It was finally evening, and this long Monday morning would soon close out in the House of Sparkle. Lights were dimming, baths were drawing, and glasses of water were being measured out for ideal nighttime-hydration levels by the matriarch, Twilight Velvet, who incidentally had to come up with a fourth set of everything in the kitchen all over again and wasn’t panicking or stressing out at all, thank you very much.
Much like with Velvet, the entire family was a little stressed over the last few days’ occurrences. Yet oddly, none less so than Twilight Sparkle herself, who lay on her bed, tap-tapping away at her laptop like nothing at all was amiss.
She looked over her open document, journal.word. The word-document wasn’t her scientific journal, nor her journal where she recorded her magical theories, her dreams, or her organization journal. It was her personal one, a diary. And she was filling it right up with this past weekend’s madness.
Madness. A year ago, she’d have written off everything in here as madness. But, give or take some experience with true friendship, and a little more with real magic, Twilight was actually strangely calm despite everything she was putting down in this document.
Over a week ago, it had been her dream to visit the mysterious land of Equestria, a world where pony… yes, pony versions of herself, her friends, and her family all lived in a magical kingdom ruled by immortal alicorns who controlled the very sun and moon and stars themselves. The realm where all the magic in the human world came from. The realm where her dear friend Sunset Shimmer, a unicorn-turned-human was born.
And now… well, Equestria was still a magical paradise and she’d give anything to stay longer… but she also had just spent their long weekend holiday causing time paradoxes with the legendary Starswirl the Bearded, helped convince the renegade twin of the Spirit of Chaos to redeem himself again, and defeated her dark, magically corrupted self, Midnight Sparkle twice before the entire multiverse was destroyed.
Suffice to say, she was tired when she got back to school this morning… only to have an explosion of Chaos Magic spread madness and random transformations all over Canterlot City, not only potentially exposing the secret of magic to the wider world, but overthrowing her own conceptions about reality itself!
And worst of all…! They’d canceled school that day. Principal Celestia said it was to give students a day to recover from Disqord’s (yes, with a ‘Q’) chaos and remember how to walk without hooves again. A thoroughly distressing notion, Twilight thought, to miss out on a productive day of lessons and examinations…
And yet, it wasn’t all bad. Out of all this, she’d not only gained a sense of peace within herself and the self-esteem not to hold herself too closely in competition with her alicorn Princess self from across the mirror, but also…
Her bed suddenly shifted, like a weight had landed hard next to Twilight, sending the high school senior tumbling through the air and onto the floor, narrowly missing her sleeping dog Spike.
The dog leapt to one side, “Watch out!” he cried very uncharacteristically of dogs, yet wholly in-character with himself.
Twilight landed hard on her backside, her glasses almost flying off her face. She quickly adjusted them back into position, and then gazed upwards…
At Midnight Sparkle. It was strange, even uncanny to see her in the flesh. They looked so near to identical it sometimes felt like she was walking about with a clone. Midnight’s skin was darker than her own, a rich lavender shade, and her eyes were that electric blue hue of aqua. Finally, paired with the pink also found in Twilight’s, Midnight had an aqua stripe running through her long, flowing hair.
She hadn’t looked this way in the mental plane, where Midnight and Twilight had once warred for control. There, the tulpa had a pair of hawkish wings, and was clad in an aggressive dress that allowed her full mobility as she strove to drive Twilight to the brink of madness and despair.
Yet a tulpa, a separate personality hewn from Twilight’s own, she was not. Now, she was Twilight’s twin sister. Reformed, if you could believe it.
And completely insane.
“Once more,” she cackled wickedly, “I have proven the supreme sibling!”
Twilight gaped, “Midnight? Wha…?”
“I claim this bed as my own! You have lost, dear Twilight, and forevermore there shall be only the hard carpet of defeat to soak with your bitter tears!”
