• It’s been a while.

The shadow twisted and tore itself off the wall, stepping onto the dull concrete. The innumerable others, still yelling out their mute cries, remained confined to their places.

Fixer looked at the shadow that stood in front of him and scowled.

• Do you think… Do you think you can scare me with this? - his mind was bubbling and boiling, yet he still managed to find enough words to talk back.

• Well, if that makes you feel better, the intent was to do the exact opposite.

• Drop the fucking act, - Fixer spat out before collapsing under the insurmountable pressure on his temples.

• That would be difficult, - the shadow shrugged - The act is all on you.

The unicorn listened to the voice coming out of it and felt the fire inside his head consume all that it feasibly could. This was not right. This was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

• You don’t look well. You never did to begin with, but… This just looks ugly. Are you sure you can walk? I need you to walk.

How could it be? He did not understand. His mind and body were already swollen with enough trauma to fuel an impenetrable insanity, but this question rose to the top of the pile and flashed red, like a police light. The shadow had fully taken form by then, and was one no longer - if it ever was.

The voice… The shape… it could not have been.

• Go to hell.

The words left a trail of blackened blood on the floor.

• Fine, so be it. I’ll just drag you.

Fixer felt a limb touch him, and instantly caught himself trying to think that it was a shadowy tendril, something unnatural, something impossible, something to be opposed, but it was none of that. This train of thought circled round, and could not find an end, conflicting with itself.

A sudden raspy scream pulled him out of the loop.

• Oh, fuck my shit. The hell… You’re not right.

The unicorn’s eyes widened slightly as he realized that the wildfire in his head had half quenched, and thoughts nearly did not sting with each move. Even the frightening realization of the fact that explained it did not make him fear so much. With that touch, he had felt what he had been lacking for so long.

Something that had been lost ever since the genesis of the world gone wrong.

• You… You…

• Go on, tell me, - the voice sounded interested, and the timbre of it created a croaked unity, blocking out the soundless shouts of the shadows on the walls, - Maybe you've actually realized it yourself.

Fixer looked up at the stallion in front of him. He had a brown coat, a long horn, his snout bore several small scars, his mane was dull brown, and his iris was the color of smog. He wore a standard issue LPPD detective vest with the epaulettes and insignia removed.

• You’re not real.

• Oh dear, - the other one smacked himself on the head in frustration - You really are dense, aren't you.

He was missing half his face.

• I am your Rationale, Frame Fixer.

And nothing was wrong.

• And you are my split personality.

His eyes were still blurry, and so was everything else. Somehow, he got up. Somehow, he did not snap his own neck after having met the other one.

They had been walking for some time now. Fixer kept to himself through most of the way, still aching and feeling tired.

Fixer shrugged uncomfortably. He did not know what to think of it. On one side, it unnerved him to think that the other him was denying the name. On the other, it seemed fitting. On the most plainly visible side, there was another him. Whatever it was, it was clearly wishing to trick him.

That was no explanation for why he felt united and complete.

• How long have you been there?

• This world or "your" head?

“Figures.”

“Hello, I can hear you.”

• Both.

“Why not talk like this then?”

“Boring.”

• A while. You came second. I came first. In both cases. In hindsight, I really wish I didn't.

Fixer breathed in the stale air, and felt his insides retch as the toxic refuse made itself noticeable.

• Do you feel that? That’s our timer right there. This thing isn't going away. This place will fall apart. Not if we don’t have anything to say about it.

• Do we, though? - his sense of priority flashed bright for a second, otherwise swimming in the chaotic pool of thoughts and concepts that his mind had become.

• I wouldn't have been nagging you all this time if we didn't.

The paths before them opened, closed, and formed themselves out of distant landscapes at the slightest whim of his companion. Limping to keep up with him, Fixer knew that sooner or later, he would have to find out why Rationale was there, and how he could possibly be real. If he could.

That was a very conflicting thought.

• Look at this mess. I can’t believe you’ve managed to fuck it up even worse than it was at the beginning. Frame Fixer. So much for that.

However, as he saw the definite shades of sickness on the other unicorn’s body, combined with the all-too-familiar smirk, his desire to investigate was dulled further and further. The hole in the right of his head, which consumed part of the forehead and all of the eye, could not have been a good sign, either.

He just wanted to feel safe near something for a change.

• You know, I really would have expected you to be slightly more surprised, - said Rationale, creating a corridor out of statues, floor tiles, rocks, trees and chunks of cement, - You just met your better self and you seem to be pretty fine. Did the brain damage carry through, by any chance? This isn’t normal.

• Is anything anymore?

He really did not want to know the truth. At the same time, he needed to.

• Good point. I can see you’re quite comfortable with not knowing. Fortunately, I can relate. Knowing hurts. It really does.

Somewhere far away, the metallic roar of the engine that he brought to life sounded off yet again. The earth quaked, even though there was no earth to quake.

• Unfortunately, however... both of us will have to find out a lot today. Going to have to bring each other back to speed, so to say.

