Prepare for Trouble and Make It Double
Raindrops was not in a good mood at the moment. Granted, it was rare for ponies to see past her normally dour exterior even when she was in a good mood, but there was a difference between appearing angry and being angry for Raindrops. If ponies were able to tell the difference, it was probably because they were either a friend, or they had crossed a line to see it for themselves.
There is something very wrong with the pony that fails to learn not to earn her ire again.
Right now, Trixie was warranting anger about halfway between mildly annoyed and blind fury. She had been on the receiving end of Raindrops blind fury at least once, and it had once terrified her into thinking that her friend could snap at any moment. In the end, it had taken her awhile to learn how much more there was to the jasmine pegasus.
That being said, it should have been easy for her friends to tell she was more frustrated than anything. Thus it was with great surprise she found Trixie backpedal into a corner on her entrance.
There was none of the bravado and cunning Raindrops normally saw in Trixie, and that stopped the pegasus clear in her tracks. She’d been so sure that Trixie wasn’t afraid of her anymore, but sometimes she couldn’t help but have the tiniest wriggling of doubts that she still scared the friends she tried so hard to keep.
“A-are you afraid again?” Raindrop’s ears flattened against her head, and now it was she who took a step back. Her rage was momentarily quieted by surprise. “I thought you said you weren’t afraid anymore?”
Trixie cringed at the sound of Raindrops voice.
“I- I’m not-” she began.
Twilight, sensing the storm that was about to tear apart the nice peaceful explanation of things she wanted, tried to intervene. “Raindrops, wait-”
“You said you wouldn’t be afraid of me anymore!” The anger was back, although Raindrops wasn’t sure who to feel angry at anymore.
“Raindrops!” Carrot Top had just made it into the library. “Stop it! You’re going to make it worse if you keep yelling, and you don’t even know everything that’s going on.”
“What do you mean I don’t know what’s going on?!” the weather mare snarled. “It sure seems about as bright and clear as the sky outside! Trixie set the weather schedule behind, and now she’s afraid of what I’ll do to her!” All the furious energy left her, and her voice became very quiet. “She’s afraid- She’s afraid that I’d-”
“No!” For the first time that day, Trixie’s voice was strong and resolute. “It isn’t you! Don’t you dare blame yourself for getting annoyed at me for this! Last night I messed up again. I cast a spell I couldn’t handle again, and the result was that I failed everypony again.” She sighed. “I’ve been trying not to panic all day, and seeing your reaction just now brought back all the doubts I’ve been feeling about how badly I messed up.”
Twilight tilted her head to the side. “Yeah, about that. Didn’t you say that you were going to give me an explanation as to what exactly went wrong?”
“S-sort of,” Trixie stuttered, “but I want Raindrops to actually listen to it instead of having her rage about me being scared of her.”
Raindrops was currently refusing to look at Trixie, but she planted her haunches on the ground and motioned to her to go on. Trixie looked to Carrot Top for confirmation, and the farmer waved at her encouragingly.
“I suppose it technically began a couple days ago,” the showmare began. “Some say the most dangerous thing in the world is a bored foal, and with how bored I’ve been lately I’ve past straight from foalish shenanigahns to downright sun-baked insanity…”
And so Trixie’s explanation began.
It was easier, in a way, to present it like a story to her friends. The theatrics and jokes certainly wasted some time, but it was much more comforting than the cold truth of the situation. Twilight tried to rush the explanation at first, but a quick and quiet word from Carrot Top quelled her impatience.
Instead, the librarian began taking notes.
Carrot Top, for her part, listened for a while before she too began to apparently take notes for her letter to the princess.
Raindrops just sat there and listened.
It took Trixie two hours to tell the story to her satisfaction. She explained of the hours she had spent trying to study from a book of all things, and she explained of her discovery of the duplication spell, a spell she had always admired and equated with Princess Luna but had never been able to find. Half her speech alone was about how she had found and decided to cast the spell.
But then came the hard part.
