Perfect for Me

by The Equestrian Gentlecolt

Self-Image

That night, two identical mares rested in each other's embrace. Somewhere in the intervening time, studying had become the last thing on their minds, and when a cool breeze snuck in through the open window, they were more than happy to let it caress their coats as they drifted off toward Luna's realm.

One nuzzled in closer to the other for more warmth. The other, already quite warm enough, nonetheless pulled her companion closer with a contented sigh, deeming it well worth the minor discomfort of the heat. She opened one eye just as the other did, and they leaned in to share one more sleepy kiss.

Twilight Sparkle was in love. And if it was with herself, well, could anypony argue that there was a better match?

Sleep came, and with it, dreams.

---

"This is highly unusual, you know."

Twilight looked to her left, somewhat startled to find the old priest there, although she couldn't imagine why now that she thought about it. Hadn't he been there all along?

"I don't think anypony really expected me to grow up normal, Reverend Sunchaser," Twilight said with a small smile. The reverend was an old friend of the family; he'd know exactly what she meant.

"Can we get on with it?" the other Twilight snapped from her right. "The clock is ticking. Look, skip all the pageantry and just get to the proclamation, alright?"

Twilight turned with a slight frown, but she couldn't be upset at her twin. Not today, not when the mare was resplendent in the same perfectly white wedding dress as she wore. Beautiful. And precisely symmetrical with herself, just as it should be.

Her frown vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

The reverend blinked at them, harrumphed, and lifted the script back up in front of himself. Twilight had written that herself—or perhaps her twin had, but that wasn't important—and she was quite proud of it. But time was wearing on, and they had places to be.

"Very well," Reverend Sunchaser said, flipping past a few pages and finding his new place. "In the name of Princess Celestia and the warmth of the sun she commands, I now pronounce you: mare and wife. You may kiss, er, yourself."

Twilight nodded, and couldn't help but smile in spite of her other self's rudeness. It was highly unusual. But it was done. Or rather, it was almost done. Her horn glowing, she lifted the veil that covered the other mare's face.

The Changeling Queen stared back at her, her mouth widening into a wicked grin. Her sharp carnivore's teeth glinted in the sunlight.

"Surprise!"

Twilight yelped and stumbled backward, but her hooves caught on her own wedding dress. She tripped, and fell.

And fell...

And landed with a whump on the floor of the crystal caverns beneath Canterlot. The scenery was familiar, and not in a good way. She struggled to disentangle herself from her dress as she took in her surroundings.

"Changeling problems?" The voice echoed around the cavern. Her head whipped around and her eyes settled on the form of her ex-foalsitter and now sister-in-law, Princess Cadence, sitting not far from her. Her forelegs were crossed casually, as if this was a perfectly natural place for her to be.

"Cadence! You've got to help me!" Twilight finally freed herself and dashed over, putting her hooves on Cadence's shoulders, shaking her for emphasis. "I was right there at the altar, and so was I," she began explaining frantically, "but then the other me wasn't me anymore, it was that horrible changeling queen, and now I'm here!" She felt like she'd missed something in there, but she couldn't quite put her hoof on it. It wasn't important, anyway.

Cadence didn't seem nearly as concerned as she should have. "Yeah, I know how that is. Just when you think you really know somepony, they go and turn into an emotion-sucking abomination. It happens to the best of us. Come, sit with me." She lifted a wing.

"But... help?" Twilight said plaintively.

"Sit, Twilight." The command was gentle, but it was spoken with all the authority of her station.

Twilight sat immediately, right where she was. Then she frowned, peering at the princess suspiciously. "Wait, what do you mean you know how it is? You were the one who got replaced!"

Cadence lowered her wing back to her side. "Well, weren't you, too?"

"Oh. I guess I was." Twilight sighed, and stared at her hooves. "Everything was going so well, too."

"Don't worry," her sister-in-law said, coming over to sit by her instead. "I'm sure some young purple hero will come rescue you sooner or later."

