Chapter 4: A Sister, Met
Chapter 4:
A Sister, Met
The rest of that early morning was a blur. At some point the Knight-Protector had laid his hands on Spike to heal him, imperfectly; his wounds were closed, but his (mercifully cleanly) broken leg had merely been set and splinted, this being beyond the Knight-Protector's power to heal. Twilight had seized him and kissed his head and his snout, lauding his courage; and at this point - with the Knight-Protector and Pinkie Pie's reflection departed to get the child to safety and to clean up the rest of the Nightmare herd - Spike protested that it was embarrassing and besides, this was what she paid him the big gems for.
"Well, I'm not paying you enough," Twilight said. She briefly wondered if he was angling for just that reaction, then decided that he hadn't the guile - and even if he was angling for a raise, he deserved one. "I notice you're a lot more talkative NOW."
"Yeeeah, well." Spike smirked at her - then winced; he had put his weight on his broken leg. "Ow. When's the last time you heard Winona talking? Or Opal? Or Angel?"
"They aren't really that loquacious," Twilight allowed, with a broad smile. "You thought it would be less conspicuous if you were just my dog, then?"
"Tell you what, you won't be able to shut me up the moment I see someone's dog talking to them on this side of the mi-" Spike's ears suddenly perked up, and he sniffed the air - then cocked his head to the side, utterly silent, flicking his eyes and ears for Twilight to follow.
Twilight did.
Marching down a dirt path and illuminated by the rising sun was a woman - and one that Twilight suspected she knew. The hat was the biggest giveaway, an unmistakable wide-brimmed dairy-rancher's cap made of tightly woven straw - but there were other clues. The hay-colored hair, for example, tied back in a three-part braid; the eyes as vibrantly green as a freshly picked Pippin. The skin, a slightly riper - and therefore more orange - cast of peach than her sister in Fleur, and dusted with deep red-brown freckles. The hip-hugging denim jeans with voluminous pockets. The red plaid shirt. The loose tan vest, also with pockets.
And there was the fact that she was escorting Fleur - who was clinging to her by a black belt of some strange and elastic material; and that she had something that caught the sunlight in her hand and refracted it back in gold and red. She slipped this into a pocket, concealing it like a hold-out dagger. Twilight raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing. She couldn't fault the woman for expecting trouble; Fleur and her reflection back home both clearly attracted it.
She tipped her hat to Twilight, squinting, frowning. "Are yah Lucy? You the girl that saved mah sissy?" Her tone of voice suggested to Twilight that she - not doubted it, exactly, but that she was not at all sure what to make of it.
Or the fact that someone other than her had to look out for her sister bothers her, a lot. Yes, that fit this woman's more equine half to a T.
"In that I got the monsters' attention long enough to get the Lady of Laughter's attention, yes," Twilight said, putting Spike down gently before hauling herself up.
To Twilight's surprise, the woman wrinkled her nose - as if Twilight had offered her a fresh cow pie instead of a clarification. "Her? Pfah. Yer lucky yeh got out alive then. Some - SOME - of the Ladies are alright, but Laughter - here's a big surprise - Laughter don't take this seriously enough." She cast her gaze to the ground, her eyes smoldering, her frown poisonous. "Guess she's better'n Generosity, at least..."
Twilight's face must have fallen at that - and she did feel herself biting her lip, come to think of it - because the woman averted her eyes. "Not to say they don't mean well, but - " she hastily amended. Then she shook her head. "Ne'er mind. Lucy - you saved my sister, and I'm grateful for it. D'ya need a lift home?"
Twilight laughed nervously. "Home, what home? I just got here, looking for -"
She realized that she had no cover story, and nowhere to live while she was here. It was possible that someone would purchase her gold bits and copper horseshoes for the local currency - gold and copper were, after all, valuable metals - but it was by no means assured, and even assuming she could exchange her money she had no idea how long it would last.
On the former point, she was at least lucky that she was dealing with the person most likely to accept the truth - no matter how outlandish it seemed - at face value. " - Well, this is going to sound incredible, but I'm here tracking down something that was stolen from me," she said. "A crown, actually - made of starmetal, iridium I mean; it had a gem mounted on the front, a star -"
"- carved from purple amber?" the woman said, her eyes wide and her tone of voice both low and shocked.
"Is it anythin' like your brooch, sis?" Fleur said, pointing to the pocket in which the woman had stuffed it.
