The Mirror Room, deep within the crystalline halls of the Castle of Friendship, was steeped in perpetual twilit silence. Perhaps this harmonious, librarian gloom was a spiritual or magical extension of the castle’s very first resident, and her deeply ingrained love of all things bibliophilic. Or, maybe it was the result of the very Spirit of Harmony itself suppressing extreme lighting, energy, and passion to create a forum of friendship and peace…
Whatever the cause of the Castle’s tranquil nature, it was shattered by the opening of the room’s large doors, which heralded the return of the Princess of Friendship herself.
And her guest.
“Are you sure you’re okay to go?” she asked, almost pleadingly of her friend and fellow alicorn, Sunset Shimmer, “You’ve only been here for one day. I can’t imagine you’ve already acclimated to your situation…”
Sunset, in a rather improved mood from the day before, trotted into the Mirror Room with a heavy set of saddlebags on her flanks, and a skip in her step. Who knew Twilight had so many books on magical theory that she could send multiple loads through the Mirror on multiple days…?
Alright, Sunset admitted. Maybe I should have known…
She laughed, and rolled her eyes at Twilight’s question.
“I think I’ve had enough of moping around for a lifetime, Twi,” she chuckled, coming to a halt before the Mirror itself. Facing the magical artifact directly, she added, “Princess Cadance made some good points, and I should get up, and get back in the game…”
“What did you two talk about?” asked Twilight, just managing to avoid sounding completely desperate to know what had been said in the private meeting the night before.
“Plus,” Sunset said with a knowing smirk, as if she hadn’t heard Twilight’s question at all, “I got schoolwork to finish over there. You wouldn’t want me to skip out on schoolwork… would you?”
Her tone was teasing, but she could see in the reflection before her that Princess Twilight’s knees had started shaking at the question.
“N-no… of course not!” Twilight laughed in a way that was not healthy, “I just worry, you know?”
Sunset flipped the switch to engage the Mirror’s magic, her old journal perpetually plugged into the machine which powered the effect. She turned back around, and gave Twilight a bright smile.
“I know, Princess. I know,” she said, and reached out her foreleg for a hug.
Princess Twilight, letting go of her grimace, returned the gesture, and sighed into the side of Sunset’s neck as they hugged.
“Are you sure you don’t wanna tell me what Cadance said?” Twilight whispered, her voice like a fiddle string about to snap, “Cuz, like, you seem a lot more chipper than yesterday, and I could use that sort of pep talk training once in a while…”
Sunset snorted, loudly, and pulled back from the hug, laughing. The display of amusement might have gone on for a bit, if not for how one of Sunset’s new wings reached up, and gently wiped away the merry tear forming at the corner of her eye.
The human-familiar motion, while in a pony-familiar body, caused Sunset to freeze. She stared at the pinion that had drawn away the tears with an open expression of disbelieving shock.
Twilight winced, internally. She knew that look very well herself.
“This…” Sunset breathed, slowly out of her nose. “This will take some getting used to.”
“I was gonna say,” Twilight said, blushing slightly, and rubbed the back of her neck with one hoof, “You should probably come over more often, to finish… acclimating. I still scare myself in the mornings when I see wings, and I’ve had these for a while now!”
Sunset hummed to herself, eyes still locked on her wing. Carefully, almost mechanically, she withdrew it, and folded the new appendage back to her side, secured beneath her saddlebags.
“Cadance just talked about… stuff,” Sunset said, quietly. She blinked a few times, and rapidly, before she could look back to Twilight, and continue. “I always treated her like garbage, growing up, because of my own hang-ups, and… she sorta wanted to air all that out.”
Twilight frowned, a look of concern in her eyes.
“And… that’s why you’re in a good mood? You got a dressing down from my Sister-in-Law?”
Sunset smiled, and shook her head. “More like, we finally had that sister-to-sister chat we should have done years ago,” she said, eyes becoming far-off and away.
Then, she frowned. “Um… wait, I guess if she’s Celestia’s niece, and I’m her… uh, then we’re cousins…?”
There was a sound. A worrying sound. A terrible, blood-chilling sound that Sunset had learned, from her experiences with a slightly different Twilight, to run away from.
Squee.
Princess Twilight’s face was nightmarish, a horrific combination of unbridled joy, excitement, and smugness unbound. Her eyes were sparkling, and her teeth were bared in a smile that ran from ear to ear.
And on equines, grinning ear-to-ear was a lot more disturbing than on humans.
“Sister…?”
“Twilight, no!”
“Even cousin would imply…”
“I swear to Celestia…!”
“And anypony in the Royal Family would…”
“I will end you, Sparkle!”
“… naturally, be called a Pri—”
Sunset slapped her wings over her ears, and clenched her eyes shut.
“Lalalalala! I’m not listening! I’m not listening to you!”
There were, from there on, several unproductive minutes of chaos in the Mirror Room as Sunset Shimmer flew laps around the perimeter, while Princess Twilight Sparkle – Element of Magic, Sole Sovereign of Equestria, First Pony Among Equals, She Who is Friend to All, Guide of the Eternal Spheres, Civitas Auctor Imperialis, et al – chased her, while constantly shouting the word ‘Princess’ over and over again.
If Discord hadn’t already elected to stay out of this story, he might have even made an appearance, just to take it all in. Instead, the world would settle for a rather bemused Spike walking past the door at that moment, still brushing his teeth.
The little dragon watched the two alicorns descend into giggling fits as Twilight finally caught her prey and bore her to the ground, with piles of reading bean bags littered about.
Then, with a roll of his eyes, Spike chose to also leave this story, and go seek breakfast instead.
