> The Many Clones Of Twilight Sparkle
>  by naturalbornderpy
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Sparkle Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Applejack turned to the rest of her friends, blowing a bit of her mane from her eyes. “You gals ready?”
                
Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash nodded in unison, eclipsed in the tall shadow of Twilight’s castle.
                
Rarity asked Applejack, “Why the saddle bag, darling? I thought we agreed to a light conversation today.”
                
Applejack’s eyes darted from side to side. “It’s nothing, you hear? Just some apples. Yes, apples… in case we get hungry.”
                
Rarity shut her eyes. “You and your apples, Applejack. I swear—”
                
“Can we hurry this up!?” Rainbow Dash cut in, hovering above them. “Let’s just go knock some sense into Twilight and be done with it! All right?”
                
“If she wants some sense to be knocked into her, that is,” Fluttershy added.
                
Rainbow Dash ran a hoof over her face. “Whatever. I’m going in.”
                
Just as she flew towards the door, it parted open and Rainbow Dash vanished into the gloom of the castle. The four remaining friends took a shaky step inside.

The entryway was wholly consumed in darkness, until a single spot of light illuminated a puffy desk chair facing in the opposite directly. Slowly—squeakily—it turned to face them. Twilight Sparkle sat with one leg crossed over the other, gingerly petting a snoozing Opalescence in her lap.
                
“So glad you’ve all decided to join me this morning,” she greeted coolly.
                
Rarity took a step forward. “How did you know we were coming, Twilight? And how did Opalescence get in here?”
                
Twilight put the cat on the ground. “I’ve actually been sitting here for six hours now, incase someone came. Opalescence must’ve climbed through a window while I was waiting.”
                
She clapped her hooves together and the overhead lights came on.
                
She smiled. “Now what can I do for you?”
                
Rainbow Dash shot forward to land in front of her. “I want to know why you wouldn’t stop making pancakes the last time we hung out together!”
                
“And I want to know why you were so quiet at our slumber party the other day,” Rarity added.
                
“And I want to know why you were so loud last Wednesday!” Pinkie Pie screamed, while jumping in the air and waving her legs.
                
Applejack approached Twilight awkwardly. “And I, uh… want to have a word alone with you, whenever these gals happen to leave.”
                
Despite all the questions thrown her way, Twilight’s smile never faltered. She sighed, resting her head on a hoof. “The answer to all that is simple, my friends; the real Twilight Sparkle hasn’t left this castle in well over a month. Maybe longer, it’s kinda hard to remember.”
                
“But, Twilight, that’s just not possible,” Rarity said. “I was with you only yesterday. All of us spent time with—”
                
“Clones,” Twilight finished for her. “You’ve all spent time with clones of Twilight Sparkle.”
                
Rarity blanched. “But why!? And how?”
                
Twilight shrugged again. “Magic and science, really. A giant vat of Sparkle clone goo poured into a Sparkle-shaped mold and then baked at three hundred and fifty degrees for sixty-four minutes. Add some color… a soul… break for lunch… lettuce on toast sometimes. No big deal, really.”
                
Applejack stood next to Rarity. “That still doesn’t explain why. Why wouldn’t the real Twilight wanna spend time with us?”
                
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Twilight’s been busy, all right? Having a castle to take care of, having a baby dragon to look after, and having six different friends can cause all sorts of time-consuming hassles. Plus, her customary one book a day policy.”
                
Applejack pointed a leg at her. “You said ‘Twilight’ and ‘her,’ meaning that you’re not the real Twilight at all, are you?”
                
Twilight tipped her a wink. “Correct, Applejack. I was one of the first of Twilight’s creations—Exposition Sparkle. My duty is to remain in this chair until someone comes along and inquires about the Twilight clones. It’s been rather lonely, to tell you the truth. But I just find explaining things so much fun for some reason!”
                
In a rush of air, Rainbow Dash soared to the side of Exposition Sparkle’s chair. “If you like explaining things so much, then maybe you’d like to explain which Twilight clone was sent to my place.”
                
Exposition Sparkle smiled at her. “Pancake Sparkle.”
                
“I knew it!” Rainbow Dash flew into the air. “That explains why she wouldn’t stop making pancakes! I couldn’t even stop her if I wanted to. She even made a pancake out of my couch, once she ran out of ingredients.”
                
“How does one even create a Pancake Sparkle?” Rarity asked. “Wouldn’t Twilight be trying to create clones that actually act somewhat like her?”
                
“A teeny, tiny accident,” Exposition Sparkle explained. “A bit of Twilight’s morning pancakes ended up in the clone goo and… I think you can guess the rest.”
                
Fluttershy raised a leg. “Which clone came to our slumber party last week?”
                
“Silent Sparkle. Has the tendency to say things just out of earshot.”
                		
“I hate stuff like that!” Pinkie Pie trumpeted. “You know how annoying the volume of one’s voice can be if used incorrectly!?”
                
“I, umm, understood Silent Sparkle just fine, actually,” Fluttershy admitted.
                
Applejack asked, “Just what other clones have you been sending out into Ponyville?”
                
Exposition Sparkle brought a hoof to her chin. “Well, there’s Screamy Sparkle, the Twilight that can’t stop yelling, and I think Sneezy Sparkle went out to pick dandelions with Rarity the other day.”
                
Rarity winced. “And what a terrible day that was.”
                
“And I know for a fact Apple Sparkle spent close to a week at the Apple family farm for some reason…”
                
Applejack lowered her hat to her chest. “You mean… the Twilight that came to see—” She started again. “The Twilight that came to the farm wasn’t the real Twilight after all?”
                
Exposition Sparkle chuckled. “Why would you think that? Apple Sparkle has the ability to say two words and two words only: apple and apples.”
                
Applejack roughly wrung her hat, eyes red. “I guess I never noticed that. I’ve just never felt as close to Twilight as I did during those seven days. Is… is Apple Sparkle here?”
                
“Sure. I’ll bring her in.”

Exposition Sparkle brought a hoof to her mouth and whistled.

An identical Twilight Sparkle entered the room, glancing from each of the mares until locking eyes with Applejack. Her ears fell flat against her head. “Apples?”

A single tear coursed down Applejack’s cheek. “Yes, Apple Sparkle. It’s me, Applejack.”
                
Apple Sparkle ran to Applejack to wrap herself around her. “Apple! Apples!”
                
Applejack brought out a bouquet of flowers from her saddlebag and hoofed them over to her. “These are for you, Apple Sparkle. And well I… shucks, ain’t no time like the present, is there? Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”
                
Apple Sparkle’s face went blank. “…apple apples? Apple?”
                
Applejack smiled. “Yes, completely honest.”
                
“Apples!”
                
With that said, Applejack and Apple Sparkle kissed passionately, letting the bouquet of flowers fall to the floor. Apple Sparkle moaned out the word “Apple” on continuous loop.
                
Rarity tried to blink away the insanity, sadly to no avail. She glared at Exposition Sparkle. “Just how in Equestria is it possible to create so many terrible Twilights? Twilight’s smart! Twilight’s—”
                
“Also very friendly,” Exposition Sparkle explained, “perhaps too friendly. The first Twilight clone was almost an exact duplicate, besides the fact she was a tad more butter-hooved than most. We’ve come to call her Accident Prone Sparkle, and because Twilight felt so bad for her, she gave her a job as lab assistant.”
                
