//------------------------------//
// Mad Science 3: Sweetie Belle Drift 
// Story: A Witch in Broad Daylight 
// by Epsilon-Delta 
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In one sense, Sweetie Belle was more constrained than ever been before.

There was an ever-present threat from all the enemies Rarity and her new friends were making. That meant it wasn’t safe for Sweetie Belle or Apple Bloom to leave the castle. A forcefield at the edge of the castle grounds, where the ruined suggestion of an ancient wall still stood, was the edge of her world for the time being.

Then there was the fact that Sweetie herself was the result of a highly illegal ‘surgery’. Having a robot body, being made of illegality, meant she couldn’t just go into town anymore. At best, she could go to an outlaw town like Oaken Field.

But in reality? None of that felt like it mattered.

Stuck in this castle, Sweetie Belle was surrounded by this surge of freedom she never had before. The town she used to live in was just a town. This place was like a whole alien planet to explore!

After an entire month, Sweetie and her new best friend Apple Bloom hadn’t even finished exploring every room of the castle. That wasn’t just because a few rooms, like the one Rarity kept her giant vats of acid in, were locked off for being too ‘dangerous'. It was that every room had something interesting enough to distract them for a whole day.

Like one room was an entire aquarium of robot fish, complete with a laser shark. In another room, Rarity had a small museum dedicated to Sweetie Belle. It was like Rarity brought Sweetie Belle back to life just so she could kill her again with embarrassment! Though seeing all the Sweetie Bots lined up from the MK 1 to the 8100 was interesting, at least.

Not least of all was the analytical engine room. Sweetie had never even heard of an analytical engine before, yet that thing was like an entire world to explore all on its own. The list of things that machine could do never ended.

Rarity was never against letting Sweetie Belle interrupt her to play with the thing. To Sweetie Belle, it felt like there wasn’t any gap at all. She just woke up and Rarity was an adult now. To Rarity, it had been eight years. That meant Rarity was willing to give her anything.

Well, almost never.

At the moment, Sweetie Belle was scooched up close to Rarity in her chair. They were looking over the website for the upcoming Madcon. That was an important event, as it was when they decided who their leader would be for the next year.

“They have videos for all the robot tournaments for the past twenty years?” Sweetie Belle pointed out that section of the screen. “Can we watch them? I wanna see what robots looked like back then.”

“You can if you want, but I won’t have time today,” said Rarity. “Twilight is coming over in a little bit. We’re not nearly done upgrading you.”

Sweetie Belle looked down at her newest body. This wasn’t her ‘real’ body, which was sitting idle in her room, but one of the new 8100’s. It didn’t look any different from the old 8000s except that they were white instead of grey.

They were white because the frame was made of some new metal Twilight showed Rarity how to make. It wasn’t as strong as the expensive alloy that made the 9000’s armor, but it was light! A 9000 weighed 180 pounds, an 8000 weighed 100 but this was only 70. That was still a chunky pony, but Sweetie felt light as a feather.

“Are you taking Saccharin this time?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Saccharin was the one they experimented on. She was less fragile than Sweetie Belle.

“I’m afraid so.” Rarity nodded.

“But Apple Bloom trains with Twilight too,” Sweetie Belle complained. “I’m not going to have anything to do all day!”

“If you want something to do, I can give you something to do.” Rarity turned around on her chair.

She meant, giving Sweetie Belle things to study. Summer school was not what Sweetie Belle had in mind, though. Maybe if she was at least learning something cool like Apple Bloom, it’d be different. The one downside of having a robot body was her ability to control magic was almost zero, less than an earth pony’s even.

If only one more kid was living in this place, things would be perfect.

“Oh! Wait!” A great idea popped into Sweetie’s head. “If you know how to make intelligent robots, then you can just make me as many friends as you want, right? Can you give them any personality you want?”

“Saccharin is different,” said Rarity. “Her ‘brain’, if you will, isn’t merely a small analytical engine like an 8000s. Intelligent robots use a ‘persona core’, you see. I can’t create one whenever I like because nopony really understands how they work.”

“Didn’t you make one? How can you have no idea how it works?”

“I do have some small idea how it works,” Rarity corrected her. “But I can only build one in the hours that follow exposing myself to the outer realm.”

Sweetie Belle knew a tiny bit about all this mad science stuff from before. It wasn’t something you could learn much about in Equestria, so her understanding of it was poor.

Now Sweetie Belle was a bad guy and if you were a bad guy you could do anything. That was another way she was free.

“What’s it like?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“It’s difficult to explain the rush of inspiration you get from it!” The way Rarity smiled made her memories of that time seem fond. “The entire world looks completely different for a few hours. Time becomes optional and ‘impossible’ is a laughable idea. You can do nearly anything in such a state.”

Her smile faded just a little.

“But once it’s over, it’s difficult to even remember what you’ve done.” Rarity shook her head. “It took me half a day to create Saccharin’s persona core, yet I was only able to reverse engineer small parts of it over the next several years. I hardly even know what I programmed her to do.”

Now there was an image in Sweetie Belle’s mind of Rarity staring unblinkingly into her projector while she slammed her hooves into the analytical engine as fast as possible.

“Attempts to write down how it works during the rush have universally failed.” Rarity took out a small notebook from her drawer. The title written on it was simply ‘What?’. “My notes made sense to me at the time but are a touch incomprehensible after the fact. I’ve yet to work out what this scribbly one means.”

Rarity turned the book to Sweetie Belle. The page was filled with a black vortex made of hundreds of circles. In the bottom right, in Rarity’s neat hoofwritting, was the word ‘seven’.

If there was any meaning behind this message, it was so far beyond Sweetie Belle that she didn’t even attempt to understand it.

“Can’t you just keep doing it until you understand?” Sweetie Belle asked. “You already went on the eighth.”

“Each time is less productive than the last and comes with a greater cost.” Rarity put a hoof over her mask. “My pathological need to wear a mask at all times is charming compared to what’s next. Being at my limit also means the next dive I take likely results in me going berserk and trying to kill somepony for twelve hours rather than being productive. It isn’t worth it.”

The thought of Rarity turning evil when she was at ten thousand times her normal level of inspiration was scary.

“Could I make a persona core if I stick my head in the thing?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“No. You do need some education beforehand. But your idea isn’t wrong, per se.” Rarity turned back to her analytical engine. “That’s why we form these mad science organizations. Ponies like me teach those who have yet to do their first dive, then they push the field of mad science forward.”

Sweetie Belle wasn’t sure if she’d even want to. The curiosity covered her like a bad itch, but the fear of going to the outer realm for even one second was enough to keep her from scratching.

“But just to be perfectly clear,” Rarity added, “I forbid you from doing a dive for another eight years at the very least.”

“You don’t have to worry about that one,” Sweetie Belle assured her. “There’s no way I’d do something like that on my own.”

Just then, Sweetie Belle noticed Apple Bloom in front of one of her other bodies.

Sweetie Belle could simultaneously see through all her bodies at the same time now. The sight from her other bodies was like the sight in the corner of her eyes. She hardly had a clear picture of it in her mind, but she could certainly notice things moving and talking to her.