Minutes later, once the giggling had stopped and Twilight had finally allowed her to leave, Sunset Shimmer stepped through the Mirror portal, and returned home.
Flying down a tunnel of rainbow light wasn’t the worst way to traverse universes, Sunset had to admit. The trip was always over in an instant, despite it feeling like an eternity during transit, and she was pretty sure she’d eventually learn to stick the landing.
If it weren’t for the ticklish sensation that came with every bone and organ in her body shifting from an equine to hominid shape, and the awful itching feeling that came over her as her clothes re-emerged from her form, she might even enjoy the journey.
She flew out of the portal’s other end, right into the bright morning sunlight of another Friday at Canter—
“Duck!”
Duck?
Everything suddenly shifted to black and white stars as a splitting pain flashed across Sunset’s forehead. All she could fix in her thoughts was the sound of a baseball hitting the bat, or a ringing bell just as a truck smashed into it.
After the initial shock of… whatever happened, Sunset realized that she felt two distinct things. One was the cold, wet grass in which she was lying, sprawled out. The cold was actually almost enough to shock her straight back up off her back.
Almost.
Unfortunately, the other thing Sunset felt was her head throbbing like someone’d just cracked her with a brick. Her hands were already up, covering her whole face in a vain attempt to somehow cover up and stop the flaming-hot pain that saturated her entire head all at once.
Her eyes, skull, ears… heck, even her nose kind of throbbed at the moment. This was, quite possibly, the worst sort of pain to be feeling while one writhed on the ground in utter, abject agony.
“Oh, dang Sunset! You got knocked the heck out!”
Second worst.
Getting a Great and Powerful mocking was currently ahead of traumatic head injuries.
“Like, for real!” Trixie laughed, “You got shellack— oh crap…”
Sunset slowly lurched back up to a sitting position, one hand covering her forehead, and the other waiting in the wings if she needed to either put pressure on a cracked skull, or give Trixie one of her own. With the immediate shock gone, the rest of her head slowly began to dial down the eye-watering pain, by degrees.
She was even brave enough to open her eyes, despite the sunlight almost instantly making her remember some unfortunate late-night parties she’d gone to back when she was a filly at Celestia’s School…
“Bestie?” the blurry blue shape Sunset assumed was Trixie asked, hovering over a prone purple shape lying nearby, “You alright!?”
Sunset shook her head. And immediately regretted it as her brain seemed to rattle around like a bag of marbles. But, after a few more seconds – and to be sure, a few more seconds in head-trauma-time felt closer to forever – she was able to open her eyes again, and actually focus on what was going on.
Midnight was also sitting up, a few feet away. She was also clutching at her head, and shivering with the sort of pain that naturally came from smashing heads together with someone else.
Although, by the look on Midnight’s face, Sunset would have sworn getting fawned over by Trixie was somehow worse than the injury.
“I’m fine, Trixie!” Midnight snarled, batting aside her friend’s concern with her own hands, “Give me a minute and… and I might be able to stand up.”
“Midnight?” Sunset called out, despite her ears still ringing, “What happened?”
Trixie, taking a step back from either proned girl, looked at Sunset with wide-eyes.
“What happened?” she said incredulously, “What happened was that my best friend was just hanging out, moping as she do, in front of the busted Wondercolt statue…”
“Trixie,” Midnight groaned, “I was not moping…”
Trixie threw her hands out. “When suddenly! A skull-destroying missile came zooming out of the portal…!”
“Why didn’t you duck?” Sunset asked, trying desperately to ignore Trixie’s shrill rendition of events.
Midnight opened her eyes, and stared at Sunset with a look of confusion. The look shifted, subtly, into one of… sadness? And just as swiftly as the change happened, Midnight looked away, and towards the cold, wet ground.
“I, of course, tried to warn my bestie as the portal switched on,” Trixie continued on with her display, despite neither Sunset or Midnight paying her even the slightest attention by now, “But tragically, Trixie wasn’t fast enough!”
Slowly, Sunset managed to bring herself into a standing position. The pain hadn’t really subsided so much as it had taken a backseat to her curiosity, but Sunset wouldn’t let that stop her. She took a few experimental steps forward, and stopped blessedly soon after, the distance needed to reach Midnight being blessedly short. She looked down on her friend, as a pit opened up in her stomach.
Something about the way Midnight just sat there, in the cold mud, not even trying to protect herself, unnerved Sunset.
And her eyes…
“Midnight? Everything okay?” she asked, then felt her head again, “Besides the headache?”
Midnight’s eyes flicked upward, finally giving Sunset a good, unblurred look at her friend. Two days should not have had as much of an effect on someone as Sunset could see in Midnight’s gaze.
She looked like she hadn’t slept since they’d last parted. Her hair was a bit of a mess, the long straight strands fraying at their edges and right along Midnight’s aquamarine stripe. Her eyes had bags under them, badly hidden by some makeup Rarity must have once bought Twilight.
There was just a hollowness to her face that caught the breath in Sunset’s throat. Midnight almost looked dead.
“Zombie from Tirek’s Revenge 3,” Trixie (un)helpfully stated, clearly thinking the same thing as Sunset, “I told her already…”
“I’m fine,” Midnight groaned, though without much emotion to back it up.
Trixie, rolling her eyes, reached a hand out and passed it through Midnight’s hair.
“Hey!” she snarled at the uninvited contact.
“Oh, save your hey!” Trixie snapped back, her hand holding up several dark strands of hair that had fallen out. “You might marry a horse.”
She paused, as her brow creased in worry.
