Twilight Sparkle was flung from the void and into the world proper again. Behind her the air crackled with energy from where she had emerged. It looked like someone had hit the air a little too hard and it cracked, sending lines out in various directions from her point of escape. Those cracks sealed up just as quickly as they appeared, leaving nary a trace that a pony had been violently ejected from the space between spaces.

Of course, she had been aiming to be deposited on the street below. Her work with this particular brand of magic was not as exact as she would’ve liked and as of right now she was hundreds of feet above Manehattan and falling.

It took her a moment to corral her senses and get her wings righted so she could stop her descent. In no time her altitude was stable and she was looking over this Equestria that was definitely similar to her own, but also distinctly different.

The most immediate difference she could spot from her vantage point was that the statue that sat in the harbor, that of the mare of liberty, was half destroyed and in the process of being rebuilt. There were also swaths of the city that were in ruin or severely damaged. A battle had recently taken place here and the city was recovering.

Despite it not being her Equestria, it still hurt to see one of the jewels of the country in this state nonetheless. She wished she could actually help, but that wasn’t the reason she was here. A quick locating spell pointed her in the direction of her quarry: straight down and about a block north.

Twilight swooped down towards the ground and headed towards her target’s location. As she got closer, more recent chaos became more and more apparent. Ponies were screaming, crying and in panic. They were all also running from the point that she was headed towards.

“Not a good sign…” She admitted to herself.

But at least if the worst had already come to pass, it meant that they would all be far too busy to look up and see another Twilight Sparkle flying above them. She would take that for now. The last thing that this world needed was more confusion and chaos, especially now…

Twilight rounded a corner and saw the source of all of the chaos for the first time. It was a high end restaurant, one she had been to with some of her friends at least once before. She couldn’t remember the name and now it was nearly unrecognizable in its current state.

The small outdoor patio that held about a dozen tables was a complete mess. The tables were in pieces and there were obvious signs of a magical battle.Scorchmarks littered the stonework of the surrounding buildings and there was a crater in the middle of the street…in the middle of which laid the prone and colorless body of…her.

It may sound a little obvious, but it was very strange to see her own dead body. This was the first time she had caught this directly after the incident, when she could at least still see the corpse. She had seen her own grave before and that was surreal, but this was something else. She expected to feel an intense sadness or even the urge to be sick, but instead she just felt…curious.

She expected all of the Twilights to be more or less uniform, but that apparently was not the case at all. This Twilight had a very short mane with no bangs at all and the back went maybe a quarter of the way down her neck. Her tail was cut in a similar fashion, maybe about a foot long at best. Then there was the scar that trailed down her face from above right eye, straight down it, and then expanded into a starburst on her cheek.

This version of Twilight Sparkle had been through the ringer and had met a fate that befitted such a life. It looked like, at least, that she had nearly given as good as she had got. There was dignity in that, at least Twilight thought so…

“Sweet Celestia…Twilight…?” A voice that was as familiar as her very own came from behind Twilight. It was a soothing presence until she remembered that this was not her Equestria and this was not her friend.

Twilight turned and was face to face with Rarity, this world’s Rarity, and she was just as beautiful as any other. She was virtually unchanged from the Rarity of Twilight’s own world save for a recently cracked pair of blue rimmed spectacles on her face. Tears were falling from her sapphire blue eyes as she stared in shock at this very much alive facsimile of her dead friend.

“No. That’s not…” Rarity fumbled for her words as her gaze went between the two Twilights, not believing what she was seeing with her own eyes. “Who…”

“Rarity.” Twilight’s mouth was dry and she could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. Her throat tightened around the words that she was struggling to force out. “I…I’m so sorry.”

The situation and its consequences were beginning to hit her like a fully loaded train. This was no longer a hypothetical on a chalkboard. It wasn’t a theory. This was real. This Twilight was a real pony with real problems and real friends.

And now she was dead.

But this was neither the time nor the place to have a sudden breakdown over the truth of it all. That would need to be postponed until later when Twilight was safe back in her own existence. For now, she needed answers so that even more people wouldn’t lose their Twilights.

“I know this is…a lot. I’m sorry I have to be here now…I wanted to try to prevent this but…” She was too late. It wasn’t the first time, but hopefully it would be the last. “I’m not your Twilight…” She looked back to the colorless form at her hooves. “Obviously. But I mean I’m not from the future or the past, I’m from another Equestria. Another world.” Celestia only knew if Rarity was capable of absorbing all of this right now, but she was hoping that at least some of it would get through. “I need to know what happened. Please. From the beginning.”

“W-we were out on a date…our first anniversary.” Twilight suppressed her urge to comment on that fact. Now was neither the place for the time, but she would ask more about that later if she could find the time. “It was…she wanted to take me here, where we had our very first date and they had finally rebuilt it after her battle with Tirek…” That would explain the widespread destruction at least. “I-”

“It’s okay.” It wasn’t okay, but it was the only assurance that Twilight had ready. “Then a pony showed up, right?” She had never talked with somepony who had actually seen the assailant in action. She had read descriptions from papers, but this was the first actual contact she had with a pony from another world.

“Y-yeah…it was…” Rarity took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Twilight had seen that look a hundred times over plus some. It was a sign of her immense focus and an attempt to recall details. “They were wearing long robes, used to be white but were covered in dust and grime. Silk, judging from the way it moved and the weight. They wore a…helmet. Made of crystal. It wasn’t any kind of crystal or gem I had ever seen before.”

