//------------------------------//
// Chapter 12: Everything is Wrong~! 
// Story: Caverns & Cutie Marks: High School, High Stakes 
// by TheColtTrio 
//------------------------------//

The six girls sitting at the table in the Sweet Shoppe all jumped in their seats as the front door banged open and Sunset burst through the door cackling and giggling to herself. A small grin was trying to remove the neutral look she was fighting to hold on her face.
“Uh… Not that I don’t appreciate a really good jester impression, but you’re kind of making me wish that Owlman was real.” Rainbow said, pressing herself against Rarity in an attempt to open as much space as she could. “What’s got you so crazy?”
“Mouse pads of questionable quality,” Sunset said with a dismissive wave as she tried to suppress her laughter. “I’ll explain later. Anyone seen Princess Twilight?”
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Pinkie waved her hands at the sudden dismissal. “Back up! You gotta explain a few things! Making no sense is my job! What’s this about mouse pads of questionable quality? Is it a boob mouse pad?”
Sunset’s grin lost the war and she gave a weak nod. She grimaced at the curious and scandalized looks the other girls were giving her.
“Whose mouse pad?” Pinkie urged.
Sunset swallowed and wiped her brow. “Pu… pu… Purple Heart’s.”
The rest of the Mane Six stared at the red-haired girl.
“Say what now?” Rainbow croaked.
“Do you mean to tell me,” Rarity said, “that a fine, upstanding young gentleman like Purple Heart is the owner of a mousepad that represents such a deplorable level of debauchery?”
The redhead nodded.
“That,” Rarity mused, “might be the most hilarious thing I’ve heard all week.”
“If y'all’re done bein’ six years old-” Applejack started to say.
“AJ, you’re blushing almost as much as Fluttershy is,” Rainbow Dash interrupted.
“AS AH WAS SAYIN’! Princess Twi should be here any minute.” The sound of the cafe’s door opening acted as the perfect punctuation to her statement. “Or right now.”
“Hey, girls,” Twi greeted, joining the group at their table. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
“Well, we have perverted news,” Rarity sniffed. “Who goes first?” Twi blinked several times at the fashion mistress.
“You,” she prompted. “What did they do now?”
“Purple Heart has a.... Uh… boob… mouse pad,” Fluttershy answered softly.
“Fluttershy!” Rainbow hissed. “Why’d you speak up?! I could have saved your innocence!” Twi blinked again.
“I… wasn’t expecting that...” she mused. “But… you do realize that the mouse pad most likely belongs to this world’s Purple Heart and not the one you’ve seen goofing off around us?”
The other girls were quiet for a moment, contemplating that little tidbit. Rarity shivered and shook her head.
“While that is marginally comforting,” she admitted, “I still have to interact with a version of Purple Heart.”
Rainbow Dash tapped the table. “We can still make fun of our version, right?” She leaned back as seven pairs of eyes turned on her. “What? We were all wondering it.”
“We really shouldn’t,” Science Twilight said, adjusting her glasses.
“But we’re still gonna!” Pinkie helpfully chimed in before turning to look at Princess Twilight. “So, what was your news?”
	Princess Twilight cleared her throat and tried to hide any remaining traces of mirth from her face. “I still don’t know whose magic brought those three into this world, but I’m sure it’s not the Dazzlings or my world’s Discord; the one who started the whole game thing in the first place.”
“An’ what makes you so sure it wasn’t him? From what you’ve told us, and what we know of our own, he doesn’t exactly sound like the type you trust just on word alone,” Applejack asked, prompting a sigh from Princess Twilight.
“Well, I went and talked to him...”


* * *


	“Discord, we need to talk,” Princess Twilight said, simultaneously attempting to ward off some very annoying teapots.
“Oh? About what?” Discord mused. “Is it about the hideous curb appeal of your castle? Or maybe that mop you call a haircut?”
“No, it’s about some mutual frie-... acquaintances of ours,” she corrected.
“Hmm. You likely don’t mean Fluttershy, or you wouldn’t have cut yourself off from saying friends... It’s not about Derpy is it? I mean, she does always seem to get the mail on time. Wrinkled sure, but on time.” A random hand appeared and covered Twilight’s mouth as she was about to interrupt him. “No no, I can get it! Give me a second.” The draconequus hummed in thought for a few moments before he snapped a claw. “I’ve got it! You want to talk about Royal Guard Number Forty Eight!”
“No! It’s about those three colts you pulled in for the game!” Twilight finally managed to shout.
“Ah... yes, them... I wonder what they’ve been up to?” He wondered as he set about ironing his tail.
“They’ve shown up in the world on the other side of the mirror. Was it your doing?”
“While I’d love to interact with them again, I’m afraid they wouldn’t leave me in any more than at least eighty-nine pieces. So no, I swear on my friendship with Fluttershy I haven’t even checked in on them since the game ended and they went home,” Discord swore, holding up five right paws.