Rarity smashed a hoof into her temple. “That’s got to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
                
Exposition Sparkle shook her head. “No. What’s really dumb is that no one’s put a cover on the clone goo bin yet. I mean, come on! You know much stuff has fallen in there already?”
                
Pinkie Pie charged towards Exposition Sparkle. “All right! I want to see the real Twilight, right this minute!”
                
Exposition Sparkle mashed a hoof into Pinkie’s mouth. “Be quiet, please! You don’t want to wake her.”
                
“Wake up who, exactly? Is Twilight sleeping right now?” Fluttershy asked.
                
“No. Not Twilight, but Sparkle Sparkle.”
                
Applejack unhooked herself from Apple Sparkle just long enough to raise a brow. “Sparkle Sparkle?”
                
Exposition Sparkle spoke with a hushed voice. “Remember when Twilight used the powers of the other three alicorns in order to defeat Tirek and save Equestria?”
                
They nodded.
                
“Well, she’s successfully created a clone that’s has close to that same power, if not more.”
                
Pinkie Pie gasped. “More?”
                
“Didn’t I tell you to be quiet?”
                
“You did, but I didn’t listen!”
                
“WHO DARES AWAKEN ME FROM MY PEACEFUL NAPPY NAP!?”

A voice erupted from another part of the castle, so loud and all consuming it felt as if its very words were piercing the hearts and minds of all those within earshot, speaking to them from deep inside their own bodies. Cold. Uncaring. Merciless. As low and guttural as the most horrid of monsters currently residing within the walls of Tartarus.

Next came a rumble that shook the castle’s very foundation, sending bits of dust falling from the ceiling. A half-dozen chandeliers in the hallway swung from side to side on their chains.
                
“Look what you did!” Exposition Sparkle said. “Sparkle Sparkle is awake! Even as gifted as she was, Princess Twilight Sparkle was barely in control of her new powers when they were gifted to her. Sparkle Sparkle… is much more innocent than most, making her much more uncontrollable. More than anything, she must be dealt with carefully.”
                
“I say we get out of here as fast as we can,” Fluttershy chirped.
                
Exposition Sparkle shook her head. “I’m afraid it is too late for that. Sparkle Sparkle already knows what each of you might be thinking about before you even thought about thinking about it. All those within a hundred mile radius are already at her mercy.”
                
The six mares by the door huddled close together as a surge of white and yellow light exploded at the far end of the hallway. A moment later, a glowing Twilight Sparkle duplicate with a coat of white and a churning fire mane entered the room, levitating in the air in a field of bright sparks and blinding light.
                
“Behold!” Exposition Sparkle announced. “Sparkle Sparkle!”
                
As the mares’ eyes adjusted to the harsh lights, they finally saw the awesome power that was Sparkle Sparkle… as well as the fact she was about only one-third of Twilight’s usual size.
                
Rainbow Dash broke away from the group, chuckling. “That’s it? She’s like a foot tall. She’s like the size of Sweetie Belle!”
                
“Do not let her size fool you, Rainbow Dash,” Exposition Sparkle warned. “Inside of that petite filly body is the rough equivalent of four Princess Celestias, all held under the unsure control of someone who has yet to master the basic art of going potty.”
                
Rainbow Dash chuckled again. “But she’s so cute! Well… if she didn’t talk so loud and wasn’t on fire all the time.”
                
Sparkle Sparkle descended to the floor to stare at Exposition Sparkle. Her eyeballs were nothing more than yellow spaces of pure crackling energy.
                
“I WISH FOR COOKIES AND MILK PLEASE AND THANK YOU!”
                
Her words effortlessly made Exposition Sparkle’s mane blow back from her head.
                
Sparkle Sparkle walked up to the rest of them, stopping right below the trembling Fluttershy.
                
“YOU SHALL NOW READ ME STORIES AND MAKE FUNNY VOICES! THIS YOUR GOD DEMANDS! BELLY RUBS WILL BE FORTHCOMING!”
                
Pinkie Pie had to forcibly shove Fluttershy forward, so Sparkle Sparkle could take her hoof and lead her back down the hall. Before disappearing behind the corner, Fluttershy looked back and mouthed the words, “Help me!”
                
“YOUR HAIR FEELS SOFT I WILL TOUCH IT NOW!”

Sadly, even the remainder of the Elements of Harmony would be no match for the filly demi-god known as Sparkle Sparkle.
                
Rarity again tried to blink the insanity away. “Okay. Enough’s enough. Show us where the real Twilight Sparkle is.”
                
Exposition Sparkle tried her best to smile again. “She’s busy at the moment.”
                
“We don’t care. We want to see her. Now!”
                
“At the moment, she’s with… another Sparkle.”
                
Applejack stopped kissing Apple Sparkle’s neck to glance up. “By all the Sparkles we’ve seen so far, let me take a wild guess who she might be with: Doorstop Sparkle? Mumble Sparkle? Grape-Flavored Sparkle? Bizarro Sparkle? Waffle Sparkle?”
                
“Well,” Rainbow Dash interjected, “they already did make a Pancake Sparkle. Waffle Sparkle’s just going overboard.”
                
Applejack raised a leg. “And all this isn’t already a tad overboard?”
                
Exposition Sparkle sighed. “Twilight Sparkle is with Sexy Sparkle right now. How did Sexy Sparkle come to be, you ask? Just add a batch of clone goo with an E tablet and there you go.” She looked at a foreleg that held no watch. “So far, those two Twilights have been going at it for three and half days, give or take a few tea breaks and clone creating sessions.”
                
Rarity ground her teeth and stomped her hooves into the floor. “I don’t care who she’s with! I’m sick of all these clones! I want to see the real Twilight Sparkle, all right?”
                
Exposition Sparkle contemplated for a moment, unsure how much better she could explain the situation to them. She looked up. “Would you all leave if I let you watch them for a bit?”
                
The five mares by the door conversed between themselves, before Apple Sparkle spun around to speak for the group.
                
“Apples.”
> Trevor Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“THIS PLEASES SPARKLE SPARKLE! PLEASE CONTINUE, PRETTY MARE!”
                
Fluttershy’s hooves shook as she simultaneously held a book up to read while rubbing at Sparkle Sparkle’s tiny round belly.
                
At Fluttershy’s touch, the filly kicked at the air with all her legs, grazing a nearby chair that flew into a wall and smashed into splinters. Fluttershy made sure to keep her body away from Sparkle Sparkle’s flying legs.
                
Fluttershy read from the picture book, “And when Goldi-mane ate from the first bowl of porridge, she found it too hot, so she—”
                
“WHY WOULD SHE NOT JUST COOL IT WITH HER ARCTIC BREATH POWERS!?”
                
Fluttershy trembled again. “Umm. Most ponies don’t have arctic breath powers. Or at least Goldi-mane doesn’t.”
                
“THIS BOOK DISPLEASES ME! NO MORE BOOK!”
                