Twilight sighed. This again. Midnight seemed… well, whereas Twilight was always on the bashful and withdrawn side, a natural consequence she supposed of her years being bullied and traumatized against friendship over at Crystal Prep Academy, Midnight was a natural stage presence. She exuded confidence and a sort of graceful violence that Twilight at times couldn’t help but admire… and other times found extraordinarily annoying. It was like living with Trixie Lulamoon in ‘Magician mode’ all the time.
In short, Midnight was a huge ham.
“Shining Armor already said he was bringing over the spare mattress and frame for you. You don’t have to take my bed!” she growled back.
Midnight huffed, “It is mine, by right of conquest! Besides, you said ‘what’s mine is yours’!”
Spike sighed as he trotted out the door, “Okay, this is my life now. A dog house would be kinda nice at this point…”
The bespectacled girl shook her head and stood up, “That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up my bed without a fight!”
Midnight grinned viciously, “Just try it, Twily!” she sneered Twilight’s… their brother’s nickname for Twilight, “We’ll see who’s the superior sibling… if you dare!”
Which was right when Shining Armor himself knocked on the open door. “Um… am I interrupting something?”
Twilight aimed a joking scowl at her new sister and said, “Not really. Midnight’s just excited to be getting her own bed. Isn’t she?”
The girl sitting on Twilight’s bed raised an eyebrow, “Why would I be? I have this one,” and gave a little smirk.
“Well, glad you two are sorting it out,” said Shining as he hefted several bits of metal, “I got a frame here, plus a mattress and some sheets and blankets for you.”
Midnight sighed, “Please tell me the sheets aren’t pink,” she tugged at the borrowed pink and yellow pajamas she wore now, “I’d bet money Rarity would be horrified by this stuff on me.”
“Well, you can ask her about it tomorrow when she’s helping you with your wardrobe,” Twilight said, a little grumpy at the way her fashion was being criticized.
Shining couldn’t quite smile at the situation just yet. Becoming a brother unexpectedly, again, was still something he was working through. So, he decided to keep things brief, “Where’d you want this for tonight?”
Midnight raised one hand and pointed at the metal frame in Shining’s hands, “Don’t worry, I will take care of it.”
Nothing happened.
“Huh,” she looked at her hand. Seemed perfectly normal. “Odd. Let’s try again,” and she pointed her hand towards the mattress she could see leaning up against the hallway wall.
Again. Nothing happened.
“Um,” Shining Armor didn’t know exactly what was supposed to happen, but with all this weird magical stuff going on he had a good guess it’d be something like that. If whatever that is ever happened.
“Midnight,” Twilight’s voice was touched with worry and concern, “Don’t panic.”
“My magic,” Midnight stared in horror at her hands, “It… it’s gone!” Her breathing sped up, becoming shallow. Midnight threw her eyes about, trying to catch the tell-tale signs that this was all a dream. Tearing in the environment, or shadows not casting correctly. Maybe Princess Luna had trapped her in a nightmare? Could she do that? If so, she was getting better…
Her eyes flew up to Twilight. It… it was her, wasn’t it? She still had…
“You…” Midnight snarled, “You had something to do with this!”
“Hey now…!” Shining tried to step in.
Twilight shook her head vigorously, “No, Midnight. We…”
But Midnight would not be interrupted, “You tricked me! When we split, you found a way to take all the magic. You decided you needed insurance, just in case Midnight turned on you!” A wetness began to build behind her eyes, “You never trusted me! You never…”
Her breath caught in her chest. Twilight wasn’t looking at her like… her eyes were also…
Curse humans and their eyes. Midnight had hoped all her tears were burned away the moment Twilight had become her all those months ago…
She was so far into her own head that Midnight didn’t register at first that her… sister had taken her shoulders in hand. “Midnight,” she whispered, Shining looking on with a confused expression just edging into genuine worry, “I promise, I didn’t have anything to do with you losing your magic. But humans don’t have a normal way to use Equestrian magic, not unless they have an artifact from across the mirror, like our geodes,” she absent-mindedly touched the purple gemstone at her neck as she said this.
There was no thought, nothing rational. All instinct. She… Midnight needed magic. It was literally the first thing she’d consciously thought about when she’d been born. All consuming, all-needing, all-thirsting… she needed it.
