Author's Note

So, here's our first look at what’s going on with the other Pinkie and Twilight.

As always, you know my policies.

Wrong Twilight and Pinkie

Celestia and Luna had serious expressions on their faces when they met with Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Starlight Glimmer. They were both decked out in full regalia, as usual, with Celestia in an angelic white formal dress and Luna in a midnight blue business dress. Applejack was in her usual farm attire, which meant a red plaid shirt and blue jean shorts; Rainbow was in her formal Wonderbolts attire, with the added bonus of her personal flight goggles on her head; Fluttershy was in a forest green dress, adorned with animal impressions; Rarity was in a formal black dress, with cuts down the side of the legs for greater ease of movement and her mark on the chest and lower back; and Starlight was decked out in khaki hiking shorts and a dark blue tank top.

They were all in an observation room for a room designed for containing magically problematic ponies. Both Twilight and Pinkie seemed to be sleeping in the room that was being observed. “Why the major precautions, your highnesses,” inquired Starlight, “Twilight and Pinkie have never been that kind of dangerous before.”

“My sister and I did a full battery of tests on them when we found them out in the wilds near Canterlot,” said Luna, “even going as far as to see what I could glean from their dreams.”

“What we found was that their magic was a bit off, yet similar, to the ponies we know,” said Celestia. “However the rambling expressions of both have led us to believe that they are merely alternates of the ponies we know and without more accurate information regarding where they are from we cannot begin looking for the ponies we know.”

“To make matters more difficult,” said Luna, “they didn’t entirely switch places with the ponies we know, just their minds have swapped places with their alternates, which explains why their magical signatures are a bit off. Even if we did find the right world the two are in, we wouldn’t recognize them as the ponies we know because their marks will be different. They might be a bit similar but just different enough for us to have no way to positively identify them. What we do know, which isn’t very much, is the alternate Pinkie has a bit more girth to her and the alternate Twilight is still a unicorn.”

“Twilight’s brain would really come in handy now,” said Rainbow, “can’t we just ask this other Twilight to help out?”

“It’s not that easy,” said Luna, “even in their dreams, they ranted about the ‘dragon in charge’ and wouldn’t allow any further explanation than that, we had no idea what they were talking about. I’m afraid we’ll need to give them some time to acclimate to everything here first, which could take days or weeks or even months. In the meantime, I suggest you all wite up lists of a few sample books for the two them to read so they can more easily acclimate to their new situation.”

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Twilight and Pinkie looked around the room they were in, it seemed to be designed to prevent the occupants from potentially harming themselves. As to why they were both in the room, they suspected it was to make things less problematic. Twilight and Pinkie took another look at each other, for the fifteenth time, and confirmed both their physiology and marks were somewhat different. The book was missing from Twilight’s mark, and she had wings for some reason, and Pinkie wasn’t quite as pudgy with the cake missing from her mark.

They didn’t know how long they had been out but suspected it was at least a few hours. The sound of an exterior door opening was heard and a few minutes later a purple and green baby dragon, that looked like he just got his wings, strolled n from a hidden door they couldn’t keep track of for some reason. He wore visitor’s bracelet with seven tubs of books on wheels stacked three high trailing behind him and stopped to take a look at them before saying in a very childish sound voice, “Do you know who I am?”

“Um, no, should I,” said Twilight in confusion, “you’re much younger than the dragons I’m used to seeing,” this deflated the baby dragon for some reason.

“Actually, we do,” said Pinkie with excitement, “that’s Spike, but he’s so much younger than the one we know.”

“So all that ranting about this not being our universe was real,” said Twilight with surprise, “my ring isn’t calibrated for that sort of spellwork.”

“Didn’t you notice Celestia and Luna didn’t have rings on their horns, and neither do you,” said Spike as he began setting the books up in the far corner of the room from where he entered.

“Honestly,” said Pinkie, “I don’t think we were paying attention to that, we were more confused why they didn’t have collars on.”

Spike stopped unloading the books and facepalmed for a moment before getting back to work unloading the collections of literature while saying, “In all the multiverse, Pinkie is still Pinkie and Twilight is still Twilight. Alright, I brought you a few books to read while you’re here that your alternates’ friends in this world think could help,” he then reached into his surprisingly deep pockets and pulled out some books and files, “and these are materials I thought you might like to take a look at. They’re profiles on the two of you in this universe that I’ve been working on for the past year or so, mostly thanks to this universe’s Pinkie and Twilight, and their personal diaries. I’m pretty sure you should know how to open them, they were written by the yous that existed here. I also brought a copy of the friendship journal they and their best friends wrote a while back.”

With that, the young dragon finished his task and left the two mares to get acquainted with their materials of choice. They both decided to start with the dossiers that had been written on them; they would move on to the books later. Twilight was an expert on research, and they were kind enough to give her and Pinkie several new research materials.