//------------------------------// // Twijacked // Story: Twijacked // by Pozzo //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle had a lot of time to think these days, now that she was just a brain in a jar. Sometimes she thought about the big things in life-why are we here, where are we going, and so on. The classic kind of stuff that smart, inward-looking people get to thinking about when they were alone at night. Other times she thought of the not so little things, like why the word “abbreviated” was so long, or if there was another word for synonym (there was). And of course she thought about her friends, her family, her mentor, and all of the people that she cared deeply for in her life. But most of the time she was thinking about Trixie. About what she was doing now, or if she was nearby, or if she would see her again soon. Taken out of context, it might seem as if Twilight was rather besotted with the blue unicorn. But the truth was that Twilight Sparkle had rather more pragmatic reasons to be wondering these thoughts. She was about to have those questions answered. The door to her bedroom swung open, and in walked Twilight Sparkle. Well, it certainly looked like Twilight. Same purple fur and neat, indigo mane and tail, with that tell-tale natural streak of pink running through it. Same unicorn horn, same gleaming purple eyes, and the same small stature, albeit with a generous bust sticking out from under her shirt. To the casual observer, it simply was her, and for a split second Twilight herself thought that she was looking at herself through another ponies eyes. But she knew that this wasn’t true. She was Twilight Sparkle, after all, and there was only one of her. And if you looked closely, you could see the little clues that something was off. Her body language was all off. Usually, the bookish purple unicorn held herself with a sort of quiet, unassuming manner. But this Twilight Sparkle swaggered into the room with a projected confidence and a Cheshire cat grin. The imposter walked up to Twilight as if she owned the place. Which, in a sense, she did. “Oh, good evening, Sparkle,” said the Not-Twilight. “How are we feeling today? Damp? Hahaha!” she laughed, in a voice that was definitely the voice of the lavender unicorn, but with a degree of haughtiness that would seem so unfamiliar to those who knew her. The doppelganger summoned up a chair and sat down in front of Twilight, who simply stared straight ahead. Not that she had a choice. “I was just catching up on your dear friends there.” Continued Not-Twilight, in a mockingly casual way. “Or should I say my friends, now? They certainly didn’t seem to notice a difference. Neither does your pet dragon…Spike, isn’t it? He certainly seemed to answer to it when I was talking to him just there.” She laughed to herself before restraining herself, a nasty glint in her eyes.  “Does that depress you, Sparkle? That your dim-witted friends can’t even tell you from me…the Great and Powerful Trixie?!” Twilight said nothing, as Trixie laughed manically in front of her. She soon stopped, frowning. “Hmmph, this isn’t a fun if I can’t hear you.” She commented. Trixie’s horn-or rather, Twilight’s horn-glowed purple, and Twilight felt a now sadly familiar jolt of electricity run through her. Then she spoke. Not physically, because in her current condition that was impossible. But her thoughts could now at least be heard by her captor. “Trixie, you let me out of this jar right now or else I’ll…I’ll-“ “Or else what, Sparkle? You’ll get my nice new clothes wet?” said Trixie, indicated the clothes that she had appropriated from Twilight’s wardrobe. “Although they are a bit plain for Trixie’s tastes. Isn’t the white one a fashion designer? I’ll have to go find some grander garments, now that we’re such good, close friends…” “They’ll figure it out eventually!” said Twilight, with utmost sincerity. “And when they do, it’ll be you in the jar!” “Yes, you tell yourself that Sparkle.” Replied Trixie, waving a hand dismissively as she produced  a packet of salted nuts from somewhere, and started to nibble away at them. She looked at the jar in front of her and shrugged. “I’d share, of course, but I think it would be bad for you. I’ll have to find some fish-flakes for you to eat.” “No thank you. And answer me this: What happens if someone finds your body lying around without a brain in it? “Oh, please. You think I’d leave