In an instant, the book was levitated into the air and blasted with a shot of energy from Sparkle Sparkle’s horn. Not even the ashes of the book remained.
                
“MORE BELLY RUBS, PRETTY MARE!”
                
With two hooves, Fluttershy rubbed along the filly’s belly, who squealed in delight. A moment later, Fluttershy blew a raspberry in the center of her stomach.
                
Sparkle Sparkle giggled uncontrollably, sounding oddly close to a regular filly for once.
                
“Hehehehe! Hahahaha!”
                
Fluttershy looked up in surprise.

Sparkle Sparkle did the same.
                
“I mean… HEHEHEHE HAHAHAHAHA!”
                
Fluttershy slumped. “Oh. You almost sounded adorable for a moment.”
                
Sparkle Sparkle narrowed her eyes at her.
                
“SPARKLE SPARKLE IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF ADORABLE! LEST YOU FORGET!”
                
When Fluttershy’s mane touched her shoulders again after being blown out of her face by the power of Sparkle Sparkle’s voice, she nodded a single time and tried her best not to die.
 

***


 

As was being made abundantly clear, Twilight’s castle was a lot larger and more labyrinthine than its outside would suggest. Once Fluttershy had given Sparkle Sparkle a two-liter filled with scolding hot milk, the filly had finally conked out and gone to sleep inside her solid steel crib.
                
Fluttershy left her room and soon got lost trying to find her way back to the entrance. Now she stood in front of a door she wasn’t completely sure she should go through.
                
“The F.S. Room,” she said, reading off the door’s plaque.
                
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” a voice said from behind her.
                
Fluttershy turned and found Twilight Sparkle standing in the hall with her, wearing a thick blue sweater and a pair of large glasses resting on her horn. Already she knew this wasn’t the real Twilight Sparkle.
                
“Not unless you bring a book,” the Twilight finished, her voice much less enthused than normal Twilight’s.
                
“Which Sparkle clone are you?” Fluttershy asked.
                
“Opposite Sparkle.”
                
Fluttershy gasped. “Oh, no! Like an evil Sparkle! Like one that wants to take over the world and do everything the exact opposite of regular Twilight? Oh, no. I should run away from you. But I don’t know which way to go. If it’s not too much trouble, could you give me directions to the nearest exit and fastest route away from you? Please, don’t take offense. It’s not like I don’t like you or anything… even if you are the embodiment of pure evil and me and my friends will probably do battle with you in the coming days—”
                
Opposite Sparkle held up a hoof. “I’m not the literal opposite of Twilight; I just not as into her normal hobbies as her. I don’t even read much. Instead, I watch movies or listen to audio books. I also like coffee a lot more than tea. Also, Twilight’s the helpful type. I’m not all that helpful, or opinionated, either. I thought about changing my name to ‘Meh Sparkle’ or ‘Whatever Sparkle,’ but never got around to it. Too much work.”
                
Fluttershy frowned. “So you don’t know the way out of here?”
                
Opposite Sparkle shrugged. “Not really. But I’m sure if you stay in one direction, you’ll end up staying in that direction. Or something. Whatever. I dunno.”
                
“You’re really not that helpful.”
                
Opposite Sparkle waved a hoof. “Whatever. I’m sleepy. I just ate a whole personal pizza and need to go lay down. That corner over there looks dry enough. Good luck escaping from clone castle.”
                
“Clone castle?” Fluttershy whimpered out.
 

***


 

It took her some time, but Fluttershy found enough courage to open up the door labeled “F.S. ROOM”. As much as she’d hoped the initials might’ve meant “Front Staircase” or something similar, it turned out to be something completely different.
                
Fluttershy was starting to suspect the rules of normalcy had left Twilight’s castle a very long time ago.
                
“Book?”
                
“Books?”
                
“Does she have a book? I bet she has a book!”
                
“Maybe she knows where books are!”
                
Beyond the door that Fluttershy had just opened were at least two dozen filly-sized Twilight Sparkles. When she took a step in, every pair of eyes came to rest on her with wide-eyed excitement. Soon every filly Twilight encircled her, all their little voices echoing off the small room’s stone walls.
                
Fluttershy sighed. “Filly Twilight room. Even if I couldn’t have known that, I really should’ve known that, anyways.”
                
One of the filly Twilights poked at her leg. “Do you have any books with you? I would really like one if you have one.”
                
Fluttershy shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, but the only book I had burst into flames only a few minutes ago. I didn’t see any others.”
                
One filly Twilight near the back of the Twilight herd tried to jump on top of another filly. “Did she say she burned a book!? Why would she do that!?”
                
“She harmed a book?”
                
“There’re books somewhere?”
                
“Someone’s destroying books?”
                
“I heard the word ‘books’ and now I want to scream too!”
                
As the filly Twilights’ voices rose to be heard above each other, they slowly pressed towards Fluttershy until she was forced to retreat from the room. Once out in the hall, Fluttershy chose a direction and galloped as fast as she could.
                
In hot pursuit were the two dozen tiny Twilights, a steady chorus of “books” announcing how close they were to her. It might’ve been adorable if it wasn’t so damn terrifying.
                
“I don’t have any books!” Fluttershy screamed at them.
                
One Twilight jumped up from the sea of other Twilights. “We know! Because you burnt them all!”
                
“That’s not what I meant and you know it!” Fluttershy yelled back.
                
Just as she rounded another corner, a leg shot out of a closet doorway and pulled her in, keeping a leg over her mouth. Unable to locate her, the herd of filly Twilights soon passed the unlit room and continued down the hall.
                
Fluttershy broke away from the stranger. “Opposite Sparkle? Is that you?”
                
“Afraid not.”
                
From out of the closet came a Twilight Sparkle that Fluttershy could tell at once wasn’t the real Twilight. Their mane and tail had been clipped short and their muzzle had more solid edges than mares’. Perhaps most telling of all was their voice—low and soft.
                
He held out a hoof. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Trevor Sparkle.”
                
Reluctantly, Fluttershy shook his hoof, noticing how firm his shake was.
                
“What does ‘Trevor’ mean?”
                
He shook his head. “I have no idea. But I do need to say meeting another mare that doesn’t look like a weird version of myself is rather refreshing. Especially a mare that happens to look as cute as you.”
                
Fluttershy blushed, swinging her lock of mane to block out most of her face.
                
“What’s your name?”
                
“… Fluttershy.”
                
“And how in Equestria did you find yourself down here?”
                
“Sparkle Sparkle brought me down here to read to her. Then she destroyed the book and took a nap.”
                
Trevor Sparkle nodded. “Sounds about right. I think Sparkle Sparkle means good, but has trouble showing it. You know that game where you pretend the ground is lava and you need to hop from piece of furniture to piece of furniture to get to the other side of the room? Well, I played that with her once, only using real lava.”
                
Fluttershy giggled, then stopped. “Oh. That wasn’t a joke, was it?”
                
He shook his head.
                
“I’m so sorry. I’m just so confused right now and there’re just so many different Twilights around here that I’m having trouble keeping track of them—”
                
“Trevor Sparkle! Are you hiding down here again!?”
                
Trevor Sparkle choked on air. “I need to hide. Fast! If I hide in the closet I pulled you into before, will you say I’m somewhere else?”
                