Apple Bloom was trying to get her attention on top of that. Sweetie focused on that body to get a better look to find her new friend waving a hoof in front of that robot’s face, asking if Sweetie Belle was ‘home’.

Sweetie Belle gave Rarity a quick goodbye before switching bodies.

As a robot, Sweetie Belle could effectively teleport anywhere in the castle she wanted. She simply switched control to the other 8100 and she was right there in front of Apple Bloom.

She was starting to see the robot her brain was inside of as merely a part of her body, rather than the whole of it. That was how seamless her control over all the spares was.

Sweetie Belle was now the 8100 stationed in the backyard. Apple Bloom and Saccharin were both already there in front of her. Now she could feel Apple Bloom poking the robot, though it was muted compared to the 9000’s sense of touch.

“Okay, I’m here,” said Sweetie Belle. “You can stop poking me.”

“We only got maybe an hour till Twilight shows up,” said Apple Bloom. “There was something cool in the lake I wanted to show you, cause I dunno how long it’ll last. Come on.”

Apple Bloom didn’t wait to run off into the vast wilderness of Rarity’s backyard. That place was like a small forest in itself.

She only had half of it mapped out in her head so far. Immediately behind the house was a jumble of weeds and vines that drowned what was once a garden and greenhouse. That’s what happened when you left the perpetual rain machine on too long.

That part was looking better now as Applejack, who hated sitting around, spent any free time tearing up all the weeds and vines.

But the place they went to today was a small pond surrounded by a garden of moss. The only structure near it was a single bench, half-buried in the ground and covered with moss. It’d been dedicated to somepony long ago, but that name was faded.

Sweetie Belle came to the edge of the pond and peered into the murky water to see if she could finally find whatever lived there. To her surprise, there was far more life in it this time.

There was a huge school of tiny little fish swimming around the edge of the water. Some of the tiny fish would light up briefly in the dark waters as if briefly electrified. There were so many of them that, though they rarely lit up, the lake was speckled with flickering lights.

“See? It’s flashfish! Just like in the movie,” Apple Bloom pointed out. “They only look like this for three days.”

“What movie?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“You never seen Finny Frenzy?” Apple Bloom looked skeptical of the idea.

Sweetie Belle shook her head.

“Oh, that’s right! It was last summer,” said Apple Bloom. “Must have been one you missed cause your brain was in a jar.”

The fact that Sweetie Belle had missed 8 years meant there were all sorts of stuff she had to learn about now. It didn’t sound like a lot of time at first, but it sure felt like the two fillies were from different generations sometimes.

Apple Bloom had never even heard of Summoner Knights, even though it was the most popular thing in the world right before Sweetie Belle took her extreme nap. Then Apple Bloom though Daring Do came out some fifty years ago, despite the last one being release right after the accident. At least Sweetie Belle didn’t need to wait a year for it, now.

It was weird to think all her old friends were adults now. Lilly, Daisy, and Roseluck were no doubt off doing taxes somewhere. And had they met before the accident, Apple Bloom would have been practically a baby.

“Well if you didn’t see the movie, then you don’t know about this.” Apple Bloom took some leaves from a nearby shrub and threw them into the pond.

For a brief second, every one of the flashfish lit up at once. It wasn’t like before either. The surface of the entire lake glowed like it was electrified and the leaves disintegrated. Sweetie Belle was a little startled by the display and took a step back.

Reflexively, Saccharin took out her guns and opened fire on the flashfish, scattering them all to the deeper parts of the water where they vanished from sight. The lake flashed brightly a few times, then all signs of the fish were gone.

The other two fillies were stunned at the sudden attack.

“The hay did you do that for?” Apple Bloom asked. “You scared all the poor fish away!”

“Sweetie Belle is my sister,” said Saccharin. “The fish electrifying the lake was an act of aggression against her. Things that threaten my sister are my enemies who must be intimidated or destroyed.”

“I think you need to learn a lesson about staying calm,” said Apple Bloom.

“Calmness is simply the art of letting your enemies go undestroyed,” said Saccharin. “If I can correctly identify the enemies of Rarity, it doesn’t matter how intense I am.”

“Well if you want to keep playing with us, you gotta tone it down!” Sweetie Belle threatened.

That got her to at least consider it. Sweetie Belle knew that beneath all those urges to kill and burn stuff, Saccharin was still a kid and didn’t want to be left out of their games.

“Very well.” Saccharin shook her head. “How does one learn to tone something down?”

That was a good question. The two of them needed a moment to decide.

After a second, Apple Bloom noticed a butterfly fluttering nearby. She held out her hoof and the butterfly landed on it. Animals, especially dumb ones, tended to be drawn to earth ponies like that.

“Okay, take this butterfly for instance.” Apple Bloom gently held it out to Saccharin.

“There are 8,000 ways I could destroy this worthless insect.” Saccharin declared.

“Yeah. But don’t.” Apple Bloom gently set it on the robot’s muzzle.

“Don’t?” Saccharin looked at the butterfly on her nose. “I have never considered such a thing.”

Saccharin watched the butterfly sit on her muzzle, but made no attempt to burn it.

“There! Now just keep not destroying it,” said Apple Bloom. “It’s that easy! And we can move on to petting a cat or something next. I dunno what all these robophobes are complaining about. Keeping Saccharin from destroying stuff ain’t hard at all.”

“Rarity told me that old-fashioned robots could only feel aggression,” said Sweetie Belle. “That’s why they just constantly killed everything. They saw everything everyone did as an act of aggression.”

“Aggression is the most simplistic emotion and the easiest to replicate,” Saccharin agreed without disturbing the butterfly. “Even pathetic lizards and inferior robots have this sense.”

“Yeah, but the new ones like Saccharin can feel love, fear, and aggression.” Sweetie Belle was pretty sure she got that right. “That’s why they don’t necessarily kill you now.”

“Huh. I never knew that.” Apple Bloom turned to Saccharin. “So you can only feel three emotions?”

“My emotions are triangulated between these three points,” said Saccharin. “Sadness is the most difficult emotion to replicate. I cannot experience remorse, nostalgia, or any related emotion. No pony has ever created a robot that can feel sad, nor do I see any reason to build such a robot. Sorrow is a useless emotion that needlessly reduces one’s abilities.”

“That’s not true,” said Sweetie Belle. “Because, uh…”

Her gut instinct was to disagree with the idea that sadness was useless. Yet she drew a blank coming up with a reason why that was the case.

“Think of it like this,” Sweetie Belle came up with an idea. “If Rarity hadn’t been crushed by sadness, she never would have created you. I’d be dead too.”

“I reject your argument.” Saccharin looked at her but didn’t shake her head as not to disturb the butterfly. “Rarity’s love for her sisters is infinite! That alone would have motivated her to rebuild you, were it at all possible.”

“I guess we can’t know for sure,” Sweetie Belle admitted.

But she still felt like she could come up with a better argument than that if given a bit longer. She’d probably think of something brilliant later that day when it was too late to bring it up again.

“Well you know,” Apple Bloom closed her eyes and nodded her head, “I bet a wise pony would say ‘sorrow is what makes joy worthwhile’ or something like that.”

And she nodded her head wisely a few more times.

“But is that true?” Saccharin asked.