that old, beautiful, actually not old thank you very much thing lying around? Trixiiiieeee!” The door opened again, and in walked Trixie Lulamoon, resplendent in her usual starry cape and hat. Twilight didn’t have a jaw, but if she did it would have dropped open in shock. “Hello, Trixie! And hello, Sparkle.” Said the new Trixie, as Twilight’s head spun (metaphorically speaking). “Surprised to see me?” “Well….yes! How! You’re in my body, not yours!” cried Twilight. “Answer me!” the new Trixie continued to stare at the brain in the jar, before turning to the original Trixie. “Can she speak like that?” “Oh, I forgot. No, she can’t. Here, let me include you in the chat.” Said Trixie 1, her horn glowing purple again. “Ooh this is fun, isn’t it? Can you hear her now, oh Great and Powerful Trixie?” “She better!” “Oh yes, I heard that alright. My my, feeling grouchy are we, Sparkle?” asked Trixie 2, with a smug grin that perfectly matched the one on “Twilight’s” face. “Oh, this is a sight the Great and Powerful Trixie will never forget!” “Oh yes, nor will the Great and Powerful Trixie!” said the Great and Powerful Trixie, as they both laughed an identical laugh. “Just tell me how you managed to be in my head as well as your own, at the same time!” asked Twilight. “And stop referring to yourselves in the third person, it’s confusing when there’s two of you.” “Well, my unenlightened friend, it was foal’s play” said Trixie 1, wrapping her arm around the blue unicorn’s shoulders in a familiar, friendly manner.  “All you need is some special water from a certain magical pool…” Twilight gasped, mentally. “The mirror pool?! But the entrance was sealed!” “Was it? I found it rather easy to get in. Then again, I am the Great and Powerful-“ “Okay, okay, get to it already.” Interrupted Twilight, annoyed. Both of the Trixie’s harrumphed, and the one that at least looked like Trixie moved closer to Twilight’s jar as the Twilight impersonating Trixie continued. “Yes, once I had a jar of the stuff, all I needed to do was cut the top of my own head off, flip my extremely beautiful brain into the stuff, and voila! Two Trixie brains.” “But…the pool can only replicate minds to a simple degree! I’ve seen it work!” said Twilight, bubbling slightly in her jar as she “spoke”. “That would only work if the mind it was cloning was…very…uh…” “Yes?” said Trixie, still smiling but with an edge to her voice. “If my mind was very what?” “…simple?” Trixie scowled in a way that Twilight thought she would never see her own face do. Then, suddenly, Twilight yelped as she felt her jar being picked up by Trixie 2, who swirled her around in there like she was an olive in a martini glass. By the time she was set back down again, Twilight felt vaguely sea sick. “Be careful with that tongue, Sparkle.” Warned Trixie. Twilight thought about pointing out her lack of any actual tongue with which to be careful with, before thinking against it, still feeling a bit queasy. Trixie 1 coughed into her hand and continued. “Anyway, at this point, I had two perfect brains, and my revenge plan was almost ready. I just needed to do the swap itself. Which was, well…embarrassingly easy, really.” Twilight fell silent, partly with embarrassment, as she thought back to yesterday. It had been a day like any other, in that she had been reading a book. A really good one, with romance and intrigue and lots and lots of historical detail. In fact it had been so engrossing that Twilight had somehow failed to notice that someone was using magic to saw the top of her head off. It was only when Twilight had turned her head to ask Spike something and there was Trixie, holding Twilight’s freshly detached skullcap in her hands. Before she could register what was going on, Trixie’s horn had glowed, and for a split second Twilight had felt an odd pulling sensation deep within. Then everything had went black. “And now, here I am.” “Here WE are.” Added Trixie 2, going back to her original’s side and locking arms. “Taking our revenge. And there’s nothing…” “Absolutely nothing…” “…that you can do about it.” They finished, in tandem, before giggling at each other with clear satisfaction. Twilight again said nothing. Until Spike or her friends figured out the scheme, there really was nothing she could do, other than hope that they didn’t flush her down the toilet or something equally bad. Trixie 2 picked Twilight’s jar up again and whisked her over to the wardrobe roughly shutting her inside. “Sweet dreams, Sparkle. I’m sure we’ll have lots of fun over the next rest of your life or so. Night!” The door slammed shut, leaving Twilight in darkness.   