Chapter 7
Chapter 7
It was like looking in a mirror.
“Wow. It’s like looking in a mirror.”
Well, that was creepy.
“A dirty mirror.”
Twilight Sparkle must have seen the sour look on my face, and grinned sheepishly. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, at first glance you looked at a lot like me. But now that I look closer—”
I leaned back, because she really was looking closer.
“—I can see that your colors are slightly different. The similarity is magnified by your choice of the same mane style as me. I wonder if we’re related?”
I pushed her back to a comfortable distance with my hoof and said, “Related? Because of a mane style?”
She snort-laughed. An actual snort. “No, of course not! Style number twenty-four in Snipper’s book of manecuts is simple, practical, low-maintenance, and available at every Snipper’s franchise. I was just thinking out loud.” She leaned forward again. “There are seven common eye morphologies in Equestria, five horn shapes for unicorns, and three genes that control bone length ratios in… Well, we share all of those genes. Coloration is far less hereditary, but genetics is still involved. Also, Twilight is a family name.”
“Yes,” I said, pushing her back again. “I’ve met your mother.”
“Oh,” she said as she pulled a hoof to her chest. Her eyebrows squished together, but I couldn’t tell if her frown was part of her confusion or a sign of offense. I wasn’t sure what she was feeling, but her wingtips twitched a bit as her eyes darted left and right. “You visited my mother.”
“Yes, I did just say that.” I shifted my hooves on the floor. “She was very nice. Showed me some photo albums and everything. Lots of photo albums. Told me your entire family history. I was lucky to get out alive.”
Sparkle chuckled. “Well, I guess you did meet my mother. So, what brings you here?”
“I have a problem. And the problem is, well… It’s you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. See, I run a donut shop in Canterlot, and I’m listed in the public directory. So if anypony comes looking for you, they see ‘Twilight Sprinkle’ and come visit me instead.”
Sparkle scratched her head. “Who comes looking for me? Because I don’t really get a lot of visitors.”
“Oh, the usual,” I said, holding a hoof in the air. “Suitors, favor-seekers, and, uh—” my brow wrinkled for a second “—revengers? I don’t know if that’s a word. Also, usurpers.”
“Usurpers?” Twilight Sparkle raised an eyebrow and tilted her head.
“Yeah,” I said as I pointed behind me with a hoof. “Like her. She’s here to usurp your throne.”
Sparkle leaned to her right and peered around me. I stepped aside and let her look at the wide-eyed mare in a fluffy bathrobe and messy mane. Copper didn’t move a muscle. Sparkle looked at me again. “She doesn’t, um. She doesn’t look particularly dangerous. Why is she in her bathrobe?”
I sat down. “That’s my bathrobe, actually. It’s how she works.” I held up my hooves in a threatening manner. “She shows up and announces her intention to take over the world, making you underestimate her with her silly outfit. Then out of nowhere, BAM! She’s usurped your couch.”
“Oooookay,” Twilight Sparkle said as she glanced between me and Copper. “I’m just going to pretend that any of what you said makes sense.” She pointed at Copper with a hoof. “Miss, do I understand correctly that you are here to depose me and usurp my throne?”
Copper opened her mouth, but didn’t speak for several seconds. “A-actually, I’m here because she”—Copper jabbed a hoof at me—“pony-napped me.”
“Okay.” Sparkle turned around and closed the book she’d been reading when we came in. “This is getting weird.”
I heard the sound of hooves approaching, and turned to see Starlight Glimmer—first mention page 184, Twilight Sparkle’s first and current apprentice—trotting up with Spike riding on her back. “Wow,” she said, looking me up and down like I lived in a display case. “You sure weren’t kidding, Spike! That is weird.”
Sparkle turned back around and said, “That’s not the weird part. She claims to have been pony-napped by her who in turn claims that she is here to take over Equestria. Or something.”
Starlight glanced at Copper and then turned back to Twilight. “She’s in a bathrobe. Don’t they usually dress up to take over the world? Like, at least a cape, or something?”
Copper stared at me with a “told-you-so” sort of look. I rolled my eyes, then cleared my throat. “Okay, I may have forced her hoof a bit, and brought her to Ponyville without her very fancy cape, but she really did come here for a reason. Why don’t you tell them, Copper?”
