“Come on, Twilight! The purple slime-ice-stuff can wait. Don’t you think it’s more important to visit Rainbow Dash in the hospital?"

Twilight Sparkle sighed, but there was no denying that Spike was right. She knew when she was getting too deep into her research. Yet the bounty of untapped knowledge in front of her was hard to part with. Her basement lab was cold as a meat locker, but the last thing she wanted was to leave. Surrounded by countless slime pieces, Twilight felt she was close to understanding what the slime monster had done, and how she could reverse the effects.

If not for the annoyed young drake at the doorway, she would have been content to stay put.

Can’t do that to Rainbow Dash. But I would love to visit her with some good news about her magic returning. If I can just study this sample a little longer...

“Twilight!” Spike yelled again.

Twilight groaned, not bothering to hide her annoyance.

“Go ahead of me, Spike.”

Twilight could feel Spike glaring at her from the top of the stairs, ready to remind Twilight one of her best friends was in the hospital. She knew being there for Rainbow would mean more to her friend than mixing chemicals with tiny bits of solid slime. Twilight anticipated the hundred different ways Spike would argue for her to leave, but she had one good argument for staying a little longer.

“I just need to study this a bit more. I think I’m very close to understanding what the slime monster did, how it did it, and figuring out when Rainbow Dash will be okay. I promise I am just going to spend another hour down here. If I go even a second over that, you have full permission to lecture me on not keeping my word.”

There was no immediate response from Spike. Twilight didn’t want to pull herself from her desk to risk seeing just how disappointed her assistant might have looked.

“Is the frozen slime really that important?" Spike called down, "Supermare took care of it, and you said all those ponies it drained would get their magic back over time anyways. Why study it further?”

Twilight looked annoyed at the mention of the ‘pony’ responsible for defeating the thing that was her responsibility to begin with. She kept herself as composed as she could. She could not afford to have Spike stop her right now.

“If I can reverse engineer what the monster did, I may be able to help Rainbow Dash and all those other ponies recover faster. Besides, you know Rainbow—she’s going to want to get back into action as soon as possible. Even if that means potentially hurting herself because she’s impatient. I promise, just one more hour. Why don’t you meet up with Rarity first, andI’ll catch up with everypony else at the hospital.”

It was a ploy. Not mean spirited in the least, but a ploy all the same. Twilight rarely wanted Spike to go away when she conducted research. Yet, hearing Spike rush down the stairs to her lab was the exact opposite of what she wanted at that moment.

“Are you just trying to get rid of me?” Spike asked as he hopped the last step of the stairs to Twilight’s lab. She groaned louder than she meant to, realizing her ploy was a complete and utter failure. If Spike noticed, he didn’t say anything as Twilight turned to see him quickly rub his arms with his claws. “It’s like winter down here, Twilight! You’re going to get sick if you stay here without even a scarf around your neck.”

“I’m fine, Spike,” Twilight deadpanned. “You’re a dragon, I didn’t think this little bit of cold would bother you.”

“Little bit? There’s ice everywhere! Did you really need the royal guard to deliver all the frozen slime here? What if it all melts and floods the lab?”

Twilight rubbed the bridge of her nose, realizing her studying was going to have to wait. At least for now.

Don’t be so annoyed, there’s no reason for that right now.

“Permafrost doesn’t melt naturally. And yes, I do need all these samples here. I’m working on a way to understand how the slime monster was able to do what it did. I did a little research and discovered the only other creature known to devour something as intangible as magic was a centaur named Tirek. It took both Princess Celestia and Luna to catch him by surprise just to beat him. If there are other creatures out there able to do what he did, and be devious enough to capture and hold its victims for multiple feedings, then we need to know how to stop them. This slime monster wasn’t just out there struggling to survive, it was trying to becoming bigger and stronger, almost on a gluttonous level.”

Spike looked nervous, as if the frozen pieces around them were more dangerous than they looked. “Is it even safe to have all this stuff here?”

“It’s fine. The monster isn’t alive anymore, thanks to Superfilly at least.” Twilight couldn’t hide the annoyance and disappointment in her tone. A small living sample would have made her research much easier.

“Uh, you mean Supermare right?”

“Oh… well, about that.” Twilight stopped to clear her throat. Spike was a huge Supermare fan, and she felt slightly bad for withholding all the details of the superpony’s latest heroic deed from him. “I guess I forgot to mention it, but apparently Supermare has a filly partner now. I didn’t get to speak to her for long. She’s awfully young though. It just—”

“—Makes you worried that another pony with strange and scary powers you can’t explain is out there?” Spike finished. Twilight frowned, a sense of dread filling her as Spike spelled out her fears so clearly.