Days passed, though the passing of time was hard to definitively measure for the captive brain of Twilight Sparkle. Hours could pass without any sort of sensory stimulus, trapped in a dark wardrobe all alone. On a few occasions she could faintly make out a light steps on the wooden floor of her room-Spike, presumably. But she was completely unable to make her presence felt, and after a while the sound of his claws on the ground would fade away completely. Twilight did not even have the luxury of dreaming at night. Whatever solvent she was floating in apparently prevented it, as a precaution in case Princess Luna were to try and communicate with Twilight in the realm of dreams. She could still sleep, which was a small mercy, but given that she was floating in darkness for large periods of the day, it only meant that the flow of time was further obscured. In a certain way, then, Twilight would actually feel relief when the wardrobe door was opened and a pair of hands would yank her out of her hiding spot. It wouldn’t last long, of course, but it was something. The Trixies would enjoy having a good old gloat at her expense, leaving her jar in the room and filling Twilight in on how Trixie’s new life as the Element of Magic was going, and what her friends were up to. “I’ve let everyone know that the Great and Powerful Trixie is now my good, close friend, and that we will be sharing accommodations for a while.” The original Trixie had told her, one night. “The girls are…well, still warming to her. But they will, in time.” “If they don’t…” said the other Trixie, lounging on the bed in a very low cut silver corset. “Well, perhaps they’ll join you in that cosy little wardrobe. Or would you rather share a jar? They’d be enough room, I’m sure, because I don’t imagine their brains would be terrible big.” The thought filled Twilight with a horrid dread-either her friends would fall for the ruse, or be captured and disembodied like she was. Where would this all stop? What was Trixie’s ambition? All these questions were laughed off by the Trixies. “Oh, we don’t make plans, do we Trixie?” said Trixie 1. “Not at all. We simply take what we want, when we want it. Perhaps we’ll visit Celestia some time, if we get tired of your life. It must be nice to live in a big castle like that.” “You wouldn’t dare!” said Twilight. “Princess Celestia would never fall for such a trick. Neither would Princess Luna!” “I bet you thought the same, Sparkle. And look at you now.” Replied the original Trixie, who opened up the jar and fished Twilight out as if to make good on her word and take a proper look at her. “So small, fragile and helpless. It suits you.” “Let me go!” cried Twilight. Whenever she was outside of her jar, her vision went black-it must be enchanted in some way. Outside of its confines, she could still hear  the two Trixie’s thoughts thanks to the telepathic link established between the three of them, but she was deaf to anything else. The only sense she retained was touch, as she felt the warm touch of her own bodies hands on her lobes, holding her in a firm grip. She desperately wanted to wiggle free, but even moving was essentially impossible. She truly was helpless. “Catch, Trixie!” said her captor, and Twilight squirmed as she felt herself sail through the air, only to be caught by a equally firm grip. This continued at an alarming pace for a few minutes, the genius brain now reduced to a mere toy in the hands of the Trixies. The throwing eventually slowed down until one of them (it was now impossible to tell who) was content to lazily toss Twilight up and down in the palm of her hand. When they finally grew bored of her, Twilight was mercifully put back in her jar and stored away safely in the wardrobe for the night.   