“I dunno!” Apple Bloom shrugged. “I’m just a kid. But I know that’s what they’d say.”

“I don’t think ponies who say such things are wise,” said Saccharin. “I have only seen sorrow harm my sister Rarity and produce nothing in return.”

Sweetie Belle realized just then that Saccharin spent most of her life alone with a pony who must have spent years wallowing in sorrow. Rarity seemed so happy now, but what was she like while Sweetie Belle was in her coma?

She could understand Saccharin’s resentment towards sadness.

“I will not allow my sister Rarity to be sad,” Saccharin vowed. “I will ensure Sweetie Belle is never harmed again. I will finally win the battlebot tournament this year at Madcon and solidify her as the new leader of the Mad Science League. To finally win this is another one of her dreams.”

“Hold up,” Apple Bloom interrupted her. “If you lost before, then there’s another robot even stronger than you?”

“Yes. Biohazard, the flagship robot of the Mad Science League’s current leader, defeated me the last three years in a row,” said Saccharin.

“But ain’t you invincible or something?” Apple Bloom asked. “How do you lose?”

“My armor is stronger but Biohazard was superior in all other aspects,” Saccharin explained. “One can win the battle without destroying the other robot by scoring more points. A focus on defense puts me at a disadvantage.”

“But you can take him now, right?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Yes.” Saccharin looked down at her hoof. “With my new upgrades, I can obliterate Biohazard. Big sister Rarity will become the head of the Mad Science League as she deserves! The others will have no choice but to adore her. In time, the Mad Science Association, Cartel, Institute, and Organization will all kneel to Rarity.”

Adult Rarity had way more ambition than teen Rarity. Back then, Rarity’s biggest goal was ‘I’ll make a dress’. Now she wanted to build all kinds of impossible-sounding stuff and eventually become the queen of mad science or whatever it was called. And that was only a fraction of the plans Sweetie Belle’s new de facto family had.

“Huh.” Sweetie Belle looked up at the sky. “It does kind of sound like we’re doing a world domination kind of thing when you say it out loud. You don’t think we’re the bad guys, do you?”

“Oh, I work for The Darklord,” said Apple Bloom with a smile. “I accepted that we’re the bad guys a long time ago. I’m on the dark side one hundred percent!”

“Um.” Sweetie Belle glanced briefly aside, then back at Apple Bloom. “Okay.”

The butterfly flew off just then, though not because Saccharin disturbed it. Instead, it seemed to be reacting to the appearance of a new pony.

Rainbow Dash flew out of the castle, landing just past the garden. Sweetie Belle swiveled her ears in Dash’s direction as soon as she noticed there was another pony with Dash. Not only was it a pony Sweetie had never seen before, but the newcomer was a filly about the same age as her.

She was at once given an uneasy feeling. That was exactly what Sweetie Belle wished for just an hour ago. Everypony knew it was a bad omen when your wishes came true like that.

Her mind buzzed trying to figure out who this could possibly be. The new filly was a small, orange pegasus. They were far away enough that listening in on them gave her no clues.

She couldn’t be a normal pony because they’d never bring a normal pony here. Maybe they rescued her from some monster recently? And Rarity agreed to let yet another pony stay in her house? Rarity was exceptionally generous if that was the case.

Dash gave the filly a nudge in their direction. The filly looked reluctant to go over to them at first, like Dash had just asked her to go play with a group of babies, but did start walking towards them a second later.

To Sweetie Belle’s surprise, Dash took off the second Scootaloo started towards them. So she was just not going to tell them who the heck this was? Well, Sweetie would figure it out soon enough.

“Oh hey, Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom waved to her enthusiastically as she got close. “Over here!”

Sweetie Belle blinked and turned to Apple Bloom, stunned.

Apple Bloom knew who this was? Was it one of her werewolf friends?

“Yeah. Sup.” Scootaloo leaned against a tree when she got close, trying a little too hard to look cool. “So, uh, what are you up to today?”

Scootaloo briefly glanced at Sweetie Belle but looked away as fast as she could. That was something she got a lot back in Oaken Field. Ponies who were curious about her but didn’t want to be rude by staring.

“We were just talking about how Saccharin’s gonna win the big robot tournament!” Apple Bloom explained.

“There’s a robot tournament?” Scootaloo’s ears perked up with interest.

Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle looked from Scootaloo to Apple Bloom with growing confusion and frustration. They were completely ignoring her, acting like a new filly showing up was no big deal and needed no explanation.

What the heck was going on? Who was this filly?

More importantly, why was everyone acting like there was no reason to introduce the two of them? Did Apple Bloom just assume Sweetie Belle knew Scootaloo? If Rarity were here, she’d scold them for their poor manners.

Remembering her sister, Sweetie Belle decided to step up and do the polite thing. She’d make the introduction herself.

“Uh. Hi!” Sweetie Belle held her hoof out to the newcomer. “My name is Sweetie Belle. I’m Rarity’s sister. This is her castle. I got into an accident a while back so now I remote control these robots, see?”

“Huh?!” Now Scootaloo stood up at attention.

Scootaloo looked almost horrified that Sweetie Belle would say hello to her, stared at her in stunned silence for a good couple of seconds.

Was she that surprised the robot was talking to her?

Either way, Scootaloo suddenly cleaned up her act and put on a big smile.

“Oh! Yeah! Of course! I’m Scootaloo. Rainbow Dash’s sister?” Scootaloo bumped Sweetie Belle’s hoof briefly and smiled a bit too wide.

Now Apple Bloom was the one watching the other two in horrified confusion.

“Rainbow Dash has a sister?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“I’m right here, aren’t I?” Scootaloo spread her wings and laughed. “Didn’t she mention me to you? I’m pretty sure she mentioned me to you.”

“No.” Sweetie Belle shook her head. “I feel like that would have come up by now.”

Scootaloo’s smile faded quickly. Now she was annoyed.

“You just must have not been paying attention! Rainbow Dash talks about me all the time.” Scootaloo lifted her head, proud of that fact.

Sweetie Bell tried thinking back.

“Wait! No, I specifically remember her saying she was an only child.”

“What?” Scootaloo’s ears were drooping with worry.

“When we first met. She said she was an only child.”

“No, she didn’t,” Scootaloo quickly countered. “She told you that she had a little sister when you first met. You know exactly who I am.”

“What?” Sweetie Belle stared at her.

Was this that gaslighting thing Rarity warned her about? This conversation wasn’t making any sense.

“You two playing some kind of game?” Apple Bloom interrupted them. “I’m confused about what’s happening here.”

“Trust me, I’m way more confused than you are.” Sweetie Belle shook her head. “Apple Bloom, sorry for cursing, but who the crow is Scootaloo?”

Apple Bloom looked at Scootaloo, struggling to think of a way to even answer that.

“She’s Scootaloo.” Apple Bloom smiled awkwardly. “You know? Our best friend Scootaloo?”

“Yeah! I’m your best friend Scootaloo!” Scootaloo smiled like she was in an awkwardness competition with Apple Bloom. “We already met each other!”

“I dunno why she’s saying it all weird, but she’s right,” said Apple Bloom. “I think it’s been two or three weeks? Dash took her out of the orphanage back then.”

