The Me in the Mirror, the Me in Dreams

by Mockingbirb

The Things We Do To Ourselves

"Intruders! How dare you even be here!"

Pinkie Pie smiled. "I'm here to throw you a party." She gestured at a home-made sheet cake on the dining room table. The cake's frosting depicted the girlish Twilight Sparkle. A girl who was fully and merely human. The girl who Midnight had once been.

On one of the walls hung a banner, with the message, "We know you're still in there, Twilight! Please come out and play and be you again!"

Rainbow Dash held out an awkwardly wrapped package. "I got this for you, Twilight." Midnight instantly surrounded herself in a scintillating, sapphire-colored shield that gleamed like a million tiny gems. Midnight's magic reached out and tore the wrapping paper open.

The World-Empress laughed. "A Daring Do book. Useless! Fit only for children!"

Rainbow shrugged. "It's fun."

"Fun! Fun is for fools!"

Applejack said, "I got you some gourmet apples." She held out a basket.

Midnight smiled, showing a frightening amount of teeth. "Now THAT is a worthy gift. Delicious AND healthy. Not like this useless CAKE!" the dictator shouted. Magical force crushed the cake into a smeary, sugary paste.

Fluttershy said, "I got you this," and showed Midnight a stuffed toy dog. "I was afraid to get you a real one. Because you've been too mean lately, and you might hurt it."

"Spike!" Midnight shouted angrily. "You dare remind me of Spike?"

Hearing his name, the dog shambled awkwardly into the room. "Hello," he said. "Pleased to meet you girls. My name is Spike."

Rainbow clenched her fists and said, "That's not Spike. The real Spike would remember who we are."

"Well I'M SORRY!" Midnight said, "Spike DIED in the magical fight you girls picked! Sunset Shimmer's falling body CRUSHED HIM TO DEATH! THANK YOU VERY MUCH! So this animatronic taxidermy version is ALL I HAVE!" Midnight started crying.

"I'm very sorry about your dog dying," Fluttershy said. "He seemed very nice. We're all very sorry." The other girls agreed. "It's terrible to lose a friend. But he doesn't have to be the only friend you ever have."

"Oh, I suppose you girls want to be my friends?" Midnight said.

"If you'd let us," Fluttershy said bravely.

"Let me tell you who wants to be my friend," Midnight said. "You've heard of Justin Timberwake? He wants to be my friend."

Fluttershy said softly, "I'm sure that's very nice."

"If any of you haven't heard of Justin, maybe you've heard of the President of the United States?"

"Who hasn't?" Rainbow said. "Oh. I guess that was one of those questions you ask because you know everybody knows the answer."

"Have you heard of Michael Jackspone?"

"Who?" Rainbow asked.

Rarity explained, "The amusement park mogul, dears. Although what with his health problems, he isn't much in the public eye. Rumor has it he's turned entirely...well, never mind. The point is, he's a big deal. And quite a patron of fashion, too."

Midnight continued, "To help me feed my armies, I've told the agricultural scientist Norman Borehog that he has to be my friend, whether he likes it or not. I've given more millions of dollars to his research projects than any of YOU girls could probably count."

Pinkie Pie said, "Approximately eight hundred ninety-two million, as of this April."

Midnight looked astounded. "How?"

"I'm minoring in accounting, so I did a research project. Party management has a lot of dimensions, if you're thinking big. And researching Norman Borehog's research budget was a good research topic for me to research. Norman Borehog is trying to make sure everyone in the world has enough to eat! That's even harder than just making sure there's enough flour and sugar to make sure everyone in the world can have their own birthday cake."

Midnight remarked, "You seem to be well-informed about my...secret research budget. You might think this is the first time any of you girls have impressed me tonight. But this is at least the second time. When I found you in this room, and you weren't already dead before I even found you? That was the first time."

"Thank you!" Pinkie said. "Do you like being impressed?"

Midnight rubbed her chin. "I'm not used to it. I'm not sure yet. But it was certainly a surprise."

"Most of the best surprise parties are!" Pinkie said.

"Speaking of surprise parties," Midnight said, "You girls seem to have brought me some gifts. But why should I be the only one to receive gifts tonight? I want to offer you girls a gift."

Fluttershy said in a tiny voice, "Is this the kind of gift that we would actually want?"

"Oh," Midnight said, "Just about anyone would want it."

Pinkie jumped up and down. "You want to be our friend! And to stop being all evil! Hurray!"

"I wouldn't go THAT far," Twilight said. "But it is something I think you'll want. Don't you want to find out what it is?"

Rarity said, "If you insist. What wonderful present do you plan to give us?"

"With certain conditions," Midnight said, "even though you broke into my fortress home, I am willing to let you keep your lives."

Rainbow said, "That's not a gift! That's just offering to not take something away from us!"

Rarity added, "With certain CONDITIONS doesn't sound like a gift. That sounds more like extortion."

