitting it. It’s pretty obvious if you think about it,” Fluttershy said with a look that spoke volumes about her inexplicable understanding of non-Euclidean spacetime. It also said, “Seriously, Twilight? How could I not know this?”
“Umm, all righty then,” said Twilight as she turned back to Rarity, “moving past why Fluttershy is an expert on Minkowski space—”
“Angel can be so precocious sometimes.”
“—I think I have a plan for how to save Sweetie Belle.” Her cheeks tugged into a smug grin. “Do you think you can knit another möbius scarf?”
“It’ll take an hour or two,” Rarity said, counting with her hooves, thankful that she didn’t need to count higher than four, “but I can do it, yes. I’ll also need some more material to knit with. I used the last of the yarn I had to knit the one that made Sweetie Belle disappear.”
“Hmm,” Twilight mused, rubbing her chin. “I don’t really feel like waiting that long, but perhaps there’s a way we can speed this whole process up?”
As Sweetie Belle tumbled through the void, occasionally catching glimpses into the third dimension, she couldn’t help but admire the scarf. It was a rather nice color, after all. She tugged at the scarf and loosened it a bit so she could look at it better.
Just then, a thought occurred to her.
“Hey, what if I just take the scarf off? Would that bring me back?”
Just then, another thought occurred to her.
“Wait… Rarity always told me that if I ever got lost I should stay put because it’s easier to find me that way.” She brought a hoof to her chin. “I wonder if that applies to being dimensionally lost as well?” She shrugged. “Eh, what’s the worst that could happen? I’ll wait it out.” She kicked back, which was hard to do since there wasn’t a ‘back’ to speak of, or a ‘front’ for that matter. Really, it was sort of just a directionless place all around, but regardless, she crossed her back hooves, put her front hooves behind her head and closed her eyes.
“I’ll just hang out here with my purple scarf until Rarity comes to save me.”
Passing another slit into the third dimension, she thought she heard someone say, “No, it’s violet yarn that I need, dear. Purple isn’t even a real color,” but dismissed it as her ears playing tricks on her, despite how unlikely that seemed.
“Now, now, now… who do we have here?” came a voice from behind Sweetie.
She spun around quickly, but saw nothing. “Okay,” she said to nothing, “that definitely wasn’t my ears playing tricks on me. Who’s there?”
A dark cloud materialized before her. It bared its teeth in a cheshire grin. “No, my dear, the better question is… who are you?”
“Or is it whom?”
“...It’s who.”
Sweetie nodded. “Sounds about right.”
“Well, we managed to gather all the stuff we needed,” said Twilight, a satisfied smile on her face. She glanced around Rarity’s boutique, looking at the other ponies sharing the room with her.
“Yes, and I even had enough yarn to make us all matching scarves, so I’d say overall it was a rather productive day,” said Rarity, propping herself up on her ego.
“Right, except we still need to save Sweetie Belle, so, y’know…” said Fluttershy, rolling her eyes.
“Oh!” said Twilight, suddenly looking at Rarity. “That reminds me. Sweetie Belle… how much would you say she matters to you?”
Rarity was taken aback. “Twilight!? How could you even ask that of me? She means the world to me.”
Twilight waved her hoof. “All right, all right, calm down. I was just asking because this might be a really dangerous trip, and I don’t want to get trapped in the fourth dimension too, so if Sweetie Belle wasn’t totally important—”
“She’s my sister!”
Twilight sighed. “Fine, let’s go save Sweetie Belle.” She waved towards an empty space a little to the left of them. “If we all huddle up over there, and spin our scarves around, we should vanish like Sweetie Belle did.”
Fluttershy frowned. “Couldn’t we just stand where we are?”
Rolling her eyes, Twilight let out an exaggerated groan. “Oh my Celestia, fine. We’ll do it here. It's not like the lighting is better over there, or that since the window is open so there's a pleasant breeze. No, right here is fine."
