Of Robots And Ponies: The Secret Story of Sweetie Bot

Chapters

SWEETIE BELLE ACQUISITION PROGRAM
SWEETIE BELLE REPAIR PROGRAM
SWEETIE BELLE BEAUTIFICATION PROGRAM
SWEETIE BELLE CAMOUFLAGE PROGRAM
SWEETIE BELLE RETRIEVAL PROGRAM
SWEETIE BELLE SYNCHRONIZATION PROGRAM
SWEETIE BELLE SACRIFICE PROGRAM
SWEETIE BELLE LEVITATION PROGRAM
SWEETIE BELLE EDUCATION PROGRAM
SWEETIE BELLE CHASTITY PROGRAM

SWEETIE BELLE ACQUISITION PROGRAM

“Lyra, what are we going to do tonight?”

“The same thing we do every night, Bon-Bon: try to take over the world!”

It was a sunny day in Ponyville. Two mares, a green unicorn and a white earth pony with candy-colored mane, trotted through the marketplace. The unicorn was levitating a large box, containing a yarn of thread, a hammer, and a bag of sweets. The earth pony kept grabbing candy from the bag, which required standing on two hooves, and ate them.

“Bon-Bon, stop eating those sweets.”

“I can't resist,” answered Bon-Bon. “They're just too tasty! They also look so delicious, nopony could walk past them without eating some!”

“That is the reason I bought them,” explained Lyra. “They are an essential part of my plan. Speaking of which, have you received the package?”

“That huge one? It fell down from the air this morning. I signed some papers for that gray pegasus. I wanted to see what's inside, but I was too lazy to open it. Hey, how did you know I got a package? I didn't even order anything!”

“It's because I ordered it. I used your name to make harder for the government to track me.”

“Oh, it's again this robot stuff?” asked Bon-Bon.

Several ponies who were around turned their heads and looked at Lyra.

“Be quiet!” whispered the unicorn. “I don't hide from the Equestrian government to simply reveal everything to random ponies in the street!” Lyra stopped and peeked inside the bag. “Hey, you ate almost all candy!”

Bon-Bon smiled: “I'm sorry.”

Lyra put the box down and using her magic she wrapped the candy bag with the thread.

“Done. Now you'll stop eating. I need at least few ounces of these sweets for my plan to work.”

She picked the box back and they both trotted towards their house.

***

“So, what's inside?” asked Bon-Bon, examining closely the big box, which now stood in their basement.

“It's Taz, or Technicolor Automatic Zebra, model 42-U.”

Lyra dismantled the box and revealed a white life-sized model of a filly unicorn pony.

“Uhm, Lyra,” remarked Bon-Bon. “I think they've sent you the wrong stuff. It's a pony, not a zebra.”

“I know, Bon-Bon. Taz comes in many different sizes and shapes, it's just a historical fact that the first Tazes were zebra-shaped,” explained the unicorn.

The earth mare walked towards the model and gently prodded it with her left forehoof.

“Is it a sex toy? If it is, then I think it might be illeg–”

“It's not a sex toy!” yelled Lyra. “But it's even more illegal than any sex toys. Just look.”

The unicorn opened a smaller box that was inside the big box with the Taz, revealing various cables and instruments. She raised model's tail and inserted a plug into a socket that was there. Bon-Bon watched the whole situation with surprised look on her face.

“Are you sure it isn't–”

“Shut up!”

Lyra put the plug from the other end of the cable into a socket in the electricity generator.

“Power source connected, recharging,” suddenly said the model.

“Wow, it talks!” gasped Bon-Bon. “But are you really, really sure that it's not–”

“Bon-Bon! I have a little more work to do with this robot and you still didn't even start doing your part of plan! You only have one thing to do, do it now and let me work!”

The earth pony understood completely what Lyra meant and quietly trotted to another room.

“Initiate boot sequence,” said the unicorn.

“Booting. Welcome to Taz installation wizard. Insert the serial number to register your copy of Taz OS X, or say register later to continue the trial period. Trial period remaining: 90 days.”

“Register later.”

“Please wait as Taz OS X installer finds drivers for the hardware.” The robot stopped for a moment. “Drivers installed, but some devices were not recognized: an unknown Cutie Mark Emulation Device. Please download an appropriate driver and install it manually later. Would you like to input a personal name for this unit, is it a part of anonymous robotic army, can it choose a personal name for itself, or will it contain multiple personalities?”

“Input name: Sweetie Belle.”

“Chosen single named personality installation: Sweetie Bell. Is it correct?”

“No! Sweetie BELLE!”

“Chosen single named personality installation: Sweetie Bell. Is it correct?”

“Argh!”

“Unrecognized command.”

Lyra shook her head and went to a cabinet standing next to the wall. She opened it, pulled out a long cable and connected one end to the back of robot's head and the second one to the back of her own head. She didn't have to speak any more, but Taz kept giving audible feedback.

“Chosen single named personality installation: Sweetie Belle. Is it correct?”

“How would you like initialize memories?”

“Please connect a compatible memory source and say okay.”

Lyra pulled out the cable from the socket in her head, when Bon-Bon came back.

“I did it! It took me five tries, but I did it!”

The earth pony was holding up a rectangular board with freshly painted words: ‘Freak Andy’. Lyra closed her eyes and covered her face with her hoof.

“Free candy, Bon-Bon, not freak Andy. What foal would ever want a freak Andy?”

Bon-Bon blinked few times.

“Free candy? Oh, now it makes sense,” she exclaimed. “That's why you bought so much candy and no Andies.”

“I have no idea if buying Andies even makes any sense, but please go do it again, and correctly this time.”

“Okay!”

Taz reacted immediately: “No compatible memory sources found. Do you want to try again or cancel?”

***

The bushes near the Carousel Boutique were full of ponies this morning. Usually, if there were any ponies, they were of different sexes and they would engage in very intimate activities, but this time there were two mares, staring silently at a huge box. The box stood supported by one stick with a long piece of thread tied to it. The other end of the thread was hidden somewhere in the bushes, you could say that it was near the place the mares were hiding. Next to the box there stood a huge sign, saying “Free candie” and in fact there was candy, lying on the ground in the shadow of the box.

Around half past seven a young filly left the boutique to go to the school. She noticed a sign standing near the road. When she read it, her face brightened and she jumped towards the box. Suddenly, she stopped halfway.

“Wait, it looks like somepony wants to prank me.” said the filly to herself. “It's the same trick they had on My Little Human yesterday. They are not too creative. But I'm not dumb! I'm gonna take the candy and run away!”

The foal started slowly sneaking towards the candy. She went under the box, carefully looked around if nopony was going to attack her and slowly reached her hoof–

THUD!

“AARGH! Darkness! I see darkness!” yelled the filly after the box has covered her.

Lyra and Bon-Bon walked out from the bushes and slipped a bottom under the box. When the pony in the box calmed down a little, Lyra levitated it and returned home.

***

The filly wriggled while she was being strapped onto a chair in Lyra's basement. “What's happening? What are you doing to me? Are you aliens? Little green ponies?”

“I'm not little,” said the unicorn mare.

Bon-Bon giggled and explained: “We kidnapped you to use you in our plan of world domination! Soon Equestria will be ruled by robots!”

“What? You're robots?” asked the shocked filly.

“No, only I am,” said Lyra. “Don't move, it probably won't hurt.”

“If you're not a robot, why are you helping her?” the filly asked the other mare.

Bon-Bon froze in spot and started thinking. It was a good question, she never asked herself about it before. What could be the answer...?

“It's simple. I give her free candy,” explained Lyra.

Bon-Bon gasped in joy. By Celestia, Lyra was right!

The unicorn brought a big helmet and put it onto Sweetie Belle's head, covering it all.

“Bon-Bon,” she ordered, “keep an eye on her.”

She walked to another room, following the cable that went out from the top of the helmet. She picked up the plug and inserted it into the back of the small robot's head.

“Try again.”

The robot, which looked like an exact replica of the kidnapped filly, answered.

“Starting memory transfer.”

In the other room, the filly started screaming in pain.

A moment later a second voice joined her. Lyra quickly left the room and returned to see Bon-Bon screaming together with the kidnapped filly.

“What are you doing, Bon-Bon?”

“I don't know,” answered the earth mare. “She started screaming for some reason, I panicked and started screaming too. Is she in pain?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” shouted Lyra, to be heard over shrieks of the suffering filly. “She's just screaming to get our attention, she thinks that if she screams loud enough, we'll let her go.”

A voice came from the other room: “Memory transfer complete.” At the same moment, the screaming filly started to calm down.

Lyra removed the helmet from the filly, returned to the other room, pulled out the cables from the robot's head and from under the tail and said to it:

“Increase friendliness towards Lyra and Bon-Bon. Increase inquisitiveness. Start personality.”

The robot blinked several times.

“Huh? What am I doing here? Hello, Lyra!”

“Hi, Sweetie Belle!” Lyra replied. “I found you unconscious in the street and brought you here.”

“Thanks! But I'll go home now.”

The robot walked forward, her hydraulic joints making squeaking sounds. When she walked past the door to the other room, she saw a glimpse of something interesting. When she peeked inside, she saw Bon-Bon examining somepony strapped onto a chair.

““Aargh!””

Both real and fake Sweetie Belles yelled in shock.

““Who is that?”” asked both of them.

“This is your robotic clone,” Lyra explained, pointing at the real Sweetie Belle, “sent by the Evil Robot Empire. We captured it and we're gonna hand it over to authorities.”

Bon-Bon looked confused: “Wait, Lyra, isn't it that one who's a robot?”

The unicorn smacked her in the back of her head. “Of course not. Now, keep an eye on that one and I'll show the real Sweetie Belle the door.”

The imprisoned biological Sweetie Belle yelled: “It's a lie! I'm the real Sweetie Belle!”

The fake Sweetie Belle remarked with her robotic voice: “No, you're not! Your voice is totally different!” and trotted upstairs, followed by Lyra.

“No! You can't let her go!” real Sweetie Belle yelled again. “What will she do to my sister?” After a moment of silence, she added, whispering: “And what about me? Are you gonna kill me?”

“The real secret agent never leaves any evidence,” proudly said Lyra when she returned. “When I leave Ponyville, I'm gonna swap you back and synchronize your memories, so you won't remember anything about this and you'll think you really did all the things the robot did. And don't worry about your sister. She'll be eliminated only in case of emergency.”

Sweetie Belle hung her head down.

“Can you at least untie me? I need to go to the toilet.”

***

“Yes, the cult's budget is pretty tight right now. We could use more funding.”

Fluttershy was visiting Rarity, official reason being purchase of socks. Both mares tried to at least seem to try to conceal the whole Smooze worshiping issue. It wasn't important that the half of Ponyville knew about their little sect, the etiquette required at least an appearance of secrecy.

“Oh, my dear leader,” said the unicorn. “I'd gladly help, but I currently have no free funds. Maybe when I sell next few batches of clothes.”

“You don't have to push too hard,” politely replied the pegasus. “I mean, you can always donate as much as you want. I don't do this for money, our religion is a non-prophet– I mean, non-profit organization.”

“Fluttershy, I have a fabulous, yet quite unrelated idea,” sparkles of inspiration shone in Rarity's eyes. “Why won't we let Sweetie Belle join our group?”

“I don't know, it would look too suspicious,” hesitantly answered Fluttershy. “There are lot of cases nowadays, when some pony, usually a unicorn, kidnaps a kid, does unspeakable things to them in the basement and then wipes their memory with a potion or a spell. I'd be on tongues of all town, maybe even police would get interested in our activities.” The pegasus shifted her gaze. “Maybe when she grows up.”

Suddenly, the doors to the Carousel Boutique swung open and a little white unicorn jumped inside. Fluttershy squealed in shock and hid behind Rarity.

“Rarity, I'm home!” exclaimed Sweetie Belle.

“Oh it's lovely, sweetheart, but please never do that again. No proper lady enters like that. How was it at school?”

“Actually, I don't remember being at school at all?”

“And that's why?” asked Rarity, with her eyebrow raised.

“Well, I have no other memories of today apart from waking up in Ms. Heartstring's basement...”

Upon hearing those words, Rarity fainted almost instantly.

“Oh Smooze,” whispered Fluttershy.

SWEETIE BELLE REPAIR PROGRAM

“Rarity, what are we going to do tonight?”

“The same thing you should do every night, Sweetie Belle: go to sleep already!”

It was very late in the evening, but Sweetie Belle still refused to go to sleep. She was loitering around the Carousel Boutique, involuntarily destroying almost everything in her sister's workshop that she could touch. Rarity was already fed up with her sister's clumsiness and tried to get her to go to sleep, but with no success.

“But it's still early! I could help you with your work a little,” whined the filly.

“No! Got to your bedroom!” the mare ordered.

“I love you!”

“Now!”

Sweetie Belle stopped unwinding a big roll of thread and walked towards her room with resigned look on her face. Rarity sighed and went directly to bed, without bothering with cleaning up anything of the mess her sister did.

***

The sound that woke Rarity up next morning, was not the sound of her alarm clock.

“Hey Rarity! It's morning already! Can I help you now?”

Sweetie Belle was jumping energetically around in Rarity's bedroom.

“Sweetie Belle, calm down!” said Rarity half-asleep. “Have you eaten any breakfast, for instance?”

“Good idea! Initiating breakfast preparation sequence!”

Sweetie Belle hopped towards the door, when suddenly she stepped on the roll of thread she was playing with yesterday. She slipped and fell down. All Rarity could hear was a loud thud, preceded by cracking noise.

“Ouch! It hurts!” Sweetie Belle started to cry, lying on the floor. “I think I broke my leg!”

Rarity jumped out of bed. “Of all possible things that could happen in the morning, this is... THE SECOND! WORST! POSSIBLE! THING!”

“What's the first?” asked the filly.

“Oh, it's losing my fake eyelashes. But enough of this conversation, I'm gonna save you, girl!”

With a skill of an experienced war veteran, she put the injured filly on her back and trotted outside.

***

Meanwhile, in a certain basement...

“Bon-Bon, we have a problem. I've got an urgent alert from Sweetie Belle's wireless. Rarity's taking her to the doctor.”

Bon-Bon blinked.

“I don't know if you understand,” Lyra continued, “but a doctor will find out she's a robot and our plan will be busted. Quick, follow me.”

The green unicorn grabbed few things from a shelf and galloped outside. Her earth pony friend followed her.

***

The doctor was enjoying his morning coffee, when the window in his office suddenly opened. He turned his head and noticed a white earth mare staring at him.

“What's up, doc?” she said.

Before he could react, the mare jumped inside and pinned him to the ground. She was followed by a green unicorn mare, who poured some liquid from a bottle on a cloth and covered doctor's mouth with it. The doctor struggled a little, but after few seconds he lost consciousness.

“Okay, I'm gonna check if there's somepony in the treatment room,” said Lyra. “You know what to do.”

Bon-Bon started to undress the doctor and Lyra trotted towards the treatment room door. When she opened it, she bumped into a nurse.

“Why hello there!” Lyra smiled.

Before the nurse could respond, she had chloroform-soaked cloth pressed to her mouth. She collapsed to the ground and the unicorn pulled her inside, closing the door behind her.

Bon-Bon barely finished binding, gagging and shoving the unconscious doctor into a cabinet, when a loud knock came to the door.

“Come in!” shouted Bon-Bon.

The door opened and revealed Rarity carrying Sweetie Belle on her back.

“Good morning, doctor, my sister sprained her ankle today. Oh, you're the new doctor? I think I should introduce myself: my name's Rarity and this is my sister Sweetie Belle.”

“I'm the doctor.”

“Doctor who?” Rarity asked, surprised that anypony would introduce themselves like that.

“Doctor Bon–” Bon-Bon bit her tongue in the last moment. “Doctor Bonaparte. Now please lay her down here.”

Rarity laid her sister down on the bed. Bon-Bon approached the injured filly.

“Hmm, it looks bad,” she commented. “I think I need to prepare an injection.”

“I don't want an injection!” Sweetie Belle protested.

“Oh, this injection is not for you, it's for your sister.”

“What!?” Rarity jumped back to distance herself from the white mare.

“You need an injection, so wait a little until the nurse comes,” said Bon-Bon. “Sister Ly–... Lycra, come here!”

The door to the treatment room opened, revealing Lyra in nurse's outfit, hovering a large syringe. Her eyes were squinted, as if she wanted to say ‘When we get home, I'm gonna kill you for this pseudonym.’

When Rarity saw the syringe, she jumped to the door, opened it and fled from the office.

“Catch her!” ordered Lyra and turned to Sweetie Belle. “Disable motor functions.”

Sweetie Belle froze motionless.

Rarity ran through the hospital's corridor, followed by Bon-Bon and Lyra. Her war memories started to come back. She frantically looked for anything that could be used as a weapon. Suddenly, she saw a glimpse of an instrument table in an operation room. She took a sharp turn, burst through the door and grabbed two scalpels with her magic. Lyra and Bon-Bon skidded to halt before the door and saw the armed white unicorn inside.

“Stand back!” exclaimed Rarity. “I have scalpels and I won't hesitate to use them!”

Lyra sighed and slowly walked towards her foe.

“Let's stop this farse. Give up, so it won't hurt.”

Rarity wasn't convinced. She let out a powerful war cry and magically tossed a scalpel towards Lyra. The scalpel lodged into the green unicorn's chest. Lyra stopped, looked at the knife in her body, looked back at Rarity and calmly said:

“You really thought it would work?”

Seeing that her attack failed, Rarity rushed forward, pushing aside Lyra and Bon-Bon, and followed the path back to the office to get Sweetie Belle and run away with her. The other two mares followed her.

When Rarity opened the door to the office, she saw Sweetie Belle lying motionlessly on the bed.

“Sweetie Belle, can you hear me? Sweetie Belle! SWEETIE BELLE!”

Sweetie Belle, while she could hear Rarity, couldn't move. Even her fake breathing movement, implemented in robots to make them look as pony-like as possible, was disabled. For an unsuspecting observer, the filly looked like a dead body.

“Oh no! You killed Sweetie Belle! You bastards!”

Rarity turned towards the door just in time to see Lyra and Bon-Bon running towards her. She focused her whole magic, prepared to pour all of its strength into scalpel tossing—

THUD!

A sudden sound coming from the far side of the room startled her. She jumped back, looked at the source of the noise and noticed the cabinet in the corner opened. A bound and gagged stallion rolled out from it and began to look around frantically to understand what was going on.

“Damn, the doctor came out of the closet!” shouted Lyra, while tossing the syringe towards surprised Rarity. The syringe hit her right into her flank. Lyra used her magic to inject the liquid. Before Rarity noticed it, it was too late. She collapsed unconscious to the floor.

“I didn't know he was gay!” remarked Bon-Bon. Meanwhile, Lyra walked to Sweetie Belle, grabbed a screwdriver and started to inspect the filly's hind leg.

“Check if somepony's coming while I'm busy.” she ordered Bon-Bon.

Bon-Bon closed the door, leaving only a small gap. Lyra started repairing Sweetie Belle's leg. After few minutes, the repair was done. The unicorn looked with admiration at her own work for a second and then her eyes rolled up and she started shaking.

“Done.” she said after regaining her composure a moment later. In the same moment, Sweetie Belle got up, pulled unconscious Rarity on her back and slowly walked away. The green unicorn explained: “I've programmed Sweetie Belle to take Rarity home and forget everything that happened. Catastrophe averted.”

***

Rarity was really enjoying her sleep, when she heard her annoying little sister.

“Hey, Rarity, it's noon! I prepared brunch!”

Rarity slowly got up and said: “You wouldn't believe what outlandish dream I had. You broke your leg, I took you to the hospital, the nurse tried to inject me with something, I tried to fight, but they were immune to any attacks, I returned to take you back home, but you were dead, and I don't remember how it actually ended...”

Sweetie Belle calmly listened to her sister's story, trotted to the kitchen and started jumping around, circling the table with two plates and a stack of pancakes on it. Some of the pancakes even looked edible.

Rarity sighed, sat down in a chair, put a pancake on her plate and grabbed a fork and a scalpel to–

’Wait, where did this scalpel come from?’

SWEETIE BELLE BEAUTIFICATION PROGRAM

“Rarity, what are we going to do today?”

“The same thing we do every Sunday, Fluttershy: go to the spa!”

Two mares left the Carousel Boutique and trotted towards the sect's spa center. Little they knew, they were followed by two other mares.

Lyra and Bon-Bon followed Rarity and Fluttershy, keeping their distance as large as possible. When they saw that their targets entered the spa building, they stopped and gave up.

“Come on, Bon-Bon, we're going home. We need to prepare a plan.”

***

Under Lyra's basement there was a huge conference room, ready to accommodate several dozens of ponies, but it wasn't actually used by anypony else than Lyra or Bon-Bon.

The room was dimly lit with multiple small red lights and adorned with multiple banners of the Evil Robot Empire. On one of the walls there was a large map of Equestria with Ponyville marked with a giant red tack. Next and parallel to that wall, there was a platform with a long desk on it. Lyra stepped up the platform, the lights installed in the desk illuminating her ominously from beneath. Bon-Bon sat down at a long table that stood in the middle of the room.

“I see all members of our section of the organization are present, so I'll begin.” Lyra began. “I think I can already trust you enough to reveal what actually I'm doing.”

“The Evil Robot Empire has fought with Equestria for a long time. In the last fifty years or so, we switched from direct military attacks, to intelligence and sabotage. Our agents, such as I, disguised as ponies, have been sent to Equestria and they try to plant as many fake ponies as they can. To make those fakes harder to detect, they are programmed to think they're real ponies. They can be used to spy on Equestria's biggest secrets. And here's my objective.”

Lyra pulled down a huge slide with three lines of text:

1. INFILTRATE THE SMOOZE CULTISTS

2. ???

3. VICTORY!

“As you can see,” she continued, “my plan is not exactly detailed. The second part of the plan really depends on the results of the first one, so we'll just have to fill it in later. I see a question, yes?”

Bon-Bon, who raised her hoof in the air a moment earlier, asked: “So when do we start infiltrating them?”

“We already did. Sweetie Belle is our fake,” answered Lyra. “And to succeed, we need to make her join Rarity and Fluttershy in their secret activities. For starters, she has to go with the to the spa!”

***

“Rarity, I wanna to go to the spa with you next Sunday.” said Sweetie Belle.

Rarity, who was eating her breakfast and reading a newspaper, spat out oatmeal in shock when she heard it. She put the paper on the table, took a napkin, wiped her mouth clean and said:

“Well, well, Sweetie Belle. You're going to grow up to be a fine lady. I didn't expect you would take interest in such ladylike activities so soon, like mud baths, instead of getting dirty while playing in m– Erm, that's great, you're surely have a lot of fun.”

Sweetie Belle grinned widely.

***

Lyra grinned widely.

“Just as planned,” she whispered, before starting laughing maniacally. Bon-Bon stood nearby and seemed unimpressed. She was slowly chewing an apple.

“Robots sure are interesting.” she remarked. “But why are you so excited? It's just a little filly going to the spa. I understand that it can be amusing, but– wait, are you REALLY sure it's not any kind of a sex toy?”

Lyra's face expression instantly changed. She turned serious in an instant.

“How many times have I to explain it to you? I didn't send Sweetie Belle to the spa to do any naughty stuff. I sent her to gather important information about the Smooze cult, so we can harness power of Smooze to finally defeat Celestia. Just listen.”

Lyra turned on the audio feed, so Bon-Bon, sitting safely in Lyra's villain lair, could not only see on the screen what Sweetie Belle was seeing, but could also hear what Sweetie Belle was hearing.

“So it's your first time in the spa?” asked the spa attendant on the screen.

“Affirmative,” Sweetie Belle's own robotic voice could also be heard.

“Nothing interesting is happening as for now,” remarked Bon-Bon. “My Little Human re-run is airing in few minutes, switch to it.”

“Do you really prefer watching a show for little fillies, instead of spying on the most dangerous apocalyptic cult in this part of Equestria?” asked the unicorn, more annoyed than surprised.

“Eeyup.”

“So go watch it upstairs.”

“No way!” protested the earth mare. “What if neighbors see me watching it? I've always watched it here.”

“No. If you really want to watch this foalish stuff, do it upstairs.”

Bon-Bon uttered few muffled swearwords and trotted upstairs. A minute later Lyra could hear Bon-Bon singing: “My Little Human, My Little Human, aaah aaah aaaaaaaaaah!”

Trying to ignore her annoying subordinate, the unicorn got back to work.

***

“So how are you enjoying the mud bath?” Fluttershy asked Sweetie Belle. Both of them lay together with Rarity in tubs filled with the finest mud the cult could afford.

“Uhm, it's very nice. The warm mud is really good,” answered the filly.

“I'm so glad you like it,” said Rarity, with her eyes covered by cucumber slices.

“Sure I do!” exclaimed Sweetie Belle, throwing her forelegs up in the air. With a loud screech coming out from her shoulders.

Rarity instinctively dove into the mud in fear.

“What was that?” she asked, her mouth being barely over the surface.

“It was Sweetie Belle, I think,” said Fluttershy. “Sweetie Belle, what did you do?”

