“Rarity?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Am I a pony?”
Rarity froze. She was sitting at the dinner table along with Sweetie Bell, holding a fork full of mushroom carbonara in front of her in her aura.
“P-pardon?”
“Am I a pony?” Sweetie Bell repeated.
“Well, of course you are!” Rarity said with a small chuckle. “What else would you be?”
Sweetie Bell frowned. “I… I know that,” she said, sounding unsure of herself.
“Then what’s the problem?” Rarity asked, gently setting her fork down.
“I just…I…” Sweetie Bell then took a deep breath before continuing, “I think that I might be a realpony.”
Oh, thought Rarity. Oh. She gently set her fork down. “Um, I’m sorry, darling. I don’t think I quite understand,” Rarity lied.
“You know, a real pony,” Sweetie Bell said, waving her hoof around in a circle. “One with… skin, and bones and… stuff?”
Rarity grit her teeth. She had been really hoping to avoid this particular conversation. “Now, dear, we’ve been over this,” she said carefully. “You are a machine, not a ‘real’ pony, as you say. You don’t have real skin, you don’t have real bones. You are all machine. Understand?”
“But I’m not!” Sweetie Bell snapped. Rarity winced. “I-I’m not a machine! I’m botanic!”
“Organic.”
“Huh?”
“I believe that the word you are looking for is organic.”
Sweetie Bell blinked. “Oh.”
“And besides, like I said, you are not organic. What you are is my little sister, alright? That is what you were designed for, that is what you were programmed for, and that is what you always will be. Understand?”
“But… no! I’m not a machine! I know I’m not!”
Rarity brought a hoof up to message her temple. She was already feeling a headache coming on. “Darling, please. Where are you getting such an idea?”
“Twilight!”
That gave Rarity a pause. “Twilight told you? As in, Twilight Sparkle?”
“Yeah!” Sweetie Bell said with an enthusiastic nod. “Well, kinda?”
Rarity gave Sweetie Bell an incredulous look. “Oh” said Sweetie Bell!“Uh, you know that thing that Twilight likes to say? Extraordinary claims…”
“...require extraordinary evidence,” Rarity finished, before mentally cursing herself.
“Yeah! And you always say that Twilight is the smartest pony that you know, right?”
“...yes…”
“Well, there you go!”
Rarity sighed. “Darling… you do know what she means by that, right?”
“Um… that you need to have proof before you believe in something. And I've got proof!”
She’s not going to drop this, Rarity thought. Oh well, I suppose I might as well humor her. “And what, exactly, do you have for proof?”
Sweetie Bell swallowed. “Well, I… uh…” Sweetie Bell trailed off. She nibbled on her lip, clearly in deep thought. Just when thought that the conversation had ended, Sweetie Bell suddenly shouted “My body!”
“What now!”
“My body,” Sweetie Bell said, gesturing to herself. “Look! I don’t have any buttons, or wires! And- Rarity?”
Sweetie Bell watched as her sister shook her head. “Darling, of course you don’t have any buttons or wires. Why would anypony design you to look that way? It would be so unfashionable!”
“I… okay, that’s a good point,” Sweetie Bell conceded. “But… but I also have other proof!”
“Sweetie…”
“No! It’s true! I… I don’t lift heavy stuff. And I can’t do fancy math inside my head or anything! That’s why you need to get Twilight to keep tutorin’ me!”
“Sweetie Bell!” Rarity gently scolded. “Don’t talk like that.” Sweetie Bell slumped back into her chair, not making eye contact. Rarity reached across the table and patted her hoof. “Sweetie bell, regardless of what you think, you are a machine. And nothing is going to change that.”
“But… but if I’m just a machine, then how can I do… do…”
“Do what now?”
“This!” Suddenly Sweetie Bell sprang out of her seat, gesturing towards her plate. “You know, eating?” She then pointed at her cup. “And drinking!”
Rarity sighed. “Sweetie…”
“And I’m breathing!” Sweetie Bell then inhaled sharply. “See?”
“I’ve told you…”
“And I go to the bathroom!”
Rarity scowled. “Sweetie Bell, please. Do you have to bring that up while we are eating?”
