Twilight narrowed her eyes; up until moments ago her day had been going so well. Spike had opened the shop; so she got to sleep in. The coffee machine didn’t crap out. And out of the several dozen ponies that bumbled their way through the front door, almost none of them had browsed.
No, by all accounts the day was actually bearably enjoyable. Then shit stain junior came in faulting that Twilight wasn’t allowed to slit her throat, and forced her to work. Then she had to close the shop probably for the next few days. And now there was whatever the hell horror-story-harlot wanted to do with her.
Out of all the ponies Twilight had to deal with regularly, she probably respected Rainbow Dash the least. Who else was just as stupid as the rest of the slop in Partyville and only had a mind of her own because she decided to pick up literacy at some point? Plus Twilight couldn’t even enjoy taking advantage of Rainbows willingness to do what she said because the pegasus was too busy bugging her about the latest story by her hack of a favourite author.
Twilight stared at the blue pony in front of her, the one expectantly awaiting a response. A part of her wanted to never say anything, just stare at Rainbow silently for entirely too long, and see how long it’d take her to crack. But unfortunately Twilight was voluntold to find some clone expert the next district over.
“Another you?” Twilight deadpanned, “You mean a clone?”
Rainbow Dash looked confused for a moment before it seemed to click in her head. “Oh! Yeah! A clone! Why didn’t I think of that? It’s like in Dark Alley’s book: the Other-“
“Yeah, yeah,” Applebloom interrupted, “Just like the book, go outside and Twilight will take care of it.” Rainbow Dash nodded and ran out of the book store, violently ringing the bell above the door. Applebloom waited a few seconds before looking over at Twilight, “You think she’s getting dumber?”
Twilight saw the smirk on Applebloom’s face, she could almost hear the ‘heh’ that awaited her response. Twilight merely narrowed her eyes though. “The only two things she’s getting are in my way and on my nerves.”
Applebloom burst out laughing as Twilight walked to the front door of the shop. “She’s not the only one on my shit list, Applebloom,” Twilight thought as she summoned her keys. “She’s further down than your name.” Hearing the jingling noise of the keys Twilight was impatiently waving in the air, Applebloom quit laughing long enough to take a hint and leave Oakfield’s.
The wind was gently blowing and birds could be heard overhead. Twilight followed the earth pony out the front door and made sure to lock both locks she had installed. She still wondered if a third would have been better, but Spike was probably right when he told her that conventional security wasn’t something to get too worked up over. The locals in Partyville were either too dumb to consider breaking a rule, too caught up in their act of being stupid, or too powerful to even consider stopping with a simple lock.
The locks gave her piece of mind though, if nothing else: bars on the windows, deadbolts on the doors, a gun behind the cash register, and on top of the bars, most windows were boarded up. All of it made her feel like she had a place to relax and drop her defences a bit; Important as they were to keep up, it did get exhausting some days.
Triple checking that the door was in fact locked, Twilight turned around to greet the day. The first thing she saw was two Rainbow Dashes, which told her that her scowl was most assuredly deserved. “Of all the asinine…”
The Rainbow Dash to the left was how Twilight remembered her: dumb look on her face, probably obsessed with some new book, annoying, barely able to hold a conversation that didn’t revolve around paperbacks. She was annoyingly taller than Twilight, self-conscious, trying to be smart if nothing else, and potentially somebody worth her time.
The pony to the right however was undoubtedly a clone. From a distance it looked like Rainbow Dash, a blue pegasus with a prism of hair colours, it even sort of stood the same way as the original to the left. That’s where the similarities ended though. Being a clone, it was roughly seventy or so percent smaller than the original. It also lacked the spark of Sight that all cognizant creatures had.
Applebloom stepped back and watched Twilight study the clone, while Rainbow Dash herself nodded, “See, Twilight? She looks just like me. She’s a clone like you said.”