The filly answered honestly: “I don't know.” She lowered her forelegs, with similar, but quieter screech. “It just happened. I don't even know what is making this sound.”

“Everypony, what would you say for a little jacuzzi bath?” Rarity tried to change the topic.

“Agreed!”

Both mares slowly got up and left the tub. Sweetie Belle had some difficulties, so her sister helped her.

“Now, before we go to the jacuzzi tub, we need to shower,” Rarity explained to the filly.

The mares trotted towards showers, followed by Sweetie Belle. With each filly's step, a screeching sound could be heard.

“I keep hearing that sound,” remarked Fluttershy. “It sounds like grains of sand between two moving metal parts.”

“Are we followed by a robot ninja?” asked excited Sweetie Belle.

Rarity frowned: “That's no laughing matter, little miss. I fought those bastards in a war. You can't imagine how vicious, cruel and inequine they are.”

When they got under the shower and the water started pouring down, Sweetie Belle's body jerked.

“The water's too cold?” asked Fluttershy?

“Maybe a little,” answered the filly, trying to regulate temperature.

***

Lyra came out of the basement. “Bon-Bon, we've got a problem.”

“What is it, Lyra?”, answered the earth mare, without moving her gaze from TV screen, where colorful humans were having adventures and learning about friendship.

“You know we sent our robot to the spa?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“I forgot she's not waterproof.”

***

Two ponies were enjoying their jacuzzi bath. The third one, a white unicorn filly, not so much. Sweetie Belle's body twitched every few seconds.

“Sweetie Belle, are you okay?” asked concerned Rarity.

“Yes, I'm—” TWITCH “–Sweetie Belle and I live in Carousel–” TWITCH “–okay.”

“I don't think so.”

Rarity got up, pulled out her sister from the tub, excused herself and returned home with Sweetie Belle on her back. Fluttershy was left alone.

“I have no idea what just happened...” the pegasus whispered and submerged her whole self under water.

***

“Sweetie Belle, are you okay now?” asked Rarity during dinner.

Sweetie Belle, who had stopped twitching an hour after leaving the spa building, answered:

“I think so.”

She moved her hoof towards the bowl with carrot roast. The familiar screeching sound could be heard again.

“The war was so long time ago,” Rarity whispered to herself, “but those robots keep following me. Where are they hiding?”

“Rarity, may I go to the spa next week?” asked the filly.

The mare tried to evade the direct answer:

“I don't know... I'd have to ask Fluttershy first, if our religion is okay with taking small fillies to such enterprises...”

“I'm not small! My size has exceeded necessary levels! Is it about my lack of cutie mark?”

“Sweetie Belle, stop talking and eat your dinner!”

“I love you!”

“Eat!”

***

The Celestia's glowing sphere was yet again lowered and Molestia's¹ darkness came upon the magical land of Equestria. In other words, the night came. Two ponies, one robot unicorn and one earth pony, sneaked around the town towards the Carousel Boutique.

“I'm saying it again, Bon-Bon: I don't need you today,” said annoyed Lyra. “I'm gonna do everything myself.”

“Aww,” Bon-Bon frowned. “I just wanted to tag along, there's nothing interesting on TV.”

“Okay, but be quiet!”

The mares approached the boutique. All lights had gone off long time ago. All the inhabitants were in a deep sleep. The green unicorn unlocked one of the windows with her magic and quietly went inside. The white mare shook her head with disappointment and loudly exclaimed:

“That's stealth? I'm gonna show you real stealth!”

After a little preparation, Bon-Bon jumped into the open window, releasing a pseudo-ninja-like battle cry, nudging the frame and making the window shut down with a loud thud.

Suddenly, a light upstairs was turned on.

“Crap, they're gonna find us!” Lyra said through clenched teeth.

Rarity slowly descended from the stairs, armed in a long saber. She slowly walked towards the source of the noise, looking around for anything suspicious.

“Is anypony here?”

She turned on the light.

“It's clear here, too. It must've been the wind.” She trotted towards the window. “As I thought. Sweetie Belle didn't properly lock the window again. What if somepony from the street just entered here? I'm going to have a talk with her tomorrow.”

Suddenly, she noticed two female silhouettes.

“What these two mannequins do here? Sweetie Belle moved them again? Oh Smooze, since I'm here, I should put them into some use. They can't stand here naked all day.”

Rarity put her sword down and searched for two dresses. She levitated the yellow one and put it on the unicorn shape. Then she took the pink one and tried to put in on the earth mare shape. The dress slipped from the back and fell down on the floor.

“Hmm, it doesn't fit.” Her eyes suddenly sparkled with joy: “I—DE—A!”

She took a pin, grabbed both the dress and the pin, and walked to the earth pony.

“Now if I pin the dress to the mannequin here...”

She focused, laid the dress correctly and prepared to pin it. She slowly moved the pin towards the target, but it seemed like eternity, as if the target tried to move away from the pin. Just a little more...

“Ah, forget it,” she resigned. “I'm too tired, I'll do it tomorrow.”

She put the dress back on the hanger, put the pin back into a cushion, grabbed her sword and returned to sleep.

When the light in Rarity's bedroom went out, Lyra broke silence.

“That was close.”

Bon-Bon seemed annoyed: “She wanted to pin a dress to my flank!”

“Calm down, we still need to go upstairs. Or, actually only I need. You can stay here and pretend to be a mannequin again, or just simply go home.”

The robot unicorn grabbed her saddlebag, which was hidden behind a cabinet, put it on and walked upstairs. Halfway, she noticed she was wearing a very fancy yellow dress. She tore it off her and threw away, before continuing her tour.

When Lyra arrived into Sweetie Belle's bedroom, she noticed that the filly wasn't asleep.

“Hello, Lyra,” she whispered. “Meeting you has a high positive emotional value!”

“Hello, Sweetie Belle. Suspend system.” Lyra whispered back. Sweetie Belle's body stopped moving.

The green unicorn walked towards the motionless robot, took out tools and a bottle of oil, and uncovered her. She quickly disassembled limbs of the robot, cleaned all the parts from traces of mud and put in fresh oil. When she was done, she covered the filly back, whispered “Wake up” to her ear and walked back downstairs.

When she arrived back, she saw Bon-Bon.

“You're still here?” she asked. “Get going, we don't have anything to do here.”

The earth mare spat out the paintbrush and slowly climbed the window Lyra had opened. Moment later, the unicorn followed and they returned home under cover of the night.

***

“Good morning, Rarity!”

The white mare turned to her other side. “Not yet!”

“Come on, Rarity, I prepared breakfast!” Sweetie Belle's voice was coming from the kitchen.

“Did you burn anything?” Rarity asked half-asleep.

“Actually, it's still burning. But don't worry, flames are not too big.”

Upon hearing these words, Rarity got up almost instantly. She galloped towards the kitchen. When she was running downstairs, she suffered a huge shock.

“Who tore my beautiful dress! I'll destroy them!”

Shreds of a yellow dress lay down on the stair steps.

“Sister, the flames are too big now!”

“This crime cannot go unpunished! When I know who did it, I'll shove these shreds into their throat!”

“Sister, did you like the curtains in the kitchen?”

“Or from the other side!”

“Because we have no curtains in the kitchen now!”

“I'll put into the shreds as many pins as possible before shoving...”

“Rarity, dresses are on fire!”

Rarity finally reacted to Sweetie Belle's words.

“What!? I'm coming!”

She ran towards her sister's voice and skidded to halt in the kitchen. The fire was engulfing a pan and food products that lay nearby. The clouds of black smoke filled the air and slowly escaped through an open window.

“My dresses!”

“I was kidding, only the curtains burned,” Sweetie Belle admitted. “Help me with extinguishing.”

Rarity turned water on and magically directed the stream at the flames. After a minute, the fire was put out. Neither the curtains nor pancakes survived the flames.

“It looks like no breakfast for me,” remarked the mare.

“I'm sorry.”

“You're always sorry. It's the third curtain set this month.”

“Rarity,” Sweetie Belle tried to change the topic. “I got visited by a green pony this night!”

“Aliens?“ Rarity said with condescending tone. “Really, darling, it was probably just your hallucination. Go talk to Twilight, but she'll probably say that that alien of yours is not scientifically possible. Which won't mean anything – I swear to Smooze, one day that pony will call her own self ‘not scientifically possible’. Speaking of which, have you heard that weird noise we kept hearing yesterday?”

Sweetie Belle stopped for a heartbeat, listening to the silence.

“Negative,” she answered. “I haven't heard that ninja robot today.”

“That's splendid. Sweetie, make me a sandwich. I have some important thing to do.”

Rarity trotted outside the kitchen to the store. She took a look around. It looked exactly as she left it yesterday, but she felt like something was missing.

“Weird, where are those mannequins I dressed at night?”

She took few steps forward, looking around. When she inspected everything at eye level, she raised her head and looked at the ceiling.

“Aaargh!”

On the ceiling, some words were crudely written using black paint:

NINJA ROBOT WAS HEAR

____________________________________________________

¹ In “Friendship is Witchcraft”, Luna's real name is Molestia, but it doesn't mean she's molesting anypony.

SWEETIE BELLE CAMOUFLAGE PROGRAM

Author's note to readers unfamiliar with Frienship is Witchcraft: Molest Fest is FiW's version of Nightmare Night, a.k.a. Halloween, and Molestia is Luna's real name.

“Fluttershy, what are we going to do tonight?”

“The same thing we do every night, Rarity: try to start an apocalypse! Uhm, if it's okay with you...”

Fluttershy was visiting the Carousel Boutique again, again under the pretense of buying socks. Sweetie Belle was sitting in the corner, doing her homework.

“I'm not sure, dear leader. Last time we failed. I missed the eclipse and I didn't bring a raccoon corpse.” answered Rarity.

The pegasus smiled: “Don't worry, I've acquired very powerful magic. We can now use the same kind of space-time portal as Pinkie Pie.”

“That's splendid! But today is the Molest Fest, won't kids interrupt us?”

“They won't, all kids in town know that I don't give candy or even open door to anypony on the Molest Fest. We should be fine.”

***

“Okay, Bon-Bon, I'm going to the Molest Fest to follow our Sweetie Belle. You stay here and keep an eye on the real one.”

Lyra wrapped her entire body in old bandages. This year, her Molest Fest costume was a mummy. She delibaterily chose it, because it allowed her to conceal her identity.

The real Sweetie Belle sat down in a cage in the corner in the basement. The cage was sparkling clean, there was a plate with dandelion sandwiches and a pile of comic books. The filly was holding one volume in her hooves.

“I want to go to the Molest Fest, too,” she remarked, without even averting her gaze from the fourth volume of Rupony Kenshin she was reading.

“I asked Lyra about that, she said no,” said Bon-Bon, and then she added excitedly: “But don't worry, I'm gonna keep a company to you, we're gonna have a super-duper fun time together!”

Sweetie Belle stopped reading.

“Ms. Heartstrings, please kill me.”

“No, I can't,” replied Lyra. “I explained it to you already.”

“Then kill her!” the filly pointed at the white earth mare.

“I can't either. Listen, kid, it's only one night. I know she's annoying, but if you're lucky, she'll fall asleep in few hours.”

“Oh no!” Sweetie Belle cowered in fear.

“Why not?” asked Lyra.

“She snores!”

“I do?” asked Bon-Bon, surprised.

“I'm glad that I disable my audio input at night,” the green unicorn smiled.

***

“So, Sweetie Belle, how do you like your costume for the Molest Fest?”

Rarity was hovering in the air a black cape with red lining.

Sweetie Belle was confused. “What is that?”

“Oh, for Smooze's sake, it's a vampire cape! You're gonna be a vampire!”

“I don't like vampires,” the filly protested. “Every night I have nightmares about them drinking my blood.”

Rarity sighed.

“But you'll look fabulous. Put it on, I'm going to find the fake teeth that I bought.”

Sweetie Belle put on the costume. Her sister trotted towards a cabinet, opened a drawer, and took out a set of fake teeth. She gave it to the filly, took a brush and started to brush her hair. Finally, Rarity took a step back to take a look at her work.

“Weird, why does this costume remind me of Twilight Sparkle? Twilight is all about crappy pornographic books. Vampires? Sparkle? Does not compute!”

“Robot speech pattern detected,” suddenly said Sweetie Belle. “Rarity, are you sure you're not a robot?”

Rarity frowned: “I'm not a robot and stop insinuating that I am!”

“Error...” the filly hung her head.

The unicorn mare chuckled, trotted towards a wardrobe, opened it, and searched for a scarf.

“So, we're ready for tonight! I think your friends are already there, waiting for you.”

Rarity put on the invisibility scarf and after it activated, she sneaked outside. Sweetie Belle looked into a mirror, pondering if her costume is any good, and left the boutique too.

***

A large group of schoolfoals formed in the town square. Towering over them, there was Pinkie Pie, dressed up as a chicken. They were discussing which route they should take to gather as much sweets as quick as possible.

Sweetie Belle arrived, arousing interest of other foals. Pinkie Pie cackled: “A vampire! Run away!”, but to her dismay nopony else even pretended to be scared.

“Cool costume!” remarked Apple Bloom, dressed up as Frankenpony's bride.

“No way, you call it cool? Vampires are gay!” retorted Scootaloo, pretending to gag. “Werewolves for the win!” In fact, Scootaloo was dressed up as a werewolf.

Among ponies Sweetie Belle noticed somepony she didn't know.

“Unrecognized pony found,” she said to him.

“Oh, hello. My name is Newt Pippington Britishooves,” the little colt responded to her. “I moved to this jolly good town few weeks ago. I'm dressed as a pirate, so I can wear an eye patch, because I lost my eye recently.”

“How did you lose your eye, Newt?” asked Scootaloo.

“Oh, I can tell you!” Pinkie Pie interrupted. “One day I found unconscious Newt on the street, took him home, and when he woke up, I gave him a cupcake and let him out– I mean, said goodbye to him as he left my basement.”

Newt corrected her: “Miss Pie, I remember that I had eaten the cupcake before I lost my consciousness.”

“It's just like with me!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed in joy. “One day, I was found unconscious by Lyra, and she took me into her basement. When I woke up, I simply walked home. I didn't get any cupcakes though.”

“Bloody hay! It's quite like my story!” Newt gasped in awe.

Sweetie Belle smiled and nodded. “It's good to know that somepony else not only shares with you pony flesh and pony blood, but also has had similar experiences in their life.”

Apple Bloom was still unconvinced: “Yeah, but what does it have to do with the eye?”

***

“I spy, with my little pony eye, something beginning with ‘K’!” said Bon-Bon, smiling widely.

“Is it cage?” monotonous voice of biological Sweetie Belle answered her.

“Yes, how did you know?” the mare was surprised.

The filly rolled her eyes. She couldn't focus on reading, because Bon-Bon kept coming up with ideas for stupid, boring games and couldn't give her a rest until she joined them. They had already played one round of Monopony, but given Bon-Bon's inability to count, the game came to an abrupt end when she was presented with a challenge of calculating rent.

“So what do you say about watching My Little Human?” the mare tried another approach. “Who is your favorite princess? Mine is Princess Putin! After Bella Sprinkle and her friends defeated Nightmare Soviet, Nightmare Soviet turned into Putin, so adorable! Or when Princess Obama came and forgave Putin everything and they hugged! Or when Bella saw Putin fighting a bear, she was so shocked, she turned into a bat and flew away!”

Bon-Bon continued rambling about minutiae of the show, while Sweetie Belle was trying her best to ignore her.

***

A moment after Lyra arrived to the town square, a huge chariot flew down from the sky, carrying a dark blue alicorn. The alicorn stepped outside and removed her hood, revealing her face. Everypony in the square trembled in fear when they saw that Princess Molestia herself came to Ponyville to celebrate the Molest Fest.

Lyra hid behind a corner and peeked from time to time to see what was happening. Apparently, one pony wasn't feeling uncomfortable with the princess and tried to talk to her.

Suddenly, in the robot's electronic brain a thought appeared. Even if robots managed to achieve control over Smooze, causing more chaos in Equestrian government wouldn't hurt. It seemed like they were taunting her: sending an important government figure alone in the middle of the night to the crowd of people. This simply smelled like an opportunity for an assassination.

Lyra smiled. She only had to wait for a good situation. For example, the current one, when the princess was walking, followed by some purple unicorn in a weird outfit, and all other ponies prostrated themselves to the ground, was not favorable. If she attacked now, she'd be spotted right away, and even if she succeeded, her whole conspiracy would be busted and she would have no chance to control Smooze. The only way she could do it, was in some secluded place, when the alertness of other ponies would subdue.

***

The group of foals led by Pinkie Pie was walking past the road leading to Fluttershy's hut.

“Miss Pie, won't we go to that house?” asked Newt Pippington.

“Oh, there lives Fluttershy,” answered Pinkie Pie. “She won't give us any candy, so there's no reason to go there.”

The group continued their march, except for one filly. Sweetie Belle froze in place, her gaze fixated on the hut.

“Why do I feel this strong urge to go and take a peek inside?” she asked herself.

She slowly trotted to the hut's doorstep. She noticed the door was locked, so she started to circle the building in order to find an open window. She found one on the back of the hut. It was pretty high for a little filly like her, the wall was very thin and there was no windowsill to support her hooves. Regardless of that, she attempted to climb it, because there was no other way inside.

“Hey, kid, are you silly?” she heard a voice behind her. She lost her focus, her hoof slipped and she fell down. When she was lying on the ground, she saw Zecora the Rhyming Zebra.

“Don't enter here, you little... silly!
This entrance is not windowsill...y,
so entering here would be silly.”

Sweetie Belle wanted to respond to those bad rhymes, but she heard some movement inside the building. Automatically, she run away and hid in bushes.

The window swung open, revealing Rarity.

“Zecora! I knew it! What are you doing here?”

Zecora stuttered: “There was this little foal, trying to achieve burglary goal...”

The unicorn cringed.

“Stop rhyming! Your rhymes are a crime against equinity! We're trying to start an apocalypse here, we've got some complications, so we'd appreciate if nopony interrupted us!”

“Okay, I'm leaving, I wish you a nice end of the world.” the zebra burst out and took the road back to the town.

Rarity looked around to check if there was anypony else, and then closed the window.

A minute later, Sweetie Belle left her hiding place and said to herself: “Entering process interrupted.”

***

Lyra quietly observed Molestia from distance. The Princess was finally enjoying herself and taking part in traditional Molest Fest games, such as Toss A Spider, Toss A Pumpkin, and Toss A Spider And A Pumpkin Shortly Afterwards. There were no guards or policeponies in sight, and apart from the lavender unicorn wearing a bad cosplay costume, nopony paid much attention to what the princess was doing.

This was a good moment for a robot unicorn attack. It would disrupt power structures of Equestria and ponies would no longer live in harmony, harmony of princesses.

The green unicorn trotted slowly to the princess and whispered into her ear:

“Princess Molestia, may I talk with you in private?”

“Sure thou may, my bandaged friend,” answered the alicorn, “but please, call me by my spirit name: Luna!”

Lyra exchanged few angry looks with the badly dressed purple unicorn and led the princess into a back alley.

“I am so glad that I could make so many friends today, and I hope we are going to be good friends, too,” said Luna, when they arrived to their destination.

Lyra looked around to check if anypony could see them. It appeared that their currect location was safe.

“Actually, I wanted to talk with you, because you're a princess,” said the unicorn, secretly and slowly charging her combat magic.

“But not for long! I promised my dearest friend, Twilight Sparkle, that I give my princesshood to her.”

In shock, Lyra managed to utter only one word: “What.”

Luna added: “I am grateful to her for making me look sexy again.”

The unicorn felt sudden urge to protest, but she didn't know if she should object against the usage of the word ‘sexy’ or ‘again’.

Seeing that her conversational partner was not responding, the alicorn continued.

“Thou shouldest join us in our friendly activities. Miss Sparkle invited me to a yaoi anime marathon at her library. I would be glad to have more friends at this event.”

Lyra finally regained her focus and responded:

“I have no time–”

“Princess Luna!”

Lyra and Luna looked in the direction of source of the voice. It was Twilight Sparkle, happily trotting towards them.

“So here were you hiding,” the unicorn in goofy outfit remarked. “I've just talked to Berry Punch, she's gonna hang out with us on Sunday. Oh, hello, masked pony! Who are you?”

Lyra responded nervously: “Uhm, it's me, Rarity. Don't you recognize me?”

“Well, I supposed you would wear something more elegant for the Molest Fest. But a mummy? You sure surprised everypony. And what do you think about my costume?”

Lyra ogled Twilight from her hooves to the top of her hat.

“Nice, I think. Who are you dressed up as?”

“Rarity, recognizest thou not?” asked Luna. “It's from Rupony Kenshin.”

Lyra chuckled. “Oh, right, how could I miss that? Sorry, gotta go.”

Without saying anything else, the robot unicorn ran away.

***

After failed break-in attempt, Sweetie Belle joined the group of foals again. It looked like most of the chaos that Princess Molestia has caused, has been cleaned up. The princess scared the foals for a last time and followed Twilight Sparkle afterwards. Pinkie Pie and the foals returned to the town square in order to enjoy the remaining part of the night.

After the party ended, all foals returned home. Sweetie Belle went to the Carousel Boutique and met there her sister Rarity, who was lying on a couch and drinking cider straight from a bottle.

“Hi, sister. It was very good night. I've got a lot of candies and met a new friend. His name is Newt.”

“And I didn't met the friend I wanted to meet,” Rarity responded angrily. “We were summoning Smooze, but then somepony knocked to the door and pulled Fluttershy outside. She returned terrified, mumbling something about being molested by Molestia. But what's worse, when the Dear Leader was outside, that zebra started rhyming outside the window. You should've heard those rhymes! A horror! I had to chase her away. With nopony in the summoning circle, no wonder that the spell failed. And guess what excuse that striped abomination had!”

“She saw a little foal, trying to achieve burglary goal?” guessed Sweetie Belle.

“Exactly, she– wait, how did you know that?”

***

Lyra returned home in a very bad mood. All her plans for tonight failed. Her main plot, sneaking into summoning ceremony, failed because of some zebra. Fortunately, the summoning was also unsuccessful. She could tell that because no ooze was pouring down the street. Because of that, if the cultists tried again, she would have another chance. Plan B, involving killing off the princess, also failed, due to appearance of that lavender freak. Lyra could handle one opponent if she had an element of surprise, but her combat capabilities were not enough to fight against two magic users.

When she was stepping inside her house, she heard some weird loud sound. It sounded like a mating roar of a wounded manticore, but it had slower rhythm. She unwrapped bandages, turned the light on, and slowly proceeded, searching for the source of the noise. It seemed as if the roars were coming out from the basement. The robot slowly descended and followed the sound. On her way towards the source, she grabbed a machete and levitated it in front of her in case of ambush. The sound intensified, coming from the room where the cage stood. Lyra peeked inside. She saw terrified Sweetie Belle, covering her ears with her hooves. The filly noticed the unicorn and pointed her right hoof forward. Lyra took a step inside and looked in the direction the filly was pointing at.

She saw Bon-Bon, sleeping and snoring.

SWEETIE BELLE RETRIEVAL PROGRAM

“Twilight, what are we going to do tonight?”

“The same thing we do every night, Luna: watch anime!”

Three ponies: Twilight Sparkle, Molestia (spirit name: Luna) and Berry Punch gathered in the basement of Ponyville's library. The guests, Luna and Punch, sat down on the couch, while the host, Twilight, walked towards a huge TV set and inserted a disk into a player.

“What series is this?” asked the fuchsia-colored earth pony.

“This is the uncensored version of Death Scroll, all 37 episodes. I think tonight we manage to get through at least 18 of them,” answered the librarian.

“That's great, I've always wanted to see it,” joyfully exclaimed Berry Punch.

“I've already seen this series, but woe! Only the censored version! There's a lot of details I'd love to see,” added Luna.

“Okay, it's starting now. Move aside, I wanna sit in the middle.”

The screen went black, and from the speakers a voice could be heard:

“This world... ponies of this world... are rotten...”

***

Sweetie Belle was bored.

She was sitting in her cage for several weeks now, she had read all Bon-Bon's comic books, and she was full. A plate with two dandelion sandwiches stood next to her, but she had no appetite.

She tried yelling to get her captors' attention. Unfortunately, Lyra never showed up, and Bon-Bon failed to provide her with some fresh entertainment. She had a choice of re-reading all Arsène Lupony III series, or doing nothing. And she already knew that series so well, she could quote large parts of it, verbatim.

The young unicorn had it enough. The anger was building inside of her for last few days. She suddenly stood up on her hind hooves, and threw her forelegs in the air, yelling “Oh come on!”

The cage jumped up.

Even though Sweetie Belle had never had any formal training in physics, she knew that a cage jumping like that, when the prisoner didn't get their hooves from the floor, was somewhat suspicious. She again rose to her hind hooves, this time much slower, and pushed the ceiling with her forehooves.

The ceiling rose. Sweetie Belle took a look at the place where the floor joined with the bars.

It didn't join. The cage consisted of the floor and the ceiling with bars attached. The bars were not attached to the floor at all.

Feeling shame for not figuring this earlier, the unicorn pushed the cage bars and tripped the upper part of the cage over.

