Twilight’s instincts kicked in. She immediately encased herself inside a dome-shaped magical shield.
The shield went up just a moment before Rainbow Dash swung the bat at her head, causing the bat to bounce off the shield and recoil directly into Rainbow’s face. The force of the impact reversed her flight trajectory and she tumbled head over hooves backward through the air, landing several body lengths away.
Twilight took a defensive posture within the dome and quickly looked for any other incoming attacks. When she detected no other impending threats to her body or magic, she untensed her muscles and took stock of where she was.
The first things she saw were six creatures that were unmistakably this world’s version of her and her friends. And Starlight was right – while they were clearly ponies, they were also very different. Most notably, their heads were essentially the same size as all of the other parts of their bodies combined. Larger if you included mane volume. Twilight wondered whether, if compared side-by-side to a pony in her Equestria, their bodies would be smaller or their heads would be larger. The thought occurred to her that with such a large cranial capacity, this entire species of pony might exhibit intelligence higher than hers. She didn’t like that thought.
Next, she looked around at the place she was in. She saw a kitchen, displays filled with cupcakes and breads… she was definitely in some kind of bakery. But the architecture was uneven – right angles were few and far between. Yet the building was clearly ponymade as opposed to being built into some naturally occurring formation, so it had been an intentional decision to make everything look like it was about to collapse at any moment. Twilight wasn’t sure whether the ability to keep an unstable bakery standing upright was a point in favor of or against her hypothesis that these ponies had a higher intelligence.
She turned her attention back to the ponies in the room. Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, and Rarity. Rainbow Dash was lying motionless on her back, spirals in place of her eyes. None of the others seemed particularly concerned about attending to her.
Twilight then looked up, as Pinkie Pie had climbed to the top of her dome shield.
“See, that’s why I didn’t take that mirror down!” Pinkie said to the others. “In case it decided to spit out another new pony for us to meet!”
Twilight realized that by staying inside her dome, she was being rude. She neutralized the shield, encased Pinkie in her magic, and gently set her down alongside the others.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. I come in peace from another dimension in the spirit of friendship.”
“I must say,” Rarity said, “that’s a much more pleasant introduction than the one our last visitor provided. No panicking or verbalizing her confusion over unfamiliar surroundings. And there’s no need to cover Pinkie’s ears lest she pick up any new words.”
“I learned how to read lips to get ready for this time!”
The native Twilight tentatively stepped forward. “Are you… me?”
The visiting Twilight looked down and back at her own body. Four legs, two wings, and she already knew that she had her magic. The proportions were way off, but all of the usual parts were there. “I’m my universe’s version of you, yes. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Princess Twilight.” She held out her hoof for a hoofshake.
Instead of reciprocating, the native Twilight’s jaw dropped to the ground. It didn’t have all that far to travel.
After a couple of seconds, she closed her mouth.
“You’re… a princess?” she asked the visiting Twilight, her voice filled with awe.
“…Yeees?” Twilight answered. She placed her hoof back on the ground and hesitantly said, “Are you not a princess here?” She hoped that she hadn’t just altered the timeline by revealing something that hadn’t happened yet. But that Twilight was already an alicorn. That meant she had to be a princess, right?
Applejack stepped forward. “That hasn’t been established yet. If we ever get ourselves into a situation where Twilight’d need to be a princess, I’m sure she’d be one then.” She reached out, took the visiting Twilight’s hoof, and shook it. “Name’s Applejack. Pleased to meet you.”
“I know you are,” Twilight said. Then hastily corrected herself, “I mean, I know that you’re Applejack! You’re all my friends back home. That is to say, I have versions of all of you in my dimension. I mean, there are versions of all of you in my dimension!”
The others simply stared at her.
“Is Rainbow Dash okay?”
As if on cue, Rainbow leapt back up onto her hooves. She looked at the ponies in front of her.
“An evil clone!”
She grabbed the baseball bat and once again launched herself toward the identical purple ponies. This time, she aimed for the native Twilight.
Four other ponies tackled her from the air and pinned her to the ground.
“She isn’t an evil clone!” Applejack said from what was an impressively arranged pile, considering the difficulty of getting four sets of stubby legs onto Rainbow Dash’s body without everybody’s heads getting in each other’s way.
“I’m Twilight Sparkle’s interdimensional counterpart,” the visiting Twilight said.
Rainbow Dash blinked.
“She’s me from the mirror world,” the native Twilight explained.
“Ohhh,” Rainbow said. The others let her stand back up. She put a hoof to her chin and said, “But mirrors show you the opposite of things, right? So that would make her evil! Unless…”
She zipped over and got up face-to-face with the native Twilight.
“…you’ve been evil all this time!” She jabbed her accusingly in the chest.
Pinkie Pie pushed Rainbow aside, then stood in front of the visiting Twilight. “Welcome to Sugarcube Corner!”
“This is Sugarcube Corner?”
“The finest bakery in Ponyville!” Pinkie said. She gestured behind her with a foreleg and all of the walls glittered.
Before Twilight could decide which of her many, many follow-up questions to ask, Pinkie ran over to a cupboard and ran back holding a glass bottle with a rounded base.
“May I interest you in a potion?”
Twilight looked at the bottle. “A potion?”
“We serve only the finest potions at the finest bakery in Ponyville!”
Even more questions raced through Twilight’s brain. She settled on the one most pertinent to the moment.
“What kind of potion?”
“It’s a mystery! Nopony knows what it’ll do!”
She immediately uncapped the bottle and drank the entirety of its contents in one gulp. Within moments, her mane and tail began to emit a steady pink glow. Twilight had to squint in order to look directly at her.
