//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4 
// Story: Two Sides of the Same Coin 
// by Minute Trapping 
//------------------------------//

	"I… Toffee is really me." said Caramel, apprehensive of what the response would be for years of fraud and lying to authorities.

"Indeed you are." replied Celestia, without a hint of anger or even surprise in her voice.

"Wait, you knew‽" asked Twilight in shock.

Celestia addressed her reply to Caramel and not Twilight. "If 'Toffee' had wished to stay inconspicuous, 'she' could've picked a better cover story than 'agent of the Royal Guard'. I can't keep in touch with all of my subjects like I used to, but I do like to keep tabs on those under my direct command."

"Wait, by 'all of your subjects' do you mean the whole principality?"

Celestia smiled and looked off into the middle distance. "Yes, all of Equestria. There was a time thousands of years ago when the country was small enough that I could get to know everypony. Obviously over time our population grew, and I lost track. I still try to keep track of the statistics at least, impersonal as it may be."

Caramel was stunned; suddenly his problems seemed trivial in scale. "Wow… I never thought about how hard immortality could be on a pony. And what do you mean by 'our population'?"

"Celestia's face kept the same radiant smile. "I mean Equestria's population. I may be a diarch, but I'm an Equestrian citizen as much as you. Also, I'm not immortal. I may outlive many ponies, but I am bonded with the Sun, and when it fizzles out so shall I. But if I am not mistaken, you didn't come all the way to Canterlot to hear about the distant future or the distant past. Did you just come here to come clean? I could have Luna correct the records for you."

Twilight stepped forward. "Caramel was hoping you could use your magic to… to stabilize him."

"That would depend…" started Celestia, her horn glowing a light gold for a third of a second, "on the cause of the 'problem'." Her smile faded slightly. "I'm afraid I cannot."

"What? Why?"

"Even magic as strong as mine cannot rewrite a pony's genetic code. Your sixty-fourth chromosome is a Y at the moment, but I can detect telltale signs, physical and magical, that it was recently an X. Even if I could somehow edit the genome in each of your trillions of cells, you wouldn't be the same pony after I meddled with what makes you you."

"But, I… you're the Princess! Your magic has to be strong enough. I don't understand." Caramel shouted.

Princess Celestia smiled reassuringly and waited for Caramel to calm down. When he picked himself up, she asked "Yes, I am a princess. Would you like me to explain further?" After he nodded, her horn glowed and fifty seconds later the door opened and in floated a saw and a small disk, half blue and half red.

After they came to rest on the floor in front of him, Caramel examined the bar more closely. It was a heavy metal cylinder, cool to the touch. Into the red side was stamped the letter N, and the letter S was stamped into the opposite side. It was a magnet, probably from a science kit for foals.

When Caramel looked up from the magnet, Celestia continued. "I'd like you to split this magnet for me. Just cut off the south pole and leave me the north."

"I can't." said Caramel, catching on.
"Why not?" asked Celestia, encouraging him as she often would when Twilight was an inquisitive young filly.

Caramel continued, paraphrasing his physics lessons from school. "The magnetic field is made because of the polarities of all of the molecules in the magnet. As a whole they give the magnet two poles, but they're not separate chunks that can just be cut apart."

"…so what would happen if you tried?" asked Celestia, nudging him on.

"Well, you'd get two thinner magnets, but they'd each still have a north pole and a south pole. So you'd just get thinner and thinner magnets until they started to crumble in your hooves."

It was Twilight Sparkle who ruined the moment by jumping in and putting the final pieces together. "So not only would you fail to separate the poles, but you'd destroy the magnet in the process!"

Caramel shot Twilight an annoyed glance, but Celestia was used to her awkward know-it-all ways, and found her absolutely adorkable. "It would be easy to get the poles to switch places, such as a reversal spell would do, but both poles would still be there. I'm afraid I can't lock you into one sex the same way I would reverse somepony's sex, but even if I could, I'm not so sure you'd want me too."

Caramel was caught off guard. "What do you mean? Of course I do."

"I take it you wish to be locked as a stallion?" asked Celestia inquired.

"Yes, of course I do. That's why I came here in the first place!"

"Is it? Or did you come here to be locked as a mare?"

Caramel started to respond, but stopped himself and thought it through. He knew he was a stallion, and wanted to stay that way, but he also remembered telling herself the exact opposite. "I don't know." said Caramel, his admission punctuated by a heavy cough.

"This isn't just some shapeshifting spell that I could shut off. Your actual sex and gender are in flux. It seems the years of living a double life has caused you to think of yourself as two separate ponies, but you're not. For you, male and female, stallion and mare, are just two sides of the same coin."

"I never thought of it that way." said Caramel after a moment's thought. "Thank you, Princess." As he and Twilight turned to leave, Caramel steadied himself against a column as a flip ran through his body.

Celestia forced herself not to stare at the light amber plot reshaping itself before her very eyes. After Caramelle had caught her breath and had started to leave, Celestia spoke up. "Does it hurt?" she asked, genuine concern in her voice.

Caramelle shook her head. "It can be a little disorienting and exhausting, but the whole thing takes less than a minute and the worst part is just a few seconds." She paused to sip eagerly from a glass of water Celestia had conjured. "The worst part is everything that goes into keeping the secret."

"If I may make a suggestion," replied Celestia, "I don't think this needs to be kept a secret. Of course it's ultimately up to you, but I think you'll find that ponies are much more accepting than you give them credit for."

Caramelle smiled and thanked Celestia again, before turning and walking through the door.


[COMMERCIAL BREAK]