In a dimly-lit room in Twilight's castle, five sat in a circle: (clockwise) Starlight Glimmer (eyeing up a nearby clipboard with game rules beside her and a mug of cider in a hoof), Fluttershy (with a little apple juice box in front of her), Trixie (in full magician outfit holding a bottle of cider in her magic), Rainbow Dash (surrounded by 4 mugs of cider), and Spike (holding a small mug of cider). They watched eagerly as an empty cider bottle spun around, slowing down.
Starlight waited for the bottle to come nearly to a stop, then cleared her throat. "Well, I'm calling it, that's Trixie up first."
Trixie smirked. "Fluttershy, truth or dare?" she asked, pointing to the yellow pony.
Fluttershy eeped and brought her hooves up to her barrel. "Um...truth?"
Trixie rolled her eyes. "What's the um...most intimate you've gotten with your animals?"
Fluttershy's mouth gaped open. "I-I um uh...I c-can't...I plead, um, the 'fifth' I think the rules called it. Starlight...go easy on me."
Trixie sighed before taking a big swig of a cider bottle.
Starlight took a sip of her cider. "Hey now, the rules say I can't go easy on anypony, in the name of fairness, and I have to make substitute answers really embarrassing... I'm gonna say you had too much cider one night and woke up in bed with Angel Bunny...and those yellow and pink winged rabbits I saw are the result 3 months later."
Fluttershy put her head in her hooves. "...D-Discord named them 'bunnisuses' actually..."
Trixie chuckled so hard she snorted and coughed up some cider on the floor, while Spike fell over laughing against Rainbow.
Rainbow for her part tried to stifle a chuckle, but eventually failed. "Heh...sorry Fluttershy."
Trixie finally took a deep breath, and massaged her cheeks a little. "Okay, so The Great and Powerful Trixie gets to dare her now, right?"
Starlight nodded, while Fluttershy gulped and slowly looked up from her hooves.
Trixie smirked again. "Fluttershy, kiss my hooves and rump as if I'm royalty."
Fluttershy turned to look at Starlight. "Um...but um, I'm in a relationship with Discord, so...what about the betrayal rule?"
Starlight put a hoof to her chin. "Hmm, I don't think so, it's not exactly a romantic gesture, and Discord the lord of chaos for sure has to okay something so comical."
Rainbow looked into a bottle and sighed, then shrugged. "Yeah, sorry Flutters, but her logic's sound, and it's not much worse than half the stuff you do with the animals."
Starlight looked between Fluttershy shivering and Trixie smiling. "But...Trixie, clean up first for hygiene reasons, Spike knows the proper way to do it so let 'im. Uh...and Fluttershy, remember you're not required to um, go inside anypony's anything."
Fluttershy gulped as Trixie casually went over to the sink, followed by Spike.
A while later, Fluttershy was shivering a bit as she sucked from her juice box, rapidly collapsing it.
Trixie smirked as she looked on. "Not everypony can handle Trixie's Great and Powerful Booty. It's a taste of pure amazement, not one to wash out with pathetic apple juice!"
"Urgh..." groaned Rainbow. "You'll get yours...it's my turn now. Trixie, truth or dare?"
Trixie glared back. "Fine. Truth."
Rainbow rolled her eyes and took a sip of cider. "Figures. Well...how about...ugh, I've got nothin'."
Spike rubbed his chin. "I got one for ya, Rainbow. She keeps using the third person when talking about herself. Why?"
Rainbow put up a hoof, which he slapped with his hand. "Nice one, yeah, that!"
Trixie sighed. "I'm...not sure I want to get into that..."
Rainbow smirked. "Are you pleading the fifth? 'cause I've got an idea what I'm gonna dare ya to do!"
Spike chuckled. "And I bet she'll use the fact the rules let an action take up to a whole minute!"
Trixie's eyes went wide.
Fluttershy suddenly hacked up juice, dropping the flattened juice box fell to the floor, and making a loud sputter. Rainbow started giggling, while Fluttershy blushed profusely and grabbed one of Rainbow's cider mugs, then hid her face with it as she drank.
Trixie gulped as she looked to Fluttershy. "No no, uh...I-uh...The Great and Powerful Trixie is willing to tell you, but it will be a long story. Surely longer than a minute. And I perhaps went too far with our sensitive yellow friend."
Fluttershy promptly put down the mug and hugged Trixie with a smile.
Starlight raised an eyebrow. "You know, I'm rather curious myself, and I'm sure this can't be too bad. I'm waiving that rule this time. Tell the story." She took a sip from her mug of cider.
