Splitting Up
This year, we’re going to Canterlot for the Fall Feast Festival. Mom says this year will be different for Skyla and me, though she hasn’t explained why. All she’s said is that it will give us a slightly different perspective on things. She also said we can bring anything we want with us. I’ve made some shoes for my forehooves with mechanical hands on them. I can’t walk with them on, all they can do is open and close, and they currently use the wearer’s magic as a power source, so simply wearing them for too long (about an hour) will result in magical exhaustion.
Aside from the usual fun and festive Fall Feast Festival festivities, aunts Celestia and Twilight will also be teaching Skyla and I a spell only alicorns can use. They didn’t give us any details, though mom and dad seemed to know what it was. I do know it’s not the spell to raise and lower the sun or moon since unicorns used to do that and there’s a secret group of them to take charge of that if aunt Celestia and Luna can’t do it for some reason.
The train ride to Canterlot went as normal: one suitcase taken to the luggage car while the four of us got onto a first class car, where we spread out a bit. Mom’s a good way into her pregnancy and it’s showing. She’s still a few months away from giving birth (something which disgusted quite a few of my classmates in health class), so that’s a few months left before I leave to keep my sanity. I’ve already let Skyla take full decoration power of our room, and it’s showing. I don’t really care much for her tastes, but I’m able to put up with it.
I shivered as we passed through the Empire’s bubble. It’s something I always noticed when travelling, but I was also used to it, so it didn’t really bother me. I pulled a magazine, the Creative Inquiry, out of my saddlebag to read. I found and bought it at the station while we were waiting for the train to come in. There were a myriad of topics brought up in it, especially theoretical constructs, both physical and magical.
I was browsing through the creativity contests, where a problem was presented and readers could submit various solutions, and the best ones would get 12, 6, or 3 free issues of the magazine as a prize, when I was poked with a slightly chilled hoof. “Want to play a game with us, Inova?” mom asked. I looked to the floor and saw a copy of Economic Empire set up. I looked between it and the magazine before deciding to play.
We all knew that dad was bad when it came to cooking. He’s the only pony I know who can put a dry slice of bread in a toaster and have it come out both burnt and soggy. And on low power at that. However, he seemed to get all the good luck with his food properties. Chefs the world over came to try his cooking, he wrote a top selling cookbook with color pictures, and it even spawned a few cults.
We didn’t finish the game, due to our joyous laughter at what we imagined. We also arrived at the Canterlot station, where mom teleported the game back home. I’m sure Aunt Twilight and my grandparents would love to hear that story.
It was colder than usual in Canterlot. In fact, there were already traces of snow in the air. Just a flake or two here and there. Still, it was a little chilly. I guess the weather teams here decided to start rolling winter out a bit sooner. That or there was new management. I was glad to have my fur and feathers though. It would suck not to have any right now.
As usual, we picked up our suitcase and made our way to a carriage that was waiting for us. We hopped inside and the stallions pulled us towards Canterlot Castle. To be honest, I kind of felt bad for them, having to pull a chariot in the cold. In fact, something about us ponies pulling things ourselves felt. . . odd to me. I at least figured there could be some way to make a powered carriage that could protect both the passengers and whoever was operating it.
I let those thoughts simmer as we approached the castle. After about 20 minutes, we arrived. As always, we thanked the stallions as we went inside. We were promptly tended to by a castle attendant, who took our suitcase to our usual room in the castle. We made our usual route through the castle, grabbing some quick snacks the kitchen had prepared for all of us on the way. They were very good snacks.
We met aunt Celestia, Luna, and Twilight, along with grandma and grandpa, in the throne room. They were sitting on pillows and having tea, and there were pillows for us too. There were also a lot more pillows set aside for some reason. They all looked perfectly fine to me. There was even a big, thick looking blanket folded up there for some reason.
“Hello, everypony” Celestia greeted us. Luna waved as she usually did. We gathered around and sat on the pillows. I didn’t feel like sitting with my immediate family, so I picked up my pillow and moved it to be between aunt Luna and grandma Velvet. I also happened to be closer to the extra pillows and blanket, neither of which held my interest at the moment.
“Now that everypony’s here, I’d like to go ahead and teach Inova and Skyla the spell” aunt Twilight said.
“Excited, are we, Twilight?” Luna said.
“Sorry. I just want to teach the spell as soon as possible.”
“Go ahead” mom said. “I won’t demonstrate it though, since I am pregnant. I don’t know how it would affect the foal.”
“That’s alright, Cadence. Celestia can demonstrate.”