Midnight Sparkle lunged for the geode.
“Wait…” Twilight tried to hold out one arm to block her sister’s charge, but as they touched there was a singular moment, lost to Shining but clear to the sisters themselves, where the pendant shimmered… and Twilight’s fingers appeared to sink into Midnight’s shoulder…
Shining Armor, a young and fit member of the Canterlot City Police Department, had years of training to fall back on in situations like this, when crises erupted suddenly and action was needed to stop a fight before it became serious. He’d been born for such work; he had the instincts.
His training and instincts utterly failed him now, as the white-hot flash of magical light exploded in the center of his sisters’ room, flinging him back into the hallway. Had random explosions not been a regular occurrence in the Sparkle household, their parents would probably have done more than note the noise complaint for later demerit.
Shining’s head swam for a couple of seconds, but then, his training kicked in. Stunned only a moment, Shining leapt back to his feet and rolled up to the door frame, keeping himself out of line of sight of the bedroom.
He peaked around the door, “Twily, are you… alright?”
There was a light amount of smoke in the room, wafting up from the carpet where that six-pointed star of Twilight’s had been burned into the center of the carpet, with seven smaller stars surrounding it.
And sitting in the middle of the star, rubbing her head and moaning irritably, was Midnight Sparkle. Yet… she didn’t quite fit the description Shining had got from the other girls. Her wings weren’t so… hawkish? And her clothes weren’t as lurid as he’d heard (thankfully!).
She seemed to notice this as well. “What!? HMidow didahw you an?” her words tumbled out like a traffic jam that, in Shining’s opinion, would have taken hours to clear.
She tried again, “TwMidnlight, stahpwho ungi…”
When she growled to herself it almost sounded like two voices. She slapped one hand over her mouth, which continued to grumble and bite around it. One black wing slapped the bookshelf next to her, one leg scuffed along the carpet. It was like watching a young woman go to war against herself.
Finally, the free hand reached up… and snapped its fingers, sending out a flicker of that eerie electric-flame. Instantly, her horn lit up with aqua light, and a familiar voice rang out from it.
“Midnight! Stop whatever you’re doing and… listen to me?” Every vocalization caused another flicker of light from the horn. “Huh… how’d you do that?”
The girl pulled her hand away from her mouth, “Ventriloquism spell. I assigned your speech to the horn, since humans have distressingly few redundant vocal cords.”
“Wait,” Twilight said with a measure of skepticism, “Did you trap me in your horn!?”
Midnight, Shining decided to just call the physical body that, shook her head, “No, we still share a body, I just changed where your vocals…”
She finally noticed the body situation. She looked down at herself, and began to check out individual parts, first her hands, then wings, then the contents of her own face.
“Did… did you know that was going to happen?” Twilight asked.
Midnight stood up, wobbly enough for Shining to rush over and catch hold of her arms. “Easy there!” he said.
“Mirror!” both voices shouted at once, though Twilight’s came back with a, “Please and thank you!”
Shining stared for only a few more seconds before running straight out the door. He returned moments later, a small hand-mirror with him. As he offered it to… his sister, she scoffed in Midnight’s voice.
“Really? That little thing?”
“Thanks, Shiny,” the horn flared gratefully, “Though I have to agree. We could have used a larger mirror…”
Midnight nodded, “Got it.” She then reached back with the mirror and hurled it into the small writing desk Twilight had set next to her bed. The mirror…
Burst into blue light as it connected, instantly transforming into a vanity-mirror atop the desk. Shining said nothing, resigned to his position as witness to these strange events.
Twilight stopped mid-gasp as she saw the mirror fly, now whispering at the sight, “Oh… I didn’t know we could do that.”
The sisters managed to walk mostly with a normal gait, both starting to realize they needed to coordinate to make this body do anything. They approached the mirror, Midnight commenting as they did so, “I managed to snag a few spells from Princess Twilight when she and Luna tried to banish me from your nightmares. That one was going to be a birthday gift for her Rarity.”