“Why? Who’s looking for you?”
                
Before he shut the closet door behind him, he whispered, “Sexy Sparkle! And I can’t let her find me!”
                
Less than five seconds later, another Twilight Sparkle clone trotted down the hall, looking Fluttershy up and down with avid interest. Unlike normal Twilight, this one’s mane and tail had the look of being wet even when it wasn’t. Her eyes also remained half-lidded, as if constantly thinking about something bad. When she stopped to stand in front of her, she even held out her plot to one side as if showcasing it.
                
Sexy Sparkle grinned at her. “You’re new. And adorable too. Let me pinch those cheeks of yours!”
                
“I’d rather you didn’t—”
                
Before Fluttershy could finish her sentence, Sexy Sparkle went to her and ran a hoof from her neck up to her mane. Fluttershy took a step back until her butt squished against the wall.
                
Sexy Sparkle gasped. “And she’s shy! My oh my, aren’t you just the sexiest little thing. Let’s see what happens if I just…” She moved a lock of Fluttershy’s mane to cover half her face. “Wow! A mysterious pony! ‘What’s she thinking?’ ‘Oh, I know! How to be adorably sexy at all times.’ Jeeze, girl. Where have you been all my life? All… eight days of it, so far.”
                
“You must be Sexy Sparkle,” Fluttershy squeaked out.
                
Sexy Sparkle lifted both hooves into the air. “So you’ve heard of me! That’s fantastic! My name’s already spreading.” She held a hoof to the side of her mouth. “I hope that’s not the only thing of mine that gets a good spreading, if you catch my drift. Huh? Huh?”
                
She nudged her in the ribs until Fluttershy nodded in return.
                
Sexy Sparkle sighed. “What was I doing down here again? Oh, yes. You didn’t happen to see a stallion down here, did you? Looks kinda like me and kinda like everyone else around here except for one very large difference that’s pretty hard to miss if you know just where to look. His name’s Trevor Sparkle and I’m starting to suspect he’s avoiding me.”
                
Fluttershy tried to become one with the stone wall behind her; slow her breathing and her thoughts so she could pass through the stone and into whatever lay behind it. If she got stuck halfway across the physical planes of flesh and stone and was trapped inside the castle walls for all eternity, she’d eagerly accept it over further conversation with Sexy Sparkle.
                
“What do you want with him?” Fluttershy asked, still thinking about the quietness of stone.
                
Sexy Sparkle chuckled deeply. “Oh, just a friendly chat. Maybe a few drinks. Maybe an invite upstairs to Twilight’s room to have a very intimate chat between the three of us. Since Trevor’s the only stallion in this bizarre castle of clones, I’ve been meaning to catch him—I mean, speak with him—as soon as I could. You didn’t happen to see him, did you?”
                
Fluttershy hid behind a lock of mane again. “Can’t say that I have.”
                
Sexy Sparkle frowned. “Pity. I think he’s afraid of me because he thinks I’ll break his pelvis during our little chat. I mean, I will, once I get my hooves on him. I’ll absolutely ruin that smexy stud.”
                
“Smexy?”
                
Sexy Sparkle flipped a bit of wavy mane away from her face. “Oh, that? For someone like me that considers most things either gorgeous or sexy, I’ve found the need for an entirely new classification of what turns me on. One step above sexy is smexy. So far, Twilight Sparkle and Trevor Sparkle are the only ones worthy of such a term.”
                
Achoo!
                
Trevor Sparkle sneezed from beyond the closet door.
                
Sexy Sparkle turned to it. “Was that a sneeze?”
                
Fluttershy hurriedly ran a hoof across her nose. “Yes! Excuse me! There must be a lot of dust in the basement.”
                
Sexy Sparkle stared at her. “That sneeze sounded awfully masculine, I must say.”
                
Fluttershy shrugged. “Genetic trait?”
                
Sexy Sparkle narrowed her eyes, giving Fluttershy a smoldering look. “Damn. Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly get any sexier: adorable, shy, sneezes like a stallion. Watch out, my cute little mare. If you’re not careful, you might just find your name at the very top of my smexy list.”
                
Fluttershy grimaced. “I’d rather not be on that list, if that’s all right with you.”
                
“Then you gotta stop being so damn sexy all the time.”
                
“But I don’t know how!”
                
Sexy Sparkle rolled her eyes. “And here she goes again! You know how sexy naivety is these days?”
                
“Not really.”
                
“Very.”
                
“Really?”
                
“Oh, yes.” Sexy Sparkle backed away from her, giving Fluttershy some room to breathe. “You’re lucky I’m on a mission right now, cutie pie. Otherwise I’d have you on the floor faster than you could say, ‘Hey, I’m on the floor. How did that happen?’”
                
Fluttershy kept silent, hopeful the mare would depart soon.
                
Sexy Sparkle hoofed over a business card. Where it came from on her body was anyone’s guess, as Sexy Sparkle—naturally—had no clothes to speak of.
                
“Here’s my card, if you ever want to… I don’t know, spend some quality time together.”
                
Fluttershy glanced at the card. “All it says is ‘Move your tail upwards and four inches to the left.’”
                
“That’s all you need to do, honey, and then I’ll come running. I have a sixth sense about things like that.”
                
“I believe you.”
                
Sexy Sparkle gasped noisily. “Believability, too! What did I just tell you about being so damn sexy in front of me? Now you’re just trying to take advantage of me and my special talents.”
                
Fluttershy retreated into the wall again. “Please just tell me what’s sexy and what’s not sexy so that I may try and not be so sexy in front of you!”
                
“I would, but I gotta run. It’s been fun, though. Have a quickie on the house.”
                
Sexy Sparkle leaned in to give Fluttershy a kiss on the lips. As brief as the contact was, Fluttershy nearly collapsed to the floor as all of her nerve endings were struck with blinding amounts of pleasure. When Sexy Sparkle backed away, Fluttershy found her lips and tongue completely numb.
                
Fluttershy even forgot her own name for a while.
                
“Tootles!”
                
Sexy Sparkle gave Fluttershy a playful slap on the butt before hurrying up the hall.
                
Alone, Fluttershy sat on the cold stone floor and tried best to summarize all that had happened to her and her friends since first entering Twilight’s castle.
                
“What the buck is going on here?”
> Discord Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So how do you like the pancakes?”
                
Fluttershy looked up from her stack of blueberry pancakes to glance at Trevor Sparkle, who had his own short mound of buttermilk pancakes to call his own.
                
Using his horn, he moved his fork and knife around the plate. “Best pancakes you’ve ever tasted, right?”
                
Fluttershy nodded quickly, sliding her mane over her face again. “They’re very good, thank you. I had trouble deciding which ones to get at first, but some of the ones on the menu didn’t actually sound all that appetizing.”
                
After Sexy Sparkle had left Fluttershy alone, Trevor Sparkle led her out of the castle’s maze-like basement and asked if she was hungry. Not wanting to seem impolite, Fluttershy silently agreed and together they climbed the castle’s many steps to a restaurant that had opened up inside just recently.
                
A large decal above the door to the place read: “PANCAKE SPARKLE’S CASTLE OF PANCAKES”.
                