The woman and Twilight both gave Fleur the same look. Dawn and Dusk, Spike was giving her the same pained expression, and the same slash-across-the-throat gesture: shut up! When the woman saw that she laughed a little bit, mostly out of nervousness; but her expression was all-too-familiar - a tight-lipped grimace, eyes darting back and forth, nose retracted into her face.
Fleur, naturally, was oblivious, and eventually rolled her eyes and folded her arms at her sister's 'baffling' non-answer.
"...Tell ya what, Lucy," the woman said. "Why don't I put ya up for the night and get ya set up at Jay-eff-kay - tha's prolly where you wanna start lookin' for yer..." she coughed into her fist. "Fer the Crown." Twilight heard the caps, even if it was lost on Fleur. "We can talk a bit. Palaver, if you would."
"I'm very grateful for your Gener- for your help," Twilight said, cautiously. She half-bowed from the waist, arms out in an expansive gesture. "I can help with food - I should have a few pies with me in my sad- in my bags, if they weren't squashed. A quiche, a mushroom pie - and an apple pie."
"Apple pie. Marry me," she said, with an exaggerated, appreciative groan of hunger. "Yer the first house-guest we've had that brought pie with them. Long story?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.
"You have no idea," Twilight said. "And I'd love to tell it. But first - may I ask your name?"
The woman doffed her hat and smiled. "You can call me Jackie Lynn, miss; Jackie Lynn of the proud Calvados clan."
Twilight actually laughed. Of course. Isn't Calvados just a fancy brand of Apple - Jack? She shook her head and, when Jackie offered her hand, she took it and shook it with a firm squeeze. Where have I heard this song before?
~~~~
Fleur and Jackie sang, in synch with the cheery cadences of the cart's radio:
"At the Gala ~ everybody ~ will at last see my beauty!
"They will see me clean up nicely at the Gala!
"(At the Gala!)
"I will find him ~ my Prince Charming! And how gallant he will be!
"He will treat me like a lady!
"Tonight ~ at the ~ GALA!"
Twilight didn't dare join in; she knew the song - or at any rate, the melody and MOST of the words - but she knew it as an act of ritual magic, as her circle of friends bolstering their will and stating their purpose. And, of course, hearing Jackie sing Rarity's part - after Jackie had all but said that she loathed Rarity's reflection, the Lady of Generosity - was disorienting and disheartening.
It was so strange, the things that made her homesick; a song, with all the right notes in the right order, but with the wrong words, and sung by the wrong people.
Instead, she looked out the window at the passing trees, the passing houses and shops - taller and grander than those in her own world, and with illuminated signs - and sighed, one hand under her chin and the other stroking Spike's dozing form.
When the song ended, a newscaster reported the discovery of a lost child in the nearby 'Schwartzholtz State Park,' and on the continued bafflement of the local Rangers and guard as to the strings of kidnappings and mysterious deaths by trampling and goring of innocents in 'the Alameda county area.' Jackie paid close attention to this, frowning, only nodding at hearing the happy ending of this story in the child's safe return.
This was followed by a crier hawking a 'teevee,' whatever that was - and at this, Jackie shut off the radio.
Twilight cleared her throat. "I have a stupid question," she said.
"Might have a stupid answer," Applejack's reflection replied.
"What's the name of this city?" Twilight asked.
Fleur stared at Twilight, blinking. "Wow, ya really aren't from around here, are you? You one of them Ethiopian exchange -"
"FLEUR CALVADOS!" Jackie roared, her face flush with anger and secondhand mortification. "Were you BORN in a BARN!?"
Twilight shrunk back, her face in an awkward half-smile, not knowing what to make of this. "An Ethiopian what now?" she asked.
"Never you mind. It's just - yer black and my sister's an idjit and ah am so sorry," Jackie said in one plosive breath.
Fleur folded her arms and directed her sullen gaze out the passenger-side window. "Ah'm not an idjit and you know full well ah was born in a hospital," she said.
Twilight blinked, trying to piece together any context at all to put Jackie's shame into. She looked down into her hands -
Her purple-red hands. Ah. "She assumed I was from another country, because I have darker skin," Twilight mused.
"Eyup," Applejack's reflection snarled, shaking her head.
Fleur grimaced, then turned to Twilight with a sheepish expression. "When ya put it that way, it does sound kinda like I'm an idjit," she said.