“You did what!?” Twilight shouted in a tinny, static-laced voice, then dropped to an inquisitive mumble, “How could…? That does sound like a nice… Instant Spell Memorization… I keep forgetting you could do that…”
Midnight chuckled, “If I wasn’t trying to drive you mad at the time, I might have been able to glean more from them, but here we are.”
Shining frowned at this, but said nothing. This whole night was about as mad as could be, and he didn’t feel like jumping in any more than he already had to.
The sisters finally reached the mirror on rubbery legs, and gasped. She… they were different than before. The girl who looked back at them did indeed have Midnight’s coloring, a darker shade of lavender for skin, as well as that streak of aqua running alongside the pink in her hair, despite it being long and straight like the Princess’s hair had been. She even had the flaming aqua aura around her eyes, but the similarities stopped there.
She had Twilight’s eyes, for one thing. And her wings were smaller, and shaped like Twilight’s were whenever she ‘Ponied Up’, though they still retained the black color of Midnight’s own. The combined girl reached up to feel the pony-ears which also had appeared atop her head.
Well, that was all fine then. Twilight and Midnight had been ponies… or, a pony enough times to not find that so strange. What was the most shocking change however…
“What are we wearing?” Midnight snorted, definitely not humorously.
It was almost the same outfit Twilight had been transforming into for a while now, the usual sky-blue long blouse replaced with something nearly-identical, but a bright and shining gold color.
“Hmmm,” Twilight thought, “It… somewhat resembles the outfits Princess Twilight wears.”
Princess Twilight. Equestria. The magic lessons she’d promised. Midnight felt a rush of energy flow through her veins as these thoughts boiled up. She could feel her magic again, and it called out…
It wanted to be used.
“Midnight! Wait!”
But Twilight was not quick enough. The winged pony-girl vanished in a rush of air and a flash of blue light.
Shining Armor watched the spot where his sister… sisters had vanished from for several long seconds. Then, deciding that thinking too much about this stuff was asking for trouble, he got to work assembling the bed.
They’d be back. He hoped, anyway.
A loud pop split the night air on the grounds of Canterlot High School. A flash of aqua lit the yard and illuminated the empty, cracked Wondercolts’ statue plinth, the site of the portal to Equestria. And standing mere yards from the portal, was the combined form of Midnight and Twilight Sparkle.
“It’s… it’s right there!” Midnight pleaded, legs shaking as she tried to push them forward. “Come on! We could have the Magic! ALL the Magic…!”
Twilight’s voice rang out, “Midnight! This isn’t you anymore! Just stop and listen to me!” She managed to get their wings flapping, pushing wind forward towards the portal and pushing her own body backward. Even with the added lift, they were drifting slowly towards the portal.
Midnight would not be denied. “Twi… I need… this…” It was so close. So… painfully close! Her sheer need began to pull them closer, and closer. She could see the portal ripple with light as her fingertips neared the plinth’s surface.
“No,” Twilight bit down, hard in her mind, “No you don’t…!”
A second flash of light, a second pop.
Yards and yards away, another flash of purple light dropped two nearly identical girls onto the school roof.
Cold night air now tickled Midnight’s exposed skin, biting at the beads of sweat on her forehead, shocking her back to reality. It was like a haze had been pushed aside, or like that moment just after a fever broke… well, Midnight didn’t know that feeling directly, but she shared a few memories of Twilight’s childhood that filled in the gaps. Dreamy, illogical logic fell away, leaving only Midnight’s rational mind…
Which meant the last few minutes weren’t a fever dream. They were real. And the second magic had hit her system, she’d actually tried to steal it. From her sister. Her sister who…
Twilight loomed suddenly over her as she pulled herself into a sitting position.
“What the heck was that about!?” she demanded, hands set on hips. Fury burned in her eyes as those old feelings towards Midnight returned. The pointed anger and resentment of her own mind gone rogue.
Midnight, as Twilight often used to when cornered or pressured, pulled herself inward. She wrapped her arms around herself. She was very alone up on this roof, and very cold.
