Twilight Derealized

Neither trusting the other to be alone with the books, they’d instead sent Spike out to fetch their friends like so many dog treats. It was good to keep him on his toes, anyway. They passed the time amiably noting how very much like a changeling the other was.

Just as the unicorn was about to opine on the very changeling-esque way the alicorn dropped her diphthongs, they were interrupted by the arrival of their friends. Well, the friends of one of them.

Simultaneously, the Twilights launched into their explanations, filling the air with a disordered cacophony.

“--Woke up in the woods--”

“--Because Spike forgot to set the alarm--”

“--Briefed on--”

“--My shopping list--”

“--Then I managed to open the door and enter the library--”

“--And as I came in, this one--”

“--Broke my statue--”

Their choreographed duet complete, the two ponies collapsed in equally exhausted heads, letting silence return to the library.

“Wait, when’s the part where one of you explains why you’re Twilight... Or why any of this is happening?” Rainbow Dash asked with the air of one convinced they understood the world.

“I just told you, it’s a plot by Queen Chrysalis! She’s trying to convince you all I’m not the real Twilight by replacing me with a fake Twilight, then telling me I’m the real not-real Twilight and sending me here to prove that I am the not-real real Twilight intending for the real not-real Twilight to defeat me and prove she’s the real real Twilight to you. She even sent an agent to help me replace my the real not-real Twilight who replaced me, knowing that you ... wouldn’t believe ... a damn word ... I just said ...” The possibly real not-real Twilight’s rattled speech slowed to a halt at the incredulous looks she was receiving.

“That's a load of changeling bull and an obvious changeling trick,” Applejack dismissed with a hoof.

“You think any part of this is obvious?” Spike grumbled from the wall where he had been attempting to etch a graph. The paper was covered in arrows, circles and a crudely sexual drawing.

Rarity spoke up, “Erm, it does seem rather far-fetched. Unless Chrysalis is chasing the dragon again ...”

“I would like to chase a dragon,” interrupted Fluttershy. “If he was a cute, little one like Spike.”

“That is not a path you want to go down.”

“Hey, keep focus! The sooner you girls prove the evident, the sooner I can go back to reading Malone Dies,” said alicorn Twilight.

That piqued the unicorn’s interest. “Ooh, are you at the part yet where something happens?” she inquired.

“Hmm ... uh ... ” She scrunched her face, mentally sorting through pages of rambling, “I don’t think so?”

“Now you’re the ones getting sidetracked,” Rarity harumphed, brushing a hoof under the edge of a powdered, white curl, “the situation is very strange, but it can’t hurt to confirm for certain which Twilight is the genuine.”

“I have an idea,” Pinkie Pie who had been doing an admirable job of not stealing the center of attention leapt onto Rarity’s back.

The fashionista shifted in agitation, snapping instinctively as her mane slipped down an inch on her face.

From her new vantage point, the earth mare stuck one hoof out and stated, “eeny, meeny, miny, moe, that one! No, that one! Actually I think I had it right. No... Wait, which one of you got your mane cut most recently?”

“Not helping.”

“Well, did the two of you make any headway at all?”

“Not so much,” admitted a Twilight.

“We already tried postmodern literary analysis,” supplied the other.

For the third time in her life, Rainbow Dash made a helpful contribution. “Well duh, there’s your problem! Twilight’s known for being an egghead so of course the changeling would be prepared for a bunch of egghead stuff. Nah, what you need is something not so obvious--and much less lame. Something awesome like a race!” She finished by pumping her hoof in the air, urging some invisible crowd into cheers.

“And just where would we do that?” replied Rarity, ever ready to poke holes in things. “We certainly can’t do it here, and public street races are no longer allowed after that stunt you and Spike pulled.”

“Why don’t y’all hold it over at Sweet Apple Acres? The real Twilight Sparkle’s welcome there any time... The changeling phony’s welcome to meet Kicks McGee.” Applejack kicked her back left leg as she spoke, leading to a full body spasm.

Spike had accepted that his pornographic doodle would never resemble the original subject, and decided he would defend its horribleness as a deliberate offense. Now he turned to one of what was possibly his mistress, “Are you sure this is the best idea? I mean, it did come from Rainbow Dash...”