"Apology accepted," Twilight replied, thinking.
Back home, coat color was more or less random - and not, as it apparently was here, a racial marker. Wings or horns, or the lack of them, were markers of racial and national origin; less so, now that the three races intermarried freely after the Hearthswarming War, but there was still some lingering idiocy around the subject. Moon and Stars, you only had to look at Prince Blueblood for a prime example of a thundering unicorn supremacist.
Twilight wasn't immune to more subtle kinds of racism, to her shame - she recalled her behavior towards Zecora and winced. Okay, she wasn't immune to some overt kinds of racism either, to her eternal shame.
Jackie cleared her throat. "Before we were so rudely interrupted -"
"- Ah already apologized, so lay off, sissy," Fleur grumbled.
"- yeh asked for the name of our fair burg. So - Ponyville," she said. "Welcome to Ponyville, California."
Twilight stared at her, her mouth open while she struggled for the right words. Then they came: "Are you kidding me?" she said.
"Ah ain't foaling you," she responded, with a smirk.
Twilight blinked, at that. A lot. For a second she thought she'd said 'fooling' through her accent - but no; she'd deliberately said 'foaling.' She briefly wondered if this was a sign that Jackie knew her true species, that she knew about the world on the other side of the mirror, and that she was letting her know that she knew with carefully chosen words -
Jackie puckered her mouth, flexing it to one side of her face. "Y'know how goats have kids and ponies have...?" Her face fell, and she sighed. "Never mind," she said. "My jokes are pretty terrible."
"So. Ponyville, California," Twilight said, sighing.
"Eyup," Applejack's reflection said, twisting the steering-wheel of the cart as they came across a bend in the road; a sign pointing their way read Sweet Apple Ranch - 2.5 miles. "Back in the gold rush - eighteen forty-nine, or close enough - my great grandma and grandpa made an awful lot of money breedin' ponies and sellin' them to the people pannin' for gold. Funny how the shopkeepers and the farmers made out better than the actual treasure hunters, innit?"
"You breed ponies." Twilight tried to wrap her aching head around this concept, pinching the bridge of her nose. But if this world had dogs and cats - and these bipedal... whatever they were had achieved sapience - why couldn't they keep non-sapient pet ponies? Her species had, after all, evolved for strength and endurance; a proto-pony would be an incredibly useful draft animal. "Of course you do," she said, shaking her head. "So the town was named after them. I see."
Twilight put on a smile. "Could I see the ponies before we get breakfast?" she asked.
~~~~
The pasture was well-loved, the wooden fence smoothed from regular care to keep it free of splinters; the alfalfa in the fields was starting to mellow and dry, turning the same shade of gold as Jackie's hair and tantalizing in scent to Twilight even in her 'human' form - for such, she finally gathered, was the name of her current species, a species that normally found grass unappetizing unless it had mutated (or been bred) into grain.
Absentmindedly grazing on this tender and delicious variety of grass were animals so like the people that Twilight knew from home that it broke her heart to see the dullness in their eyes. They were not people; they were animals, no smarter than Winona, or Gummy, or Opal.
Majestic animals, to be certain; there was undeniable strength they carried in their rippling legs, their shoulders and barrels and flanks. There was a sense of speed, even as the creatures called ponies in this world were near still, only trotting over to lean their heads over the fence's edge and accept the sweet apples and crisp carrots that Jackie and Fleur were offering balanced in their flat palms.
Twilight followed suit, trying not to cry. One of the ponies, a great roan stallion, sniffed her hand and the Honeycrisp apple in it before he took the whole apple in his mouth at once, accidentally kissing Twilight's palm as he did so.
- or perhaps he kissed her palm affectionately; she wanted to think of it as deliberate and as affection -
- but that was foolish. "After all," she murmured as she scratched the beast behind his ears, "you're a pony; and the ponies here clearly can't hold up their end of a conversation."
"You doin' okay?" Fleur asked her - yelled to her, from across the field, as she helped her bigger sister sort the apples she was picking. "Ya look upset."
Twilight nodded, taking a deep breath. "I'll be fine," she said, hoping that Fleur wouldn't catch her emphasis on the future tense. She looked at Twilight with a frown, before shrugging and turning away - taking her at her word.
Another one of the creatures here named ponies came up to her - Twilight wanted to say it was timid or fearful, if that wasn't stupid to say - at a very slow and shaky pace. She could almost swear that this new pony, a mare, was staring at her.