“I…” she tried to find the words, “I don’t… Twilight, I didn’t mean…” but she couldn’t finish. She did mean to do what she did. Without the haze of magic clouding her thoughts, she was now fully aware of what she’d just tried to do, and how bad it would have been for everyone if she’d gotten her way. She felt…
What was this new feeling? Midnight, lacking feelings as a tulpa, had only a few hours to grasp what her emotions were. She’d felt pride, and humor… even a touch of love and affection when Twilight and Sunset had first accepted her. But this new feeling was awful! It felt like a stomach ache… which Midnight also knew only vicariously through Twilight.
Oh no, was this guilt? That would be the most logical option. She did just threaten reality… again.
Twilight kneeled down to Midnight’s level, and a worried look overcame her irritation. “Midnight,” she whispered, “Believe me when I say that I will try to understand. I know you… tried to do that for a reason. I just want to know. I can’t help unless you tell me.”
Ugh… Midnight hated it when she was right. Intellectually, she knew that Twilight being right wasn’t the same as her being wrong, but those old thoughts were slow to vacate her new, independent headspace.
She took a breath, and said, “I… I’m scared.”
When Twilight said nothing, she continued, words coming in fits and bursts. “I… you don’t know what it’s like to lose your magic. It isn’t like when Rainbow gets upset because she can’t fly everywhere she wants… You made me out of your… your raw curiosity. Your desire to know more, to learn more. More magic…”
She shot up to her feet, anything to get some distance from Twilight. That was a mistake, as the wind picked up right when she did so. As a distraction from the cold, Midnight walked to the edge of the roof and began staring over the low wall at the statue plinth again.
“Magic isn’t some neat trick for me. It’s not just telekinesis, or the power to fly, or Sunset’s memory-vision thing… without those, you and your friends are still whole. Without it… it’s like I’m blind,” she turned halfway around to watch Twilight in the dark, “Did you know I used my magic-sense more than my actual eyesight whenever I was in control?”
“Midnight,” Twilight whispered, one hand over her heart as she approached, “I didn’t know.” She paused, looked away, then back. Her voice took on a touch more anger, directed towards herself, “No, I should have known. Magic is who you were. I shouldn’t have expected you to change completely, especially over the course of half-a-day!”
The two sisters now stood right at the edge of the roof, together again. Twilight put her arm around Midnight’s shoulders, expecting her to pull away or grumble and passively accept the affectionate contact. But instead, either to push back the cold or as acknowledgement of Twilight’s understanding, Midnight actually leaned into the half-hug.
Twilight broke the silence first, “You don’t have to send me reports or anything,” she chuckled, “but I’m always here if you want to talk about these things. We’re sisters, after all.”
Midnight smirked, “Alright. Alright, you’ve convinced me. I won’t destroy the world for the promise of magic. Tonight,” she added with a titter.
Both sisters laughed lightly together on the roof, only for Twilight’s face to scrunch up. She’d just had a thought, and the peculiarity of it somewhat mystified her. It was… an odd idea, but one she was surprised to not have contemplated earlier.
Breaking the hug, to Midnight’s brief distress, Twilight lifted up her geode-pendant in-between her hands, thumbs and forefingers pinching it on both sides. With a twist of her hands, aided by a flicker of magical energy, the pendant split with a crack.
“Twilight!” Midnight’s eyes nearly jumped out of her skull, “What…!?”
“Here,” Twilight said plainly, as though she were offering Midnight a piece of birthday cake.
Midnight continued sputtering, “But… but Twilight! What if you broke it!? Your magic could be…!”
“I said,” her sister seemed to proclaim her will, dictate her terms, “that what was mine, was also yours. We found this geode together, so it’s half yours. And if breaking it in half means that I have to give up magic so that you aren’t alone, then so be it.”
Midnight… honestly didn’t know what to say, do, or think. No one had ever been this nice, or this understanding towards her. And even if that was only by default, having never really interacted with anyone else, it left her stricken with the conflicted impulse to either snatch the pendant away, or to run screaming for the hills.
