//------------------------------//
// SunSunSun (SunSun; SunSun) 
// Story: Anthology of Graybles 
// by Str8aura 
//------------------------------//

"Okay, I know it's only been a week, but I'm taking time travel away from you. It's for your own good."

Sunset looked up from her cellphone lying on the table, unable to be picked up due to the weight brought on by the massive hunk of gem gorilla glued to the back to keep it running in a world without electricity or cell towers.

"What? Why would you do that?"

"You're petty with it. You use it for every inconvenience."

"No I don't, Twilight."

Sunset clicked on the next video, groaning at the unskippable ad played right before it, some kind of new magical weapon capable of immanentizing a very tiny eschaton in the brain of the target, separating them across three different planes instantly. Because it was an Equestrian ad, a royalty free nursery rhyme was chosen as the music for the commercial. "Hey, Twilight, when was pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake written?"

"1698, by the playwright Thomas D'Urfey for his play The Campaigners. Why do you ask?"

Sunset disappeared in a flash of light, returning a second later covered in blood.

"No reason." She replied, turning back to her video.

"Okay, first of all, that's taken out of context, second of all, never project words into my mind again, and thirdly, why did you narrate that in third person?"

"If you think I won't use my magic to induce forced flashbacks, you don't know me very well. And I'm sorry, I know you spent a long time learning that spell, but enough is enough."

"How do you even remember that?" Sunset protested as Twilight cautiously approached, whipping a blanket off the alicorn's bed with her hooves as defense. 
"Come on, I need a special power while I'm in Equestria so I'm not just a recolor of you. You have psychic abilities that could tear open reality if you wanted to, and I haven't trained my horn in years! I can barely do a levitation spell! I'm rusty!"

"I'll be happy to teach you, just hold still!"

"But time travel is the only solace I can take that not every moment is nothing more than that, a moment that will pass within the instant I'll never be able to return to! It's my escape from the persecution of reality!"

Twilight sighed, "Don't be ridiculous, it doesn't free you from time, only your perception of time, although you can't tell the difference. Now give me- A ha!"

Twilight finally launched the spell, tearing magic out through Sunset's momentarily glowing eyes. Sunset groaned, falling backwards dramatically.

"Fine, you know what? Keep your stupid time travel, I'm going to find something else that can separate me from you. Like a brick wall."

Twilight sighed, watching Sunset scooch off lazily on her belly. "I don't mind you learning magic, you just got to be conservational with it. Think like a cartoon character! Don't comprehend the full scope, just use it for childish things like pulling pr- Uh, like doing taxe- Uh, maybe I should join you!"

Her last calls went unheeded as Sunset kicked the door to the basement shut behind her.





A few minutes later, Twilight descended the basement steps, reasoning that Sunset's postmaturely blossomed teenage angst would have soothed by now.

"Sunset! Sunset? Are you in here?"

Two identical voices replied from the darkness, a meek "Yes...?" and a steadfast "No."

Twilight paused, memories of mirror pools curbstomping her scientific interest. Actually, if she had a dime for every time there was more than one Pinkie in her world, she would have exactly forty-five cents, adjusted for monarch tax.

"I'm coming in, and if there's more than one Sunset, I'll be two seconds away from shooting! Unless you're doing something embarrassing, in which case I'll leave you be because you shouldn't be afraid to explore your sexuality, but still!"

Silence. Twilight fluttered down gently down through the middle of their imposing spiral staircase, landing in the center.

There were indeed two Sunsets, and one was strapped down to a table.

"Okay, a promise is a promise..." Twilight muttered.

"No wait, I can explain!" Non-tied Sunset shook her hooves, a gesture which didn't really translate well without hands.

"Do I want to hear...?"

"I found one of your spellbooks, and it advertised a magical manifestation of the folly of equine- which, like, is a complete cheat, because which folly? We contain multitudes, you can't just label some random flaw as the penultimate folly. Do you mean our fucked up lungs that bleed when we run too fast, or our brittle hooves, or our complete inability to recognize our own flaws, or what? So, I had to find out."