The familiarity had almost fully removed the physical and mental pain within him. Just being near Rationale felt right. They walked through the corrupted grey void that leaking toxic waste, but it no longer burned his eyes. Deep within, he felt they were closing in on something very important.

Deep within, he felt that something was wrong.

• You must have figured out that I've been talking to you for a while now.

• Yeah… I have. You masked yourself at first. Then, I never thought to notice that my own voice was telling me what to do.

• Well, there’s no shame in it. You haven’t exactly had the smoothest road you could have had. Besides, you aren’t amazingly smart, so... don’t worry yourself about it. You haven't been alive for all that long, after all.

Something pinged and screeched within Fixer’s head, filling him with darker thoughts. His peace was being invaded. Somehow, the invasion felt right.

• So if that’s how it is, then why did you never show up before? Why make me go through all this? This was your idea, wasn’t it? - he asked questions that he wished he would just concoct excuses for, - All this shit I had to go through, that must have been you. There’s noone else. What was the point?

• Huh, so now we’re getting confrontational. At least we’re getting somewhere.

Rationale stopped, and the “floor” under them had begun to move on its own accord, sliding them to their destination. Behind both unicorns, sofas appeared. The other one took a seat, and motioned Fixer to do the same.

• I’m sick of walking, anyway.

• How about you answer my question? - reluctantly, Fixer sat down, his joints squeaking out in relief.

• Oh, I’ll answer everything. Seriously, I will. I have to.

He stared into the gaping hole in the other unicorn’s face and felt less and less at ease in his company.

• Really, do you?

• I wish I didn’t.

The plot of tiles their sofas resided on slid ahead, traversing the grey void, only sometimes passed by objects floating in the now toxic nothingness. Statues, trees, furniture, bottles, toys, mirrors… Relics of a broken world.

• Before I do so, however, I’ll have to do something extremely unpleasant. For me, that is.

• What would that be? - Fixer tensed in his seat.

• I need to bring myself in sync before I can do the same with you.

• In sync?..

• Oh, this is going to be very complicated. Look, just let me do it, and it’ll be much clearer.

• Well, what does it involve? - as much as most of him protested, Fixer still realized that he was talking to something that was much more powerful than it seemed. He could not exactly skip out of the conversation.

• I touch your forehead for a few seconds. Then, I swear a lot, and probably puke. Or, well, I would puke if I could.

Rationale stood up and reached with his hoof. Having gone through dozens of errant ideas, from jumping out into the void to trying to bash the other Fixer’s head in with the lamp, still somehow intact in his pocket, Fixer nodded and bent forward.

Useless. Useless. Useless. Useless.

Worthless. Pointless. Meaningless. Senseless.

Why? Why? Why? WHY? WHAT WAS THE POINT?

Who came up with this? Who made this? Whose sick, twisted, perverted idea was this world?

The core of the world he had to live in consistent of nothing but a pile of rainbow confetti. That was all that there was to it. He had lived there for so long, and in all those years, he was the only one whose head was in the right place. His purpose, his meaning - all so funny and silly to the rest of the mumbling morons that inhabited it.

Now… Now he had something that could change EVERYTHING. He could fix every problem there was. Not just fight with the symptoms, like he had done for so long in the miserable farce of a police force, but tear out the root and burn it with acid. His dreams, his fantasies, his world done right - they would at long last be real.

It was him that the Orb called to. He was chosen. Fate had it that way. It was never meant to be there, an alien mind, thrown through the wormholes into a two-dimensional world of pastel colors and shoddily painted rainbows. Roaring in anger, lost in space and time, it could not begin to comprehend the world it was thrown into, all too relatable. Desperate, it sent out a call, trying to find at least a single fitting operator. Many tried to answer, but none of them fit. They built a ritual chamber for it, but what did it matter?

It screamed at them, and they ended their useless lives, hanging from the ceiling, impaled on the edges of the bars, leaping down into the abyss to their broken doom, and cutting their throats with whatever they could find. All of them infected with the pointlessness of the world that refused to conform to reality.

At long last, it had found the one - or rather, he had found it. Irony had it that its operator would find it first. Sent to investigate. Solve a crime. That he did. The crime of their world’s existence.

It stopped time itself, let him into its chambers, and showed him what he would have to do, what he would have to bring back. It would worm its way into his body so that he may hatch it, and it would hatch him, and when he would be ready, the pillars of existence would be crushed. In their place, a new world, one that the Orb so longed for.

Home.

It reveled in its dreams, and imposed them on the carrier, crushing through his still primitive mind with concepts beyond his understanding. Eventually, it had to tone its influence down as the barrage was too much. He was still fitting, not perfect, but fitting. It sat content within him, ready to punish any uncooperative thought.

Everything screeched and scratched, like a vinyl record put through a cheese grater. His breath came before him, as he inhaled and exhaled frantically, still under effect of what he had seen.