She pulled the robe tighter in front of her chest with her hooves, and looked at the three ponies staring at her. I tilted my chin slightly higher into the air. She saw the gesture and one corner of her mouth curled upward ever so slightly before she assumed her regal posture. Her regality diminished slightly as she lifted the corner of the robe to show off her flank. “I am Copper Crown, and, as you can see from my cutie mark, my destiny is to become a princess.”
“Psssst!” I hissed at her, loudly enough for everyone to hear. “You forgot to say ‘vile pretender.’”
Heh. As it turned out, I was the evil one.
Copper turned white as a ghost, and her jaw dropped open as she stared at me with wide eyes. Sparkle raised one eyebrow and lowered the other. Starlight’s grin threatened to break the surface and show itself on her face. Spike looked ready for a show.
I cleared my throat and did my best to imitate Copper’s dramatic voice from yesterday, even throwing a pretend cape over my shoulder. “Twilight, you are not qualified to be a princess! Prepare to be defeated, vile pretender!”
Copper blushed, hard. It was adorable. Sparkle and Starlight both looked at me, mouths agape, then turned to Copper, then back to me. I shrugged. “This is what I deal with on a daily basis.”
“I…” Twilight Sparkle shook her head. “I have no idea how to deal with this. Either of you. I mean, if you were rampaging through town and threatening ponies, or enslaving the townsfolk to build a throne for you in city hall—”
“Oh!” Copper exclaimed, holding up a hoof, “Like Trixie did, the second time she came to Ponyville!”
“Yeah, but—” Sparkle leaned back and put a hoof to her chin “—you’re not doing that.”
Copper giggled, her messy, wavy mane bouncing around her ears. “Why would I hurt the ponies of Equestria? I’m destined to be a princess so I can help make Equestria a better place.”
Sparkle nodded for a moment, then said, “And you think I’m making it a worse place? That’s why you want to overthrow me?”
“Eeeeeeeh,” Copper said, waving her hoof back and forth in the air. “Let’s call that a misunderstanding. I saw you as standing in my way of becoming a princess. But when I took the time to learn about how you became a princess, and what you’ve done since, I can’t see you that way any more.”
“Also,” I added, “once you’ve seen your archenemy as a filly stealing cookies with the help of her adorable big brother—” I shrugged “—there’s no going back.”
“Yeah,” Sparkle grumbled, “she shows that one to everypony.”
“It’s true!” Spike said with a snicker.
Even Starlight Glimmer was smirking behind a dainty hoof.
“So, what happens now?” Copper asked with a cringe. “Are you going to banish me, or something?”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, and I don’t really have anything against the idea of you becoming a princess.” Sparkle looked at Copper’s flank again. “I can’t really argue with destiny, either. Whatever ‘destiny’ is.”
“That,” said Starlight as she held up a hoof, “is an interesting question. Based upon my recent, heheh, temporal transgressions, it seems like destiny isn’t so much set in stone as it is shaped by the ponies around us.”
Sparkle raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Excellent point, Starlight. My friends and I all got our cutie marks together—”
“The sonic rainboom!” Copper interjected.
Sparkle eyed us both warily. “—and when an irresponsible use of time travel caused that to not happen, our destinies had all changed.” She tapped her chin with a hoof. “You know who else got their cutie marks simultaneously?”
I bit my lip and looked at Copper. I could see the gears turning in her head. She looked back at me and raised a hoof like she was trying to pull the answer out of the air. “Oh, I know this one. It was in the next-to-last section of your binder, after Twilight defeated Starlight the first time, but before she took her as an apprentice.”
“A binder?” Sparkle turned toward me, slowly, with a wide plastic smile on her face. “I looooooove binders.”
I suddenly found myself wishing for a donut and some chocolate milk.
“Oh yeah!” Copper shouted. “The Cutie Mark Crusaders!”
“That’s right,” Sparkle said without taking her eyes off of me. “Starlight, why don’t—”
Copper’s head bobbed left and right as she listed off facts about the Crusaders. “Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo. Applejack’s sister, Rarity’s sister, and no relations of note, respectively. They got their cutie marks in helping other ponies with their cutie marks. Crazy! Even though Twilight had spent years fruitlessly helping them search for their talents, and—”
Sparkle cleared her throat. I must have been making a face, because when Copper looked at me, her ears drooped instantly. The Princess quietly said, “Starlight, why don’t you take Copper Crown to see the Crusaders? Twilight and I have some business to discuss.”