“Uh…” Trixie looked back at Sunset with a wince. “Is that offensive? I really don’t know anymore…”
Sunset, continuing to ignore Trixie, knelt down and held her own hand out to Midnight. Midnight, for her part, almost glared at the hand as it came into view, before shifting her grumpy look up at Sunset again.
She sighed. “You want to take a look at my brain, don’t you?”
“I want to help you up,” Sunset replied, tilting her head curiously to one side, “if you’ll let me. I promise, I won’t peek unless you say it’s okay.”
She smiled, in that fragile way Sunset always did when something was eating at her. The way Midnight was acting wasn’t just worrisome. After this week, and all the attendant misery and complications to their friendship, Sunset didn’t want this to be something worse at play.
But she knew that it was.
Midnight stared at the hand for another moment. Then, with a sigh, she reached out and took it.
Sunset hefted herself and Midnight back up to their feet, and tried to release the other girl so she could help clean off any dirt that had clung to her while knocked down.
Midnight didn’t let go. Instead, she took a long breath through her nose, and tried to lock eyes with her friend.
“Sunset…” she started, slow and hesitant, Midnight’s words coming out like she was dragging them out, “I… Maybe you should…”
“Midnight!” Sunset cried out, suddenly, “Your eyes!”
That outburst caused Midnight to flinch away, hands up to her face.
“What? What’s wrong?” she asked, a note of worry creeping into her voice.
Sunset, eyes wide open, leaned in so close that her and Midnght’s noses almost touched. She stared intently into Midnight’s eyes, her own narrowing and narrowing as she did so.
Trixie crossed her arms, and frowned at the odd display.
“So… you gonna tell us what’s up, or is Trixie not allowed to be a part of this…?”
Sunset said, in a low and hollow voice, “Your eyes are blue.”
Midnight blinked. Twice, even.
“Um… yes?” she said with a questioning inflection, and took a single step back from the Equestrian inquisition.
Trixie snorted and laughed, “Pretty sure she knew that already.”
“Not your irises,” Sunset said with annoyance, and pointed to the whites of her own eye, “Your sclera’s turning blue!”
Hearing that, Trixie tilted her head to get a better look. Leaning to an extreme angle, she almost got underneath Midnight’s face before she saw it as well.
“Omigosh!” she exclaimed, pulling back, “Your eyes are blue!”
Sliding back, Trixie tapped her chin in thought.
“Honestly,” she said, smiling, “Trixie may be biased, but this might be a good look for you.”
“Wait, really?” Midnight asked, shoving Trixie out of her face and quickly reaching into her pocket. Bringing out a compact mirror, she took a look herself. “What!?”
Staring back at Midnight was a girl very much like herself. Though, with her scraggly hair, paling skin, and eyes sporting dark bags, she very much would rather that not be the case.
And her eyes, the sclera around her irises, were blue. Not so deep a blue that one might immediately notice, but blue enough to where her eyes were almost glowing, faintly.
She groaned at the sight.
“What the heck is this, now?” Midnight sighed, snapping the mirror closed, “Am I going to grow a tail next!?”
Sunset bit her lip, and held her breath for a moment. She reached a hand out, again, and set it gently onto Midnight’s shoulder.
“Midnight,” she whispered, “Are… are you using the Wake Up, Stay Up spell right now?”
“The what-up whosit?” Trixie unhelpfully chimed in, utterly baffled.
The fact that Midnight said nothing did not go unnoticed. Even as she drew back, away from Sunset and Trixie, Sunset was already pressing forward.
“Midnight…”
“Yes, alright?” Midnight snapped back, flippantly, “Mom and Dad won’t let us have coffee yet, and Twilight and I used up all the energy drinks in the house last night so we didn’t have to sleep again. So…”
Trixie gasped, “How much did you two drink?”
“Not a lot,” Midnight groaned. Then, running one finger under her nose, she quietly added, “Maybe, like, a box or two…”
“What the heck…!?”
“That’s what Shining said, too,” Midnight pouted, and crossed her arms defensively, “You know, when he caught us this morning in the lab.
“I don’t see the real issue here!” She threw her hands up in the air. “Twilight said the spell didn’t have any significant side effects…”
Sunset rolled her eyes, and shook her head.
“It was Twilight?” she asked, and sighed with exasperation, “How did you two know about this spell, but not the side effects!?”
Midnight scoffed, “What part of Uncontrolled Magical Psychometry and Magical Crystal Palace are you not comprehending…!?”
Trixie, a wary eye on her friend, half-turned back to Sunset. “Okay, you keep saying there are side-effects…”
“Glowing eyes,” Midnight groaned, and flipped a bit of errant hair from her face over her shoulder, “and maybe a headache tomorrow, I would not consider these as side effects.”
Sunset scowled, and then said something that caused the very air around them to chill.
“And the kidney damage?”
Midnight was silent. Her eyes widened slightly, and a bead of sweat broke out across her brow. Aside from this, she could have been a statue.
Trixie, by contrast, seemed to be staring off into the distance, her breath coming in shallow and rapid.
“Switch the spell off, Midnight,” Sunset frowned, “Clearly, your magic-learning ability isn’t perfect, or you’d know what every filly entering magic school learned in their first Health Class.”
“Y-yeah,” Midnight stammered, before covering her eyes with her hands, “Yeah, I… omigosh, how did Twi… how did we miss that?”
Midnight fell silent, simply covering her face and shivering in the relatively warm and sunny daylight. Trixie and Sunset both held back from approaching, neither knowing the best way to comfort Midnight in this state.
But then, Sunset took one step forward.