Like a flood gate breaking, Trixie began to talk of actually casting the spell. She talked about how it had been five minutes of pure doubt and fear coldly clutching at her as every good and confident feeling she had was drained away in an exhaust of magic. As soon as the spell had completed she’d instinctively cast an invisibility spell on herself in fear and backed into the corner. Her description of watching her duplicate walk out of the residence was as surreal as the actual experience had been. She even summoned an illusion of herself to act out the part of her doppleganger. And, when it was all said and done, she waited for her friends verdict.
Twilight was silent for a moment more to make sure Trixie was done. Carefully writing the last of her notes, she put her quill down, looked at the notes to make sure she’d heard everything correctly, and then put her face in her hooves with a groan. “Really, Trixie? Of all the possible things for you to keep, you chose my experimental notes. Notes that, I should add, were incomplete for the most part.”
“Idiot,” Raindrops added with a small smile.
“No wonder you’ve been so twitchy.” Twilight sighed. “If you’d actually read the notes right, you would have realized that that spell was never supposed to be cast. That shortcut wasn’t a shortcut. It was conjecture on how to modify the spell so that a pony could segment their mind. I was working on it as a sort of forced meditation spell to hypertune my focus.”
“Umm… Could you please dumb it down a bit for the less magically inclined?” asked Carrot Top tilting her head.
“She cast a spell that was only half complete,” Twilight stated bluntly. “I have an idea of what’s going on, but I don’t know the side effects. Basically, Trixie split herself not just physically, but mentally as well. I can’t argue as to what the exact split is yet, but if this Trixie is acting nervous I’m betting the other half has even more bravado and confidence than normal.” She opened the door to the basement and waved Trixie towards it. When Carrot Top and Raindrops moved to follow she stopped them. “I’ll need to run some tests, and I’d rather not have anyone get in the way. I suggest you figure out how you’re going to get Trixie’s duplicate back. If what I saw last night was the duplicate talking and not just a drunk Trixie then Luna help Neigh Orleans, because they’re going to need it.”
…..
The dreamy and dazzling Lulamoon slowly awoke from her lofty and luminescent dreams. Her mane was as silver starlight, and her coat was an awing azure. She was truly deserving of the title of great and powerful.
Then she moved and the hangover decided that, as great and powerful as she was, it was not to be ignored.
Even the miserable mire of a migraine, however, refused to lower the peppy and prismatic Lulamoon’s day, and she crawled from the bed she had rented for the night. Had she rented it for the night? The last thing she remembered before her memory faded was saying goodbye to the rest of the townsponies and promising to catch up in a bit. She couldn’t leave Neigh Orleans without a quick stop at her family’s place after all.
The showmare’s stomach gave a mighty and magnificent roar as she smelled roast potatoes with a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg. That was strange. Most hotels, even in Neigh Orleans, didn’t naturally serve her perplexingly prefered taste in foods. She normally needed to call room service and convince them that it was safe to bring to the room without a biohazard suit.
Heading into the hall, she noted that it was rather small and cramped compared to a normal hotel’s design. Thoughts of the buildings design fled her mind as the need for food reasserted itself, and she nearly floated down a rickety staircase.
Upon entering the source of the delightful smell she found herself in a cozy little kitchenette. It took the enlightened and efficient Lulamoon only five whole seconds to realize that a hotel did not normally house one kitchenette to feed the entirety of its guests, but it took only two seconds for her to recognize the individual sitting by the counter reading the newspaper.
His name was Limelight, and he was one of the best stagehands in Neigh Orleans. He was about average height for a pony, but he was lanky and thin. That, combined with his rather dark green coat, helped him stay unnoticed in the backgrounds of his shows. His cutie mark, a set of three spotlights centered upon the silhouette of a pony represented his particular talent for lighting, although he was skilled at almost every backstage job there was because of the number of times he’d had to cover for one pony or another.
He was also her eldest cousin.
“Limelight?” she asked perplexed. “What are you doing at my hotel?”