* * *


Applejack narrowed her eyes as the princess finished her little story. “Why do ah’ get the feeling you’ve heavily truncated that story?”
“Because I have.”
“An why’d you do that?”
“Because I spent an hour as a sofa.”
“Ah. Fair enough.”
“So if it’s not your version of Discord,” Science Twilight mused, “then who or what brought them here?” 
“Well,” Rarity said, “who do we know who can open portals between worlds, and that we’ve had to fight in the past?”
Slowly, all heads turned in one direction
Sunset blinked. “What?”
Princess Twilight sighed. “In the interest of ruling out the obvious; Sunset, did you do anything that could have brought them here?”
“No way! If I had, I would’ve sent them back as soon as Purple Heart fell on me.”
“Good. With that out of the way, who’s left?”
“There’s th’ Sirens,” Applejack offered. “Then again, Ah dunno if they’d be be powerful enough for somethin’ like this. It ain’t exactly in their wheelhouse, either.”
Sunset frowned. “Hey, as long as we’re ruling people out, what about our Twilight?”
Science Twilight waved her hands in front of her. “Don’t look at me. I learned my lesson after last time. Besides, I was trying to go places, not bring things here.”
“Well, who else is there?” Rainbow Dash said. “Anyone on your end that could do this, Princess?”
“Sure,” Princess Twilight said with a shrug, “but I can’t think of anyone who would mess with this world besides Discord. Everypony else is either reformed, banished, or reduced to their constituent magical parts.”
Science Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Reduced to what now?”
“Sombra was a weird exception.”
“So if it’s not anyone we know,” Fluttershy said, “then who could it possibly be?”
“Not to put a damper on this,” Science Twilight cut in, “but I’m more interested in why they’re here at all, and what makes them so different from those in our world. The version of Wits End in our world seemed like a completely different person than the one from another dimension.”
“How so?” Sunset asked.
“Well, him and friends weren’t… really a thing. I never saw him with anyone else while I was at Crystal Prep. Even when I did talk to him, he didn’t talk nearly as much as our Wits.”
“Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”
“Mmmmmm…”
“It’s a thing, that’s for certain,” Rainbow Dash commented. “But it also doesn’t mean much. They’re two different people. Of course there’s gonna be a difference.”
“But they share the same face, the same appearance,” Sci Twi pointed out. “Shouldn’t there be some similarity in terms of their personality? I mean, look at Princess Twi and I. We’re both scholars.”
“That’s just vocation, darling,” Rarity chided. “It seems to be true for all of us. I’m a fashion designer and so is the other Rarity. Rainbow Dash is an athlete both here and there. Same goes for the rest of the girls and their pony counterparts. It seems true for most individuals in both worlds: they share something, but not everything. Besides, we’ve only met the Wits End of both worlds. What about this world’s Purple Heart and Light Patch? Without having met them, we can’t fully compare the two versions.” Rarity took a sip from her cup.
The girls sat silently for a moment, blinking at the fashionista. The fashionable girl lowered her cup and finally noticed her watchers. “What?” she asked.
“I think Twilight may be rubbin’ off on ya,” Applejack wondered.
“Which one?” Sunset asked.
“Does it matter?” Rainbow snorted. “She just went all ‘scientific theory’ on us.”
“OOOH! Now I know why Light Patch is familiar to me!” Pinkie suddenly shouted, startling the other girls, but also drawing their attention.“I think I met this world's Light Patch! I helped organize a party for him and his family for when they moved in.”
“Yeah and?” Rainbow prompted skeptically.
“I only kind of met him for a little bit. I tried talking to him, but he was busy on his phone, so I figured I’d give him time and try again later, only he’d disappeared and I couldn’t find him in the party at all. I’d asked his parents and all they said was he’d only scheduled twenty minutes for the party,” Pinkie filled the others in. “I haven’t really ever seen him since.  Once or twice around town, but he always looked so busy, even when he wasn’t doing anything. So I kind of ignored him.”
“Seems we’re two for two on similarities,” Rainbow threw out, “I don’t suppose any of you have run into this world's Purple Heart huh?”
The girls all turned to look expectantly at the rainbow haired girl. Rainbow fidgeted slightly. “What?”
“Weeeeeell,” Science Twilight drew out the vowel, “considering you’re the resident athlete, I think we were all expecting you to be the one to speak up about this world’s Purple Heart. From what I heard, he’s enrolled at Daring Do’s School for Physically Gifted Youngsters. And seeing as that is primarily a physical education school, I’d have thought you’d have met him before on a sports field, if not afterwards.”
“Oh… Well, that would be true,” Rainbow Dash hummed, “if the sports teams for Canterlot High and Daring Do operated in the same district.”
There was a pause of silence as the other girls digested this factoid. Pinkie’s response was the most thought out.
“Say what now?”
Rainbow Dash sighed. “I could go into this long shpiel about the differences between sport districts, conferences, divisions, county lines, and countless other things. But the gist of it is that the only time a team from Canterlot High faces Daring Do actually play against each other is in a tournament.”
“And why haven’t you ever come face to face with this world’s Purple Heart?” Sunset asked.
Rainbow cringed. “Cuz he apparently only plays baseball.”
“So?”
“So in baseball tournaments, your opponent is usually based off of your seeding.”
“What’s seeding?” Pinkie asked.