"How?" Twilight asked. "There are only two of me, one is a changeling, and I'm stuck down here."

"I suppose you'll just have to be the hero, then."

"What?" Twilight looked up at her sister-in-law.

"Well, nopony else is going to do it for you." Cadence grinned at her. "Now, off with you!"

Twilight opened her mouth, but a flick of Cadence's wing sent her sprawling into the darkness.

She lit her lantern, and its glow pushed back the shadows somewhat. Rough-hewn passages spread out before her, branching and twisting in the half-light beyond the lantern's light. A diamond dog den?

"You'll never get away with this, Ahuizotl!" Her own voice reached her from one of the twisted passageways ahead of her.

No, she recognized this place. Natural cave walls resolved themselves into intricate stonework, and things she had thought were stone formations became statues in the shapes of rearing ponies, crossing horns with mythical beasts. This wasn't a diamond dog den; it was the legendary Maze of Minos! She had read about it in... a book. She didn't remember which right now, but that wasn't important. What was important was that there was a roc clawing at the roof, screeching furiously and sending cascades of pebbles down around her ears.

There was no time to waste. Twilight took off running in the direction she'd heard her voice come from.

"This way!" It was to her left. She twisted, hooves kicking up stones as she skidded, and shot down the left tunnel.

"Over here!" Her left again. She made another sharp turn.

"Hurry!" Six left turns in, she realized she was going in a circle. She heard her voice again, once again from her left, and halted to listen.

"Even if you manage to beat me, Ahuizotl, I'll be along soon. The odds of you beating me twice in a row are five point seven five percent, at most. Give up now, and I might be able to talk myself into going easy on you."

She didn't wait to hear the response. Turning left one more time, straight into a wall, she cut to the chase and blasted her way right through it.

She never had been much for mazes.

As she strode through the impromptu doorway, horn aglow (she’d always wanted to do that), the dust settled on a bizarre scene. Her other self hung from manacles on the wall, with a smug expression that could only mean "I told you so." Across the room, the dread villain Ahuizotl sat in an armchair by a lit fireplace, wearing a monocle and smoking a pipe. There was a book held open in his hand.

The book was titled Daring Do and the Death of Twilight Sparkle.

"That book doesn't even exist!" Twilight cried, lowering her head and charging the villain.

"Ah, but it will s—"

Ahuizotl didn't get to finish his sentence. The roc fell through the ceiling and onto him at the same time that Twilight crashed into them. Both enemies exploded into dust with the force of the impact.

The dust surrounded Twilight and trailed behind her, and her hooves kicked up more and more of it as she galloped frantically down the long road to the Ponyville train station.

"Late, late, late," she chanted nervously to herself. "Save the world, rescue the damsel in distress, you can arrive in the nick of time for that, but the victory ceremony afterwards? Late, late, late! Get it together, Twilight."

The last cars of the train were pulling away as she arrived. She shook her head. Couldn't wait for the next train. She was going to be late!

"I need a ticket for that train!" she shouted at the stallion behind the counter.

"Okay," the ticket pony said, "but you'll have to catch it yourself."

“Thanks!” She got a running start just as the tail end of the last car passed her, then she leapt off the platform, stretching her hooves as far as she could. At first she thought she hadn't jumped hard enough, that she'd crash onto the tracks below, but she sailed through the great doors of Canterlot Castle just as Princess Celestia began her introductory speech.

"You're late, Twily," her brother said next to her. "Better hurry, or you'll miss it!"

She bolted inside, pushing her way through the audience. Nopony seemed inclined to move out of her way, which made it very slow going. Kind of rude, considering that she was pretty much the savior of Equestria. She heard the princess's voice over the crowd.

"...faithful student, bearer of the Element of Magic, and pretty much the savior of Equestria: Twilight Sparkle!"

"I'm h—" The words died on her lips as she burst through the front row of the audience.