This memory was not fleeting. He felt everything. He could still recall everything. It did not hide in the confines of his shambling mind, it was all out there, and he remembered all of it.

The Orb. The Orb. It was the Orb.

Fixer looked around, watching the surroundings get covered in distorted notches and broken up pictures in place of what used to be peaceful, oozing, grey nothing. Rationale was true to his word and laid tense on the couch, spitting and cursing under his breath.

• I… I remember.

• Oh, so do I. I remember. More than I would ever want to. I don’t have a body, - he drifted a hoof through his stomach, to minor surprise of Fixer’s, - And my gut is still curdling.

• What did you just do? Everything’s gone messed up. It’s got to be you. Or is it-

• Yes, it’s me, no worries. My stability is a bit integral to all of this… world. We should be worrying, but definitely not about this, no, not at all, - he propped himself against the couch and rubbed his head right over the hole, pieces of the hoof shifting right through it - See, I just took a trip down Memory Lane. Caught up to speed. Saw what you did. Ingested that what I've been missing. I’m complete now.

Fixer took a breath and immediately cringed in a heavy coughing fit, spitting out ichor and feeling the toxic air vividly, even in the in between the two of them were coursing.

• It sucks.

A hoof extended in his direction once again, and he got up with Rationale’s help. Now, the nonexistent walls surrounding their makeshift tile and couch float scribbled and screeched in frequencies that were all too familiar. The feeling of unity with the other Fixer had begun to scare him.

• I know what you are, - the unicorn stared the other right in the one eye he had. He called him a split personality. He thought he would just accept that.

• Well, humor me, maybe we’ll save some time.

• You’re the corruption.

Rationale blinked and tilted his head.

• I remember your voice. You’ve been there for so long, you piece of shit, - another coughing fit interrupted Fixer, but Rationale seemed intent to keep listening, - It’s you who did all this. We exchanged memories just now, I know we did. I’ve seen so many of those like yours… Only mine were blurred. Like I wouldn't let them through. Like I fought them. Yours, I saw fucking everything. You liked this. This, all of this, it’s because of you.

The other unicorn exhaled slowly and brought a hoof to his face. Fixer continued.

• I may barely remember what happened, but I’m not an idiot, I can piece it together. I don’t care how this… Orb got here, or what it really wanted. What I know is that eventually, it was activated, and that lead to this. And what it did was give you the fucking reins of my life. You finally had something to relate to, something to drive me out of control. What I had to do, what I had to think, what we ended up with… it was you. You’re the dirt. You’re all that was ever wrong with me. I don’t know where you came from, or what you are, but you’ve been there for so long. In my head, doing all this shit to me.

Rationale had sunk into the couch by that point, and was waiting for Fixer to finish.

• Maybe I was insane, maybe you’re not even that at all, but I don’t care anymore. When my world fell apart, we got separated. Now I’m on my own, and now I can think without you. I can make choices without you. I can live without you. You just abuse your power because you made this world. You are nothing I want to have anything to do with. Not anymore. Not again.

• Are you done?

• Yes.

• I have no idea how you can combine being... actually pretty close and being the biggest idiot I’ve ever seen.

Or so it thought.

• Wh…

• Kicking in, huh? It has to be. You have always been a little slow, Fixer. Always sitting in your corner.

He was in control. He would always be. He had an image of his own.

The Orb did not need to know of it.

And it never did.

• See how selective memory works? Build up something that makes someone you don’t like look like the bad guy. Oh look at him, he’s not nice. Let’s call him names. Misrepresent proof. In the force, they could even reprimand you for that.

Fixer did not understand. Rationale just bared his teeth in the same smirking motion, although it was in no way mirthful. The unicorn grasped his head in confusion.

The memories plugged in and out madly, showing him bits and pieces. He could see them now, for worse.

• Don’t think that you’re the victim here. Or, better yet, a hero. Do you know how much I had to go through to pull you here?

“Stop don’t think stop don’t think nothing is wrong”

• Spoon-feed you chunks of memories so that you wouldn't turn inside out like I almost did, calm you down when you were losing it, practically tell you what to do step by step? And still you’d managed to die! Multiple times, in fact! I stuck with you through all this. I was your Rationale in this fucked up world. In this fucked up world, and in that one too.

The nonexistent ground quaked again and threw Fixer down, forcefully having his eyes look over the tainted non-walls. They blinked and stuttered with every word that Rationale said, dark scratches shuffling around, eventually forming familiar letters.

“DO NOT DISTURB”

He recognized the writing. It was barely surprising.

• And do you know why? Because I’m still in charge here. I always was. What I’m in charge of is not in perfect condition, as you’d noticed. And I have a plan, which, unfortunately, involves you.

• Fuck y—

• I’ve had enough of this shit, FIXER. I need you here. I can’t do what I need to without you. But now, when you finally arrive, maybe slightly more intact than I hoped - kudos there - you go and say… this.

The walls blinked again, very much like a projector.

