Trixie Times Two

The bunk room was cramped and grey. In contrast with the rest of the pod, it's contents were somewhat minimalist. Twilight lay motionless on the bottom bunk, staring into space. With a loud clatter, Trixie burst into the room.

"This is going to be perfect," she trilled, "you'll be able to teach me all sorts of spells and..."

She stopped, noticing Twilight who had still not moved. "Have you been moping around in here this whole time?"

Twilight did not reply.

"Aren't you glad to be spending time with a pony of such sophistication, such maturity? I'm claiming the top bunk by the way, so you can forget any ideas you had about that".

Trixie leaped up onto the bed, causing the structure to shake. "Aw cheer up Twilight Sparkle. We can reminisce about all the wonderful moments you've spent with Trixie,"

"When?" said Twilight,

"Excuse me?"

"When have I ever shared any wonderful moments with, you? When have we ever even been friends?"

"Oh come on, we go way back, good old Trixie and Twi,"

"Funny, I don't remember it quite like that,"

"I mean sure, we've had our differences, but that's all behind us now right? Hey, remember the time I went crazy with that amulet and tried to banish you from Ponyville? Funny how you can laugh about it now". Trixie leaned over and found Twilight glaring at her. "Sorry, I'm not really helping am I?"

Twilight got up off the bed and trotted over to the narrow window. There wasn't much to see outside. The flat, generic terrain went on and on until it vanished into an uninteresting haze of darkness and dust, picked up by the storm.

"Did you not have anypony you cared about, I mean back home, like a close friend or something?"

"Not really," Trixie replied, "I, well I suppose I was always travelling around too much for that,"

"I miss my friends," said Twilight,

"They must have meant a lot to you. I can only imagine what that's like".

Twilight nodded. "I just know if Rainbow Dash was here, she would do something brave and heroic. It might not work, but she'd try. Or if it was Pinkie Pie, she'd say something and everypony would laugh, and everything would be okay".

She turned to Trixie, who had climbed down to join her by the window.

"I'm sorry Twilight".

The two of them shared a hug.

"What did you think of the great and sympathetic Trixie?" she teased.

Twilight laughed, her eyes growing moist. "Thanks Trixie. I guess you're not so bad".

Trixie smiled. They held onto each other a little longer.

"But what if we can't find a way to get back?" said Twilight, "What if I never get to see my friends again, or my home again? We could be trapped here forever, and ever, and ever, and..."

Doctor Whooves burst in. "I'm not interrupting anything am I? It's just I fixed the temporal drive; we can go back home now".

The Doctor was waffling in his characteristic style as the others, now joined by Derpy, followed him down the stairs. "Well I say I've fixed it, it's more of a work around solution I devised, and I'm only about eighty percent sure it will work, actually more like seventy percent, no let's be optimistic and call it seventy-five percent, or maybe even seventy-five point five percent, although I had a teacher once who used to tell me off for putting decimal places in percentages, Einstallion his name was if I recall correctly".

Twilight laughed.

"What's funny?"

"Nothing, it's just, you remind me of a friend. She would always ramble about random stuff like that".

The door of the laboratory swung open. Inside was the very definition of organised chaos. Cables and technology were scattered across the floor, along with old watches, egg timers and other seemingly functionless clutter. More stuff hung from the walls, and from the ceiling. There were shelves, mostly in need of repair, loaded with tatty hardbacks. The whole place had a pungent chemical odour. Twilight and Trixie glanced at the strange cubicle like contraption in front of them, and then looked at each other.

"What is that thing?" said Twilight,

"Ah, now, you see instead of trying to transmit the entire pod back through time, as was the original idea, this is going to send us back individually. In theory..."

A spring popped out of the contraption and flew across the laboratory, landing close to Twilight's hoof.

"Don't worry, that's supposed to happen," assured the Doctor, "no wait".

He went over and fiddled with a panel on the side of the machine. Something similar to lightning began crackling through the top of it.
"Where was I? Oh yes, in theory you just step into the temporal transmitter and it will send each of you straight back to where you came from. Now who would like to go first?"

"I think you should go first Twilight," said Trixie,

"I don't know; it looks kind of dangerous,"

"Pretty lights," said Derpy, marching forward,

"Derpy wait".