“Shut up.” Twilight berated the pegasus before turning back to the clone. It didn’t seem to focus on anything besides Dash herself. “Can you tell me your name?” Twilight asked, sounding close to a soothing tone, her best attempt at one anyway.
In response the clone looked at Twilight, or at least in her direction, there was no real way to tell if the thing even knew it was being addressed. It didn’t speak, and instead the noise that came out of its mouth was a whinny. It then immediately lowered its head and started eating the grass on the ground. Twilight heard Applebloom laugh again.
Rainbow Dash took a few steps away from it, “And it keeps making that weird noise.”
“It’s the sound our ancestors made. And the fact that you don’t know that earns my pity.” Twilight thought as she watched the clone sidle up beside Rainbow Dash, closing the space made. “Right, well I can definitely confirm it’s a clone.”
“Leave it to the blue one to bring our problem to us.” Applebloom snickered as she stood up, having sat down at some point in the last minute. “Well you’re the guinea pig here Twilight, how are you going to deal with it?”
Twilight internally growled as she dragged her hoof down her face. She was supposed to be the expert. Want it or not, she had years of experience and knowledge. The fact that this stupid girl had the stupid Whisperer giving her a stupid advantage was stupid! If the Whisperer’s last host didn’t die, Applebloom would be just another kid going about her life.
If Twilight ever found a Nomad, she’d use her wish to make time travel possible just to beat the shit out of the jackass that went and killed the last Whisperer’s body. But she shook her head, escapism was the dumbest thing somebody could do, especially in the midst of a clone epidemic. “For starters,” Twilight spoke through gritted teeth, “I’ll track it back to where it came from and destroy the chain upward unti-“
Suddenly, Applebloom shot forward and chopped the clone on the back of the neck, knocking it out.
“Whoa!” Rainbow Dash shouted, jumping back.
Twilight took in Applebloom’s sudden movement with a cocktail of grogginess and anger she didn’t expect. Why didn’t she do anything? The clone was about to Split of all things, why didn’t she do anything about it? Worse, why did she let Applebloom take care of it?
With the clone knocked out, pausing it’s mitosis, Applebloom stared directly at Twilight, livid. “How stupid are you?! You almost let it Split, what kind of Hunter let’s a clone SPLIT?!”
Twilight looked at what could almost have been a disaster and then narrowed her eyes at Applebloom. Her reaction time may have been slow, but she would have doine something about it, “Maybe if I didn’t have a child breathing down my fucking neck, I could have done something about it sooner.”
“Done what? Glared it to death? You’re the worst Hunter in St. Orangeberg!”
Twilight stared daggers directly into Applebloom’s eyes, “And how the fuck would you know? How many Hunters even come out to this shithole? Partyville is filled with the dumbest people I’ve ever met, how does anyone with half a brain even stand living here?”
Applebloom stomped a hoof into the sidewalk, “Is Panhandlershot ANY better? You come from a place where stabbing is currency, you’re no better than anyone else around you.” She threw up her hooves in fake alarm, “Oh no, don’t take my knife Twilight, How will I pay to eat out of the garbage can today?”
A purple hoof stopped immediately in front of Applebloom’s face. Twilight wanted to flatten her into paste, to rip her in half and feed her to several rabid dogs, or whatever else, just to shut her the hell up. But no, fuck Twilight right, she just had to accept more abuse until the end of time, what even the fuck?
“Um… Twilight?”
At the sound of the uncertain voice, Twilight looked at Rainbow Dash, absolutely not willing to deal with any more shit. “What?” She asked as curtly as possible, almost sounding like a direct order more than a question.
“Me, I… um, the clone of me is waking up.”
Twilight looked at the clone and realized it had half open eyes, and was struggling to catch it’s bearings and stand. She didn’t want a repeat of seconds earlier, so she wanted to deal with it quickly, before it could continue Splitting.
She placed her hooves firmly on the ground, being in a bit of a hurry concentration would have to be forced. The air around the clone started to pick up a slight magenta hue as Twilight’s horn glowed to match. Rainbow Dash stepped back as the clone was lifted from the ground, being engulfed in a swirling sphere of light pinks and purples.