“But I do go!” Sweetie Bell continued. “And I’ll have to go again! Eventually! If we wait for a little while, I-”
Sweetie Bell then trailed off, noticing the look that her older sister was giving her. “I’ll, uh…”
“Darling, please,” Rarity said. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
Sweetie Bell then exhaled slowly, tilting her head down to stare at her plate. “I dream,” she said quietly, so much so that I took Rarity a moment to realise that she spoke.
“Pardon?”
“I dream. Last week, after I watched that movie with Scootaloo, I… I had a nightmare.”
Rarity narrowed her eyes. “You mean the one that I specifically told you not to see?” Sweetie Bell nodded. “Look, Sweetie Bell. You don’t actually dream. It’s just something that your mind does to help you process your memories. It’s not real.”
“It seemed real to me,” Sweetie Bell whispered.
A silence fell over the two. “Well then,” Rarity said after a moment had passed. “I suppose the ice cream is still sitting in the kitchen. We best finish our carbonara before it melts.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Not even for ice cream?”
Sweetie Bell didn’t answer her. Instead she stood up and pushed her chair in.
“Sweetie Bell?”
She continued to ignore her and made her way to the bathroom. She shut the door behind her, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
She felt a sense of unease wash over her. She gazed at her reflection, taking in the details of her face and body. For a moment she just stood there, studying herself.
She looked… normal? Maybe? She looked like she always did. Rarity had said that she was built to be indistinguishable from a real pony, right?
She leaned in closer to the mirror, examining every inch of her face. She pinched her cheeks, trying to feel if they were real. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, inspecting the muscles and tissues inside.
But now matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find any sign that she was a machine. It was as if she was made out of flesh and blood, and not just some collection of various mechanical parts strung together for whatever reason.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door. “Sweetie Bell?” said Rarity. “Are you alright?”
“I-I,” she replied, her voice cracking.
“I’m coming in.” Rarity then opened the door. Suddenly, Sweetie Bell found that she couldn’t hold back her tears anymore. She instinctively buried herself into Rarity’s chest, feeling her forelegs quickly wrap around.
“Shh shh shh,” Rarity cooed. “It’s okay, it’s okay…”
“R-rarity, I-I…”
“It’s alright. I’ve got you.”
“Rarity… you’re… you’re hurting me…”
“Shh, just relax.” She felt the filly begin to struggle in her grasp. Luckily, she was no match for the larger pony, and quickly fell limp. “There we go, nice and easy…”
“...I didn’t know what else to do, so I had to deactivate her,” Rarity said. She was sitting on her fainting couch, watching Twilight as she worked over her sister.
“I see,” Twilight said, scratching her chin as she thought. She had already begun the process of removing Sweetie Bell’s fur, leaving portions of her circuitry visible.
Rarity shuttered. The thought that that was right now under her skin was making her uncomfortable.
“And have you noticed any unusual behavior beforhoof?”
“Looking back on it now, I suppose so,” Rarity said with a sigh. “I can’t believe that I let this happen.”
“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Twilight said sympathetically, before walking over and placing a hoof on Rarity’s withers. “You know, I’m sure you’re not the first pony this has happened to,” Twilight said with a smile that fell once she saw Rarity’s scowl. She then swallowed. “Uh… I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Rarity grumbled.
“Good,” Twilight said, before abruptly clapping her hooves together. “So, luckily it doesn’t look like she has sustained any serious damage. I’ll have to run some tests and some debugging, but I should have her up and running in a few days at most.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Twilight said as she scooped up the filly in her wing. “Like I said, it’s nothing I can’t fix.”
“Well, thank you! And thank you for coming over here on such a short notice.”
Twilight shrugged. “Hey, what are friends for?” Rarity smiled. “Well, have a good night then!” Twilight said. She had nearly made it to the door when Rarity spoke again.
“Twilight?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think there are real ponies out there?”
“Um, I’m sorry?”
“You know,” Rarity waved her hoof in a circle. “Real ponies. As in, made of flesh and blood?”
“Oh.” Twilight frowned. “I… I don’t know. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“Alright. Well, have a good night then.”
“You too!”
Twilight then stepped outside and teleported back home. She made two quick notes, one to remind herself about Rarity’s question, the other to remind Spike dinner was in the fridge, before heading into the basement to get to work.