“Basically, it’s where your team is ‘planted’ in the tournament bracket,” Rainbow Dash explained. “In tournament play, the teams with the best win/loss records are seeded higher. Since the baseball teams for Canterlot and Daring Do have the best win/loss records in each tournament we enter, we’re seeded higher. You following?”
There was a shuffle of shaking and nodding heads, all with blank eyes.
Rainbow sighed. “Seeding is a way to prevent the best teams from meeting until the championships.” She waited a beat. When none of the other girls said anything, she grimaced. “Canterlot usually gets knocked out before the championships. Meaning we’ve never played against each other. At least since I started high school...”
“And ya’ve never thought ta watch his team play? Isn’t that something ya athletes do? Scope out th’ opposition?” Applejack snorted.
It was Applejack’s turn to get stared at. She sighed. “What now?”
“I think Rainbow’s rubbing off on you,” Pinkie commented.
“I’m actually kinda embarrassed I hadn’t thought of that,” Rainbow Dash admitted, rubbing her head and grinning abashedly.
“Does our world’s Purple Heart play soon?” Science Twilight asked. “Because if he does, you may want to take her Purple Heart-” she nodded at Princess Twilight, “-and go check him out.”
“Hey, what about your versions?” Pinkie asked suddenly looking at Princess Twilight. “What are they like?” Princess Twilight looked at Pinkie in surprise for a few moments before she replied.
“I… don’t know.” Princess Twilight frowned. “Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in Equestria before.”
“Maybe they look different?” Pinkie continued. “I mean, we don’t look exactly like our Ponyverse versions... Probably.”
“Sure, but I saw them as ponies back in Discord’s game world. They had pretty… memorable appearances.” The purple girl stroked her chin thoughtfully. “It’s possible that they’re outside of Ponyville or Canterlot…”
“THERE’S PLACES BESIDES PONYVILLE AND CANTERLOT?!”
Twilight leaned away from the shocked party girl. “...I suppose I could go looking for them back in Equestria. If anything, they should be more like the versions native to this world, rather than those three.”
“So you’re saying we need to spy on the boys in this world?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Like, super spy sneaking around?”
Science Twilight nodded. “I’d rather avoid anything that could get us in trouble for stalking, but it could help to figure out why they’re so different.”
“Then how do we wanna do this?” Rainbow Dash asked. “It’d make sense if I look into Purple Heart. Checking out the competition and all that.”
“If Light Patch is such a hard worker,” Applejack said, “then chances are he works someplace mah family supplies. Ah can look into him.” She turned to Science Twilight. “y'all wanna spah on Wits?”
Twilight shook her head. “The Wits End in this world already knows me. He’d be able to pick me out quickly.” She thought for a moment. “I should probably go with you to watch Light Patch. It’s unlikely anyone at the places he’d work would know me.”
“Fluttershy should go after Wits End,” Princess Twilight said quickly.
The pink-haired girl jumped in her seat. “Wh-why me?”
“Trust me,” the princess said with a wry grin. “If the Wits in this world is anything like the one I know, you’ll be the perfect distraction if he sees you.”
“...What?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Rarity sighed. “I suppose I’ll go with Rainbow and look for Purple Heart.”
Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “You? You’re like the furthest from the kind of person that would go looking for sports people. Why would you want to look for him?”
The fashionista flipped her magnificent hair over one shoulder. “Well, there’s certain aesthetic aspects of his that compliment my own.”
The sportsgirl’s expression went blank. “It’s just because you’re both have purple on you, isn’t it.”
“It’s not the only reason…”
“I guess that means Pinkie’s going after Wits End,” Sunset said, leaning back in her seat.
“Oh no,” Princess Twilight said. “I’ve got a special mission for her. You’re spying on Wits with Fluttershy.”
“What?” Sunset stood up, slamming both palms on the table. “There’s no way I’m gonna deal with two of him! What could you want Pinkie to do that I can’t do?”
“I want Pinkie to keep Just Duty busy.”
Sunset paused. “What? Why?”
Both Twilights shifted forward. “It’s simple,” Princess Twilight said. “Everytime Light Patch goes out and it looks like he’s going to find something out…”
“Officer Duty shows up, thinking it’s the native version of Light Patch,” Science Twilight continued. “If Just Duty found out we were spying on Light Patch…”
“We’d be written up for stalking,” Princess Twilight said, “and he’d likely tell the native Light Patch and his family.”
“Freaky twin thing aside,” Sunset grumbled, “why have Pinkie keep Just Duty distracted?”
“Can you think of anyone better at being distracting than Pinkie Pie?” Both Twilights asked simultaneously.
Sunset Shimmer’s mouth formed a thin line as she turned to where Pinkie was sitting. The party girl was busy juggling the salt and pepper shakers, the container of napkins, and a rubber chicken that had appeared from who-knows-where. “Fine,” she sighed. “I can’t argue with that logic.” The two Twilights grinned and shared a high five.
“I’ll go back to Equestria and see if I can find the pony versions of them,” Princess Twilight said as she stood up. “When you learn about each of them, let me know via text.” She paused for a beat. “Get it? Text? Because you write in the book?”
“Yep,” Sunset deadpanned.
“Did you get it?”
“Oh, I got it alright.” Sunset stood. “I’ll go let the boys know the plan.”
The girls still at the table watched as the red-haired girl walked out the door. After a moment, Pinkie Pie piped up. “I don’t get it.”


