Twilight Derealized

If this Fluttershy was anything like normal, she'd be taking her daily shower right about now, scrubbing off the refuse that she lived in as a talking pony surrounded by less-talking animals. From previous occasions, Twilight knew exactly which window she could use for the best unobstructed view when Fluttershy stepped out of the shower. She may have had to admit she was no expert on spying, but peeping did come naturally to the self-isolating unicorn.

Latching onto the frame, she gazed through the second story window with no small amount of nostalgia. Twilight could still remember the first day she had seen her friend’s noble organ, her sheath opening up and spilling out proud, pink flesh like a great banner unfurling. As Twilight had explained to numerous court-appointed psychiatrists, her obsession wasn’t sexual. Fluttershy was notoriously phobic of contact, anyway, instead the lavender mare’s appreciation was purely aesthetic. Indeed, Twilight had often considered herself the Georgia O’Keefe of the penis, and Fluttershy’s magnificent organ was a work of art, a thing of beauty, a piece to be honored and adored.

Or it should have been. Twilight nearly vomited with rage as she saw the mare turn, presenting her filthy, just-washed vagina. Nausea made her vision swim and the unicorn felt a pounding growing behind her horn..

Without even pausing to consider her actions or the existence of doors, Twilight threw herself through the window. In a hail of broken glass, the enraged equine struck the tile floor. Fluttershy squeaked pathetically as she grabbed a towel to conceal her shame.

The unicorn was having none of that. Righting herself, Twilight advanced on the pegasus and pointed a hoof in righteous fury. In the tone normally reserved for angry gods, she commanded, “Explain yourself!”

Fluttershy couldn’t help but feel she should be the one asking that question, but she was never one to argue with her friends. ”Um, explain?”

“Why don’t you have a penis?!”

Outside the window, a bird, startled by the commotion leapt into the air and flew away. A passing squirrel stopped to watch, its acorn held between its paws. Even the trees took notice of the noise and subsequent silence as the two mares stared each other down.

Inside the bathroom, a droplet of water hung for a moment, undecided if this was its moment to descend into the puddle at the bottom of the shower or not. Several towels, colored yellow and decorated with pink flowers swayed in anticipation.

Finally, Fluttershy remembered how to speak. “That is not a question that anyone should ask anyone.” It was a moment she would remember to tell her psychiatrist later, about how she had asserted herself.

Twilight released her anger and confusion in a cathartic blow to Fluttershy’s vagina. While the pegasus crumpled in surprise, the unicorn leapt back through the window and retreated into the phallic symbolism of the forest.

Silently insalubrious, Twilight rested her haunch into the loam of the forest. Back into the woods again, like some kind of fucking metaphor forgotten. What else did she have? This couldn’t be her Ponyville, this couldn’t be anything, and the knowledge drove through her brain like a splinter.

Fluttershy’s failure to have a penis was the last straw for Twilight. She couldn’t go on like normal without that, couldn’t pretend everything--or anything--was okay any longer. She rested and ruminated on her next move, watching the movements of the birds and squirrels scurrying through the trees. The sun slid beneath the horizon while she waited, fuming in her displacement.

Twilight was coming. Her time, the hour granted to her by name as the sun disappeared. Stuck on earth, there’s no cure for that. But she was Twilight Sparkle and she read books, that was all there was to it, and it was time to put an end to these ridiculous games. One hoof in front of the other she slipped back into the town, watching the lights die out as the ponies that were possibly her friends went to sleep.

She focused her magic again, fully expecting the teleportation to fail as it had failed her so far, but the spell finally clicked. She opened her eyes in the library. Her library, and there was the impostor slumped over a desk. Her desk. And spreading over the papers (her papers) was a pool of drool. The drool was not hers, it belonged to the impostor.

The alicorn Twilight barely made a sound as the statuette crashed into the side of her head.

“The penis really did bring the work together,” Twilight muttered.

By the time alicorn Twilight had stopped slurring her speech and recovered, she was bound in a makeshift hobble. Her wings were also held to her sides, and the unicorn was standing before her, wearing a triumphant grin.

“I bet you thought I’d just give up, right?” Twilight asked.

The alicorn didn’t respond, only illuminated her horn as she began to cast a spell. Her head snapped to the side under the impact of an eldritch force.

“No,” Twilight said, striking her duplicate across the face a second time. “No magic. No more games. Tell me what you did to Fluttershy.”

“I never did anything to her. You assaulted her in the-” Twilight’s voice was cut off as she was slammed again, this time directly into the snout. She snorted as blood trickled down the back of her throat.