She was free, standing on a huge rectangular board, that was supposed to be the cage floor. Smiling widely, she began to sneak upstairs.

Luckily for her, Lyra was nowhere in sight. On the couch in the living room, however, Bon-Bon was sitting, playing Pony Haystation. She was wearing headphones, so Sweetie Belle couldn't hear game's sound effects.

The filly started to sneak towards the door, trying to avoid Bon-Bon's line of sight. She was already half-way between the exit and the basement door, when the white mare turned around and saw her.

Sweetie Belle froze in shock.

Bon-Bon waved to her.

Sweetie Belle waved back.

Bon-Bon turned back to the TV screen and continued playing.

Sweetie Belle immediately galloped outside and directed herself towards the outskirts of Ponyville.

***

The sun was setting over Ponyville. Sweetie Belle was galloping for at least ten minutes. She could barely catch her breath. She stopped and looked around. She was already outside the town borders. On the horizon, she could see a familiar hut. It was her sister's cult headquarters, or less formally – Fluttershy's house. She trotted happily in its direction.

Soon, the filly arrived to the entrance. She knocked two times. The door opened, revealing a yellow pegasus.

“Oh hello, Sweetie Belle,” said Fluttershy. “I'm so glad you came.”

“Fluttershy, you must help me!” Sweetie Belle pleaded. “They're gonna look for me, you have to hide me!”

“Oh of course I will. I've just got this new recipe for summoning spell, I need one virgin to sacrifice, and I think you'll be perfect. What do you think?”

Without waiting for an answer, Fluttershy trotted to the kitchen, searched drawers for a knife, grabbed it with her teeth, and came back to the door.

“Oh, she's gone...”

***

Bon-Bon was almost done. Only few seconds and she'd finish this level...

*SMACK*

A strong blow to her head broke her concentration, her game character misjumped and fell into a pit full of upright spikes. Somepony tore headphones from her head.

“What?”

“She escaped!” Lyra's voice answered her.

“No, she didn't! She escapes one level later, I read a walkthrough!”

“I'm not talking about your stupid games!” Lyra yelled angrily. “I'm talking about Sweetie Belle! She escaped from the cage!”

“How's that possible? It was an Acme Moderately-Escapable Cage!”

“I don't know! All I know is that's she gone now!”

“If you say so...” Bon-Bon thought for a moment. “Now I remember seeing her. I waved to her and she waved back.”

“So what are you waiting for? Go find her!” the green unicorn tried to push the white mare off the couch.

“Yeah, I'm going, I'm going. Sheesh!”

Bon-Bon mumbled some swearwords and left the house. Lyra sat down on the couch, put on the headphones, grabbed the controller, and started playing.

***

Sweetie Belle decided that Fluttershy's hut was not the best place to hide from Lyra and Bon-Bon. When she was walking through the Ponyville, she decided to try the next best place. When she saw it, she slowed down and stopped before the door. She knocked three times.

***

The crimson pegasus thought to himself: ‘I can't appear too confident, because if I do, he'll think I'm trying to conceal the fact that I'm Killer. Let's proceed slowly.’

“So, Night, can I really trust you?” the black unicorn asked.

Night moved towards the unicorn, pinning him between himself and a bed.

“If you can't trust me, who's left?”

The unicorn, known to his teammates only as M, smiled and seductively whispered to pegasus's ear: “Nopony else. Only with you I can catch Killer and make him pay for his crimes.”

Night smiled and gently laid M down on the bed. “I want him caught as much as you do,” while thinking to himself: ‘Just as planned.’

“This scene was heavily censored. I'm so happy I can see in in its whole glory!” exclaimed Luna.

“This version was expensive, but sure it's worth it,” replied Twilight.

“Shouldn't we wake Berry Punch up? She'll miss the best part.”

“Nah, it's her fault she got drunk too fast.”

“If you say so... Oh, look at his stallionhood!”

Two mares looked at the TV screen, trying not to blink, with their mouths drooling, and Celestia knows what else wet.

They suddenly heard a triple knock to the door. Twilight grabbed the remote with her magic, pressed ‘Pause’ button, and asked angrily:

“Who the hay can it be at this hour?”

She trotted upstairs, only to see Spike open the door, revealing a very tired white filly.

“Rarity's sister! What are you doing here?”

“Help!” Sweetie Belle tried to catch her breath. “You must hide me! Lyra Heartstring's a robot, she kidnapped me and locked in her basement.”

The librarian rolled her eyes.

“Riiiight, sure. Come in. We're watching Death Scroll downstairs, wanna join?”

“Hey, you told me I'm too young for this stuff, and now you're proposing it to her?” protested Spike.

“Spike, you're a straight male, you wouldn't like it,” she explained.

“Sure, a basement is fine. It's not like I spent last few weeks in one,” replied the filly.

Twilight, failing to understand Sweetie Belle's sarcasm, smiled and showed her the way. The little unicorn went downstairs, greeted Luna, and sat down next to her on the couch.

“Twilight, do you think it's okay for her to watch this stuff?” the alicorn asked with concern.

“Why not? She's a grown filly, she already got her horn.”

“But foals have horns from birth.”

Twilight didn't answer and smiled mischievously instead.

***

Two stallions stood next to each other, their necks joined by an iron chain. The crimson pegasus asked:

“Is this really required, M?”

The black unicorn answered:

“Yes, Night. I really want to prove you are not Killer, so I thought if we can't be separated, I can keep an eye on you all the time.”

“I'm glad you say so,” replied Night. “But isn't this chain too long?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you really want to keep an eye on me,” the pegasus drew near, “we should be really, really close.”

“Like friends? I...” The unicorn stumbled over his words. “I think you're my first real friend...”

“More than friends!” The pegasus nuzzled M's neck seductively. “Let me show you.”

Berry Punch was snoring in the corner. Twilight and Luna were watching this juicy scene without blinking, drooling heavily. Only Sweetie Belle sat quiet. She has already read all volumes of Death Scroll and the anime adaptation wasn't very interesting for her. The only novelty for her were THOSE scenes, but the filly was still to young to understand and appreciate them fully. The mares were enjoying themselves though.

Suddenly, a loud knock came to the library door. Twilight paused the video, groaning loudly:

“Who the hay is it now? Don't ponies see that the library is closed?”

Sweetie Belle reacted to the knocking, too. She exchanged looks with Luna, while putting her hoof to her mouth, and quickly hid in a closet that stood in the corner. Luna looked puzzled, but didn't say anything. Instead, she turned around to see what Twilight was doing.

The librarian opened the door and saw three little fillies.

“Good evening!” the fillies greeted her.

“Good evening, Applejack's sister, Rarity's sister, and... um... the third one! What are you doing here?”

While the orange pegasus filly kept pulling porcupine needles out of her wing, the yellow earth filly answered:

“We're crusadin' for our cutie marks, as always! We wanted to ask if ya know how to git a cutie mark related to jellyfish!”

Twilight stood dumbfounded for few seconds, and finally replied, smiling:

“I have no idea.”

“Okay, so we git goin'! G'bye!”

The fillies galloped away in direction of the Sweet Apple Acres. Twilight closed the door, turned around to return to the basement, when unexpectedly somepony else knocked. Annoyed vehemently, she opened the door and saw a white earth mare. She couldn't remember her name, but she remembered that that mare once kept watering the same patch of flowers for three hours straight.

“Uhm, hello? Have you seen a white unicorn filly?”

“Sure, she went that way.” Twilight pointed her hoof in the direction where Cutie Mark Crusaders went. The mare thanked her and galloped away. The unicorn closed the door and sighed with relief. Then it suddenly struck her.

Was Rarity's sister watching Death Scroll downstairs with them, or was crusading outside with those two fillies?

‘Twilight, you're getting crazy! It's all Berry Punch's fault! You shouldn't drink so much, it's her bad influence.’

She trotted to the bathroom to refresh herself. She leaned forward, supporting her forehooves on the sink, and glared into the mirror. She saw a drunken and tired mare, with eyes red from watching TV. She shook her head and washed her face with cold water. It helped: she instantly felt better.

When she returned, Luna said to her:

“The filly came out of the closet!”

“Oh, I didn't know. If she prefers fillies—”

“I'm not talking about—”

“I should've shown her some yuri anime. I think I still have all four seasons of Celestia-sama ga Miteiru. Do you think she'll like it?”

“Cele-mite? I'm not sure... Maybe we should check it out first, I've heard a lot of good things about that series.”

“Yeah, we totally should check it if it's suitable. Next week?”

“Deal. But we need to finish Death Scroll first. Press play, I can't wait to see what happens next!”

“When I think about it, it would be pretty weird if somepony from the street just came in here now and saw the video paused on an hoof-drawn, fully erect–”

“Press play already!”

***

The lone unicorn filly ran through Ponyville, looking for next safe place to hide from her captors. She suddenly saw light in one of the buildings. She slowly approached it and heard a joyful polka coming from the building. She knocked four times.

***

“Jellyfish taming!”

“Jellyfish catching!”

“Jellyfish breedin'!”

Three young fillies, strolling in the night on the streets of Ponyville, were discussing what were they going to do next morning. They walked towards the Sweet Apple Acres, where one of them lived. When they reached farm's gate, they stopped to exchange their last words tonight.

“So we still have no idea what to do with jellyfish?” asked the pegasus.

“Jellyfish cutie mark: not found,” added the unicorn.

“If not jellyfish, then Ah think we can come up with some good idea tomorrow.” the earth filly suggested.

“I hope it will be a better idea than today's,” burst the pegasus.

“It's not mah fault! If ya could fly, ya wouldn't have any problems with those porcupines!” protested the earth filly.

“Oh yeah? If you're so smart, we didn't you try for herself?”

“Ah didn't because Ah didn't want to git mah ribbon dirty! Mah sister would've killed me if Ah destroyed mah ribbon!”

“Oh, so you're scared of your sister?”

“No, Ah'm not!”

“Yes, you are!”

“No, Ah'm not!”

“Yes, you– Wait... where's Sweetie Belle?”

The fillies looked around, only to see that there were only two left of them. In the distance, they could see a sillhouette of a running mare, carrying something on her back.

***

Pinkie Pie opened the door and saw a unicorn filly standing outside.

“Hello, kid! You're one of Apple Bloom's friends, aren't you?”

“Miss Pinkie, you need to help me! Robots want to kidnap me!”

Pinkie drew closer to Sweetie Belle and looked deep into her eyes.

“That's what a robot would say.”

Sweetie Belle protested:

“I'm not a robot! The other me is a robot!”

“That's even more like something a robot would say.”

Sweetie Belle went silent. Pinkie Pie noticed this and cheerfully invited the filly inside.

“Don't worry, kid, everypony was accused of being a robot at least once. Or a gypsy. It's no big deal. Come in.”

The unicorn filly entered the bakery and noticed it was dark inside. The only source of light happened to be in a room in the back. Pinkie Pie trotted slowly to the light, stopping once or twice to check if Sweetie Belle followed her. She indeed walked slowly behind her. The pink mare opened the door, blinding the filly with the light. When her eyes got accustomed to new conditions, Sweetie Belle saw a crib with two babies.

“Aww, babies! Are they yours?” she asked.

“Nope!” answered Pinkie. “I'm theirs.”

Sweetie Belle froze in shock. Did she understood it right?

“Wait, are you saying...”

“Yep, they're my parents.” Pinkie turned to face the foals. “Aren't they cute?”

She turned back to see how Sweetie Belle would respond, but the filly was nowhere in sight.

“This again... Everypony whom I tell about my parents runs away. Why would they do that?”

***

“I got her!” Bon-Bon yelled from the doorstep.

Lyra paused the game she was playing, got off the couch and trotted towards the door to see the results of Bon-Bon's search. She saw her henchpony carrying a white unicorn filly on her back. The filly suddenly said:

“Hi Lyra!”

*SMACK!*

“Hey, what for?” asked Bon-Bon, massaging the place of her head where Lyra hit her.

“That's the wrong Sweetie Belle, you idiot!”

“What?”

“Put her down!”

Bon-Bon took the load from her back, put the load onto the hooves and said:

“Oopsie, auntie Bon-Bon took you for somepony else.”

The robotic filly smiled and said “No problem detected.” Then she galloped away into the darkness of the night.

The white mare watched her disappear and then turned to her boss:

“She looked exactly as the one who escaped!”

“That's the point!” Lyra yelled. “They need to look identical! Now there's two Sweetie Belles running around the town and I see that we can't hope we catch the real one soon.” She pointed her hoof at Bon-Bon. “We're waiting till morning and let's hope nopony notices that and starts asking questions.”

***

Twilight couldn't stop asking herself questions.

Did she really see a second Sweetie Belle, or was she just drunk?

Currently playing was a juicy scene that was totally cut off from the censored version of Death Scroll. But Twilight couldn't enjoy it, her mind was busy trying to understand the situation.

If she knew that she would wake up next day with a hangover and decide that this whole double filly conundrum was an alcohol-caused delirium, she would fully enjoy seeing two main male characters doing each other.

***

“All the ponies in this town are CRAZY!” Sweetie Belle said to herself, hiding in bushes near the Carousel Boutique.

After she confirmed that the robot doppelganger wasn't home, she decided that the best choice now it to get help from her own sister. She knew her sister hated her and wouldn't ever participate together in a family contest, but she had no other choice. She took a huge breath, closed her eyes, and slowly trotted towards the door. She raised her hoof and knocked five times.

She heard 10 knocks.

She opened her eyes and looked to the right.

Other she also opened her eyes and looked to the left.

““What are you doing here?!”” both Sweetie Belles shouted.

The door opened, revealing Rarity. She had bags under her eyes and stank of alcohol.

“Oh Shmooze, I'm sheeing double. I musht be drunk.”

““She's a robot!”” both fillies pointed hooves at each other.

“There'sh nope-pony elshe there, darling. Come inshide, it'sh cold...”

The fillies walked inside, keeping their gazes fixated on each other.

“Now go to bed.” Rarity ordered. “I'm gonna go shoon, too, jusht one more gulp.”

Sweetie Belles walked to the bedroom, and Rarity trotted to the kitchen, where her last bottle was.

The fillies stopped in front of bed and looked at each other.

“I'm not sleeping with you,” one of them yelled.

“Of course you're not, that's my bed and you go out,” the other responded.

“No, it's my bed and you go out.”

“I'm not leaving.”

“Nor do I.”

After a moment of silence both fillies jumped to the bed, crashing in midair.

“Move aside, you're taking too much space.” said one of them, pushing another with her flank.

“I'm on my own half. It's you who's taking too much space.” replied the second one.

“I'm not! And share the blanket!” The first one grabbed the blanket with her hooves and started trying to pull it out of the second one's grasp.

“Stop pulling, you'll rip it apart!”

Both fillies suddenly calmed down.

“Okay, I'm gonna sleep now. Just don't try to kill me in my sleep,” the first one said.

“I won't!” objected the second one. “It's not me who's a rampaging murderous robot.”

“Hey, I'm not! That's you who's a robot!”

“Stop it! And don't try to kill me because you think I'm a robot – which I'm not!”

“So we both won't try to kill each other tonight for any reason whatsoever. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Both fillies shook hooves and instantly fell asleep.

***

Both fillies woke up at the exact same moment.

‘‘She didn't kill me,’’ both of them thought. ‘‘It means she knew that killing me would lead to her being revealed as a robot. If she did kill me, autopsy would've proven that I'm a biological being. She's not that stupid.’’

Then suddenly both of them realized: ‘‘I'm so stupid! If I had killed her last night, not only I would've proven I'm a real one, I would've also got rid of that robot once and forever!’’

They turned around and looked angrily into each other's eyes. Suddenly, Rarity's coarse voice could be heard from her bedroom:

“Sweetie Belle, make me a breakfast...”

““I'm coming!”” they answered.

The fillies ran to the Rarity's bedroom and presented themselves before her.

““What would you like?””

“Oh Smooze...” Rarity rolled her aching eyes. “Not only I've already got a hangover, but also I'm still drunk.”

***

“Honestly, I swear to the Evil Robot Overlord, why did you keep insisting we use your method of choice, why did I agree, and why the hay did you choose that?”

Lyra couldn't contain her anger. She was currently sitting hidden in bushes near the Carousel Boutique, holding a piece of red yarn with her magic. Bon-Bon was with her, observing their surrounding. It was morning and soon foals would start going to school.

“Well, that's the only method I knew,” the white mare answered. “And I know it works.”

The other end of yarn was tied to a stick, supporting one side of a huge cardboard box. Under the box there was a pile of candy, and next to it there stood a sign, saying “Free kandy”.

“It worked once,” the robot unicorn corrected. “And do you really think she's so stupid she'd fall for the same trick twice?”

“I would.”

Lyra sighed heavily. She had already lost all her hope about Bon-Bon's usefulness.

“Oh, they're coming!” the white mare exclaimed.

“They?”

Lyra took a peek. She saw two white unicorn fillies walking next to each other. The fillies didn't look as if they were in good mood, it looked rather that they would kill each other if an opportunity presented itself. Suddenly, they saw the candy and stopped.

‘It's like on that day,’ the real Sweetie Belle thought to herself. ‘But it's safe to assume that Lyra wouldn't be so stupid as to use the same trick twice. It has to be somepony else. This time, I'm really gonna steal that candy.’

The robot filly thought: ‘Wait, it looks like somepony wants to prank me. It's the same trick they had on My Little Human few weeks ago. They are not too creative. But I'm not dumb! I'm gonna take the candy and run away!’

In the exact same moment, both fillies launched themselves forward and galloped towards the candy pile. The yarn was pulled, the box fell down, and the fillies were trapped.

“Dammit!” one of them yelled from inside the box.

***

Lyra was walking in circles in the basement. The door was locked. Bon-Bon was sitting on the floor next to two Sweetie Belles.

“Okay, Bon-Bon,” the green unicorn started. “We've got two fillies here. Imagine I'm absent. You must now determine which of them is a robot, so you know which one to set free.”

“Oh, that'll be simple!” Bon-Bon replied. She stood up, walked in front of the fillies like a sergeant in front of recruits, and asked.

“Which one of you is a robot?”

The real Sweetie Belle, trying to seize the opportunity, yelled: “I am!”

“Aha! I knew it!” the robotic filly exclaimed with joy.

Bon-Bon smiled and happily said to the real Sweetie Belle:

“Okay, so you may–” *SMACK* “Ouch! For what?”

“What the hay is that supposed to mean?” Lyra shouted angrily.

“I tried to find out which one is a robot! I don't know any other way!”

The green mare sighed: “Who must I work with? Take this one,” she pointed at the robotic filly, “and release free. Quick!”

Bon-Bon took a key to the door and led the fake Sweetie Belle outside. When they reached a safe distance, Lyra asked the real one:

“How many ponies saw you both?”

“Only my sister, but she was drunk, I swear! Please don't kill her!”

“You're lucky that she's the only reason I bother with this plan.”

Moment later, Bon-Bon returned downstairs, without company of the robot filly.

“What did I miss?” she asked.

The only answer she got was silence and Lyra's condescending gaze. She tried another question:

“Both those fillies look identical. How can you so quickly discern which one is real and which one is a robot?”

Lyra sighed: “For a robot like me, it's simple. The real one doesn't have a wi-fi.”

***

Sweetie Belle was sitting in her cage again, this time in a more durable model. She was perusing volumes of comics she had already read several times. Suddenly, she heard a loud noise. She turned around and saw Bon-Bon carrying a small TV set. Before she could think up a question, the mare put the TV in front of the cage, plugged the cables, and went back upstairs. She returned again, this time carrying a bag. She put the bag on the floor and said:

“You were complaining about lack of entertainment, so I went to the library to look for something interesting. I got here something. I haven't watched it yet, so I'll watch it with you.” She put a disc into a player. “It's Death Scroll, the complete uncensored edition.”

SWEETIE BELLE SYNCHRONIZATION PROGRAM

“You know what am I going to do tonight? The same thing I'm going to do every night since today, Whooves: trying to stay sane in this crazy town.”

Engineer Whooves was talking to himself to keep his mind occupied in the dark interior of his new flat in Ponyville. He moved there literally one day earlier and now he strongly regretted his decision. He never liked Ponyville – when he was visiting a month or two ago, he noticed it was impossible to get any soyburgers. He was Amareican, he won't switch to apples.

But he had no other choice. The only free post for a municipal hourglass operator was here and he could not dream about getting job in any other town. Crisis, the government said. Whooves sometimes wondered if the Occupy Canterlot movement was right. Could ponies, whose main slogan ‘We're the 99.99%!’ was all about racial prejudice against alicorn minority, be right in their economic postulates?

‘It's not time for that, Whooves,’ he decided and slapped himself in the face. ‘I need to stay focused.’

There was a reason he was staying inside his flat, with curtains pulled and door barricaded. The reason was chasing him for hours and Whooves was relieved he managed to escape his foe and hide in the only safe place he could think of.

But let's start the story from the very beginning.

***

A small, dirty flat on the 13th floor of a skyscraper in the middle of Amareica City. Several empty bottles of sake lay on the floor. A lone drunken stallion was snoring on a couch. Since he lost his last job, he chose to spend his all life savings on booze. While he sent applications for hourglass operator position to many towns and villages in Equestria, none has responded. Initially, he hoped to get job in Fillydelphia or Manehattan, but after they didn't respond for weeks, he desperately decided to try other places. Still, no response. He even went so far as going to some towns and personally handing his application to mayors, hoping it would improve his chances. All of them declined.

The stallion groaned. Sunlight shone through the window directly onto his face. He couldn't stand the light, so he got up to pull the blinds. He looked around, only to see he was out of drink. He rolled his bloodshot eyes, grabbed a bag and went outside, down the staircase to the shop.

On his way back, he instinctively checked his mailbox. There was a pink envelope inside. ‘Cool, more bills,’ he thought to himself and got back to his flat.

The first thing he did after locking the door was opening the letter. His eyes hurt; he wished he had an assistant to read letters aloud. To his surprise, this one wasn't a bill:

Dear Engineer Whooves,

I'd like to inform you that our previous hourglass operator quit her job to pursue a carrier in dentistry. We would be very thankful if you decided to take her post. I took a liberty of arranging everything. As for your accommodation, ask Miss Carrot Top at the Sweet Carrot Acres. I expect you soon.

— Ivory Scroll, Mayor of Ponyville

Whooves scratched his head. If he was to get out of his misery, he should try every opportunity that presented itself before him. This was one of them. He smiled. ‘It's time to celebrate,’ he thought and opened one of the freshly bought bottles.

***

The train trip was uneventful and Engineer Whooves managed to get to Ponyville and later the Sweet Carrot Acres without any unnecessary adventures. The owner of the farm turned out to be a rather pretty orange mare. Unfortunately, she said that something came up and offered Whooves another place to stay: just above her friend's flower shop. The flower shop owner's name was Roseluck. She was pretty, too, with her scarlet mane, but it turned out she was engaged.

Whooves spent his first afternoon on unpacking. When he was done, he went downstairs to visit her landmare. It turned out that she was being visited by her two friends and suppliers, so his time went pretty quick in a pleasant atmosphere.

***

The next day started beautifully. Engineer Whooves woke up without hangover. It was a weird feeling: not drinking for over 24 hours. For breakfast, he ate leftovers from his trip to Ponyville. He'd buy some fresh stuff later. He went downstairs, greeted Roseluck, trotted to the streets towards the main square... and didn't know which way to go next.

“So, where's the damn town hall in this town?” he asked himself. His memories from his last visit in Ponyville were fuzzy, he visited too many other towns in the meantime to remember them all. “I know, I'll ask some locals,” he decided.

Whooves trotted to a green unicorn mare, who had just passed him.

“Excuse me...”

The mare turned around, saw Whooves and galloped away after releasing a loud shocked gasp.

“Well, that was one accurate answer.”

Anypony could hit the town's weirdo on the first try, couldn't they?

He tried again, this time it was a grey pegasus mare who was leaving her house.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted her, “I'm Engineer Whooves and–”

“Hi, it's a pleasure to meet you,” the mare interrupted him immediately. “My name is Derpy Hooves, and we from the Hooves family should keep together!”

Whooves tried to fix the misunderstanding: “Family? Actually, my name is spelled–”

“So what can I do for my long lost cousin?”

“Ekhm... Well, my name is spelled with W-H, not H, so I doubt we're family. It's a given name, not a family name. What I wanted to ask–”

The expression of Derpy's face changed.

“Oh, I'm so sorry, Mister Whooves. Please, please accept my apology muffin!” A muffin appeared from nowhere in her hooves.

“Muffin? Sorry, but I have no time–” Whooves tried to avoid this, but he couldn't resist the cute mare's stare. “Fine.”

“Hurray!”

The mare led him inside and showed a tray with many different kinds of muffins.

“So this here's an apple muffin, chocolate muffin, cherry muffin, carrot muffin, almond muffin, blueberry muffin, and–” she pointed at the cyan-colored pastries, “these are my favorites: rainbowy muffins!”

Before he could react, a cyan muffin landed in his muzzle, inserted by the talkative mare's hoof.

***

“Bon-Bon, we have a problem!” Lyra shouted as soon as she entered the house.

“What is it this time?” Bon-Bon's voice came from the basement.

