//------------------------------// // The Problem with Parallels // Story: The Perfect Stallion For Rainbow Dash // by chief maximus //------------------------------// The Problem with Parallels As the record played on, Blitz and Rainbow talked into the night. Rainbow had never had more engaging conversation! They both clicked so perfectly, she wondered why everypony didn't simply fish their alternate self out of a portal to hang out with. "Can you believe Twilight actually didn't want us to meet each other?" Blitz snorted. "Yeah, that sounds like Dusk all right... 'Don't do this, the universe will explode, don't do that, you'll rip space-time...' he mocked in his best impersonation. "That's pretty good," Rainbow giggled. "He's a good guy and everything, he's just a little bit..." "High strung?" Rainbow completed. Blitz smiled. "Yeah, you got it. But I guess that could be useful sometimes. He helped me study for my Wonderbolt reserve test." "Me too! She figured out I had to learn by flying over stuff," Rainbow added. "Oh, yeah! He really had a lot of patience with me, especially after I kept goofing around with his owl and Barb." "And, when you think about it, all we really had to learn was just a paragraph of information anyway," Dash replied. "Did Twilight ever turn you into a griffon or a dragon?" Blitz asked. Rainbow folded her arms. "No..." "Me neither. I guess I could just ask my buddy Gildon..." The record had long since run out, leaving the needle off track and hissing silently. "Listen, Rainbow, I know you brought me here to be your pretend date, but, haven't you ever wondered what actually having a special somepony would be like?" Blitz asked. Truth be told, she certainly did. It was something that put her in a bit of a bind. Her reputation maintained that she needed nopony, and probably never would. But in her heart there was a void. One that she never felt comfortable talking about, and thus never talked about with anypony; not even her five best friends. But now that she was simply talking to herself, perhaps she could finally express herself the way she'd always been afraid to. "Well... yeah. Haven't you?" she asked. "Of course!" Blitz replied quickly. "But... I can't bring myself to talk about it. I'm supposed to be the dauntless cool guy who—" "Never lets anything slow him down?" she completed. "Yeah." Blitz smiled. "Think we'll get our first real kiss anytime soon?" he asked, not counting both their earlier encounters with male and female Caramel. "I hope so. Was your last date as awkward as mine?" Dash asked. "Yeah. Crying mares weird me out." A brief pause entered the room before they both looked up at each other. "So, I just had an idea..." Blitz began. "I think I had the same one..." Dash added. "It's not weird, I mean, it'd be like kissing yourself in the mirror, right?" "Yeah! Only the mirror is alive... and has lips..." "Yeah..." Blitz said, softening his tone as he wrestled with his morals. "But, it's just a kiss, just to get our first real one out of the way," he reasoned. "Right, just to see what it's like!" Dash added. "Just so that we can say we've done it," Blitz finished. Another awkward pause filled the room as they sat up from their positions on the ends of the couch. Both were nearly apple-red, but neither had the stomach to laugh at the other. Wordlessly, they leaned in, hearts pounding in their chests as their lips inched closer to each others. Twilight poured over her maps, trying to calculate the kind of wind conditions favorable for hiding a cloud house, and cross-checking them with the locations she'd already searched. "Any luck?" Spike asked, bringing her a glass of water and a bowl of asparagus spears to snack on. "Almost," she replied, raising her nose from her work. "According to these wind conditions, there's really only one place she could be, but unfortunately it's a pretty big swath of sky to search." Spike nodded. "So, do you want me to keep your dinner warm for you while you teleport out there?" Twilight sighed, sitting back on her stool. "Unfortunately I won't be doing too much teleporting. My magic has been acting up lately." Spike had read horror stories from some of Twilight's medical journals of unicorns' troubles with unstable magic. He agreed it was wiser to hoof it until she could see a specialist. "At least you've still got your wings," he reminded her, walking over to the kitchen to start their dinner. Twilight stared at the section of Ponyville she'd circled in red ink when she noticed the water in her glass begin to ripple. Before she had time question it, a great rumble shook the treehouse. Twilight