“Well, yes. I don’t— I mean we don’t really know anything about her. The things she can do should be impossible. Now there’s a much younger pony out there just like her? How many more ponies could there be with these kinds of abilities?”

Spike rolled his eyes, “Twilight, Supermare is a hero. And now there’s a Superfilly out there too? Come on, this is great news! I know Supermare is still a new hero and all, but she’s been helping ponies all over Equestria! So what if she seems more powerful than Princess Celestia and Princess Luna put together? Does it really matter if one pony is stronger than a whole horde of dragons, or totally invulnerable to things that would hurt even celestial beasts? I swear seeing her fight that Scorpio was one of the most epic things ever! She was throwing punches so strong they made shockwaves that blew away clouds!”

While Spike was gleefully reminiscing, Twilight remembered all the reasons she was fearful of a pony like Supermare. The sudden appearance of Superfilly only doubled her concerns.

“I just can’t trust a pony that can do all those things, while we know nothing about her. Now this Superfilly appears out of nowhere. Just the thought of a pony that young able to do all the things Supermare does is really concerning! Again, what if more of them pop up? What if this is a whole new race of ponies that lures us all into a false sense of security only to turn around and take over all of Equestria? There would be no way to save ourselves because nothing can stop Supermare! Or at least…”

Twilight paused, turning back to her desk and the samples. The urge to continue her work felt stronger than ever.

“At least, nothing had been know to stop her until today. I was informed that Superfilly was the one who defeated the slime monster. All this,” Twilight waved a hoof to all the pieces of purple ice in the lab, “was her doing. Arctic Breath, another well-documented power of Supermare’s, where she freezes her enemies like a windigo. And yet, Supermare herself couldn’t beat this monster alone. I need to know why.”

“I thought you wanted to know how to reverse what it did? You know, so you can help Rainbow Dash and all those other ponies?” Spike pointed out.

“I do! But I have good reason to believe that Supermare might have gotten captured by the slime monster, if only briefly. She didn’t outright admit it, but I could see she was shaken up.”

Spike tilted his head at Twilight, narrowing his eyes at her, “You almost sound… happy about that.”

“I’m happy that Rainbow Dash and those ponies are safe. And… maybe I am a little relieved to know Supermare does in fact have some weaknesses. She’s not an unstoppable force of nature.”

“You do know Supermare isn’t an enemy like Discord and Nightmare Moon too, right?”

“Nopony knows Supermare, Spike. She always disappears after she’s done ‘saving the day’,” Twilight groaned, wishing it was easier to explain why the supposed hero made her so nervous. “If she was captured, she didn’t seem all that weakened like the others. She might have recovered. I want to know how, and see if I can apply that to Rainbow Dash and help her recover too.”

Spike hesitated, unsure about Twilight’s motivations. He could feel he was pushing her limits with his questioning though. The worry on his face was easy to read, and Twilight could tell she was doing little to ease the dragon’s concerns.

“So, you think studying and experimenting on the pieces of this monster will show you how to… do what? Give magic? If the slime monster isn’t alive anymore, then it wouldn’t have any magic to give. It would have to take some first.”

Twilight blinked, and an idea came to her at that moment.

“Maybe… I think there is still some evidence here that I can tap into. But I know, I know, just for an hour more. You know me, Spike, I can get a lot done in just an hour. Rainbow might be safe now, but it will be a long time before her magic fully returns. I really think that, just as I’m trying to help Dash in my own way, Rarity is doing the same. You might be able to help her out better than you can help me right now.”

Twilight pressed the issue further before Spike could get a word in, “Knowing Rarity, she might be so distraught over what happened to Rainbow, she could be on her drama couch right this second. Honestly Spike, I’ll follow up and see Dash soon.”

Spike hesitated, but only for a short time. The thought of helping Rarity was too tempting to ignore.

“Well… okay. One hour. I’ll go and see if Rarity needs me, but we’ll stop by here to pick you up. One hour!” He said, stepping away towards the stairs. Twilight nodded, turning quickly back to her work. She never notice Spike open his mouth to say something more, only to frown and keep quiet as he left.

“One hour. That should be all I need for my work.”

The work in question consisted of a currently empty wide-based beaker with a large funnel over it. Above the funnel floated a hoof-sized piece of the frozen slime suspended by her magic. Twilight’s old notes and new notes on the slime were tacked to nearby corkboards, showcasing formula breakdowns and magical equations.