Lyra trotted downstairs and said with muffled voice:

“It's the robot police.”

“So cops are robots too?” asked the white mare.

“No!” shouted her boss. “I saw him! It was the same stallion I saw in Cloudsdale. He was a pegasus then, he's an earth pony now, but it's him! He's tailing me!”

“Wait, you were in Cloudsdale? But you're not a pegasus.”

“Anti-gravity generator.”

“Oh.”

“So, where was I?” Lyra tried to get back on track. “We need to hide evidence. Now. I've already sent an order for robotic Sweetie Belle to come here, we'll hide her in the lair with everything else. Now get moving!”

Bon-Bon put down a yaoi anthology she was reading and reluctantly got up from the coach. Lyra entered a secret passcode to the secret door to the secret lair into a secret panel. The door opened, revealing an ominously looking conference room. The white mare started moving the equipment to the room. A minute later, a knock could be heard upstairs. Lyra trotted there, looked through the peephole and let the white robot in. She immediately locked the door afterwards.

Mares moved all illegal items in over an hour. Robotic Sweetie Belle didn't help them, preferring to argue with the biological one about which one was real.

When all the stuff was moved, Lyra locked the door between basement and ground level and opened the cage.

“We need to take you downstairs for a moment,” the green robot explained.

“And what if I don't want to?” the filly rebelled, but Lyra only sighed.

“It's three against one. Are you sure?”

Sweetie Belle looked at her opponents.

“Two robots and a pony. I give up.”

“Hey!” the doppelganger shouted. “Now you're calling not only me a robot, but also Bon-Bon?”

“I'm a robot?” asked surprised Bon-Bon.

“Everypony downstairs!”

Nopony dared to disagree with angry Lyra, so the three white ponies walked downstairs. The green unicorn followed them and ordered:

“Bon-Bon, strap the one I've released to the chair.”

Bon-Bon looked around in confusion.

“Which one?”

“Sweet robot tits, not this again,” Lyra facehoofed. “Both!”

***

It took a while, but after a fight both fillies were strapped to chairs in Lyra's secret lair. Bon-Bon was covered in bruises and earned a black eye. Lyra was in better shape, mainly due to her robotic body, but she still lost lot of hair.

“So what now?” asked the white mare.

“System suspend,” said Lyra. One of the fillies froze motionless. “I'm going to synchronize their memories.”

“Cool. I'm hungry. I think I'm gonna grab something.”

Bon-Bon trotted upstairs. Lyra put a brain scanning helmet onto the real Sweetie Belle and connected it with a cable with the socket on the back of the fake one's head.

“Synchronize memories.”

The robotic filly asked: “Synchronizing memories will overwrite data in the target brain device and alter data on this brain device. Do you wish to continue?”

“No!” shouted Sweetie Belle.

Lyra smiled: “Foolish filly. The robot is programmed to recognize the voice of the pony who configured the operating system. Yes.”

“Work in progress: 0%.”

Sweetie Belle started screaming in pain. Her body twitched spasmodically, but she was firmly secured. Lyra sat down and observed the process.

“Work in progress: 20%.”

Equine neural tissue was an adequate medium for reading data, but it was awfully slow to write. The process was taking a long time. And all the screaming was certainly stressful for filly's lungs.

“Work in progress: 40%.”

Lyra smiled. Everything was going according to her backup plan. She would release the biological filly with altered memories, hide in her lair under the basement and pretend nothing happened. In the worst case scenario, the robot police would capture Bon-Bon, deem her mentally unstable and lock her somewhere where she wouldn't be able to mess with Lyra's pla–

“Error while writing to the device: connection lost.” Biological Sweetie Belle yelled louder than earlier and jerked in the chair, breaking her restraints.

“What?” shouted Lyra in surprise. She turned around, only to see Bon-Bon chewing the connection cable?

“What are you doing?”

“I was hungry (Rebooting system...) and the door upstairs was closed, (Huh? What happened? What's that helmet? My head hurts...) so I came back (Uhm.. hey, why am I strapped to a chair? Anypony?) and tried to find something to eat here. (Here, I'll untie you. What's that black string in your mane?) I really, really looked, but I couldn't find anything in the basement, (Thanks. Let's run away, before the robots come back.) so I came here to ask you for the key, (Good idea. Hey, Bon-Bon, Lyra, we're running away! Come with us.) but I saw you're busy and didn't want to interrupt you... (Let's not wait for them. They're adults, they'll manage to fend those robots off by themselves. Look, a key!) And as I said, I was really hungry... I'm sorry.”

Lyra sighed: “The key was on the table the whole time. See?” She turned around and pointed at the table, only to see that the key was gone. She turned around again and noticed that the fillies were gone, too. She galloped upstairs, noticing all the doors wide open, and went outside. Both Sweetie Belles were gone.

***

“I'm full...”

The table inside Derpy's house was covered with crumbles. Engineer Whooves sat in the chair, his stomach full of delicious baking goods.

“But I still have muffins...” the host insisted, carrying a tray with more muffins.

“No, thanks. Instead of muffins, could you tell me where the town hall is?”

Derpy smiled, turned her head, and looked in the correct direction: “Sure! It's that way.” She obviously couldn't use her hooves, because she was holding the tray.

But which direction was it, when her eyes both pointed in different directions? Whooves didn't know how to solve this problem in a polite and politically correct way, so he just pretended to be content with the answer.

“...Thanks,” he said and left the building.

***

Rarity was swinging her saber in the middle of the Carousel Boutique, practicing her fencing skills.

“I told her many times: no reproduction before middle school. She didn't listen. Now her coltfriend's gonna pay. It will be a lesson for her.”

Suddenly, the door to the Boutique swung open. Rarity recognized her sister's voice.

“–and after that we should–”

“Hello, Sweetie Belle!” Rarity said.

Two identical fillies, who just entered the building, froze in shock. So did the mare.

“Wait, who is she?” whispered one filly to the other.

“I don't know.” the other answered.

“I– I can hear you. It's me, your sister Rarity. And I'm definitely sober today, aren't I?”

The fillies were unconvinced.

“She says she's my sister, but I have only one sister, and that's you.”

“I think she might be a robotic doppelganger designed to swap places with one of us.”

“She's not even similar. She's a unicorn and she's white, but she's too big, her mane has weird color, and her voice is annoying.”

“I really like her mane, but agreed, something fishy's going on here. Do you remember the robot that kidnapped us?”

“Now I remember! It looked like a unicorn, I can't recall the coat color though.”

“Girl...s? You're not alone,” Rarity interjected, “would you please explain to me... everything?”

“She's gonna attack us.”

“She's armed.”

“Let's flee. Now!”

The fillies ran outside and split ways just behind the doorstep.

For the next few minutes, Rarity stared blankly at the door. After she regained her composure, she said to herself: “When I said ‘no reproduction’, I meant ‘no reproduction’. And mitosis is a reproduction...”

***

Engineer Whooves induced vomiting in a back alley. As soon as he emptied his stomach from excess muffins and trotted back to the main street, some small white unicorn filly crashed into him and pushed him into a muddy puddle.

“Ouch! Hey, kid, watch out!”

“I'm sorry, sir!” she apologized.

Whooves looked down at his dirty hind legs. “Sorry won't cut it. Why are you running so fast, it's dangerous!”

“Please, sir, you have to help me!”

“Let me guess. You're running away from your robot captors.”

“Yes! How did you know that?” the filly exclaimed enthusiastically.

“I heard that story from so many fillies before. I'm Engineer Whooves and I'm to smart to fall for that. All you want is to use your fake kidnapping story to extort money from me.”

“Hey, I really was kidnapped by robots!”

Whooves smiled: “Prove it.”

“I... I can't,” she hung her head down and turned around to walk away.

“Get lost, kid!” he yelled after her.

Deep in his heart, Whooves felt a little satisfaction from getting rid of yet another scam artist in ten seconds flat.

***

Rarity trotted through Ponyville to the only pony who could possibly know an answer to her difficult question. She walked past the library, because the perverted geek was not the right pony. She walked past Applejack's market stand, because the barbaric farmer was also not the right pony. She walked past the Sugarcube Corner, because the gypsy witch was also not the right pony. She walked past Rainbow Dash's napping cloud, because the shortsighted simpleton was definitely not the right pony. She walked past Fluttershy's hut, because even the Great Leader was not the right pony for this kind of question.

Her question required a deep knowledge. A deep knowledge that only the most experienced witch doctors could possess.

She arrived at a tiny hut in the middle of the forest and knocked few times to the door. The door opened, revealing Zecora. Well, somepony would say that Zecora wasn't the right pony either, because she was a zebra, but hey, that'd be racist.

“Hello, worshiper of Smooze.
Can I be to some use?”
– the zebra asked.

“I have a question,” Rarity went straight to the topic. “What do you know about pony mitosis?”

“What?”

***

Engineer Whooves trotted from Derpy's house in a random direction. The buildings looked familiar, as if he had seen them earlier, but he still couldn't remember where Ponyville's town hall was.

During his stroll, he saw a large tree adapted into a building. It piqued his interest, so he decided to enter. He knocked to the door, waited few seconds and when he didn't receive an answer, he peeked inside.

“Library. Quite nice. Hello?”

He saw a purple unicorn mare standing at the desk and writing something with a quill held by her magic.

“Just a moment, please! I'm in the zone!” she said, without turning around. “Oh, yes! Hinting homosexual feelings always does the trick, doesn't it? Why Twilight, you are a talent.” She put a full stop on the sheet and finally looked at her visitor, who in the meantime decided to enter the library and currently stood in the middle. “Now, how can I help– Omigosh, a Timelord! And I thought it was just a TV series! Where did you park your Tardis? Hey, wait...”

The stallion was gone. Twilight shook her head and sighed.

“Did he thought I was serious?”

She always did the same practical joke on everypony with hourglass cutie mark. Last time, it was Minuette, the hourglass operator. She took it much better though, probably because she also had a foalish crush on that young actor playing the Doctor. The stallion looked almost exactly like the actor. He and Twilight could role-play in bed...

Twilight shook her head again to cast off these thoughts. She had a chapter to write and she knew exactly what new character she could add to the story.

***

“So you say your sister split in two?
My sister did it one time, too!”

Zecora prepared some herbal tea with rum and served it to Rarity. They both were sitting at a wooden table next to hut's wall. Rarity sighed and answered:

“Yes. I'm not sure when she did it, but now I have two of them. Wait, you sister did mitosis, too?”

The zebra nodded:

“There's an old zebra saying:
You should kill her without saying.”

“But she's my sister!” the unicorn protested.

The zebra retorted:

“How many sisters do you have? One or two.”

“One. At least I should have one.”

“So get rid of the excess one. This is what zebras and ponies always do when a foal divides. Oh, I forgot to rhyme.”

“Please don't bother.”

Rarity took another sip from her cup. Zecora continued:

“You've been cursed by gods, still
you much choose one foal to kill.
Both alive will cause more chaos,
so... chaos... chaos... damn! Kill one! Everyzebra who left both foals alive didn't end up well.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rarity. Zecora leaned forward and explained.

***

“Bon-Bon, we have two problems.”

Lyra was walking in circles in her underground lair. She was accompanied by Bon-Bon, who was currently playing with the equipment they had stored there.

“Wow, we always had only one,” she say, without averting her gaze from the electronic device she fiddled with.

“Put it away and focus! We've got a robot police officer in town and our robot decoy is running wild in the streets!”

“So what are we gonna do?”

Lyra sighed and explained:

“We? What we? I'm not leaving this room until he's gone. It's you who needs to go out to fulfill the mission.”

“What mission?” Bon-Bon got excited. “I love missions! I'm gonna be a secret agent! My name is Bon. Bon-Bon.”

“Shut up.”

Bon-Bon stopped talking.

“Listen, moron, all you need to do is to find out where he lives, hide there, wait for him and then kill him.”

“Easy-peasy!” Bon-Bon laughed. “Give me a blaster and I'll finish him in not time.”

“I have no blasters.”

“Grenade launcher?”

“Nope.”

“Lightsaber?”

“Oh come on, what next? A moon sized battle station? Be serious.” Lyra walked to the pile of equipment and started rummaging. After a moment she pulled out her weapon of choice.

“A machete?” Bon-Bon was disappointed.

“Yes. Take it and go.”

The white mare grabbed the weapon with her teeth and took a full swing to test it out. If Lyra hadn't jumped away, she'd have lost her head already.

“Hey, watch where you're swinging!”

“Thorry. Ah'll ve kirrhull.”

With the weapon in her muzzle, Bon-Bon left the house. Lyra watched her leave and locked all the doors afterwards.

***

Engineer Whooves was trotting in his search for Ponyville town hall, when a small white unicorn filly bumped into him.

“Hey, it's you again!”

The filly asked: “Who? Me?”

“Yes, you. Don't pretend you don't remember.”

“Um, sir, you might have seen my sister.”

“A sister?” Whooves smirked. “That's new one. Let me guess: you also were kidnapped by robots?”

“How did you know?” the unicorn was surprised.

“I know you're trying to trick people, that's how,” he said angrily. “Unless you can prove it, which I doubt.”

“I can!”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, there's the robot!”

Whooves turned in the direction the filly was pointing in. He saw a stunningly beautiful unicorn mare. She was carrying a sword of some sorts in a sheath studded with gems. She looked worried and deep in thoughts. The stallion smiled: “Thanks kid, I forgive you that you wanted to trick me.”

He cantered towards the mare. When he caught up to her, he greeted her: “Hello.”

The mare yelped, jumped around and grabbed the handle of her saber with her magic, preparing to unsheathe it if required.

“Oh my, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you. I'm just here to clarify something.” He paused for a moment. “I'm Engineer Whooves.” The mare didn't react immediately, so he continued: “What's your name?”

The mare said something quietly. Whooves shook his head and walked one step closer: “Didn't quite catch that.”

“I'm Rarity,” the mare said, this time audibly. Anguish and despair could be heard in her voice. Whooves could swore he saw a tear forming in the corner of her eye.

“Well, um, it looks like I shouldn't take more of your time. See you later!”

He turned around and trotted back to the filly: “Well, that was easy. She's doesn't look like a robot.”

He couldn't see that, but Rarity's face expression instantly turned into that of anger: “Sweetie Belle!”

The mare jolted to them in a second.

“Sweetie Belle, who is he?” she yelled. ‘It must have been some older stallion, an adult.’ Twilight's words resonated in her head.

“I don't know, I've never seen him before.”

“Actually,” he corrected, “I've met her earlier today.”

“Aha! So you lied to me!” the mare pointed her hoof at Sweetie Belle. “I said to you: no reproduction before middle school!”

“Wait, is it going where I think it is going?” Whooves asked, but nopony listened to him. Rarity pulled out her sword.

Whooves whole life flashed before his eyes. Before his instincts took over, in the last conscious decision he decided to run. Run as fast as he could.

The furious mare followed him.

***

After a fairly long chase, Engineer Whooves found the street leading to Roseluck's flower shop. He galloped upstairs without paying any attention to the shocked flower mare. He locked the door, moved a wardrobe to support the door, pulled the curtains and started walking in circles.

“You know what am I going to do tonight? The same thing I'm going to do every night since today, Whooves: trying to stay sane in this crazy town.”

He knew he'd go crazy if he'd not occupy his mind with something, so he chose the safest and cheapest thing: talking to himself. He'd been doing it for few minutes, when he heard a loud thud. The wardrobe wobbled.

“Come out, you pedophile!” loud scream came from the other side of the door.

“I'm not a pedophile, I've never seen that filly before!”

“Liar!”

Some powerful force was ramming at the door. The boards started cracking. The wardrobe moved.

“Sorry, Whooves,” he whispered to himself, “but you have to convince her that you didn't touch that filly, and you're running out of time! I just need this to end so I can assume the position of local hourglass operator without a bunch of crazy ponies trying to kill me all the time. Now, where's the light?”

The stallion looked around to locate a light switch, but before he managed to do that, bathroom door swung open, the light was turned on and he saw a white earth mare wielding a machete.

“Thurfrahse!” she shouted.

Whooves tried to back up from the new attacker, when the wardrobe toppled over and the main door burst into pieces. On the doorstep there was the unicorn mare, her horn was glowing brightly.

“Kill!” the unicorn breathed heavily.

“Crush!” the earth mare said through her teeth, clenched on the handle.

“Destroy!” the unicorn took a step forward.

“Aaah!”

Whooves yelled and started to panic. He frantically looked around, but there was no way to escape. The windows were locked and it would take forever to open them. If only he had some device that could take him away from here...

Suddenly, the air in the middle of the room started bending light in a weird way, releasing a wibbly-wobbly sound. All three ponies froze in bewilderment. The unicorn immediately recognized the sound of interdimensional portal.

Suddenly, with a flash of bright light, a large, tall blue box appeared in the middle of the room. A song, sung by a male voice, was coming from inside:

I'll fix up a solution with a box that I have done
They say a workshop time saves nine, but I'm just saving one
I'll gather me machine parts to make my time device
I'm fed up with those people, there's no chance I'm playing nice

The door to the box opened, revealing a brown earth stallion. He looked around, smiled to the mares, grabbed Whooves and towed him inside, singing all the time:

Watch as I work up my gypsy science
Titanium screws and copper wires
Watch how I make a time paradox
Open the box door, jump in!

He closed the door and the box disappeared with the same kind of bright light. The mares dropped their weapons in shock. After a moment, one of them broke the silence:

“Wasn't that song in that My Little Human fanfiction, where Weird Al built a time machine in his hardware store?” Bon-Bon asked.

Rarity looked at her with disgust:

“You watch a show for little fillies?”

Bon-Bon quickly covered her mouth with her hooves: “Oops, I said it! Please don't tell anypony!”

“Don't worry,” Rarity giggled. “I watch it, too. When my sister is watching it, I pretend I'm doing something different behind her back, but in fact I keep staring at the screen. I also watch reruns.”

Bon-Bon's face brightened:

“Brohand?”

“Brohand!”

The mares bumped their hooves.

“But still please don't tell anypony,” the earth mare asked again.

“Okay, but neither should you,” agreed the unicorn.

Bon-Bon moved closer to Rarity and whispered:

“Schumacher×de Grasse Tyson?”

Rarity shook her head:

“Schumacher×Attenborough. Sorry.”

“What? But Attenborough is straight!” protested Bon-Bon.

“So are Schumacher and Tyson,” answered Rarity. “Do you think that because Tyson is a bookworm, he's so desperate he'll develop romantic feelings to any of his friend, regardless of their gender? Or Schumacher: if somehuman wears tight red bodysuits and drives red vehicles, it doesn't make him gay, does it?”

“Yeah, you're probably right,” nodded Bon-Bon. After a while, she added: “Don't you sometimes think that we take a foal cartoon way too seriously?”

Rarity stopped for a moment to think.

“Nah,” she finally answered.

***

The interior of the box was unexpectedly larger that the outside. Engineer Whooves look around and finally rested his gaze at his savior. The other stallion looked almost identical to him, but a little older, he even had the same cutie mark.

“Who are you?”

“The stallion answered: “I'm the Doctor.”

“Doctor who?”

“Just the Doctor.”

After a moment of silence, the owner of the box laughed: “I've always wanted to do this. Now seriously: I'm you. From the future.”

The younger stallion said, as if asking for confirmation: “You're Engineer Whooves from the future.”

“Yes. And actually, I'm a real doctor now. I went to college again to get my PhD.”

“A PhD? How? I can't do it, I'm too stupid.”

Doctor Whooves smiled: “When I was your age, I was saying the same thing. I'm sure of it, I've just heard myself.” He giggled. “Now, I must show you something.”

The stallions trotted to a coffer standing opposite to the door. The elder one opened it and took out a large notebook.

“Here. All questions from all exams you're gonna have during the grad studies.”

***

Two unicorn fillies trotted towards the Carousel Boutique from different directions. They went inside and hugged:

“I'm so glad you're okay, sister. Did you get any help?”

“No, I've met one stallion who looked strong, but he didn't want to help me.”

“Yeah, me too. I only hope Lyra and Bon-Bon are okay.”

“I hope they escaped before the robot came back. But we must fight without them.”

“Yeah!” one of the fillies released the other from her forelegs. “Sweetie & Belle!”

“Flesh & Blood!”

“Wild spirits!”

“Gifted by Mother Nature!”

““Yeah!””

The fillies jumped and clapped each other forehooves together. They were shouting loud enough to not notice the first knock to the door.

In front of the Carousel Boutique, two other fillies waited for the door to open.

“How do ya think, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle's home?” asked Apple Bloom.

“I don't know,” Scootaloo replied. “I don't know why she left in the middle of the class in the first place.”

Apple Bloom knocked again. After a moment, which Scootaloo spent on flexing her tiny wing muscles, a door opened, revealing Sweetie Belle.

Or actually Sweetie Belles. Both of them.

“Haha! Sweetie Belle has been doubled!” exclaimed the pegasus.

“Sweetie Belle! What happened to ya...all?” the farm filly asked.

“We were kidnapped by a robot! Right, Sweetie?”

“Yeah, Belle! But the robot acquired another target, so now were safe.”

Scootaloo and Apple Bloom looked at each other with confused look on their faces. The pegasus whispered: “It looks like there are two of them now. We must deal with it.” Apple Bloom nodded, although the shocked expression didn't wear off.

One of the white fillies continued: “So what are we doing today? Sweetie wanted to try swimming again.”

“And Belle wanted to help Twilight writing her next novel.”

“Hey, I didn't!”

“Yes, you did! Who stole a copy of Scoota-Lewd's Diary from Twilight's saddlebag?”

Belle didn't respond to this accusation, turning her head away instead. Sweetie displayed a triumphant smile.

“Ah'm confused, Scoots,” Apple Bloom said. “They look the same. How will Ah know which is Sweetie and which is Belle?”

“It's simple,” explained Scootaloo. “Belle doesn't have a wi-fi.”

SWEETIE BELLE SACRIFICE PROGRAM

“Sweetie, what are we going to do tonight?”

“The same thing we do every night, Belle: sew dresses!”

Earlier that evening, both Sweetie and Belle remembered that their sister was a famous dressmaker and they spent a lot of time arguing in front of Apple Bloom and Scootaloo which one of them it was. The other two fillies unsuccessfully tried to convince the unicorns that the real dressmaker was Rarity, but both unicorns scoffed at mere suggestion that the robot could have anything to do with it. After they gave up arguing, they decided to sew.

With a battle cry of “CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS DRESS MAKERS!”, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo joined Sweetie and Belle in their efforts, but whatever the four of them tried to make, in the end it certainly didn't look like a dress, but more like a jumbled mess of pieces of fabric and loose threads.

***

Bon-Bon returned home, humming a cheerful song. She was carrying a machete, holding its handle in her smiling muzzle. She entered the house, closed the door behind her and went downstairs.

“How's the mission?” asked Lyra, when she saw Bon-Bon getting down to the conference room.

“He's gone,” the earth pony replied, dropping the weapon on the ground.

“You killed him?” the unicorn robot got her hopes up.

“No.”

“Is he dead?”

“No?”

“He ran away,” Lyra finally said with disappointment in her voice.

Bon-Bon confirmed: “Yeah, kind of.”

“Where's he now?”

“He got into a blue box and disappeared.”

The earth mare's explanation was deemed not sufficient by the unicorn.

“You're making stuff up based on that TV show, aren't you? That police stallion looked just like that actor, didn't he?”

“I swear I'm not making this up! Are you calling me a liar? It's not me who has a lyre for her cutie mark.”

Lyra paused for few seconds before responding:

“You haven't just made that pun, have you?”

***

Rarity was cleaning her saber in Fluttershy's hut. Fluttershy was sitting on the other side of the room, reading a grimoire. The book was probably older than both princesses' ages added together. It was probably written by so-called First Generation of warlocks. The language was ancient, but the Great Leader had no problems deciphering the strange runes that filled the pages of the book. Angel Bunny was nervously peeking from the kitchen, trying to not become a fencing practice target.

“Dear leader, do you remember our plans about virgin sacrifice?” Rarity asked nonchalantly.

Flutershy took her eyes off the ancient pages.

“Oh, yes, but I thought we could find another filly,” the yellow pegasus replied. “I wouldn't like to deprive you from your only sister, only to get a defective spell component.”

“Defective?” Rarity paused her work for a moment.

“You know, since your sister is not...” Flutershy covered her mouth with her hooves. “Oh, sorry, I remember you don't like talking about it. Anyhow, there's this filly with red curly hair, I think her name is Twitht. Nopony would probably miss her–”

“Dear leader, may I suggest something else?” the unicorn interjected, while resuming polishing the blade with a rug.

“Shoot!”

Rarity froze for a second with a shocked look on her face.

“Oh, sorry, memories from the war...” she said after shaking her head vigorously. “I just happen to have one extra copy of my sister, so we can use this.”

“I don't know, what if the copy is defective, too...”

“Fluttershy!” Rarity's tone of voice changed. “I beg you! I need to get rid of that copy!”

The pegasus was surprised: “Why? What would happen if you didn't?”

Rarity leaned forward and whispered into Fluttershy's ear the story she heard from Zecora.

***

Rarity and Fluttershy trotted through the town to the Carousel Boutique. The door was unlocked. They entered, but they couldn't see anypony there.