“Exactly.” Scootaloo nodded. “You met me two or three weeks ago. Stop being weird.”

“I did not meet you ever.” Sweetie Belle lowered her head, determined to hold her ground. Something was wrong here and she wasn’t going to let it slide.

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah you did!”

“Nu-uh!”

“Yeah huh!”

Scootaloo stomped off. She stopped off to the side to do some breathing exercises.

“Calm down. Calm down.” Scootaloo chanted to herself as she rubbed her hair. “I don’t get why this isn’t working.”

“Did you just ask why shouting ‘yeah huh' didn’t work?” Apple Bloom looked back and forth between the two of them.

“Yeah. Why what isn’t working?” Sweetie Belle’s eyes narrowed. She almost had this pony cornered.

“Nothing.” Scootaloo smiled. “Just stop being weird, okay? You forgot you met me. We live in a world with all kinds of crazy stuff so that’s not even a big deal, right? Let’s just move on with our lives.”

There was no way Sweetie Belle was just going to drop something like this.

“Saccharin, your memory is perfect.” Sweetie Belle turned to her for support. “Rainbow Dash said she was an only child, didn’t she?”

“Yes. I remember every conversation I have ever heard word for word,” said Saccharin. “This ‘Scootaloo’ was mentioned 116 times before my observing her in person for the first time, seventeen days ago. The initial conversation with Rainbow Dash went exactly as follows:

Twilight: There are some things we wanted to talk to you about. I have another offer for you, but it might take a minute.
Rarity: Certainly I’d be willing to trade with you of all ponies. But can't you come back in a few days? I just reunited with my sister.
Rainbow Dash: You did? That’s great! I could at least go visit Scootaloo, so I can’t even imagine. I feel kind of bad about interrupting now. Maybe we should come back in a couple of hours, Twi?
Twilight: Our mission is time-critical.”

Sweetie Belle stared at Saccharin, dumbfounded. That wasn’t what happened!

“Yeah, you see?” Scootaloo asked. “You’re just misremembering stuff.”

“No way!” Sweetie Belle shook her head.

No, she had this mystery all figured out. ‘Scootaloo’, if that was even her name, could alter memories! Even Saccharin’s.

It didn’t seem Scootaloo’s mind-warping powers worked on Sweetie Belle for some mysterious reason, so there was that. But what did Scootaloo want and what could Sweetie Belle do about this?

“The most likely scenario is that your memories have been corrupted,” said Saccharin. “Though there is also the possibility that everyone else’s has instead.”

“Yeah,” Apple Bloom agreed. “Something ain’t adding up here. Maybe she’s right. Scootaloo’s acting kind of weird too.”

“We should discuss this with Rarity,” said Saccharin.

“Hey. Fine with me.” Scootaloo just shrugged it off. “I’m really worried about you too, Sweetie Belle.”

Sweetie Belle glared at Scootaloo. She was just going to alter Rarity’s memories too, wasn’t she?

Sweetie needed evidence to show everypony else their memories were being distorted!

“Okay!” Sweetie Belle nodded. “If you’re Rainbow Dash’s sister then how about you prove it?”

“How would I do that, exactly?” Scootaloo asked.

“Just follow me. I have a plan.”

Sweetie Belle started leading them to the castle, to her sister.







Sweetie Belle kept an eye on the intruder as they climbed the stairs. Scootaloo was suspiciously confident, making Sweetie Belle even more certain she was up to no good. She made no attempt at dodging this as they entered the room with the analytical engine, the room Rarity was usually in.

When they entered, Rarity stopped typing up whatever she was writing to turn to the group of fillies.

“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle pestered her sister with the same voice she always asked for favors with. Rarity had a hard time resisting Sweetie Belle. “Do you have a DNA testing thing somewhere in here?”

“I suppose I do have something you would call a ‘thing’, yes.” Rarity nodded. “But what precisely do you need with it?”

“I wanna learn about science so I can be more like you, big sis.” Sweetie Belle pressed her muzzle lovingly against her sister’s side.

She didn’t stand a chance!

“Aw.” Rarity’s heart melted and she nuzzled the top of her sister’s head. “Of course I’ll teach you anything you want to know!”

“Great! I thought maybe we could look at Rainbow Dash’s and Scootaloo’s DNA,” said Sweetie Belle. “Cause can’t you tell if two ponies are related like that? Like how do you tell, exactly?”

Sweetie Belle looked over at Scootaloo, expecting her to begin to sweat. Yet Scootaloo simply smiled back, supremely confident this would turn out in her favor.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea!” Scootaloo agreed, leaning up against the wall. “I always wondered that too.”

Sweetie Belle kept her eyes on the intruder. What was she planning?

“I should say that DNA sequencing isn’t a precise science just yet.” Rarity turned back to her analytical engine and started bringing all sorts of things up on the projector. “In Equestria, what you’re asking for is still largely science fiction. The Mad Science Institute is close to sequencing a full pony genome, but they aren’t there yet.”

“But you can do it, right?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Oh, I’ve already taken DNA samples from everypony in the castle!” Rarity hit a button, turning the engine on. “I do have just enough sequenced to answer your question. You see, ponies have two sets of DNA. One is in the nucleus and the other is mitochondrial DNA.”

Rarity gestured to some information on the projector. Sweetie Belle didn’t understand it at all, except that parts of it did look like DNA.

“You see, on the left is Scootaloo’s mitochondrial DNA and on the right is Rainbow Dash’s.” Rarity moved a hoof from one set to the other. “Do you notice anything?”

Sweetie Bell looked them over but had no idea what she was even supposed to be looking for.

“Oh!” Apple Bloom, ever quick on the uptake, raised her hoof. “They’re the same.”

“Exactly!” Rarity gave her an approving nod. “You see, you inherit all of your mitochondrial DNA from your mother, meaning siblings will always have identical mitochondrial DNA. You and I have the same mitochondrial DNA as do Applejack and Apple Bloom.”

“So then the two of them gotta have the same mom,” Apple Bloom concluded.

“Precisely.”

“What?!” Sweetie Belle looked up at the display.

This shouldn’t be possible!

It was true she couldn’t find any difference in the sequence, but how did that happen? If Scootaloo was just brainwashing everypony, then there wouldn’t be a record of her having the same DNA as Rainbow Dash. Rarity shouldn’t have her DNA sample at all.

“And it’s easy to tell if two brothers have the same father by looking at the y chromosome,” Rarity went on. “The only difficult scenario is telling if two sisters have the same father. Presently, you can’t use this to tell who a mare’s father is.”

“Wow.” Scootaloo leaned up against the wall and smiled at Sweetie Belle. “Isn’t that interesting, Sweetie Belle? I got the same midichlorian count as Rainbow Dash. Who’d have thought?”

“Mitochondrial DNA,” Rarity corrected her.

“Yeah!” Scootaloo stepped towards Sweetie Belle. “In fact, you know what? As long as we’re here why don’t you have your sister do every stupid scientific experiment you can think of on me? You can do brain scans, X-rays, blood tests, that annoying bone density thing, even live dissection. It’s not like I care or anything. I’m down for all of it. Testing Scootaloo all day long.”