“YOU’RE THE CORRUPTION”

“ALL THAT WAS EVER WRONG”

“BECAUSE OF YOU”

He had nothing to say. He just coughed and cringed at the pain in his lungs.

• Well, guess what? What you said was rather... accurate. A perfect description of YOU.

“YOU”

• For all of MY life, I had to live with a nagging, whining, useless tumor in my head that kept telling me things. “This is bad, that is wrong, don’t do this, don’t do that”! The one thing that distinguished me from all those rainbow-brained morons, rational thinking - and all you ever did was punish me for it! Or, well, you tried. Oh boy, did you fucking try.

Rational thought could not have predicted it.

He awoke at the last moment, his pure conscience seeping through the cracks in the cage that the cursed Orb built for it, and screaming out as loud as it could.

How could he?

What has he done?

What was he doing?

What was he?

He looked at the world, falling apart color by color and tile by tile, and heard an endless half a dozen screams pierce his soul in their dying, vengeful agony.

He looked at himself, an obscure, towering, bipedal figure, oozing toxic gas out of the holes it would call its eyes and mouth, a body made of the blackest black that shattered all that this once-peaceful once-world once stood for. He asked himself what he was, and it answer was not a word he knew.

The perfect Orb in front of him cracked down the middle, breaking the fabric of creation in half, but he could not hear it, nor feel the bloodstained pain from the shard that went through his head.

He heard only pain and the distorted, jumbled voices that he could not longer fix. He felt only despair, sorrow and guilt.

He was supposed to be a detective. He ended up being a monster.

The whole world had gone wrong.

To err was one thing. To restore, another.

Rationale stopped to breathe, jagged, flickering vapors leaving his nostrils incoherently. Fixer, his eyes still wide open, attempted to rise and shake off what just went through his head, but that was not to be.

In familiar but less crushing fashion, his body was lifted into the air against his will, and thrown with violent force.

He was staring himself in the face, eye to single eye.

• I was going to be nice about this, you know.

• About what?..

• The CORRUPTION. You’re the corruption. Just look down.

Fixer struggled to move, held in place and nearly choked by whichever energies Rationale employed.

• Ah, right, you can’t. That’s fine, I’ll make you.

His body made an uncomfortable turn so that he was looking directly at the pool of black ichor that he had coughed up.

• For all your talk of how I’m corrupted by the Orb, you certainly seem to enjoy pretending that you just have a bad case of the sniffles. Tell me something, FIXER: do you really think you’d leave without it? That it wouldn’t hang on? That it wasn’t following you in the one way it could?

The pain in Fixer’s body resurged, cutting through him with its jagged edges. Why did it have to make sense?

• A parasite on a parasite.

“The Orb has been inside me. All this fucking time.”

“Genius.”

• And now we’re getting it out. Because I need it to FIX all that YOU made happen.

The hollering noise of the sirens engulfed the disappearing joke of a world in metallic laughter. Her burnt out body, twisted and cracked, knocked over a table and covered her in ink, accompanying the blood nicely.

Just a little longer. Just a few seconds left until the last one bursts through and bears witness to what would be the undoing of a world gone wrong and the making of a world done right.

He exhaled a clog of smog and stepped into the shadows, discarding the last remains of his old self in a wardrobe - if only to mock the mundane world that was about to end. A snake shedding its skin. He was the serpent that ate worlds.

Her wings could already be heard flapping nearby. She was so eager to break in, stopped before by what the naive never-to-be-Princess thought would buy her time to call for pointless help. This was her time to play the hero. That is, if things this primitive grasped the concept. He no longer knew or cared.

A loud, clumsy crash that took out part of the railing signaled for the show to begin. The pieces in his chest circled around almost excitedly.

- What’s going on in here? Twi? Twi?! What has he done? How did he get in here? What the hay is happening outside?

He made special care to exclude the doomed plane from any noises he would make. The burnt out husk was neatly covered by a blanket of darkness, just waiting for the last pillar to come closer and see through it.

- Where are you? I know you’re here!

Steps banged down the stairs, coming closer to the eventual discovery.

- Do you think we are that stupid? Think you can fool us? Think we’ll believe you just “tore it to shreds”? Like I would trust you, you stupid weasel. I’ve always had my eye on you. Come out!

Not yet.

- I always knew! They just never listened! Some shamus crawls in, says he tore his own papers to shreds and forgot everything! I can’t believe they trusted you!

She was within sight now, stepping so cautiously he almost broke a laugh at how miserable it looked. These things really had no right to exist. He simply could no longer laugh.

- Come out, I know you’re here! What-

Finally.

- Wh- wh- what… what have… oh no. How… How...

The look of horror on her face and the crack of her voice quenched at least some of the hatred to the pastel-colored useless world, soon to fuel the fire of the engine.

- How can… how… No. No, no, no… I KNOW YOU’RE HERE! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

- I’ve fixed her.

- No. No, no, no no no no no no no no.

