"It's not theft if it's research," Suri Polomare explained.
"That don't look very comfortable there, Twilight," Applejack remarked.
Twilight was sprawled awkwardly across a wooden platform, which was mostly surrounded by multiple cardboard cutouts. She levitated herself off the platform, being careful not to disturb anything.
"You're right, but it's worth it. If this experiment succeeds, we'll establish important truths about the nature of art!"
Across the room, a pony-tall stand supported a head-sized view camera and a large black shroud. From beneath the shroud, a mare's voice said, "That was better. I think we've almost got it. Could you just take a tiny bit of margin off the top of the front cutout?"
"Sure," Twilight said. She picked up a small, sharp knife, and started carefully shaving the cardboard.
Rarity walked into the room. "I heard Twilight is working on some new artistic project! I could hardly contain my curiosity." Rarity eyed the assemblage of objects. "Twilight? Just what is it that you're doing?"
A pink mare with a purple mane and tail came out from beneath the camera's shroud. "She's helping me with my brilliant new creative project, of course!"
Rarity stared. "Suri Polomare? Right here in Ponyville?"
Suri chuckled. "I know you small town ponies aren't used to seeing real Manehattan designers. But you don't have to gape like that. You might get a fly in your mouth."
Rarity said huffily, "What amazes me is that you're even willing to show your face around here. The most creative idea I've ever seen you have was your idea to copy my designs and enter them into a fashion show as your own!"
"What can I say? You snooze, you lose." Suri smiled condescendingly. "You know that picture with the soup cans? Andy Warthog said he got the idea from my demonstration that creativity is reproducible and fungible."
Rarity's face turned pink with anger. "So you say! As if I would trust your word about anything. And that's not even what those words mean!"
Suri smirked. "SNOOZE and LOSE? You ought to know what those words mean better than I. You have so much more experience with them."
"WHY I--"
"Ladies!" Twilight interrupted. "I know Suri Polomare mistreated you, Rarity. But isn't everypony capable of turning over a new leaf? Why, even Sunset Shimmer--"
"Sunset Shimmer at least understood what she'd done wrong, and apologized as she worked to change her ways!" Rarity exclaimed. "Suri is surely too busy with her NEW reprehensible behavior, to apologize for her OLD contemptible misdeeds."
Twilight looked thoughtful. "I have to admit you have a point, Rarity. But if I just kick Suri out and take over this project myself, I'll be doing the same thing she did to you. This was Suri's creative idea, and I have to respect her for it."
Rarity sniffed haughtily. "And just what IS this idea of hers?"
Twilight said, "Some ponies believe art is a universal language. It transcends the boundaries between different countries, different spoken languages, different species. It's timeless and immortal."
Rarity nodded. "Some ponies do believe that. As a creative artist myself, I can say...in the real world, things can be a bit more complicated."
Suri opined, "You're fairly good at garment design, for a provincial hick. But you know as well as I, Rarity, that a dress you design one season? It's out of style a year later. Your work's value and meaning are temporary at best, Rares."
"Don't call me Rares, you cheap hack!" Rarity snorted. "Suri, have you ever designed a dress on your OWN that was good enough to even fall INTO fashion, let alone fall out of it? With your work, who could even tell?"
Suri said, "The values of your so-called 'art' are transitory and superficial. That's why I'm no longer working in fashion. I've moved from the catwalk to the walk of universal meaning."
"Sounds like empty talk!"
Twilight interrupted, "The point of this experiment is to test the theory that artistic values and meaning really are universal. Or multi-universal. So I took Suri across a dimensional barrier to another universe, where we viewed some of that world's greatest works of art. By replicating those works of art in our own world, using Equestrian equivalents, we can find out whether they have the same power to move ponish minds and hearts."
"And move souls!" Suri insisted. "Don't forget souls."
Twilight shrugged. "Sure, souls too. Although I don't know how to scientifically prove whether souls even exist."
Suri insisted, "Twi, don't you remember those television and radio programs in that other world we visited? Anything that gets millions of creatures to send money away to somecreature they don't even know, must be very powerful! That's a power I must learn to harness and use for myself!"
Twilight said uncomfortably, "That's...your interpretation is...we can investigate that later. Leave it for another time, Suri."
Suri snorted, but didn't argue further.
Twilight shaved a tad more cardboard, and asked, "Does this look good, Suri?"
Suri went back under the shroud. "I think so. Let's try it."
Twilight levitated herself back onto the platform, where she arranged herself into a position that looked uncomfortable for any living organism.
"Foomp!" An old fashioned camera flash made the room smell faintly of smoke.
"What do you think?" Twilight asked.
Suri came out from under the shroud. "The fact you just asked is exactly the problem."
Applejack remarked, "Say what?"
"So much talking! In the world where we found the artistic motif this is based on...do you remember that motif, Twilight?"
Twilight levitated herself back off the platform, to stand a distance away from it. She wiggled and stretched. "Ahh! That feels better. As I recall, Suri, the theme is that a mother's child turned out to be a godlike being, but to protect his fellow creatures, he gave his own life. His mother is mourning her child, now a grown creature who has died."
"Exactly!" Suri said. "She is MOURNING her DEAD CHILD! And do you know what dead children do not do? They do not TALK! They do not DISCUSS PHILOSOPHY! They do not ARGUE over whether their ARTISTIC DIRECTOR is being INSULTED by some small town clotheshorse!"
"I...they--" Twilight said.
"What I need you to do is ACT THE ROLE of a godlike being who has given her life for others. BE THE ROLE! No distractions! All you other ponies! Rarity! Applejar! Get out of this room! And NO TALKING!"