That silenced everypony else in the room, though only Sweetie Belle wasn’t confused at all by the suggestion. That was a subtle jab at her!

It was getting harder to guess what Scootaloo was doing, but more clear that she was certainly doing something.

“Yes,” Rarity spoke after clearing her throat. “Well firstly, I make robots, Scootaloo. I don’t need to do experiments on ponies. And while your enthusiasm is refreshing, it’s also a tad on the morbid side.”

Sweetie Belle was scrambling her brain trying to think of some way to prove what was going on! If Scootaloo could just rewrite history then there was no way to wing this, was there?

But it did look like the others were at least suspicious of Scootaloo’s odd behavior. Maybe begging was her best shot now.

“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle implored her sister. “I can’t prove it, but Scootaloo is some kind of horrible demon thing!”

“Sweetie Belle. What are you—?”

“She wasn’t here yesterday!” Sweetie Belle pushed on. “She’s brainwashing all of you and changed your memories! She has some weird power she’s using!”

Rarity raised an eyebrow at that.

“Please, Rarity!” Sweetie Belle bowed her head to her. “You know I wouldn’t lie about something this important, right? Please, just trust me.”

“Hm.” Rarity looked over at Scootaloo, then back at Sweetie Belle. “Well of course I’m going to take your concerns seriously, Sweetie Belle. If what you’re saying is true, she couldn’t have possibly altered the memories of everypony in the whole world, so we’ll just…”

Rarity was back to typing on the analytical engine.

An enormous wave of relief washed over Sweetie Belle.

Of course Rarity was going to side with her over some random pony, even if she thought she’d met Scootaloo before. Now Sweetie Belle could just let her sister take care of it. Rarity was a genius, after all, she’d be able to find some way to see through Scootaloo’s deception!

She turned to Scootaloo, triumphant. But her triumph cooled when she saw Scootaloo wasn’t worried about this at all.

“Yeah?” Scootaloo smirked. “I’m sure your sister would help you if you asked her to. But we just got here! What did you want to ask her about, again?”

“Yes.” Rarity turned around to face Sweetie Belle again. “What was it you wanted to say?”

Everypony was looking at Sweetie Belle expectedly now.

They seriously forgot what just happened! Scootaloo mind-wiped them or something!

This was getting scary!

“This isn’t funny, Rarity!” Sweetie Belle called out to her.

“What’s not funny, Darling?” Rarity asked with genuine concern. “Is something wrong?”

This was too far! Sweetie Belle wasn’t going to let somepony get away with doing this to her sister!

“You!” Sweetie Belle lowered her head and took a menacing step towards Scootaloo. “How dare you?! I don’t know what you just did, but if you do that one more time, I’m gonna— gonna push you over or something!”

“Gah!” Scootaloo jumped back until she was pressed up against the wall, taking the threat with deathly seriousness. “You don’t want to hit me! Trust me!”

“Then stop doing whatever it is you’re doing and give up!”

“Look, I can keep this up all day! You give up!”

“Well, I can keep this up for two days!” Sweetie Belle stepped closer. “I can go six days on one nutrition tank, I never get tired and I don’t need to sleep or go to the bathroom! Just try me!”

“Yeah?! Well I can—!” Scootaloo pulled back. “Ah, who am I kidding. I can’t do this for three days.”

“Ha!” Sweetie Belle lifted her head, triumphant. “Looks like I win! So now you gotta stop doing whatever it is you’re doing. Right?”

Scootaloo kept glaring at Sweetie. This very much wasn’t over after all.

Meanwhile, Rarity and Apple Bloom looked on at an utter loss.

“Excuse me,” said Rarity. “I’m not sure what you two are even arguing about. Is there any way we can keep this civil?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong you two?” Apple Bloom looked at them with genuine concern. “This is advance crazy.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” said Scootaloo. “Hey, Sweetie Belle, why don’t we just talk this out? In private? Sorry for yelling.”

She stood by the door, smiling.

Going with her was dangerous, but Sweetie Belle was immune to whatever powers this pony had.

Was it because she was part robot? She’d think Saccharin would be immune too if that was the case.

Whatever the reason, Sweetie Belle was the only one who could do this. Rarity sacrificed so much for her and now it was Sweetie Belle’s turn to protect everyone else. She knew all the other ponies here would do something dangerous for her.

“Yeah.” Sweetie Belle nodded. “Let’s talk.”

“Alright,” said Rarity. “But if I hear any more yelling, I’m coming in there.”

Scootaloo led Sweetie Belle out of the room. They went down the hall a little before Scootaloo gestured to the room she wanted to ‘talk’ in.

It was a door that hadn’t existed yesterday, Sweetie Belle was sure, and on the other side was a room with nothing in it. Scootaloo seemed more dangerous every second. She only entered the room after Scootaloo went in herself.

As soon as they were inside, Scootaloo closed the door behind them and leaned up against it.

“Alright, look,” Scootaloo spoke first. “I’m not here to hurt anypony, okay? In fact, I kind of like Rainbow Dash. I just need to get more of my medicine. Once I have it, I won’t bother you again. As soon as I leave, everything goes back to normal. Your sister and the yellow one won’t even remember who I was.”

“Medicine?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Scootaloo held up a clear bottle, through which Sweetie saw a few blue pills.

“I have an extremely rare disease.” Scootaloo put the bottle back. “Only two ponies in the whole world have it. If I run out of this stuff, I’m worse than dead. But the guy who owns the copyright or whatever is the biggest douchebag in the world. I have to find a way to make my own.”

Scootaloo glanced back at the door.

“I figure somepony over here has to be able to show me how,” said Scootaloo. “This place is like Area 5X but smaller. Anyway. You can just ignore me and everything will be fine. I promise.”

“I’m not going to trust you after you used mind control on my sister!” Sweetie Belle stood her ground.

“It’s not mind control,” Scootaloo insisted.

“You can’t trick me! Anypony can see you brainwashed everypony else and you would have done it to me too if you could.”

“It doesn’t work like that. It’s like my— like that guy always says. Changing facts is easy; changing opinions is hard,” Scootaloo recited the witticism as if that proved anything. “I can make myself Dash’s sister but I can’t make Dash love me. I can only make ponies do something they would have done anyway were things a little different. Making your sister hate you or try to kill you would be nearly impossible, for example.”

Sweetie Belle kept staring at Scootaloo with her ears down, unamused. There was no reason to assume Scootaloo was telling the truth about any of this.

“Think about it,” said Scootaloo. “I really am Rainbow Dash’s sister right now. Me having the same DNA as her wasn’t a trick. You think I know what midochlorines are? There’s no way I’d think to change that. I just change it so I’m Dash’s sister and the rest of reality changes by itself to fit.”

It was true that Sweetie Belle was hoping to get Scootaloo with something like that. She didn’t change Rarity’s memory of the DNA test, but the actual DNA test was different.

“Even if that’s true, it’s still basically brainwashing,” said Sweetie Belle.

“No, it’s not!

“Yeah, it is!”

“Yeah, well—?!” Scootaloo stammered. “You know what? It doesn’t matter if it’s brainwashing or not! They’re just going to lock me away forever no matter what I do, so why should I even care, huh?! I don’t care if I’m following whatever stupid rules you have because you’ll just do the same thing no matter what!”