The black, foul residue from the kilometers-reaching cluttered pipes flowed, filling him to the brim with visions and ideas and toxic waste.

- And now I’ll fix you.

- No, no, no. No. You… You’re not real. You’re not real. You… you…

He rose from the ash and the grime, and inhaled the lung-rending air to exhale a breath of turpentine, sulfur and cropped black smog.

- You… you… No. No, no. No. You can’t be real.

She stuttered, lying on the ground. Her eyes had lost focus and her speech had become senseless. As the primordial dread, so clearly intricate in the network around him, engulfed her utmost being, she had served her purpose.

- Ha. Haha. N-not real. Ha, ha, hahahahahahhhhhahahahahhhh

His eyes opened, and poured through them cold electric light, signaling to the engine of deconstruction, summoning its loud siren to ring the end of the world gone wrong.

- Hahahahahahahaahahahahah, haha, haaaaahahah

The spasming shape on the floor, a tiny insignificant speck to him, was still a pillar of existence for this wretched world, coming apart at its seams. He stretched out his arm and commanded her neck to face the sharp glass, throwing the lifeless body at the door, painting a red carpet for a new age.

Now there were none.

• Worthless.

He breathed in and nearly got frightened in the first waking moments, when something was amiss.

There was no pain. The Orb was gone. He was free. There was no “sickness” anymore. No wounds. No cuts. No pain.

• Look at me. Focus. You still have eyes, don’t you?

There was an actual floor now, too. Fixer felt the old rug with his acheless snout.

• Get up. There is no time. I NEED you now.

Fixer opened his eyes, only to feel no stinging pain and see no blur. His head no longer felt like an overweight pulsating tumor. The breathing discomfort he had become so accustomed to was gone.

His experience with all that he had encountered, however, was not gone. It was his old apartment, recreated with precision that could only be drawn from passionate love or hatred. It drifted in nowhere, the walls with the words still visible through the windows, as if to mock him if he ever were to feel at home. The odor of toxic chemicals and the roar of the metallic engine sounded ever nearer, overriding the salty smell of alcohol and the synthetic tunes of the record player in the corner. He must have been out for a while.

None of that did more than mildly surprise him.

Rationale half-floated in front of him, the familiar face still stretched in a spasming smirk. The dark hole in place of the other unicorn’s eye seemed much wronger, now that Fixer could see straight.

• You always get it better than you ever should. ALWAYS. Just… get up. Clock’s ticking.

With the withdrawal of the “sickness”, it had become painfully obvious that Rationale was not a pony like Fixer. He was just shaped that way.

Worn, tortured, and hurting, Fixer never noticed the oddities in Rationale’s appearance, barring the hole. The other unicorn’s mane looked different to his, much darker and sterner, and his face was not only perpetually stretched in a disturbing smirk, but also showed severe signs of sickness. Pale and sweaty, Rationale seemed not to notice any of it - cocky, arrogant, jumpy, the doubtless corruption given form snarled at him with the voice that had been his for years. Incorporeal - partly transparent, like a projection of something much less immediately comprehensible. Not too much unlike the Errors - but still, somehow, infinitely better. And so much worse.

In any case, Rationale was nothing Fixer wanted to associate himself with. He knew the feeling was mutual.

• ...the fuck did you do?

• Take an uneducated guess, - Rationale motioned absently to the middle of the room, where a perfect round shape floated in the air, glowing with a greyish light, - I’d rather not get into the details. Disappointingly non-gory. Hoped to rip you the fuck apart and then put you back together wrong.

The unicorn felt his skin crawl at the mere sight of it. The Orb was just as he remembered it - clearly now - but all he felt towards it was fear and hatred.

“I used to worship that freaking thing…”

• Yeah, it was pitiful to watch. But... Believe it or not, it was so occupied with combing your brain that it just never noticed me. Could say that you were doing my dirty work while I snuck away and planned. I’d like that dynamic if you’d ever do anything useful again.

• Fuck you.

• Same to you. Good thing I don’t hold grudges. I just fix them.

• Well, what’s your plan? Do we use this again? - Fixer looked at the Orb and shuddered, clenching his teeth in anger.

• No, we have a tea party with the pretty bunnies. Of course we use THIS again. It’s been the whole point of your little journey. Look, FIXER… we need to work together again. One last time, perhaps. We’ve done this all our lives. We have to rely on each other. We always were the only ones.

Rationale moved towards the Orb and stood to its side, waving Fixer over. The unnatural grey light that it emanated made him want to hurl - and so did Rationale. Still, he walked up to it.

There was so much he did not want to know.

• When… THIS was used, Frame Fixer was supposed to be a full entity. Full mind, full body. All taken over by the Orb itself, of course. We were never more than a means to an end. Someone it can associate with so that it can bring in… what it called HOME.

Fixer felt electricity zip through his spine at the memories of the visions it fed him. They were becoming dangerously clear. Alien creatures. Psychotic bipeds. A world full of horrors that made Equestria seem sweet in comparison.