The dark green earth pony chuckled and folded the paper up. “Last I checked this was my house, not some hotel. Although, I suppose it does happen to contain your breakfast.” Standing up from the table, the lanky stallion motioned his cousin to take his seat. A plate piled high with hashbrowns dusted with cinnamon and drowned in gravy.
“Oh how nice of you, mon ami!” Lulamoon exclaimed excitedly. "You even remembered Oncle Sky Shaper’s hangover cure!” With great gusto she sat to ravenously ruin the relatively delicious spread laid out before her.
Limelight chuckled again. “I thought you would appreciate it. You always had the weirdest taste in foods, so I figured the gravy wouldn’t hurt. I never could figure out why mon pere always seemed to think of gravy as the miraculous cure-all of the world.” He set the paper on the counter. It was headlined Lunatic Lulamoon Refuses to Shoo Fly Shoo. “One of the many oddities in the family I suppose, although you always seem to outshow the rest of us in that department. Do you remember anything at all about last night?”
“Umm…” came Lulamoon’s intelligent response. Last night was rather fuzzy after all the festivities. “I don’t suppose you wanna to tell me what exactly happened last night, do you, mon ami?”
“What fun would that be?” asked Limelight, grinning. “There’s no way little old me can do it justice. I’m just a stage hand after all. You’re the performer. You want a hint of the stunts you pulled last night? You’re going to have to go take a look at what’s left of the stage outside, Lulamoon.”
Limelight waited for the expected outcry against his cousin being called Lulamoon, but it never came. Instead, his cousin was suddenly bouncing and beaming like a foal on Hearth’s Warming Eve. “That’s a great idea mon ami! What better way to remember last night than to go out and do everything all over again?”
Before Limelight could respond, Lulamoon licked the last bit of gravy from her plate and dashed off to her room shouting something about getting ready.
“Did she just ignore me calling her Lulamoo-” Limelight began before the realization hit him. “Again?!”
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A member of Trixie's family has made it into canon! Yay!
Ah, well.....this might finally get her to admit that there's something to be said for being a bookworm. It's like something M!Rainbow Dash would do......
After the two haves merge again:
"Ahhh, it's good to be whole again! I feel confident AND humble, and..." *Trixie's face suddenly goes pale as memories sort themselves out, and after a few seconds, she punches herself in the face* "What were you thinking?! You got me PREGNANT?! Ewww, I'm TAINTED!!"
excitedly, "You
_______________________
Poor Neigh Orleans is about to be rocked by a hurricane. Hurricane Lullamoon! And all shall be blown away by her amazing and bedazzling, stage presence.
Ooh, this isn't gonna end well...
Love the alliterative narration in Lulamoon's part. I feel like it really adds to the contrast between the two Trixies. Looking forward to seeing how they get her back down to earth long enough to merge with her other half, ha!
Ditto about the alliterative narration, that is a great touch.
3941232
1. Hmm... I forgot about the bracelet... How would she have gotten around that? hmm... gotta figure that out cuz that's gonna bug me...
2. Anyways, as to Teleportation Circles I guess I didn't show it enough in story, but I saw it as a very limited thing. So context would be limited to things such as wealthy passengers or perhaps big universities... Something to make it not everywhere at once and probably only in the most important of cities (hoofington only counts as we established there's a lot of hoofington's ones bound to be big... in fact the big one might be the reason littler ones are named hoofington). Compound that with a probably limited space capacity (say the size of a broom closet to a living room depending on complexity) compared to a train (freight or passenger) plus the amount of power it takes a unicorn that's not Twilight Sparkle would leave them really drained.
3. I suppose it doesn't really need to be in Neigh Orleans? I just feel that the atmosphere of New Orleans feels better for tracking Lulamoon after a giant party... Part of the stories about the zany things Lulamoon got into... Things I'm not sure a small town should have (although knowing Pinkie Pie that may not be the case...)