"Turns out the folly of Equine is just an evil version of themselves, which is such a cheat." Tied-down Sunset griped.

"So, I did what any reasonable and held-together adult who has spent years masquerading as a hormonally confused and anxious teenager would do, and tied her up for the good of mankind- of, uh, equinekind." Sunset finished, looking back to the other facet of her for confirmation of her thought process. Other Sunset nodded.

Twilight sighed. "Okay, I'll give you credit, I can't imagine that being a very easy spell to pull off-"

"It was, actually..."

"-and self-division spells are often really pretentiously described with words like 'Doppelgänger" and "Ex Nihlo" and "Roota", as Spike had to make me aware of, but that doesn't really excuse this. I spent the better part of three days hating you because you were the mean version of yourself, and now she's back?"

Sunset's head shrunk into her own neck. 

"Ah... Not exactly. I assumed the same thing, but then... Hey, Un-Set, mind passing that book over there?"

"Fuck you, do it yourself." Un-Set replied as she levitated the book over to her.

Twilight stared in confusion as Sunset plucked the book from the air.

"Yeah... it wasn't exactly a clean cut." 

Sunset explained. "She didn't just pick up my bad quirks; She tries really hard to be angry, but sometimes has an occasional outburst of politeness when things get stressful. She also took my knowledge of making pasta, my ability to rap the fast part of Fergalicious in one breath, and my tendency to sometimes sit by and say nothing while someone else exposits, which really sucks, except for the fact that I've never found myself talking this much."

"I'm sure some of us still wish you would." Un-Set remarked. "No possible idea who, though."

Twilight gaped. "This is a catastrophe!"

"I mean, I wouldn't go that far, but-"

"You lied to me! You can perform telekinesis."

Sunset froze, performing the coveted nose scrunch. "I-"

"You should never lie to your best friends, Sunset. And Un-Set. Lying is a gateway to distrust, and a true, true friend needs to always have trust-"

"Shut up, we get it, you're tight." Sunset silently thanked the heavens as Un-Set spoke up, thankful someone else could say what she was thinking. "I mean, you're right and a true friendship is the most beautiful treasure of all, but shut up. If you are quite done figuring out a solution to my very existence, I'd like to get up. I lost my memory of how to untie a Devil's Tongue that I got from boy scouts, so I'd really appreciate a refuse, or in a minute both of you will be indistinguishable from refuse. Ooh, that was a good one."

"Okay, okay, I think I can figure this out." Twilight breathed, pulling the book to her and pacing in a clean 360 degree circle. "First we'll need to venture to the outskirts of Equestria, which we should be able to cover in a few strung together teleports, climb the terrifying mountains of the frozen north, which have an elevator at the bottom, bargain with the gods for one of the dreaded Typhon's scales, which should be pretty easy because the only god up there around these times is Gaia and she'll be more than happy to part with some of the scales left in Typhon's bedroom in Tartarus from his molting years, then we'll have to find some dirt..."

As Twilight rambled on, Sunset and Un-Set shot a look at each other, suddenly beset with an idea. Both lit their horns at once, and they reperformed the Folly spell, tweaking subtle details each time.

Un-Set became a manifestation of Sunset's memories of where she left her credit cards, and Sunset was left with everything else.

Un-Set became a manifestation of Sunset's insecurities, but the ability to speak her first language was left to Sunset, forcing her to lament in Equestrian Sign Language until they tried again.

Un-Set took every memory Sunset ever had except hearing Caramelldansen for the first time on Earth, which bounced around Sunset's skull frantically.

Un-Set was reversed back to being a manifestation of Sunset's anger and dope rhymes. Sunset sighed.

"Got that?" Twilight finished. Both Sunsets snapped to awareness.

"Yeah, sounds perfect. You're the magical prodigy, you've got this." Sunset confessed.