and Spike echanged confused stares. "Oh Celestia, it's another Changeling invasion!" Spike cried, dashing beneath the kitchen table. Twilight stood static for a moment. "I don't think so, it felt like it came from the base—" The basement door exploded open, revealing a trio of Twilight Sparkles. The first was a cyborg, only a few sections of her body remained flesh and blood. The rest of this Robotwilight shined a brilliant chrome in the afternoon light. One eye was its normal purple, while the other glowed with an electronic light, as if backlit from behind. The second was a battle scarred warrior of the wastelands in a lycra battle suit with the skulls of her enemies hanging from a belt around her waist. On her face, a scar running from her forehead to just above her lips distracted from her eyepatch and shortly cropped mane. The third Twilight's mane shimmered in the light, and waved in an absent wind. Around her neck shined the regalia of Princess Celestia. "Twilight Sparkle of universe 77, you Rainbow Dash, and Rainbow Blitz of universe 63 are under arrest!" The robotwilight proclaimed. "What? On what grounds?" Twilight demanded. "The council of Twilights demands your presence!" Celestia-Twilight replied. "You must stand trial for compromising the fabric of the universe." Twilight gasped. "Now wait just a minute, I've never—" "Seizing protocol initiated!" Robotwilight fired a holding spell, narrowly missing her target. "Twilight, run!" Spike shouted, blowing a smokescreen between her and her pursuers. Ordinarily, Twilight respected the rule of law, and ordinarily, she would have gladly sorted this whole thing out in a calm and civilized manner. But once magic starts flying around, courtesy goes out the window. She quickly flew out of her window, leaving behind a curling plume of smoke in her living room. Spike tried to make a break for the door, but found a cold steel claw wrapped around his ankle, lifting him off of the ground. "I have her Spike," Robotwilight beeped. "Freeze him temporarily," Celestialight instructed. "What about the other Twilight?" Solid-Sparkle asked. "You and I will catch her." Celestialight replied, glancing over her map. "I have a feeling I know exactly where she's headed." With only an inch to spare between them, a distant shout ruined the moment. "Rainbow Dash!" She groaned. "It's Twilight," she said, pulling herself away and heading toward the window. "How did she find us?" Blitz followed her to the window to see Twilight racing toward their house on unsteady wings, being chased by something straight out of a dream. "Is that... is she being chased by more Twilights?" Twilight barreled through the wall of her house, spitting out cloudstuff and scrambling to her hooves. "Hey! What's the deal breaking into my house?" Rainbow snapped, forgetting that she was technically the one in trouble. Twilight looked at her, and then Blitz. "I didn't want to believe it!" Twilight growled. "I can't believe you'd take advantage of my trust like this! I can't leave you alone for a second, can I?" "What? You never told me I couldn't use your stupid portal thing!" Rainbow shot back defensively. "I thought it was implied that bringing something into a universe where it doesn't belong is a bad idea!" Twilight countered. "I guess common sense isn't so common!" "If you're not supposed to bring anything back with it, then why make it able to do that?" While Twilight busily berated his twin, Blitz stared worriedly at the two Twilights still heading straight for Dash's house. "Uh, guys..." Before any could react, the house moved from beneath them, Celestialight's magic collapsing the cloudy floor. All three fell from the house, halting inches from the ground, fastened securely in their captors holding spell. "I swear Rainbow, if we make it out of this, you're never staying at my house unsupervised again!" Twilight whispered as their three pursuers approached them. "Where are you taking us?" Blitz demanded, struggling against his magical bonds. "To the Twilight zone. All of you are in big trouble!" Solid Sparkle replied. "Universes are not toys! The laws of physics are just that; laws! And when they are broken, there are consequences!" "Wha, why me?" Blitz stammered. "I was tricked in to coming here!" "We'll decide what you were when we convene the council," Celestialight replied, teleporting them back to the library basement, where Robotwilight had already prepared the portal. Twilight put a hoof over her face. "Celestia's gonna be so mad..." As soon as the other Twilight's stepped through the portal, the prisoners marveled at a city designed and built