*Friendship Not Included

by Liquid Truth

Idle Hooves Are the Manager's Workshop

The breeze that hit Twilight’s face as she opened the door was uncommonly cold. While the rest of the base was filled with oxygen at twenty-five degrees Celsius, the room she entered was about six degrees lower. And while the cooling needed to keep it at that temperature was minuscule, the system doing so would no doubt be on an industrial scale. Because the only definition for “air conditioning” The Manager knew was, “Take thermal energy to somewhere you can turn it to electric potential, then do it.” There was no such thing as throwing the heat to the environment and hope the problem goes away. Not in an asteroid.

To visualize, the system she used to refrigerate Bristle Acre’s pantry to about 4°C (39.2°F) was the exact same as the one used to cool down The Industrial Brick to -200°C (-328°F), but with fewer steam turbines to eat up the heat.

The other option would be to plant Wheezeworts. The Manager wasn’t known to be kind to nature, though, considering she was built for colonizing lifeless planets.

And so it was a mild surprise that Twilight found a Wheezewort planted next to the cloud bed.

She didn’t know why it was the most surprising thing she found in the gold-walled bedroom with red velvet carpets and countless masterwork paintings lining the walls, but there she was, standing at the entrance looking at the Wheezewort. She wasn’t even surprised that there was a refrigerator that’s actually connected to power.

The door at the other end of the room opened, and Rarity walked out. She was wearing a red beret with a paintbrush sticking out of a pocket made specifically for holding brushes on a beret. “Oh, sorry, darling,” she greeted her, “have you been waiting long?”

Twilight shook her head and enlarged the bundle of reed fiber on her back. “No, I’ve just arrived.” She leaned left to look at the room behind her. “Was that a personal toilet?”

“Technically, it’s public,” she answered as she trotted forward and took the bundle. “But nopony else ever uses it.”

Twilight checked her to-do list and found that it wasn’t yet short. She should be going elsewhere as soon as possible, but there was something she needed to know. “Rarity, can I ask you something?”

“Rarity?” she asked in a dangerous tone. ”Rarity!? Don’t you know who I am!?”

Twilight took two steps back and a hoof at the mechanized door’s switch. “Uh... Rarity?”

Her scowl vanished as quick as it appeared and was replaced by sorrow. She sighed. “Of course. No, dearie, you’re mistaken. I’m Belle, Head Artist of Bristle Acres.” She flicked a hoof on her fantastically curled hair. “Head Artist of the entire colony, with that.”

“But isn’t—”

“Yes, I know.” She did a backflip, and for a second, Twilight thought she was going to break her neck, but a sofa appeared out of nowhere to catch her. The pose she then struck could only be described as ‘cliche.’ “I can’t really be the leader of something if I’m the only one, can’t I? Woe is me, the only dedicated artist in the entire colony!” She sobbed. “How could such tragedy befell upon such a magnificent mare?”

Twilight looked at her with half-lidded eyes. “Seriously?”

“Do I look like I’m dramatizing it!?”

“You sound incredibly narcissistic.”

"Oh, hush. It's a coping mechanism preventing me from going mad from all my stress."

Twilight blinked.

"You think you're the only one smart enough for self-awareness?"

Twilight shook her head. “But I thought Rarity is also an artist? And I remember—”

“Yes, yes, part-time artists, aren’t they?” She dropped from the sofa and kicked it with a hind hoof, sending it flying smoothly to an empty space on the far wall. “All under my teachings, even the famous Rarity herself,” she bragged, spitting the name Rarity like poison.

“You have something against Rarity?”

“A friend of hers, are you not?” Belle ushered her to come in, and Twilight did so. “I do, in fact, have a lot of things against my doppelganger. Never being recognized as my own name, for one.” She flourished at the wall to her right, which was covered with paintings of many styles and sizes, all with a level of skill recognizable even by the most artistically blind. The only space without art was the sofa. “Never being credited for creating almost every masterpiece painting in the entire colony, from the ten-meter long painting of Hell Let Loose in Tartarian Moat to the small First Death in the chambers of the Observatory!” She fluttered her eyelashes at Twilight. “I’m sure you’ve noticed the latter?”

“I thought The Manager was pulling a prank. I put it under the desk.”

“It was a painting of a very dear friend, Twily. But!” she flourished once again, summoning a handkerchief out of nowhere and blew into it. “But nopony ever told you who painted it, didn’t they!?” She cried. “And yet, nopony could ever comprehend the absolute torture which I am about to describe!” She threw her head back and sobbed once. “I don’t think even you, the most cold-blooded Duplicant in the entire colony, can bear listening to it!”

“...Which was?”

”Idle!”

“Idle?”