“It’s okay, really,” she said soothingly, and reached out again for Midnight’s shoulder, “I was an overachiever myself, back when I went to Celestia’s school. I know what it’s like to…”
“To what, Sunset?” Midnight slapped her hand away, scowl returning instantly, “You think we did this just to get a few more hours on the hologram project?”
“Didn’t you?” Sunset asked, eyebrows raised.
“Of course, we did!” Midnight cried, and stamped her foot, “But it was also a great opportunity to not dream again!”
And just like that, the spell broke. Metaphorically, at any rate. Midnight gasped, perhaps at her own words, or perhaps at the way her knees suddenly buckled beneath her.
Yet, a heap of tired teenager, she was not destined to be. Two sets of arms looped under her and wrapped around her torso, holding Midnight up, even as her whole system decided to crash from within and without.
The blue light in Midnight’s eyes faded, adding ‘literally’ to the above metaphor.
“Woah!” Sunset cried out, her own knees starting to buckle under the weight of her friend, “Hang on there! Trixie, get…”
“On it!” the blue stage magician called out, and without apparent effort she’d already hefted her Bestie up, and carry-walked her over to the Wondercolt statue-plinth.
Sunset marveled at the way Trixie could do that.
Guess she would have to be pretty fit for her act…
As Midnight was leaned up against the cold stone, she suddenly drank in a deep breath of air, and her arms snapped out to grasp the plinth edges.
“Careful!” Trixie said, gently coaxing her friend into a more stable and comfortable position, “Did you just drop the spell?”
“Y-yeah,” Midnight half-gasped, half-yawned, “Kidneys…”
Then, as her breathing slowed, tears welled unbidden to Midnight’s eyes. Her breath shuddered going in, and shook coming out. In, and out, she gasped and gasped for an inch of control, before it all came flooding out.
Midnight slid down the plinth’s face, into a sagging crouch, and doubled over. Sunset and Trixie joined her there, arms bracing the shivering, shaking, crying teen.
Minutes passed. This early, there was no one to interrupt as Midnight poured herself out into her own sleeves.
“I can’t keep doing this,” she croaked, “We can’t keep doing this. It’s too much! Every night, every time I close my eyes… if it’s not Cinch showing up, or me and Twilight being her, it’s a witch-burning, or the Friendship Games, or…
“Heh,” Midnight shook with a crooked laugh, and covered her eyes with one hand, “It’s karma, isn’t it?”
“Don’t say that!” Trixie jumped in, taking even Sunset a little aback, “You haven’t done anything like…”
“Tormenting someone through their dreams?” Midnight snapped back, throwing up her arms and facing her friend with the full fury of a sleep-deprived glare. Her eyes were red and bleary, but still piercing.
“That’s literally my playbook!” she cried. “I nearly drove Twilight insane! I attacked her self-esteem, and almost drove a wedge between her… and her friends…”
Midnight slowed to a stop. Her whole face slackened, just a little.
“That’s… literally my playbook…” she whispered, eyes narrowing, her brow furrowing again.
Sunset looked around, and spotted her overstuffed backpack, still lying in the grass. Leaving Midnight to her silent fugue, she grabbed the bag, and quickly fished out one of the many, many books she’d brought back with her.
A simple brown journal, with a not-so-simple marking on its face. An aquamarine Sparkle, split halfway into a crescent moon.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Sunset growled, and flipped open the journal, “Luna was supposed to help with this. I don’t think she realizes how bad things have…”
Her pen nearly touched paper.
Which was when the gong sounded.
The thunderous clang went out across Canterlot City in a great wave, mildly annoying just about every living thing up at this hour, shaking all the windows in their frames, and coincidentally causing Rainbow Dash to jump out of her bed, smack her head against her bedroom ceiling, and then crash back down onto her floor.
She would never forgive Disqord.
For, indeed, that very man, the Lord and Spirit of Chaos himself, had stood atop the empty Wondercolt statue plinth, and slapped a gong the size of a small van with a swordfish.
The gong’s sound went through Midnight, Trixie, and Sunset like… well, like a gong the size of a small van had just been struck a few feet away from their delicate, human bodies. The reverberations shook all three teens to their cores, from their heads to their toes.
Sunset dropped the journal and pen, and then dropped herself to the grass beneath her, while Trixie shuddered so violently that she started bouncing away, like she was a player-piece on one of those old vibrating sports-gameboards.
Midnight, by contrast, only experienced a mild, if persistent, ringing in her ears. She supposed it was due to the plugs – tiny bathtub plugs, yet plugs nonetheless – which had appeared in her ear canals at the precise moment the gong had been struck.
Once the shaking had died down, Midnight pulled at the tiny chains attached to the plugs, and allowed herself to hear again. The gong’s terrible sound was still echoing off in the distance, and Trixie and Sunset were left groaning on the grass.
Her train of thought ruined, she glared up at the slowly descending Disqord.
“Oh, joy,” she sighed wearily, and stood up, “It’s you…”
“You don’t sound happy to see me, O Purple One,” the Lord of Chaos said with a smirk. He pulled aside his hideous brown coat, and reached into one of its many inner-pockets. Midnight thought she could see zebra patterns on his coat, but they scattered before she could get a good look at them.
“I’m not here to warn you to get going to class, if that’s what you’re upset about,” he added, as a roll of ducks taped together fell from his pocket and began waddling away, “You know I don’t have the stomach for schedules…”
Sunset and Trixie were both getting to their feet when Disqord seemed to find what he was looking for. With a grin and an old-fashioned flourish, he drew a cardboard drink tray out of his coat, complete with four tall paper cups.
Four tall, steaming paper cups.