On the other side of her lab was a white board with magic-written, color-coded notes and high definition photos on everything Twilight Sparkle knew about Supermare and her powers.

“There’s a connection here, and I’m going to figure this out…”

Twilight hurried back to her work. The idea that her old experiment became such a formidable force was astonishing. Knowing it gave Supermare trouble made Twilight hungry to know more. She had to understanding what her simple science experiment had evolved into.

There was no denying she wanted someway to stop Supermare, if she ever had to. Heroic deeds or not, a pony with that much power was too dangerous. Even if Princess Celestia didn’t readily agree, Twilight was convinced she knew better. Supermare was something that could not be controlled, something that attracted even more danger to Ponyville and the rest of Equestria. Now, there was another ‘hero’, younger and possibly even more out of control, assuming Superfilly would behave anything like an actual young filly would.

Twilight’s magic quickly gathered a variety of chemical solutions, some she shook and others she mixed together. Next to the beaker were tiny chips of the frozen slime, taken from random pods. Her magic gathered the chips and dropped them into a test tube half filled with a clear solution. The change in color to the solution went from purple to a deep, ugly brown, as expected.

“Test 33 is confirmed as another failure today. Starting Test 34 now.”

Twilight gathered chips taken from a slime pod she had separated from all the others. Dropping those chips into the next test tube, Twilight’s eyes lit up as she saw the solution stay clear.

“Alright, this should do it. If I can crack this, I’ll be one step closer to understanding what Supermare is. All that magical energy couldn’t have disappeared.”

With the clear test tube held securely in her magic, Twilight poured the solution over the levitated chunk of permafrost slime. Right away the block started to melt, drippings catching in the funnel and collecting in the beaker. Twilight’s eyes widened as the slime stayed the same consistency of water. It was relief— there was no reverting it back into a living bio weapon.

The block was half melted when something unexpected happened. Twilight shielded her eyes and looked away as the dead slime gave off a chemical glow she had not expected. When it was clear the glow would not go away, Twilight turned slowly to look back at the beaker, and the now bright neon green liquid it contained.

It’s responding to the slime that drained Supermare… but it never did this with Dash, or the samples from the other pods. I bet it wouldn’t respond to anypony else’s for that matter. But why is it responding at all?

Holding the filled beaker of modified glowing slime, Twilight Sparkle gave a satisfied grin. It might not have been a way to reserve the loss of magic, but it did seem she had discovered something that would react specifically to Supermare’s magic.

“This is going to require more testing. Field testing, I should say.”

Rainbow Dash always trusted her eyes.

As a skilled flyer, her eyes had to be up to par with her wings. Inattention meant crashing into clouds or worse, into another flyer. Her training as a Wonderbolt reserve member demanded extensive eye-to-flight coordination, and total awareness of her surroundings at all times.

Yet even as she saw Supermare shimmer away like a mirage, leaving Applejack in her place, Rainbow Dash refused to believe her eyes.

It had to be a trick. Supermare had proven she could move faster than Dash’s eyes could follow. She admitted that Applejack was on her way to visit her. The superpony must have swapped places with Applejack, while only appearing to have never moved.

Except Rainbow Dash’s eyes confirmed that was a lie. Applejack had the same slack body language, the shame-filled eyes, even the same mane style as Supermare. Everything Dash’s eyes saw in front of her screamed the impossible truth. Only the egghead term ‘improbable’ could describe the dilemma Rainbow Dash faced, though she managed to sum it up much more colorfully when she was finally able to speak.

“Guh wha? W-what the buck? Y-you’re… but, you were… I’ve been… but you’re… A-Applejack?” Rainbow Dash struggled just to get her thoughts out. The inability to understand the sudden transformation was scaring her, and the mental overload threatened her sanity. She could only take a weak step away from Supermare— from Applejack.

Despite her fears, it was Applejack who turned away first, looking ashamed to meet Rainbow Dash’s eyes. Dash imagined Applejack felt as bad as when Discord possessed her to willingly tell lies. Dash wished he would pop out of the walls or under her hospital bed, claiming this was all some ridiculous prank.

No such luck.

“This can’t be right. You’re… you’re not Supermare. You don’t look anything alike. You’re an earth pony! I mean, I guess she is too. But okay, Appplejack doesn’t have all those crazy superpowers or Applejack would have used them when we fought Nightmare Moon. Or even when that huge Ursa Minor came to Ponyville!”