“Hello, Sweetie Belle, are you both home?” Rarity shouted.

“Go away, you robot!” a reply came from upstairs.

“Yeah! It's our boutique, not yours!” a second, totally different voice added.

Rarity was not happy with the turn of events. She turned around to face the source of the voices.

“What do you mean ‘your boutique’, I'm the dressma— AAH!” Rarity started to back off from mannequins wearing Sweetie and Belle's creations. “What in the name of Smooze are those abominations?”

“I told you, Sweetie, robots have no fashion sense!”

Rarity's voice became angry: “Sweetie Belle, you're wasting my materials on this. But I have more important thing to ask. Will you go with me to Fluttershy's?”

“No!”

Fluttershy patted Rarity's shoulder, shook her head and spoke to the fillies:

“Hello, girls. Please, you don't have to listen to her, but it's me, Fluttershy. Would you do this for me?”

The fillies paused for a moment.

“Fluttershy? Since when are you working together with a robot?”

“Wait, I remember that there was not only a unicorn robot, but there also was a henchpony with pink in her mane.”

“Was it Fluttershy?”

“I think so.”

“Fluttershy, you traitor! We're gonna tell on you to the Princess!”

“Yeah! Buck off!”

Fluttershy was confused by their reaction.

“Girls, Rarity is not a robot! She's your sister!” she tried to explain.

“Yeah, that's what a robot's henchpony would say!” one of the fillies answered smugly.

“We should try another approach,” Rarity whispered into her leader's ear and two mares left the building.

***

Bon-Bon was lying on a couch, doing nothing, when she heard a knock to the door.

“Who's there?” she asked, without getting up.

“It's me, Rarity.”

Upon hearing these words, Lyra quickly locked herself in the basement and Bon-Bon trotted to open the door.

“Hi Rarity, how's it going?” she said, while letting her guest in.

“Can I make a little request, please? My own sister threw me out and I have no place to sleep tonight.”

“Sure, you can stay here. Come in, I'll prepare something to eat,” Bon-Bon suggested, closed the door behind her guest and trotted to the kitchen.

“Oh, it's so nice of you. Is your friend home?” Rarity took a look around.

Bon-Bon voice came from the kitchen: “Yes, but she's kinda scaredy-cat nowadays. She locks herself downstairs, because she's afraid of some robot police officer.”

A muffled swearword came from the basement. Rarity's eyes widened: “Robot police came to Ponyville?”

“You didn't know that? Anyhow, he's gone now, but Lyra doesn't believe me.”

“Don't worry, darling, I believe you,” the unicorn reassured. “I'm glad he's gone, because lately my sister – or should I say, sisters – keep accusing me of being a robot. That's ridiculous, do you agree?”

“Mhm,” the earth mare pretended to have listened.

Rarity sat down in an armchair next to a small table and took a look around the room. She liked the paintings on the wall: she always admired Realism in art, although any other pony would feel weird, looking at a picture of princesses Celestia and Molestia being slain by a single orange pegasus filly. As for the futurist abstract sculpture in the corner, she found it disgustingly primitive, as if some art college student failed at creating a metaphorical piece. The jumbled mess of screws, wires, metal rods, and metal sheets looked as if somepony dismantled a pony-shaped metal figure and arranged the parts chaotically.

Bon-Bon returned from the kitchen with a bowl of hayfries. She put it on the table and sat on the couch, on the opposite side of the table to Rarity.

“It's still early. What do you wanna do?” the host asked.

“I don't know. Anything is fine,” the guest replied.

Bon-Bon got up and trotted towards a TV set.

“What would you say for some humans?”

“Sounds good to me. What about your friend?”

“Oh, she knows I watch it, but she doesn't like it.”

The earth mare inserted a disk into the player, took a remote and got back to the couch. With a press of a button, the show started.

De Grasse Tyson, a dark-skinned human wearing a mauve suit, was taking his usual stroll through streets of Humanville, when he noticed his two friends watching something on the Humanville race track. The friends were a long-haired human in a colorful shirt and an elegant, dark haired human in a stylish black suit.

“Hey Armani, hey Weird Al. What are you looking at?”

The long haired human responded: “Schumacher! Isn't he the most daring devil? I mean, the most devilish darer? I mean–”

“He's dazzling!” Armani interjected.

“Oh yeah, that's a good word. He's dazzling!”

Tyson walked towards them and saw a red race car on the track, moving with an incredible speed. He barely could follow it with his eyes. Suddenly, while taking a sharp turn, the car hit the barrier surrounding the track and was catapulted into the air. The three humans gasped simultaneously.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Tyson uttered in shock.

The car span around several times and stopped on the barriers at the next turn, after losing all its wheels and many other parts.

Weird Al shrugged his arms: “So much for dazzling.”

***

The bushes next to Carousel Boutique were yet again witnessing two mares hiding in them in the morning.

“Are you sure it's a good idea?” the yellow pegasus asked.

The second mare was holding a yellow thread. The other end of the thread was tied to a stick, supporting one side of a huge box. Under the box, there was a pile of candy and next to it there was a sign, saying ‘Gratuitous confections’.

“Rarity, where did you get this idea?”

“I saw it... on TV! Yes, on TV, I was zapping through the channels and there it was, haha!” Rarity displayed a nervous smile.

“Okay, I hope it works,” said Fluttershy, shifting her gaze back at the box.

Around eight o'clock, two fillies left the boutique and walked towards their school. Suddenly, both of them noticed the sign.

“Sweetie, do you see what I see?” Belle asked, pointing at both the sign and the box.

“I don't know what it is, but it looks familiar.”

“So, what do you think?”

Sweetie paused for a moment.

“Belle, what does ‘gratuitous’ mean?”

Belle put a hoof to her chin, as she was taught she should do while thinking. She thought for whole two seconds and the result was:

“I dunno.”

“We'll ask Miss Cheerilee. Come on, you're be late for school!”

The fillies cantered away. If they didn't, they would hear a soft voice coming from the bushes:

“Rarity, you idiot!”

***

“Good morning, kids. Take your seats.”

Upon hearing their teacher's words, foals, who were scattered around the classroom, moved towards their designated seats, managing to greet the teacher back:

““Good morning, Miss Cheerilee!””

All the colts and fillies took they seats and calmly waited for Cheerilee to start the lesson. Only two white unicorns didn't sit down.

“Hey, it's my seat!” Sweetie shouted, pulling the chair out of Belle's grasp.

“No, it's mine!” Belle leaped forward.

Cheerilee started slowly turning to face the fillies: “Sweetie Belle, could you be qui— Aah!”

The mare jumped in shock: “Sweetie Belle, why are there two of you?”

“She stole my seat!” Belle pointed her hoof at Sweetie.

Cheerilee couldn't conceal her confusion: “But this seat was for only one Sweetie Belle...”

“So where do I sit?” Belle threw her hooves in the air to protest.

Cheerilee remarked: “Wait a moment,” and went out of the classroom. The class erupted into chatter.

***

Rarity trotted through the streets of Ponyville with her head hung down. She couldn't believe that such a perfect plan failed. She disappointed her mentor, even made her cry. It was the most severe of crimes in Equestria's penal code: making Fluttershy cry. She hoped nopony would ever find out, because in that case she would certainly become a social outcast.

Suddenly, she noticed a familiar lavender unicorn, leaving her arboreal abode. She remembered the second thing she planned to do today.

“Hello, Twilight!” the cultist shouted.

“Hi, Rarity! What are you doing this early?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” retorted Rarity, also known for getting up late. “But since I met you, I have some more important thing to ask: do you happen to have a telescope for sale?”

“Telescope?” Twilight was surprised. “Well, I have one, but I still use it, so I can't sell it.”

“Oh. Do you know anypony who might have one?”

Twilight pulled up a saddlebag that was slipping off of her back.

“I think Luna has one. I'll mail her about it. Are you in hurry?”

“What do you mean?”

Twilight smiled with pride: “I can arrange that if Luna still has the telescope, she'll send it here tomorrow before noon.”

Rarity jumped with joy. “Really? Oh, I would be eternally grateful! Thank you, Twilight!”

“You're welcome.”

Rarity happily trotted in some random direction, singing quietly some song about swords and death. Twilight observed her friend leave. When she lost Rarity from sight, she pulled a piece of paper from her bag. She had to triple check if she really didn't make any spelling errors in the application. It was a very important thing. It was for science.

***

Belle was sitting at a desk miss Cheerilee brought for her from school's storage room. The teacher, still confused by a sudden duplication of her student, opened her notebook to check what subject should she teach today, when suddenly one of the white unicorns raised her hoof up.

“Yes, Sweetie? Belle? Damn it!”

“Ma'am,” Sweetie said, “what does ‘gratuitous’ mean?”

Cheerilee smiled and started to answer: “Well, it means...” she tried to remember, but nothing came to her mind, so she switched to different method of handling this kind of situations: “What kind of filthy language is that, young filly! If I hear you saying such stuff again, I'll be forced to contact your parents!”

Few foals in the back snickered.

“Now, what subject is... Aha! Today, we'll again talk about robots.”

Students groaned. They've had classes on robots few times too much already. Belle raised her hoof:

“We've seen a robot!”

Cheerilee blinked in disbelief: “Where? How did it look like?”

Belle rushed with the explanation: “It was big, and white, and had a purple mane.”

“Wasn't it your sister?”

“No, Sweetie was with me all the time.”

Cheerilee had no idea how to respond to that. She analyzed the whole situation in her head, and after a moment she decided:

“Class dismissed. See you tomorrow.”

She trotted outside. The last thing she wanted to do is to waste the rest of her dream on conducting imaginary lessons. Other earth ponies usually dreamed about stuff they could never do in real life, like flying, and not about the same things they did at work. It would be an awful experience to go through the morning routine and start working, only to wake up to the sound of alarm clock and realize you need to do it again. Cheerilee was too smart to allow it to happen. It was time to have some fun.

***

“Madam Mayor, mail for you.”

Mayor Ivory Scroll was sitting at her desk, reading a newspaper, when her young assistant brought her a pile of scrolls. She put the paper away, grabbed the first and unrolled it.

To Ivory Scroll, Mayor of Ponyville

It came to my attention that Ponyville library lacks an hourglass. I would like to ask you to send the municipal hourglass operator to consult with me the possibility of hourglass installation. I would be very grateful.

I will be waiting for him at the library today at 7 pm.

Your sincerely,

Twilight Sparkle

The mayor smiled. That was one of the most adorkable methods of getting a date she saw in ages. She pondered how to answer this request. Engineer Whooves surely was a professional, but he lacked any social skills. He seemed to be afraid of his own shadow and he tried to avoid meeting any new ponies, as if all Ponyvillians wanted to kill him. The mayor giggled softly. This would be a good opportunity to show him that ponies of Ponyville are as everywhere else. She grabbed her quill and scribbled in her notebook:

get Whooves laid

***

Foals cheerfully left the school building. Unbeknownst to them, some adult pony was observing them from her hiding place and it wasn't their teacher.

“Psst, Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon!”

Two fillies stopped and looked around to locate the source of the voice.

“Hey, Tiara,” Silver Spoon whispered, “I totally heard somepony calling us.”

“Girls!” a quiet shout came again. Fillies trotted towards the bushes surrounding the school yard, only to find a yellow pegasus there.

“Miss Fluttershy!” Diamond Tiara said. “What are you, like, doing here?”

“I need your help. Fifty bits for capturing both Sweetie Belles. I need them in my hut today.”

The fillies looked into each other's eyes.

“It's, like, a deal!”

They galloped towards Cutie Mark Crusaders, while Fluttershy observed the scene from afar.

“Hey Sweetie Belle!” Diamond Tiara yelled to get the white unicorns' attention. “Wanna bet?”

“Bet what?” Sweetie asked.

Diamond Tiara tried to quickly think up something, but Silver Spoon was faster:

“I totally bet both of you together won't, like, fit into Mr Boxy.”

“What? Mr Boxy is my best frie–” Diamond Tiara tried to protest, but she couldn't, given Silver Spoon's hoof put into her mouth.

“How much?” Belle asked.

“Like, ten bits.”

“Deal.”

Silver Spoon, Sweetie, and Belle shook their hooves and galloped towards Diamond Tiara's house. The pink filly followed them, shouting her objections at them. Scootaloo, still confused, asked Apple Bloom:

“Who the hay is Mr Boxy?”

Apple Bloom inhaled deeply and spoke without pausing to take a breath: “Mr Boxy is an equinification of a multichromatic parallelepipedal cardboard container. Initially, Ah've observed an instance of such equinification while performing a comprehensive summary of mah training routine with Rainbow Dash.”

Scootaloo processed the answer in her bird brain for a while: “I still don't know what Mr Boxy is, but you were training with Rainbow Dash?”

***

“I still can't believe we let her put ourselves in a box and get delivered here.”

Sweetie and Belle stood in the corner of the room in Fluttershy's hut. All the ways out were locked, so they could not escape, and all they were doing for the last few hours was standing idly, awaiting their fate. The yellow pegasus looked with concern at her follower and asked:

“Rarity, are you sure you want to do it?”

“Yes.” Rarity nodded. “We'll sacrifice one and the other one will watch what will happen to her if she reproduces ever again.”

“Let us out, you robot!” shouted one of the fillies.

“Sweetie Belle, for the last time: I'm not a robot,” replied annoyed Rarity. “I'm your sister. Or maybe an aunt. I don't know how it works in this case.”

The pegasus interjected: “Okay, Rarity, but how will we decide which one to kill?”

“Still got that virginometer?”

“One moment.”

Fluttershy trotted to the cabinet and pulled a rectangular device out of it. She passed it to Rarity. The unicorn pointed the device's antenna at the filly on the left, pressed the button and a red light lit up. She pointed it at the filly on the right and after pressing the button, she saw a white light.

“Aha! This one is still a virgin!” she exclaimed. “We can use her as a spell component!”

“That's good. I wouldn't want you to experience–” Fluttershy almost mentioned Zecora's story, but she bit her tongue in the last moment. “Uhm... help me prepare the summoning circle.”

“Yes, my leader!”

The mares took a big cubic piece of rock with red substance embedded in it. They crushed it with their hooves and removed the pieces of stone. What was left was a dark red powder, which they used to draw an encircled pentagram on the floor. When the pentagram was ready, the powder started to emit red light.

“This is goodbye, Sweetie,” the filly on the right said.

“No! I won't let them! You can't die!” her twin protested.

“No, you won't do it...”

“Yes, I will! Belle, swap places with me.”

“I can't, Sweetie! They'll kill you.”

“And if we don't swap, they'll kill you. I can't allow that. Sorry, and goodbye, Belle.”

“But...”

“No buts. I love you, sister. Now please swap.”

The fillies, with tears in their eyes, hugged each other and exchanged places. The mares were occupied with lighting up five wax candles they put in the tips of the pentagram arms. When they finished, Fluttershy grabbed Sweetie, tied pieces of string to each of her legs and tied the other ends of strings to the hooks in the walls. Belle tried to stop the pegasus, but she was held by Rarity, who observed the whole scene with no emotions. Sweetie was laid down on her back in the middle of the summoning circle, with her legs spread out. Fluttershy trotted to the kitchen and returned a moment later with a large knife. Both mares started to chant: “Iä! Iä! Smooze fhtagn!” Fluttershy raised the knife, put it to the filly's chest and pressed down. Sweetie yelled in pain. Fluttershy continued the incision downwards, through the belly button towards filly's nether regions. Sweetie's skin parted, revealing her innards.

It was all wires and pieces of metal.

The mares stopped chanting. The knife fell down from Fluttershy's motionless muzzle. Sweetie stopped crying and exclaimed: “Cool, I'm a robot!” Suddenly, the door exploded, revealing two new ponies.

“I hope we're not late for the party,” Lyra said. “Bon-Bon, the tranquilizer!”

***

The clock struck seven and a gentle knock came down to the library's door. Twilight hopped towards them and let her guest in. Engineer Whooves wasn't displaying any emotions. He simply trotted inside and said:

“Good evening, miss. I heard you wanted to install an hourglass here.”

“Oh yes, but you don't have to hurry,” the unicorn replied with a warm tone. “First, I think we should sit down and talk a little.”

“Talk?” The stallion raised his eyebrow. “But–”

“Absolutely!” Twilight interrupted him. “White or red wine?”

Whooves noticed that the only table and the only chairs stood in the darkest corner or the library. On the table there was a crimson tablecloth, two plates, two wine glasses and a single lit candle. Twilight didn't hear any answer, so she asked again:

“I've got the finest liquors from the whole Equestria, I got them through my special connection. So, what would you like to drink, Doctor?”

The stallion answered: “If you wish, you can call me ‘Doctor’, I'm planning to become one in few years. Uhm, red, maybe?”

The librarian happily cantered to the kitchen and fetched an expensively looking bottle. “So, shall we sit down?”

Whooves slowly trotted towards the table, letting Twilight pour drinks and sit down first. They raised the glasses and said ““Cheers!”” Whooves took a sip.

‘Yuck!’ he thought. The wine was disgusting. He barely managed not to gag.

“So, Doctor, why did you, uhm, decide to become one?” Twilight asked.

Whooves paused for a moment. “Well, it's hard to explain and you might not believe me, but...” he paused again, “it involves a little bit of time travel.”

Twilight's eyes sparkled with joy. ‘He's roleplaying!’ she thought. ‘That's so exciting!’ Despite her excitement, she tried to hide her feelings: “So, time travel with some kind of time machine? What kind?”

“Well, uhm,” Whooves started to feel uncomfortable. “A blue one.”

Twilight couldn't control herself any longer. She quaffed the remaining wine with one swift, well practiced motion and threw the empty glass to the other end of the library. The glass shattered into multiple shiny sharp pieces. The librarian leaned forward and looked directly into Whooves's eyes.

“So, Doctor, care if I take you to show my room, and in exchange you show me your screwdriver?”

Whooves swallowed. “But I didn't bring any tools with me...”

“Oh, I'm talking about the other screwdriver,” she added seductively.

The engineer fully understood this innuendo. In panic, he galloped towards the door, hoping to run away from the excited mare. He skidded to halt just before it to grab the handle, but to his disappointment the door turned out to be locked. He yanked the handle several times before giving up. He lay down and started to cry. Suddenly, he felt something pulling on his tail, ultimately dragging his whole body away from the door. He only managed to whisper one word:

“Help...”

***

Two ponies, a white unicorn and a yellow pegasus, sat down strapped to chairs in Lyra's underground lair. On the table that stood in the middle of the room, Lyra was fixing a white robot filly, using various tools. Bon-Bon was standing in the corner, munching carrot slices. The slices were in a bowl that stood on a cabinet. There was a huge sign over it, saying: ‘CHEW THIS; DON'T CHEW CABLES’.

Lyra finally stopped poking around inside robot's chassis and connected it to her main server.

“Restore from backup,” she said.

“Are you sure? Restoring memories from backup will overwrite all current memories,” the robot filly responded.

“Yes.”

Lyra turned around to face the mares.

“Sorry, I need to wipe your memories. Luckily, you're older, so I'll be able to remove precisely those memories I want.”

“Please be gentle,” whispered Fluttershy, whose all legs were tightly tied to the chair. Rarity, who was sitting next to her, didn't say anything, because she still didn't wake up after getting her dose of sedative back at Fluttershy's cottage.

Lyra put a helmet on Fluttershy's head and pressed several buttons on the computer's keyboard. Fluttershy started screaming very, very softly.

Bon-Bon reached to the bowl, but her hoof hit the bottom. She glanced inside: the bowl was empty, but she still had an insatiable urge to chew. She looked around and she noticed the robotic Sweetie Belle, with her stomach still open. Several clips were holding together robot's ribs, so the glue could dry. When she saw wires inside, she felt a tingling sensation in her lips. ‘Okay, Bon-Bon, nothing happens if you grab the cables with your lips and don't bite anything with your teeth.’ After making this mental note, she burrowed her muzzle in filly's innards. She instantly felt better.

Fluttershy passed out after the memory transfer. Lyra put the helmet on still unconscious Rarity and repeated the procedure. It took only few minutes to complete. When she was done, she said without looking behind her:

“Bon-Bon, take those two and toss them away.”

In shock, Bon-Bon quickly pulled her head from inside Sweetie Belle's stomach and accidentally pulled out two cables from their sockets. She quickly put them back and executed the order.

Meanwhile, some filly shouted from the upper level of the basement:

“Oh, cool! Death Scroll! I've always wanted to watch this series. Hey, when will you release me from this cage?”

SWEETIE BELLE LEVITATION PROGRAM

“You know what I'm going to to tonight? The same thing I do every night, ‘Doctor’: cry into my pillow because I'm a lone mare nopony will ever love!”

While Twilight was one of the most proficient magic users in all Ponyville, her arcane power was nothing compared with stallion's will to live. While she managed to get Whooves dragged to the base of the stairs to her bedroom, his perseverance and strong muscles prevented her from moving him even one step upstairs. She sat on the stairs, panting heavily and trying to regain her stamina. Whooves was lying on his side at the floor, looking as much exhausted as she did.

“Why can't you be more considerate?” Twilight continued her rant, taking breaks every other word to take a breath. “Why does everypony treat me not as a mare, but as some kind of freak?”

“Frankly speaking, you're kinda freaky,” said Whooves, but he immediately regretted his decision. He quickly blamed his stressed brain. Twilight started crying, tears running both her cheeks.

“Everypony has few quirks, why can't I have mine?”

“Well,” the stallion started to think up ways to amend the situation, “the thing I found freaky was that you just attacked me like some wild beast. Everypony would try to run away.”

Twilight wiped her tears.

“Yeah,” she calmly admitted, “that was a little reckless. To my excuse, I drank a little beforehand.”

“You shouldn't drink before date,” Whooves scolded her.

“Yeah, I should've known,” the librarian sighed. “They said so in the book.”

“Did the book say you shouldn't force your date to anything?”

“Maybe?”

Whooves sat up.

“Listen, miss, before you drag anypony to your bed, maybe you should just get to know each other. For instance, I still don't know what's your name.”

“I'm Twilight Sparkle. So, will you go to bed with me?”

“No.”

“Darnit.”

“You are not very subtle, you know?”

Twilight sat silent for a while, not knowing what to say. Whooves continued:

“But from my observations, I can conclude that it's normal for mares from Ponyville to assault stallions who just moved to the town.”

Twilight immediately denied: “Oh, but I'm not from Ponyville, I'm from Canterlot. And you?”

“Amareica City.”

“So, could it be that me coming here from Canterlot and you coming from Amareica means that fate brought–”

“No.” Whooves cut her off and added a second later: “It's not some sappy romance story written by some pink-glassed author for his naïve readers.”

“But I like romance novels. And I even write them.”

The stallion sighed: “That would explain a lot.”

Twilight yawned. The whole conversation was draining away the rest of her energy. “I'm sorry, but I really need to get to bed. You may join me if you want.”

“No, thank you,” answered Whooves, watching as Twilight was slowly ascending the stairs. “I'll be going back home. Bye.”

He got up on his hooves and slowly walked towards the door. He grabbed the handle, pulled it... and it resisted. He pushed it... and it resisted, too. He sighed and trotted back. He climbed the stairs and finally arrived into Twilight's bedroom. The librarian was lying in the bed, snoring. He prodded her:

“Hey, Twilight, wake up. You forgot to unlock the door.”

Apart from few shrugs, the sleeping mare didn't react. Whooves grabbed her shoulders with his hooves and yanked her few times, yelling: “Wake up! The library is on fire!” Unfortunately, the only result he achieved was Twilight turning around in bed. Whooves saw no other exit route from the library, so he didn't knew what to do now. His energy levels achieved a new low. Suddenly, his eyes rested on the bed. It looked inviting. His body begged his brain to rest, so he gave up to its calls. He lay down next to Twilight and covered himself with half of her blanket. He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

***

“Rarity, what are you doing here so early?”

“The same thing I'll be doing every day, Rainbow Dash: looking for that pedophile!”

Rarity couldn't remember when was the last time she woke so early. She woke even earlier than Sweetie Belle, which meant she could finally enjoy a quiet morning. The first thing she decided was to take a morning walk, just to take care of some unfinished business. The fact that she was carrying a sword might or might not have had something to do with that.

The first pony she met was her short-sighted friend, Rainbow Dash. At first, she was called ‘Bon-Bon’ by her, but as soon as the pegasus landed and took a better look at the white shape moving down the street, it turned out that it was just an extremely early occurrence of Rarity.

“A pedophile is in town?” Rainbow Dash gasped in shock. “Where? I'll help you look!”

“Darling, you're the last pony I'd give any task involving looking,” Rarity said bluntly. “Besides, he's an earth pony, so I think I can do it myself.”

“So, can I help you in another way? I simply have today this rainbow mood for helping.”

Rarity pondered for a moment: “Hmm, you can check on Sweetie Belle, she should wake up any moment now and I bet she'll be surprised to see I'm already out so early.”

“Okay, so gotta dash!” the pegasus exclaimed and flew in general direction of the Carousel Boutique. Rarity looked as her friend maneuvered between buildings instead of flying in a straight line at higher altitude. When she lost the sight of Rainbow Dash, she continued her walk.