That she knew how Twilight felt and was sympathizing with her.
But that was -
Twilight looked it in the eyes.
And saw intelligence. And fear.
Twilight instinctively took an apprehensive step back before looking this new pony over, some irrational part of her brain screaming at her to pay attention. This new pony was a dark-colored mare, a pale purplish milk chocolate in color with a similarly dark mane that had an almost violet sheen - save where a ribbon of magenta and right next to it another of indigo had been braided into its bangs and the hair falling at her shoulders.
Twilight offered her hand to the mare, who flinched. But then she put her nose under Twilight's hand, consenting to be stroked, still staring at Twilight in what she was now sure was mingled fear and hope. Twilight no longer thought that was silly. She tried to think of what about this was so off as she stroked up the pony's snout to her head, then down her shoulders and across her back to her flanks.
There was a mark burned into her hips, a brand, but that was true of all the ponies here; Jackie had explained that the three apples (and of course it was three apples) marked them as property of Sweet Apple Ranch, and therefore as under her protection. Twilight hadn't liked that, but she could live with it. Had to live with it.
Except as her hand traced the brand, she realized it wasn't three apples; couldn't be. It was too angular -
Twilight looked.
Twilight stared.
And suddenly she understood; if not everything, then enough.
"Lucy?" someone asked in her general direction. "Lucy, you okay? You look like a goose just walked over your grave."
Twilight Sparkle belatedly recalled that she was going by Lucia Bolido in this world, and turned to the source of the voice - a concerned looking Jackie Calvados, with a bushel of apples in a basket under one arm.
"Yeah, I'm okay - my mind just wandered off for a bit," Twilight said, laughing nervously. "Uh - tell me, how did you get hold of this purple one?"
"Her?" Jackie tilted her head. "Huh. Lucy, it's the darndest thing, but she just showed up one day about four years ago - along with the snooty golden mare."
"Really," Twilight asked, nodding. Privately, her mind was taking this information, sifting it, calculating. The fact that the golden one had also been found at the time, and was a mare - it added up. "Do you think she was a runaway, or from one of the other ranches nearby?"
"First thing we checked," Jackie sighed. "Truth of it is, no one had seen a brand like that in Alameda county or the next five over. Eventually Parv just suggested I give her a good home - poor nervous thing," she said, without making it clear if she meant the pony or this person, 'Parv,' that she had mentioned in passing. "We've had her ever since."
Twilight nodded, her fingers gently tracing the twelve-pointed star burned into the purple mare's hip. "Alright. Thank you." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to have a private word with her."
Jackie raised both eyebrows at that, but then smirked and tipped her hat. "Go knock yourself out," she said, before walking for her house proper. "She's a good listener. Sometimes I swear she knows English."
"I would never have guessed," Twilight said, her voice flat. Then she turned to the pony and kissed it between the ears.
"Lucia?" Twilight asked it. "Lucia Bolido?"
The mare's ears twitched. It turned her head to look up at Twilight, jaw open, radiating shock - then nodded, once, twice, three times.
"Call it a lucky guess," Twilight told her.
The mare looked all around herself, her ears following her eyes, and she began to breathe hard.
"It's okay, it's okay," Twilight assured her. "I'm a friend. And I know exactly what happened to you, and I will set it right."
The purple mare flicked its eyes and ears to the golden one.
"I think she's as much a victim as you are," Twilight muttered. "I know -" she sighed. "I know her reflection - her double, like I'm your double; and sister, she is a real piece of work."
The purple mare cringed at that.
"Yeah, okay, that's an understatement," Twilight said, chuckling, scratching the purple mare behind the ears. "But she's up against me, now - and know that I know my best weapon hasn't been taken away, just changed -"
The purple mare tilted its head at Twilight, frowning.
"Here's how I see it," Twilight explained. "If you were changed into -" and she indicated the purple mare's body "- by Sunset Shimmer, she used magic to do it. She must have. And since she was operating under the same handicap that I was... since she was here, and human, with no horn... that means that I can also work will, without a horn, while I'm human. I just need to figure out how."
The purple mare's flat-eared, flat-browed look was so akin to Twilight's own looks of skepticism - and why wouldn't it be? - that she had to laugh.
"What, she changes you into a pony and you're stuck on the part about magic and not being human?"
There was a moment of stillness before the purple mare - before the true Lucia Bolido, Twilight Sparkle's reflection in this world - hung her head and nodded.