Something worrying happened as Scootaloo snapped. The white of her right eye turned black, reminding Sweetie Belle somewhat of a ghost’s eyes.

Scootaloo’s reaction to this was quick and panicked. She covered the eye and turned to the side. As quickly as she could, she opened the bottle of medicine, nearly spilling a few pills out. She downed one of them and breathed to calm herself back down.

Her eye was already back to normal when she turned around.

“Are you okay?” Sweetie Belle asked. “That looked bad.”

“Yeah.” Scootaloo held up the bottle again. “You see? I need this stuff bad. Think of it like this. If you were gonna die without more medicine and the only thing you had were my powers, would you seriously not use them?”

Though she was still angry, Sweetie Belle had to stay quiet for a second to keep herself from admitting Scootaloo wasn’t completely wrong. If it was to save her own life, maybe Sweetie Belle would do something bad.

Scootaloo perked up at seeing she’d finally got something over on Sweetie Belle.

“And I’m sure you can relate to how terrible adults are,” Scootaloo went on. “I dunno what your deal is, but you must have been surrounded by greedy science types who just don’t care about you at all too. The adults just want to use ponies like you and me to make money. We don’t have to care about them.”

Sweetie Belle shook her head. That part she couldn’t relate to.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” she said. “Rarity cares about me a lot and she never did anything but help me.”

“Yeah?!” Scootaloo looked offended, but couldn’t counter Sweetie Belle. In the end, she got depressed and looked off to the side. “Well it’s not fair. I should be allowed to not care about the adults, at least.”

Sweetie Belle was determined to not feel bad for this pony, but Scootaloo did look pretty depressed right now making that a difficult vow to keep. She was starting to wonder if she could just talk her way out of this.

Sweetie Belle tried to think of what the adults would have done in her situation.

All the grown-ups around her always tried to make friends with their enemies. If Rainbow Dash could turn the most terrifying witch in history into her friend, then why couldn’t Sweetie Belle do the same thing here?

“Okay.” Sweetie Belle stepped forward. “I don’t like what you’re doing but I’ll make you a deal. You stop using whatever your powers are and I’ll ask Rarity to help you. But you have to tell them the whole truth, okay? Like what you are and everything.”

Scootaloo was even quieter now.

“Well?” Sweetie Belle held her hoof out. “If you really are just some kid who needs help, I know they’ll help you.”

“Look, it’s not that easy, okay?” Scootaloo shook her head. “I wish it was, but it’s not.”

“I know it’s probably scary, but like I said, I’ll vouch for you once you stop. I’ll make sure nopony hurts you. Rarity will listen to me, you saw yourself. These ponies forgave Trixie, okay? They’re total saps for this sort of thing.”

“I’m not scared!” Scootaloo snapped at her. “I’ve asked grown-ups for help plenty of times in the past, okay? Some ponies are just lucky like you and have great lives. Other ponies are unlucky and everything sucks. This sort of thing doesn’t work for me.”

It was times like these Sweetie Belle wished she was some great orator. She was struggling to think of what else she could say or do to convince Scootaloo to just ask for help.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Obviously.” Scootaloo turned her cheek on Sweetie Belle.

What problem could there be that she couldn’t talk about? Was she dangerous? Or maybe she’d killed a ton of ponies? The adults would probably figure it out if they talked to her.

Sweetie Belle wished she could just make this Scootaloo pony talk, but how?

“But hey! There’s no reason we have to fight, you know!” Scootaloo was the one to hold her hoof out this time. “I have kinda-infinite powers. I can give you anything you want while I’m around. I have so many things I can tempt you with.”

“Like what?” Sweetie Belle wasn’t tempted, but she gave a curious look anyway.

“Like.” Scootaloo spread her wings and a pile of brightly colored toys appeared behind her. “I can make you whatever toy you want! Just name it and it’s yours. I’ll give you anything you ask for.”

Sweetie Belle looked over the pile of toys. There were laughably easy block puzzles, those things where you push a button and it says the name of the animal on top of it, one of those ring stacking clowns…

“Why are these all baby toys?” Sweetie Belle looked over the square block and square peg. “I’m not going to be tempted by baby toys.”

“This bead maze thing is kinda relaxing!”

The bead maze was one of those things you saw in the waiting room of a doctor's office. It was a jumble of wires with little shapes you could move from one side to the other. Scootaloo started moving a bead from one end to the other only to drop it as soon as Sweetie Belle gave her a look.

“Look, this is the only stuff they let me have cause everything else is too ‘stimulating’ or whatever.” Scootaloo stood up defiantly, suddenly feeling the need to defend herself. “The only other thing I know is comic books and those are hard to make.”

“Okay.” Sweetie Belle felt like they were getting somewhere now. “Who’s ‘they’ again?”

“Huh?!” Scootaloo noticed her mistake and panicked, shaking her head rapidly. “No one! It’s not important. But hey, if you don’t want any toys there’s gotta be something you do want. Oh! I just had a perfect idea!”

Scootaloo placed her hoof gently on Sweetie Belle’s muzzle. She winced like she was concentrating hard on something. So hard, from the looks of things, that a small trickle of blood came from her nose.

But just a second later she was done and took her hoof back. Something changed at that moment, everything felt different, but what exactly happened escaped Sweetie.

A bizarre sensation came over Sweetie Belle. Cold air came rushing into her muzzle and pushed her chest out. That’s when it hit her.

She just breathed.

At that, Sweetie took a step back and looked herself over. Sweetie Belle had fur! She felt her hair and it was actual hair once again. Her body was soft and squishy when she touched it. She could even feel a heartbeat.

On her forehead once more was her real horn made of actual bone and carmot. Sweetie Belle could feel the impulse of magic once more in place of the teleke-whatsit thing it’d been replaced with.

Scootaloo turned her back into a normal filly.

This wasn’t even the robot with the brain, but somehow it was flesh and blood once more. There was such an odd disconnect between this and her other bodies, where she could both feel and not feel them at the same time.

“Whoa!” Sweetie Belle turned around, chasing her tail in a circle as she looked over her body again. She never thought she’d see her old body again, seeing as it’d been eaten.

The feeling of her chest slowly expanding and deflating was so strange now. She’d spent so much time in that machine that everything about this felt completely alien to her.

“You see?” Scootaloo stepped back with a smile. She was panting heavily now, blood still coming out her nose. “I can do anything. Kind of. It’s not permanent, but you can go back to normal any time I’m here. You can be a real pony again and all you gotta do is not say anything. Isn’t that incredible?”

Incredible? Sweetie Belle looked down at her organic hooves.

“Yeah.” Sweetie Belle slowly turned her head to Scootaloo and gave a single nod. “Incredibly bad.”

“Wha?!” Scootaloo jumped back.

“Change me back!” Sweetie Belle jumped forward and tackled Scootaloo. “This is horrible!”

Talking gave her pause as she realized something else. She staggered backward off Scootaloo as a feeling of horror and disgust overtook her.