I wasn’t sure if I could see heat waves coming off of Sparkle, or if I was just starting to get faint. As I heard Copper’s hoofsteps disappear into the stacks, I wished, for the first time in my life, that my friend was standing by my side.
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look'it ma! she gots a friend!!
also, you don't admit you have stalkerish binder to the person its of to their face :X
Oh joy, Twilight Sparkle just HAD to be introduced to freakin' binders!
Wait, if Copper Crown is freakishly inexplicably knowledgeable about things like the sonic rainboom and the Cutie Mark Crusaders, how did she not know that Twilight Sparkle lives in Ponyville?
And nobody was surprised.
8113678 See, it's things like this that convince me you haven't read the story at all.
8113678
She's been told by Twilight Sprinkle and/or Velvet.
8113690 Which part? The part where I agree with the text, or the part where it just seems implausible that the Cutie Mark Crusaders' entire cutie mark story would be included in the binder?
That was fun. Also, Sprinkle's about to get sprinkled.
8113678 It's in the binder. You know, Sprinkle's binder. The one Sprinkle showed her. In an earlier chapter of this story.
8113702 Again I say, why would the Cutie Mark Crusaders be included in a binder about Twilight? They'd barely be a footnote.
Quick! Throw a donut at her!
8113710
So you don't think a group of ponies with whom Twilight had regularly scheduled tutoring sessions would be in a very thorough analysis of Twilght's life?
8113782 Seeing as I don't think it makes sense for Sprinkle to have such an advanced thorough analysis of the mare without ever having met her, yes, I'd call erring on the side of logic to be reasonable.
And so Twilight's day got a bit stranger.
binders = check lists
Donut Shop = Castle
Bakers Dozen = reshelf day 12
Twilight Sprinkles evil twin...
I don't think sprinkle realized she just called copper her friend, thought or otherwise
8113903 give it a week and she'll be galloping towards world saving danger with a motley crew of misfits. Twice more and she gets free wings!
8113639 Every now and then I am brilliant, when I'm not busy being a genius.
8113798 You don't need to meet someone to get info on them, and Sprinkle has a pretty understandable reason for being obsessed over this.
8114043 An understandable reason?
That was so perfect.
And then friendship happened. It's sneaky like that.
That moment your stalkie realizes you've been stalking them for years
8113690 I think I have a bit of a weird head canon.
And that head canon is that Twilight Sprinkle is the most powerful being of all.
Because her cutie mark is a donut.
... I'm still trying to remember the explanation behind that, but I assure you! There was one!
8114285
Because donuts are a toroid, which is the most powerful shape in the universe?
8114312 really?
So... princess of donut meet princess of friendship?
Hey! Donut is a form of friendship too! Same with cupcake!
8113678 to put it in simple terms, to try to avoid the confusion T.S. Sprinkle studied EVERY MINUSCULE ASPECT of T.S. Sparkle, included whom did she mentored....
8114312 Torus actually. Toroid is a similar shape but with flat sides that you would find if you shaved off the top and bottom of a donut.
Tape rolls are Toroids, Inner Tubes are Toruses.
8114015 Or when you're not being a piece of mutant fungus trying to consume all that is around you.
~Crystalline Electrostatic~
9:38_4/23/2017
Ya done goofed, girl.
Please, donut hurt her!!!
(Note for those who don't understand this one: donut = do not)
Sprinkle had better milk this situation for all its worth.
Just a random thought but, does Twilight Sprinkle's cutie mark have six pointed star sprinkles or regular ones?
8114676 That's racist against mutant fungi, who have their own congressional district here in NJ.
...Now why didn't I think of having her meet the Crusaders?! @.@
I'm shocked that Sparkle was able to resist pointing out that by virtue of actually sitting on her metaphorical throne, she cannot be a pretender as she holds her title in more than pretence.
8134067
It wasn't that bad.
(Or was it?)
8134071
Colt: "Come with me if you want to live."
>no relations of note
You're a terrible person.
That ending line was spot on. I love where this is going, and the banter was pitch perfect. I laughed aloud at the opening lines. That was excellent.
Why the hell would people think Twilight's running a donut shop in canterlot?
8410936
You mean the same folks who know so little about Twilight Sparkle that they are forced to look her up in a public directory? The ones who are so ill-prepared they are defeated by a pony who makes donuts?