No one was this nice. No one. It wasn’t possible. Was it?
With a trembling hand, she reached out. In trepidation, she allowed one finger to brush the pendant offered to her. There was a feeling there, a hum of warmth. And with as little fanfare as Midnight had ever seen with magic… the geode changed color. It was purple a moment ago, and then with the barest hint of contact, it shifted to a bright blue… an aqua.
Midnight took the half-pendant, she and Twilight watching it with wide-eyes. She gripped it in her hand. She closed her eyes, and then tried to see by opening her other senses. And…
A fire roared within her. It was… different from before, but with certainty she knew it was back! Her magic! Its heat swiftly pushed all chill and cold aside, and with a barest thought she could sweep her mind’s eye across the whole school in an instant. She felt another flame burning, mere inches from herself… Twilight’s pendant glowed alongside hers.
“It’s… it’s back,” she whispered, tears burning her cheeks, “I can feel it again.”
Midnight couldn’t stop herself. She threw her arms around Twilight and gave her sister the strongest, tightest hug she could possibly manage. By the way Twilight gasped and struggled, Midnight guessed she’d managed somewhere around a ninety-percent full Pinkie Pie hug.
Shining Armor had just finished putting the second bed together when another bright flash lit up his sisters’ room. He finished laying down the brilliantly-pink covers, and turned just in time to watch a softer flare of white light disentangle the Sparkle sisters into two girls once more. They stood together, holding hands directly atop the star-symbol burned into the carpet.
“Worked it out?” was all he said.
Twilight smiled, and nodded, “Yes. All it took was talking things over, and being willing to listen. I did the listening...”
“And I almost destroyed the world again,” Midnight sighed, not in shame but boredom.
Shining decided to ignore that. He had plenty of time to think about it later. “Alright,” he said, clapping his hands together, “I think it’s time you two finally got some shut-eye. Twily’s got school in the morning, and mom and dad are taking Midny out for some family bonding.”
Midnight frowned, “That is not my nickname.”
“Your disliking it only confirms that it is,” Shining grinned, “Now, get some sleep!”
Twilight yawned, “No complaints here!”
Midnight, however, scowled at the vibrant… pink monstrosity that was her bed, and decided she needed at least a few more moments to properly acclimate to her doom. So, she indulged in one more nagging thought she’d held onto for the past few minutes, at least since Twilight had brought it up at the school.
“Twilight?” Shining stopped in the doorway, and her sister paused as she drew back her bed-sheets. “What… precisely did you mean before? About us finding the geodes together?”
Twilight blinked several times. “What?”
“You said we’d found it together,” Midnight clarified, “But I don’t recall when or where you got the geode-pendant. Was it a gift from Princess Cadence?”
Shining’s eyes widened slightly at the name, but he betrayed nothing. Twilight, however, scrunched up her face. She frowned, and then continued in a pained pantomime, something she occasionally did when a particularly perplexing problem prompted a response.
“What are you talking about? You were with me when Sunset and I found the geodes in that cave at Camp Everfree!” She held up her half-pendant for emphasis, “You were trying to destroy my mind and take over my body at the time!”
Shining could only add a strained, “What!?” to the proceedings.
Midnight raised an eyebrow at her sister, “Everfree? The… camp? Was that where you met Timber Spruce?”
“Who?” Shining’s previous shock was instantly replaced by the practiced frown of a policeman with a crook in his sights as this Timber Spruce came up… a Boy…
Midnight hadn’t skipped a beat, “Her boyfriend…”
A hand slapped over her mouth, Twilight somehow clearing ten feet of open carpet instantly. Midnight wondered idly if Twilight could teleport without fusing…
“Hahahaha! Oh! Midnight!” Twilight’s voice edged near to hysteria, her saucer-like eyes switching between a loving, innocent look for Shining… and a murderous glare for Midnight. “She’s such a kidder! Right…?”
Midnight also began to wonder, with laser-focus, if it wasn’t Twilight who was the evil twin…
Shining, however, was far more used to Twilight’s manic ways. “Twily,” he said warningly, “I thought Mom and Dad made it clear how we all felt about secret relationships in this family.”