Midnight said, "You catch on fast. But I still think I'm offering you something you want."

Rarity said, "What are these conditions?"

Midnight grinned evilly. "You have to tell me how you got in here and stayed alive."

"Oh!" Rainbow said, "That's easy!" Fluttershy put her hand over Rainbow's mouth.

"First," Rarity said, "You have to make us a promise. You have to promise not to harm whoever helped us."

"What? I will make no such promise."

"Very well then," Rarity said. "You have to promise to CONSIDER not harming whoever helped us. Because I believe the person who let us in had your best interests in mind."

Midnight looked skeptical.

"Dear, if you hurt them, I believe it will hurt you more than it will hurt us."

"Fine!" Midnight said. "I only have to promise to CONSIDER not hurting them, right? That's not too much to ask. As World-Empress, I may CONSIDER anything I please."

Rarity nodded.

Off to one side, Midnight heard something dragging across the floor.

"Don't hurt him!" Fluttershy shouted. Midnight turned her horn towards the sound, ready to destroy any possible threat.

"Oh!" She laughed. "It's just you, Spike! Here I thought maybe the girls were distracting me so some other enemy could make a sneak attack!"

Rarity said, "Spike has the gift I brought you. It's for any girl who cares to see her own beauty."

The animatronic taxidermy dog adjusted the wrapped package's position, and used his teeth to pull off the cloth covering. A large circular mirror was exposed, with a base that tilted it upward towards Midnight.

"Especially," Rarity said, "her inner beauty."

Midnight looked at the nerdy, innocent, NICE girl in the mirror. "How..." she said. "Who told you girls? How far do the treason and betrayal GO?"

Spike said, "I see you talking to your mirror all the time. And waking up from weird nightmares where you're arguing with yourself. You always act angry. But after I watched you long enough, I finally understood. On the inside, you're sad and lonely. You get to do hardly anything you really want to. You have to spend all your time crushing anybody who might oppose you. And preparing to crush anybody who might oppose you. And just once in a while, you spend a few hours pretending to be real friends with some of the famous and powerful people who are terrified of you. I think the last time you had any fun was last year, when you let yourself joke about plant epigenetics with Norman Borehog for a few minutes."

"So?" Midnight said. "What choice to I have? Suppose I just try to give it up one day. I've terrified millions of people. No, billions of people. Do you think none of them will try to get back at me? The line of people waiting to get back at me will be so long...by the time Jane Average gets to get back at me, there won't be anything left of me to get back at!" Midnight pointed at the sheet cake Pinkie had brought. "I'll already be smashed flatter than that cake!"

"It's a sad predicament," Rarity said. "You seized power over the whole world, and you're left without any power of choice at all. Or that's how it seems. If only someone would bring you a way out, maybe as a birthday present..." Rarity smiled secretively.

Midnight looked searchingly at the mirror. "That isn't just a mirror, is it?"

Rarity smiled. "Have you ever heard of Princess Twilight Sparkle?"

Midnight laughed. "Have I? She's only one of the most powerful people--I mean, ponies--on the other side of the dimensional barrier! My trans-dimensional, other-world counterpart! My nemesis! My...oh. Are you saying she did something to that mirror?"

"She enchanted it. It's an escape portal to Equestria."

Midnight said, "After these years of struggle, she's just GIVING me a portal to Equestria?"

"Well," Rarity said, "there are a few conditions."

Midnight laughed. "This I've got to hear."

"One," Rarity said, "while a human visits Equestria, the human takes on the form of an Equestrian pony. Because you're Princess Twilight's human counterpart, we believe you would turn into a unicorn."

"A unicorn? With a magical horn?"

"Yes," Rarity confirmed. "With your own natural magic."

Midnight giggled. "What are the other conditions?"

"You have to promise not to try to conquer or invade Equestria. To not become any kind of actively evil mastermind while you're there."

"I think I've had my fill of evil world conquest for a lifetime," Midnight said. "If the Equestrian government is in danger of being conquered by evil forces, I suppose I might consider being a general for the good gals. But I don't promise to do even that much fighting."

"That sounds fair," Rarity said. "There is a third condition too. Remember that magic you stole to help you become Midnight Sparkle? You might have to let it go back to where it came from. Twilight's spell on this mirror is supposed to help her regain what you extracted from her crown."

Midnight shrugged. "I suppose neither she nor I have any choice. She probably can't invite me into Equestria while I have all the stolen magical power of a world conqueror. Letting me have natural unicorn magic of my own, while she tries to return my stolen magic to its rightful place, seems like a good compromise. It's a much better deal than I would have dared to ask her for."

"Well, then," Rarity said. "How long do you think it will take you to wrap things up here?"

Midnight grinned at Rainbow Dash. "Do you remember how I said those Daring Do books are a waste of time? Maybe that's not entirely true."