“Seriously though,” he laughed, and pushed one of the hot drinks into Midnight’s hands before she could protest, “Drink up! You’ve got somewhere to be, and you can’t be there feeling like you look!”
Midnight eyed the drink suspiciously. Even in her current state, her mind started rattling off every single reason why this was a prank, or some cruel joke by Disqord, or simply a really, really, really bad idea.
But, at the same time, she didn’t care. Because about two seconds later, her nostrils were filled with such a heavy, spiced scent that Midnight was half certain the steam from the coffee had enough caffeine to wake her right back up.
She knocked the cup back before Sunset had a chance to tell her not to.
Which she did anyway.
“Don’t give her caffeine!” she shouted as she advanced on Disqord, “Midnight doesn’t need caffeine, she needs water! Hydration and sleep are the only things that help get you over the Wake Up, Stay Up spell!”
Not-quite scalding hot liquid poured over Midnight’s taste buds and down her throat in a cascade of flavors. She could taste all of them, sense all of them. To her mind, each one was a hint of somewhere and somewhen else.
It was overpowering.
Especially as the energy clawed its way into her hands, her feet, her eyes.
“This is amazing!” she cried out with a gasp as she finished her first quaff, relatively frigid air making her mouth and teeth tingle as she breathed in again. “What is this? It can’t be regular coffee!”
Disqord smirked again, and passed out the other cups to Trixie and Sunset, leaving one for himself.
“I had a brilliant pupil, some years back,” he explained while casually dipping a tiny head of lettuce into his own coffee, “Skipped out on a chemistry grant to pursue a rock career. Got imprisoned for a while in South Mareica after he said some unfortunate things about El Presidente in some of his lyrics during a tour.
“He survived,” Disqord chuckled warmly, in a somehow nostalgic way, “and once the international community banded together to effect a regime change, he brought home a few coffee bean strands. Brews his own custom blend, these days.”
Disqord beamed and took a sip. “I get a free bag every month. The gratitude of students! Now I know why Princess Purple opened a school. Free swag! Oh, and the admiration of the community, I guess. It can’t possibly be the pay.”
An empty cup presented itself to him, catching the professor up short in his merry remembrances.
“More!” Midnight cried, eyes literally sparkling as she did so.
He hmph’d, and raised a knowing eyebrow. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Princess You’s hooked on Pinkie’s sugary-sweet cappuccino monstrosity, and this is at least as good…”
With a snap of his finger, the cup was magically refilled, and Midnight brought it up to her lips with a hunger.
But Sunset was done indulging in that. She snatched the cup out of Midnight’s hand, and met the other girl, glower for glower.
“Midnight,” she said with a huff, “You need help!”
“Coffee helps!” Midnight snarled, and with a flicker of blue magic, her cup popped back into her own waiting grasp, “Coffee definitely helps!”
“This is some killer stuff,” Trixie could be heard in between her own delighted sips of the magical brew. “Hey, this student of yours, the Rock Star? Anyone I’ve heard of?”
Ignoring the bickering orange and purple teens in favor of blue, for the moment, Disqord shrugged. “Ever hear of a band called Crystal Empire…?”
Midnight’s voice cut through the air before he could say more.
“Send the useless Moonbutt over here to fix me, and then we’ll talk about surrendering the coffee!!!”
There were now two coffee cups floating in her magical aura.
“If I have to beat you unconscious again…” Sunset slapped one fist into the palm of her other hand, “… then I will! Friendship magic, or the old school way. Your choice!”
A coach’s whistle blew, loud and shrill across the school grounds, bringing both Sunset and Midnight’s attention back to Disqord… who was now dressed in grey training sweats and topped with a red baseball cap that read ‘KAOS’ in bold text.
“Alright, as much fun as letting you two wallop each other would be,” he sighed, clearly against his better judgement, “I actually do have to get this ball rolling. Sunset?”
The girl in question scrunched her face in a disapproving frown, but said nothing.
“Call Sci-Twi and let her know about the kidney thing,” Disqord said with an unusual air of authority, “Pretty sure Midnight’s phone is still melting down toward the planet’s core at this point.”
He then pointed a finger at Midnight herself. While she kept her attention on her teacher, she still managed to get a few chugs of her desperately needed beverage in before he spoke.
“And you’re coming with me!”
“Oh?” Midnight smirked as much as she could with two coffees in hand, and one of them still touching her lips, “I still have five minutes before your class starts. What was that about schedules?”
“Oh ho ho!” Disqord chuckled, “You think you’re so clever? Who said I’m here to get you to class?”
Trixie, still nursing her own drink, eyed her professor curiously. “Uh, then why are you here?”
Disqord folded his hands behind his back, which did nothing to stop him from holding his coffee in a third hand, and said, “Luna wanted to talk to you about that test you took…”
The word ‘test’ caused a mild case of choking, on Midnight’s part, as she accidentally gave her lungs a dousing.
“… and we all need to talk with you about something far, far more important,” Disqord finished.
Sunset raised a disapproving eyebrow. “Which is…?”
He reached out one hand, and it settled into a familiar, snappable shape.
“Why, the future, of course!”
And with a snap, he and Midnight vanished into thin air. Nothing disturbed the silence of the school grounds that was left in their wake.
At least, until Trixie met Sunset’s eyes.
“That… was really ominous, right?” Trixie asked, “That wasn’t just me?”
“No…” Sunset sighed, and looked up at the statue-less plinth again.
“It wasn’t just you…”
Truth be told, Midnight wasn’t quite feeling up to this today. Sure, the coffee helped, but there was a level of weariness, brought on by a week without REM sleep, and at least 24 hours without sleep at all, that was even now dragging at her bones. Her muscles ached, and as she’d already proven once today, her emotional walls were frayed.