Applejack didn’t answer right away. It looked as if the normally forthright and honest farmer was struggling to find the right words to say. She couldn’t recall a time when Applejack ever had a problem speaking anything but the plain old honest truth.

“I am Supermare. Can’t say I feel all that super right now, though,” Applejack sighed, “But I am Applejack too, crazy superpowers and all. I guess it’s fair to say I ain’t all normal. I mean, I am still a pony. And an earth pony. But… but I guess I really ain’t like any other earth pony in Equestria.”

“You’re… an alien? You are! You’re an alien impersonating the real Applejack!” Dash shouted, looking like she was ready to fight, even though it was taking effort just to keep standing without support.

“Dash please, I am Applejack. And I am not an alien… though there is a spaceship…”

“Ah ha!”

“Let me explain!” Applejack shouted, getting Dash’s full attention.

The pegasus looked concerned and stole a glance to the window. She was willing to bet she could still jump and fly, or at least glide and crash, if she had to escape.

“I am Applejack. Same Applejack you met at the Golden Oaks Library for Twilight’s ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party. It was the first time we ever talked more than just polite conversation. I grew up at Sweet Apple Acres with my granny, big brother, and little sister. I’m a farmer through and through… but a few months ago I started to change.”

Rainbow Dash didn’t look very convinced.

“I don’t know if maybe it had something to do with getting my Element of Harmony, or maybe I just hit the right age… don’t think that’s really the case… but something happened to me that I can’t rightly explain. Suddenly I’m bucking holes into trees, or plain old uprootin’ the poor things. I stopped getting tired. Started lifting more than Big Mac— like things were just feather-light. Starting breaking a lot of things around me without meaning to. I’d try lending a hoof to help raise a new barn or shed, and I’d hammer right through the planks or support beams. Then my vision got all weird. I could see shapes through walls, and ponies… without skin. And things started to catch fire just by me looking at them funny. I didn’t know what was going on, till Granny Smith pulled me aside one day and had a sit down with me. Turns out she was noticing all those weird changes in me. And worse, she was seeing them in Apple Bloom too.”

“You mean just one day, out of the blue, Applejack suddenly started getting these weird powers? And Apple Bloom has them too?” Dash asked, looking skeptical at what she was hearing.

“She didn’t at first. For her, it was mainly the whole super strength thing. That and not getting tired or hurt anymore. Granny Smith said she had a feeling something like this was going to happen to us someday. She took us to one of the isolated barns that hardly gets used anymore. She showed us… well, I just have to come right out and call it as it is. She showed us the spaceship she and my Ma and Pa found us in.”

“Okay, wait timeout,” Dash spoke firmly, struggling to keep up with barrage of information. “Crazy backstory aside, if Applejack is really Supermare, then how come I never recognized her in that costume? Or anypony else for that matter. Supermare doesn’t even wear a mask.”

“It’s the costume. I don’t rightly know how it all works. Its got this enchantment on it, I reckon. Makes it so that when I wear it, nopony recognizes me. Like a... glamour? Least that’s what I’ve heard Twilight call magic that makes one thing look like something else.”

“Wait, wait, you actually remember all that egghead stuff Twilight likes to talk about? Okay, now I know you’re not Applejack,” Rainbow Dash shook her head, looking thoroughly annoyed and more tired than she had ever been. “The Applejack I know doesn’t even like magic. She even got mad at Twilight when she tried using magic during her first Winter Wrap-Up. Now you’re telling me Applejack is actually a superpony with a magic costume? No way. You’ve got to prove this. Tell me something only the real Applejack knows about me. And if you are Applejack, prove you’re Supermare by doing one of those freaky things she does all the time.”

Rainbow Dash smirked, thinking this would trip Applejack up. Or Supermare? Or the alien pony that looked like Applejack and claimed it was Supermare? It was taking major effort just to keep all this new information together.

“Okay… something only Applejack knows. Okay. I know that deep down, you have a fear of failure.”

“Lies!”

“It’s the truth or I wouldn’t say it. You remember the time you started to get really cocky about how you were saving lives in Ponyville? It got to be where you were doing it just for attention, instead of doing it to actually help others.”

Rainbow Dash could already tell where this was going, and the bitter memories it brought back made her scowl. “Applejack and the others invented Mare-Do-Well to teach me what a humble hero would really look like. Still think that was screwed up by the way. Don’t see what that has to do with a fear of failure though.”

Applejack pressed on, looking determined to get her point across. It was a look that Dash believed the real Applejack would make when she was becoming stubborn.

