Pandora yawned and idly cursed Celestia for raising the sun so early, causing its late morning rays to fall onto her face. There were a few things draconeqi couldn’t do much about, and direct sunlight was one of them. “*!&@$$ sun-coddling *!+(#!” she swore, smiling slightly since there was no way her mother could hear her; at least... she didn’t think her mother would go for remote hearing spells all the way across Canterlot. She wiped the small frown that had accompanied that last thought off her face and focused on waking up, at least as much as a draconequus could.
Things had been different, and, in Pan’s opinion, better, since she had moved out from her parents’ home to share an apartment with Cupcake. Cupcake worked at the bakery nearby and Pan did... well, whatever. It depended on when her mother asked her, she was variously an artist, engineer, salespony. Pan thought her mother was a bit frustrated that she didn’t have a cutiemark like a pony would, which made figuring out what she should be doing more difficult. At least they didn’t live under the same roof anymore. And her father! A stodgy draconequus! He was such an embarrassment, to her as well as the species.
In any case, it was testament to her force of will rather than her wakefulness when she swept into the bathroom a few moments later. [REDACTED] Washing up, she decided to treat herself to her own visage by looking in the mirror. She was looking pretty masculine today actually, face wider and chiseled and hair shorter. Her image’s mouth curled up into a smile as she grimaced and stuck out her tongue.
“Paradox.” she groaned. “What do you want?” She and Paradox had met in her foolish youth a year or so ago, back when Pandora had thought it was a good idea to go searching for alternate versions of herself. Bad idea. Alternates were always even worse, plus profoundly irritating. She’d slipped into Dox’s dimension for a visit though, and... damn, Beefcake. Cupcake was pretty fine, for a pony, but Beefcake, her male alternate... it took most of Pan’s self-control (plus maybe knowing that Dox would try to stop her) not to try dragging him back to her dimension, or maybe one of those nether dimensions that hardly impacted even the ones on either side.
“Oh... nothing.” said the image, which was now sagging into the room. Its eyes searched the room, and it sighed. In a snap, Paradox was standing right beside Pandora, arm slung around her. “Just wanted to see how you were doing, ‘twin sister’.” Before he’d even finished his sentence, most of him had dashed into her room. “Hey, get back here!” called Pandora, shrugging his arm off. I mean, it was sort of his room too, but it was the principle of the thing. She’d always respected his personal space before, so shouldn’t he?
She caught him tossing junk around in her already messy room. “Where is it?” he asked, looking genuinely worried. “Where did you put it?”
“What?” she replied, “Where did I put what?” She was pretty sure he’d never given her some artifact of power or something from his dimension, but it would look pretty bad if she’d doomed his universe by losing it.
“You know... your egg. Where did you put your egg?”
Pan started laughing. She couldn’t help it. “You laid an egg?!” she gasped, then choked up with laughter again.
“You... didn’t?” he asked, puzzled and defeated. “But we’re supposed to be alternates! Why didn’t you lay an egg?”
“Probably ‘cause I use birth control...” Pandora mused, savoring the warm feeling in her belly (from laughing; not egg-laying. She still chugged the horrid sludge her father assured her was a preventative every week. She’d almost hoped he was trolling her, but nope). She hadn’t laughed like that in a while. She thought back to yesterday, when she’d been unnaturally proud of Cupcake’s win at the Canterlot Baking competition... “Wait, don’t tell me, Beefcake?!”
Her alternate just stood there, blushing, and now it was Pandora’s turn to slide her arm around him. “Oh, you sly dog, you,” she cooed, “you’re lucky to have such a catch.” Defeated, her alternate slumped down under the weight of her arm. “But... H-How?” he asked.
“Well.” said Pandora, moving in front of him and adopting her fake lecture voice, which was probably very much aided by the fact both her parents were professors, “When a draconequus loves a pony very, very much...”
“I know that part!” Paradox pushed her shoulder away. “It’s just... any pony? And I thought it was just female draconequi.”
“What?! How could my father give birth to me? Or your, oh, your mother gave birth to you...” Pan had never met Eris, but everyone in Dox’s universe was the opposite gender, so he was born from an egg laid by his mother, instead of his father. Not that Dusk Shine was even a draconequus... Pan shivered slightly, wondering how her mother would get along with her own alternate... Probably something to avoid at all costs, if Pan’s experience was any indication. “How did you think I was born?”
“I thought... your mother...”
“What? Ew.” Pandora let go of her alternate’s shoulder, made a face and entered a serpentine twist to convey her disgust at the indignities of live birth, but when she looked back, her conversation partner was no longer eye-level.
Paradox lay sprawled out over the floor of her room, and didn’t reply. He sniffed, and Pandora could see that he was trying to hold back tears.
“Uh... there, there.” ad-libbed Pandora, crouching over her alternate and patting him on the back. In response, he just started crying.
“Um. You’ll be an excellent father. I know Cup- I mean Beefcake. S-He’s not the sort to get hung up over niggly biological details, so I’m sure he’ll raise your child with you. You’ll be great parents!” Pandora was starting to panic. It was usually a drain when someone started crying, even when that pony was Princess Skyla, but when that pony was essentially yourself... Not only were you forcefully reminded of how miserable you were, but you realized unfortunate things like how unattractive you were when upset.
“Good.... parents?” asked Paradox, as if the idea had just occurred to him. Then his eyes widened. “The egg! I left the egg on my bed, between the sheets! What if Beefcake comes in... and sits on it?”
Pandora rolled her eyes. If Dox’s universe were anything like her own, the chances of Beefcake entering his room were more or less nil after the bug incident. Dox was paying no attention to her though.
“Oh, ah, I’m a terrible father... Just... just... wait here, don’t go anywhere, I’ve got to go check to see if it’s okay.” he continued. “Maybe I can lock it in an unbreakable cage?” he said before snapping out of this existence and back, presumably, to his own dimension.
Pandora sighed and looked around her messy room, thinking about herself, her friend Cupcake, and their alternates. Then, she slowly started to smile as she realized how Dox was going to repay her for weaseling out of that gambling debt (paid with quasidimensional gold, feh. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought of doing the same thing, but it was the principle). She was going to broadcast this in every dimension she could.