"Trust me," Twilight said, taking Lucia's chin in her hand and looking her in the eyes. "I am a better wizard than that cruel, grasping, lying, dour traitor ever pretended to be. And I swear, on my honor and on my magic -" Twilight bowed her head, touching her forehead to Lucia's. "I swear that I'll set things right. That I'll change you back," she said.
It was then that she noticed the staring eyes of a very small red-headed girl, head tilted at Twilight's admittedly very odd behavior.
"What?" she asked Fleur.
"You're weird," Fleur said.
Twilight laughed, and shrugged. "Yes. Yes I am." And then Twilight grinned at her, and said: "You can tell your sister I'm done talking to her little pony now."
Fleur nodded and did exactly that, word for word, at the top of her lungs.
Lucia - even balefully transformed as she was - whinnied laughter.
Twilight knew that it was the first time in four years that she'd had occasion to, and clenched her fists, and swore silently that Sunset Shimmer would pay for that.
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Well this is certainly an interesting take. I do so love the explaination of what happened to the world beyond the mirror's Twilight and Sunset Shimmer seeing as that wasn't actually touched on in the movie other than in brief passing by Pinkie. I'm hoping they rectify this in the sequel. Anyway great job the only qualm I have is that the second half of the chapter was all in italics for some odd reason. Keep up the good work, I look forward to seeing more of this.
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Must have dropped a tag, somewhere. I'll go hunting for it and fix it.
ETA: Found it and fixed it. That'll learn me to read it once I've published it just to double-check.
And yeah, thank you! I tried to think of a way to do it without utter silliness while showing Sunset as a credible threat to the Goddess of Friendship in Training, and... well, I'm gratified to know that works.
You know, I'm really liking how the Knight-Protector is a healer and a protector, rather than a powerhouse fighter. The healer/barrier character is usually a girl (there's a reason they're called "barrier maidens" on tvtropes), so it's nice to see the switch. On top of that, such a role means he can support the main cast and contribute to the story, but without overshadowing the Mane 6 in the process. I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with this.
I don't know about Fleur, but there's a pretty good chance Applebloom was.
Wait, what?
One more time.
Okay, maybe I'm overdoing it. But the vast majority of fanworks I see that show the ponies as humans make them all white - I can only remember one work piece that had one of them being black (I think it was Rarity). So it's nice to see that not being the case here. It's not a big deal (and it shouldn't be), but it's another detail that I appreciate. When Equestria girls came out, I didn't like how they designed the girls so their fur color became their skin color, but in hindsight I realized that was the safest choice they could make. can you imagine the backlash the MLP team would have experienced if they also made the cast all white? Or even if they did diversify, they'd get complaints like "why is Rarity black?" or "what was the point in making Pinkie Pie hispanic?" or what have you.
And God help them if they made Fluttershy asian.
Regarding Ponyville, California...there's a real actual town (or city) in Virginia called Troutville. A town called Ponyville is not a stretch at ALL.
As much as Twilight can understand the keeping, breeding, and branding of ponies in this world, I like how you show her *emotional* reaction to it without stating it. You don't say 'it upsets her', but show it by how she very carefully points out to herself why it's okay here while trying to keep her tears in check.
Sunset Shimmer getting her human counterpart out of the way, allowing for her to take her place? Ruthless, but smart. Turning her into a pony? That's just devious. Still, could have been worse - Sunset could have killed her.
Though now I wonder if Sunset did the transformation out of a sick sense of humor, or if she had to keep this universes Sunset alive for some reason. Interesting to see if thats the case.
But it also brings the question as to why she transformed this universes Twilight. Was it just coincidence, poor Lucia being in the wrong place and the wrong time? Or is this indicative of a far more complex plan Sunset has up her sleeve?
On to chapter - waitaminute.
Oh well. I'll just sit in the corner here and wait for the next chapter then. Sorry if I spammed your inbox today.
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First off: STORYKEEPER IS BEST REVIEWER. Seriously. Never worry about overanalyzing things or offending me, this is exactly the kind of feedback I wanted. You even slapped me upside the head a couple times when I deserved it.
(Ah yes. Run on sentences, my nemesis. We meet again.)
CHAPTER 1 notes:
Twilight's Principality isn't just to be Ponyville, but the lands south of Ponyville (Including Appleoosa, among other things). I'm curious what Mayor Mare thinks of it myself...