Considering the business rested solely on the inhabitants of Twilight’s castle, Fluttershy found herself to be the only pony in the place that didn’t bare a striking resemblance to Twilight. She tried to count all the different clones pleasantly munching on fluffy hills of pancakes, but lost count after twenty or so of them.
                
Trevor Sparkle flipped open a menu that pattered all the way to the ground. “Two hundred and thirty-six pancake dishes. None repeating. Although the further you go down, the worse they get: gumball pancakes, pancake-infused pancakes, pancake in the shape of a waffle—” He looked up. “Why wouldn’t they just call it a waffle, then?”
                
Fluttershy shrugged, finally noticing the rhythmic tune in the air that had been playing ever since they’d arrived—a techno song about pancakes. In the corner of the room, another Twilight clone controlled a set of turntables that played out a set of speakers. On her head, she wore headphones and dark sunglasses.
                
Fluttershy would’ve thought the sight of DJ Sparkle would cause her to once again question just what was going on here, but alas, it seemed she’d finally reached the point where she just didn’t feel like questioning things anymore.
                
“Tree bark pancake, broken glass pancake, mushroom pancake, plastic pancake, invisible pancake, Tabasco pancake.” Trevor Sparkle shut the menu and shook his head. “That Pancake Sparkle’s got issues. Good pancakes, but serious issues.”
                
The pancake song stopped with a record scratch and Pancake Sparkle stuck her head out from the kitchen, adorning a chef’s hat and apron. “Did someone say ‘more pancakes!?’”
                
Trevor Sparkle turned to her. “No! No one said ‘more pancakes!’ Everyone’s had enough pancakes already.”
                
Pancake Sparkle frowned, her ears falling flat against her head. “Could someone say ‘more pancakes?’ I really don’t know what to do with myself unless I’m making pancakes.”
                
Trevor Sparkle rolled his eyes. “Fine. More pancakes, please!”
                
Pancake Sparkle’s grin was so wide it nearly divided her head. Bringing a spatula up, she cart-wheeled back into the kitchen as DJ Sparkle started up the pancake song again.
                
“That was really nice what you did,” Fluttershy told him. “She looked so happy when you mentioned pancakes.”
                
Trevor Sparkle sighed, shoving his plate aside. “That’s the trouble with all these Sparkle clones—most of them don’t make any sense. It’s like they’re only created for one single purpose. To talk or sing or explain things or make pancakes or to annoy—”
                
“Or be sexy?” Fluttershy chirped.
                
“Please, don’t remind me of her. It’s only a matter of time before she finds me and…”
                
“And what?”
                
Trevor Sparkle bit his lip. “I’m not sure, but I doubt it’ll be good. I gotta get out of this castle—far away from all these clones that happen to look like me.”
                
“You could stay at my cottage… if you wanted to…”
                
Trevor Sparkle leaned across the table. “Really, Fluttershy? You mean that?”
                
Fluttershy slid her pancakes in front of her to hide her blushing face. “I mean… that is, if you have nowhere else to go… I mean, so far, you’ve been the only sane clone that I’ve met and you did help me find my way out of the basement.”
                
“Would it complicate matters if I told you that I liked you? Or that I think you’re rather cute?”
                
Fluttershy took a quick glance up to find Trevor Sparkle smiling at her. Finding no good place to hide from the smile, she plopped her head into what pancakes of hers remained.
                
Trevor Sparkle chuckled. “Is that a yes or a no? Or is the fact that I look a heck of a lot like one of your friends causing you some doubt?”
                
With an entire pancake stuck to her face, Fluttershy brought her head back up and tried to act as if blueberries and cream weren’t currently dripping onto the floor.
                
“Pancake delivery!”
                
Pancake Sparkle lowered a tray of pancakes onto their table that almost reached the ceiling. Once settled, their table cracked in half and hundreds of pancakes fell to the floor and spread outwards into the room.
                
Pancake Sparkle gulped dryly. “Well, you did ask for more pancakes.”
 

***


 

Her beauty is the type that cannot be classified. It is limitless and ageless—unbound by the simple concepts of love. I’ve only known her for a week, and yet I feel every part of my being want to cling to her; tell her how I feel and hold her close while never letting go.
                
Her voice is soft and yet strong. Her fortitude is unmatched and if I can walk alongside her for the rest of my days, I will have led a life worth living just by being beside her. Her breath smells of freshly cut apples and her mane feels like silk to my skin. When her lips touch mine, I find warmth burning inside of me so bright I fear it will tear me apart. But one small look into her eyes tells me that everything will be all right—that all cares and pains will cease to matter in this world as long as she is mine and I am hers.
                
The love between us is a love never-ending. It is pure and simple at its core, while complicated when viewed from a distance. Those that shall try and break that love between us will find vengeance most severe—pain they could never even imagine.
               
One look at her smiling face and I already know I would die for her—face the very hordes of Tartarus just to kiss her lips again.
                
As I walk behind her in Twilight’s immense castle, I think of all the things I want to tell her—what I want to whisper into her ear as I hold her beside a roaring fire. Finding courage, I open my mouth and speak the words I think she needs to hear, so she’ll never need to think twice about why I love her as much as I do.
                
Finding my throat parched, I tell her…
 

***


 

“Apples.”
                
Applejack turned around to look at Apple Sparkle. “You say something, sugarcube?”
                
Apple Sparkle blushed. “Apple… apples apple.”
                
Applejack slowed her pace to wrap a leg around her, pecking her on the cheek. “Isn’t that sweet of you to say! I love you, too, Apple Sparkle.”
                
Instantly, Applejack could feel the eyes of all of her friends upon the two of them.
                
She grumbled out, “What? I can’t kiss my marefriend in front of y’all for some reason?”
                
Most looked away, except for Pinkie Pie who sidled up next to them. “Nobody cares about that, silly! We just want to know if the rumors are true!”
                
Applejack raised a brow. “What rumors?”
                
“That Apple Sparkle tastes like apples!?”
                
Applejack loudly stomped a hoof. “Now that there isn’t anyone’s business, you hear? What happens between Apple Sparkle and I, stays between—”
                
In one solid bounce, Pinkie Pie rocketed upward and landed gracefully in front of them. Gripping both sides of Apple Sparkle’s head, she smooched her on the lips and pulled away, gasping excitedly. “She does taste like apples, you guys! I knew it!”
                
Rarity sighed. “No one was curious about that, Pinkie Pie. Just you.”
                
“I was a little curious,” Rainbow Dash admitted above them.
                
Applejack frowned. “Well, now you know. So knock it off, all right! If y’all want your own Twilight clone, then be my guests. There’re more than a few of them around here, so take your pick.”
                
Once Fluttershy had been taken away by Sparkle Sparkle, the six of them had asked Exposition Sparkle where Twilight’s clone laboratory had been built. Once they’d been given a general map of the castle, they followed the looping directions for close to an hour before finding the correct room.
                
Before departing, Exposition Sparkle heeded to them a warning: “During your journey, do not enter any rooms besides Twilight’s laboratory.”
                
