//------------------------------// // Complications // Story: Sparkle Is An Imposter // by Swish //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle was sitting on the floor in her library. She was surrounded by a stack of books, and looking at them made her feel sick. All she wanted was some banana pancakes. Her eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, and when she did finally decide to rest, she had terrible nightmares. The most common dream was seeing Princess Celestia addressing all of Ponyville, only to suddenly have a changeling take her place, pieces of the real Celestia floating off into oblivion. She let her tired eyes close, and began to rest when she heard a voice behind her. Turning around she saw a ghost-like Luna with a plate of pancakes. "Care for a bite, Twilight Sparkle?" For the seventh time that week, Twilight woke up screaming. Panting, Twilight glanced around the dimly lit library. If she squinted her eyes hard enough she could barely see a small, familiar baby dragon sleeping to her right. Looking around the rest of the library she found that there wasn't a book in sight that wasn't neatly tucked away in their proper places on her bookshelves. If this had happened a week earlier she might have been happy about this sudden change in the way the place was organized, but right now she was much too tired to care about anything except for the sleep that she seriously needed. As her bloodshot eyes absently surveyed the room further she managed to mentally coax her body into moving her out of her bed, only to collapse on a heap of blankets she'd pushed off in her sleep. Resting her head on the cold floor, she tried to understand the change in her behavior. She'd woken up this way every night since the experience with Princess Celestia, and still had no idea what was going on. She'd tried reading through her spell books, but after less than ten pages of reading she'd felt as if she was going to throw up. The worst part was that everything inside of her was aching for banana pancakes. She seriously couldn't get the taste out of her head. Despite how tired she was some part of her brain still managed to function and everything inside of her was screaming that something wasn't right, and Twilight knew what it was. Pushing herself into a standing position, she decided it was time to write to Princess Celestia. "Sthpick, shtashk a nothe" she mumbled as she vainly tried to balance herself. She was disappointed to find that her number one assistant was still sound asleep. And snoring. She staggered towards his bed and managed to get her hoof caught on one of her blankets. She stumbled around swaying left to right before finally collapsing in front of the sleeping dragon. "Sthpick, Canth you heawrh me? Sthpick, I thneed you thoo thtack a nothe. Sthpick, Washe up!" She coughed a couple times before yelling one last feeble "STHPICK!" There was still no response from the sleeping dragon, so Twilight found a piece of parchment and a quill. She began to scribble down a quick note to her dear Princess Couch Potato. Dear Princess Celestia, Lately I have been having the weirdest dreams, as well as strange nightmares. I'm not sure why, but I would appreciate it if you would relay any similar symptoms you experience to me. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle It was pretty impressive that Twilight had enough determination and strength left to write the letter, but she wasn't quite strong enough to read out loud as she normally does. Instead, she read out loud like she doesn't normally do. It sounded something like this. "Dear Printheth Thelethtia, Lathly I hath ven hafing the weirtheth Dweamth, ath wehl ath stwanth nighmars. I'm noshure why, Buth I'd apreshate it if you wolth welay any thimilar thympthomth you ethperienth to me. Yure thaithful thtudent, Toilet Spurkle" If Twilight Sparkle had looked back on this small incident, she would have realized it was a good thing she didn't have Spike jot down what she was saying. Even so, Spike still had one other job besides writing the letter. Creeping over to the small dragon, Twilight managed to get into a position which allowed her to partially lay on the ground while having one hoof dangle over the side of Spike's bed. Using her horn, she tickled Spike's nose with the feather side of the quill while holding the letter above his nose. It was a matter of seconds before he sneezed and the letter was sent. Princess Celestia was busy swimming in the swimming pool when a letter from Twilight Sparkle arrived. She was so surprised she screamed something around the lines of "SHARK!" but nopony seemed to hear her except the guards, who looked over quizzically before deciding nothing was wrong. Princess Celestia sheepishly lifted the soaking letter out of the water, and began to read. The letters may have been soaked, but she could still sort of understand what it meant; something about Twilight having the same sleep problems she'd been experiencing before their little 'incident'. Deciding she'd deal with the letter in a minute, she flew back up to her room, feeling happier than ever before. Walking over to a few open books on her desk, she began to read 'The Guide To Spell Reversing'. She smiled to herself as she read, realizing she was enjoying this a lot more than she should be. You see, Princess Celestia already knew what was going on. She'd managed to read through quite a few books in the Canterlot library, and she'd even had access to restricted sections. Luna had made fun of her, and called her an 'Egghead' (an expression she seemed to have picked up from some Ponyville citizens) but Celestia was determined to expand her knowledge of the world. In the process of reading so many books, she discovered that the spell Twilight used was a simple soul-changing spell, and reading further she discovered they mentioned a simple mistake that caused souls to intertwine and even switch bodies every now and then. This had delighted her, because whatever sort of side-effects soul switching had she was now extremely eager to switch bodies with Twilight in order to learn