“Agh! My mouth is filled with spit!” Sweetie Belle tried spitting it out, but her stupid body just kept making more. And there was no way to turn it off! “How did I ever think this was okay?!”

She stuck out her tongue and tried to scrap the disgust off with her hooves.

“But nopony ever wants to stay a robot in my comic books!” Scootaloo got back on her feet. “They just cry about it the whole issue and it’s boring.”

“Yeah, and none of the ponies who wrote those books ever had their brain get put into a robot!” Sweetie Belle pointed at her brain, encased in her slimy skull made of fragile bone. “What am I supposed to miss? Being covered in snot and sweat? Not being able to turn pain off? Having the strength of one small filly? Getting dust in my eyes? And don’t even get me started on how disgusting the whole ‘bathroom’ thing looks to me now!”

Sweetie Belle shuddered at the thought. Even now she felt so disgusting. She was hyper-aware of all this gross stuff covering her. The snot in her nose, the spit in her mouth, the sweat that was starting to cover her… she couldn’t take it anymore!

“Change me back!” Sweetie Belle jumped at Scootaloo again.

“Okay! Yeesh! That was hard to keep up, anyway!” Scootaloo’s nosebleed was getting a lot worse, Sweetie Belle noticed.

Sweetie Belle returned to the sweet embrace of metal and machinery. She backed off Scootaloo and hugged herself to feel her robotic strength and all those unnamable devices wrapping around her like a blanket. All that slimy biology washed right off her like so much filth in a shower. This was the cleanest she could ever remember feeling.

“I missed you so much, robot hooves.” Sweetie Belle gave them a nuzzle.

“And I thought I was weird.” Scootaloo got up and shook her head in defeat. “There’s gotta be something I can tempt you with.”

“Nope!” Sweetie Belle shook her head. “My life is perfect. You can’t tempt me with stuff.”

“No one’s life is perfect!”

“Mine is.”

“Okay, fine.” Scootaloo started backing up to the wall, where the door used to be. “If I can’t tempt you, you leave me with no choice but to use my ultimate attack.”

This was it!

“Bring it!” Sweetie Belle lowered her head, getting ready. “I’m completely invincible to all types of damage. Go ahead and try to vince me.”

Sweetie Belle had 600 weapons and she knew how to use a good two or three of them! If it was the only way to keep her sister and her friends safe, then she could be brave and fight too!

But Scootaloo’s smile was confident enough to make her nervous.

“You’re sure you’re immune to every type of damage?” Scootaloo recreated the door and threw it open.

On the other side of the door was the room the adults had been in earlier, only now it was just Dash inside. Scootaloo started crying and ran into the room.

“Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo glomped onto her and began crying as loudly as she could. “Sweetie Belle punched me in the face! Wah-ha-ha!”

“Whoa!” Rainbow Dash pulled Scootaloo’s head back to look at her. “You’re nose is bleeding bad! No, you gotta lean forward.”

Dash tiled Scootaloo’s head down and pressed her bleeding muzzle against her chest.

“What the heck did you do?!” Dash turned on Sweetie Belle.

“What?!” Sweetie Belle stepped back. “I didn’t! That’s not what happened! She’s lying!”

“Even if you two were playing or something, you need to be more careful!” Dash scolded her. “You have the strength of a thousand small children and Scootaloo has a heart condition! It’s not okay for you to hit her!”

“But!”

Scootaloo started wailing even louder.

“What’s going on here?” Rarity came into the room.

“Your sister broke Scootaloo’s nose from the looks of things.” Dash stroked the crying filly’s hair.

“Sweetie Belle!” Now Rarity was scolding her too. “Part of being an unstoppable avatar of death is—"

“I know!” Sweetie Belle stomped her hoof on the floor. “Just shut up for a second!”

“Don’t you talk to me like that after everything I’ve done for you,” Rarity snapped at her. “You may be an unkillable machine god, but you’re still a child. Go to your room until you’ve cooled off!”

“Okay, fine!” Sweetie Belle stomped off towards her room. “But this isn’t over!”

“And when I say that I mean every spare body you have in the castle too!” Rarity called after her.







A few minutes later, Sweetie Belle was still stewing in her room, back in her main body.

“Alright, we have a problem, girls.” Sweetie Belle said to the council of Sweetie Belles.

The council of Sweetie Belles, a collection of ten robots, stood all around her bed. Sadly, the council had zero intelligence outside of Sweetie’s brain, so they couldn’t live up to their name.

Sweetie was mostly on her own here. But what to do?

She could try attacking Scootaloo for real, but who knew how that’d go down. She’d need to save that for her absolute last resort.

To be fair, Scootaloo hadn’t made any attempt to destroy Sweetie Belle or hurt anypony yet. You’d think it’d be incredibly easy to kill Sweetie Belle with powers like that. So either she couldn’t kill ponies with her powers or she wasn’t entirely evil.

Still, she couldn’t let Scootaloo get away with this!

The first thing she had to figure out was why this power didn’t work on Sweetie Belle. She assumed everypony else was affected by it, likely even Twilight and Pinkie Pie, or else one of them would have already said something.

So what was unique about Sweetie Belle?

She was half machine and half pony. But how could that help? It didn’t seem to make any sense.

“If only I was as smart as Rarity!” Sweetie Belle collapsed onto her back. “What would she do?”

Asking that question allowed made her remember that Rarity had briefly tried to do something! What was it again?

She said ‘there was no way Scootaloo could have brainwashed everypony in the whole world’, then went to do something on her analytical engine. Hopefully, Rarity was right that this wasn’t affecting the entire planet.

“Maybe she sucks us into a pocket dimension where things are different?” Sweetie Belle was just saying ideas at random. “Or she could have a field that surrounds her and everything inside it changes. And then—"

That was it! Sweetie Belle figured it out!

“And wait!” She pointed at one of her other bodies. “And that’s why it doesn’t affect me! Because I’m not entirely inside of it!”

Sweetie Belle had multiple bodies that weren’t inside the castle directly feeding her small amounts of information. That meant she was partially outside. Scootaloo’s magic couldn’t affect her the same way it did ponies that were entirely inside it.

At least, that sounded like it could be true.

“Okay. But how the heck do I use this?” Sweetie Belle asked herself.

One of her bodies was in Coco’s house. That had to be outside the Scootaloo zone. She could ask Coco for help, but then again this was outside that pony’s league. What would she even do?

Who else was there outside?

Sweetie knew from gathering her council that Pinkie Pie wasn’t here at the moment. Surely there was something Pinkie could do! Though Pinkie was in Ponytown.

She couldn’t just run around Ponytown as a robot, but she could use the portal to get to Dash’s house, then call Pinkie over. She just had to hope that Scootaloo’s control over things didn’t bleed through the portal.

Even if she was grounded, sneaking over there shouldn’t be too hard.

“Alright!” Sweetie Belle jumped off her bed. “Time to be sneaky.”







Sweetie Belle tumbled out of the portal and into a closet in Dash’s mostly empty basement. She slowly went upstairs, the basement door leading into a kitchen filled with gift baskets.

Sweetie Belle just needed to find a phone jack. She’d be able to plug one of them into her foreleg. Then she could make an untraceable call.

