“No… no, no, no, no, no…”
A young purple mare with a navy mane and tail raced from one end of her bedroom to the other, growing more and more frantic with each circuit. Now and then she stopped, grabbing something from her desk or closet and jabbing it against her head. Scissors, knitting needles, a penknife, and even a clothes hangar were grabbed and stabbed, completely ineffectually, against the medium-sized horn in the center of her forehead.
“No, no, no, this—this isn’t happening! This can’t be happening! I—I’m not a unicorn!” The mare slammed the clothes hangar in her hoof down on her bed and turned toward the mirror propped in the room’s corner. She stared into it, stared horror-stricken at the spiraled horn protruding from her forehead. “Dear Faust, what’s happening to me?”
“Twilight?”
The mare started at the sound of her mother’s voice, whirling toward the door of the room. It was closed, but still… “What?” she called in a trembling voice.
“Your principal is here to talk to you.”
Twilight whipped around and grabbed the flower-adorned hat hanging off the doorhandle of her closet. She placed it carefully over the horn—she refused to think of it as her horn—and then went and opened her bedroom door.
“Okay,” she called. “I’ll… I’ll be up here.”
A few moments later there was the clip-clop noise of hooves on a stairway. Then Twilight’s principal, a heavyset stallion named Straight-A, came into her doorway.
“Hello, Twilight. Mind if I sit down?”
Twilight shook her head, trying to hide the nervous tremble in her legs. There was any number of things this unexpected meeting could be about—Twilight’s plummeting grades, her ‘antisocial’ behavior, her refusal to take her hat off in class. Please, please don’t ask why I won’t take off my hat.
Straight-A walked over to Twilight’s desk and sat down in the chair next to it, swiveling so that he was facing his student.
“Well, Twilight,” Straight-A said, shifting forward slightly in his seat. “I suppose I should—how do you youngsters put it?—cut right to the chase.”
And then the pony sitting in Twilight’s desk chair changed.
The pony—if it was a pony, Twilight had no idea anymore—shifted. Its mane and coat changed color and its body shape transformed until there was a slender blue-coated earth pony sitting in Twilight’s desk chair. The pony—if it was a pony—had a slick, short red mane and tail and a cutie mark of a black feather.
Twilight stumbled backwards, barely even noticing when she hit her fetlocks on the hoofboard of her bed.
“Wh-what are you?” she gasped.
The blue pony looked at her with golden eyes. “What am I?” the pony asked. Its voice sounded female, but it also sounded blurred and distorted—like nothing Twilight had heard before. “That’s simple. I’m a mutant.” She cocked her head. “Like you.”
Twilight tried to back up again, and failed thanks to her bed. She could feel her heart beating fast—thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump. “I-I d-don’t know wh-what you’re t-talking about.”
The blue pony just stared at her. “I think you do,” she said calmly. “If I asked you to take off your hat, what would you do?”
Twilight froze.
“That’s what I thought,” the blue mare continued. “You’re a mutant. You know what that means, don’t you?”
Twilight tried to think, tried to remember what she’d learned in science class. “A-a mutant—is—genetics,” she blurted. “A mutation is an error in the genetic code.”
The mare nodded. “Good. I knew you were a smart one.”
“B-but—th-that’s—I—I—I can’t be a mutant! Th-the horn—” She broke off, realizing with a pang of horror that she’d revealed her secret.
“Don’t worry,” the mare said. “I already knew.” She gave a hint of a crooked smile. “I’ve been watching you.”
Twilight swallowed. Her mouth was desperately dry. “Th-the horn—i-it’s—it’s p-probably just—you know—recessive. M-my mother has a unicorn somewhere in the family…” She trailed off, because the blue mare was shaking her head.
“It’s not just a recessive trait,” she said, “and you know it. If it were recessive unicorn genes, you’d’ve been born with a horn. But it just started growing, didn’t it? And you were an earth pony before.”
Twilight just nodded, hanging her head despairingly.
“You’re a mutant,” the mare reiterated. “And that’s why I’m here. I have an offer for you.”
Twilight lifted her head again, watching the mare warily.
“What?”
“I want you to come with me.”
Twilight tried to back up, and smacked her back hooves on the bed yet again. “Wh-what?” she stammered. “No—I can’t, I—”
“Think about it.” The mare tilted her head to the side. “You can stay here. I won’t force you to do anything. But your horn will keep growing, and your powers—they’ll manifest. And when they do—” The mare shook her head. “Everypony will know, and it won’t be pretty.”
Twilight said nothing, so the mare went on.
“Or—you can come with me. You can learn to use your powers, and learn about the others.”
“Others?” Twilight’s eyes widened and she stared, dumbfounded, at the slender blue mare. “Th—there are other m-mutants?”
“There are many of us,” the mare said.
Twilight bit her tongue.
“I—I don’t know,” she said.
“I won’t make you decide now,” the mare said. “Think about it. If you want to take my offer, meet me in front of the town library after midnight tonight.”
“B-but—my family.” Twilight thought of her mother, her father, and of Shining Armor. “I can’t just… leave.”
The blue mare gazed at her almost-sadly. “If they knew what you were, believe me—they’d want it this way.”
Then she stood and walked toward Twilight’s bedroom door.
“Wait!” Twilight called. The mare looked back at her, already re-taking the appearance of Straight-A.
“What?” Despite her changing appearance, the mare’s voice remained the same.
“I—I don’t know your name.”
“I know yours,” the mare replied. “Twilight Sparkle. And you can call me… Mist.”
Then she opened the door and trotted out.