Twilight allowed the dragon a pat on the head. “Thanks for the concern, Spike, but I’ll be fine. I read books.”

“Uh, actually,” he gave an awkward chuckle, “I was talking to the other Twilight. Y’know, the one with wings.”

So, no other pony questioning the validity of a race to reveal their dear friend, it was decided to hold the competition at Sweet Apple Acres straight after dinner. Nothing like a full stomach to boost running performance.

The two Twilight Sparkles stood side by side like bugs under their friends’ microscopes. The rest of the Apple family had arrived as well in order to insure that their property was kept safe.

Put it out of your mind. The unicorn pawed the starting line as she gazed across a formidable racecourse filled with hurdles, pits, and other obstacles Rainbow Dash had insisted on. At one point, she even thought she’d heard mention of piranhas but that couldn’t be right. Could it? Take a deep breath. Twilight felt the Mexicolt takeout she’d had settling in her gut like a stone, a stone of confidence. And friendship.

Maybe a little pre-match smack talk would ease her nerves. “Are you ready, changeling fraud?” she inquired, eyeing her opponent.

“If I was the charlatan you’re referring to, I’d reply ‘Readier than you’ll ever be.’”

“But since you think you’re me, you’re not ready. I understand.”

The other Twilight’s face blanched. For a moment, they observed their mirror images, terrified and humiliated. “That isn’t what I--”

Spike let out a fiery belch, signifying for both Twilights to jump in confusion and then sheepishly begin trotting forward. Gradually, they sped up, breaking into a run and plowing directly into the first hurdles.

Twilight kicked furiously with her rear hooves, listening to the hurdle creak under her. To her left, the alicorn flapped her wings. Damn it. She should have insisted those be bound. While the posts creaked under her weight, the mare tried to remember a previous lesson about not going too far within the bounds of friendly competition, but this was less friendly competition and more a battle to death, so maybe good sportsmanship didn’t apply?

While she was meditating and kicking like a foal drowning during her first trip to the pool, the other Twilight had managed to battle past her first hurdle. Flapping her wings in a frenzy, she’d pressed her body over the barrier.

With a sudden creaking crash, Twilight’s face met the ground. Success! Success tasted like dirt. Cursing and stumbling, she regained their feet and continued on toward the second set of hurdles. If she couldn’t jump over them, maybe she could slide under them? The impostor had apparently had the same idea, and soon they were struggling against each other, side-by-side.

About half an hour slightly less than a kilometer later, Twilight hauled herself across the finish line, dragging her rear hooves and the last hurdle behind her. For the past several minutes, she’d seen mostly dirt, which is more than her friends had witnessed as they had averted their eyes.

Still, she made it. First! She turned back to where the impostor was struggling against a hurdle. Her wings stuck through the posts, jutting out in strange directions. Every attempt to right herself only resulted in further distress.

Twilight coughed out a mouthful of ground paste. The foul mixture of dirt and phlegm struck the ground alerting her friends that they could safely remove their faces from their hooves. It had been a humiliating and painful ideal, but she’d finally made it. Everything was coming up Twilight. Her smile could have humiliated Celestia’s finest morning as she turned to the smiles of her friends.

“I knew it was you!” Rainbow Dash proclaimed as she ripped the hurdle away from the impostor’s wings. The others gathered around the changeling, the other one, the winged one.

“But, I won,” Twilight protested. How could this be happening? She’d won, hadn’t she? She’d done everything right. Her eyes, already stinging with sweat began to brim with tears. She’d even jumped the piranha pit when her foe had only had to glide. Her ears dropped like the flags of a country fallen to invasion.

“Yeah, and the real Twilight would never come in first in a race,” Dash snorted, rolling her eyes dismissively.

Everyone cooed happily as they swarmed the sweating flesh of the impostor. Everyone, except the one being praised for her supreme failure.

“What the hell, guys? Is this really what you think of me?” The unwitting victor stood up, shaking herself free.

“Come on, don’t be like-”

“No, I refuse to be your Twilight, or anyone’s Twilight, if all that means is I’m some slacker who can’t even win a hoof race,” she turned toward the tear, dirt and sweat streaked face of her opponent. “This isn’t over, yet.” The alicorn stormed away, her hooves striking the ground in what unicorn Twilight had to admit was certainly a very weak stomping. After a few moments, perhaps remembering that she had wings, she flew into the sky.