I did a long blog post on swearing in this and most of my fics, which I'm not going to repeat. Suffice to say I came up with different blasphemies than you'd get on a world influenced by Abrahamic religion.
If it's not apparent why Sentry was protected, this is a 'not coming up except in authors notes' thing, so: his Cutie Mark/talent/name is specifically as a sentry. The others were excellent marksmen or had attention to detail or were wrestlers or something. Sentry? Is a sentry. A sentry asleep on the job is not an effective sentry, so his inherent magical talent protected him.
Sentry is now a meaningless word.
Chuubo's is hellovfun and mostly a good guide to dramatic pacing. If it further helps, this fic is firmly in Chuubo's Adventure Fantasy mode. Decisive Actions, Getting In Trouble, and Succumbing To Temptation are going to happen A LOT.
Chapter 2: The Spike Appreciation Station. I feel like the writers don't know what to do with Spike a lot of the time, so I cut him some slack and show that he's got respect. He's still a bit of a buttmonkey, but at least Twilight is aware of it and acknowledges that Spike is best dragon.
I basically had the
scene like that for
shippingpacing reasons, yeah. I like how the mane six roundup (mane six roundup~!) went.Sunset: Credible Threat to the Princess of flipping Magic. I liked the idea of Sunset, but in practice I went "she's not at all a threat to Twilight. To school student!Twilight, but not to MAGICAL PRINCESS!Twilight." This scene, and Celestia's "As much as I hate to say it, stay safe even if it hurts her" speech was an attempt to convey that.
I'm glad that struck a chord. Telling people to turn the other cheek is worse than useless advice for dealing with bullies; Celestia would know that. And advise it. Even if it hurts her to think of an acceptable outcome for Sunset.
Also, as to why only Twilight can go: Yeah. Fuck the balance of the universes. The balance of the universe is already screwed up because Sunset had 4 years to screw things up to her liking.
Chapter 3: Apparently I Have Hands
Don't blame me for the magical girl angle, blame the movie. This is just me taking an act 3 asspull and making it an Act 1 turning point.
And yeah, I have a nickname for the Knight Protector. Tuxedo is part of it.
Chapter 4: WHY IS TWILIGHT BLACK?!?! DOWNVOTED
Yeah. I wanted to make it completely clear that Twilight/Lucia were Black, and that JFK is not the whitest school you know. I have that headcanon for reasons, mostly having to do with my circle of friends and Twilight Sparkles We Have Known.
Blink and you'll miss it, but Pinkie/The Lady of Laughter and ???/The Knight Protector aren't white either (you can get blue-black hair out of Europe, but it's a lot more common in Central? Africa, China, and Japan). FUNNY YOU SHOULD MENTION "WHY IS PINKIE HISPANIC" IN PARTICULAR: her reflection's name is Rosalinda.
The Calvados family ARE white, but the Calvados family have an accent to maintain.
As for Sunset's method of silencing her foes: She turned them into ponies because, as mentioned, she's a sociopath and it amused her. Also; a dead body attracts more attention than a disappearance.
Chapter 5: ...is in progress, I swear! I'll have something up this weekend.
Woah, that's a harsh fate for human world Lucia, assuming something that's hopefully temporary now that Twilight is on the scene can still be called a 'fate'. Also, it's interesting what you are doing with the names, it's fun having them be different but still related.
Hah!
5471171 I am SO GLAD that this plot point works as intended. I was worried about it when I posted, that it would be too silly.
The pony transformation works beautifully in explaining why this world's Sunset and
TwilightLucia aren't around. Before I read further, my guess is that Sunset ponified Lucia, because she recognized her as the bearer of Magic/Friendship, and thus the linchpin of the Element Girl Squad. Take her out right at the start, and the others remain a manageable threat; let Magic unify everyone in pure harmony, and it's "Eat weaponized friendship, you extradimensional bitch!" time.Also: for humanized Twilight, I tend to see her as having a darker skin -- her being from the Indian subcontinent would fit very well -- because, well, she's the darkest-colored pony among the Mane Six, because I was exposed to really good fanart with non-white human Twilight early on, and because it torques certain people off so much.
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Lucia isn't the only one who got transformed. There's also that 'snooty golden mare' to think about.
I felt Twilight's pain when she saw the state of ponies in this world. That was clever to turn the human versions of Twilight and Sunset into ponies.