* * *


“And that’s when I turned her into a couch!” Discord cackled loudly, the yellow and pink sock puppet on his claw joining in as well. “Ah, those were good times a couple of minutes ago.” He looked back at the puppet, which stared blankly at him with its button eyes. “What’s that, sock puppet Fluttershy? Do I actually know of anything that could be dangerous in that world?”
With an audible scoff, the Draconequus pulled the sock off and tossed it over his shoulder, walking away from the resulting explosion. “That’s ridiculous. The only threats I could possibly know about in that world would be ones that have crossed dimensions. And the only thing I know that can cross dimensions is me!” He thought for a moment. “And Twilight. And that Sunset Baconhair girl. Maybe Princess Sunbutt. And I’m willing to bet that Sunswirl guy made a spell for it too.” He frowned. “Now that I think about it, crossing dimensions is pretty popular.”
“Still!” Discord took a seat across a five-seat sofa. “Not like there’s any villainous types who’d be doing such a thing. Heck, even the villains I made can’t do that.” He stopped. “Except that one who may or may not have done that. What was his name? I forget, but he certainly Bael’d out of being a villain as soon as he could, so he’s probably no threat.” He leaned his lion’s paw against his chin, drumming his claws against the armrest. “The paladin pony’s still in that game world, and I put the other one in a pickle jar for safekeeping like a responsible adult.” He smiled, sparing a glance at the glass jar that held an angrily vibrating orb of light. “Well, with that taken care of, it’s time for a celebratory nap!” He stretched out across the couch, and proceeded to make exaggerated snoring noises.
...Until he stopped and rolled over. “Alright, fine!” he shouted at nothing. “I’ll check the other world and make sure no-pony who's supposed to be there isn’t missing! Stupid conscience....” With a snap of his fingers, Discord summoned two large tomes, and opened them to the same section: Cast and Characters.
“Let’s see,” he muttered, running a claw down the two lists. “Amber Glitter, Bugsy, Mugsy, Boomer, yadda yadda… Never did give that bandit chief a name, but whatever. There’s the alicorn princesses, who can stay in there thank you very much. Spider queen lady’s still there. The bunnies are all happy and such. That should be every-” He stopped. 
There was one name missing.
“That can’t be good,” Discord murmured. “Who even was that?” He flipped to the page number next to the name and scanned the page. “Ohhh, I remember this one!” He stopped, the gears in his brain turning. Literally perhaps.
“Uh oh.”