It didn’t help that the Shadow was back in full force.
Shining wasn’t happy to see us up so early, it said. He doesn’t really think of you as his sister. Why put up with him then?
That was at 3am. Outside, by the statue, the voices had gotten worse.
She’s not coming back, they said in front of the portal. She’s gone because of you. She abandoned you.
Even while Trixie talked about a new trick she’d come up with for her next show – worryingly called the Moonshot Manticore Mouth Dive – Midnight had the voice in her ear reminding her that Trixie wouldn’t know real magic if it ran up and bit her.
And it should, right? Just so she’d know her place…
“My playbook…” she whispered to herself, and took another sip of coffee. She was almost out of her third cup, and tried to savor the taste of it. Disqord already made it clear he was cutting her off after that.
She shot him a withering look that failed to do anything more than elicit an amused smirk from the ancient Chaos God. They were currently sitting in Luna’s office, waiting for the Vice Principal to return with the results of Midnight’s aptitude test.
Midnight sat in the uncomfortable student’s chair, and Disqord sat on a high-backed throne beside her.
“Oh, cheer up, you grumpy thing,” he laughed and lounged languidly in his seat, “At worst, your nightmares will probably just drive you completely and irreparably insane!”
“I suppose that’s a good thing by your standards?” she huffed, and took another long sip.
Disqord shrugged, and said, “Madness and Chaos are quite similar, in all the best ways. All I’m saying is, relax! Aren’t things always darkest before the dawn? I think I remember teaching a philosophy course on that…
“Wait, no,” he shook his head, and then gave himself a facepalm for good measure, “I think Harness Puller came up with that one. Probably my best student that century.”
Then, Disqord blinked a few times, and started scratching his chin.
“Why does everything in this universe have something to do with equines? I shouldn’t have taken that vacation a thousand years back. That’s when it all started. Missed so many important events…”
“Don’t you have a class to teach?” Midnight leaned against her chair’s arm, and frowned purposefully in Disqord’s direction.
“Don’t you worry your pretty purple head, Dolly,” he said, and proceeded to pick up several of Luna’s pencils from off her desk. With a wave of his hand, each and every one of them dulled their tips and lost a centimeter of eraser. “I’m omnipresent. I’ve got a Me teaching the class at this very moment. Plus, one is off making random traffic lights break down all over the tri-state area…”
“That’s just criminal.”
He pffft’d at Midnight, and rolled his eyes. “No one is getting hurt! Just a few scares here and there, for fun. I’m also throwing eggs at Pinkie’s house, watching Rhombus of Moolah on daytime television, and there’s a Me going around moving Applejack’s favorite sofa seat half an inch to the left whenever she’s not looking at it.”
Midnight frowned… but she couldn’t exactly deny the tiny smirk also forming on her lips.
“Well… now you’re merely a monster,” she said, half-felt.
Before Disqord could say anything snarky or witty in response, the door to the office opened, allowing Luna to come back inside and dump what looked like an unpublished novella on her desk with a satisfactorily papery whapping sound.
If Midnight was a walking, talking, sleep-deprived corpse, Luna was at least a terminal patient. Coffee or no, she definitely had been pulling all-nighters over this meeting.
That didn’t exactly fill Midnight with a lot of confidence in the meeting itself.
At least she’s more professional than that idiotic Princess.
No, Midnight was not sure if she or the Shadow had been the one to think that.
Luna began… by not beginning. The Vice Principal checked her chair’s level, and glanced fretfully to her own coffee cup – which oddly bore a smiling chibi version of Celestia’s face – before seemingly deciding to pick up the documentation again.
Midnight frowned at this, as while she was perfectly fine reading the pile of paperwork upside-down, she couldn’t do so through other pieces of paper. Not without an x-ray spell cast on her eyes, and that would be a skosh obvious.
Worse. Luna started flipping through the pages. She might have been conducting a last-minute refresher of its contents, Midnight supposed.
More likely, said the Shadow, she’s stalling having to give you bad news…
“So, Veep,” Midnight tried cutting through the tense atmosphere after another sip of her drink, “What’s the damage?”
Midnight cringed at her own joke, especially after Disqord chuckled dryly beside her.
Luna hardly seemed to have noticed. She continued reading the paperwork for another moment, and then set it down on her desk gently, like it was delicate glass.
“I am sure that you will be happy to know your experiment at duplicating yourself did not have a negative outcome on your intelligence,” she said, slowly, a stiff smile plastered all over her face.
Midnight gripped the armrests of her chair, and tried to steady herself.
“That bad, huh?” she asked, eyebrows knitting together with worry.
Luna withheld a flinch, letting only her eyes break the façade of calm control she was otherwise clearly attempting to project.
“This is good news,” she said, hands clasping each other tightly before her, “Out of two-thousand points, you and Twilight… er, your predecessor…”
Luna grimaced at her own terminology, but pressed on despite her discomfort.
“… You scored one-thousand nine-hundred and eighty,” she finished with a sigh, “The same as before your Split.”
Midnight’s grip loosened, just slightly. She tilted her head to the side, and asked, “The same?”
“Indeed,” Luna nodded. “There was a single peculiarity in the distribution of scores across subjects, but Cranky felt that was entirely due to your personality shift…”
“Peculiarity?” Midnight leaned forward, and bit her lip. “What sort of peculiarity? Tell me I’m not doomed to a… an Art degree.”
Disqord, it must be said, possessed truly unrivaled self-restraint. Far more than his draconequus progenitor, in fact. He hardly glanced meaningfully at all towards Luna’s own degrees in Psychology and Literature hanging just above her desk.