Pinkie Pie broke that rule in less than a minute when she opened a door leading to Surrealist Sparkle’s exhibition of bizarre artwork. After Rarity broke down into heavy sobs and reconsidered the meaning of life a full six times, Applejack slammed the door to the exhibit shut and they’d continued on their way, slapping at Pinkie Pie’s hooves every time she’d try a new door.
                
Finally they’d made it there, although what they found once inside didn’t offer much help.
                
Applejack brought a hoof to her temple. “Oh, crap! Now what’s Discord doing here?”
                
The inside of Twilight’s laboratory was large and vast, something the tiny door leading into it hid well. A large telescope sat at the room’s very center, angled so it jutted out from an opening in the glass ceiling. The ceiling must’ve been over four stories high.
                
Steel terminals and controls lined every wall and in the center of one was a Twilight-shaped silver mold turned onto its side; a computer screen attached to it printed out large reams of paper filled with data. The aforementioned vat of “Twilight clone goo” hung in a giant bowl above the mold, next to a set of roll-able stairs.
                
“Waiting patiently, obviously,” Discord answered evenly.
                
Next to the humming machine sat Discord, reading from a newspaper with one leg crossed over the other. On one of his knees was a timer, quietly ticking away.
                
Rarity pointed a hoof at him. “So you’re the one responsible! I knew Twilight wouldn’t be so reckless as to try something as ridiculous as this!”
                
Discord raised a brow and kept reading from his paper. “Whatever do you mean? You really think I’d have either the time or the skill to pull off something as scientific and advanced as cloning? Blargh! Even sitting here for over an hour is torture to me. I wonder what would happen if I pulled it out early? Hopefully nothing too bad.”
                
Rainbow Dash zoomed to Discord so her face was pressed up to his. “Tell us what you’re up to, Discord! Now!”
                
Ding!
                
Squealing with delight, Discord shoved the pegasus aside and stood, flinging his timer to the side to explode. He snapped himself to the side of the Twilight mold, ripping it open and letting a mountain of steam spill out into the room.
                
He glared at them. “Remember when none of you came to my party a few weeks ago? Well, now I’ve found the perfect solution!”
                
Pinkie Pie bounced up to him. “We tried to! Honest! But we couldn’t find your house! No one knew where it was!”
                
Discord rolled his eyes. “So it’s my fault none of you can bend the barrier between realms and cross the black sea of madness in an effort to come to my party? I thought we were friends!”
                
The steam from the mold overwhelmed Applejack and the rest of them, so they could hardly see a single step in front of them.
                
“Hello, beautiful!” shouted Discord.
                
“Not too bad yourself, I must say!” replied another Discord.
                
Once the steam cleared, Applejack watched as Discord wrapped his arms around a near identical Discord—one whose skin and fur colors were of purple and light blue.
                
“You know what I’m thinking?” Discord asked.
                
“I think so!” the other one replied.
                
Both Discords started clapping their hands into each others’, keeping perfectly in sync as they increased their speed.
                
“Patty-cake, patty-cake, baker’s sham! Bake me a clone as fast as you can! Pat it, roll it, and mark it with a D! Put in the oven for Discord and me!”
                
When the Discords came to a stop, they started laughing until one had to support the other with an arm. The real Discord wiped away a tear.
                
“Ladies, allow me to introduce Discord Sparkle. They’ll be my new friend from here on out, so I won’t be needing any of you anymore… maybe Fluttershy, eventually. I’ll think about it.”
                
Rarity took a step forward to look at Discord Sparkle. “So she’s part Twilight and part Discord? I must say, she doesn’t look all that feminine.”
                
Discord waved a hand. “That’s because Discord Sparkle isn’t a guy or a girl. They’re a spirit, like me! You honestly thought the Spirit of Chaos known as Discord actually had a sex?”
                
Rarity grimaced. “So you’re not male? But you’re voice is so low.”
                
At that, Discord rolled his eyes. “I can be whatever I want to be at any time I want to be, all right? And so can Discord Sparkle. But I’ve got to run, little ones! Lots of interesting things to show my new friend!”
                
With a snap of his fingers, Discord disappeared from the room, leaving the six mares to stare at Discord Sparkle in confusion.
                
“You don’t know how to snap yet, do you?” Rainbow Dash asked it.
                
The purple draconequus shook its head.
                
A second later, Discord reappeared again. “Silly me! I almost forgot about you! Here, let me show you how it’s done.” He grabbed the other Discord’s fingers and put them in a snapping position, showing them how to do it. “And once you snap your fingers just like so—snap!—really cool things happen!”
                
Discord Sparkle snapped its fingers and its mane caught on fire.
                
Discord furrowed his brows. “Well, we’ll work on that.”
                		
With another snap, he and his clone finally left the room for good.
                
“Things really can’t get much weirder, can they?” Rarity asked them all.
                
Rainbow Dash flew into her face. “Now why would you go and say that!? If you say that, then of course things are going to get weirder!”
                
“Can I get anyone a drink?”
                
The six mares turned to the corner of the room, where another Sparkle clone walked up to them. The only difference on this clone happened to be her eyes; both of her pupils staring in completely opposite directions.
                
“Which Twilight clone are you?” Applejack asked.
                
“Accident Prone Sparkle.”

The clone nodded, causing her pupils to rearrange themselves in different parts of her eyes.
                
Rainbow Dash nudged Pinkie Pie. “More like Derpy Sparkle, if you ask me.”
                
Applejack turned to her. “Now knock that off, Rainbow! Derpy happened to open up a vortex into the center of hell a single time when she sat down on a bench in town and you still continue to use that against her. She’s just not all that… together, all right?”
                
Rainbow Dash sighed. “Fine. Whatever. Don’t get so upset about it.”
                
“Can I get anyone a drink?” Accident Prone Sparkle repeated.
                
Apple Sparkle raised a hoof. “Apples?”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle shook her head. “Oh, I wouldn’t try to drink apples if I were you. There’s a good chance you might drown.”
                
Applejack rammed a hoof into her own face. “She meant apple juice. Seriously, it’s starting to feel like I’m the only one that can understand what Apple Sparkle’s even saying.”
                
No one jumped forward to answer that.
                
Accident Prone Sparkle nodded happily. “All right! Five apple juices coming up!”
                
“We only asked for the one.”
                
“Oh, I know. But there’s a good chance eighty-percent of the drinks I bring back will smash to the floor before I can get them to you. I’m kind of bad at holding things.”
                
“We figured,” Applejack said. “But before you do that, can you tell us where the real Twilight is? We were told she was with someone called Sexy Sparkle, but then it turned out she was busy in here. And now Twilight’s not in here, either.”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle thought for a moment. “You know, you’re right. I haven’t seen Twilight in days. Last time she left, she told me to look after the place because she had to go check on Dark Sparkle’s restraints.”
                
The six mares shared a glance. “Dark Sparkle?” they all said at once.
                
Accident Prone Sparkle looked at them with growing unease. “You know? The one clone that’s not allowed to leave the castle under any circumstance?”
 

***


 

Trevor Sparkle breathed a sigh of relief as he opened up his copy of “So You’re A Clone: What’s Up With That?” and started to read. After showing Fluttershy the exit to the castle, he told her he’d see her again after he gathered his belongings from upstairs. Once he got there, though, he decided to rest for a while after all of the day’s activities.
                
