The Flim Flam Brothers spotted Trixie and nodded to her in greeting. She fell in place beside them and the three traveled together back to Ponyville, Trixie doing slow kicks on her skateboard.
They went on in silence for a while. The brothers pulled their cart and seemed to be contemplating something. Knowing them, Trixie thought, it was probably the best way to either scam the townsponies out of money or the best way to sleep with some mares.
Trixie carried the small potted plant Zecora had given her. Even clutched close to her body the little plant didn’t seem to be affected. Trixie hoped that her background body radiation actually would decrease. Zecora was really good at her medicinal mixtures.
“You know something about interdimensional travel, right?” asked one of the brothers.
“Hmm?” Trixie looked up. “Yes, I suppose so.”
She suddenly had an uneasy feeling. Nothing good could come from the Flim Flam Brothers inquiring about that particular subject.
“Well you see, it’s like this,” began Flim.
“We were recently contacted by a few ponies who had a special offer for us,” added Flam.
“They called themselves the Shim Sham Sisters.”
“Rather clever, if you ask me.”
“Indeed.”
Trixie nodded patiently. “And this relates to other dimensions how?”
“That’s where they claimed to be from.”
Reviewing what she knew about interdimensional travel and the strange, magical rock that had caused Valiant to be transported to Equestria in the first place, Trixie decided that they were probably dealing with another, alternate version of this universe. The suspiciously-named Shim Sham Sisters were a big indicator of this.
The two salesponies looked at Trixie expectantly, awaiting her opinion. She sighed. “This explanation is going to be complicated and strange, but those mares you were talking to were probably actually you, just with an alternate gender and from a different world. While you might be able to pass communication through the multiverse, it’s difficult to arrange an actual meeting due to the law of redundancy and displacement from one world to another.”
“I’m sorry, what?” asked Flam.
“My thoughts exactly,” echoed Flim.
“Two of the same pony can’t be in the same plane of existence at the same time. If you travel to their world, while you’re there you become them so you can’t actually meet them.”
The two brothers nodded. “It’s probably for the best, although I wonder, Flim.”
“What’s that, Flam?”
“Would having sex with yourself be incest or masturbation?”
“You’re twins,” Trixie put in. “Does that change anything?”
Both of them made faces and chorused, “But we’re straight!”
Flim thought for a moment. “However, if we were both girls...”
“...that would change the hotness of it considerably,” finished Flam. He and his brother both grinned. Trixie rolled her eyes and did not reply.
The three of them entered Ponyville. The two brothers started to set up their cart for sales. Trixie went to put away her potted plant. She thought about the magic rock, wondering where it had gone. It had been in Twilight’s possession but now she was no longer in Ponyville.
Trixie went back outside. The Flim Flam Brothers seemed to have finished setting up their cart and were beginning to draw some attention from the town. They opened a box and pulled out a bundle of electronics that were wrapped around an ugly chunk of basalt.
Trixie’s eyes widened. It was the rock. She started walking forward and had almost reached the brothers when a flash of light enveloped the three of them.
Trixie blinked, looking around. Most of the town looked the same. Standing in front of her were two unicorn mares. They both looked rather surprised.
“Well, er, I think I understand what you were saying earlier,” one of them said to Trixie. “This is not our universe anymore.”
“You might be right,” Trixie replied, only mildly surprised to hear words coming out that were in a deeper tone of voice than normal.
“We might as well make the best of it,” observed the other mare.
A thought came to Trixie. She -or rather, he- grinned. This wasn’t their universe, so regardless of the effectiveness of the radiation drugs there would be no guilt about temporarily exposing somepony else. “Would you two like to come back to my place?”