Midnight saw her out. “Oh, like you’re one to talk!”
Now that shut him up! Shining bit down on his lower lip, and his eyes widened noticeably. If Midnight or Twilight weren’t mistaken… it looked like he was sweating.
“Um,” he coughed, “W-what do y-you mean by that? I’d never… never…”
Both Sparkle sisters shared a grin… a predatory one.
Twilight started, “You know, Shining… our counterparts over in Equestria are all a bit older than us.”
“… Are they?” Shining knew when he was being targeted.
“Oh, yes,” Midnight smiled innocently, “Somewhere between five and… ten years? Because of the time dilation…”
Shining’s ears turned red. Was it getting warm in here? What were his sisters getting at…?
Twilight smirked, “You actually look good in a Royal uniform… Prince…”
“So!” Shining said perhaps a touch too loud, “You don’t remember the camp, Midnight!?”
A moment more of teenaged giggling, and Midnight returned to the matter at hand. She threw her mind backwards in time, to when Twilight was supposed to go to that wretched camp. She could remember… with a touch of regret those nightmares she’d been crafting to drive Twilight bananas and usurp her mind… and then Twilight’s own anxieties around her new friends. The camp was meant to be a retreat from those feelings, and a means of building upon her new friendships…
And then… nothing. There was just a black void where the two-or-three days of Camp Everfree should have been.
“I… I don’t remember any of it,” she said, slowly, more to herself than anyone else. Her voice picked up there, however, “It’s like… I can remember that it happened, but not what happened. It’s like I heard about it second-hand, with parts missing…”
Twilight and Shining watched as Midnight became… twitchy. Her eyes darted around as she thought, and her hands began to work themselves into knots as she mentally and verbally went over the memories one by one.
“Do you not remember anything else?” Shining offered.
Midnight scowled, “And how would I know!? I can’t just remember what I don’t remember, Shiny. It’s an unknown, unknown variable!”
The blush that hadn’t quite left Shining’s cheeks burned slightly hotter at that obvious lapse on his part.
“Quick!” Twilight stepped in, “Who are our main friends?”
Midnight might have been… well, she was definitively panicking, but she was still like Twilight; once a serious scientific problem was in front of her, she fell right into the routine. “Sunset Shimmer, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie,” she counted off on her fingers, “not counting the Principals, the Dazzlings, the Shadowbolts…”
Twilight sighed lightly, “Alright, so you’re not forgetting anyone important.” Worry returned, “But what could have made you forget Everfree?”
Midnight’s eyes snapped open, and a horrified look came over her features. She locked her gaze with her sister’s. “We… we basically just performed magic-brain-surgery on ourselves this morning…”
The full implications of taking one person with a mental dissociative disorder, and then splitting that one person into two bodies, each with one of the personalities from before… suddenly dawned on everyone in the room. And in the silence that followed…
“So… first I lose my magic,” Midnight whispered, “And then I’m the one who loses her mind?”
“No,” Twilight shook her head slowly, “You’re… you’re not the only one…”
Shining’s now permanently shaken expression wheeled over to his original sister. “Twily…?”
“We…” she bit her lip, “We knew that there might be some side-effects from the Split. We were certain that intelligence and magical power would be fully duplicated and divided equally… but when I was checking my lab equipment earlier to make sure my genetic-sequence-locks were still working…”
Shining’s dumbfounded stare prompted Midnight to add, “She wanted to make sure our DNA didn’t get messed up since she used it to lock up her lab equipment.” This seemed to work for Shining. It was just like in his comic-books… that he now shared with his dog…
“Everything seemed fine,” Twilight continued, “But… I think I might have lost my ambidexterity.”
“Wait, seriously?” Shining was reeling slightly from all this. For a family like the Sparkles, anything that compromised one’s mind or mental abilities had always ranked high on everyone’s personal worst fears list. Nightmare Night was always quaint for the Sparkles, since no one thought to go dressed up as a brain tumor.
