"Really though. He's a dick."
Integrals
***
For once in her life, Rainbow Dash chose to take it slow.
Slamming the door open, while effective, would have brought all the attention to her. That was not the goal here. What she wanted to see was her friends acting in supposed privacy. And if she was correct in her suspicions, that sight would be very entertaining indeed.
Through the widening crack in the doorway she saw her friends in a heap, slowly rising while rubbing their eyes. They stood in some sort of intricate chalk pattern on the floor which rapidly smudged under their hooves. The chalk lines continued across the room.
The door opened further, revealing more and more chalk until a familiar heap came into view. Had she not put two and two together before, the sight would have been confusing.
"No way," Dash muttered in disbelief, careful to keep quiet and maintain her stealth. "Dude! Check it out."
Her clone craned his neck to see above the mare, following the same path she had moments earlier. His face transitioned from concern to amusement rather quickly.
"Did they just do what I think they just did?" he asked.
"I think they just did what you think they did," Dash answered.
"What do you think they were thinking?"
"I don't know what to think." She backed herself and the stallion away from the door to regroup. Regrouping, of course, entailed collapsing back onto the ground in suppressed laughter. "This is too good!" she exclaimed
"I know! Did they just, like, up and decide to do that today?"
"How should I know? I've been with you since you got here." Dash checked the crack in the doorway once more and returned. "Sh-should we, like, go in and talk to them or something?"
Blitz frowned. "Not sure. I mean, if they're anything like I was, they'll want to sleep right now."
"Not them. I meant the girls."
He considered his options briefly before he shrugged and gave a grin. "We could screw with them?" he offered.
Dash smiled back. "Blitz, have I ever told you I like the way you think?"
Mischief sparked in their respective eyes as they turned toward the door.
...
"Rarity!" complained a winded unicorn. "You didn't say it would hurt!"
"It didn't when I did it. Or, I don't believe it did."
Rarity rolled onto her stomach and set about massaging her aching head. Now that she thought about it, there was some pain on that day. That pain just so happened to occur simultaneously with a pony crashing into her.
She was suddenly very jealous of the unconscious ponies across the room.
"Is Spike in today? I may need some of that medicine he made."
"You can abuse drugs later," Twilight responded irritably, forcing herself up. "Right now we need to figure out what we're doing with them."
"Whaddya mean 'what we're doin' with 'em'?" drawled the earth pony behind them, already on her hooves and looking no worse for wear. "We tell 'em what's what and let 'em decide what they do."
"Er. You want to tell them everything?"
Applejack raised a confused eyebrow. "Uh, yeah? D' you not?"
The librarian shifted uncomfortably, eyeing the pile of ponies she had yet to thoroughly examine. For all she knew, they might not have been breathing.
Before she could ruin her point with silence, Twilight was pushed aside by a manicured hoof.
"What Twilight means to say is, we don't want them getting the wrong idea about all of this. If we just give a plausible reason for their -um- being here, then we may avoid some awkward conversations. Do you catch my meaning, Applejack?"
This time, her eyebrow was cynical. "'Course ah' do. Yer sayin' ya want to lie to 'em."
Rarity scoffed. "Well you're hardly in a position to tell me what my personal motives are. I have my reasons."
"Well ah'm tellin' mine the truth."
"'Yours?"
Applejack rolled her eyes. "The one of me. There ain't no good way to say that without soundin' like mah great grandpappy." She shuddered. "We still got his whip in the attic."
Nopony really knew what to make of that bit of a history lesson they just received. However, the lull in conversation did give them all an idea of just how loud they were talking.
"Um, if none of you mind me asking," interjected a soft voice. "Maybe we could be a little bit quieter? They are trying to sleep after all."
Rarity chuckled softly. "You know, I forgot that part. Blitz was a tad grumpy when he woke up. Some quiet might help all of us."
They all nodded in agreement. There was just one thing wrong about the situation. With the word "quiet" being thrown around so much, they realized the silence of the greatest source of noise among them.
Pay attention to the dogs that don't bark, said Twilight's literature professor from the steel trap that was her mind.
Or more aptly, she added. The party ponies that don't yell.
Sure enough, Pinkie Pie was not in the chalk circle nursing a headache or arguing about morals. She was, however, in the other circle with a very large pair of cymbals.
A magical aura enveloped her body right before the brass discs could give everyone a headache, halting all of her movements and dragging her rigid body back to the conscious side of the room. The cymbals tumbled into Twilight's other magical hand which gently placed them on the floor.
"Pinkie!" Twilight whispered loudly, dropping her friend from her magical grasp in a much rougher fashion. "You almost woke them up!"
She laughed gave the unicorn a look. "Of course I almost woke them up! They're no fun when they're sleeping."
Twilight made to reply, but found herself surprisingly short of breath for such a small spell. The shortness of breath was followed by a dull throb around the horn area. The hoof that met her face in response to somepony's silliness also served to massage her apparently exhausted magic muscle.
"Forget fun right now. Let's just quietly figure all this out while we let them wake up, okay?"