Applejack gasped theatrically. "The evil monster who conquered the world with stolen magic FIBBED to us?" She chuckled.

Midnight asked, "Do you remember what happened at the ends of the books, to some of those elaborate temples and mazes where Daring Do and her rivals were racing to retrieve some dangerous artifact?"

Rainbow said, "A lot of them just collapsed for some reason. I don't know why? I guess they were really old."

Midnight said, "When you have a building that harbors powerful, dangerous tools that could be used to harm the world...sometimes it's better to have it destroy itself and its secrets than to let just anyone plunder it and misuse what they get."

Rainbow spread her wings with excitement. "Now I get it! Your evil empire's bases have a secret self destruct button! I always wondered why the evil masterminds would put those in."

"Yeah," Applejack said. "Seems like if you just left that out, you could take the money you saved and spend it on a better ventilation system."

Midnight pulled a cellphone out of her pocket. "If I'm not around to misuse my evil empire's oppression amenities, why should anyone else have the fun? Spike, you know how this works."

Spike barked a numeric code into the phone.

A recorded message started playing over a PA system built into the fortress-home, warning everyone in the building. "Self-destruct system activated. Prepare for evacuation. And don't try to steal any office supplies, especially the deadly ones. Thieves of deadly oppression tools will be targeted by the defense drones and robo-lasers. Using an amazing invention created by your World-Empress, this message will now repeat in sign language and Braille."

"Goodbye, worldwide evil empire, your day of destruction has come," Midnight said. "Girls, now that the self-destruct system is activated, the automatic defenses will let you escape. It's just trying to stay for too long, or trying to come back, that will be a problem."

"Do you want to take anything with you?" Applejack asked. "Ah can help you carry stuff to the mirror."

Midnight looked around thoughtfully. She went to the dining room table and took a less severely crushed corner of the cake. She nibbled it, and wrapped some more cake in a napkin. "Thank you for the best surprise party ever."

"Hurray!" Pinkie Pie said. "Party is a SUCCESS!"

"Also," Midnight said, "I wish someone would say goodbye to Norman Borehog for me. Helping him fight the world's famines is the one part of my whole world conquest project that wasn't a complete waste. Well, that and public address systems that make announcements in sign language and Braille. Those are good too."

"I'll tell him you said that," Pinkie replied cheerfully.

Midnight scooped up her animatronic dog. "What will going through the portal do to Spike?" the soon-to-be-ex-villain asked. "Will he be okay?"

"I don't know what it'll turn him into," Pinkie said. "The Equestrian Spike is a baby dragon. But whatever he becomes, it's sure to be funny! And probably really cute too!"

Midnight stepped into the mirror, falling through its surface. "Good-b--"

Author's Note:

I don't know whether I'll write another chapter or not, but I at least had to let Midnight make a life-changing decision, and show us how at least one evil overlord cliche is a really good, practical idea if you're an evil overlord.

"Norman Borehog" is a stand-in for Norman Borlaug. His agricultural research, while not flawless, helped to save millions of people from famine.

Speaking of Borlaug, suppose you want to help fight problems like world hunger? You might consider OxFam to fight world hunger (link), or Doctors Without Borders to help fight disease (link).

This story is not an entry into the 2020 Pride and Positivity Pride Month Event (link), because I didn't think the story fit the theme (and I didn't want to try to force it to.) But if it were, SigmasonicX might suggest a charity such as "The Okra Project (link) - Combating food insecurity in the Black Trans/GNC community (Paypal link)," or other charities on that event's lists.

To help you find and evaluate many relatively established charities, you could look at Charity Navigator (link). But many of the newest and smallest haven't so far had a chance to get into that system.

---

"Animatronic" might still be a registered trademark belonging to Disney. But when Midnight Sparkle put the entire world under her heel, she stole whatever she wanted to.

Comments

[RDDash]

Up to you, the new chapter sounds fun.

[Sarsath]

Why aren't there as many fanfics of Midnight becoming the empress of the world as there should be?

[FanOfMostEverything]

Yeah, once that initial rush of power wears off, any Twilight will see that world subjugation isn't worth the trouble given enough time. When given a chance to escape revenge and do what she always wanted to do with magic in the first place? Of course she'd take it.

That said, the shift from haughty, internally conflicted world tyrant to grateful refugee feels way too fast. Yes, it was a facade, but there's no visible sign of Midnight dropping it. No sigh of relief, no hesistation as she forces herself to drop the act, no little nod of approval from her saner reflection. Just a seamless witching of gears to moving out. Her dialogue makes it sound like she's exhausted from trying to stay one step ahead of whatever resistance may exist—and how long has she ruled the world, anyway?—but her actions make it seem like she wasted a weekend on a hobby that didn't pan out.

I do quite like the premise here, but the resolution feels way too quick. Also, Sunset's apparent death gets glossed over a little too easily.