***

Whooves slowly opened his eyes. What he saw didn't look familiar. Was he in the room he rented from Roseluck? No, he slept there few times already and he would recognize it. He saw an unfamiliar bookshelf full of thick books. He turned around to look at the other side of the room.

His muzzle bumped into a muzzle of another pony, who also just woke up and turned around.

““Argh! It's you!”” they shouted simultaneously. Whooves immediately jumped out of bed, while Twilight grabbed the blanket to cover her chest.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I don't remember!” he answered, sweating heavily. “Do you?”

“No! Wait, is there a chance we...”

Twilight paused for a moment. Her eyes widened in fear. Whooves started walking backwards to distance himself from the mare.

“I think I remember...” she muttered. “I'm not sure, but I think we did... it...”

“But–!” Whooves wanted to protest, but Twilight immediately interjected:

“Don't panic, I still might be wrong. I might. We must be sure. Yes, we must know. For now, let's pretend nothing happened.” Twilight released a short manic laugh. “We'll solve this riddle. We must solve it.”

“Yeah, so, um, I gotta go to work.”

“Wait, won't you stay for breakfast?”

Whooves paused for a moment. He did feel hungry.

“Okay, I think I still have enough time.”

***

“Sweetie Belle, where are you?”

Rainbow Dash flew into the Carousel Boutique, knocking several mannequins over. Some of them deliberately, to check if they were Sweetie Belle. She didn't have much luck – none of the white shapes responded in any other way than falling down.

“I'm here!” a voice came from some room at the other end of the building. Rainbow Dash dashed to the source and met a locked door. She knocked few times.

“Sweetie Belle, is that you? Come out!”

“I can't.”

“Why?”

“When I was trying too pee, something weird happened. Wait, acquiring door lock!”

The door was unlocked, but it didn't open. After a second or two, the pegasus decided to open the door herself. She entered and saw a bathroom. There was a toilet in the middle, but no sign of Sweetie Belle. Rainbow Dash squinted her eyes to see better, but she couldn't find Sweetie Belle.

“Sweetie Belle, where are you?”

“Look up.”

The pegasus took a step forward and looked up. She saw something white hovering under the ceiling, flailing its limbs aimlessly. She squinted her eyes again. It looked like Sweetie Belle.

“Whoa, rainbow!”

“I keep trying to pee, but I can't!”

“Stop it, you should come with me and start training! You are a much rainbower flyer that that orange chicken that keeps following me around!”

Sweetie analyzed the offer for a moment. “Okay,” she answered. Suddenly, she plummeted down, landing on Dash's head, which in turn was pushed into the toilet bowl. The filly scrambled to her hooves and the pegasus shook her head to get rid of water from her muzzle.

“What are you doing here, Rainbow Dash?”

“Your sister gave me a very important mission: to see if you survive morning on your own.”

“I survive it every day before she wakes up. It's not like a living biological thing dies, because somepony left it alone for few hours.”

Rainbow Dash asked:

“Have you had breakfast yet?”

“No.”

“So eat a breakfast and come dash with me!”

Upon saying these words, the cyan mare flew out of the boutique, knocking one mannequin more.

***

Twilight and Doctor finished eating breakfast at the library. When the mare was gathering the plates to put them in a sink, she said:

“I think I know how he can quickly determine what happened.”

“You do?” asked Whooves.

“Yes. If you have an hour, we can do it now.”

Whooves thought about it for a moment: “Sure, I think I can even be late to work today. So, how do we do it?”

“We need to visit one of my friends.”

Twilight cleaned her hooves and trotted towards the front door. Whooves followed her. She grabbed the handle with her magic and tried to pull it, but the door resisted.

“Oops, I forgot to unlock it.”

She took a key from the shelf next to the door and unlocked it. When she opened it, she noticed Spike sleeping on a doormat.

“Hey, Spike, wake up.”

Spike stretched, yawned and opened his eyes: “Oh, hi Twili... By Celestia's beard, since when do you have a coltfriend?”

“Spike, that's a long story...”

“No wonder you locked the library for the night,” Spike winked, making way for the ponies.

Twilight's face became slightly redder. Without saying a word, she closed the door, locked it and said:

“We have some important thing to do, so I'll come back later.”

Twilight cantered away in direction of the Everfree Forest, immediately followed by Whooves. Spike observed their silhouettes becoming smaller and smaller and then he turned around to enter the library.

“Damn it, Twilight! You locked me out again!”

***

“Rain! Bow! Rain! Bow”

Rainbow Dash stood in the street before the Carousel Boutique, shouting commands and watching as Sweetie Belle rhythmically ascended and descended, hovering over the ground.

“Can we stop the training? I'm starting to feel dizzy,” the floating filly asked.

“Not yet! I need you to learn to fly forward!”

“I'm trying, but I can't!” Sweetie Belle flailed her legs in midair, but she didn't move in any horizontal direction.

“What's goin' on here?”

Rainbow Dash turned around towards the source of the voice:

“Is that you, Applejack?”

Sweetie Belle noticed that the pegasus stopped paying attention to her, so she landed safely on the ground.

“No, this is Apple Bloom,” answered the yellow filly.

“Oh, because I saw some orange shape moving and I thought it was her.”

“It was me, Scootaloo!” the pegasus filly exclaimed. “Sweetie Belle, why can you fly?”

“Insufficient data to answer the question,” the unicorn replied. “All I know is that when I woke in the morning and tried to pee, I started to float.”

“That's funny, it's the other way around with me,” said Scootaloo. She closed her eyes, bent her legs, started flapping her wings and focused.

A small stream of warm liquid came out from under Scootaloo's tail.

“Ew, Scoots!” Apple Bloom backed off from the pegasus. “If yer goin' to do it, go to the toilet!”

“Sorry!”

“Girls,” Sweetie Belle interjected, “isn't it the time we should go to school?”

“Ya don' know?” Apple Bloom was surprised. “The classes have been canceled.”

“Why?”

“Miss Cheerilee had some sort of accident yesterday, she's in hospital now, but Ah don' know any details.”

“Whoa,” Rainbow Dash gasped. “So she was that earth pony who tried to fly down from the cliff yesterday.”

Scootaloo nodded: “News sure go fast.”

“Not as fast as me,” the cyan mare smiled with pride.

“So what happens when you try to pee, Scoots?” asked Sweetie Belle.

“I simply pee,” the orange filly answered. “May I show it?”

“No!” protested Apple Bloom.

“We should go inside,” Sweetie Belle suggested. “I'm curious what will happen when I'll try to fly.”

“What's going on here?”

“Oh, hi Bon-Bon. Or Rarity. Whatever,” replied Rainbow Dash to the newcomer.

“Hi sis!”

“My, my, what are you doing here?” Rarity asked.

“We're tryin' to figure out why Scootaloo pees when she tries to fly and Sweetie Belle flies when she tries to pee.”

Rarity's eye twitched. She smiled nervously and said:

“Well, it looks like I really shouldn't wake up so early. Wake me up when something interesting happens.”

Without listening to the fillies about Sweetie Belle's flight, the white mare cantered into the boutique and then to her bedroom.

“So what do we do now?” asked Apple Bloom.

“I still haven't shown you what happens when I try to pee. Sweetie Belle, lead us to your bathroom.”

The fillies ran into the building, leaving Rainbow Dash alone.

“So, everypony's gone?” she asked herself. “Dash it! Leaving me alone without saying goodbye, that is soooo unrainbow!”

The cyan mare slowly walked towards the town square.

“Oh, was it raining? I stepped into a puddle.”

***

Twilight and Doctor approached Fluttershy's hut. Twilight knocked to the door and they waited for the yellow pegasus to open.

“Oh, hello Twilight, uhm, good morning to you sir,” said Fluttershy when she opened the door. “Please, come in.”

Twilight replied: “Hi Fluttershy,” but Whooves was silent. Before his eyes there was the most beautiful mare he'd ever seen. He felt his heart racing as if he was a young colt with a crush. He followed both mares inside, without averting his gaze from the winged beauty.

“He have a problem, Fluttershy, and probably only you can help us,” Twilight exclaimed.

“What kind a problem? I'd do anything to help my friend.”

“Do you still have that virginometer?”

Fluttershy smiled slyly: “I think I know perfectly what is your problem. Just wait a moment.”

Whooves stood silently, looking how the cute pegasus moved around. Fluttershy rummaged through her belongings and fetched a rectangular device.

“Got it.”

“Great,” Twilight exclaimed happily. “Now, use it on me.”

Fluttershy pointed the antenna of the device at Twilight and pressed a button. A white light lit up.

“Um,” the pegasus began, “Twilight, you're a virgin.”

Whooves sighed with relief, while Twilight started hopping around him, shouting merrily: “Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!” Suddenly, she lost her balance and bumped into the stallion. While luckily for her she didn't look like that, Twilight was quite a heavy mare, so Whooves was pushed and he fell down, hitting a sharp edge of a table with his head and immediately losing his consciousness. The unicorn immediately stopped bouncing and froze in shock.

“Oh, Twilight,” Fluttershy remarked, “instead of him knocking you up, you knocked him out.”

***

“So after we did one hundred fifty seven experiments, Ah conclude the followin': Sweetie Belle flies when tryin' to pee and pees when tryin' to fly, and Scoots pees regardless of if she tries to fly or pee.”

Apple Bloom was wearing a white labcoat and glasses she found in Sweetie Belle's collection of costumes for costume parties. For some mysterious reason she also managed to summon a beaker of oozing purple liquid. Asked where she got the liquid from, she only answered “Ah got it from Applejack, it's from the time she was still a silly pony.” After these question had been asked, the three fillies started two-hour long series of experiments, and now all the results were gathered. The Specimen #2 “Scootaloo” pouted:

“That sucks. Why a unicorn can fly better than a pegasus?”

“Ah don' know, but the data says the truth,” replied Apple Bloom. “Sweetie Belle can fly, ya don't.”

“Don't worry, Scootaloo,” Sweetie Belle tried to reassure her friend. “One day, maybe your flying skills will achieve the maximum level and you'll be able to increase your altitude.”

“Okay, girls, are you done? I really need to go to the toilet.”

Rarity was tiptoeing in place with her hind legs crossed for the last thirty minutes, politely waiting for the fillies to finish their urination-related experiments. Her inner honor wouldn't allow her to interrupt their work, but more she waited, more sure she was that what the kids were doing was simply a disgusting way to waste time. When Apple Bloom confirmed they were finished, Rarity bolted inside.

Suddenly, a loud knock came to the front door and the ponies inside heard a familiar voice of the town's muffin lover:

“A delivery for miss Rarity!”

“Oh come on!” Rarity's voice came from the bathroom. “Does it always have to happen when I'm... busy?”

“I'll get it!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed and cantered towards the door. She opened it and saw a blonde-maned gray pegasus standing next to a huge wooden crate. The words ‘BEHOLD! THOU SHALT NOT DROP THIS CRATE, FOR THE CONTENTS ARE FRAGILE!’ were written in red on it.

“Good morning,” Sweetie Belle greeted the deliverymare.

“Hello, kid. Is your sister home? She needs to sign here.”

“Um, she's kinda busy. Can I sign?”

Derpy shook her head. “I can't allow that. Well, you can use her electronic signature, I think I turn a blind eye on it.”

“One moment.”

Sweetie Belle returned inside and trotted to the bathroom door.

“Rarity,” she asked, “do you have an electronic signature?”

“What? No!” Rarity vehemently denied. “Sweetie Belle, our religion forbids having electronic devices, except for simple things like TV. If I ever found any computer-like device in our home, I'd stomp it into a pulp and throw away as far as I could!”

“You want our life to be closer to our biological nature?” Sweetie Belle inquired.

“Yes, that's what our dear leader Fluttershy wants. Wait a moment, I think I'm done.”

A sound of toilet flushing could be heard and Rarity emerged from the bathroom. She immediately ran towards the front door, signed the papers Derpy handed her and pulled the wooden crate inside.

“Finally I can find that pedophile!” the fashionista exclaimed cheerfully, while opening the crate. The crate revealed an old telescope.

“There's a pedophile in town?” Apple Bloom asked

“Oh yeah, children. You didn't know? Well, I don't know why I expected that my sister had already told you.”

Sweetie Belle protested: “I wouldn't hide from my friends that they're in danger! If I knew there's a pedophile, I'd tell them!”

Rarity looked at the filly with concerned look on her face: “I'm so disappointed in you, young lady. After all the things you did with him, you're still in denial.”

“What things?”

“I have no time for your silliness,” the mare responded. “I'm taking this upstairs, maybe I'll spot him.”

Upon saying this, Rarity levitated the telescope and took it upstairs. The three fillies were left alone.

“So, what now?” asked Scootaloo.

“We should go see miss Cheerilee!” Apple Bloom suggested. “What do y'all think?”

Cutie Mark Crusaders left the boutique and galloped towards the hospital.

***

Whooves opened his eyes. For the second time today, he didn't wake up in his own bed. He looked up and he saw some beautiful face.

“Oh my, are you okay?” the owner of the face asked.

Engineer's heart started to beat faster. He tried to answer the question, but no word could come out of his lips.

“Don't worry, I'll take care of you,” she continued.

Deep inside his soul, Whooves started to feel happiness. It's the first time a mare in Ponyville showed him some warmth, instead of assaulting him. He observed the flank of the yellow pegasus, which was the only part of her body visible from the couch when she was preparing something in the kitchen. A moment later, the mare came with a bowl of soup.

“I thought you'd like some lunch, you've been lying here for a while now.”

She smiled. Whooves felt some part of his heart melting. He finally managed to utter one word:

“Thanks.”

The pegasus smiled again and gracefully returned to her work. Whooves couldn't see the whole scene clearly, but it seemed that her work involved reading an old, think book and writing down something. Whooves could only imagine what such a cutie could write: Poetry? Cooking recipes? Or maybe she was a teacher, preparing her lesson plans? One thing that Whooves immediately decided couldn't be the case, was any kind of black magic. There's no way such an innocent and cute creature could indulge in such activities.

Whooves drank his soup and put the bowl on a table with a quiet knock. When the mare heard the sound, she interrupted her work and trotted to the stallion. Whooves was no longer lying down, he seemed to feel better.

“Did you like the soup?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“That's great. I've just finished my work for today, so we can talk a little and get acquainted with each other. My name's Fluttershy.”

“My name is Whooves.” He felt a sudden surge of blood rushing to his face, making him blush. “I'm an hourglass operator from Amareica, I moved here few days ago.”

‘Damn it, Whooves! You're not a schoolfoal anymore, why are you reacting like that?’

“Amareica? Nice. And how do you like Ponyville?”

Whooves paused for a moment: “Well, I'm still trying to get used to it. So much is different here.”

“I agree,” Fluttershy said. “But I believe that thanks to my work,” she pointed her hoof at books and papers, “they will become more alike. My few words and all the differences that caused prejudice and suffering will be smoothed out.”

‘Oh, so she's a poet. And an idealist, who believes in power of words.’ Whooves again felt a surge of that feeling, which he always associated with adolescent colts having their silly crushes on fillies. He could never suppose that he will ever feel it again. Every single moment he was discovering new levels in cuteness in his interlocutor. It was like all his dreams came true in shape of this mare. He tried to focus, to avoid turning her off with anything. All his thoughts that were not busy with analyzing the details of Fluttershy's person, were focused on a careful choice of words.

“That's lovely.”

Well, not the best choice, but you can't blame him for not trying.

“I'm glad I found someone who likes it,” she said. “Most of my friends think I'm wasting time on something silly and useless.”

“Don't listen to them. What you do is beautiful, it's an art.”

Fluttershy smiled and Whooves's heart melted again. “I know only one other pony who talks about it like that.” A loud knock came to the door. “And I bet that pony just arrived.”

Whooves felt little disappointment when Fluttershy went to the front door to let the guest in. Well, at least everything was going in the right direction.

“Hello!”

“Hello, dear leader. I'm so angry I wasted so much time with that telescope. I thought I'd find him in a jiffy, but no! So I decided to come here and help you with the work instead.”

That voice.

“That stallion!” Rarity yelled, pointing her hoof at the couch.

“You mean Mr. Whooves?” Fluttershy asked, but Rarity was already on her way to the engineer's throat. He didn't waste any second. Instantly, he was on his hooves and a moment later he ran away through the open window. Rarity jumped forward to catch him, but she failed.

“I'll get you later, you pedophile!” she yelled at the escapist.

Fluttershy couldn't hide her confusion: “What do you mean?”

“Do you remember when we checked if Sweetie Belle is a virgin?”

“Yeah, I do, but...” Fluttershy winced in pain while trying to remember, “I don't remember what was the result.”

Rarity paused for a moment, searching through her memories. She hit some kind of void during her search and it hurt. She closed her eyes and grabbed her head with her hooves. “It hurts! I can't remember! But I know! I know the result was negative because I know it was him who did it.”

Fluttershy sighed: “What a pity. I even wanted to break my chastity vows for him. With him.”

“My leader!”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

***

“Bon-Bon, do unicorns fly?”

“No, Lyra, they don't. Or is it a tricky question?”

Lyra sighed. Earlier that day, she went outside for the first time in few days and one of the first things she saw was a unicorn filly floating in the air. After all the events since she released the robot filly in the wild, she grew accustomed to the constant stream of failures.

“Well, since I was in Cloudsdale, there should be no more flying unicorns out there, and yet there is one.”

“Oh, sweet!” Bon-Bon exclaimed in happy voice, without turning her gaze away from TV screen, showing an episode of Game of Saddles. “Who is the lucky one? Do I know them?”

“Yes, you do know them. Wanna know some funny fact about the anti-gravity module in robots?”

“Shoot.”

“It's right next to the urination module, it even uses the same type of plug. If someone was inexperienced, they could plug the cables in the wrong way.”

Bon-Bon voice was still cheerful: “So what does it have to do with the flying unicorn?”

“I'm one hundred percent sure that that unicorn had its cables correctly plugged in when I last checked.”

“Wait, was it...” Bon-Bon started to realize.

“Yes. Somepony messed up cables inside Sweetie Belle. Do you know who?”

***

A loud knock came onto the library's front door. Twilight opened it and saw Whooves. The stallion immediately jumped inside and closed the door.

“What happened?” she asked.

“That crazy bitch thinks I'm a pedophile and wants to kill me!”

Twilight paused for a second: “Wait, are you a pedophile?”

“Of course not!” he denied it immediately. “May I stay here for a while?”

“Okay,” she agreed. She turned around and trotted to the kitchen, knocking a thin book from a shelf. “Oops, I was writing it yesterday afternoon, I should've put it somewhere else.” She levitated the book and placed it onto an empty shelf next to Whooves. Then she turned around and cantered to her bedroom, totally ignoring her previous destination. She looked as if she remembered something.

Whooves looked at the book Twilight put on the shelf. It was titled “The Adventures of Sparlight Twikle and The Doctor.” He opened it and started reading:

“So, Doctor, could you show me your screwdriver?” Sparlight asked the Doctor with innocent look on her face.

“Yes, but first we should check if there are any Weeping Pegasi in your bedroom, and then I'll show you my ‘screwdriver’.”

“And what are you going to do after that?”

“I haven't decided yet, but it will definitely involve lot of screwing.”

Whooves turned over few pages to see that indeed, the next scenes did involve screwing. The story ended in the middle in the book, the rest was still waiting to be filled with the same mare hornwriting as the others.

He put the book away where he took it. When he turned around, he was shocked by sight of Twilight descending from her bedroom. She has painted her cutie marks over with a purple paint and she was wearing a schoolfilly uniform.

“Excuse me, mister,” she said, “but my parents aren't home. Could you please come with me to my bedroom and play with me until they get back?”

This was too much for the poor stallion's mind. Whooves bolted to the front door and yanked the handle several times. It turned out the door was locked.

“Okay, I see you're busy,” Spike's voice could be heard from the other side. “I'll come back later.”

***

““Hello, miss Cheerilee!”” three little ponies chimed, while entering the hospital room occupied by their teacher. The mare was lying down in bed, with both her forelegs immobilized in casts and a neck brace around her neck.

“Hi... oh, it's you,” Cheerilee's joyful expression waned as soon as she recognized who had visited her. “Before we talk about anything else, I'll ask: how many Sweetie Belles are there?”

Scootaloo's face went pale. Some repressed memories from the previous day started to resurface. Suddenly, she felt something tugging her tail. She looked back, only to see it was Apple Bloom's tail.

“What do you mean, how many?” Sweetie Belle replied to her teacher, while Scootaloo whispered to the farm filly: “What do you want?”

“Are ya thinkin' what Ah'm thinkin'? About yesterday?” Apple Bloom whispered back.

Scootaloo paused for a moment. Cheerilee continued: “I mean, how many little white annoying unicorns are there?”

“None! I'm a good filly!” Sweetie Belle answered smiling. Behind her back, the secret conversation continued:

“I thought I was seeing things,” said Scootaloo, “but now I think that there really were two Sweetie Belles yesterday.”

“What does it–” Apple Bloom tried to asked, but she was interrupted but Sweetie Belle.

“Talking behind my back detected,” the unicorn said angrily.

“Heh heh, sorry Sweets,” Scootaloo smiled sheepishly.

“Anyway, girls,” Cheerilee continued, “they've arranged a substitute teacher for you, so you can go to school tomorrow.”

“Oh, that sucks,” Apple Bloom said to herself under her breath.

“I need to pee!” Sweetie Belle suddenly exclaimed. Before anypony could react, she was already hovering in the air. The ground-bound fillies looked with horror as the white unicorn was getting closer to a fan spinning under the ceiling. Cheerilee remained composed and said with a calm expression on her face:

“It's unfair. It's my dream, so I should fly, not her. Ugh, screw that. If I go to sleep in a dream, I'll wake up.”

Upon saying this, she closed her eyes and started snoring. Sweetie Belle was floating just under the fan, trying to move aside by pushing her hooves at the ceiling. In few seconds, she managed to achieve total control of her movement as long as she stayed close to the ceiling. She could propel herself forward by using friction between her hooves and the ceiling's surface. In layman's terms, she was walking on the ceiling. She smiled and said to the other two:

“Look, I'm a Spiderpony!”

***

“For the hundredth time: no, I'm not attracted to underage fillies.”

Whooves was lying down at the base of the stairs leading to Twilight's bedroom, breathing heavily. The equally tired unicorn sat on the stairs. Sweat was washing out the paint from her flank.

“I'm sorry, I kind of rushed into conclusions. When I heard from Rarity that her sister was not a virgin, and then she said she found a pedophile in town, and then you ran inside and said something about being accused of being a pedophile, I put two and two and two together and came to a conclusion that you are.”

Whooves sighed.

“Are all ponies in Ponyville so reckless? Oh wait, you're from Canterlot. Does it mean Ponyvillian stupidity is contagious?”

“Oh, stop it,” Twilight snorted. “Some ponies in Ponyville are sane.”

“That didn't sound that good, you know?”

Few moments of awkward silence later, Whooves continued:

“And all of that because I had to install an hourglass here. I spent in this building so much time and yet I don't even know where I should start.”

“Oh, that,” Twilight laughed. “It was because I asked the mayor to send you here. I don't actually need any hourglass.”

A confused look showed up on Whooves's face: “Wait, does it mean that you can easily manipulate mayor into arranging a meeting between ponies?”

“Yup.”

“And what about others?”

“Anypony can do it, she loves matchmaking ponies.”

Whooves pondered for a while and suddenly he got an epiphany. He smiled widely, turned around, quickly got up to Twilight, grabbed her shoulders and kissed her. Twilight's pupils widened in shock, her heart skipped a beat. Her mind went blank and the only thing that mattered now was his lips and tongue. Whooves broke the kiss and said with a smile:

“Twilight, I wanted to put you on my ‘To Avoid’ list, but now I have to consider you my friend.”

“A friend?” Twilight asked, still in state of shock.

“Yes, forever a friend. Thanks!”

Whooves hummed a cheerful song and trotted towards the front door. Twilight hung her head down, trying to accept his words.

“A friend...” she whispered to herself. She felt as if a part of her world was shattered. Her hopes were crushed. She suffered the worst fate she could ever dream of.

She was friendzoned.

Whooves's voice came from the ground floor: “Twilight, could you please unlock the door?”

***

The sun had already set and darkness covered the land. Under the guise of night, two ponies were sneaking towards the Carousel Boutique.

“Why are you following me?”

Bon-Bon didn't answer to Lyra's angry question and asked her instead:

“So, what are we gonna do?”

“We?” Lyra shouted. “Not we, me. And I'm going to fix than damn robot you broke.”

“Okay. I'll help you.”

Lyra barely managed to stop herself from smacking Bon-Bon's head. Instead, she increased her pace, wanting to be over with it as soon as possible.

The robot and the earth mare arrived to the back of the boutique. Lyra levitated a rope and tied it to one of decorative poles surrounding the second floor. She climbed it, followed by her faithful minion. She opened a window, entered and saw Sweetie Belle lying in her bed, but with eyes still open.

“Hi, Lyra! I was going to go to sleep now.”

“Suspend system.”

Sweetie Belle stopped moving. Lyra magically removed the blanket, took a screwdriver from her saddlebag and raised it in air over Sweetie Belle's body.