A painful pang of guilt and sorrow stung him as he recalled the old world.

• That’s what it wanted. We were never asked. Well, too bad for it, - Rationale spat out, the smirk on his face becoming eerily genuine - Because we were special, FIXER. WE were FIXER. The two of us. Two, all our lives. We were never alone. We were together the moment we crawled out of the crack and through the pool of blood. I don’t know why. Two minds. One body. Our memories. You do remember that, don’t you?

• I do, - Fixer sighed.

• Now… There is a fact you’ll have to come to terms with: I have always been number one. You woke up in here, and started walking and thinking and talking and remembering and whatever else - you must think you're in charge. Only you were the split personality, Fixer, just as I told you. You sat, whined, and watched. You ruined everything I tried and kept nagging my memories. Me? I did all the thinking, I made all the plans, I did every action. ME. It was ME. I was our RATIONALE. I saw that ludicrous travesty of a world for what it was. Only I couldn’t fix anything. See the irony? My name is Frame FIXER - can’t stand it now - and I can’t fix anything. I only respond, I react, and then I do paperwork - welcome to the police force! I was just a DETECTIVE in some crooked city where these pastelhides gut each other every night, and every morning, whoever survives pretends that we’re a happy candyland of sunshine and rainbows.

Fixer’s ears dropped. That explained the memories. Or, rather, he wished it did.

He knew which he shared with Rationale and which were his own.

Rationale’s smirk told him that they were about to reach the good part.

• Now, you, you existed solely... to WHINE. Always in the back of MY head, complaining about everything I ever did. Best of all, you actually thought YOU were in charge. You, the weak, mumbling, awkward, depressed mess, were in charge. According to you, you BELONGED to these idiots. You just wanted to join them, hop into the background and become the useless blot that you are. And since you’d draw ME with you as well, I couldn’t allow that, so I just stuffed you as far away as I could and tried not to listen to you complain every time I’d beat some crook half to death after he already told me everything I needed to know, because FUCK them and FUCK their happy pony society that they RUIN THEMSELVES.

The room shook violently, as if it had begun to give birth. The immaterial walls scraped along the nonexistent borders, and he watched torn concepts pour into the room. Photographs had begun to bulge over the walls. Himself, his badge, him on duty. Other ponies, all so chewed up and blurred that none of their features stood out any longer. His apartment had turned into a mess of hanging pictures.

• But guess what, that paid off. When we found the ORB, I was the one that drew it to us, but you were the one it took for the main part. It couldn't go back anymore, it was TRAPPED in you. Just fused into our body, shards into our flesh, realized how hopeless you were, and started making desperation plans. Never had time to look for me. It took what it had and started to turn you into what it needed. For the first time in years, you had CONTROL. I lost my strings over the puppet we shared for all those years. Naturally, the first thing you did was quit your job, go private - badly - and start drinking, moping, puking, all the good stuff. But… whatever - as long as you kept it occupied. I’d just take my entrance when it would be time to start, take it by surprise, and finally fix this stupid world. It explained enough to you for me to know how to operate it. I’m not that DUMB.

Fixer just leaned against the couch and kicked one of the many bottles on the ground, listening to what he already knew to be true, but never wanted to be so.

• The plan was going so well, and at last, when it told us to start the conversion, I came in, wrestled control away, and then… YOU FUCKED IT ALL UP.

The scream that Rationale gave out pressed Fixer deep into the couch seat, leaving him with a ringing in his ears for a few minutes and little more, as by that point his fright tolerance had risen to less than sane levels.

• You just decided to wake up, come out, and start WHINING into the Orb right as it was doing its work! That wasn't me, FIXER, I’m not the bad guy who killed your nice little world of colorful ponies, that was YOU. You couldn't have possibly found a worse time to play our conscience. Who gives a FUCK what we had to do to get there, just let it happen, it’s literally just a few minutes - but no, you have to ruin everything! And those nice pony ladies that you bawl over so hard that they’re FLOATING around in here, ripping reality as they go - that wasn't ME either, that was you, whether you like it or not. Your memories, your thoughts, your fantasies, you could only think about them, and this is what we've got. Errors. It’s not them anymore, it’s what you turned them into. Too bad you realized it and decided to start WHINING about it in THE WORST POSSIBLE MOMENT.

Rationale was never, not for a second, anything remotely good. Every instinct told Fixer to rebut whatever came out of his twin’s mouth, but instead, he listened. He listened and felt how dying inside feels when you no longer have pain and spasms to occupy you.

• Good thing I knew that from the start. You got a crush on these morons, didn’t you? They showed kindness to you for the first time in your useless life. Boo hoo. Can’t let them die. Keep the Magic of Friendship alive. Now, though, when they were like this… I just had to point you at them, and that made you move along.

Truth really hurt.