So Chapter 3, no major continuity concerns here, at least none that aren't just extensions of what I already mentioned in Ch2
Minor note, but we seem to recently be leaning towards the idea that Trixie's eclectic pallet isn't actually all that unusual for Neigh Orleans. Maybe a bit more exotic and experimental average perhaps, but at its core still based her "Creole" heritage. Though I might imagine that the years she spent in Canterlot might have broadened her pallet even more so and that the combination of both might make her all the stranger still. That said, a "biohazard-suit" reference, as funny as it is from an audience perspective, is probably not very in character for her thoughts while back home in the town that more or less taught her to eat like she does, at least not unless the ZERO inhibition half that is Lulamoon starts actually going overboard and ordering outright crazy food to eat.
Now on a far me contentious bit of humor (as in I unambiguously enjoyed it), as it was becoming increasingly apparent that Trixie was not in a hotel but rather somepony's house I was becoming increasingly worried for her. Not really for fear that she'd illegally broken in, nut more so that she might have spent the evening doing things that would make her unified self rather squeamish.
3942291
1) I can maybe think of a few ways around the anklet problem though I'm hesitant to bring them up as they do amount to the sort of loophole abuse that could easily get out of hand if other authors got carried away with it, As I 've said, the legal restrictions on Twilight's mobility are actually something useful to remind authors not to over use her, but even if brainstorming this is possibly against my better judgment her goes.
One of the fic idea's I'd like to see pursued at sometime in the future is the idea of a Chained Heat adventure, which would likely work through the use of a complementary anklet that Trixie would wear and acts as something of a physical tether. Now normally Trixie is no doubt required to fill out extensive paperwork in advance before using it, she might conceivably still have it on hoof at her residency in case of emergency. So the unsanctioned use here is something that would likely get Trixie a harsh reprimand, but won't actually get Twilight arrested for violating parole.
This, however still leaves the problem of Trixie sending Twilight back to Hoofington without her. I can come up with a solution to that to, but its implications are perhaps even more troubling. Trixie is technically authorize to deputize other ponies to act as substitute escorts, however, this is also something that is supposed to involve paperwork. I could, however, see the complimentary anklet being used as quick'n'dirty work around, in that Trixie could give it to somepony else to wear, in which case the only real edit you'd need to make is too add an extra pony to be accompanying Twilight when the L6 encounter her outside the library. I must say my biggest concern would be in undercutting the potential for future chained heat exploits by making it possible to just juggle Twilight at random, though as a work around perhaps the complimentary anklet can only be passed to a substitute while at a constabulary or similar government building.
All potential work arounds aside though, I do still share G&C2's concerns, even if not for the same reason. In that it shouldn't be so easy for Twilight to "cheat" the terms of her parole. Of course so long as at the end of this fic Trixie gets and appropriate reprimand about abusing/neglecting her sworn duties as a parole officer, (of the NEVER do this again variety), the worst of the implications can probably all be mitigated.
2) Of course that still leaves us with the teleportation circles factor. It's not just that they exist that's the problem, but that they can seemingly be used on such short notice. Even if normally it's quite expensive to hire a unicorn capable of activating them, thus precluding there use by common ponies, the L6 are knights of the land and so having such long distance teleportation as an option would seriously impact any fic where time/speed is supposedly of the essence. It's the kind of thing that can force other authors to have to come up with contrived excuses to explain why the L6 would ever use any other form of transport when acting in an official capacity.
So Lulamoon is a fan of Added Alliterative appeal, makes for exuberant entertainment.
Ok this has the possiblity to be outragiously funny.
One questions though?
If the stories in Lunaverse Season 2 are in order then this comes just days/weeks after A Bushel of Carrots with all those examples of why cloning yourself can be a bad idea. So why has nopony brought that up while chastising Trixie?
4106382
Actually this was started awhile before Bushel of Carrots in real time if you look at the publication dates. In terms of time within story I'm not sure it is afterwards. It takes place in fall, just like Bushel, but we don't have a predetermined order of episodes like season 1, only the season of fall, winter, spring, or summer that they fall under.
4106673
You might want to get on the horn with RDD to get the order of these two stories switched and separated by another story then
Otherwise it is something of a sticky logic point.