“Hee hee!” Pinkie giggled. “I’m brighter than you!”
It spoke volumes of Twilight’s diplomatic training that she was able to keep her response to herself.
Pinkie ran back to the cupboard, then returned holding six more bottles. She offered one to Twilight.
Twilight held up a hoof. “No thanks, I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself!” She distributed the bottles among her friends and kept the sixth for herself. To Twilight’s mild horror, they all voluntarily drank the potions.
There were six puffs of smoke that quickly vanished to reveal that each of the ponies had transformed. Applejack had become a robot, Rarity had become an octopus, Fluttershy had become a thin guitarist dressed entirely in purple, Rainbow Dash had become a wooden marionette, Pinkie Pie had become a jacket-wearing outlaw sitting on an idling motorcycle, and Twilight Sparkle had become Rarity.
The visiting Twilight stared with wide eyes. It seemed like the most appropriate response.
The Rarity-octopus produced a roll of fabric from some unseen hiding place and covered it in an ultramarine ink she expelled from her own body. Fluttershy began to play a funky riff. Rainbow Dash, with nothing to hold her up, fell over.
Seeing no evidence to the contrary, Twilight said, “So you all drink potions that have unpredictable, transmogrifying effects on your own bodies? That’s something that regularly happens in this dimension?”
Pinkie drove the motorcycle over to where Twilight was standing. “Not so much anymore,” she admitted, her chipper voice incongruous with her vehicle, outfit, and full beard. “It stopped being so important once we found out who was making them.”
“Who was— you were drinking body-altering potions without knowing who was making them?”
“She turned out to be a real nice pony,” came the robotic voice of Applejack, not addressing what Twilight felt to be the more important question. “Maybe a little clumsy, but everypony makes mistakes.”
“I… I think I need to lie down,” the visiting Twilight said. Twilight-turned-Rarity stepped over, conjured up a fainting couch, then went back to admiring herself and posing in front of a mirror on the other side of the room. “You drink unidentified, potent liquids concocted by a former stranger who you now know still might be making mistakes. That’s a behavior that’s acceptable here. To be performed and emulated.”
“Absolutely!” Pinkie said.
Before Twilight could respond, the front door opened. Twilight turned her head to see that dimension’s version of Spike carrying a stack of envelopes.
“Mail’s here!” he announced.
At least she thought it was Spike.
She heard Rarity squeal in excitement. When she turned her head back to see how an octopus could squeal, she discovered that all six ponies were back to their original selves, now sitting in a straight line near her.
The dragon walked down the line, distributing envelopes to their intended recipients. He gave the final envelope to Twilight, who was at the end of the line. He then looked past the native Twilight to the visiting Twilight, standing just a few paces away.
He turned back to the native Twilight. Then the visiting Twilight. Back. And forth. Back. And forth.
“Nope,” he said. “One is my limit.” With no further comment, he walked out and shut the door behind him.
The visiting Twilight turned to her counterpart. “Was that Spike?” she asked.
“Of course,” the native Twilight said. “What other dragons are there?”
“Does he always sound like that?”
“Yes…” the native Twilight said, clearly confused.
“Sorry. It’s just that where I come from, that isn’t what his voice sounds like. That sounded like Rarity doing her impersonation of him.”
The native Twilight simply shrugged.
“Another question,” the visiting Twilight said. “You all get your mail here?”
“We’re all here pretty much all of the time. So this would be the most logical place for us to receive our mail.”
Before Twilight could say anything else, Fluttershy announced, “I got a letter from Mong!”
In unison, the two Twilights asked, “Who’s Mong?”
“My friend from Crossbones Island,” she explained. “He’s a giant ape…”
She grew dozens of times her original size. The visiting Twilight stumbled backward a couple of steps.
“…about this big, who briefly had a starring role in a Bridleway show. But the pressure of being a famous celebrity got to him, so he grabbed me…”
She acquired a Fluttershy doll, which she held in her foreleg.
“…and carried me up to the top of the tallest skyscraper in Manehattan. Some ponies got into airplanes to force him back down, but before he could hurt any of them, I talked to him, let him know that I understood how he felt, and convinced him to climb down to the ground on his own.”
Applejack stepped forward and weightily proclaimed, “It was beauty stilled the beast.”
Fluttershy shrank down to the size of the others. “I taught him the methods that I use, showing him how to suppress his rage deep inside himself, where it can’t hurt anybody else.” Shadows fell across her face. “Until the day he’s pushed too far.”
The visiting Twilight gulped and turned to the other Twilight. “I’m still trying to figure out how this dimension works,” she said. “When did Fluttershy drink the potion that made her grow?”
“Oh, that wasn’t a potion,” Twilight cheerfully explained. “Fluttershy is always able to do that.”
“You’re able to change size at will?”
“Not all of us. Just Fluttershy.”
The visiting Twilight blinked. It was the only motor function working.
Pinkie Pie held up an envelope of her own. “I got a letter from Good Moussekeeping magazine!”
Rainbow Dash stepped over. “Is that about the recipe contest?”
“It is! I’m too nervous to open it!” Her front hooves began shaking, vibrating so much that the letter popped out of the top of the envelope. Pinkie read it.
“It says that my streusel-topped graham-bottomed cream-filled brownie cupcakes… took first prize! Hooray!”
She jumped into the air, inflated like a balloon, and popped, releasing a spray of confetti and streamers that landed in a pile on the floor.
The native Twilight turned to the visiting Twilight, awaiting her reaction.
“Actually, that isn’t all that different than the Pinkie Pie in my dimension.”