• And that’s how we got this wonderful place, which you fittingly call “WORLD GONE WRONG”. That’s the one smart thing to ever come out of you, I swear. A world that tries to piece itself part by part, drawing from disconnected MEMORIES, filled with everything that ever made you, US, feel mad. Population - six eldritch horrors and one worthless IDIOT that created them. That, and those corpse things… ugh. Myself, too, but I’ll write myself out, thank you very much. Kudos, really.

At that point, Fixer realized that the truth was pointless to argue with. What was done was done.

He did, however, have a point of his own.

• So we’re just wiping it, huh? Destroying another world so that we’d get our way? “Finishing it off”?

• Oh for f- Don’t tell me you have some inane reason why we have to preserve this place.

• I do.

• Okay, fine, shoot. Maybe it’s good for a laugh.

• There are others here. These “corpse things”.

• That tried to kill you - actually, did kill you - and then left you to get ripped apart by the Shadow, yes.

Fixer could faintly remember how they got the name for the tumors, which manifested themselves as messes of wires, metal and oil. The term was that of the Orb. It was what an operator from centuries ago, from a completely different world, called it. The same world this one originated from.

He did not want to access his memories anymore. Too bad that everything of worth was in them, and his current self consistent of nothing but fragments of that dreadful past. Shards of a mirror.

• They don’t know any better. I made them this way. They’re… they’re my fault. I don’t care what you say about me, but they are there, and they are sentient. They have done nothing wrong. We can’t just leave th-

• Yes we can. You fascinate me, honestly. How about we get those Errors of yours on it as well, hmmm? Surely they don’t know any FUCKING better!

That hit a nerve.

• NO THEY DON’T! They are DIFFERENT. They HAVE to die. They are all that is wrong with this world - all worlds! They... they shouldn't be like this, we've ruined them, and now... now they are just a travesty of what they were. They need to go. I just want the worthy preserved. I don’t care how crippled they are, or what they did! If we can’t save this world, then they have to go with us! - Fixer nearly blacked out as his mind spoke for him, with little consent involved in the matter. He was losing touch with reality very, very fast.

Rationale let out a croaked laugh.

• You know… You just did something almost right. You’ve proved my theory, you know. Multiple, in fact. The first one is that you’re an idiot, we’re not taking any zombie ponies with us just because they’re misunderstood.

Fixer frowned, barely suspending his anger. He decided to try and negotiate further instead.

• Well, what’s the second one then? And what’d I say?

• Oh, see, you’re not the same anymore, FIXER. I may actually have been a little bit wrong about you, - saying that, Rationale reached for his chest pocket.

• How… so?

• You’ve changed. All that you’ve gone through, it has actually changed you. My old split personality has actually picked up tricks while I was away! So much of a blank sheet, I guess some semblance of sense rubbed off on you. I doubted it would, but… it did. The FIXER I knew would never have said what you just did about those… Errors. He’d come up with some bullshit excuse not to right what is so obviously wrong. Poor little ponies that got stuffed in an existential cheesegrater. You… You just screamed at the top of your lungs about how they’re WRONG. Even when you knew what they really were, irredeemably so. And you almost made a point. They're all a part of you, remember? And I know a certain something that would have been very conveniently affected by this.

A feeling of dread came over Fixer as he watched Rationale pull out the Shard out of his pocket. The reflection in it stared right back at him with its empty eye.

• This will do nicely. Even better than YOU. Just a bit of cleaning and off we go. I won't even need to go through the bother of having to see you any longer. You've brought me a good substitute. I've not been missing it... but I sure am glad it's here.

Rationale never saw how the shape of the Shard fit exactly into the hole in his face. Fixer did. In his panicking mind, a thought crossed through, but was immediately shut down:

“SHUT THE FUCK UP”

And so he did, as something much more immediately important was happening.

“I said there would be cleaning.”

The unicorn backed away, dropping off the couch and crawling back, away from what emerged in front of Rationale, who smirked still.

• And things just got a whole lot easier.

• Worthless.

• Now it’s a win-win situation. For me. Here’s a suggestion: try to not die for as long as possible. Raises the chances of a proper CONVERSION.

He understood absolutely nothing.

It kept going. It never stopped.

He listened to the shuffling and dragging noises, the metal clunks, the cold wail of sirens.

It could never be fixed.

It worked exactly as it was intended to.

His legs carried him away against his own will. After all he had gone through, Fixer’s conscious was left devoid of many things - among them was fear of death. It was a pleasant thought, if anything, only he would never let himself end before this travesty came to a resolution. He did not truly fear anything anymore. Whether it was insanity or something beyond that was not for him to decide.

The thing that marched after him, however, instilled dread on the most primal level, forcing the unicorn’s limbs to shake in terror and scramble to get his body as far away from it as they could. That was its nature. Fear and wrongness incarnate. Little else. The Aberration was released from its prison, so sick of following him around in the piece of glass.

The monstrous shape stomped down the halls that were not there moments before, running Fixer out of breath and ideas.