Pinkie didn't get a chance to voice any disagreements about "forgetting fun", the worst of the Seven Deadly Party Fouls. The door slammed open too quickly for any of that. Now was that time for that big entrance. The shock and awe. The pomp and ceremony. Mostly pomp, though.
"What have we got here, Dash?" asked a colorful stallion as he trotted into the library like he owned the place.
A matching mare was close behind him. "Well, Blitz, I'd say we've just caught our friends just before getting to know themselves a bit more."
"We sure have, Dash. But they seem to have forgotten something."
"What's that, Blitz?"
"Well, Dash, they have definitely been impressed by my impact here in Ponyville. Right?"
"I think that's pretty safe to say. Making more of me couldn't be anything but awesome. You think they wanted a little bit of that awesome we've been making?"
"Mhm. But that's what they forgot." He approached the group of still silent mares, grinning a smug grin and making sure to make eye contact with each wide-eyed pony before him. "You see, the awesomeness of the clone is decided by the awesomeness of the original."
That sounded a great deal like a scientific conclusion. A flawed conclusion, but a conclusion nonetheless. Thus, Twilight was the first to break out of the stupor of being caught. Which was fortunate. She wouldn't have been able to appreciate Dash's condescending pat on the back otherwise.
"It's okay, Twi. I'm sure your clone'll be cool too. We just don't want you to get your hopes up is all."
That was the sting. Pinkie broke into laughter, Applejack gave a chuckle, and Fluttershy and Rarity smiled at their pompous friends.
Twilight, on the other hoof, shook her head with a sneer.
"I don't get it."
"Get what?" Dash asked, foreleg still draped over the unicorn's back.
Twilight, shook it off, storming forward. "This! All of this! I don't get how you're all so nonchalant about this! We just made ponies for the-"
Pinkie Pie's shushing interrupted the unicorn's outburst, as well as the copious slobber that accompanied it.
"No yelling!" she whispered at the top of her lungs. "They're sleeping!"
Rarity sighed. "And here I was thinking we made some progress. Settle down, Twilight. No point in getting riled up."
"I'm not riled up," Twilight shot back. "I've just been racking my brain about how to explain all of this to you two and then you come in and make jokes?"
"Jeez," Dash said, smiling despite her friend's tone. "Sorry we're being so cool about all of this."
"Yeah. We're okay with it," Blitz added. "Why are you angry?"
"I'm not!" Twilight exclaimed quietly. "Look, can we just get back to what we're doing about them? I say we start with some explanations."
"As do I," Rarity agreed. "Or what they absolutely need to hear, rather."
Applejack chose not to confront the truth issue again. "Well ah think we should at least give 'em somethin' to eat first. 's downright cruel bringin' new ponies into the world and droppin all these stories on 'em without vittles."
"Oh!" Pinkie squeaked, balancing an unlit light bulb on her head. "I'll take mine out to the market and we'll bake for everypony!"
Fluttershy mumbled something along the lines of "Let them rest."
The conversation quickly devolved into an argument of whispers, the "Explanation" side splitting between truth and quasi-truth and the "Food" side debating who would get to do the cooking.
Dash just looked on like her friends were a bunch of babbling idiots. We're all guilty of that at some point, though. Being idiots, I mean.
"Uh, guys?" she interrupted. "You're all kind of forgetting about our resident clone here. Remember Blitz? The guy that went through this already? The guy that probably knows what you should do?"
The arguing stopped, realization and embarrassment dawning on their faces.
Blitz pressed his advantage. "Yeah. I was wondering when they were gonna ask my opinion. I really thought you all were smarter than that."
"Hey!" Twilight objected.
"So, why don't you all give us some space so I can bring the guys up to speed, eh?"
"That's-" the librarian began as if she disapproved. "-actually a good plan..."
Every newly cloned pony looked at their host with shock, each thinking their own variant of "She agreed with something?"
"I know. That's why we thought of it." The stallion gave his double a hoof bump before trotting over to the, well, other stallions.
The mares watched him go with varying opinions of his conduct. Gratefulness for his assistance, however, still prevailed among them.
"He's so cocky," Twilight remarked with some distaste.
Her fellow unicorn rolled her eyes. "I can only imagine where he gets it."
"There are two possibilities. Either he got it from Dash, or all stallions are like this."
Rarity grimaced. "I do hope it's not the latter considering our new, eh, surplus of males."
The conversation was becoming rather egghead-ish, the bane of the group's athlete. So she might as well have gotten some information out of it.
"So I get that you saw us being awesome and all," Rainbow Dash began. "But did that really make you all just want more clones?"
Oh don't get her started again, Dash, Rarity complained inwardly.
To her surprise, Twilight did not have another nervous breakdown. She just picked up talking when nopony else dared expose a motive.
"I don't know about them," she said while she gestured to her silent friends. "Or me, for that matter. But, now that they're here, I suppose it's a good chance to conduct research on the cloning spell. Plenty of new live subjects. There could be some practical applications. No need for organ donations if healthy ones can be copied and placed in a patient."
