A few minutes later, Faust was done with talking to the Twilight from our world to let us in. Of course, the five recently arrived mares were taken by complete shock from Faust’s appearance.
All of them, except for Pinkie who was jumping for joy, “Hi there!” she said as she hopped over to Ms. Redhead. “What’s your name? Where did you come from? Are you staying in Ponyville for very long? I hope so, that way I can throw you one of my ‘Welcome-to-Ponyville’ party. Would you prefer chocolate or vanilla cake, or both? What’s your favorite-”
“Pinkie Pie,” Luna interrupted her by picking her up off the ground by her magic. “Do calm thyself; she doth not expect to stay here for long.”
“Ah Luna,” Faust said, “You’re doing it again.” My alternative other boss turned pink in embarrassment.
Fluttershy walked passed the two tall horses and me to the hospital beds where she finds the two Twilights. The one who’s conscious examined her for a moment before saying: “Hey, I think I know you. In fact, you all look familiar.”
“What are you talking about darling?” Rarity asked, “Of course you know us. We’re your friends.”
Twilight shook her head, “No I don’t. I think you might have mistaken me for her.” She pointed to the unconscious princess next to her.
The others looked at her in shock.
“Okay, hold up,” Applejack interjected, “What do ya mean, ya have no friends?”
“I just don’t,” Twilight shrugged, “and why should any of you care? It’s not like… wait…” she got out of the hospital bed to look at each of them. “Now I know why all of you look familiar, all of you were the ones who were trying to spy on me a few days ago!”
“Twi, what are you talking about?” Rainbow questioned.
“You guys were the ones who had me ended up here in the first place,” she said.
“But I thought you said spotting your double was what brought you here,” Faust inquired.
“Actually,” I spoke up, snapping my fingers to have a suit, tie, and a fedora with a pencil in one paw and a notepad in the other. “I’d like to know what happened after you chased your other self through the portal. And why their Twilight hasn’t woken up yet.”
“As do I,” Luna agreed. “I’m certain that everypony here would wish to know as well.”
Faust went up to Twilight, putting a hoof on her shoulder, “Just tell them what you’ve told me.”
Twilight nodded, “Okay, I guess I should say that I’m not a pony first of all.”
“We already know that silly,” Pinkie interrupted, “I mean it’s just simple logic that you’re not our Twilight since you’re a unicorn and our Twilight is an Alicorn. But you sound exactly like Twilight, and even Discord has told us that you’re from the human world.”
Twilight blinked, “Okay… Anyway, I want to clarify that I wasn’t the one being chased, she was the one who was doing all the chasing.” She pointed to her other self to make this point. “Plus, I didn’t look to where I was going before I tripped and fell into this place. So, of course, I got scared once I arrived here with a different body that I’m not used to, along being in a world that I’m not familiar about. Who wouldn’t?”
“But, how did you end up in the Everfree?” Fluttershy asked.
“Well, she freaked me out when she popped out of that mirror, and I started running. Of course, I didn’t know where I was going, even after I ran out of that crystal place. She somehow kept popping in front of me, only to find out later that she was trying to calm me down. I tried to avoid her as best as I could until we ran into the forest. She at last gotten me to listen, saying how she’s not going to hurt me. The only problem was that by the time she was able to do so, we realized that neither of us has any idea where we were.”
“Now hold on,” Rainbow stopped her, “didn’t, our Twilight use her wings to figure out where the two of you were?”
Twilight blushed, “Oh… About that,” she rubbed the back of her neck with a foreleg… Wait, I know that look anywhere. It’s the kind of look that my students give when they knew that despite knowing fully they had a project to do they never end up doing. “I uh… Well, when she was chasing me, her horn glowed and tried to drag me back to her… but I uh… I grabbed a rock and threw it at her.”
“You broke her wing!” Rainbow exclaimed.
“Hey, I didn’t know what her motivation was at the time! Plus, I didn’t know that was, well, normal here.”
“So I guess that explains how you two got lost,” I said, jotting down a few notes. “But that doesn’t explain why she’s out cold.”
“Again, my bad,” Twilight answered, “As I said, we got lost in that forest for a few days, trying to figure out where we’re going and all. Well, she… the other me tried talking to me and… we didn’t get along. She went on about the importance of friendship and I told her why I didn’t need it. I keep telling her that we have our intellect after all, so why hanging out with a couple of strangers would be any more important? And then there was all this nonsense about ‘magic’ that she was using. I keep telling her that magic doesn’t exist and even brought about scientific examples why not. So you could guess that we’d argued for a while until it reached a boiling point. We were by a short cliff when we’d bickered that I… I pushed her. She lost her balance and tumbled backward down and I saw her hit her head against a tree.”
‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves a scoop,’ I thought to myself, ‘Twilight pushes self off a cliff and into a tree!’
“How could ya do somethin’ like that?” Applejack scolded.
“I wasn’t thinking straight, okay?” she confessed, “I was angry at her. But when she hit her head… I-I couldn’t just leave her there. I mean, even if we disagreed, she’s still me. So… I tried carrying her on my back until I found some ruins where I spent the night in; which is where we stayed until we were found.”