“I’m literally her left hand,” Midnight smirked in spite of herself, and how dire their situation was. “Sinister, isn’t it?”
He furrowed his brow, “So… you can’t gloat about it at Hearth’s Warming this year?”
Twilight frowned, “Toss me something. Let me catch it in my left hand.”
Shining shrugged. He really had to see this if it was true. He and Twily had always competed with one another, and despite the seriousness of this conversation… some small, petty part of him wanted to confirm this.
Then, with a wicked grin, he reached out and grabbed something he knew Twilight would never let fall. Had to be sure, right?
He tossed the small, hand-stitched horse-doll in a gentle underhand. The ugly little thing hung in space for a moment before it tapped Twilight’s outstretched left hand… which feebly swatted at the doll and sent it sailing to the carpet below…
Where Midnight Sparkle dove to catch it.
“See?” Twilight stated with a professorial smugness. She wondered, however, why Shining gave her such a… horrified look. Or what was up with Midnight just then, panting on the floor like she’d caught the good porcelain, as opposed to a ratty little doll.
“What?”
Midnight shot up to her feet, doll held fast to her chest, “What do you think you’re doing!?” she cried, very much too loudly, one eye clearly about to burst a blood vessel in Shining’s general direction.
Shining raised an eyebrow. “I… I thought it’d be best if I tested it with Smarty Pants. Twily would never drop her… I thought.”
Twilight returned the quizzical look, and asked, “Who?”
Midnight’s eyes locked with Twilight’s again, “Smarty Pants.”
“Again,” said Twilight, less amused, “Who? Or, what?”
Genuine concern slipped into Shining’s voice, “Smarty Pants. Your favorite doll? Your, like, childhood friend?”
Twilight adjusted her glasses, and took in the oddly misshapen thing with a glance. “I think I’d remember something like that.”
“But, Twilight,” Midnight’s voice cracked, “You did… until this morning.” She held out the Smarty Pants doll to her sister, as if that might restore what she’d lost.
Twilight stared at the tattered doll, her eyes haunting every stitch and every seam. Shining and Midnight knew what Twilight looked like when she was deep into her ‘thinking mode’. She bit one finger, narrowed her eyes. She tapped one foot, and then another. After a full minute, her movement had become twitchy.
And her eyes were reddening with tears she tried desperately to hold back.
“I…” she swallowed, “I loved this… Smarty Pants?”
But where Twilight had held back, Midnight let loose a sob and threw herself at her sister. “I’m sorry!” she cried into Twilight’s hair, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“Midnight?” Twilight’s tears began falling, but her voice remained, “You didn’t do this.”
“I took Smarty Pants away from you! I tried to take everything…”
A strong hand landed on each of the girls’ shoulders, and with a firm, gentle push, Shining Armor separated them. He brought his face low, so that both would be looking him right in the eyes.
If they’d ever once doubted their Shining and the Prince across the mirror were one and the same, his authoritative glare dispelled that notion immediately.
“Twily, Midny,” he stoically whispered, “Now is not the time to think about these things. You’re both tired and strung out. There’s nothing you can do about this tonight, so why not wait until morning, when you’re both rested up?”
There was something calming in the way Shining spoke. Who would have guessed their brother, valedictorian, cop, and former high school football captain, a ‘meathead’ as Dash called him behind his back… could be so comforting with his ‘police officer’ voice?
Both Sparkle sisters nodded agreement. Twilight declined Smarty Pants with a hand gesture, and went to her bed alone. Midnight quickly snuggled down, wondering what sleep would be like, as she’d never done it before, while clutching the ragged, wonderful little horse-doll to her chest.
Then, as Shining Armor turned out the light and made to close the door behind him, he leaned back in, and with the tiniest twinkle in his eye, whispered into the room, “I… might be taking Cadence out this Saturday for a very special reason… and she might not be entirely aware of it yet.”
As the door closed, and sleep overtook them both, Twilight and Midnight Sparkle could at least smile together, and hope for a brighter tomorrow.