Fluttershy and Rarity gave each other quick glances then Rarity said, "Regardless of where we do it, it's best if start now since, as you're aware, my sister is still trapped in an alternate dimension, and if she's followed my advice, she'll stay put." She reached a hoof up and touched her scarf. "Are you girls ready?"
Twilight followed suit and brought a hoof up to her scarf as well. "I'm a little warm, but I suppose I'm ready."
Fluttershy placed a hoof on her scarf as well. "I've always wanted to visit the fourth dimension. It'll be interesting to see if the Heisenberg uncertainty principle holds up in a dimension other than our own."
"Yes, well, I'm sure we'll find out." Nodding firmly, Twilight added, "On the count of three, everyone start twirling your scarves and the chronological resonance should send us into another dimension."
"That, or the build up of gravitic energy will rip our atoms apart and send bits and prices of us into different dimensions," Fluttershy said with a sweet smile.
"Or that, yes. But as long as we keep the twirling to a manageable level, we should be fine."
"Umm... what was that about atom ripping?" asked Rarity. "It sounded bad."
Twilight waved her hoof dismissively. "What? No, no, we'll be totally fine. I'm sure everything will go perfectly smoothly. Okay-" she let out a sigh "-on three. One... Two... Three!"
As Twilight said the last number, all three ponies began to twirl their scarves around like they were at a nightclub. Around and around they spun until a small tear appeared in the space in front of them. It grew larger until a wide portal was staring them in the face. Like a dimensional vacuum cleaner, it sucked them up and they disappeared without a trace in matter of seconds.
A few moments later, they were deposited into a wholly alien world of vast emptiness. All three of the floated silently through the void, their manes and scarves elegantly flowing freely as if they were underwater.
Fluttershy glanced over to Twilight, brushing her mane out of her face. "Looks like we made it safely," she said.
Twilight let out a small chuckle. "Yep, seems that way."
Rarity, whose mane had inexplicably managed to stay in place, was upside down when she said, "I must admit, I was worried when you said that we should be fine since that sounds like what a character in a novel would say right before something goes horribly wrong."
Twilight hadn't really considered this before. "Huh, I guess it's a good thing real life isn't subject to dramatic irony."
"Indeed. Incidentally, I think we may have some company."
"What?” Twilight flipped upside down and looked behind her. When she saw who it was that was looking back at her, she sighed. “Darn you, dramatic irony…”
“All right, Trixie,” said Twilight, her hooves crossed and a scowl on her face. “You’ve led us here, so where’s Sweetie Belle?”
Trixie grinned wolfishly. “Oh, don’t you worry about her. She’s perfectly safe where she is.”
Rarity would’ve lunged at Trixie had she not been in a space with no discernible way of propelling herself forward, so she settled for an angry glare. “What did you do with her?”
Trixie jabbed a hoof over her shoulder. “She’s behind me, in a fourth dimensional box.”
Fluttershy raised an eyebrow. “But, doesn’t that mean she might be in three dimensional space again since the box has a chance of being either three dimensional or four dimensional based upon its quantum state?”
Her wolfish grin grew even wider as Trixie replied, “I suppose you won’t know until you check. As it is now, she exists in a superposition of both states, both three and four dimensional at the same time. Only if you make it past me will you be able to see if she’s in this dimension or not.”
Twilight raised her hoof. “Yeah, I’ve actually got a question about that. How are you in this dimension?”
Trixie laughed. “It’s a funny story actually. See, I was out buying some new lampshades for my—”
Twilight waved her hoof. “Yeah, sure, whatever… just skip to the important part.”
Huffing, Trixie begrudgingly skipped to the important part. “I was carrying my new lampshades home, you see, and I happened to catch a glimpse of a book out of the corner of my eye. I went to investigate and found Crystal Wisdom lying on the ground in a puddle of water.”
Twilight grimaced, shuddering slightly. “You found that? I thought I’d made sure it would never be seen again.”