Two pillows were encased in Celestia’s glow and floated over to her. After they were set on the ground, her horn lit up brighter, then she glowed like her sun. Once the glow died down, there were three smaller ponies where she was before, each sitting on a pillow. One was a unicorn, one was a pegasus, and one was an earth pony. All three had the same coloration as Celestia did.
“Hi” all three Celestias said, each of them smaller than the original. I raised an eyebrow at the sight.
“This is a spell that is exclusive to alicorns” Twilight explained. “Alicorns have traits of all three types of pony, and so are essentially three ponies combined, at least in concept. This spell cleanly separates all of these aspects, turning one alicorn into three ponies. One of them will hold more consciousness than the others, and it’s the one with the magic you’re most attuned to. My central self, along with Celestia’s, are unicorns. Cadence and Luna’s central selves are pegasi. I predict that Skyla’s will be unicorn and Inova’s will be earth pony.”
“It’s a fairly easy spell to learn, so you two shouldn’t have any problem learning it” unicorn Celestia said. “The three of me will go get us some extra tea and snacks.” The Celestias walked off to do just that.
Aunt Twilight called Skyla over to her to teach the spell while Luna and I faced each other. Luna’s my favorite aunt. She’s the only one who plays tactical games with me.
The spell itself was really wasn’t simple, but it wasn’t remotely difficult either. Even I could cast it with no problem, I think. I saw a bright light from Skyla’s direction and when it died down, I saw a unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony in her place. All three began poking each other before deciding to stage a raid on the kitchen and rushing out, aunt Twilight hot on their trail, casting her own splitting on the way.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and cast the spell. It felt strange, like I was being pulled in four directions, but it wasn’t unpleasant either. My view of the inside of my eyelids was soon replaced with a bright light blue. When the light left, I felt myself in four places. Three of them felt normal, though each a bit less than my alicorn self. The fourth one felt at once strange and alien, yet at the same time perplexingly familiar. Also, the inequine part felt really, really cold. I opened my inequine eyes and saw the equine three of me standing there, eyes closed and shivering, though not as much as I was.
I moved what felt like an arm and brought into my sight an open hand. My chill was not forgotten, but I was fascinated by the hand.
My pegasus self opened its eyes next and saw everypony else looking back at the strange me. I turned to look at myself, and I immediately saw that the strange me was human and female. She had pale skin, the same blue streaks in her hair that were in my mane and tail, and her overall proportions were different from what the human club came up with, but they worked. Upon seeing myself, my human self forgot about her hand and curled up, her face turning red.
I forgot to mention that my human self was wearing the same amount of clothes that I usually do on a daily basis, which was none. My unicorn self came to shortly after that realization, and quickly levitated the blanket around my human self without looking at what she was doing.
My human self wrapped the blanket around her completely, and all four of me calmed down after that. It helped that the blanket seemed to have warming enchantments in it. My equine selves felt the relief of the heated blanket, and it was big enough for all four of me to get inside comfortably, so we did.
While I was in my toasty cocoon, my pony selves gathered around my human self. It was both strange and comforting. There was only one opening in the cocoon, and human me, which seemed to be the central me that aunt Twilight described, used that opening to look outside. Mom, dad, and aunt Luna were towards the wall, discussing something that was most likely related to me.
“Inova?” grandma Velvet said from just outside my cocoon.
“Hm?” all four of me replied at once.
“Are you alright? Do you need anything?”
“Answers” earth pony me said first.
“A hot chocolate” unicorn me said.
“More answers” pegasus me said.
“Warm clothes” human me said. “I’m cold outside this blanket, I don’t like not having something on, and I don’t know why.”
Grandma Velvet sat near me, just at the edge of my limited sight. “I wish I had the answers, Inova” she said. “What you did has us all confused.” I saw grandpa Light heading towards the room’s exit to get the hot chocolate.
“All I did was cast the splitting spell as aunt Luna showed me” my unicorn self said. “I had every thaumatic path at the right frequency and the spell’s build correct. I don’t know where I went wrong with the casting to get human us here.”
“Hey, we all cast that spell together” pegasus me countered as she looked her wing over and straightened some soft feathers. “We all cast it correctly. Or maybe we cast it too well and created human us in the process.”
Earth pony me claimed human me’s lap. “Maybe we should look at the spell on paper” she said. “It is an alicorn only spell, so it probably isn’t as refined as other spells are. Maybe there’s a miniscule chance of this happening each time.”