He read aloud from his book: “Topic number six—how to stand out from the rest of your clones. Ever tried wearing a hat? Not many ponies wear hats these days.”
               
Beep… beep… beep… beep…
                
He looked up from his book to listen to a soft beeping noise from somewhere in the hall outside. In order to keep others out, he’d both locked his door tight and then cast a spell on it to make it appear like just an ordinary space of wall.
                
As the noise increased, Trevor set his book down and felt something cold settle deep within his gut.
                
Beep…beep…beep…beepbeepbeepbpbpbp!
                
The beeps pulsed louder and faster, until they sounded like they were right outside his room. Before he had a chance to react, his bedroom door was ripped off its hinges and the only pony in the entire castle he didn’t want to see strolled inside.
                
“Sexy Sparkle…” he quivered out.
                
Sexy Sparkle shook a lock of mane from her eyes. “The one and only!”
                
“How did you find me? I had a cloaking spell and everything.”
                
Something that looked like a bit of metal with a tiny green screen hovered around Sexy Sparkle’s head. “With this little sexy device—a testosterone level reader. Since you’re the only stallion in the castle, it didn’t take me too long to track you down.”
                
“How in Equestria could you have made that?”
                
Sexy Sparkle exhaled loudly. “What? You don’t think I’m smart just because I look at the world in a far sexier light than most? I am still a Twilight Sparkle clone, you know. I still have her level of smarts.”
                
Trevor Sparkle hastily glanced around the room. “Is there any way of talking you out of this?”
                
She flashed him a grin. “Afraid not, my smexy little stud. And don’t you dare think of running or zapping away. I’ve already thought and planned out over two-hundred escape routes or tactics you might try to use and I’ve come up with a deterrent for all of them. There is no escape, Trevor Sparkle. You will be mine and all mine for the next two to twelve hours.”
                
He gulped. “Will it hurt?”
                
She tipped him a wink. “Only if you want it to.”
                
For a minute, Trevor Sparkle weighed his options. Considering he only had around four escape routes in mind at the time, he came to the bitter conclusion he was completely and thoroughly screwed. Or would be, starting soon.
                
He stood up and sighed. “Fine. Let’s get this over with, then maybe you can get me out of your system for a while.”
                
Sexy Sparkle moaned. “Oh, but I’ve only wanted you in my system, Trevor.”
                
“No more puns, please. This is terrible enough.”
                
“But don’t you know how sexy puns can be?” She raised a brow. “So will you come quietly or do I need to drag you out of here, kicking and screaming?”
                
He glared at her. “I already agreed, didn’t I?”
                
Sexy Sparkle blushed a bit. “But it would just be so much sexier if you struggled a bit. I have a fantasy about stuff like that.”
                
“I’m sure you have a lot of fantasies.”
                
She bit her bottom lip as she waited by the door.
                
Sighing again, Trevor Sparkle said unconvincingly, “Oh, please, don’t. Not like this. Anything but this. I’m too young to die. I can’t believe you’d do something so evil, you sexy mare.”
                
Sexy Sparkle’s legs shook uncontrollably beneath her. “Damn it, Trevor! How did you know I found terrible acting to be the sexiest of all acting types? You’re in for it now.”
                
His eyes widened. “Uhh—”
                
With one strong kick from her legs, Sexy Sparkle charged forward and tackled the stallion to the floor. In the blink of an eye, Trevor Sparkle’s world went from bright white to overwhelming amounts of purple.
> Janitor Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I just don’t know what went wrong.”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle stood in front of the empty cell, ears pressed flat against her head. She looked like she was about to cry.
                
Rarity came to wrap a leg around her. “Just what was supposed to be in here exactly? And how did it get out?”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle wiped at an eye. “Dark Sparkle. A while ago, Twilight and I were having lunch away from the laboratory when we heard a bunch of yelling and ruckus inside. When we came back, Dark Sparkle was there, claiming she’d cleanse Equestria of all its weak ponies. Since she was still unsure of her powers, Twilight was able to contain her and place her in here until we could think of what to do with her.”
                
Rarity and her friends viewed the mammoth empty cell that once held Dark Sparkle. Chains rained down from ceiling, connected to different parts along the floor. Broken and bent bars had been thrown into the corners of the room or left impaled into the walls. A chalk diagram in the shape of a circle with numerous symbols drawn within it sat by the center of the cell. At the very back, a wide hole had been punched through the thick cement, giving the mares a perfect view of the tunnel of dirt that slowly dug upwards until it hit the outside world.
                
“Dark Sparkle did this?” Rainbow Dash asked, flying into the cell. “This doesn’t sound good.”
                
“Apples,” Apple Sparkle agreed.
                
Rarity asked, “You think Twilight might’ve went after her after finding her missing?”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle sat on the floor, head bent. “Probably. I just hope she’s all right. Twilight’s always been super nice to me, unlike other Sparkles.”
                
Applejack went behind her and ruffled her mane. “Don’t you go sweating a thing, hun. My friends and I will see to it that Dark Sparkle’s found and dealt with. And with any luck, we’ll also find Twilight in the process. The Elements have dealt with worse.”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle looked up to her. “You really mean that?”
                
“Of course I do.”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle smiled wide, one eye meeting Applejack’s while the other floated somewhere along the ceiling. She hugged her hard; Applejack letting out a grunt.
                
“If you think I’m cleaning that up, you all must be out of your minds.”
                
The six of them turned to find a purple bipedal dragon with wings pushing a broom across the floor. She wore a dirty brown hat and blue overalls.
                
Pinkie Pie squealed in delight. “Oh, yes! Dragon Sparkle! I knew we’d see one eventually!” She brought a hoof to her mouth. “Or would it be Scale Sparkle? Spike Sparkle? Fire Sparkle? Claw Sparkle?”
                
Applejack nudged Rarity. “I take it this is the Spike version of Twilight, so why does she look so much taller than him? You think the age difference between Twilight and Spike has something to do with it?”
                
Before Rarity could reply, the purple dragon pointed a claw at Pinkie Pie. “What are you talking about? I’m Janitor Sparkle. That’s all there is to it. And now I come here and see you’ve all made a mess that now I’ll need to clean up.”
                
Rarity took a step forward. “You mean the mess in the cell? That wasn’t us, darling. That was Dark Sparkle. We—”
                
Janitor Sparkle waved a claw. “Doesn’t matter. It’s still a mess that needs to be dealt with. You ever seen the castle in such a nice state before? I doubt it. That last janitor deserved to be fired.”
                
“Spike was fired?”
                
“Or he quit or something or other.” Janitor Sparkle sighed. “Doesn’t matter. It’s my responsibility now. I only hope you all wiped your hooves off at the door.”
                
“Apples?” Apple Sparkle asked.
                
Applejack shushed her. “Don’t worry your cute little head about it, sugarcube. This is all way too messed up to try and figure out just yet. We just need to try and stay calm and—”
                
SPLAT!
                
Applejack turned to find Janitor Sparkle with a face full of cake, crumbs and bits of icing dropping to the floor. Pinkie Pie stood in front of her, icing on her hooves.
                