This was only the start of the games that the Trixies would play on her. One time they had filled her jar with ice cubes, causing the most literal case of brain-freeze Twilight had ever experienced. Another time, they had produced a collection of what looked rather like sewing pins and had indulged in a little acupuncture. “You seem so tense” Trixie had told her, as she had inserted yet another sharp pin into the side of the brain. “The brain is one big muscle, Trixie is told. This aught to do the trick!” After what seemed to Twilight about a week, they bought a goldfish for her jar. While it was nice to have a little company, or at least company that wasn’t sticking sharp objects into your flesh or otherwise degrading you, the poor thing wasn’t exactly stimulating conversation. At first she had feared that it would nibble on her brain meats, but those fears proved unfounded. It was content to swim around aimlessly around the brain in the jar, bumping into the winkled organ once in a while. True to her word from earlier, Trixie made sure to sprinkle fish flakes into the jar on occasion, which was consumed by both of the jar’s residents. Twilight wasn’t sure what was worse-the humiliation of eating pet food, or the fact that it didn’t taste that bad to her. As she fed, the Trixie brain that was piloting her original body regarded her curiously. “Trixie thought Trixie was just joking about feeding you flakes. She never fed me anything…” “Huh? What do you mean?” asked Twilight. “Were you…” “Like you? Well, originally, yes. For  a day, I think, while she took care of getting you in a jar.” “Oh. I didn’t know.” Said Twilight, not sure if she should offer sympathy to her captor. Trixie 2 seemed to pick up on her thoughts though, and shook her head. “Oh, it wasn’t that bad. I would have thought being a brain would be perfectly fine for a know-it-all like you.” “Well maybe if I wasn’t being held prisoner in a cupboard and used as a fish tank, I would be enjoying this more!” said Twilight, and the liquid of her jar seemed to tremble slightly, inspiring a nanosecond of alarm in the otherwise implacable goldfish orbiting her brain. Trixie 2 considered this for a moment. Then she laughed. “Oh, you’re so fun to play with, Sparkle. And we’re just getting started. There’s so much we’d like to try…”   After a while, the Trixies stopped hiding her. This was clearly a terrible sign, because it signaled that they felt comfortable enough to have Twilight out in the open, perched on her old bedside cabinet. They had told Spike that they had found her at an auction, and that she was just a novelty-“It’s not REALLY a brain. Does that sound like something that I would do?” Trixie had told him in her best impersonation of the purple unicorn. Spike accepted this with a simple shrug, and had added polishing the jar and feeding both her and the goldfish to his list of daily chores. Twilight kept waiting for him to say something, to recognize her, but to no avail. “He’s a great help, you know.” Trixie had noted, after Spike had went off to bed one night. “Fills me in on all those personal details that I keep “forgetting” these days. Not the brightest, but a hard worker.” “I swear, if you ever touch him-“ “Oh, relax, or do we need another acupuncture session today?” said Trixie smoothly, nodding her head at the box of pins beside Twilight’s jar. “Maybe you just need a good massage….” “I’m fine, Trixie. You know one day you’ll end up doing serious damage to me. Brains aren’t toys.” “Oh, but of course you are! Well, a toy pet more like. Just like your new goldfish friend. I’ve decided to name him Goldie, by the way.” “Of course you have.” Trixie went to move away, before slowly turning around again. “You know what? I think you could do with a nice bath. Trixie was just drawing one now. Join us.” Before Twi could object, Trixie had fished her out of the jar and carried her to the bathroom, where the other Trixie was waiting. Twilight was just glad that she couldn’t see anything in her current state, although she could feel the warm bodies around her as they bathed around her. The warm water was a nice change from the goo in her jar, she had to admit. “Enjoying yourself, Sparkle? I can tell.” Trixie said, caressing Twilight’s spongy form with her hand. “It’s like I can read your emotions when we’re “linked” like this. Feels good, all this warm water…and other things…” Twilight stayed silent, and felt a finger tap against her lobes impatiently. “Yes, it does. Having a bath is nice. Okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? Can’t you just read my thoughts anyway?” “Well, about that…” said Trixie. “We need your help” said the other Trixie, from the other side of the tub. “We can only read thoughts you knowingly send us, but if we really want to keep this up, then we need to know more about you. Your life, your