She smiled and took on a thinking pose, hoof on her chin.
"Come to think of it, Spike just took up medicine. With him and the clone working with me, we could make real breakthroughs in the field of medicinal magic! Why did I not think of this before!? We could really help ponies!"
"So much for calming the egghead," Dash muttered.
While Twilight sat dreaming up new found possibilities, Rarity took a moment to release a tense breath. Keeping Twilight level-headed all this time was stressful. But the ball started rolling and it did not seem likely to stop.
"We all have plans, Rainbow Dash. There is plenty of good we can do in the world with four more hooves each, provided they agree of course."
The pegasus waved a dismissive hoof. "Psh. They'll help you. Just lay on the puppy dog eyes if they're not willing already. That usually works for you, huh Rares?"
"So what if it does? It is not a crime to use one's charm every now and then. Everyone involved ends up happy in the end."
Dash chuckled. "Except for that one guy at the Gala. What was his name again? Bruisedbud or something?"
"Blueblood," Rarity growled through her teeth. Memories of that night were already flooding back. The frosting she could deal with. It was the degradation that the detergent couldn't scrub out.
"Yeah, that's him. What a jerk, right? Better hope you don't turn out like him in a stallion's body. That would suck."
Preposterous! There's no way I would resemble that brute, stallion body or otherwise. He and I are polar opposites! He's egotistical and cowardly and selfish whereas I...I'm...
There was a hoof waving in front of her face as well as a voice saying her name.
"Equestria to Rarity. Come in. Kshh-" Pinkie spoke through her hooves to muffle her voice like a cheap microphone.
"Hm?" the unicorn responded absently. "I'm sorry. What were you saying?"
"Nothing. But your eyes went all-" she craned her head backward as her pupils all but disappeared. "-like you'd seen a roast or something."
"It's 'ghost', sugarcube."
"Ghosts aren't real, Applejack!"
Rarity tuned back out, comfortable enough with her views regarding ghosts that she didn't need to defend them. Attention returned to her thoughts which seemed to have an affinity for doubt right about then.
Well, I'm certainly not selfish. she told herself. R-right?
Nopony answered, thankfully. Self-doubt is usually preferable compared to a dissociative disorder. Usually.
She watched Blitz examine the sleeping stallions near the historical fiction section. One possessed a dashing curled mane to compliment his white coat. However, the blank face beneath it neither confirmed nor denied Rarity's insecurities.
"Um, Rarity?" inquired a soft voice that gently pulled the unicorn from her thoughts.
She felt Fluttershy nudge her so that they faced away from the others. Not that the quietest pony in Equestria was likely to be overheard.
"What is it dear?"
"Well, um. You're good with new ponies, right?"
"I like to think so, yes. Why?"
She bit her lip, giving Rarity another glimpse of that natural modeling talent of hers. All she needed were a few cheesy article headlines and they'd have themselves the perfect magazine. Alas, there was no camera inside the library. The media really should get on that.
The yellow pegasus glanced nervously at the new ponies, swapping her lower lip for her hoof between her chattering teeth. "I- I don't think I can do it!"
Despite having spoken as loud as she could, she was still drowned out by the occult discussion. Rarity struggled to hear the squeaking exclamation from point blank.
"Please try to relax," she cooed. "What has you so nervous all of the sudden?"
"I- I just don't know what I'm going to do! Or what he's going to do! Or what either of us are supposed to do! I can't-"
Rarity grabbed her friend by the shoulders and forced her to make eye contact. To stop her shaking was a task that did justice to the term "herculean".
"Listen to me, Fluttershy. You are the kindest, most likable pony in this room. Nopony, nopony, could ever have a problem with how you act. So here's what's going to happen. We'll move up our spa day to tomorrow. In the mean time, you do whatever it is you would normally do on a Sunday while helping other you adjust. If you have any problems, which you won't, we can talk about them over a nice hooficure. How does that sound?"
She could feel the pegasus's tense shoulders soften at the proposition. Just as Rarity began to dismount, however, she found her hooves clamped tightly to her sides and her muzzle covered by a silky pink mane.
"Thank you so much, Rarity! You're such a good friend!"
"Oh go on," she said back, possibly not sarcastically. "I know you would do the same for me."
She may need to, whispered a particularly annoying fragment of the unicorn's mind.
From behind the fluffy mountain that still held her, Rarity could make out Rainbow Blitz donning a mischievous grin as his wings took him to the air above the other stallions. On his hooves she could see the black straps of Pinkie's cymbals.
Rarity's nimble hooves reached out without a thought to fold Fluttershy's ears inward and it was all that kept her from launching toward the ceiling like a startled kitten.
As for the yellow stallion across the room, he probably wouldn't need his ears anyway. Or his heart. Or lungs.
His reaction would be unique among his fellow fresh clones. The others would quickly come to the same conclusion, as would he if he wouldn't find it unkind.
Blitz is a dick.