Because the phone lines might be monitored, they had a code they were supposed to use. Sweetie Belle would make a call pretending to be selling a color projector. That would be Pinkie’s hint to come over to Dash’s house.

Sure enough there was a phone jack on the far side of the kitchen. She plugged it in and the device implanted in her went to call Pinkie.

But to her surprise, somepony was already using Dash’s phone! She could hear the conversation through her equipment.

“It’s cause my Derpy Doo is the cutest pony in the world,” a male voice spoke in a cutesy voice on one end.

“Nu, uh,” a female voice, ‘Derpy Doo’ presumably, cooed back at him. “I can’t be the cutest cause you’re the cutest!”

“I take it this means you’re not busy today?”

“Dash is probably gonna be gone all day,” said Derpy. “Nothing ever happens in Ponytown so guarding here is the easiest job in the world.”

Rainbow Dash had a guard? Nopony told her this part!

Which room was Derpy in? Was it okay if she saw Sweetie Belle?

Sweetie looked around, trying to think of what to do.

“Hold up!” The mare said. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Just a second ago,” said Derpy. “I recognize that clicking sound! This is that prank where somepony tries to call you from inside the house!”

Sweetie Belle was in trouble now!

“I gotta call you back, Soarin,” said Derpy. “Okay! I dunno who you are, but this is the fourth time this has happened to me! You have no idea how prepared I am for this! You’re going to jail, buddy!”

Sweetie Belle scrambled to unplug herself from the wall, but it was already too late.

Derpy homed in on the phone jack's location within seconds. A couch slammed up against one of the kitchen’s doors and Derpy jumped up on top of it.

The pony was a grey pegasus mare wearing light body armor of an even darker grey. At her side was a lance mounted just over her right wing. Derpy looked like she was about to transition into a smooth attack on Sweetie Belle but stumbled slightly when she saw her opponent.

“A robot?!” Derpy jumped back in surprise. “I heard of robocalls, but this is ridiculous!”

“Hold on a second!” Sweetie Belle took a step back.

Derpy didn’t hesitate. She hit something on her lance, making it crackle with electricity, then jumped over the upturned couch at Sweetie.

Sweetie stumbled back, still unfamiliar with all her weapons systems. As she swooped down, Derpy planted the lance in Sweetie’s chest.

Sweetie Belle shrank away and closed her eyes as Derpy slammed the lance into her. Sweetie Belle’s body crackled with enough electricity to light the room up with a blinding light. She could feel the power surging through her for several seconds.

When it was over, Sweetie Belle opened her eyes and looked herself over. She was completely unharmed.

“Oh, yeah!” Sweetie Belle stood up. “I forgot I’m invincible.”

“What?!” Derpy took a step back. “That’s not fair!”

“Yeah, well what is?” Sweetie Belle asked. “You don’t have enough firepower to take me out! Just let me use the phone for one second to call Pinkie. Please?”

“You think I’m gonna—?” Derpy stopped to think about the request for a second. “Actually, maybe that’s a good idea. Hold on a second.”

Derpy kept the lanced pointed at Sweetie with one wing. She backed up to the phone in the room she came from and picked it up with the other wing. Holding it in the crook of her neck, she went to dial Pinkie.

This seemed like what Sweetie wanted, but Sweetie remembered the lines might be tapped. If Derpy said anything too weird, somepony with the government might hear.

Thankfully, before the phone rang even once, the front door burst open.

“Knock, knock!” Pinkie jumped in through the door without knocking. “I know you didn’t get through, but I felt it in my head you were trying to call me.”

She looked at Derpy, then Sweetie Belle, then the phone.

“Yeah, looks like there’s a problem.” Pinkie nodded to herself.

“Oh, Pinkie!” Derpy called over to her. “We’re being attacked by robots! Help!”

Pinkie yanked Derpy’s weapon away from her. In the moment of stunned confusion, she grabbed Derpy and threw the pegasus onto the couch.

“Huh?” Derpy struggled, but couldn’t get free. “Pinkie, I meant help me!”

Pinkie levitated some rope over and tied Derpy up just tight enough that she couldn’t get out.

“Sorry about this!” Pinkie clapped her forehooves together apologetically. “We were going to tell you everything after we took out Minuette on Friday, but looks like the jig is up, huh?”

“What jig?” Derpy only struggled for a second before deciding it was pointless. “Is that a drug robot? Is this drugs? Cause if this is drugs it isn’t cool!”

“No, no! Don’t worry, it’s not drugs,” Pinkie assured her.

“Okay.” Derpy raised an eyebrow.

“It’s way more dangerous and shocking than that.”

“What?!”

“But more on that later! You just hang tight for a second, all will be revealed after I take care of whatever this is.” Pinkie turned to Sweetie Belle. “So what is this anyway?”

“Hey! Don’t leave me on a cliffhanger like that!” Derpy complained behind her in vain.

Sweetie glanced over at Derpy, who was fuming but not trying to escape. She decided it was okay to be open about things.

“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle nodded. “We have a big problem at the castle! This filly just showed up at the castle. She claims she’s Rainbow Dash’s sister and everypony was going along with it. I’m a hundred percent sure Rainbow Dash doesn’t have a sister, though! I mean, she doesn’t have a sister, right?”

“I’ve known Dash since preschool and she doesn’t,” Derpy confirmed. “She even lived at my house for a couple weeks when her dad died. I’m pretty sure that would have come up around then.”

“See?” Sweetie Belle pointed at her.

Even though she knew this was the case, it still filled her with relief to have somepony finally confirm Sweetie Belle wasn’t crazy.

“This pony, I guess her name is Scootaloo, she’s going around brainwashing everypony into thinking she’s Dash’s sister,” Sweetie Belle continued. “Well, she keeps insisting it’s not brainwashing and she’s just ‘changing reality’ or something. Have you ever heard of anything like that?”

Derpy scrunched her muzzle and glanced off to the side. Pinkie gave it more serious thought.

“Reality distortion.” The words had some weight as Pinkie repeated them. “That’s an outer god thing! Only alicorns and outer realm stuff should be able to do that. If it’s either of those, we’re in for one crow of a doozy. Are you sure it’s not plain old mind control?”

Derpy held her breath as she scrunched her muzzle even tighter.

“I’m pretty sure,” Sweetie Belle confirmed. “It only works in a certain area, like she has a reality distorting… field or something.”

“Hm! A reality distortion field you say!” Pinkie tapped her chin.

Meanwhile, Derpy looked like she was about to pass out from holding her breath.

“Uh!” Derpy finally broke her silence. “Hey, robot guy? What did this pony look like?”

“Huh?” Sweetie Belle turned to Derpy, surprised. “I guess she’s maybe twelve. She’s orange with a pink mane. Her wings are kinda small. I don’t think she has a cutie mark.”

“Oh.” Derpy sounded like that was bad news.

The other two watched Derpy for a second to see if she would elaborate, but the pegasus kept on her odd poker face.

“Do you know something?” Pinkie asked.

Derpy held out another second as she agonized over whether to tell the others.

“Okay!” Derpy relented. “This is classified information, but you’re with Rainbow Dash so maybe I can tell you. I’ve been compiling a list of everything they only tell S rankers. I think I know who you’re talking about.”