secrets. Everything. Celestia’s been sending letters, and there’s only so much Spike can tell us.” “And some of your friends are giving us very odd looks when they ask about certain events we were apparently at. Well, me at any rate. Did you really fight a hydra?” “Hah!” laughed Twilight, feeling genuinely happy for the first time in a while. “I knew it! I knew you couldn’t keep this up forever!” She paused for a second. “And actually, it wasn’t really a fight, per se, but…” “You need to tell us!” pleaded the Trixies, in unison. “Please!” Twilight realized that they were desperate. If she could have grinned, she would have. “No. You’re going to get exposed as frauds. Then you’ll get exposed as kidnappers. And it’s all your own fault.” “Don’t forget who’s in charge here, my little brain.” Muttered Trixie 1, darkly, and Twilight felt her grip tighten. Nevertheless, she was defiant. “What are you gonna do? You need me, remember? You’re many things, Trixie, but you’re not going to torture me. Or…anything else. You’re not THAT far gone. I know it.” “…” “And I don’t care how small I am right now, I’m not afraid of you or…you, again.” Said Twilight, addressing both of her captors. “All I have to do is wait.” “Hmph. Suit yourself, Sparkle. Let’s see if we can’t change your mind…”   They left her alone for the rest of the night. Come the morning, though, Twilight noticed something was…off. Her vision was tinted a kind of yellow colour, and her thoughts seemed to be increasingly harder to focus on. “Wha…why  do I feel so…dizzy…” she thought. At that moment, Trixie appeared in front of her, smiling. “Hey there, friend! How are we this morning?” she asked, cheerily. Twilight tried to articulate an answer, but she just felt too out of it to formulate a proper response. “Bllrugh” she thought. Trixie frowned as her clone appeared from behind her. “Is it working?” she asked, excitedly. Trixie shook her head. “I don’t think she’s the type to get talkative when she’d drunk.” “Druuunk?” slurred Twilight, who really wished the room would stop spinning. “Butsh….ooooh, my jar….hahaha…uurgh.” “Yes, we wasted a perfectly good jarful of cider on this. Thanks for nothing, Sparkle.” “Can brains throw up?” asked Trixie 2. Her original stroked her chin. “Shall we find out?”   “What are those?” asked Twilight, a little fearfully. She was sitting in a dark room with a lampshade shining down on her, but she could make out a silhouette of a hand holding something in it. “Is that…a pepper?” “That’s right, Sparkle.” Said Trixie, holding a giant red pepper up above the un-lidded jar. “These are the hottest peppers in Ponyville, according to your pink, pie eating friend. Uh…Pink Pie, that’s it.” “That’s not very spicy, really.” Said Twilight. “That’s not really part of the cuisine around here. Also the bigger a pepper is, the less spicy it tends to-“ “…the hottest in the whole town, Sparkle!” continued Trixie. “And I’m going to start dunking them into your jar unless you talk.” “So talk, please, if that’s okay with you!” snarled the other Trixie, slamming her hands on the table. “Now can I get you anything nice, punk?” “What…. Trixie, what is this?” asked Trixie Classic, earning a look of confusion from her clone. “I’m playing good cop/bad cop, just like we said.” Said Trixie 2. “Did you forget the plan?” “I said play good cop and I’ll be bad cop. You’re playing both, you clod of a clone!” “But you said, “Trixie will be bad cop and Trixie will play good cop”, I remember it clear as day.” Perhaps it’s you who are the clod.” “I meant me, not…urgh forget it, I’m throwing the pepper in.” She did so, the red vegetable floating to the top like a dead fish. The currently purple unicorn looked at the brain for any sort of reaction. “Are you…are you ready to talk yet, Sparkle?” she asked, hopefully. “No, not really. It’s a bit stingy I guess?” Trixie groaned and palmed her own face.   