Trixie sighed as she patted Fluttershy, then gently pushed her off. "Fine...it all started when I fell into some cave in the Everfree Forest. After getting roughed up by various bits of rock, I fell into a pool...and somehow came right back out, but beside Trixie was...another Trixie."
Starlight spat into Trixie's face and dropped her mug, spilling cider on the floor. "Wh-y-you mean...you went through the Mirror Pool? Trixie, you never told me!"
Trixie hmphed and lifted her nose to the side as she wiped her face with a cloth. "There was no reason to get into Trixie's storied past. Mystique is very important, my dear Starlight." Trixie then lowered her head and closed her eyes. "Anyways, as I was saying, there were now two Trixies. From a bit of questioning and a short wrestle for smashing each other's heads with rocks, it soon became obvious that the other Trixie was...inferior, half-baked, and full of hot air, very unlike the real Trixie."
Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Yeah, very unlike alright..."
"Totally..." Spike added, before the two bumped hoof and fist.
Trixie groaned. "However, simply liberating Second Trixie's gasbag of a head from her body or making both into Trixie salsa would be...a waste of perfectly good resources, and was expected to be a severe problem for coming in to town with clean hooves. The Great and Powerful Trixie's genius soon devised a solution: Putting Second Trixie to work in a box-sawing trick."
Spike got up to Trixie's face. "Wait, so...you used MIRROR POOL CLONES for simple magic tricks? Trixie, do you have any idea how irresponsible that is?" He finally took a sip from his small mug.
Trixie rolled her eyes. "I do know now, but I was rather naive at the time, and very glad to have an assistant whose fate I wasn't at all concerned with. Anyways, though Second Trixie suffered only minor lacerations from the saw trick, she lost an eye in a knife-throwing incident, which made her rather unsuitable as a convincing double. It was a shame, too, she had grown pretty close to Trixie in intellectual ability and showmareship. I tried having her be my stunt double for my first attempt at the Moonshot Manticore Mouth Dive, but an attentive audience member noticed, and while they claimed they wanted to save her, in the chaos, those utter fools simply left the Good But Half-Baked Trixie to become Manticore dung while I was run out of town."
Fluttershy gasped. "Oh that's just awful!"
Rainbow groaned. "Oh come on, Fluttershy, it was just a clone!"
Spike stood up. "And you know how much trouble they are. I would've exploded that second-rate mare manure twice, just to be sure!"
Fluttershy sunk down a bit. "Well...I suppose, but...wasn't the clone, um, becoming a person?"
Trixie nodded. "Indeed, Second Trixie aged like fine wine, and developed some rather...annoying differences of opinion, becoming her own weird yogurt-loving lactose-intolerant gassy mare. We started using the third person to help avoid first and third person slipups while on stage. It was much the same for Third Trixie, who lasted a month before a guillotine trick she insisted was safe went wrong, and Fourth Trixie, who lasted twice as long before losing her own head in a fight with the real Great and Powerful Trixie over getting actually paid, which she foolishly started right next to where Trixie keeps her fire axe."
Fluttershy simply blinked, staring at Trixie.
Spike spoke up. "Whoa, little dark there...maybe Fluttershy's right." He then gulped down the rest of his cider.
Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Still just clones, and Trixie sounds featherin' AWESOME. I'd pay to watch that fight! Maybe we can go to the Mirror Pool and do a reenactment..."
Starlight levitated a mug from Rainbow's area and chugged half of it quickly. "Anypony doing anything with that pool without me or Twilight to contain it is only gonna have a fight with me, to stop my hoof hitting their cutie mark so hard I take it off without magic." She cast a glare that made Rainbow quickly nod, then belched and turned back to Trixie. "Anyways, so...that was the end of it? They rose up?"
Trixie hmphed. "Nah, I had...started to suspect that might happen, so I had Fourth Trixie go into the pool herself shortly before the fight. Second Fourth Trixie and Third Fourth Trixie unfortunately had difficulty with both the third person, and more complex sentences, so I was forced to use any second-generation clones merely as body doubles in stunts without much speaking, and use Fifth Trixie, then Sixth Trixie, all the way up to Eleventh and Twelfth Trixie together, for stage performances."
Spike crossed his arms. "Oh, only twelve, huh?"