“Well, that’s done it,” Rainbow Dash grumbled and took off after the fleeing alicorn. Mutely, Fluttershy glanced around and decided to follow her lead, leaving the groundlings behind to sort out among themselves.

“There ain’t much more ta do today,” Applejack turned to walk back to her own home, leaving the wreckage of pone and equipment for another day.

They were going to leave her here. Twilight stared in panic, for once her disorder turning toward something else. They were going to leave her here, like a crudely constructed impression of a hurdle.

“Wait!” Her voice, still the voice of Twilight, cut the night. The others turned back to look at her, perhaps perplexed for the moment, or maybe they were just faking interest in her so as not to appear too uncaring for the modern age.

“Where do I go?” The unicorn was lost. Her library? Gone. Her bed with the stars and planets on the comforter? Soon to be wrapped around another. Her Number One Assistant? He’d be failing to set another pony’s alarm tonight.

“That’s a point,” Applejack conceded something to the thing she loathed, “We cain’t have ye wandering around town and murderin our Twilight in her sleep.”

“Please, that’s a stupid idea,” Rarity fluffed her mane, suddenly returned to its naturally stylish curls, “and I think someone, like myself, would notice if Twilight were suddenly without wings.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Pinkie interjected with a smile. Everyone paused a moment to stare.

“She can stay the night with us,” offered Granny Smith, rearing up from the dark abyss in which the aged dwell.

“Ya can’t let that thing into our house!” Applejack, performed the grand ritual of the bourgeois demanding that the things which must be held be held far away. The farm pony was a social climber in her own way.

“It’s my name on the deed, and Ah reckon I’m the one who’s spent the past 80 years paying the tax man, so I kin do whatever I want with mah hospitalitae.”

Applejack opened her mouth for further protest, but kept silent at the look she received from Big Macintosh. If he were to write a fortune cookie it would probably read, ‘Those who do not respect their elders are said to have dim futures.’

“Well then, it sounds like that matter is settled,” interjected Rarity, now happily sporting a bob cut, “I was starting to fear I’d have to clear some space in the shed.”

And so Twilight found herself escorted through the familiar halls of the Apple home by a grumpy Applejack and bothersome Applebloom. Ponies she’d known for years treating her as an intruder.

“What’s it like being a changeling? Do yer wings really work with all them holes?” the filly asked as they entered a hallway.

“I already told you, I’m not the changeling. That other pony parading about as me in my own home is.”

“Okay,” Applebloom’s bow bobbed as she took careful note of this fact and discarded it, “but how about those weird bug eyes? Do they got like night vision or something?”

“I don’t have bug eyes but actually, yes, they do have night vision. You’d be able to read all about it if you ever visited the library.”

“Don’t listen to that changeling propaganda,” instructed Applejack. “It’s all part of her changeling conspiracy to sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids.”

“Come on,” Twilight groaned, “that one doesn’t even make sense. If I was a changeling I’d need your love, not bodily fluids.”

“Ya could take both,” replied Applejack, demonstrating to her little sister a superior technique for disregarding the evidence.

The farm pony lead a train of one unicorn, one earth pony filly and an invisible audience through the house. Grabbing some small things as she passed and apparently, desperately ignoring the conversation between her sister and the interloper.

“Ya ain’t the real Twilight, so ya don’t get a real room. You can sleep in the attic,” Applejack allowed, opening the closet to their left. “Here’s a blanket and a coat. Make ‘em useful.”

“Applejack, dearie,” Granny Smith called from downstairs, “I do hope you're being kind to our guest!”

“She’s giving her the coat treatment!” shouted Applebloom.

“Oh, you hush your mouth,” Applejack scolded, holding said object expectantly at the unicorn.

Twilight stared at the shabby gray coat and blanket. She considered protesting this, but Applejack seemed much more aggressive than usual. Kind of a dickhead. So she drew on the lessons long hammered into her skull and refrained from pressing the issue, merely accepting the items with a polite thanks. It all would blow over eventually and they’d have a good laugh about it, once she proved herself the genuine pony.