Twilight was carried into the kitchen,and landed with a squishy thud onto what felt like wooden board. Before she could wonder what the Trixies were going to try next, she felt a strong pressure towards the rear of her brain, that then began to travel across the rest of her. As this happened, she could hear Trixie’s voice whistling a merry tune. “What’s this feeling? What are you doing now?” she asked. “Oh, don’t worry your pretty little brain about it. Just…aha…ROLL with it.” Replied Trixie 2, laughing. Twilight didn’t really get it, but as the strange feeling continued she felt her thoughts getting heavier, much like before with the cider-filled jar. But this was different, a much stronger feeling, although thankfully without any of the nausea. It was more like being scrambled. It occurred to her what was happening around about the time she realized how spread out her brain felt. “Are you…flat…flattening....meeeee?” she managed, with great effort. “That’s right, Sparkle. They say people crack under pressure, and I’d say this counts!” Twilight found her ability to complain about these awful puns was being severely compromised by the rolling pin currently flattening her soft lobes like she was a mound of dough. In fact after a few minutes she felt as though she was floating in a void, senseless and formless. So she didn’t hear Trixie 1 walk into the kitchen and almost do a spit-take when she saw what was going on. “What are you doing!” the original Trixie had cried. “She’s not going to tell us anything like that!” “Oh, I know.” Her clone replied, shrugging. “I just really wanted to see what would happen. I think she’s enjoying it!” the blue unicorn picked up the now inch thick brain and waggled it around in her hands. “Ooo, I bet I can mold it into all sorts of things.” “You need to focus, Trixie!” said Trixie. “We’re one more letter away from being found out, she’d no good to us like that!” These warnings were falling onto seemingly deaf ears, as her clone turned around and worked away at the grey matter. “Are you even listening? Pay attention to Trixie!” “Tah-dah!” said the clone, turning around. She had shaped Twilight into the shape of a fish. “It’s Goldie! Swim, swim, swim…” she mimicked a swimming action with the brain. Twilight would occasionally splutter out a few vowel sounds to show that she was still okay, but very much out of it and probably unaware of the indignities being visited upon the center of her very thoughts. Twixie crossed her arms across her chest and shot a withering look across the kitchen counter. “Done?” “Oh…Trixie is entitled to a bit of fun, it’s been a very stressful few days.” “Trixie knows how Trixie feels, but Trixie will have all the fun she wants AFTER we get our facts from Twilight. Okay?” Trixie 2 nodded her head and started to remold Twilight, to the original Trixie’s relief. “Thank you. Now, I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ve decided that we need to take more drastic measurements. I’ve been studying Sparkle’s books, and I think with a few strategic cuts, we can get her into a more cooperative state of mind...” she chuckled darkly. “Do you follow me?” “Oh, yes, of course. But look at this, I’ve shaped her into my own personal dild-“ “Trixie get your mind out of the gutter and work with me here!” cried Trixie, blushing. “Oh I know you’d want to try it too. You’re me, after all.” “I’ll try it on you if you don’t get her fixed in five minutes.” “…I’ll go make a healing potion.” “Yes, you do that.”   The next hour or so was a very confusing one for Twilight. She soon regained her ability to think clearly, which was always nice But given that she still could not see, or hear anything outside of what the Trixies projected thoughts, the situation was still far from idea. When she asked what was going on, the Trixies told her that she might feel some slight “changes”, and soon Twilight did indeed start to experience sudden and almost indescribable shifts in her thought patterns. One moment she was fine, and the next she could only think in numbers, much to her captors confusions. Then, no sooner had she recovered from that, Twilight found herself focusing exclusively on what she knew about ducks. She didn’t actually know a whole lot, which only made it worse, or at least more tedious to think about. Soon after that particular quirk was fixed, Twilight found that she had forgotten everything about her past life. Her name, her friends, what she had done-everything just blanked out, like it was trapped behind an unassailable door. This caused a severe amount of alarm in the voice she was hearing in her head, whoever they were. They sounded nice, even if they were asking a lot of questions. Trixie groaned, the sense of frustration that had been brewing since the other day steadily building, as she examined her specimen. She had made a few incisions into the part of the brain that she thought dealt with memories, hoping to make them more accessible. “Bah, a failure. Trixie, I need another option.” She said to her sidekick, who was nose-deep in a book about the anatomy of the brain. The cloned looked through it carefully. “I suggest you try splitting her hemispheres apart. It might contain Sparkle’s more unhelpful traits to one half.” “And the other will help us? How intriguing.” Said Trixie thoughtfully. First though, to fix her previous mistake, she doused the cut with a little of her premade healing potion, watching as the incision healed up on the spot.  