Trixie sighed. "Sadly, yes... It all came crashing down when Eleventh Trixie tried to use an Ursa Minor to become the only Trixie. Thankfully, Third Seventh Trixie had developed nearly-great levels of intelligence, and was able to pass as the real Trixie, but not quite enough to realize the real plan and that she could bargain for her life until she was in the Ursa's mouth. She was a hero, who joined a proud tradition of Trixies becoming magically-disappearing scat piles. That's when I suddenly realized that the ever-more-well-planned attempts by clones to usurp the title of Great and Powerful Trixie weren't worth it, and promptly took my axe and disposed of all the remaining clones. By then, referring to myself in the third person was quite the habit, and part of my stage persona."
Spike raised a finger.
Trixie gave him an annoyed-looking glance. "Yeees?"
Spike put on a nervous look. "Um, you do know there's a spell to just blow the clones up into magic, right?"
Trixie sighed. "Yes, I do now. I did try a spell meant to pop them like a balloon a few times, but it never went quite right. A large spherical Trixie zipping around Fillydelphia with air sputtering out every hole unpredictably is...not exactly a way to avoid attention. Besides, the pool always sucks up the physical remains of any 'extras' into magic anyways as soon as they're dead, Twilight's spell isn't really one that 'turns them into magic', it just tells the pool to press the killswitch it has on any 'extras'."
Starlight took a sip from her mug. "Okay, you've satisfied us with the truth of why you got used to using the third person, but...I'm just curious: With all those Trixies running around, how were any supposed to know who was who?"
Trixie grinned. "Trixie number piercings on the tail dock, the one place the crowd would never notice them. The pool might copy things like tattoos and birthmarks, but not objects, even if they're stuck in you. Before you ask, yes, figuring out the rules was a messy process. You know...Fluttershy's probably the only one here who's looked closely enough to realize my piercing is a '1' and not just a line. Wink." Trixie finished with a wink to Starlight.
Fluttershy cringed a bit and nodded.
Starlight then slammed down her bottle suddenly and let out a small burp. "Okay, yeah, I actually wasn't going to ask, but now I've got even more mental images in my head. So, before we dig any deeper into Grossly-Misguided and Principleless Trixie's Clone Rampages. Spike, your turn!"
Spike stood up. "Hey, Rainbow, truth or dare?"
"Truth, I ain't afraid of nothin'", Rainbow replied, sticking her chest out.
Spike tapped his finger against his cheek a moment. "How about...tell us the full details of your wildest Wonderbolt fantasy or dream!"
Rainbow caught a lump in her throat and slunk down. "Um...well there's uh...one with uh, Spitfire and Soarin' and uh, Scootaloo's there but like, it's not uh...it's not like it's se-I PLEAD THE FIFTH!"
Spike looked to Starlight with a smug grin as Rainbow bit into her longest wingfeather.
Starlight sighed. "Okay, lot to work off of here and it could go very badly, so um...I'm gonna say that a magical accident in a stunt put on for Scootaloo's birthday party leads to her being in Rainbow's womb and the Wonderbolts give her maternity leave. I think that qualifies for very embarrassing, without being 'incriminating', per Twilight's rules."
Spike snickered. "Agreed, I like it."
Rainbow blushed hard as she hid in her wings. "Okay, uh...that's really disturbing, but sure, let's go with that." She sighed. "Okay Spike, lay on the dare."
Spike looked to Trixie, then Fluttershy, then Rainbow. "I dare you to repeat the last part of what Fluttershy did, but...like how she'd kiss Discord on her honeymoon!"
Rainbow's eyes went wide as she stuck her head up, and her wings flared out. "B-b-but I...Starlight, tell him that's not okay! It's gross!"
Fluttershy put her nose up against Rainbow's. "Excuse me? Oh, when it's me doing it, of course you're there to say I should be used to gross stuff, but when it's you, suddenly it's the end of the world, big baby Rainbow Dash has to cry because she has to smooch a hiney!"
Rainbow whimpered. "Um...okay, okay...I'll do it. Dangit, we really should've taken up Pinkie's suggestion to play Truth or Slap. This is exactly what she said ponies would dare each other to do."
Spike chuckled along with Trixie.
Starlight rolled her eyes. "Yeah yeah, enough whining, get to it already!"
Rainbow gulped and trotted over, then puckered her lips, and close her eyes, with a look of sheer regret.
Trixie hmphed, threw off her cape, put her tail aside, and then pushed her against Rainbow's snout, eliciting an "MMF!".
Starlight's slight grin faded as she eyed Trixie's dock. There was indeed a number 1, on the right side of it...and to the left, small scars where another 1 could've attached... "Dash, sorry to kick ya while you're down, but I'm taking more of your cider."
Author's Note
This is what happens when someone insists a character quirk is bad because it's unexplainable...