“Where is Fluttershy’s penis? Where are my friends?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Twilight growled, gripping her hostage’s head between her hooves for a moment before smacking her across the face.

“I do know that you hit like a filly.”

For a change of pace, Twilight struck her rival in the stomach.

“Why don’t you just untie me and leave because this-” The blow rocked the alicorn’s entire body, spinning her head to the left. Her remained turned at a painful angle for a moment before she spat out a mouthful of blood and continued, “is just embarrassing. I know you didn’t have a brother like Shining-”

“Keep your claws off my brother.” Twilight abandoned her magic and spun, bucking her double in the face and generating a satisfying crunch.

The alicorn spat a fleck of white out with a mouthful of blood this time. “You chipped one of my teeth,” she complained, “real ponies only get two sets of those, you know. We can’t just grow them back.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of the door opening.

“What have I told you about holding frackuses without telling ...” Pinkie Pie slowed as she took in the scene before her. “Oh, shit,” she finished.

The unicorn and the alicorn stared guiltily, waiting for the penalty of being caught to fall upon them. Instead, the pink pony made a beeline for the bathroom, completely abandoning her bubbly excitement. She shifted through the medicine cabinet for a moment before pulling out a brown bottle and removing the cap. She held a hoof over her nose and poured the vile liquid down her throat.

“What are you doing?” Twilight asked, as if creating some new accusation could bury the older one.

Pinkie Pie pulled the bottle away from her mouth, hacking viciously. “I didn’t think to read the label first, and now my vision’s going blurry ... but ... I think it is Old Spice? Must be Spike’s.”

“That’s crazy,” said the unicorn who had just invaded the home of another pony in the middle of the night, tied her up and beaten her while demanding an explanation for the conspiracy against her and the absence of one of her female friend’s penis.

“I know, he’s a reptile. Why would he need aftershave?” The bottle tilted back again, bearing with it the beauty of isopropyl alcohol and total oblivion.

“This isn’t the time to get drunk.”

“What this isn’t the time for is being sober,” corrected Pinkie kicking the garbage can out of the bathroom, “you might want some, too.”

Twilight turned down the offered bottle, because winners don’t do antiseptic agents recreationally.

“Your problem, but I’d rather not be sober for this next part.”

“What next part?” demanded the hostage, realizing that salvation might not be on the way.

Pinkie approached the alicorn with a lurching, uncertain step, her legs dancing in rebellion. “We’re gonna have to kill you, sorry.”

Both Twilights started in horror as the pink mare moved the can in position to the right of the bound hostage, “what do you mean kill-”

“Like this,” the thing pretending to be a pink mare took a final slug off the bottle and shattered it. With a practiced motion she jabbed the jagged edges into the alicorn’s neck and twisted the bottle around. Gout’s of blood pulsed out, first filling the neck of the bottle and then splashing into the can in spurts.

“But you said ... I just had ... escape ...” Twilight was in shock. She read books, but they didn’t mention this sort of thing.

Pinkie was just admiring her handiwork, the can was perfectly positioned and sized to collect the spilling blood, as if she had foreseen the patterns spilling out through a sixth sense. “Escape? Do you have any idea how much research and time it takes to replicate one pony? You think we have the resources to replicate an entire town and the surrounding geography? All anyling knows is that two weeks ago this one with the wings was walking around, and then we found you stumbling through the woods babbling like you’d just had a concussion. We figured it was one of Celestia’s awful plots-”

“How dare you speak of the Princess’s plot-”

“Please, this is enough already,” interrupted the thing pretending to be a pink mare. “We weren’t sure what to make of it, so we figured we might as well have a go at screwing it up. This is the real Ponyville, with a couple replacements.”

“But what about-”

“I don’t know. Noling knows. Nopony either, I’ll bet. It’s all just ...” she waved her pink hoof through the air, “but gone and, alas, to a continent and place unknown thanks to your Michael Morabsen impression.”

“Michael Morabsen? That’s what you’re going with?”

“I’m under a lot stress here, ok?” Pinkie yanked the bottle out as the flow slowed and dropped the shattered glass into the bin. “Now, we’re going to need a rug, and some papier-mâché.”

The thought of losing a rug on top of all the other events of the past two days was finally too much for Twilight to bear. “Pinkie, what are we going to do? About ... I really liked that rug. I think I need to lie down.”

“You and us both,” Pinkie agreed, “Also, did you notice how the floor is crawling? I don’t think it is supposed to do that. Someone must have spiked the aftershave.”

An hour later, Twilight and Pinkie were dragging the corpse between them. A pair of papier-mâché wings clung to Twilight’s back, giving her the distinct profile of a unicorn who has attached a pair of paper-mache wings to her back in order to look like an alicorn.