Human me thought as the pony me’s tossed around possibilities. After a minute, she spoke up. “What if the spell worked exactly as it was designed to?” This stopped the conversation. “Think about it. What if my presence in us is why we’ve had as many difficulties in life as we have?”
“Hm” all three said as they thought. Earth pony me spoke first. “That would help explain why we tripped over our hooves so often.”
“And the flight problems” pegasus me said.
“And the spell casting problems” unicorn me said.
“There’s also the phantom hand sensation we got used to” human me added while looking at the appendages. “We even made those thaumechanical hands.”
“Oh yeah” the pony mes said.
A moment later, the door opened with a bang. All four of me looked out and saw what could only be described as somewhat surreal. Three of my sister were fighting three of aunt Twilight and three of aunt Celestia. I couldn’t make out what any of them were saying, but their fight was coming my way. Grandma Velvet had gotten out of the way, but unicorn me had a different idea. She lit her horn up and held all nine of them in place.
The room was silent as the fight was brought to a halt. The nine fighters turned to face my direction. Unicorn me poked her head out first. “Would you stop that racket and pull yourselves together?”
All the brawlers looked at unicorn me in surprise. She was holding them all with no apparent effort. After a couple seconds, aunts Twilight and Celestia merged back into their alicorn selves, Skyla quickly catching how to do it and becoming a single alicorn once again. All three were dropped with no grace at all.
Before any of them could ask what just happened, grandma Velvet stepped forward and brought them up to speed, also summing up the conversation I had with myself.
So it turns out that Aunt Twilight actually knows quite a bit about humans, and actually understands why human me wants clothes. She also concluded that, since humans are bipedal, flightless, and don’t have magic, those human traits could have been what impeded my progress in those areas. Unicorn me’s mass levitation earlier was strong evidence of that.
Twilight also said that Rarity could help with making some clothes for me. Celestia added that Rarity wouldn’t have to make clothes for human me, as the splitting spell also worked on anything that’s worn. She demonstrated by splitting again, the peytral, tiara, and shoes she had on were triplicated. She unsplit shortly after, and the articles came back together as well.
All four of me decided to come back together, and unicorn me undid the splitting spell. She saw the uncasting of the splitting spell and had figured it out herself.
Once I was back together, I felt more comfortable in my skin, though the fact that human me was embarrassed by not having any clothes on still haunted me. Besides, the blanket was warm, and covered me quite nicely. I levitated a pillow over and lay down, resting my head on it and closing my eyes as I tried to think through what happened. Maybe aunt Luna could help me in my dreams.
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That was unexpected. At least every pony in her immediate family knows her true form
That was interesting
Wonder how they will this with this evident truth in the future? Also great to see another chapter added to this story. Interesting idea you came up with though would this make all alicorns crazy?
Awesome, I suppose now we can go a bit deeper (i.e.: Inova start splitting herself up too often to do better in her evaluations while human Inova starts to explores all her human capabilities while seeing how well they mix with her pony parts).
I suppose Unicorn Inova could try a mental spell to explore the memories of Human Inova.
7354978 It's not so much a true form as it is a hidden facet that the spell brought to light.
7355104 And now I'm considering what might happen if Unicorn Inova refines and fine tunes the spell to where she can control the splitting.
7355080 All the alicorns, crazy? Nope.
7355453 I guess.
7355453
Do it.
7355486 Commencing it.exe
and that was fun
This chapter made me think of garnet from Steven universe
Here's to hoping that Shining and Cadance don't completely freak out.
7355453
I think that Inova would work on the spell to also "swap and boost" each side of her. Ex.: Unicorn Inova would get a short boost of magic by the others pushing their share of magic through the magical connection. Pegasus Inova would get a boost of speed in the same way. Earth Pony Inova would be more connected to the earth if they all focus their magic into the ground. And Human Inova would get a higher reflex boost that with practice could give the perception of time being slower than normal (just a little to make a split second decision).
I also think that she would practice fighting with all five sides (alicorn, unicorn, Pegasus, earth pony, and human) of herself, (if only to protect herself and others when they can't) her family may not be okay with it but she may split herself in fighting practice to test and improve her fighting to shorten the disconnection to each form making her a team of one.
OHOHOHOH!! The pnoy Inovas use krav maga and the human Inova uses a sword!!!
Also, will anyone figure out that she has been reincarnated?
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8463638
This chapter and these comments make me think of Stronger Than You. Too awesome.
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None of us figured out who we were before this. I think it would do justice to the story that she doesn't realize until either she somehow got her memories back, or just lived on