She was already there. Even as the medal was lowered over her head, Twilight Sparkle turned and saw herself pushing out of the crowd. Their teacher's next words rang in both of their ears.

"I'm so proud of you, Twilight Sparkle."

---

Their eyes flew open at the same time. They stared at each other for a long, tense moment, each reliving the horror from her own perspective: one, the accidental betrayer, and the other, the accidentally betrayed. Twilight could feel her twin's chest heaving, mirroring her own panic.

Then she drew her forelegs more tightly around the other mare, and her twin buried herself in the embrace in turn.

"You didn't know," she said quietly.

"I didn't know," her twin agreed, voice muffled against Twilight's coat.

"You didn't mean to take anything away from me," she said, and started to run a comforting hoof along the other Twilight's back. "You thought it was just you in the dream."

"I didn't mean to," the other agreed. "I thought it was just me."

"And you were right," Twilight said firmly.

"And I was... what?" Her twin looked up at her in confusion.

Twilight smiled. "It was just a dream. An absurd one. How could I possibly replace myself?"

"That... that's a good point." Her twin laughed, a small sound, but thick with relief. "Heh. It's a good thing I'm so smart."

"Isn't it?" Twilight gave a laugh of her own. "So, breakfast. Eggs and toast?"

"I don't really feel like... I mean, yeah. Eggs and toast sounds perfect."

---

Breakfast, prepared by a grumbling Spike, was adequate. Twilight had been more in the mood for bagels—she really liked bagels—but, well, she hadn't. And so, neither had she.

The worst part of being one self with two minds was most definitely the grammar.

"I don't see why you haven't created a spell to make you breakfast yet," Spike complained.

"That's actually not a bad idea." Twilight looked thoughtful. "Maybe if—"

"Not now," she told herself firmly. "Rocs first, then breakfast spells."

"Right. So what'd you come up with?"

"Oh, lots of ideas! Not all equally viable, of course." The other mare produced a scroll from the air that was instantly recognizable—to Twilight’s expertly-trained eye—as a list. She began, as was proper, at the top. "First, and most obvious, the simple solution: blast them sky-high."

Twilight pulled her own notes over to the breakfast table. The entry was near the middle. "Environmental disaster, and bad PR. Fluttershy would never forgive us. Giant cages?"

"The biggest issue is material procurement. It'd have to be something tough enough to hold them, and raw magic is out. Holding it for the entire length of the survey would be exhausting even if we both had a full charge. What about a giant lever?"

"A giant... Oh, the seesaw method, right." She found the line in her own notes. "Great if they were bears or something, but rocs would just fly back. We could try asking nicely."

"I think we're way past diplomacy at this point." Both mares crossed an entry off the list. "Banishment spell?"

"I don't think rocs count as Armageddon-class threats to Equestria, even if they're in the way of an important archeological survey."

"Anything that stands in the way of science is a threat to our cultural advancement. But I guess I see your point. The paperwork would be a pain anyway. The line-of-shiny-objects trick?"

"Maybe as a supplement to another method; keeping them away that long is going to require something to lead them to. Table that for now. What about a sleep spell?"

She knew that wouldn't work either, even before she said it. A sleep spell that big was a non-standard variant, so using it on them would technically count as animal testing. Mass teleportation was too expensive. Covering them with a giant tarp would just make them angry. (That one had been added on a whim anyway. Surprisingly, it was on both lists.) The ideas ranged from the mundane to the extraordinary, from the magical to the scientific, and from there to the truly bizarre. (Temporarily storing them on the moon, really? Who had ever heard of moon rocs?) And yet, for every idea one had, the other one had already found the same problems with it.

"You realize," her twin said grumpily, "that I already knew the ideas weren't going to work as-is. I was hoping that if I ran them by somepony else as smart as me, you might come up with some, I dunno, solutions."

"You'd have to find somepony else as smart as you then," Twilight pointed out. When her twin looked at her sharply, she explained, "I'm not somepony else."