“Being idle! Jobless! Left with absolutely nothing to do! I have utterly saturated the entire asteroid with my talent that I have nowhere else to put my work but at the smelter! Truly the worst. Possible. Thing!”

“I am very sorry about the absolute torturous boredom that you’re enduring, but did you describe the colony’s previous most cold-blooded Duplicant ‘a very dear friend?’”

Belle wiped away her ruined mascara. Where she was able to find makeup in the asteroid was not something Twilight was willing to find out. “Yes. She was a dear friend of mine until her unprecedented death at the hands of Slimelung.”

“She...” Her mouth twitched. “She made a friend? And the ‘dear’ that you used isn’t just a personality quirk from your part?”

Belle sat on the sofa and leaned on the handle. With a sigh, she started, “Twily wouldn’t admit it, but I consider her my best friend. We spent a lot of time together researching things. She was very talkative when muttering to herself.”

“But weren’t you busy scouring for muckroots back then?”

“That had only been until the Hatch ranch came online, during which I haven’t existed yet. Art and interior decor weren’t much of a concern until the transition days of the colony, and so on the day of birth, The Manager assigned me for research duty. I have Anemia, you see, I’m not really fit for infrastructure expansion.”

Twilight huffed. “Tell me about it.”

“About what, Twily?” Belle patted the vacancy next to her. “I can tell you a lot about your past reincarnation if you’re willing to listen.” She giggled. “Even though I doubt you’d have any time for that in your ever-increasing list of duties, no?”

“Actually, I do.”

Belle raised an eyebrow.

Twilight sat next to Belle. The sofa was a lot comfier than any cloud bed she had ever slept on. “You said you were a researcher before becoming an artist?”

“I was always an artist at heart, Twilight, but yes, I was a researcher.” She pointed to the frame above her bed, which, Twilight didn’t notice among the paintings, was a black thinking hat just like hers. “Sunset Shimmer did most of the research after our first rocket launch, during which the colony was already stable enough for us to add artistic touches.” Belle stared longingly at the ceiling. “They were the best cycles of my life. Sculptures everywhere! Paintings accompanying hundreds of floors of stairs from top to bottom! Space artifact exhibitions inside barracks!”

“That’s interesting and all, but are you implying that Sunset didn’t design the rockets?”

“Ha!” she exclaimed. “No, and yes. I was the one who designed the steam-powered rocket and the research modules. Sunset and a few others designed the petroleum rocket, then the liquid hydrogen rockets.”

Twilight gaped. “The steam rocket? Really? Those bulky beasts that could barely reach the closest ring?” She held back a squee. “They were almost impossible to comprehend. The Cryofuel engine is easy science compared to that one! Are you saying you and Twily designed that from scratch?”

Belle opened her mouth, then closed it back. After a few seconds, she said, “...No. I did.”

Twilight’s smile vanished. “Oh.” She grinned again. ”You designed that all by yourself!?”

“With the help of previous researches, both from the database directly and those from what Twily left behind.”

“Belle, I have so many questions.”

Belle smiled. “You’re just like her, but at the same time, nothing like her. What kind of curse were you enduring that led you to be this sociable with other Duplicants?”

“Research!” Twilight exclaimed as she pumped up a hoof.

“Of course.” Belle giggled and wiped away a tear. “Just like her.”

“I’m going to need all your notes on the Research Module.”

“It’s all in the archive,” she answered with a raised eyebrow. “But why would you need it? I thought you’re an astronomer?”

Twilight pulled out a blueprint from her multitool belt. “I need your opinion on this.”

Belle took the blueprint and opened it. A quick glance was enough for her eyebrows to shoot up. “I don’t have the researching softwares in me anymore, but this is... ambitious, to say the least.” She looked at her. “I fear whatever idea you have in mind.”

Twilight wriggled her eyebrows. “I have a request for you if you’re willing to leave your luxuriously empty schedule behind?”

Belle let out a single laugh. “Anything to get me out of this boredom!” She held out a hoof.

Twilight ignored it. “So, Manager?”

The Manager gave her an approving nudge and granted Belle access to download the researching softwares from the Printing Pod.

Author's Note:

Sometimes it's worth spending all that resources for the sake of making a bedroom look pretty. An Ellie usually gets the room because, as her bio suggests, she likes glitters and unicorn stickers. Fittingly, she's a sticker bomber.

Lore spoiler: Her blueprint, Dr. Ellie Jones, once abused the system email to get her glitter pens back. I love small easter eggs like these.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Getting the team back together, I see. This should be quite interesting. And a sort of postmortem redemption for Rarity.

[Sylica telca]

Oooo this is fascinating. I'm finally glad twilight is meeting dupe copies along with us learning more about rwily