“It would appear you were unsuccessful,” said Trixie, laughing and patting her chest. “But it was just as well because that book saved me. It taught me how to become a true villain. Never again would I be beaten by the likes of you and your… friends.” She shook her hoof at Twilight. “Now I’ll have my revenge!”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Oh, good grief.”
At this point, Rarity took the opportunity to ask, “Umm, might I ask what Crystal Wisdom is?”
Fluttershy answered first. “Oh, that’s King Sombra’s book that he wrote while trapped in his crystal prison.”
Twilight cast a sidelong glance at Fluttershy, raising an eyebrow. “How do you—Wait, lemme guess.”
“Angel can be—”
“So precocious sometimes, got it.” Twilight sighed, looking back to Rarity. “Anyway, yes, Sombra wrote a book about being a villain and—” she waved her hooves around while shaking her head “—that’s not the point.” She eyed Trixie. “I thought you were reformed anyway? Didn’t you learn your lesson after the whole Alicorn Amulet debacle? Why are you playing the villain again?”
“Heheheh,” Trixie laughed quietly to herself. She sneered at Twilight. “Oh, but don’t you see? That was just a clever ruse. I was making you believe I was good so that you’d let your guard down and I’d be able to strike when you least expected it.”
Twilight looked around the formless void they were floating in. “Well, can’t say I was expecting this, to be honest. So, uhh, good job, I guess.”
“What? No, no, this wasn’t part of the plan. It was just a happy accident that I ran into you here. I wasn’t even supposed to be in this dimension,” said Trixie, now hanging upside down, at least from Twilight’s perspective.
“Yeah, you didn’t really get to that part,” said Twilight. “Why are you here again?”
“Well…”
One lengthy explanation later:
“Huh,” said Twilight nodding her head. “Sounds about right.”
Trixie nodded in agreement. “Yes, and now that I’ve trapped you here—”
“We’re not exactly trapped, dear,” said Rarity. “We could leave anytime we want. It’s just Sweetie Belle we’re after.”
Trixie’s eyes went wide. “Wait, you can leave anytime you want?”
“Well, I assume we can. I don’t actually know.”
“No, you’re right,” said Fluttershy. “It’s a simple matter of reversing the flow of gravitic energy so that the tachyons send us back to the third dimension.” When she saw that only Twilight had any idea what she was saying, she added, “We just need to twirl the scarves the other direction.”
“Huh,” said Trixie, suddenly feeling very disappointed. “I assumed you three were here because of Sombra as well.”
Twilight shook her head. “Nope. Just Rarity.”
“I see… in that case, would you be willing to take me back with you?”
The other three ponies considered this for a moment. Rarity decided to answer first, but then was promptly interrupted by Twilight and Fluttershy answering too.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Definitely no.”
“...I meant no, too.”
Trixie groaned, throwing her hooves in the air. “Oh, come on. You’re supposed to be the good guys, right? Can’t you just throw me a bone here?”
Twilight, before anyone else could jump in, answered, “Fine. But on one condition: you release Sweetie Belle. Is that okay with you girls?”
Rarity and Fluttershy nodded in unison.
Trixie groaned again, flailing in an even more exaggerated fashion. “All right, fine. I’ll let your dumb dragon go.”
“Uhh… excuse me?” Rarity’s head was cocked to the side, relatively speaking, and her eyebrows were raised higher than anyone thought possible.
Trixie matched Rarity’s eyebrow raise and raised her a puzzled expression. “That’s who you’re after, right? The dumb little dragon guy.”
“That’s not Sweetie Belle,” said Twilight, joining in on the eyebrow-raising action. “That’s Spike.”
Fluttershy, not wanting to be left out, also raised her eyebrows. “If you’ve got Spike, then where’s Sweetie Belle?”
Just then, they heard an eerily-familiar cackle as they passed a bit of three-dimensional space. Sweetie Belle was cowering in the corner of Rarity’s boutique, and a dark cloud hung over her.
Trixie blinked a few times, then said, “I’ve made a huge mistake.”