entirely by Twilight and her various iterations. Every corner had a bookstand or tea cart, and every other building was either a bookstore or a library. But, even more distracting than the buildings, were the residents. "Excuse me, but where are you taking us?" Twilight asked, still hanging upside down in her captors magic. Her tone suggested she'd long since given up making sense of everything she was seeing. Although in the back of her mind, she relished the opportunity to be the mare that proved the multi-verse theory. In her universe, anyway. "Well, if you'd have responded to any of our thirty correspondence letters, you'd know where you were going!" Celestilight snapped indignantly. "You got letters from yourself?" Dash asked. "Apparently, but I just threw them out! I thought they were pranks!" She replied defensively. "What would you have done with them?" As they walked through the main thoroughfare, all manner of Twilight's from every conceivable universe gathered along the street to watch the procession of the rogue Twilight. Dragon Twilights, griffon Twilights, dark magic wielding Twilights, fashionista, farmer, stunt flier, party planner, veterinarian, and a thousand more variations of Twilight all gawked at the three prisoners. Curiosity getting the better of her, Twilight had to gather as much information on this place as she could. "Excuse me, but... what is this place, and why is everyone some version of me?" Robotwilight turned her head around 180 degrees and explained as the group continued forward. "This is the Twilight zone, built by the council of Twilight's after the War of the Elements in some of the universes. It was built as a final refuge for Twilight's who had either ruined, lost control of, or been rendered powerless by events in their universe beyond their control." Twilight's jaw fell open. "So... all these Twilight's are... homeless?" "Not all are without a universe. Most were summoned here because of your actions. Very few Twilights have actually met such a fate." Even as a cyborg, Robotwilight could see the concern in her counterpart's eyes. "Don't worry, we take care of all of our Twilights. They are, after all, us." Dash watched library after library, research center after college pass by her as they headed toward a central spire with Twilight's cutie mark emblazoned on its front. "Not a bar in sight. This place was built by Twilights, alright." "Am I the only one freaked out by this?" Blitz asked "I mean, why are there so many of you?" "Well, as you probably already know, there's more than one universe that exists parallel to ours. Apparently, all the Twilights from a bunch of other universes got together and built... this." They entered the towering building and found themselves before an elevated table of ten Twilights. The three that had captured them, as well as a Luna-Twilight, a ninja Twilight, pirate twilight, secret agent Twilight, astronaut Twilight, superhero Twilight, and doctor Twilight. The chamber doors slammed and locked behind them as Celestialight released the three of them from her magic, dropping them harshly to the floor. "Now can I repudiate these charges?" Twilight asked, an edge of venom in her voice at being dragged out of her universe. "I don't see how!" Astrotwilight replied. "The evidence is indisputable!" "Evidence of what? I still don't even know what I'm being charged with!" Twilight shouted. LunaTwi silenced the rumbling chamber with a hoof. "It is only fair. Twilight Sparkle of universe 77, and Rainbow Dash of universe 77, you are charged with the crime of destroying your universe." "I know I saw it land over here..." Scootaloo mumbled to herself, searching the tall grass for the baseball her classmates had been playing with at recess. "Let's go Scoots! Recess is almost over!" Apple Bloom shouted from home plate. This was why she hated playing the outfield. "Hang on!" she called back, raising herself on her short wings to try and see over the grass. She gained a few inches and spotted a hint of white a few feet away. She dropped down and trotted through the weeds only to find something peculiar. The white she had seen had come from the ground, though it wasn't their baseball. It seemed to be a hole in the ground, except instead of dirt, there seemed to be... nothing! Just an empty white space. "What the..." Scootaloo said to herself as she examined it closer. Near her hoof was a clump of dirt. She kicked it toward the hole and watched as it rolled into the white void and disappeared. It seemed the space had swallowed it up! "Guys!" she called back to the group. "You gotta come check this out!"