Being closer to the door than Twilight, Applejack made it to Fluttershy first; not even worrying about how much she was crushing her dainty body by doing so, she embraced her in a tight bear hug, glad to feel her warm yellow coat brushing against hers. She felt relief flooding through her in great waves as she became aware of Fluttershy’s heart beating against her own. “Oh, Celestia,” said Applejack, almost hysterical with delight, “I can’t believe you’re here. We thought-”
“-Um, rumours of my death and all that,” replied Fluttershy, doing her best to wriggle free of Applejack’s inflexible grasp without hurting her feelings. She appreciated the sentiment, but earth ponies were already naturally very strong and years of hard work on the farm had only made her even more robust. The hug was nice, but she quite liked her bones where they were. She cast her eyes over her friends, her broad grin only increasing. “It’s really good to see you guys again. It’s been … way too long.”
“What d’you mean by that?” Twilight asked quizzically. She studied Fluttershy with a curious expression, though there was more to it than that, but both Fluttershy and Applejack had so far missed the slightly darker cast to her muzzle. “We just saw you this morning.”
By the light of Selene, it was a little tricky to make her out properly, but it was Fluttershy, right? The bashful smile, the trailing mane of pink underneath a battered and threadbare Stetson, and the warm glow to her pale blue eyes. There was something that just seemed a bit … off, though. Twilight’s scrutiny became more open and her horn ignited. She levitated the lantern over to them and held it particularly close to Fluttershy. The extra light allowed her to see the crow’s feet developing at the corners of her eyes, the flecks of grey streaking her mane, and the brittle look to her primary flight feathers. If she hadn’t known any better, Twilight would’ve assumed that she was looking at a pony who was a good twenty or thirty years older than she knew Fluttershy to be. “Applejack, step back!” she said acidly. “That isn’t Fluttershy.”
“Sugarcube, what’s gotten into you?” asked Applejack, too surprised to follow Twilight’s command right away. “Of course it’s Fl-”
“-Look at her properly.”
Fluttershy, for her own part, continued to smile; if she was offended by how her friends were acting, she was stoic enough not to show it. She allowed Applejack to peer at her intently, not offering any comment one way or another. Instead, she kept her gaze level with Twilight’s. Her horn was brimming with magical energy, illuminating the castle’s walls with veiny purple light. She doesn’t like being told what to believe. She has to figure it out for herself that I’m not a Changeling, or a Siren, or even Discord playing some kind of ridiculous prank on her.
“Who are you? Really, I mean?” asked Twilight coldly. Both her earlier heartache and premature sense of joy had been roundly buried underneath a cold, diamond-hard layer of practicality that came with the territory of being a princess and a protector of Equestria. Applejack, her own examination of the impostor concluded, seemed to be reaching much the same verdict and she backed away slowly from the pseudo-Fluttershy, dropping to an alert crouch, her teeth bared in anger. “And do you have something to do with the disappearance of the real Fluttershy?” added Twilight.
Taking off the hat and letting it fall by its cord around her neck, Fluttershy smoothed out her frizzy mane. She’d been aware that this could happen, and she was doing her best not to be angry or bitter about the interrogation; instead, as she’d done with her animals so often, she tried to see it from their point of view. As far as Applejack is concerned, she saw me explode not too long ago. They’re both panicked and nervous. “Both of you know me so well, I think you’d be able to tell if I was lying or not,” she said with much-practised patience. “I realise that things are a little weird right now, but I’ll try to explain.”
“How about you start by telling us something that only the real Fluttershy would know?” said Applejack. It would be much too easy to let the impostor ramble on about basic information like names of parents and easy stuff that anypony could find out with a bit of digging, but something deeper, something that only the real Fluttershy could possibly know, would at least make for a stronger case.
Thinking for a moment, Fluttershy’s eyes darted back and forth as she considered the options, before her expression suddenly brightened as something occurred to her. “A few months ago, we were in Las Pegasus to solve a friendship problem at Gladmane’s resort. At first, you thought it was something to do with Flim and Flam having had a falling out, and so you flatly refused to help them after all the trouble they’d caused us in the past.”
Twilight shot a sideways glance at Applejack, who nodded. “Yeah, that happened. We were the only ponies in the room at the time, so unless this is Flim and Flam pulling one of their scams ...” If this was an impostor, then they’d gone above and beyond the call of duty to learn some random detail like this just to fool them. “If it helps, I don’t think she’s lying.” Applejack might have been the Element of Honesty, but she’d had to explain to many ponies that it didn’t mean she was able to detect lies as such. It was more that she got a sense of when a truth was being told. It might not always be the whole, unvarnished truth, but it was usually enough to get a read on a pony’s intentions. Suffice to say, Applejack was starting to believe that this pony wasn’t dangerous.
That didn’t mean she thought it was Fluttershy, though, and Applejack said as much to Twilight. “I mean,” she added helpfully, “I could be wrong about that.”
For a further few moments, Twilight allowed the energy to flow from her body and into her horn; just because this doppelgänger wasn’t lying, or didn’t think it was lying, didn’t necessarily mean anything. Too often, they’d ran into problems by being trusting, and she didn’t want a repeat of incidents like what had happened at the school. That said, some indefinable feeling told her that this was Fluttershy. Maybe it was their connection through the Elements of Harmony? Perhaps it was a more subtle sense of always knowing who your friends are, no matter how they might have changed? Finally, Twilight made a decision and allowed her horn to go dark. “What happened?” she asked, just the slightest edge in her voice to show that she still wasn’t a hundred percent certain. “With the storm, with you, with … everything?”
Had the lightning bolt somehow prematurely aged her? It didn’t seem possible, but they’d encountered stranger magical side-effects out there than this, she supposed.
Fluttershy smiled happily, glad that Twilight’s famed ability to keep an open mind wasn’t going to let her down now. “I’ll be happy to answer any and all of your questions, but-” she extended her frail wings and shook them out falteringly “-it’s one heck of a flight from Canterlot to Ponyville, so would you mind if we did this whilst sitting down and having a fresh pot of coffee, maybe?”
“You drink coffee now?” asked Applejack sceptically.
With a wry look on her face, Fluttershy padded across the threshold and into the castle proper. “I’ve been drinking coffee since before the two of you were even born, I’ll have you know.”
Applejack and Twilight simply looked at each other askance.