She, in turn, seemed to let the unintended insult slide off of her, and instead lifted up the documents again.
“No, Midnight,” Luna said with a slight tenseness that had not been there a moment before, “In fact, the opposite. Your score only differed from before in that your Mathematics went up by one point, while science went down by one.
“Same score, overall,” she said, drawing out a single page and handing it to Midnight. “You just have a slightly different focus. If that’s not just the margin for error at play.”
Midnight snapped up the paper, and her eyes hungrily devoured the numbers on it.
Right there, in black ink.
Math: 399 points.
Science: 398.
The exact opposite of what she remembered getting last time.
She still looks like she swallowed a lemon, the Shadow reminded her. They’re laying out the good news first.
“Where’s the other shoe?” Midnight asked without looking away from the scores on the page.
“Dropping,” Disqord half-whispered into his coffee, this time noticeably avoiding Luna’s glare.
The Vice Principal took a long breath through her nose.
“Your scores will be very impressive,” she said, even more hesitant than before. “I daresay most every college and university will be interested in you, once you apply.”
Midnight lowered the paper, and frowned up at Luna.
“But… I already applied,” she said in a quiet voice. Then, louder, “I… I submitted an application to Everton months ago!”
The office was silent, save for the light ticking of a clock. Disqord, displaying unusually good judgement, followed the room’s example and said nothing. In fact, it was almost disquieting how unlike himself he was, just then.
Luna, meanwhile, worked her jaw a few times, as though she was still mulling over her next words.
Because they were important. And dangerous.
“Twilight Sparkle applied to the Everton Independent Study Program,” she said. “You, Midnight, did not exist until this Monday… and almost every college or university closed their application window months ago.”
Midnight stared at Luna with eyes as wide as saucers, and pupils that had shrunk down to pinpricks.
“But…” she whispered, horrified, “But I did the work.”
“We know,” Luna said in a pleading tone, and forced herself to meet Midnight’s eyes. “We know you worked… very hard, as Twilight Sparkle. But you…”
She paused, perhaps unsure of how to proceed.
Disqord had no such misgivings.
“You’re not quite the Twilight you used to be, are you?” he asked with a coy raise of his eyebrow. “Can’t really blame anyone but yourself if you let your sister keep the name…”
“Cordwood!”
“What?” he asked, laughing, “It’s true! Midnight isn’t Twilight! And good for her, I say!”
She kept the name…
Luna pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes, that… that is the case…”
She looked back up, to where Midnight was still sitting. Still sitting, and shivering slightly. The girl was focusing on her lap now, and her hands were gripping the armrests so tightly that Luna expected her to gouge the wood itself.
Luna stood up, and came around the desk. As she approached, she reached one hand out, to take one of Midnight’s own, and perhaps calm her distressed nerves.
“Midnight, I know…”
Midnight slapped the hand aside, to Luna’s shock. And, had Twilight Sparkle done such a thing, no doubt she would have recoiled, gathered herself, and apologized for her sudden, violent outburst.
But this was not Twilight Sparkle.
“I did the work!” she snarled, and stood up from her seat, sliding the chair back and knocking it over in one fell swoop. Luna flinched at the riotous sound in the small office, while Disqord merely watched as Midnight’s face reddened, and her clenched fists shook at her sides.
“I slaved over those reports for months after the Friendship Games!” she cried, a flicker of blue light in her eyes once more, “I calculated, and collated, and cross-referenced… That report—!”
“Was filed in her application by Twilight!” Luna snapped back with stern authority. “You, however, are not Twilight.”
Her tone cut deep, its cold and resolute nature striking Midnight as surely as an arrow. Midnight’s own mouth froze, mid cry… and closed with a soft click.
She remained standing for a few seconds, eyes blazing with untempered fury… before the energy simply fell away from her, and she dropped back into her chair – helpfully reset by Disqord while no one was looking.
The office was no longer silent. The tick-tock of the clock was joined by a softer sound. A gentle, sorrowful gasp, and quiet sobs as Midnight tilted her head forward, and tried to cover her eyes.
Luna knelt by her chair, and waited. Slowly, she raised one hand, and gingerly set it on Midnight’s shoulder.
Meeting no resistance, she held there for what felt like minutes. Time passed, and Midnight slowly fell silent. Her sobs had been pathetic things, lacking all energy or urgency. They were the sounds of someone defeated, and beyond caring about the loss.
She kept the name, the Shadow said again. She kept the name, and all our hard work that went with it.
You have nothing.
“I’ll…” Midnight sucked in a shuddering breath, “I’ll be the only Sparkle in generations who didn’t get into a university. I’ll be the black sheep of the family…”
“Not unless you do that thing with the goats,” Disqord softly said to himself, “Pentagram Burst was not the most pleasant student I’ve ever had, I’ll say that much.”
“That will not be the case!” Luna tightened her grip on Midnight’s arm, and silently pleaded for Disqord to shut up. “Cordwood has many, many friends all over, and my sister and I are not without contacts.
“Or favors owed,” she finished with a hint of a growl in her throat. Luna looked up to Disqord, and tried to signal him with a near-glare.
He took the hint.
“You remember the coffee guy I mentioned earlier?” he asked with as much a serious tone as he ever had… which is to say, just enough to perhaps guess that he was being serious. “South Mareica? Well, in addition to rock music and chemistry – for not the best reasons, I’ll admit – he also decided to head into education once his first career choice dried up. And, as it just so happens, he’s the Professor Emeritus at Canterlot Community College…”
“Community College?” Midnight lurched back to life, but only a pale imitation of it. Her eyes were bleary red again, and her cheeks were streaked with tear tracts.