“Bon-Bon, what in Smooze's name are you doing here?”

Lyra dropped the screwdriver in shock. She turned around and saw Rarity standing in the door to Sweetie Belle's bedroom.

“Hi Rarity,” said Bon-Bon. “Isn't it obvious what we're doing? Fix–”

“Filly sacrifice,” Lyra interrupted, while simultaneously shoving screwdriver's handle into henchpony's muzzle.

“Oh, no! This is horrible!” Rarity shrieked. “My friends want to kill my sister with a rusty screwdriver?” Lyra and Bon-Bon started sweating heavily. (Don't ask me why robots sweat.) Suddenly, Rarity's expression changed from an utter disgust to a friendly smile. “Wait a moment here, I'll fetch you a nice ritual knife.”

Leaving two confused mares behind, Rarity trotted downstairs to the kitchen, whispering to herself cheerfully: “Bon-Bon wants to be a cultist, too! I have to do everything I can to help her in her cultist stuff.” She rummaged drawers in search of the knife, but after searching all of them, she decided to fetch the sharpest knife she could find instead. The moment she left the kitchen with the knife, she heard a loud knock to the front door. Before she could respond, she heard a sound of the door opening and a stallion's voice:

“Hello, anypony here? I'm sorry that I came so late, but it's an emergency. I heard I could get some nice clothes here. Hello?”

Rarity went to greet her client, but as soon as she saw him, she immediately dismissed any business plans.

““It's you!”” both Whooves and Rarity shouted. The stallion turned around and started running for his life. The white unicorn followed him into the darkness of the night, swinging the knife in the air.

After having listened to this, Lyra and Bon-Bon stood in silence, not knowing what to do. Finally, Lyra decided:

“Let's get this thing done and run the hell out of here.”

***

“Ma'am Mayor, mail.”

The mail had arrived unusually late this morning. Mayor put down her newspaper, sighed and looked at her assistant, who was carrying several scrolls and envelopes. He put all the mail on mayor's desk and quickly left. The mayor grabbed the first letter, written on a sky blue scroll, which was the color of internal mail in the town hall. She unrolled it and read:

To Mayor Ivory Scroll,

I have noticed a disturbing fact that our town has no hourglass in the vicinity of the Everfree Forest. There is a small building near the forest and it would be advisable to install an hourglass there. I would like to ask for a permission to start a process of formal negotiations with the owner of the building.

Ponyville's Municipal Hourglass Operator,

Engineer Whooves

P.S. Could you send somepony to buy some elegant clothes for me? I do not think I am welcome to the Carousel Boutique anymore.

The mayor smiled. ‘So that's what you want,’ she thought to herself. ‘You can't be satisfied with such an easy prey, you're trying to aim higher. Sure, if you prefer Fluttershy to Twilight, why not?’

She grabbed her quill and scribbled just one word underneath:

approved

SWEETIE BELLE EDUCATION PROGRAM

“Lyra, guess what are we going to do today?”

“My guess is: the same thing we do every day, Bon-Bon: you'll go to whatever work you have now and I'll sit here alone and quietly prepare plans for world domination. Am I right?”

Lyra and Bon-Bon were in the basement, taking care of their prisoner. The real Sweetie Belle was in her cage, reading a comic book, while her captors were taking away books she have already read, dirty plates and the potty.

When Bon-Bon heard Lyra's guess, she smiled proudly: “Wrong!”

Lyra sighed and faced her roommate, levitating a stack of old magazines: “Could you enlighten me then?”

“It's simple: we're gonna have to guests today. Guess who!”

While Bon-Bon was standing emptyhoofed, Lyra put the magazines in the corner, on top of a larger stack. “I'll be optimistic: Fluttershy and Rarity. All the cultists at our place.”

The earth mare shook her head: “Wrong again! The first guest is Sweetie Belle.”

“It's hardly any news, she's here every day,” the unicorn replied, obviously having the robotic filly in mind. Calling the real Sweetie Belle a guest would be nonsensical – captives are not considered guests.

“Yes, but now she'll be here almost all day, Rarity asked me to take care for her.”

Lyra raised an eyebrow: “Why are you two such close friends now?”

Bon-Bon dismissed the question with a single hoofwave: “Long story. Anyway, guess who's the second one?”

Lyra sighed: “Let's be pessimistic. You're going to bring that brown-coated police officer here.”

***

Whooves left the town hall with a smile on his face. Earlier in the morning, he got an approval from the mayor to install an hourglass near the forest, which was actually an excuse to spend some time with the beautiful mare living there. He quickly went back home and put on his best tie – which was easy, because he only had two and the other one was still stained with mud after he had to run away from a violent white unicorn.

He combed his mane and looked in a mirror. In the reflection he didn't see a failure of a stallion he was few weeks ago. He saw a decently looking civil servant, who despite few hurdles managed to change his life.

He left his room and trotted downstairs, receiving few confused glances from Roseluck, who immediately started whispering something to her friends. He didn't pay any attention to them – today, he had only one goal: the hut near the forest.

He arrived there in few minutes. He raised his hoof to knock to the door, when he heard a voice.

“Are you sure we need to go?”

It was her! He couldn't mistake the cute pegasus's voice for anypony else's.

“Absolutely, dear leader. Applejack once said she wanted to join our cult, so it's crucial we go and help her. Come, the train is leaving soon.”

Whooves couldn't mistake that other voice either. He quickly turned around and wanted to run away, but the door swung open and the owner of the voice saw him.

“It's you!” yelled Rarity as soon as she saw the stallion. Whooves started to run and the unicorn followed him.

When Fluttershy lost them from sight, she whispered to herself:

“He looks sexy in that tie...”

***

Gallop. Turn left. Carts left in the street. Push away pedestrians. Running. Turn right. Yank a door handle. Locked. See Rarity. Run. Turn right. Narrow backstreet. Town square. Run down the street. Glance back – she's still there. Turn left. Again. She's gone. Pull the handle. Door opens. Jump inside. Close the door. Pant and sweat heavily.

***

“Let's be pessimistic. You're going to bring that brown-coated police officer here.”

Before Bon-Bon could respond, the door opened and a brown stallion wearing a tie jumped inside. He slammed the door shut and leaned on it, breathing heavily, as if he was running for a while. It took him a moment to realize where he arrived.

“Seize him!” Lyra shouted to her henchpony and Bon-Bon obliged.

Before Whooves could react, he was being dragged downstairs by the white mare. They descended to the basement and passed past a room with a cage occupied by a little filly. Lyra followed them and grinned widely. She and Bon-Bon strapped Whooves to a chair. Despite his valiant efforts, he couldn't get free.

“Problem, officer?” asked Lyra, with smile not vanishing from her face. “You thought you could mess with me without consequences?”

“What?”

“You were following me. Even to Cloudsdale.”

Whooves panicked: “But I'm an earth pony!”

“That's what all robot police officers say when confronted with an actual robot!”

Whooves was left speechless.

“Oh, you finished? Well, allow me to retort. What other officers are there in Ponyville now?”

“What?”

“What ain't no pony I ever heard of. Which race and gender is What?”

“What?”

Lyra's horn lit up: “Say ‘what’ again, bloody meatbag, I dare you, I double dare you, say ‘what’ one more damn time...”

Whooves gulped and started talking: “I'm an hourglass operator!”

The unicorn got closer. “Go on,” she prompted.

“Not a police officer!” he continued. “Listen, I've just moved to Ponyville and from the very beginning some crazy mares try to kill me or call a pedophile...”

“A pedophile?”

“He must be that guy Rarity was talking about,” Bon-Bon interjected.

“That's interesting... A police officer and a pedophile...”

“I'm none of that!” the stallion shouted, but the mares ignored him.

“If we only had some incriminating evidence,” Lyra continued, “we could keep him under our control. Blackmail works miracles.”

A loud knock could be heard from above.

“I'll get it!” Bon-Bon said and cantered upstairs. A moment later she shouted: “It's Sweetie Belle!”

“But I'm here!” a protest came from the cage.

“Bring her here!” Lyra commanded.

Bon-Bon went downstairs, followed by the filly. Lyra issued another order:

“Fetch a camera.”

Bon-Bon returned upstairs to look for a camera. Lyra said to Sweetie Belle:

“Assume control.”

Filly's body jerked. She shook her head, made few steps forward and wiggled her tail.

““It works!”” both Lyra and robotic Sweetie Belle said.

Bon-Bon returned, carrying a silver camera in her muzzle. She put it down and asked: “What now?”

The filly said: “Now you'll make some photos of me and Whooves together.”

Bon-Bon protested: “I'm not going to comply with such ridiculous requests from such a small filly!”

“It's me, Lyra!”

“Yeah, right! Now stop your blabbering or I'll shut you up in that blue box!”

Both the small white robot and the big green robot looked at the corner Bon-Bon was pointing her hoof at. They saw nothing.

““Stop it!”” both robots said simultaneously. ““I'm currently controlling both bodies. Do the photos of Sweetie Belle with the stallion!””

“What stallion?”

The robots looked at the chair and saw exactly the same number of stallions they had earlier seen of blue boxes: zero.

Whooves was gone.

“Cede control,” the green unicorn said and sighed. Sweetie Belle wobbled, but managed to regain balance pretty quickly.

“What are we going to do now?” Bon-Bon asked.

“I don't know! I've just fed information to the robot police officer and he managed to get free!”

Bon-Bon pouted her lips: “At least that filly didn't manage to make me take photos of her with him. That would be illegal.”

“Illegal?” Lyra shrieked. “You're helping an enemy spy to overthrow your government and now you care about some indecent materials involving minors? If he tells his superiors about this, we'll get executed!”

“We?”

“Yes, we. Me and you. Executed. Dead. Capital punishment for treason, the very first article of the Equestrian Penal Code.”

“But... I don't want to die!” Bon-Bon panicked. “I never signed up for this! I just wanted to help some poor robot in her mission! I never knew that what I'm doing is illegal!”

“And foalnapping? Assault? Mind manipulation? It's not like we're lawful citizens apart from all that ‘working for the enemy’ part.”

“Excuse me,” Sweetie Belle interjected, “what are you talking about? All I know is that Rarity told me to stay here today.”

“Oh sweet,” Lyra added, “she's still here. Sweetie Belle, go upstairs. We have important things to discuss here.” The filly obliged. “Okay, now since our situation is pretty much 100% bucked, the only thing that could happen to make this situation worse would be if the Princess Celestia herself came here for a visit.”

“Uhm, Lyra,” Bon-Bon began, “I forgot to tell you who–”

Suddenly, a loud knock came from above, followed by a loud male voice: “Her Highness Princess Celestia has arrived!”

“I'll get it!” Sweetie Belle shouted from the ground floor. Lyra bolted in panic upstairs and Bon-Bon followed her. Robotic Sweetie Belle stood next to the door, reaching her hoof to the handle. Lyra quickly slammed the basement door to quiet the voice of the real Sweetie Belle coming from downstairs. The door opened, revealing two armored stallions and a white alicorn. Lyra and Bon-Bon immediately bowed and the robotic Sweetie Belle followed suit shorty afterwards.

The alicorn stepped forward, follower by her guards. “Welcome, my faithful subjects. I came here to spend one day here.”

“What an honor, Your Majesty,” Lyra replied. “What have we done to be bestowed with such privilege?”

“I asked my student, Twilight Sparkle, to show me how an ordinary pony lives. Initially, I wanted the ordinary pony to be Twilight herself, but unfortunately she sent me an urgent letter apologizing for not being able to take care of me personally.” Celestia sighed. “Few hours later I got a letter saying I could spend my day in this meager house.”

“I can explain,” Bon-Bon interjected. “Rarity came to me earlier this morning and asked if I can take care of Your Highness for a day. So I agreed.”

Suddenly, Sweetie Belle exclaimed: “Oh no, I'll be late for class!”

“Oh, that's right, me too!” added Bon-Bon.

“What, did they finally see how dumb you are and send you back to the primary school?”

Bon-Bon ignored Lyra's snide remark and explained:

“I'm a substitute teacher and today is my first day at the job.”

“It's always nice to see an adult trying to pass the light of knowledge to the younger generations,” Celestia said to Bon-Bon with pride. “I hope you'll find your new job enjoyable and fulfilling.”

“I hope so,” the earth mare replied. “So, I need to go. Bye, Princess!”

She rushed outside. The filly followed her, smiling.

Celestia turned her gaze away from the departing ponies and looked at Lyra: “So, my dear... er...”

“Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings.”

“Lyra. Could you now tell me about how a normal pony lives?”

“Sure, my Princess. Please follow me, I'll make some tea.”

Princess smiled and faced the guards: “And you two, assume posts outside next to the entrance.”

“But Your Majesty,” one of them protested, “is it safe to leave you alone with her?”

“Oh, don't worry. She's a...” Celestia paused for a moment, “a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, so there's no reason to distrust her.”

The guards exchanged puzzled looks.

“Yeah, it's not like I'm some evil robot spy or something. Heh heh...” Lyra forced herself to chuckle.

The Princess giggled and added: “You see, nothing to worry here. You two can go outside and leave us to chat in private.”

The stallions left and closed the door behind them.

***

“Good morning, kids! My name is Bon-Bon and I'm going to be your substitute teacher for a while.”

While they say it's important to make a good impression, Bon-Bon couldn't say she achieved that. To make any impression, first you have to be noticed at all and at this moment the classroom was full of foals doing everything but paying attention to the teacher. Dozens of colts and fillies were talking to each other, throwing paper airplanes, and in the back, two colts, one teal and short and another orange and tall were fighting over a piece of bubblegum. Bon-Bon sighed, took a deep breath and shouted:

“Be bucking quiet, you squirmy maggots!”

It worked like unicorn magic. The foals quietly returned to their desks.

“Good morning. I'm Bon-Bon and I'm gonna teach you,” she tried again.

The children responded to that statement with blank stare.

“Okay, so now that the formal introduction is over, I'll start. Let me see, where are you at...”

Bon-Bon opened Cheerilee's notebook with the lesson plans. She found the right entry, dug in the desk for a math textbook, opened it on the correct page, stared at the problems for a while and finally proclaimed:

“You know, I have no idea what all those crosses between numbers mean, let's skip arithmetics for today.”

The mare threw the textbook into a corner and looked again into the notes. Suddenly, her facial expression changed.

“E–... Ethics... Today's subject is... death penalty.”

“Oh, cool, I love Ethics!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed. “It makes us wonder what our conscience is, what makes us pony, why we feel what we fell in our hearts...”

Bon-Bon cleared her throat and tried to suppress the memories of her short conversation with Lyra earlier this morning. She failed. Hesitantly, she asked her class a question:

“Okay, so what arguments do you have for and against death penalty.”

Scootaloo's hoof bolted into air immediately and she said:

“It removes dangerous ponies from the society.”

“But who are those dangerous ponies?” Bon-Bon inquired further.

“Murderers!”

“Traitors!”

“Traitors?” the mare asked, not sure who said that.

“Yeah!” shouted a gray unicorn filly sitting in the back. “For example, ponies who help evil robots to try overthrow Our Glorious Princess!”

““Hail Celestia!”” the class shouted in unison. Bon-Bon looked through her pupils at her pupils and tried to divert the conversation:

“But... but there are other ways, for example life imprisonment...”

“But killing them is, like, cheaper and stuff,” said a pink unicorn filly sitting on the left.

“But if you kill them and later they're found innocent, you can't cancel the sentence.”

“But if we're pretty sure, I think it's okay,” said Scootaloo.

“How sure is pretty sure? Is one chance in a thousand to kill an innocent pony good enough?”

“I think one in a billion is okay,” said Sweetie Belle. “Or in other words, you have to be 99.999999900000006% sure that the pony is guilty to kill them. The mere thought that you might spare such obvious traitors' lives makes my blood boil and my heart ache. We should fight those unnatural metal abominations before they kill all of sentient living organisms.”

Sweetie Belle's words were met with cheers and applauds of other foals.

“But... there's still a chance of irrevocably killing an innocent pony, right?” Bon-Bon said. “And you can never be sure, courts are fallible, right?”

“Ah reckoned from the very beginnin' that it's gonna get to this,” Apple Bloom said. “An ol' epistemological problem of certainty of knowledge. Y'all know that because of empirical nature of our experiences, y'all unable to gain any certain knowledge and therefore it's impossible to move past assignin' probabilities and likelihoods to all contingent facts about our universe, right?”

Almost all ponies went quiet and stared blankly at Apple Bloom, apart from one dark-gray earth filly sitting next to her, who simply rolled her eyes and whispered: “She can pronounce ‘epistemological’ and yet she can't, like, pronounce ‘I’.”

“What she said,” Bon-Bon added. “Now, what do you think about starting the recess a little earlier, for example now, and we'll have a math class next?”

***

Princess Celestia was sitting in an armchair in Lyra's house and sipping tea.

“Nice pieces of art,” she said, putting the teacup on a table, “but I'm not sure what is this one about.” She pointed her hoof at a mangled set of wires and metal in the corner. Lyra immediately recognized in it the remains of her former chassis, which she decided to keep for sentimental reasons, but she also immediately realized that she can't simply tell the truth to the alicorn.

“Oh, that...” she paused for a moment. “It's a gift from my uncle. He's a traveler. I never got a chance to ask him where he got it, but I think it looks nice.”

“Indeed,” Celestia nodded and turned to look at another piece of art. “And what about this picture? It sure looks like a photograph, doesn't it?”

Lyra looked at the picture of princesses Celestia and Molestia being slain by a small orange pegasus filly.

“Oh, that...”

“Yes, it almost makes me think you're a republican.”

“No!” Lyra immediately denied. It's one thing worse that being a robot in Equestria: being a supporter of abolishing of Princesses' rule and replacing it with democratic republic. The last leader of republicans, Cherry Bloom, whose goal was to become a president of Equestria, was publicly executed by pouring honey on her and burying in an anthill. Lyra had no interest in republican movement, so she told the truth behind the picture: “I got this picture for free from some gypsy traveler few months ago. She didn't say anything about it, neither the author nor the technique used to make it. It looks pretty cool though, right?”

Celestia chuckled: “You know, if it was not for me being a victim, I would like this picture.”

“Yeah, it looks nicely done.”

Celestia shifted her gaze to the green unicorn: “And frankly speaking, I personally don't think there's anything bad with republicans.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but I feel trapped. I have to remain a ruler, because if I quit, what would I do? Oh, could you tell me, miss Heartstrings, where is the bathroom?”

Lyra pointed at the corridor in the back of the building: “To the left.”

“Thank you.”

Celestia got up and gracefully walked in the direction Lyra was pointing. When she disappeared and the host heard a loud clank of a bathroom lock, the door to the basement opened, revealing a huge white alicorn. Lyra grinned.

***

“So, Rainmane, how did you like the yesterday's dinner?” asked Duskflare.

“Oh come on, honey, you know you're the best cook in the whole Equestria. You're lucky Princesses don't know about it, or they'd work you to death in their kitchen.”

“Don't think I did this for you! I simply had some leftover ingredients!”

“Hahah, okay. But I still appreciate it. It was very kind of you. Thanks.”

“And look now, you idiot, you made me blush!”

Rainmane laughed, seeing how Duskflare looked away to hide the face expression.

“Er... We have a nice weather today,” the blue-maned pegasus stopped laughing and tried to change the topic to get out from this awkward situation. They usually didn't show their mutual feeling in public, even if there was nopony watching.

Duskflare stopped pouting lips and replied: “You don't have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Change subject to something– oh no, somepony's coming!”

The guards immediately stopped talking and stiffened up, trying to look as serious as possible. A gray pegasus flew in the distance, not paying any attention to two stallions guarding the entrance to Lyra's house.

“That was close,” whispered Rainmane.

“It's your fault,” burst Duskflare.

“Yeah, maybe. I still love you.”

“Hmph!”

The stallions stood in silence for few minutes, when the door opened and a majestic alicorn stepped out.

“Your Majesty!”

“Yes, yes, it's me, now quiet, you two,” she said. “I'd like to take a look at different aspects of normal pony life. Let's go see the school.”

***

“So, we take two apples.”

“Uh-huh...”

“And two apples. And we put two and two together and we get four. This is what the plus sign means.”

“Er... I still don't get it.”

“Oh come on, miss Bon-Bon!” Scootaloo shouted, throwing her hooves in the air. “It's not that hard!”

“Give up, Scoots,” said Apple Bloom. “We tried different approaches: Ah tried with generalizin' it to arbitrary commutative monoids, Sweetie Belle talked about some registers and opcodes and Celestia knows what else (who taught her that much about processor architecture anyway?), and even havin' the dumbest foal in class–” “Hey!” “–give the most simple, down-to-earth explanation has failed.”

Bon-Bon sat on her haunches, staring hopelessly at the math textbook. All the foals gazed at her, not knowing what to do in this situation. Such a display of incompetence would be unthinkable during Cheerilee's classes. They didn't have much time to ponder over it, because a loud knock and a male voice broke the silence.

“Her Majesty Princess Celestia is here,” said Rainmane, opening the door. He entered, followed by the princess. Duskflare stayed outside.

“Hello, Your Highness, weren't you supposed to stay with Lyra?” Bon-Bon asked.

Celestia chuckled:

“Oh, I gave her a little break and went to see how you are doing. How are the kids?”

“Oh, wonderful! There are making so much progress!” the earth mare exclaimed, wearing a fake smile. The children nodded vigorously.

“That's good. I'll be going then. Guards, let's see the Mayor. They caught a robot in Ponyville today. I wonder if it had accomplices.”

Bon-Bon froze in shock. The only pony to react was Sweetie Belle:

“Yeah, death to the robots! Death to robot supporters!”

The rest of the class joined her enthusiastically. Bon-Bon sat motionlessly, her brain unable to produce any thought. The only feeling left in her soul was despair.

A single tear made its way down her cheek.

***

Lyra sat in an armchair, smiling. Everything was going according to her plan. Well, she didn't have a plan, but as soon as she would think of one, it would be a piece of cake to fulfill. Mere fact of successfully impersonating Celestia was a huge progress. She heard Princess flushing the toilet and soon the alicorn emerged from the bathroom.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Oh, um... I remembered a joke.”

“Oh, I love jokes. Tell me.”

Lyra cleared her throat, while trying to remember any, even the lamest joke.

“Okay. So, why did the cyborg pegasus cross the road?”

“I don't know?”

“To get to the other side!”

Celestia giggled and a second later Lyra joined her. They laughed together for a while, when the princess added:

“I don't get it.”

The laughter died immediately. The alicorn sat in the chair and grabbed her tea cup with magic.

“Did I hear my guards when I was in bathroom?” she asked, while taking a sip. “Did something happen?”

“Guards?” Lyra pretended to not know anything. “Maybe they were talking outside. They didn't come here. Why?”

“It's weird,” Celestia frowned. “They are not supposed to chat while on duty.”

“Maybe they always do, but they don't realize these walls are thinner.”

“I suppose you're right.” The princess took another sip. “Say, what are normal ponies like you doing for living?”

“Various things, I suppose. But sadly, I'm currently unemployed. Bon-Bon takes various casual part-time jobs from time to time, but it's not enough for two ponies.”

“So what are you two living of then?”

Lyra knew she couldn't reveal the real source of their income, which was the budget of intelligence services of the Evil Robot Empire, so she quickly made up another story:

“Savings. I inherited a small fortune and I try to make it last for a while. I think I can pull off another year or two.”

Before Celestia could respond, the door burst open and Bon-Bon bolted inside, with tears running down her cheeks.

“Lyra! Princess Celestia said they're gonna kill me!”

“She did?”

“I did?”

“Yes, you did!” the earth mare confirmed. “At school!”

“When?” Celestia asked, confused.

“Just now!”

“Hold your horses, my subject. I was here all the time and I surely didn't go anywhere.”

Bon-Bon stomped her hoof and said with a serious look on her face:

“I'm sure I've just seen Your Majesty at school!”

Celestia sighed: “This is one of the most ridiculous things I heard lately. But if you insist, fine, I'll ask the guards what they think about it.”

The princess got up and trotted to the door. She took a glance outside and gasped in shock.

“They're gone?”

“Who's gone?” Lyra asked.

“The guards! They were supposed to guard the house!”

The green unicorn suggested with fake concern: “Oh no, we should go look for them, shouldn't we?”

“Immediately. Come with me, my faithful subjects!”

***

Ivory Scroll was sitting at her desk, having nothing to do, so instead of doing any kind of real work, she was drawing various pictures of Whooves and Fluttershy together, of various levels of decency. She noticed that he had still not returned from his date– I mean, job, which meant that he probably succeeded. She was just adding a tiny detail to her last picture, when her assistant entered and announced a visit of Princess Celestia. The mayor immediately hid the pictures to a drawer and told the assistant to let the princess in.

Celestia entered the mayor's office, accompanied by two stallions. She took a look around, smiled and said:

“Greetings, mayor. I just came to say hi.”

“Your Majesty, but what about the robo–mfm...” Rainmane tried to ask, but the princess silenced him with a hoof to muzzle.

“Hi, Your Majesty...” the mayor replied. “How can I help you?”

The alicorn chuckled: “You're doing fine, don't worry. Oh, I'd forget, I just need to inform you about that. The hourglass operator, what's his name...”