more about different ponies and situations. Turning her attention back to Twilight's letter, she wrote a quick response claiming nothing was wrong with her whatsoever. Grinning wider than she had in quite a while, Princess Celestia turned to look through her books for a spell that would keep things waterproof, so she could read while swimming. Twilight Sparkle had finally managed to get to sleep, but it wasn't long before she was interrupted by a letter falling on her face. Opening her eyes again, she carefully unrolled it in order to read it's contents. Dear Twilight Sparkle, I am fine. Perhaps you should make sure you aren't sick, Nightmares can be terribly unhealthy. I hope you are doing better soon, Signed, Princess Celestia Twilight sighed, deciding she was getting nowhere. If the Princess really wasn't having any weird symptoms, it really wasn't logical to assume it had something to do with their 'accident'. As she was trying to decide whether to go to a doctor or not, she heard a loud knock at the door. "Uh, come in?" she said, a little confused. Isn't it a bit early for visitors? The door was pushed open by none other than Pinkie Pie, and pretty soon she was bouncing around in Twilight's face. "Hey Twilight!" she giggled. Twilight stared horrified at her new visitor- Pinkie Pie was the last pony she wanted to see this morning. "Why are you even here?" "I came to see how you were doing, 'cause my right hoof was a-twitchin', and when that happens it means Twi-twi has a problem!" she laughed. "You have a special Pinkie sense just for me?" Twilight asked anxiously. "Uh-huh! It goes off a loooot, especially lately! But most of the time it happens when you're asleep, but this time I knew you were awake! So I brought all your other friends to come and see you!" "You... WHAT?" yelled Twilight. "Hiya, Twilight!" Twilight's five other friends walked in through the door, with the exception of Rainbow Dash, who sort of floated inside while yawning. "What are you even doing here? I'm fine, and I'm tired!" Twilight yelled. "We're taking you to breakfest, silly!" yelped Pinkie, "Come on!" Twilight decided she was too tired to argue, and they began slowly walking down toward the middle of town. "See, you've been really down lately. Not like down as in you fell down, but like down as in you're sad. And sad is no good, 'cause then you're not happy, and happy is good! And if happy's good and happy is the opposite of sad, then sad must be bad cause bad is the opposite of good! You know what my least favorite thing is? It's when ponies say it's opposite day! Because then that means that what they said was the opposite of what they meant, which means it's not opposite day! And if it's not opposite day, then what they said is true! It makes no sense! Speaking of holidays, I really like Nightmare Night cause you get lots of candy! I wonder what I'll be next year... maybe I'll dress up as a human! Humans sound really super cool, even though you all say they don't exist. Nopony ever proved they don't, and I have reason to believe that the-" "Well, it looks like we're finally here..." Rarity said, and motioned for Twilight to go inside. "After you!" Twilight wandered inside and sat down at a table while her friends all came in after her. "So anyways," Pinkie continued. "I have like a Pinkie sense for everything! I mean, figuring out what my right hoof twitching meant was really hard, but it happened so many times it was so funny! There was that one time when you were sleeping and Spike stole your ice cream, and then there was that time when you turned partially into Celestia in your sleep! And if you're wondering how I knew, that's cause my back hooves clacked, and that was what happened when you changed the first time! Also, there was that time when you were walking and you almost stepped into poison joke that Zecora had dropped, but I yelled at you to stop and you got mad!" "PINKIE!" Rainbow Dash yelled. "I don't need to hear everything that happened to Twilight in the past week! We're trying to cheer her up here!" "Rainbow Dash?" asked Rarity. "You can understand her?" Rarity was looking at Rainbow Dash with a disapproving expression, as if understanding Pinkie Pie was something she didn't really admire. "Well she's talking all the time, you at least pick up some of it," Rainbow replied. "But seriously, I'm not sure whether it actually is worth listening too. I mean, Twilight obviously didn't turn into Princess Celestia in her sleep." "She did too!" yelled Pinkie Pie, and glared indignantly at Rainbow Dash. "Pinkie. Tell the truth," said Twilight. "This could be important." Pinkie didn't answer however, instead her eyes widened and she fell backwards off of her chair and onto the floor. There was a long silence as Twilight and her friends waited for her to respond, but after a while they went back to their normal chatting. "Um. I was just wondering. How um, how weird was it being Princess Celestia?" Fluttershy asked. "Well," Twilight began. "It was re-" "OH. MY. GOSH." Rainbow leaped from the table and pressed her face against the window. "Look at that! Can you believe it!?" Outside the restaurant was a large cart carrying a large Daring Do outfit. "I can't believe it! That's the limited edition, they must have brought it in from Canterlot! CANTERLOT!" Pinkie Pie got off the floor at this, and glared at Rainbow. "Rainbow, you're getting your script messed up, Rarity's obsessed with Canterlot, not you." Rainbow was still staring out the window, and then suddenly flew out of the restaurant to have a closer look. Naturally, her five friends followed her. "You know Rainbow, I've always wanted to tell you something," said Rarity. "That hat that she wears is atrocious. It looks like an egg is on top of her head!" "Egghead," giggled Applejack. As Twilight was watching her friends she felt a strange tingling sensation in the top of her head, and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them she was in an entirely different place, standing in a familiar room. Raising her hoof to eye level, she wasn't too surprised that it was a beautiful shade of white.