The sphere remained transparent enough that one could see the clone inside being compressed. The sphere compressed faster and faster until it was tightly wrapped around the clone. Quickly losing form and cohesion, the clone looked frightened as any trapped animal would. The air continued to condense until the clone was nothing more than a small sphere of its own, no longer holding form and being a sky blue ball held tightly in one spot.
Twilight was having a hard time holding the spell together, it required high levels of concentration to execute properly. And she was still pretty pissed off at Applebloom. As soon as the clone ball compressed to the size of a marble, Twilight found it almost impossible to finish the final step and purge the damn thing. And all shecould see in her head was the smirk on that stupid little bitch’s face.
A spark came off Twilight’s horn, popping loudly and suddenly, which startled her, and all at once the clone expanded outwards, exploding in all directions. Twilight was too spent of magic to pull up a shield, but she could easily dodge out of the way of the blue clone mass. She rolled to a stop off to the side, thankfully avoiding any of the mass. She looked over at Applebloom who was far enough away to avoid getting any on her, but Rainbow Dash wasn’t so lucky.
Fortunately it was hard to tell, because it was the exact same colour as her coat, but Twilight could make out quite a lot of clone mass on Dash. Getting up from where she’d dodged Twilight looked around at the surrounding mess.
Blue clone gunk was everywhere, and it smelled faintly like dead ladybug. The nearby ponies weren’t ghosts acting like idiots were smiling and stared at the scene. Twilight mused that if they were more intelligent, they’d likely be curious what had happened, akin to a child. But instead they just mindlessly stared at the splatter for a few seconds before moving on.
Twilight’s musing was interrupted by Applebloom laughing again. Turning to see what was so funny, Twilight saw Rainbow Dash looking at the clone mass covering her, she still looked dazed.
“That was awesome!” Rainbow declared, smiling, “Can you blow up more clones, Twilight?”
Instead of answering, Twilight studied Applebloom with a self-satisfied smirk. The little earth pony was disappointed that Rainbow Dash didn’t hate being slimed.
But almost as quickly as the disappointment came, it disappeared, and in its place was a calculated looking expression, one of scheming. Her pupils darted several directions in quick succession before she took on a jovial aura.
“You know, Rainbow Dash,” Applebloom commented as she walked over to the pegasus, specifically avoiding stepping in any of the blue puddle, “If you want to blow up clones, there’s none better than the Alpha Clone.”
Rainbow Dash turned to her with a curious and somewhat hopeful expression, “Really?”
“Yeah, if you blow that one up, it’ll be huge! Getting goo everywhere.”
Curiosity was replaced for a moment with hesitation, “Okay, why do you know that though?”
Twilight raised an eyebrow as she studied Applebloom, lying was interesting when you were watching it in action. Especially when questions came into the picture. Twilight may not have liked Rainbow Dash, but she had to give credit to asking an actual question.
“I’ve been talking to Twilight about it, we discussed it earlier.”
Rainbow Dash responded with a simple nod, “Okay, that makes sense.”
“Good, so what Twilight needs you to do is go find it in the forest outside of town so she can blow it up for you.”
With a salute and a flap of her wings, Rainbow Dash was gone, only dripping a small amount of clone mass. Twilight and Applebloom watched for a short while before Twilight turned to the only other pony still with her.
“She may be a waste of oxygen,” The unicorn spoke, cutting the silence, “But it was still pretty rude to send her off to die.”
Applebloom dismissed the comment. “She won’t die, the forest isn’t that dangerous.”
Twilight briefly considered how casual the outer district locals were with being outside the city. They seemed pretty nonchalant with leaving the only civilization for entire weeks of travel in every direction. But she wasn’t able to get far before Applebloom shrugged and motioned left down the road.
“C’mon, we have work to do.”
Twilight rolled her eyes but nodded, They walked away from Oakfield’s.