“Whooves.”

“Right, Whooves. I heard he's gone totally crazy. We saw him running around and screaming something about how the mayor is an alien and other silly stuff.”

“We did?–mfm...” Duskflare tried to ask, but Celestia stuck her hoof in his muzzle.

“So! We're be going then, you can go back to your, uhm, mayor activities. See ya.”

Not waiting for the response, the princess left, leaving the mayor in state of confusion.

***

“Slow down, my subjects!”

Bon-Bon ran through the streets of Ponyville, followed closely by Lyra. Celestia lagged behind, holding firmly her tiara with magic and breathing heavily.

“We can't stop, Your Majesty, we must find the guards!” Bon-Bon shouted in response.

The pedestrians blurred past them as they zoomed through the town, turning into every street Bon-Bon could think of, looking for the guards. They finally found them leaving the Town Hall.

“There they are!” Bon-Bon shouted. Two pegasi and an alicorn turned around and looked at the pursuers.

“What's going on?” asked Rainmane, looking back and forth at two Celestias.

“I'm not sure,” Duskflare said. “There are two princesses. Does it mean one of them is a fake?”

Rainmane pondered for a while, when Lyra, Bon-Bon and their Celestia caught up to them. The second alicorn asked:

“Why aren't you two at home or at work?”

“Who are you and how dare you impersonate me!” the first Celestia yelled. Both alicorns' horns lit up and rays of magical energy shot from them, clashing midair.

“Duskflare,” Rainmane whispered, “do you know the game of three shells and a pea?”

“I do, what about it?”

“It relies on misdirection. The player thinks there is a pea under one of the shells, but actually there isn't any.”

“So, what does it have to do with this?”

“They're both fakes.”

“What?” Duskflare shouted in shock.

“Real Celestia is trapped somewhere else and the perpetrator sent up two fake Celestias to give us a fake sense of accomplishment when we find out that one of them is fake,” Rainmane explained.

“Wow, you're really smart!”

“Thanks!” Rainmane smiled seductively. The red-maned pegasus averted his gaze and pouted lips.

“Well, I didn't tell it to you to make you happy, I just stated an objective fact!” he said.

“Whatever. I still love you. You get the one on the left, I'll take care of the one on the right.”

The guards jumped forward, tackling the alicorns to the ground. Magic shot wildly in various directions, hitting and destroying a chimney. The alicorns resisted, but none of them was strong enough to escape from powerful guardsponies' grip.

“Take your hooves from me, I'm your ruler!” shouted the princess held by Rainmane.

“No, I am their ruler!” the second one protested.

“Yeah, likely story,” Rainmane remarked, smiling. “Where's the closest doctor?” he asked Bon-Bon and Lyra. Meanwhile, Duskflare managed to cuff himself to one of the Celestias.

“Follow me,” Bon-Bon replied and started walking. Duskflare followed, dragging one princess behind him. Rainmane needed a little more time, but he also managed to put cuffs on princess's foreleg and go in the direction Bon-Bon led them. Lyra walked slowly in the back, so nopony else could hear her utter a single word:

“Shit.”

***

The orange-maned unicorn looked at the six ponies that appeared in his house unexpectedly.

“Okay, so how can I help you?”

Two pegasi wearing armor exchanged nervous looks. One of them cleared his throat and stepped forward.

“We'd like you to perform an medical examination, because we suspect one or both of those alicorns are trying to impersonate Our Glorious Princess Celestia.”

The doctor blinked, not sure is they were serious.

“Shouldn't you take them to the police and compare tongueprints?”

During the awkward silence, Lyra heard a whisper inside of her mind, saying: ‘Battery low.’

‘I did charge it before use, did I?’ she asked herself, but her memories did not contain any data on recharging her alicorn chassis.

She decided to do the best thing to save herself: she made her alicorn body get a seizure-like attack and say “beep-bop-beep.”

“Look, that one is a robot!” the green pony shouted, pointing at the white shape wriggling on the floor.

“Beep-beep!” the shape replied.

Guards stared at the jerking alicorn with confusion. Celestia was shocked to see her lookalike apparently suffer.

Bon-Bon sighed in relief. “So maybe it wasn't a real princess who wanted to kill me, but a robot princess...”

Lyra wrapped her foreleg over her shoulder and reassured her with a smile. “Don't worry, the evil robot Celestia is no more!”

“Okay, that leaves us with only one,” Rainmane said, staring at the standing alicorn.

Duskflare ushered him to the side and whispered:

“How sure are you that both princesses are fake?”

“Well...”

“Would you bet your job– no, your freedom on that?”

“Excuse me, but I've heard everything.”

Duskflare looked up and saw Celestia with an angry look on her face. Her foreleg was cuffed to Duskflare leg, so he dragged the princess behind him. She waved the trapped leg in front of his eyes.

“Uhm, I'm sorry, Princess, precautions...”

“The precautions are no longer necessary,” the alicorn exclaimed sternly.

The guard quickly rummaged his pockets in a search for key and unlocked the hoofcuffs. Celestia freed her leg and massaged the sore place with her other hoof.

“Excuse me, Your Majesty,” the doctor asked, “is there any other way I can help you?”

“No,” Celestia replied, turning around to the exit. “Have a nice day, subject.”

She left, quickly followed by Lyra, Bon-Bon, and the guards. The doctor saw them leave and quickly shouted a question: “But what with the other one?” He pointed his hoof at a liveless white alicorn on the floor, even though they couldn't see him doing it.

“You may keep it,” Duskflare said and those were the last words the orange-maned doctor heard from royal guards today.

However, he still couldn't wrap his mind around when he saw those two mares who accompanied the guards before.

***

“That was simply awful,” Celestia said. “It was the first case of robot attack in Ponyville and it had to be me.”

Bon-Bon froze and took a while to evaluate what the princess said, but when she understood it, she smiled widely. Lyra noticed it and smacked her accomplice in the back of her head.

“Well, it's very unfortunate, Your Majesty,” Lyra replied.

“I commend your courage when you faced that robot,” the princess continued. “I'd like to make you an offer.”

“Yes, Princess?”

“I heard you're unemployed. What would you say about joining forces of the Equestrian Counter-Robot Police?”

Lyra froze speechless.

“You'd work together with the current Ponyville officer,” Celestia continued, “I hope you two will get along.”

Lyra ran a procedure of displaying blush on her face.

“I'm not sure if he–”

“Oh no no,” the princess interrupted her and laughed. “You might not know it, but almost all robot police officers are female. We don't advertise it too much, organizations fighting for stallions' rights would rip us apart.”

The green robot evaluated what she heard and immediately displayed a huge grin. Bon-Bon noticed it and smacked her boss in the back of her head.

“Sure, Your Majesty, I accept!” Lyra replied to her new employer.

“I'm glad you did,” Celestia smiled. “I'll send you your first instructions later. See you again later, my dear... the heck, why not go a little crazy here, you saved me, the Supreme Ruler! Captain! Captain Lyra Heartstrings!”

Lyra saluted and watched her new employee get into her chariot and ride it back to Canterlot. The guards doubled as the chariot's power source. Bon-Bon waved them goodbye as they disappeared in the distance.

“It looks that my plan failed less than I feared,” Lyra said when she could no longer see the point in the sky that was Celestia's chariot. “I can finally find the real robot police officer and infiltrate that organization from inside. I can only wonder who that brown-coated idiot was...”

***

A little earlier that day, in Lyra's basement...

“Now you'll make some photos of me and Whooves together.”

A small white unicorn filly talked to an adult mare standing next to her. Doctor Whooves peeked from inside his time-traveling box and saw his younger self strapped to a chair.

The mare replied angrily: “I'm not going to comply with such ridiculous requests from such a small filly!”

“It's me, Lyra!” the filly protested.

Whooves sneaked behind a table and freed his younger self. Both Whooveses quickly ran back to the box. When they slammed the door shut, they could hear the mare shouting at the filly: “Yeah, right! Now stop your blabbering or I'll shut you up in that blue box!” The box emitted some weird sound and the voices of ponies outside disappeared.

“It's the second time my future self is saving my life,” Engineer Whooves said. “How can I ever repay you?”

“Huh, the fun fact is that it's totally logically impossible,” Doctor Whooves smiled. “I know, I tried to work out the logic few days after I was freed from that basement.”

“Okay, so what are you going to do now?”

“I'll drop you few hours in the future, near the Town Hall.”

“Great!” the engineer smiled viciously. “I'll go straight to the mayor and tell her about the looming danger of robots!”

“Uh, I wouldn't bother, but I know I can't stop you, so... here, we arrived.”

The door of the box opened, revealing a small backstreet near the Town Hall.

“Oh thanks Celestia!”

The younger stallion went outside and cantered away.

“Okay, it's time for me,” Doctor Whooves said to himself and closed the door to his time machine. He turned around to face the control panel.

There was a pink mare there.

“Hey, what does this button do?” she asked.

“Don't! Touch! Anything!” he managed to yell, but she didn't listen. Her hoof slammed a big, red button in the middle of the panel and the blue box was sent on the next journey through time and space.

***

“Mayor! Mayor!” Whooves yelled as he ran into the mayor's office.

The mayor put away her newspaper, in which she was solving a crossword puzzle, and asked: “What happened? Did you arrange an appointment for an hourglass installation near the forest?”

“No, I have more important news!”

“Yes?”

“That green unicorn is a robot! And that white filly too! They kidnapped me and wanted to force me into making lewd photos with the filly!”

“Okay...” the mayor responded slowly, sighing a little. “I think you need a vacation. Two weeks at least.”

“But–”

“No buts! Vacation! Now! Go home!”

“But–”

“Leave!”

Whooves hung his head and gave up. He trotted slowly from the office and headed home.

The mayor waited for him to leave, opened a drawer and took out a small mirror.

“Stupid Whooves,” she said to herself. “He needs to stop that crazy talk. I mean, what happens if he accidentally guesses something right?” She looked at her reflection in the mirror, closely examining her face. “My disguise is in a good shape, I still look like a pony, right?”

***

Field Report 035/1609

Through intensive observation I have pinpointed one pony as suspect of being a robot. The subject has displayed following characteristics:

— she displays no sophisticated emotions

— she performs random acts of violence, mostly focused on a single earth stallion

— during the last Sentient Social, her team (consisting of a subject and a filly) took only one egg from the dispenser that gives out one egg per sentient being

— robot detectors gave high results both near her house and during the Sentient Social

— she belongs to an apocalyptic cult that preaches a doctrine contrary to the doctrine Our Glorious Princess Celestia preaches

— she spends a lot of time in spa, as if trying to flaunt her waterproof chassis

— she has high melee weapon skills

Currently, the suspects goes by name ‘Rarity’. Physical description: white unicorn mare, purple mane, three diamonds cutie mark.

A biotest is requested to ascertain her biologicality. A house search is requested to find any robotic peripherals and other suspicious equipment. A foster family is requested for providing care for the filly (supposedly her sister) during the time of arrest. Finally, an anti-terrorist team of at least eight ponies is requested for assistance in the capture of the suspect.

“Hello, Roseluck, what are you writing?”

Roseluck jumped in shock; a sheet of paper she was writing on flew in the air. She jumped and quickly grabbed it, tugging it to her chest.

“Whooves, you're early!”

“Yeah, I was told to have some vacation or something...” he sighed. “I think it's a good idea. This day was so tiring, I'd need at least a week to recover. So, see you later.”

“Bye,” she replied as Whooves went upstairs to his room. When he disappeared from her sight, she put the paper on the table and did what was left for her to do: signed it.

Sergeant Roseluck

SWEETIE BELLE CHASTITY PROGRAM

“Apple Bloom, what are we going to do tonight?”

“The same thing we do every night, Scootaloo: crusade for our cutie marks!”

Three fillies were sitting around a table in a shabby tree house in the middle of Sweet Apple Acres orchards. On the table there was a huge list of several hundred things the fillies planned to do with jellyfish. Almost all of them were struck out.

“Yes, but we're almost out of ideas,” Scootaloo hung her head down. “We had over four hundred of them and they all suck!”

“Don'cha worry, Scoots,” Apple Bloom tried to reassure her. “We still have few more. See: idea number 404: makin' clothes for jellyfish. Sweetie Belle, did ya find materials for that?”

Sweetie Belle shook her head.

“Materials for idea #404: not found.”

The fillies sat for a moment in an awkward silence.

“Girls, maybe we should forget those jellyfish,” Scootaloo finally said. “We can simply go to the beach and enjoy ourselves without trying to torment wild animals.”

“No tormentin'?” Apple Bloom asked, not believing in what her pegasus friend said. “So what are we goin' to do there?”

Sweetie Belle looked as resigned as the pegasus filly. “I agree with Scootaloo. We'll come up with something tomorrow. For today, my energy levels are too low.”

“Already?” Apple Bloom protested. “But we were to try apple carvin' tonight! I even brought some apples!”

Scootaloo smiled sheepishly. “Carving? But I think it's already late and I'd have to get back ho–”

Apple Bloom leaned forward, her forehooves on the table, and looked straight into pegasus's eyes: “Brought some apples!” Then she quickly turned towards Sweetie Belle: “Brought some apples!” Back to Scootaloo: “Brought some apples!” And back to Sweetie Belle: “Brought some apples!”

“I'm a unicorn,” Sweetie Belle replied and defensively covered her face with her forelegs. The farm filly sighed and sat down.

“So y'all don' wanna do any carvin'?”

The silent stare of her friends was a sufficient answer.

“Okay, so see y'all tomorrow.”

***

Sweetie Belle returned to the Carousel Boutique and saw Rarity and Fluttershy looking at a drawing board and discussing something frantically. The board was covered with dozens of pentagrams, ancients runes, and arrows, pointing from one occult symbol to another. When the filly slammed the door shut, the mares turned around to greet her.

“Hello, Swetie Belle. What's going on at Applejack's?” the white mare asked.

“Nothing much,” answered the filly. “Oh, good evening, Fluttershy.”

“Hi. So, uhm, would you happen to have thought again about being our sacrificial virgin?” the pegasus inquired politely.

Sweetie Belle was slightly confused by the question. Before she responded, Rarity protested:

“Dear leader, I already told you it might not work. Given today's kids, I wouldn't be surprised if she was no longer a virgin.” The mare was not sure if she said that because she wanted her sister to live or because she wanted the summoning spell to succeed.

“Oh, I'm kinda prepared for that.”

Fluttershy trotted to her saddlebag, which stood on the floor next to the ironing table, and pulled out an small instrument. The device was rectangular, with two lights, one button, and an antenna.

“What's that?” Sweetie Belle asked nervously.

“It's a virginometer. It can detect an unbroken hymen tissue from distance. A kind of biodetector. Let me show how it works.”

The yellow pegasus pointed the antenna at Rarity and pressed the button. The device released a loud beep and a red light shone.

“It means that Rarity's not a virgin. Now, could you stand still?”

She pointed the antenna at the filly and pressed the button again. Again, the red light shone.

“Oh my...”

Fluttershy's face became slightly redder. Sweetie Belle seemed unconcerned with the result and shouted:

“Now me, lemme try!”

Before the yellow pegasus could protest, the filly snatched the instrument from her hooves, pointed at her and pressed the button.

Beep. A white light lit up.

Fluttershy covered her face in embarrassment. “Eep!” She grabbed the device and her saddlebag and quickly ran away.

“Poor leader...” Rarity said, seeing as her mentor disappears from her sight. “It's not her fault she's so socially awkward she couldn't find anypony in her life. I think you should make up for it to her.”

“How?”

“Find her a stallion. A stallion worth of our Great Leader!”

“Cutie Mark Crusaders Matchmakers! Yeah!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed enthusiastically.

“But first, do a test run. Try to pair up, I don't know, that teacher of yours. I heard she recently divorced. If you succeed, you may try with Fluttershy.”

“Adding finding stallions for Cheerilee and Fluttershy to list of future activities. Done. I have a question.”

“What is it, darling?”

“What can we do at beach? Because I'm going with other Crusaders to the beach tomorrow.”

Rarity focused her thoughts for a moment. “I don't know,” she finally answered, “maybe sunbathing? But I'll ask you a question, too.” A dramatic pause. “Which colt did it? Because I want to personally strangle him with his own guts.”

Sweetie Belle didn't know what to respond, so she could only blankly stare at Rarity's creepy smile.

***

At noon, three fillies gathered at their headquarters.

“So, does anypony have any ideas what to do at the beach?” Scootaloo asked.

“May sister told me we can try sunbathing,” said Sweetie Belle.

Two other fillies stared at her blankly.

“That's stupid,” the pegasus finally broke the silence. “You can't bathe in boiling water and the Sun is even hotter!”

“Yeah, we are not Princess Celestia!” added Apple Bloom.

“So what else can we do?” resigned the unicorn.

“Ah talked with mah brother,” said the farm filly, “and he said we could try swimmin'.”

““Good idea!”” the other two shouted in unison.

After packing their saddlebags, the trio embarked on their journey towards the bay.

***

Meanwhile, in Canterlot, Princesses Celestia and Molestia (spirit name: Luna) sat on a couch and played Portail 2 (cooperative mode) on their Hay-Box. When the next level was loading, Luna took an opportunity and asked:

“Sister, I was in a space camp on the Moon and now I'm managing the Moon. Does it mean that thou were in a space camp on the Sun?”

The elder princess laughed:

“Ha ha ha, don't be silly! Nopony can survive Sun's temperature.”

***

“Bon-Bon, we have a problem.”

Lyra blocked the TV screen from her roommate's sight, so she could get her whole attention. Sweetie Belle, who was sitting in her new cage, pressed the pause button on the remote.

“What happened?” asked the white mare, slightly annoyed by the sudden interruption.

“The computer has detected that Sweetie Belle was talking with somepony about swimming.”

“I wasn't!” protested the prisoner.

“Shut up, biological dead weight. Anyway, get going. We must stop her.”

“But...” Bon-Bon pointed her hoof towards the screen.

“No, you'll finish it later. Take the Emergency Equipment Set No. 42. I'll explain my plan on the way.”

The white mare reluctantly got up and trotted to the closet. She opened it, revealing a large set of saddlebags, numbered from 1 to 256. She grabbed the 42nd one with her mouth and followed Lyra upstairs.

Sweetie Belle sighed and took another look at the TV screen.

“What a coincidence,” she said. “It's the exact same frame on which Twilight paused it when I was in the library.”

***

It was a warm, sunny day in Ponyville. Ponies were enjoying their Saturday off. It was a perfect day to relax in the calm, quiet—

“I"M GONNA KILL YOU!”

Well, ekhm, it would be calm and quiet, if not for a saber-wielding mare, who chased two young unicorn colts through the streets.

***

“We arrived!” exclaimed Scootaloo.

A beautiful view was spread before Crusaders' eyes. An azure water, a narrow stripe of golden sand, and emerald-green bushes behind them. An old wooden platform extended from the shore towards the sea.

The excited fillied dropped their saddlebags onto the ground and cantered towards the shining water. “CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS SWIMMERS!” they yelled.

A loud whistle sound interrupted their joyful escapade. They stopped and looked around in confusion. In the distance, they saw a white mare running towards them.

“Miss Bon-Bon!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed when the mare arrived. “What are you doing here?”

“Didn't you all know?” Bon-Bon asked nervously. “I work part-time as a lifeguard.” She pointed with her hoof at the whistle hanging from her neck.

“Wow, I didn't know,” the unicorn robot gasped in awe.

“I didn't want to brag. Now, move away from water, it's dangerous.”

“But–” Apple Bloom tried to protest, but the mare interrupted her:

“No buts. Follow me.”

The fillies groaned in disappointment, but followed Bon-Bon. They stopped near the bushes that grew near the beach.

“Miss Bon-Bon,” Scootaloo inquired, “why can't we swim? It's been nice weather for days, the water should be warm, there are no algae, waves are small...”

The mare closed her eyes, trying to come up with an excuse. Luckily, she remembered the reason Sweetie Belle was not allowed near water:

“You can't go into water, because if you did, you would short-circuit.”

A small rock flew from the bushes and hit Bon-Bon in the back of her head.

“Ow! Who threw that?”

She turned around to see who the assailant was, but green unicorns perfectly hide in green foliage.

“'Scuse me, miss Bon-Bon, but this is horse manure,” Apple Bloom said to Bon-Bon, who kept looking around. “Ah've been in water many times and Ah've never had any short or long circuits.”

“Yeah, neither did I,” added Sweetie Belle.

Scootaloo nodded in agreement: “What they said.”

Bon-Bon stopped searching for the mysterious attacker and turned to the Crusaders.

“You don't believe me?”

““NO!”” they yelled in unison and galloped towards the sea.

“You idiot!” shouted Lyra, jumping out from her hiding place. “We must stop them!”

The fillies run onto the platform and skidded to halt at the very end.

“It looks deep,” said Scootaloo, gazing into the blue abyss.

“Don't!” shouted Lyra, who was running towards the fillies. She stopped on the platform, next to the shocked Crusaders.

“Hey, wait for me!” yelled Bon-Bon, who was still running. She entered the platform at the full speed, tried to halt, but tripped over, bumped into Lyra and pushed her into water.

The green unicorn robot tried to get hold of the platform with her hooves, but she failed. She fell to the sea with a large splash. Salty water quickly entered her chassis. In matter of seconds, her whole body started twitching uncontrollably.

The three fillies watched in horror as Lyra tried to call for help. Bon-Bon tried to reach her and after several tries she managed to grab her boss's tail with her teeth and pull her out.

When the twitching robot was finally lying on the platform, Bon-Bon turned to the horrified fillies and said:

“Do you believe me now?”

***

Twilight was reading a book in her library, when she heard sound of multiple hooves knocking energetically at the door. She got up and opened the door. As soon as she did it, two unicorn colts, one tall and orange, another one fat and teal, bolted inside and slammed the door shut.

“Help! She wants to kill us!” the taller one, named Snails, begged. Snips, the fat one, supported the door, as if he was expecting some force to ram into it. Their foe chose a different way of assault. With magic, she threw a saber at the door and half of the blade unexpectedly appeared inches above Snips's head, penetrating oaken boards.

“Twilight! Open the door! Are those two perverts in there?” Rarity's voice could be heard from the other side.

“No, Luna and Berry Punch are coming later this evening,” Twilight responded, without opening the door.

“I'm not talking about them! I'm talking about Snips and Snails!”

“What happened?”

“Those two rascals need to pay for their crimes!” The blade started to wriggle, as if somepony tried to pull it out from the other side.

“What crimes?”

Rarity explained what crimes she suspected the colts of.

The librarian laughed: “Rarity, look at them! They're still too young, they're still before puberty. They are simply not physically able to do it.”

“Really?” Rarity's voice sounded calmer.

“Yes! It must have been some older stallion, an adult. These two are innocent.”

“Oh. So I've been wrong,” the white unicorn said without emotion, as if nothing happened. “See you later, Twilight.”

“Bye, Rarity.”

With a little bit of magic, Rarity pulled the weapon from the door and trotted happily home.

As soon as he couldn't hear Rarity's hoofsteps, Snails said: “Thank you, Miss Sparkle. If not for you, we'd be dead now.”

“No problem, kids.”

Snips opened the door, the colts said their goodbyes and trotted back home.

“Interesting duet, those two,” Twilight said to herself. Suddenly, her eyes sparkled with joy.

“Oh, it's gonna be a masterpiece!”

She ignored the book she was reading a moment ago, sat to her desk, grabbed a sheet of paper and a quill and wrote a title:

‘Snaps And Slimes Discover Joys Of Adulthood’

***

Sweetie Belle was exhausted after the trip to the sea. They didn't get their cutie marks, they didn't swim, they didn't do anything, because of Lyra and Bon-Bon's sudden appearance.

“I'm home!”

Rarity put down her saber, which she was sharpening at the moment, and trotted to see her sister.

“So, Sweetie Belle, how was the sea?”

“We actually didn't do anything at the sea,” the filly said. A slight anger could be heard in her voice.

“What happened?”

“Apple Bloom suggested we swim, but then we decided not to and came back home.”

Rarity was puzzled: “Why didn't you swim?”

Sweetie Belle looked at her sister, surprised that she asked such an obvious question.

“So we didn't short-circuit.”

Rarity was even more puzzled: “Short-circuiting is what robots do, not biological ponies like me or you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. At least I think so, I have no idea how it would look like.”

The filly sighed. “So we could swim, but we wasted our day for nothing instead?”

Instead of answering, Rarity patted her sister's head.

“What do you think about taking a bath? We're both tired after today.”

“Okay. You may go first.”

Rarity trotted upstairs, entered the bathroom and started filling a bathtub. Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle went to the kitchen to grab some snacks.

Water in the tub was warm, so when it was half-full, Rarity slowly entered it.

She put her hind hoof in a wrong way. Almost instantly, she got a leg cramp. She shrieked, tumbled over into the water and started writhing in pain, trying to massage her hind leg with her forehooves.

Sweetie Belle heard all that commotion and immediately showed up in the bathroom's door. She saw that something was happening to her sister and shouted:

“You're short-circuiting! You're a robot!”

Rarity couldn't protest, but she made a mental note to give Sweetie Belle at least a week of detention. As soon as she managed to get out of the tub.