“There’s no time to worry about that now,” said Twilight. “Quick! We need to get back into three-dimensional space to save Sweetie!”
The other ponies nodded and gathered around Twilight. Trixie hovered a little further away from the group until Twilight waved her forward.
“Come on,” she said, “take my hoof. We’ll go back together.”
Trixie nodded and grabbed on to Twilight’s hoof with her own. Counting to three again, Twilight gave the signal and all three of them began to twirl their scarves in the opposite direction until a portal appeared behind them, and much the same as before, sucked them inside. With a slight pop, they disappeared, leaving the box behind as they travelled back to their own dimension.
As Spike sat alone inside the fourth-dimensional box, a lampshade beneath each arm, he let out a heavy sigh.
“This sucks…”
Back in the third dimension, Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Trixie landed in a heap next to Sweetie Belle as they tumbled out of the dimensional rift. Disentangling themselves, both physically and quantumly, they all stood up and faced the black shadow that had been cast over the room.
The shadow seemed surprised at first, then laughed deeply. “Trixie, my dear, I see you’ve made it back to your own dimension. Did you enjoy your trip?”
“You said you were sending me to your crystal palace, you jerk.”
Sombra shrugged, if shadows could shrug. “Perhaps, but you did help bring my plan to fruition, so I must thank you.”
“What plan?” asked Twilight, eyeing Sombra.
Sombra’s face materialized in the shadows, and one long tooth grew out of his mouth. He laughed again. “Why, my plan to bring you all here so I could get my revenge for that embarrassing defeat I suffered thanks to you.”
“What plan is that?” asked Fluttershy.
“My plan to kill you, of course!”
Rarity chuckled. “Really now? And how are you going to do that while you’re just a tacky black cloud?”
Sombra grinned. “Oh, it won’t be me who kills you. I’ve got a proxy for that.” As a horn sprouted from above Sombra’s eyes, it began to glow a deep red. It was cracked in half, but there was still some power in it as everyone’s eyes turned to Trixie.
Sweetie Belle cried out. “Her eyes are red! Sombra must be controlling her!”
Acting quickly, Twilight jumped out of the way as Trixie fired a blast from her horn and Sombra cackled wildly. “Yeah, thanks for the heads-up, Sweetie Foresight.”
Even though Trixie had a mean scowl on her face, and her horn was covered in black crystals as she fired yet more blasts at Twilight, her eyes were soft. She called out, “I’m sorry, Twilight. I didn’t really want to get revenge on you, not anymore anyway, but I can’t help it. It’s Sombra. He’s controlling me like a puppet.”
Twilight rolled to the side as a blast shot past her and exploded a chest of drawers into a thousand tiny splinters. “Figured that out, thanks.”
Rarity, shielding Sweetie Belle from the blasts, called over her shoulder. “Sombra’s controlling her with his horn. Maybe there’s some way you can stop him?”
Twilight’s horn burst to life as she created a magic shield just in time to deflect another beam of magic as she replied, “Thanks, but I already know that.” She took a potshot at Trixie while she ran behind a tall dresser. “Geez, what’s with everyone today?”
The dresser turned into wooden confetti just as Twilight was diving out of the way. Sombra, still laughing, commanded Trixie, “Leave her for now. Focus on the white one and her insipid sister.”
Reluctantly, Trixie turned to face Rarity. Her horn glowing red, she fired another blast at the helpless mare while saying, “I’m sorry.”
Twilight tried to run over in time, but it was too late. The beam had already been fired, and she wasn’t going to make it in time. Just then, before she could say or do anything else, Fluttershy came from out of nowhere and dove in front of the projectile. She was hit square in the chest and fell with a loud thud. Twilight’s eyes went wide.
“Fluttershy!” she cried out, holding her hoof out in a vain hope that she could somehow stop her from dying.
Rarity and Sweetie Belle’s eyes began to water as they looked at Fluttershy’s limp body just a few inches in front of them. Rarity reached a hoof out and placed it on her shoulder, rolling her over.
