"So, let me get this straight." Sunset brushed the last crumbs from her sandwich off of her jacket as Princess Twilight finished her story. "You. Alicorn Princess in the prime of your pony life. With a special talent in magic itself, which, I might add, is as-good or better than my own, got repeatedly dueled to a standstill by a middle-aged unicorn with a grudge."

"Well, when you put it that way..." both Twilights present echoed, faltering as they heard their own voice and looked at each other in confusion.

"Stop, please. For our sanity's sake, let's just stick to one Twilight talking for now. Princess." Sunset pinched the bridge of her nose.

Princess Twilight blushed as the native Twilight pushed her glasses up her nose, still slightly unnerved. Thankfully they were sitting far enough apart that Sunset wasn't getting the headache-inducing double-vision effect anymore.

Princess Twilight responded. "Well, there was a lot to deal with. The Time Spell was more than a little draining, and without any exaggeration she was a very powerful unicorn!"

"Twilight. No. I'm serious. I've felt your magic before, and even though we were both using the Magic of Friendship, everyone here can tell you that you are an order of magnitude more powerful than us individually. Even our Twilight here has an incredible amount of potential for magical volume, but not alicorn-level! You had no right to do anything but buck her sorry tail straight up to Cloud Factory Nine!" Sunset ranted, throwing her hands in the air for emphasis.

"I do?" Twilight-with-glasses asked, confused.

"Uh-oh, she's starting her 'you have it in you' rant." Rainbow Dash smiled, kicking up her feet up to watch.

Sunset held up her hands, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. "No, no I'm not. But I want a better reason why Twilight didn't wipe the clouds with her, with her abilities and talents."

"Well, can it be measured?"

Sunset and Princess Twilight both looked at the other Twilight, causing everyone else to look between the three of them for whatever they missed. Sunset tapped her fingers on her knees.

"Noooo... I don't think theres any explicit number you can put on a duelist, but you can roughly form some expectations based on their thaumatic capacities and saddle in whatever dueling school they studied..." Sunset looked sharply at the Princess. "What form do you use? I've never seen you fight with unicorn magic."

"Errrr..."

"Oh."

Applejack's eyebrow went up. "Welp, there's yer' problem."

Sunset had collapsed her face into both hands, giving a muffled groan. "You're telling me... that you studied for all those years under Princess Celestia... all the life-threatening adventures... and you never had any formal duelist training?"

Twilight blushed heavily and pulled her knees up to her chest. "I've studied all three of the historical schools and their classical forms! At least... the theory..."

With a stunned half-smile on her face, Sunset just stared into space. Rarity winced. "Oh, dear. Twilight, darling, you just found the button-"

"Theory." Sunset bit out, distant smile still creepily present. "Is inferior. To practice. We are solving this."

"This gonn' be good!" Pinkie Pie giggled.

Rainbow Dash raised her hand. "I wanna watch. If this is half as funny as I think it's gonna be, I really wanna watch."

Blinking her way back to the present, Sunset shook her head. "I don't think you all can come. The logistics of having six confused duplicates of national heroes running around might get a little out of-"

"Actually," Princess Twilight brightened as she stood, "I already drew up plans and an itinerary with 'my' Pinkie Pie if you all wanted to come visit!"

Fluttershy gasped and struggled to save her juice box as Pinkie Pie grabbed her, shouting at the top of her lungs into the Canterlot afternoon.

"PONY-PORTAL-TRIP!"

* * *

Author's Note

This is gonna be short, I'm still working on the finale of Shooting For Friendship. It came to me and it's good practice.

I made no plans for what the rest of Team Shooting For Friendship are gonna be doing while Sunset gives Twilight a crash-course in combat tactics. Let your minds run wild, but if someone wanted to run with that in a fic I am willing to make references back-and-forth.

Speaking of back-and-forth, I've recently become a part of Typewriterpony's project, supplying "bullshit based loosely on reality" to his fic.