Twilight sighed. "It'll be easier if we just get this over with. You might as well do what she says. We can talk later."
Rarity rolled her eyes, but the two spectators left the room.
When they were gone, Suri asked, "Do you feel ready to get back on the platform?"
Twilight stretched. "Sure. Let's try again." She levitated herself back into her awkward pose.
Suri said, "That's ALMOST right. Just...let me help you fix your pose." She walked over to Twilight, reaching over a low cutout. "That's fairly good, but..." Suri reached out, slightly adjusting Twilight's limbs. She pulled her forelimb back away from Twilight, and felt around on the floor.
"I've got you!" Suri reached out with the small knife Twilight had been using earlier, and stabbed. A small barrier of glowing magenta energy blocked the strike only a few hundredths of a hooflength from Twilight's neck.
Twilight's voice sounded a bit odd with her neck twisted by her pose, but she said, "Helping me feel what it might be like to have been betrayed by a treacherous friend? That's good. That really could help my acting."
Suri stabbed again, the blade again barely blocked as it neared Twilight's body. "I GUESS that's good?" Twilight said.
Suri stabbed again and again. "Why won't you JUST PLAY THE PART?" she screamed. "YOU NEED TO BE DEAD!"
Twilight mumured, "Who's going to do my job, if--"
"GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC! DIE! DIE! The spell won't work if you won't JUST DIE!"
"Did you copy a plan to kill me and steal my magic, from Tirek or one of those guys? There's usually a reason the plan didn't work the first time."
"DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!" Suri shouted again and again, stabbing maniacally at the alicorn. "I want to be a pretty pretty princess!"
Behind Suri, a "Foomp!" and a flash of light let the would-be killer know she was no longer alone with her victim. Rarity's voice said sarcastically, "Isn't that a pretty picture?"
"Or not," Applejack remarked. "Suri, you can't get away with this. Ya might as well stop tryin' to murder her."
"It's not murder if I take her power and make myself the new government!" Suri shouted. "With her raw power and my creatively treacherous genius, the combination will make me invincible! At last Equestria will have a government as strong and perfect and flawless as it deserves! Me!"
Suri turned around, facing Twilight's friends. "That was all just acting, of course. It was clever of you, Rarity, to understand that I would need a photographer for my ENTIRELY STAGED AND FAKE SCENE. So, was it convincing? I can't believe you only got one shot, Rarity. Weren't you afraid it wouldn't turn out?"
"It's not going to work," Twilight said from her position of playing dead.
"What do you mean?" Suri asked. "Of course it'll work. You and I are a pair of creative geniuses. If we try hard enough, and keep trying, we can hardly fail."
"That's not quite what I mean," Twilight said. "The pieta IS a great artistic motif, with many timeless works of art based on it. And the assassination of Julius Caesar is also a wonderful artistic theme. But combining the two in one picture? It just clashes. A rebellion to resist a dictator's tyranny by killing him has NOTHING to do with a mother mourning over the generous self-sacrifice of a merciful godlike being. It makes as little sense as pretending that you and Rarity are the same person."
Applejack chuckled. "Even I coulda told you that."
Rarity cleared her throat. "And what's more," Rarity said, "I can see from what you HAVEN'T cut apart of this picture that you've turned into cardboard cutouts, it must have been based on a great work of art, before you started tampering with it. But just substituting a real pony right in the middle of a painting of hyuu-mans mourning their own native god? It looks a bit silly, if you ask me. And that's BEFORE you started with the stabbing and the yelling."
"I'm afraid Rarity's right," Twilight remarked. "We haven't recreated or reenvisioned or translated a timeless work of art at all. Maybe a better artist like Micelangelo or Hamster the Bearded Wizard could have done something worthwhile with this, but we haven't. This is just a cheap pastiche."
"But..." Suri said, "We were the first ponies ever to do it! So it's creative genius!"
"Attacking me and trying to take my magic is one of the LEAST original ideas in Equestria," Twilight replied. "You derivative hack. The only reason I'm not sending you to Tartarus right now is, you don't seem to be good enough at this to be worth locking up."
"If I can't have supreme power, at the least I deserve eternal fame! I demand that you turn me into a statue right now, and put me in the royal sculpture gardens! In a prominent spot, with a plaque explaining that I was the foremost creative rival of the royal friend Rarity Belle!"
Rarity shook her head. "I've got a lot of rivals who I respect. And you're not one of them."
Suri screamed, "I'll show you! I'll show you all that you should have respected me!" She ran out of the room crying.
Applejack said, "Should we send somepony after her?"
"I don't even know." Twilight said. "Maybe she'll calm down. Or maybe she'll do something dreadfully stupid. I don't know if there's anything we can do."
A few days later in a park, Suri took a break from pretending that she was a famous statue. She sat down and opened her mass-market copy of the Friendship Journal that Twilight had published to share friendship lessons with the world.
Like a lot of ponies who read that book, Suri was kind of good at missing the point.
"Let's see," Suri murmured. "The Alicorn Amulet that Trixie used to take over Ponyville! I'll bet nopony's thought of copying her plan, but trying to do it RIGHT instead of going crazy like she did. I'm probably the first pony to think of that!"
Suri smiled in self-appreciation. "I really am a creative genius."
Author's Note
Micelangelo and his three rodent brothers lived in the sewers of Reneighssance Bitaly and fought against environmental crime, while holding down day jobs as painters.
Hamster ~~the Bearded~~ Wizard (link)
The Death of Julius Caesar (link) or Death of Caesar (link) or...there's a lot of this stuff.