"Oh." The other unicorn blinked. "Yeah. I knew that. Anyway, I would’ve found the solutions if there were any. Both of me would’ve, apparently."

"Definitely," she agreed.

"We might just have to wing it."

"Was that another roc joke?"

"...Maybe."

She rolled her eyes. "I don't know how I put up with me sometimes."

"Because I'm great in the hay?"

They both paused, then turned a bit red. "You didn't hear that, Spike," Twilight called out quickly.

Spike was already in the process of reshelving the aftermath of the previous day's study. "Hear what?" he asked from on top of a ladder.

"Nothing!" They relaxed.

"But seriously," her twin said, "we've always been good at thinking on our hooves. Maybe we should just go back out there and see what we come up with."

"Because that worked so well for us last time."

"Hey! We just got caught off guard. If manticores hadn't been chasing us..."

"Yeah, okay. Worst case, we can probably teleport back now that we’ve recharged a bit. One checklist of pre-adventure preparations, coming right up!"

She grabbed her quill, only to have it yanked out of her grasp. "That one's mine," her twin said.

"Well, yeah, and it's my best one. What about it?"

"No, I mean I was just using it. Yours is on the table."

She stared at her twin flatly. The other mare looked belligerent in return. "You realize we're the same pony, right?"

"Yeah."

"So..."

"So both of us own the pen. But I’m claiming it now. There are plenty of others."

"Oookay..." Twilight shrugged, and grabbed the one she'd been using before. "In that case, I'm claiming the inkpot."

"You can't do that. No, you know what? Fine. I get the paper, then."

Two could play at that game. "Well, I'm taking..." Twilight glanced around the library. "...the globe."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Her twin glared at her. "If we're just going around assigning random things now, I want the Star Swirl bookends."

"Then I get the books between them."

"Only if I get the ones on the next shelf down."

"That's playing dirty! That's the Daring Do series!"

"And?" Her twin smirked, confident in her victory. "Your move."

Twilight cast about for something that would let her outmaneuver herself. It was a surprisingly difficult proposition. Then her eyes landed on the answer.

"I'm taking Spike."

Some of the most devastating battles in Equestrian history have been between only two participants. As a student of history herself, Twilight was quite aware of the devastation that could be wrought by two powerful unicorns who couldn't come to a peaceful agreement, and she was far too smart a pony to get into a contest of magic with herself. That did not, as she quickly discovered, preclude her from baser forms of attack. Forms of attack like the flying tackle. Or kicking at the madpony who had just tackled her.

Nor, for that matter, did it rule out kneeing or biting.

By the time Spike got them to separate, they'd discovered the ancient art of hair-pulling.

Comments

[BeneathTheShade]

Great to see you continued this, although for some reason it didn't alert me despite being on my favorites list.

The talk after the dream was strange but heartwarming, and that last scene was really funny.

[Ms_Fruit_Bat]

Amusing.
You have amused the Fruit Bat.
The Fruit Bat is pleased.
Happy Hearth's Warming from the Fruit Bat.

[nemryn]

So many people try to do Meaningful Dreams, and they always end up with something that has far too much of a consistent narrative and isn't anything at all like real dreams. Not here, though!

[Chiroknu]

Thus, they have suddenly found one of the first big problems. Ownership. Spike had to seperate them..wow..thats going to be crazy in the long run..but it so shows that there is more to them than meets the eye here.

[Fareseed]

I have a feeling that they need to turn into one single entity again.

[Esle Ynopemos]

Who had ever heard of moon rocs?

Har.

[FromTheMoon]

It's all fun and games until somepony claims Spike

[TheAuthor]

"Even if you manage to beat me, Ahuizotl, I'll be along soon. The odds of you beating me twice in a row are five point seven five percent, at most. Give up now, and I might be able to talk myself into going easy on you."

This paragraph makes me smile so much for some reason. Clone grammar is the best grammar.

[Princess Cadence]

The grammar/dream logic in this was delicious.