“No one is going to believe this.”

“Of course they will,” Pinkie Pie replied, stumbling in the thick layer of weeds and mud over the ground. Whenever you’re trying to dispose of a body, there is always a marsh.

The sudden upset shifted the bundled carpet. Twilight was confronted with her own face, some blood had remained hidden from Pinkie’s draining, and it now leaked from dead sinuses and drained past her eyes.

Staring eyes. Why had they left her eyes open? The unicorn wanted to reach for her ... its ... face. To close those eyes. To close her eyes.

Desperately, Twilight broke eye contact with the ... it ... and asked the question she’d been holding in. “Why hasn’t she changed back?”

“Change what?” Pinkie was definitely starting to show signs of having drank a bottle of aftershave, her words clearly slurring now.

“She didn’t change back,” Twilight spoke in a monotone, staring into the other Twilight’s violet eyes, “back into a changeling.”

“Cuz she’s not a changeling, I dunthink.”

“Then what is she?” Twilight’s spittle spattered upon the lavender face in front of her.

“She’s a ... we’re here.”

Twilight looked over the edge of a fence, seeing an array of rabbit hutches. The pair’s arrival had drawn activity from the lagomorphs; who slowly loped forward, their white fur reflecting pale in the night.

“Pinkie, these are the rabbits,” the scholar had read a lot of veterinarian manuals recreationally, and they were very specific on the dietary habits of rabbits. “Once they get a taste for blood, there’ll be no stopping them, and regardless of her missing penis, I don’t think Fluttershy would appreciate us turning her rabbits into crazed pony-eating beasts!”

Pinkie was non-plussed. “How do you think she affordsh all that animal food?”

“I don’t care, tax rebates or something!”

“No, shilly! She’s got a deal with the mortician. Very secret, very under the table,” Pinkie, changeling Pinkie, leveraged the body over the fence, “must be six feet under it, at least.”

The first bunny approached the body, sniffing at it for a moment, and then ... and then ...

Twilight finally lost whatever remained of her last meal. The wet sound of digestive fluids and chunks spreading across the dirt, covered the sound of it in progress.

The rabbits swarmed across the body, and the curious unicorn could only hold herself back for a moment. As she looked back up, one of them ripped off an ear. The tattered scrap flapped free, dripping black along the edges as it disappeared beneath a twitching nose and whiskers.

Among the maggots, Twilight could make out no part of her body from the writhing mass of consumption. Nothing, but the head. The foddered face stared back at Twilight; it was not accusing, just a reflection. Her own face. Its mouth lolled open, dangling a fat tongue and the tooth that Twilight had chipped a few hours ago. And the filling she’d gotten six years ago.

“I can’t trust you,” Twilight murmured to the pink mare, “How could I trust somepony who just ... she was one of you!”

“Pretty sure I’m not a Twilight Sparkle,” responded Pinkie, “although I’m not sure what I am right now. Are you seeing these fireflies?”

“But then, who can I trust?” She turned to Pinkie, desperate for some reply that would elucidate everything.

“No one.”

“But ...” Twilight stammered, “how do I know? Because everyone is lying to me-”

“They’re all lying to you,” she repeated over the sound of the rabbits finally tearing into the head of the former, other Twilight Sparkle.

“And you’re lying. You told me you’re lying, and I ...” the words were on her tongue. She looked into a puddle. There was her mane, her horn, her face. The same she’d ever been, and certainly not eaten by rabbits. Why not?

“I quit. I’m done. I don’t care anymore. I’m me and this is here, and that’s the end. I don’t need to know, because I already do.”

The world waited a second. A few dust motes passed by her, dancing meaningless against the wind.

“I am Twilight Sparkle.” She winced, as if expecting the words to bring down a lightning bolt upon her head.

When nothing happened, she repeated it, “I am Twilight Sparkle and this is Ponyville and I think ... I can live with that.”

She turned to Pinkie, expecting a critical response. Instead, the pony was smiling broadly. She had settled back on her haunches in order to clapping her forehooves together. Could ponies even do that?

“Congratulations.”

The lavender unicorn called Twilight Sparkle turned her head as nothing revolved around her, and she found herself witnessing the rest of them.

Applejack, her formerly stern mask shifted toward one of welcoming, Sweetie Belle’s innocent accepting, Fluttershy’s scheming plot, Granny Smith’s aged face, Rarity and her shorn pate, all of them winking and nodding.

“Congratulations.”

The words and clapping reverberated for a moment, and then it was silent again.

She was alive in this world.

She was Twilight Sparkle.

She was.