“You confessed that in the end, you were wrong. You let that fame and attention get to your head. When Mare-Do-Well appeared and started taking the spotlight away, it got you down. You told me later, in private, that what really got you depressed was not living up to everypony’s expectations.”

Rainbow Dash didn’t respond right away. The last part was true, she had told Applejack, and only Applejack, that she couldn’t stand the idea of letting others down. She was fairly positive she never actually said the word ‘depressed’ though.

“Only a good friend would know that about you, Dash. And I promised never to tell another soul about it either.”

“... Okay, maybe you really are Applejack,” Dash spoke softly.

“I really am. And as for proving I’m Supermare too, well that at least is a little easier.”

With that said, Applejack raised herself off the ground, floating in place.

Rainbow Dash backed up so fast she slammed into the windowsill. Her body forgot how tired it was as adrenaline kicked in. Applejack, simple stuck-in-the-mud Applejack, was floating in the air without wings. Just like Supermare.

“Applejack,” Rainbow muttered when she finally found her voice. “You aren’t lying.”

“You know I hate lying. Can’t lie worth a lick as it is.”

“But you kept this a secret. From m— from all of us.”

Applejack frowned, floating back down to the floor and rubbing the back of her head with her hoof.

“A lie ain’t the same as a secret. I didn’t want to tell anypony else because… what could I say? I still can’t explain why these changes happened, and the ship couldn’t either. It got damaged or something, so it can only tell me so much. I don’t know where it came from, or where I really came from for that matter. I do know that it wiped my memory when it landed. The earliest thing I can remember is being at some family gathering, hiding under the table ‘cause there were so many new faces. I found some apple fritters… that’s about all I remember. But the ship… it planted that memory, and a whole bunch of others in my mind. Apparently, I was older when it crashed here. I was just old enough to know I had to keep my baby sister safe. Granny said when Pa opened our ship, he found me holding Apple Bloom. She was just a baby. We were both wrapped up in a blanket, looking like we had been sleeping peaceful as could be.”

Rainbow Dash watched Applejack as she spoke, seeing her eyes tear up. What she heard sounded too incredible to be real. But Applejack didn’t lie, and there was no denying that everything her eyes saw in Applejack told her that this was the complete truth. Crazy spaceship and all.

That just made it harder for Rainbow Dash to decide what to make of all this. It was all too much to take in at once. Just trying to make sense of everything was making her feel more tired than she could have imagined.

Dash opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it. Her eyes were half-open, exhaustion starting to set in after what felt like hours of holding it back. The adrenaline rush had passed, and she was crashing hard.

“I need to sleep on this,” Dash finally spoke up. She started to stagger towards her bed, slow as Tank, but not caring about appearances at that moment.

“AJ, I’m sorry about the whole, you know, could have saved me early thing. Guess it makes sense now, why Supermare always flew over the Everfree. It wasn’t the forest; it was Sweet Apple Acres you were heading to, which just happens to have the Everfree bordering it. Wow...”

Dash groaned, trying to decide what to do with all the new information that had been dumped on her, and what to think about her friend. Her suddenly very powerful, very different, friend.

“So, all those times we tried to outdo each other…?” Dash asked quietly.

Applejack bit her lip and shook her head, “Not always. The Running of the Leaves… I didn’t have my powers then. A couple of races later though… I had to hold back.”

“When I get better, and that won’t be long… I want to race you. In the sky. Wings versus no wings. If you hold back, I’ll know. If I have to do something even bigger than a sonic rainboom, I will.”

Dash was panting again, the effort to walk herself to her bed was taking its toll on her.

“When I get better… you’re going to tell me the whole story. From the beginning.”

Applejack nodded slowly, “I will. You and the others. I’m not going to hide the truth anymore.”

“Don’t tell them,” Dash groaned as she pushed herself up onto her hospital bed, getting a confused look from Applejack. “Twilight… I wasn’t kidding about her. She doesn’t trust Supermare. She was the one that pointed out your flight pattern. I got the idea from her…” Dash gave a mighty yawn at that moment, closing her eyes as soon she managed to get herself back into bed.

Applejack was there at Dash’s bedside in a moment, just in time to see Rainbow Dash submit to exhaustion. The questions she had stayed at the tip of her tongue, and now Applejack had a new problem to deal with— what to do about another best friend who didn’t trust the other side of her.

Though she was on the edge of consciousness, Rainbow Dash didn’t miss what Applejack said next.

“Thank you for still wanting to be my friend.”

Author's Note

Major thanks to IRpony for his excellent helping me get this chapter edited and polished. He is still one of the best editors one could work with.