In that moment, Twilight remembered who she was, and immediately understood what was happening. “Are you two attempting brain surgery?!” she said, appalled. “This is an outrage!” “Oh, at this point, I think I can live with your outrage.” Said Trixie, with a tired note in her voice. “Don’t worry, you’ll feel much better in a second.” And with that she split Twilight’s brain in half, right down the center, before plopping each side down. “Can you hear me?” “Uh, yeah?” said Twilight, before a second voice butted in. “Oh…oh wow, it’s like I’m in two places at once!” “So I am! This is cool! What did you…. oh, tell me you didn’t cut me in half.” “US in half.” Corrected the second Twilight voice. “No, cut ME in half. You’re still just me.” “Well, philosophically speaking, I think you’ll find…” Trixie frowned at the sudden debate that was taking place in her head, and quickly jammed the two pieces together again, pouring a bit of healing potion between the two halves to glue it back together. “Well, that didn’t work.” She said to her assistant self. “But that’s okay. Trixie is calm, Trixie is in control…and Trixie would like a better suggestion this time, pretty please.” The other Trixie giggled nervously, before suggesting that a smaller cut be made slightly further up, towards the front of the brain. “If I’m right, removing that part will make her much more obedient.” Said Trixie 2. “Excellent!” said the original. “Just what we need!” “Trixie, wait, if you do that you’ll-“ Twilight’s objections shuddered to a halt. There was a long, uncomfortable silence, and the two Trixies exchanged worried glances. “Can you hear me, Sparkle?” asked Trixie 1. “Yes….” replied a slow, monotone voice. Trixie 2 gave an excited thumbs up sign to her original, who proceeded with cautious optimism. “You will tell me everything I want to know. Do you understand.” “Yes. I do that. Yes yes.” said Twilight. Trixie found herself relaxing. Finally, she could stop worrying, and she regained some of her usual haughtiness. “Well then, slave. Let us begin. Tell the Great and Powerful Trixie about your time here in Ponyville.” “Okaaaaay!” “…” “…” Trixie looked back at her clone, who shrugged. She turned back to the now slightly reduced brain on the table and giggled nervously. “Any time, Sparkle.” “Oh. Hahaha. I like sun.” “What? No, I said…no, I demand that you inform me of your time here. How did you meet your meddling friends?” “Friends nice. Blue fast. Hahaha.” “Oh, no….” said Trixie 2. “It turns out I wasn’t right. This brain surgery business is tougher than I thought. It’s like…well…brain surgery.” “Enough!” cried Trixie, slamming her lavender hands onto the counter. “This isn’t working. I need to…yes, why didn’t I think of it sooner! I’ll brew a truth potion and dunk her into it. That will solve my problems! Er, OUR problems, Trixie.” “Ah, yes. It’s a little…crude?” said Trixie 2, which got a nod from her original. “Yes, I know, not very flashy of us. But needs must. I will prepare it soon. Fix Sparkle while I get the proper ingredients.” “Of course, Trixie. Oh, you might want to get some more healing potion ingredients, we’ve burned through a lot of stock.” “Of course.” “And some more pistachio nuts, we’re fresh out-“ “Priorities, Trixie, priorities!” ============================================================================================ Back in the safety of her jar and once again in one piece (relatively speaking), Twilight was nevertheless consumed with worry as the Trixies loomed over her, a jar of a swirling red potion in the hand of her former body. They were about to dunk her into the stuff and gain access to the memories and information that they needed to convince everyone-even Celestia-that Trixie was Twilight, and take a crucial step forward in getting away with their con. Twilight bubbled anxiously. What could she do? Was she doomed? What would happen next?