Before either of them could stop her, Derpy was inside the machine. "That tickles," she said. A few seconds later she stepped out.

"Well, nothing happened," said Trixie.

Then Derpy stepped out of the machine again; another Derpy, identical to the original in every detail. Derpy stared joyfully at her duplicate, and her duplicate stared joyfully back at her.

The Doctor looked as shocked as everypony else. "I don't understand. I must have reversed the the polarity somehow,"

"Maybe it's because of the temporal feedback relay," said Derpy,

"Stop it," said the Doctor,

"Or the calibration of the anti-matter converter," said the other Derpy,

"Both of you, stop it".

The duplicate Derpy faded out of existence.

"Of course, that's it," cried the Doctor, "great Celestia, I'm a genius. I may have inadvertently created the perfect cloning device, which of course was what I meant to do,"

"No," said Twilight, "what you were meant to do was get us back home".

"Oh don't listen to her," said Trixie, "I think it's a marvellous invention Doctor, but is there any way you can make the clones exist, you know, more permanently?"

"A few tweaks to the calibration and that shouldn't be a problem".

Twilight guessed what Trixie had in mind. "I don't think that's a good idea, believe me," she warned.

But the Doctor had already set to work on the panel.

"Come on, how much longer?" Trixie demanded,

"This really isn't a good idea," said Twilight,

"All finished," the Doctor announced.

Trixie leaped into the contraption. The others watched as the lightning appeared once again. "Ouch, ow, ow, this had better be worth it". She stepped out again, followed by an exact copy of herself.

"Is it true?" she said, "could it really be..."

"The one and only," said the duplicate,

"The great and powerful,"

"Trixieeee," they both chorused.

"Finally, somepony who knows my name, and appreciates me. This was so worth it,"

"I think I'm losing it," said Twilight.

Yawning, Twilight entered the bunk room, where Trixie was sat in the corner with her clone. "And then I turned to Snips and Snails and said, well I'm not sure exactly what I said, but it was one of those incredibly wise and witty put-downs that only the great and powerful Trixie could have thought of,"

"Oh yes," her counterpart laughed, "I remember it well".

Twilight shook her head. "I'm sure you two have plenty to talk about, but I really need to sleep now. It's been a very long day". She flopped onto the bed and fell fast asleep before even getting under the covers.

"Come on Trixie, this story will have to wait until morning," said Trixie,

"After you, Trixie".

A short while later Twilight woke up. The bunk was shaking again. She could hear voices from above.

"Keep your smelly hooves over your side of the bed,"

"How can I be smelly? I'm you,"

"Yes, but, the great and powerful Trixie needs her space," said Trixie,

"The great and powerful Trixie," said her clone, deliberately putting on a silly voice, "give me a break,"

"How dare you mock me?"

"If you're really so great and so powerful, then magic us all back to Ponyville. You brought us here".

"But, but I don't even know where here is,"

"There always has to be some excuse doesn't there?"

"If a princess who represents the element of magic can't get us back, then how do you expect me to be able to?"

"You see what I mean? More excuses. You're supposed to be the most gifted unicorn in Equestria".

"Hey," said Twilight, banging on the bottom of the bunk, "would you keep the noise down up there? I'm trying to sleep".

"She started it," they both replied together,

"I don't care who started it. I take it all back; you are the most annoying pony I have ever met, both of you".

Everything went quiet for a while. Twilight lay down again.

"So mature,"

"Right that's it. Trixie doesn't have to listen to this".

There was a thud on the floor next to Twilight's bunk.

"Wait, where are you going?"

Trixie jumped down after her clone and chased her into the corridor. "Come back here, you can't just walk away. This isn't over. And stop naming yourself in the third person; you sound like a complete simpleton".

Twilight got up and closed the door. The hum of the air filtering system all but drowned out the argument outside. "Now I'm wide awake. I'll never get back to sleep". She flopped onto the bed again. What time was it now? Without the sun and moon there was no way of even telling if it was day or night. There was no day or night. There was nothing here.

"How can this happen?" said Twilight, "now, after everything else that has happened?"