“And their magic?”

“Black. Black as night.” Rarity had to choke back a sob as she spoke. “...like a black hole. It was like…nothing could escape it.” Rarity’s lip trembled for a moment and she had to choke back another sob to continue. “Twilight…Twilight had never seen anything like it. She said it…it sapped the strength from her.”

“How did she put up a fight?”

“She was…amazing.” Rarity’s eyes opened again and they fell to the spent form of her Twilight. “Gifted with teleportation. An absolute talent. That’s how she beat Tirek, you know? He baited her here for their final battle and they…did a lot of damage, but she teleported him back to Tartarus.”

“What.” It was all Twilight could offer the alternate version of her. If the battle with Tirek followed the same general script as her own, then he most likely had Discord’s power. In order to teleport someone with that amount of magic within them…holding the fields together on multiple ponies was already something that took extreme concentration. To teleport Tirek at the height of his power? It was a feat of mythological strength.

“She tried it with this pony and it just…didn’t work.” Rarity kept talking as if Twilight wasn’t completely flabbergasted by the other Twilight’s feats. “She couldn’t teleport them, no matter how hard she tried. But she didn’t want to leave the city so she just…”

“She kept trying.” Twilight finished Rarity’s sentence for her. “She ran herself ragged, dodging the stranger and trying to figure out a way past their defenses. Eventually she was caught.” It was easy to piece it all together now that Rarity had laid the groundwork. Twilight could even feel herself trying to put together all of the things the other Twilight had tried on the stranger. Mixing magical frequencies, entangling different strands, looping into the stranger’s magic when they cast something. To feel each one of them fail would be both frustrating and demoralizing.

“Rarity. I’m sorry.” Twilight mumbled when she was done wargaming in her own head. “I wish I could’ve gotten here sooner, but I wasn’t.” There were no more words she could give, no encouraging speeches or platitudes. This Rarity’s loved one had been stolen from her. Rarity had seen this Twilight fight to her very last breath. She had seen her partner get worn down to a nub in the heat of magical combat and succumb to an overwhelming and unstoppable force. There was no way to sugarcoat that. “They won’t be back. All they wanted was her. All they want is us.”

“She’s not the first…?” That was a logical question to ask and Twilight could’t fault her for asking.

“No.” Twilight shook her head with a sigh. “I don’t know how many they’ve already taken, but I’ve been to six different Equestria’s now and they’ve all had their Twilight…” She motioned to her lifeless doppelganger. “That’s happened to all of them.”

“We have to stop them.” Was the determined and adamant response that came from Rarity. In an instant all of the sadness and grief seemed to evaporate from the simmering determination that now radiated from this world’s fashionista.

“We?!” Twilight couldn’t help but sound a little indignant about this. She had poured hundreds of hours into researching the magic that would even allow her to detect other worlds. This was not one of their monster fights that could be solved with grit and the magic of friendship. This was a multi-reality threat with completely unknown motives. “Rarity, no. This is-”

“You listen here, Twilight Sparkle.” Rarity was practically on top of Twilight in the blink of an eye. The unicorn, who was much smaller than Twilight’s alicorn form, leveled a stare that made the princess feel like a filly again. “I just lost the pony I love the most in the world and right now the only thing I want to do is to get back at the pony who did this. If there’s a chance I can stop another Rarity from losing her Twilight as well, then that’s even better.”

“What makes you think other Twilights are dating other Raritys?” Twilight was a little hung up on that little bit Rarity’s impassioned speech. Sure, maybe Twilight had glanced at her Rarity more than a few times and had even had roses delivered anonymously with a card on Hearts and Hooves Day but…

“Darling, we were made for each other.” Rarity answered with a soft smile. “This universe, the next, or any in between. I know it.”

“Well…alright.” Twilight knew she couldn’t argue with that. “I, uh, what’s going to happen here though? This world has already lost their Twilight. Can they afford to lose their Rarity too? And what about your sister? Your parents? Your friends?”

“Sister?” Rarity raised an eyebrow. Then she shook the thought away. “Twilight, this is important and you cannot do this alone. Plus, I won’t be gone forever. I’ll be back once we catch this fiend and avenge my Twilight.”

“Rarity. This is going to be dangerous.” Twilight needed to stress this. She knew the moment that she left her own world that there was a strong possibility that she would not be back. She knew that every time she ventured into another Equestria, that she might encounter something hostile to her or as with today, she might encounter the stranger. That would be the end for her then. Well, at least she assumed it would be. No other Twilight could stop them yet, so she assumed that she would be no different. “If you don’t come back…”

“I will.” Rarity stated confidently.

The confidence died for a moment as Rarity approached the corpse of her lover. Twilight could see the brave facade crumble and her legs begin to shake as she knelt next to the other alicorn. A kiss was placed on the forehead of the fallen Element of Magic and Rarity embraced the cold and lifeless body with a tight squeeze. Something was spoken, just low enough that it could only be heard by Rarity and nopony else.

“I suppose this is it.” Rarity spoke up again as she stood. Tears stained the other Twilight’s fur where the mare had momentarily buried her face. She didn’t turn around to face the visitor to her world until she had dried the remaining tears. “I’m ready.”

Twilight wasn’t sure how that was possible, because not even she was ready for what laid ahead of them.

Author's Note

What if...RARITWI!!!

Also I've never even thought of something this dark before! I don't know what I'm doing with this story! AAAAA!