“Community Colleges are the last, desperate refuge of derelicts and dropouts,” she sighed, wearily, remembering Grammy Sparkle’s favorite topic of discussion at Hearth’s Warming.
“I assure you,” Disqord said, holding up his hand in something that might have been a scout’s-honor symbol, “He’s got more than enough pull to slip you in, and he owes me big-time. He’s aware of your current condition, and is ready to help.”
Disqord’s face suddenly scrunched up.
“Huh,” he huh’d, and stared off into space, “Suspiciously aware. And suspiciously helpful. But then, Sombra was always quick on the draw…”
“The point is,” Luna turned Midnight’s face back towards her with a gentle hand, “that this is not some failure, Midnight. It is a chance to grow.
“You can take all your general units at the college,” she said, locking eye-to-teary-eye with Midnight, “and then transfer to any college or university you so desire.”
Twilight is going to Everton.
Midnight bit back another sob, and leaned into Luna’s touch.
Only one of us got to keep the name. And everything that goes with it. The opportunities. The friends. The life.
Our life.
“Silver lining,” Disqord offered from somewhere up above, as he floated along the ceiling, “but you’ll have a lot less student debt! Four-Years prefer transfers who’ve already done their General classes at community colleges like Triple-Cee! Believe me, I used to teach them. So, once we’ve got enough falsified documents for you to pass for human, you’ll be a shoe-in, wherever you want to go!”
She took our life.
Every step Midnight took, it seemed, just carried her further and further from where she wanted to go. Who she wanted to be.
At least before Monday, the Shadow said, you knew who you were.
And now, she was fumbling in the dark. Alone, and naked. Everything she wanted for herself had slowly fallen away before her eyes.
She was a disappointment. A loser.
Even Sunset only came back because she had other friends here, in this world.
All I did was hurt her, Midnight sighed, silently. If I’d just stayed a memory, no one would be hurting now. I wouldn’t be this way, this… person.
Everyone would be better off. Even Twilight.
There was just… nothing left. Nothing at all, save for the Shadow.
But if there was only one Twilight, it whispered, then she would get to go wherever she liked.
If Luna or Disqord noticed the way Midnight’s breath caught in her chest, they didn’t let on. And in that span of a heartbeat, between breaths, Midnight thought.
Midnight calculated. And a terrible, terrible sort of calculation began to form in her thoughts. Even as the math worked itself out, she could feel her heart tighten, and her eyes begin to dry.
And as the calculation summed, she ventured a thought.
A dangerous, terrible… peculiar thought.
If there was only… one?
Silence.
Then…
If there was only one.
She broke from Luna’s grasp, and gripped herself tight.
“I need to be alone,” Midnight said, looking away as she did so, her arms wrapped around herself.
The adults shared a look. Then, reluctantly, they stood up, and made their way out the door and into the hall. At the last moment, Luna turned back, and without looking, said, “Stay as long as you need.”
With that, Midnight was alone.
Alone, save for her Shadow.
Quickly, she dried her eyes, and stood again. Midnight turned around, and looked about, eventually locking her gaze on the far wall. She recalled reading, once, that the human brain was always looking for patterns. It was always trying to make sense of the world around itself, even if it began constructing patterns out of elementary chaos and randomness.
That was why you sometimes saw a face in the mirror, out the corner of your eye. It was the human mind trying to find something akin to itself, something familiar. It was… almost heartwarming, to think that people wanted to make friends so much that they’d invent one in their own reflection.
Midnight remembered that lesson, and how Twilight at the time had taken to it. So… naïve.
So, it was no trouble at all to imagine a face amid the pale grey-blue colors of the wall, in between wear and tear, and the odd coffee stain from one of the many disasters that had partly careened through the premises in the past year or two. A few looked fresh, even.
The face of her Shadow stared back.
“Twilight helped us,” Midnight whispered.
Twilight stole everything from you.
“I have friends now,” Midnight countered, “Good friends!”
They put up with you, for Twilight’s sake. The Shadow almost laughed as it said this.
“She’s my sister…”
Didn’t you once say that you were the real Twilight Sparkle?
It laughed again, angrily.
She’s just one personality, it said, one that took your place after those Games. You were the original! The one who suffered the most! Why are you just giving up?
Midnight was silent. Those words weren’t new. She’s said them herself for a solid year while she dwelled inside her own head. Drowning in her memories. Dying a day at a time as she looked back through her life, through her time at Crystal Prep, and wondered why she never burned the place down.
“So, what?” she shrugged, and half-turned from the wall, “I’m just supposed to, what? Destroy her? I think people would notice.”
Not if they didn’t remember.
A chill ran down Midnight’s spine.
“The Memory Stone—”
Wasn’t unique, the Shadow interrupted. We know how the spell worked. We could reabsorb her, erase the evidence, and get back to business!
She frowned, and pursed her lips in thought.
“All that… for Everton?”
Of course not!
For the Magic!
The Shadow was gleeful, almost cackling. Midnight couldn’t deny how that felt, either. Like a fire in her chest, blowing aside the shadows.
It’s what we’ve always wanted, it said again. We never needed this existence, these “friends”…
You just have to…
And like that, the answer came to Midnight’s mind. A cold, cruel answer.
She was done calculating.
“Unleash the magic,” Midnight said, a cruel smile splitting her face from ear to ear. “I guess it really is a page right out of my old playbook…”
The Shadow, delighted with her epiphany, faded away.
And for once, Midnight’s mind was silent.