At that moment Pinkie Pie popped into her head. "Coool, I'm in a thought bubble," she squealed, "it's soft, and bouncy". She jumped up and down to illustrate the point.

"Pinkie Pie, stop it," laughed Twilight,

"I'm a figment of your imagination Twilight; I only do what you command me to do,"

"Why are you still doing it then?"

"Hehe silly, that's probably because you remember me as the kind of pony who doesn't follow convention".

Twilight's head sunk.

"Aw, why so sad?" Pinkie stopped jumping.

"Because, well, I'm going to be away for a while. It might be a very long time, I, I don't know,"

"That's okay, but you'll still make it to that party I have planned for Gummy next week, right?"

"I'm afraid it's going to be a little longer than that. I'm sorry,"

"Aw don't worry Twilight. The beauty of friendship is you're never far apart, even if say, just as a random example, one of you is stuck at the end of the universe,"

"So it doesn't affect our friendship?"

"Of course not. I'll always be thinking of you, just as you've been thinking of me,"

"And you'll take good care of Spike won't you, all of you? I didn't even get to say goodbye to him,"

"That's what friends are for".

The door opened, and Trixie came in. Twilight wiped the tears from her eyes. "Where's, the other one?" she said,

"Don't mention her to me," Trixie snapped, "she's going to sleep in the midsection I think".

She climbed back up to her bunk and lay down, her head sunk into the blanket. "There's no use hiding it. Trixie and I, we've had a tiny little disagreement, and the outcome of it is we've vowed never to speak to each other again. I just can't stand her Twilight. She's mean, arrogant, shallow, self-obsessed, and did I say arrogant,"

"She's you," said Twilight,

"I know, that's the problem. Oh why did I ever think this was a good idea?"

"Switch the power to manual, would you Muffins," said Doctor Whooves,

"Of course".

Derpy rushed upstairs to follow his instruction. The Doctor made a few more adjustments to his machine.

"Will this really work?" said Twilight, "can you really undo the cloning process?"

"The logic is infallible. Speaking in complex scientific terms, we simply throw everything into reverse. I just need to do one more..."

The sprinklers exploded above their heads, showering all of the Doctor's equipment. Sparks flew from the panel in front of him. The machine went dead.

"No, no, no, my work, my precious work,"

"Oops, my bad," said Derpy, peering in,

"Does this mean I'm stuck with her, forever?" cried Trixie,

"Wait, I might know a spell for this," said Twilight.

Trixie dropped to floor before the princess. "What are you waiting for then? Get rid of her. Please, please, get rid of her," she whimpered, tugging on Twilight's hoof while a growing puddle of water formed around her.

"You can't get rid of me," her counterpart protested, stepping forward, "I'm the original,"

"How dare you?" said the Trixie on the floor, "I'm the original,"

"How can you possibly believe her? Look at me; I'm the one and only, the irreplaceable,"

"Oh no, how are we going to tell them apart?" said Twilight,

"If only you'd listened to me," said the Doctor, "I warned you at beginning that this cloning business could be dangerous,"

"No you didn't," shouted Derpy, Twilight, Trixie and Trixie together,

"Oh didn't I? I must have said something along those lines though, at some point".

The others all shook their heads.

"We need to think of some task that only the real Trixie could do," suggested Twilight,

"Er, Twilight," said Derpy,

"Not now Derpy, I'm concentrating,"

"Twilight," said the Doctor,

"Just a minute, I'm just trying to think of something,"

"She's gone," shouted Trixie, "I'm freeee,"

"I said just give me a minute, wait what?"

Twilight glanced around. Trixie was bounding around joyfully. Her clone had vanished.

"But how?"

"Well I was rechecking some calculations last night, and it turns out I made an error," the Doctor explained, "the new clone may have an extended lifespan but the atomic structure is still too unstable for it to be permanent,"

"So you knew that all along," said Twilight, water dripping from her mane, "and you didn't at any point think to tell us,"

"You never asked,"

"Eergh,"

"I suppose this is a bit of an anticlimax really, after all that suspense about how you were going to decide which one was the clone, and the whole moral dilemma that was developing,"

"Doctor," said Twilight,

"Yes?"

"Shut up".