Applejack Is An Interdimensional Alien

“Quills, Twilight?” Spike asked as he stood next to the mare who was seated at a table in the Royal Library, a large stack of books next to her.

“Check.”

“Notepad?”

“Check.”

“Pretzels and water?”

“The most important part some might say,” Twilight joked lightly in an attempt to calm her nerves at what she might discover. “Check.”

“That’s everything on the list!”

“Perfect!” the mare said enthusiastically. “Then let this research session begin!” With that, she stuck her nose in the first book in front of her as Spike went off alone to another section of the library. She had about twenty books on Equestrian History and Gaia the Great in the stack on the table, but didn’t want to take too much time reading through each one. She planned on skimming through them until she spotted on something worth investigating.

While interesting, it was a boring process for the mare who wanted to hurry through and either prove her friend innocent and dispel all fear or prove herself wrong and rid herself and Celestia of all doubt. However, she had to admit that right now, she had more than just a doubt about her. There was reasonable suspicion, especially with what she found back on the farm.

After leave the home of the Apples, she investigated around the farm and found the same magical signature somewhere in the orchard, the difference being that this one was used as the marker for where somepony came to through teleportation. Of course, ponies teleported all the time, but that was unicorns who were proficient in magic, and only advanced ones at that. Not to mention, unicorns didn't need to write symbols because they had a horn to cast magic. It didn’t make any sense why it would be there.

Unless, of course, some non unicorn came to Equeestria, found Applejack, and did something to her before taking on her appearance.

But she couldn’t put all her faith in one theory. There was the problem of the extra lines in the pentagram and what they meant. Not to mention, Applejack pulled her prank before all that happened. It would be quite the coincidence if something happened to her after her prank had been pulled.

Unless something happened to her before she pulled her “prank” and she was just using that to deflect suspicion.

But it was probably nothing. The most likely explanation to Twilight was that her friend was still trying her best to keep up the appearance and doing what she could to pull a fast one on everypony. She wasn’t the joking type, but she sure was stubborn. She could see AJ not giving up on a prank so easily once she set her mind to it. Maybe Rainbow Dash was helping her, too, since she went so far out there with her prank. It would make sense. She would tell her what to do and then the two of them would jump out in surprise when it turned out to all be an elaborate hoax. That was probably what this was. A continuation of her original prank.

Unless, of course, there was never a prank to begin with.

“Stop it, Twilight,” the mare told herself silently. “Focus on finding out what’s going on, not making up theories in your head. Once you have all the facts, the truth will reveal itself. If only there weren’t so much to sort through...”

Luckily for her, she had quills and paper, and everypony knew the best way to sort through what the facts were was to write them down. Quickly, Twilight got started.

Reasons for Applejack being the real Applejack:

She’s been acting normally around me and her friends

Her family hasn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary

High likelihood of this being a continuation of a prank she pulled

Earth is on the banned worlds list

Deep magic sweep revealed nothing out of the ordinary

Reasons for Applejack being an imposter:

Teleportation magic found in her home, along with magical symbols

Princess Celestia is suspicious of her

She mentioned “Earth” in her prank

She didn’t call Princess Celestia ‘princess’

Other facts:

Smell of cleaning chemicals was found in her home

She wasn’t feeling well today

I believe in my friend...

Twilight stopped on that thought. That was an issue. She believed in her friend. She was being biased. She needed to work through this objectively. There was no room for preconceived notions right then, especially if her friend wasn’t her friend and was in danger. She needed to remove her emotions and place them to the side. She took a breath and closed her eyes for a moment to do just that before opening them again and turning back to the book before.

She read to herself for a few hours, her hopes rising as she thought she might be able to clear her friend of suspicion before she found a piece of information to latch onto.

A blurb about Celestia fighting many enemies in her time as princess led to the name “Unity”, which further led to a story about an earth pony of the name who fought Celestia in combat to control the continent and make it more ‘uniform’. It didn’t mention what he meant by more uniform, but it did say that he nearly succeeded before Celestia finally overcame him, the battle ending with him being banished to Earth and him killing the previous rulers of the continent, Celestia’s parents. It described him as ‘worse than the nightmare, worse than the tantabus, worse than anything imaginable’, and listed his time in Equestria as the last time one pony killed another.

“As he was being sent away,” the book read, “he promised he would do the very same thing to where he was being sent, and if he couldn’t make the world his own, he would come back with a fierce vengeance.”

Twilight found herself absolutely terrified of what she read and did everything she could to try to think of this “Unity” pony as just another villain. It was impossible though. Despite every villain she faced being evil and trying to take over Equestria, none of them had ever killed another pony. It was terrifying, and she desperately, desperately hoped that her friend was just plain old Applejack. Unity sounded like somepony she absolutely didn’t want to have to face. Part of her told her to ignore what she read and pretend that everything was okay.

Instead though, she sighed, took a breath, and called to Spike to let him know that they were headed to Canterlot now that they had an answer to who Applejack might be and what Celestia remembered about Unity.