“Just get rid of it. Just get rid of this thing, and get back to that fucker. Then it will all be fine. I’ll know what to do. Nothing is wrong.”

“Still alive? You may just come back in one piece at this rate. One piece of shit.”

“Fuck you. We’ll see who’ll be snarking.”

• You make me laugh.

That thing talked, too. It was, perhaps, the most unnerving feature of it. A gigantic bipedal monstrosity, so utterly wrong it made anything that came in touch with it dissipate into thin air. Its face was faceless - there was little more to it than three incoherent, curved holes on a pitch black surface that rejected the light of the world gone wrong. Its voice, however, seemed to emanate from everywhere around Fixer - and that voice was his own. Chewed up, distorted, skipping pitches, but his nonetheless. To top it off, the otherworldly concoction of darkness wore his vest, visible in perfect detail over its body - all to mock him.

The Aberration had successfully come to life. The end had begun.

Too bad he had become impervious to that sort of treatment over the course of the past days.

• You run. Even they didn’t run.

He did run - through the corridors, the halls, the rooms, the forests, he ran wherever. Carried by his panicking body, he galloped through the world gone wrong as it sung its agonizing death rattle.

Trees, furniture and pieces of the sky made up the walls, the floor was a swirling cosmic mixture of colors and concepts. Auxillary shapes, no longer recognizable as anything at all, littered the evaporating halls. Sometimes, he would run through familiar places - parts of the precinct, the fake forest, even pieces of the castle and the library. They were more solid than the rest of the world, but still, the end was theirs as well. Somewhere in the distance, Fixer could hear the Errors scream in their distorted voices as the wave of destruction reached them too. The Aberration, the toxic, metal tumors of the Orb’s guardian on the other.

Fixer fit right in the middle, and rushed on to nowhere he knew.

• This is pathetic.

As he was beginning to consider ways to get back to wherever Rationale was when the Aberration was unleashed, a quake rammed through him. The body took care of the imminent fall, getting back up quickly and continuing to utilize what little stamina remained, but the mind was confused.

Fixer heard Rationale scream.

“What the fuck is going on in there?”

His answer was more twisted corridors, more insults from the Aberration, and another scream. This time, as it died out, it turned to laughter.

In that moment, Fixer felt something strange. As his body rammed through nonsensical vistas, chased by an abomination from outer worlds, he suddenly felt himself touching something round and cold with his hooves. He leaned onto it and felt his face stretch out in a painful smirk.

He did not do any of that.

“Rationale? Rationale, stop whatever the fuck it is that you’re doing. Rationale, STOP.”

The Orb was in use. He could not forget the feeling.

• You will comply.

The body and the chase became secondary concerns. Fixer evaded the Aberration thus far, and as such would do fine enough on auto-pilot until something would happen and take it away - the matter was not for him to decide.

What he felt was happening somewhere else was a lot worse.

“I… I… I fucked up.”

Before the unicorn could offer any fully formed thought in response, myriads of sounds filled his head as Rationale’s voice cracked in a maddened scream. He just exposed himself. The infection persevered.

However horrible a world of Rationale would have been, now it had become all so much worse.

“I HAVE SEEN BILLIONS OF YEARS PASS SO THAT NOTHING MAY CHANGE”

Another quake.

“Rationale? Rationale, what are you DOING?”

“I HAVE STOOD UNDER THE SCOURING SUN, AND ORDERED THAT WHICH WAS NEVER THERE TO BE BROUGHT BEFORE ME”

Fixer’s eyes gave out for a second, cutting to something he could not hope to understand.

“I’m coming. All heavens help me, I’m coming.”

“I HAVE MOUNTED THE IRON STEED AND VIOLATED THE ESSENCE OF THE VERY EARTH”

“I HAVE LOOKED THROUGH THE SCOPE, AND PULLED THE TRIGGER TO SCARE A NATION INTO SUBMISSION”

“I HAVE WATCHED A UNION DIE, AND I TOO TOOK A BITE OF THE STILL WARM FLESH”

• Your time is up.

“I HAVE PUT WORDS INTO THE MOUTHS OF THE GREAT, AND MADE THEM CHOKE ON THEIR TESTIMONY”

“I HAVE SWAM THROUGH THE SEAS OF BLACK, AND WATCHED THOUSANDS KILL FOR THE POISON”

“I HAVE SAT DOWN WITH HUNDREDS, AND FELL FROM THE SKIES TO THE WHIMS OF DOZENS”

“I HAVE SEEN TWIN TOWERS FALL, AND EMERGED FROM THE RUBBLE, SO THAT NO DEED BE FORGOTTEN”

• I have you.

“I HAVE NEVER WANTED THIS. I WANT IT TO STOP, BUT IT NEVER WILL. I WANT IT TO BE FIXED, BUT IT NEVER WILL.”

“No.”

“EVERYTHING IS FINE. NOTHING IS WRONG.”

“I NEED YOU.”

• I will enjoy th-

Author's Note

Tune in next time for the ending if your brain is still intact.