“What the…”
Suddenly, without warning, Fluttershy dropped down from the ceiling and landed on Trixie. She pinned her to the ground, giving Twilight and Rarity quick glances and a smile each.
“That wasn’t me,” she explained, using her hoof to press down on Trixie’s horn. “It was one of my clones. Remember that book I asked you for, Twilight?”
Twilight, completely incredulous, nodded.
“Well, long story short, I used quantum entanglement to give the clone all of my personality and memories and then sent her with you into the fourth dimension. I never really left. See, I suspected something might go wrong, and that I’d need to be here in case only one of you came back. Suddenly, I’m sitting here and Sweetie Belle comes tumbling out of a portal and Sombra’s right behind her. I knew you girls would be on her tail, so I waited for the perfect moment to pop out.”
Sweetie Belle stared at the dead Fluttershy clone, and then back to the original. “Well, that seems overly convoluted.”
Sombra laughed again. “Yes, well that’s all well and good, but I’ve still got my revenge to reap, so take this!” His horn flared red and Fluttershy was thrown from Trixie’s back with a burst of magic.
Trixie, against her will, was turned to face Twilight again, her horn crackling with energy. Just was she was about to fire a blast again, there was another loud thud and everyone turned to look as Spike suddenly appeared above Sombra and fell right on his face, making the angry black cloud lose focus and release Trixie from his control.
Spike shook his head and stood up. He looked around and saw that he had landed right on one of the lampshades. He sighed. “Man… and now this too?”
Twilight ran across the room and scooped the little dragon up in her hooves. She hugged him tightly, squeezing his tiny lungs until he could no longer breathe. As she set him down, she said, “Spike, you’re all right! I’m so glad you made it back safely. And you stopped Sombra, too, so that’s pretty cool.”
He raised an eyebrow, then looked behind him where Sombra’s disembodied head was lying on the ground with a dazed look on his face. “Huh, guess I did.”
Sweetie Belle pulled herself away from Rarity and ran over to hug Spike also. “My hero!” she cried.
“And apparently I got the girl.”
Twilight chuckled, ruffling his spines. “All in all, it was a pretty good day, huh?”
Spike looked at the crushed lampshade, then glanced to his right where there was still one uncrushed lampshade, and he grinned. “Yeah, I guess it was, wasn’t it?”
Rarity joined the other ponies as they looked over Sombra’s unconscious form. “So, what are we going to do with him?”
Twilight shrugged. “I suppose we should contact Celestia and see what she wants us to do. In the meantime, there’s someone else we need to deal with.” She turned her gaze on Trixie who was halfway out the door before Twilight stopped her. “Going somewhere?”
Trixie sighed, and closed the door. “No… I guess not.” She shuffled back to Twilight, her head hung low. With the best puppydog face she could muster, she whimpered. “You’re not going to punish me along with Sombra, are you?”
Twilight patted her on the head, chuckling. “No, no, I think not. Maybe we’ll send you north to fight dragons or something. That or we could get you to start a youth cage-fighting tournament to help teach kids discipline. I dunno, I’m sure we can come up with something.”
“I’m not sure which idea I like better,” said Trixie with a greatly exaggerated roll of her eyes and in the most sarcastic voice she could possibly use.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Twilight, ruffling her mane. “I bet it’ll be a fun experience for you.” Suddenly, she stopped as a puzzled look came over her face. She turned to Fluttershy. “Fluttershy, did I hear you say ‘one’ of your clones before?”
Fluttershy looked around the room, clearing her throat awkwardly. “Hmm? Oh, no, you must’ve misheard me. I’m sure I said ‘the one’ clone. Yes, yes, that’s it.”
Twilight raised a hoof to her lips, then said, “Can I ask why you have, or had, I guess, a clone?”
Fluttershy swallowed the lump in her throat and laughed in staggered breaths. “Angel can be so precocious sometimes.”
“Riiiiiiiiight.”