“Congratulations on the new job!” Pinkie Pie screamed at her.
                
Janitor Sparkle sighed again. “Please leave the castle before I set you all on fire.”
                
The six of them obliged her.
 

***


 

Applejack fumed as she felt something press against her butt again. She closed her eyes and shook her head.
                
“How many times do I need to tell you to stop touching my butt!?”
                
Sexy Sparkle flipped a lock of mane from her eyes. “I’m only categorizing, Applejack. It helps keep things in order. So many butts, so little time. You know how it is.”
                
“Actually, I wouldn’t know anything about that; also, just why in Equestria you had to tag along with us. We all might be going up against a pretty nasty Sparkle clone soon.”
                
Sexy Sparkle smirked. “You don’t find violence as sexy as I do?”
                
After leaving Twilight’s castle of clones and dropping Accident Prone Sparkle back at the lab, the five remaining mares were cornered by Sexy Sparkle near the entrance. As much as they said it would be better if she stuck around there, she followed them regardless.
                
As Applejack and the others walked in a single formation, Sexy Sparkle lagged behind.
                
“You want to at least walk with us?” Rarity asked.
                
Sexy Sparkle shook her head, her smoldering eyes never leaving the five plots ahead of her. “No, thanks. I’m too busy enjoying the view from back here.”
                
Slap!
                
“Hey!” Rainbow Dash turned to stare at her butt. “Did you just put a sticker on me? A 9.2? What does that even mean?”
                
Sexy Sparkle moaned. “I told you before. I’m categorizing. You all have such magnificent behinds that I’ve found the need to organize them accordingly. Naturally, you all get the ‘SEXY’ seal of approval, but, sadly, not all butts are created equal.”
                
Slap!
                
Pinkie Pie giggled. “She touched my butt! Ha!” She stared at her own plot sticker. “9.4! I actually beat Rainbow Dash!”
                
Rainbow Dash blanched. “What? Why? Everyone’s plots look nearly identical!”
                
Sexy Sparkle scoffed. “Perhaps to the unobservant, but Pinkie’s butt has that distinct level of fun that is absent from the rest. Yours, on the other hoof, is more athletic; although it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
                
Slap!
                
“Apple?”
                
Applejack sighed. “You got a 9.8, Apple Sparkle. For once, I’m not about to disagree with Sexy Sparkle.”
                
For the next couple of minutes, the six mares trotted up the path leading out of Ponyville, following the small clusters of destruction left by the sides of the road. Trees had been uprooted and bushes set ablaze with only twigs remaining. A blackened set of hoof-prints marked a trail along the ground. Applejack had a terrible suspicion of just where it all may be leading to.
                
After Rarity had been given her own ‘SEXY’ classification sticker, she hurriedly flicked it away, only to receive another one only seconds later. Noticing her score drop by a decimal point, she grimaced and left the sticker where it was. This didn’t mean that anyone was actually enjoying Sexy Sparkle continuing antics.
                
Lowering her voice, Sexy Sparkle whispered to them, “You know, I just saw a bush a little while back we could all… you know… go to and, uh… I don’t know, have a little fun behind?”
                
Applejack stomped her hooves into the ground, spinning to face the mare. “No! For the last time: no! It doesn’t matter how you word it, we all know exactly what you’re after. So for the last time, we don’t want to go into a bush, or a gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, or doghouse to have a little fun with you, all right?”
                
Sexy Sparkle took a step back. “Well, I was only being polite…”
                
“Also, I’m sick of you staring at my butt, so from here on out, you can walk ahead of us.”
                
Applejack shoved Sexy Sparkle ahead of the group and wouldn’t start walking until Sexy Sparkle did the same. For a time, Sexy Sparkle walked and grumbled, until she started swishing her tail around her plot while shaking her hips from side to side.
                
It seemed she had a sexy backup plan for everything.
                
Trying to ignore her, Applejack turned to Rainbow Dash, “Far as I can tell, each Sparkle clone was created due to some mishap with the clone goo. Whaddya think went in Dark Sparkle’s vat? And just who would want to create something like that?”
                
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “A rock? I dunno. That’s a tricky question.”
                
“Oh, look! Someone dropped a bit!”
                
“What—” was all Applejack could get out before something soft and warm smashed against her face. She quickly backed away and ran a hoof over her muzzle.
                
Sexy Sparkle had stopped in the center of the road, plot raised while she grabbed at nothing on the ground. She viewed Applejack through half-lidded eyes. “Oh, my! I had no idea you felt that way about me, Applejack. You could’ve just told me you wanted to stick your face there.”
                
Applejack growled deep within her throat. “That’s gross, Sexy Sparkle! Don’t you dare try that again!”
                
Everyone came to a standstill as Sexy Sparkle gingerly walked towards them. “We all know how this ends, my sexy little mares. You might deny it now, but sooner or later, I’ll claim all of your butts as my own. So why delay the inevitable? Why not just get it out of the way? All six of us, right here and right now? I’m sure your ‘saving the day’ heroics can wait until tomorrow.”
                
“Is that the only reason you followed us here?” Rainbow Dash inquired.
                
Sexy Sparkle absently kicked at a pebble. “Maybe.”
                
With a hoof, Applejack pulled Apple Sparkle next to her. “I don’t care what you want, Sexy Sparkle. I’m committed to this beautiful mare right here and that’s that. And I’m sure she’d say the same about me.” She kissed her on the temple.
                
Apple Sparkle blushed. “Apple apples.”
                
Sexy Sparkle grimaced. “Well, okay, that’s two of you, then.” She smiled brightly. “Pinkie Pie? Care to have some fun together?”
                
Pinkie Pie giggled. “I’m always up for fun! Everyone knows that! But… just not the type of fun you seem to be wanting right now. You want me to make you a balloon animal? Those are always fun!”
                
Sexy Sparkle ignored her, turning her attention to Rarity. “Rarity? We could… I don’t know, dress up or something! Make it all special and elegant! Anything you want!”
                
Rarity closed her eyes and shook her head.
                
Sexy Sparkle let out a quivering breath, mouth agape. “Rainbow Dash? Please, don’t leave me hanging. Not like this! We could make it like a contest! Sure! A big completion to see who finishes—”
                
Rainbow Dash held out a hoof to stop her. “No can do, Sexy Sparkle. You lost my vote the moment you rated Pinkie Pie’s butt higher than mine.”
                
Sexy Sparkle sank to the ground, her eyes brimming with tears. She looked to each of them in turn. “So… none of you want to? Really? You’re… denying me?”
                
Collectively, the five of them nodded.
                
Bawling loudly, Sexy Sparkle fell to the road and softly beat her legs against the dirt. Tears cascaded from both eyes as she sniffled and whimpered noisily.
                
The standing mares shared an awkward glance.
                
Sexy Sparkle hitched it a breath. “It’s not fair! You all have such nice butts and now you won’t let me have them! You’re all so mean! I thought you mares were all about friendship and magic, but no! You’re all just selfish sexy mares that don’t realize just how sexy they are!”
                
She pointed a leg at them. “Imagine being in my place. A whole world full of gorgeous, sexy beings! Every moment of every waking day, all your mind tells you is that things are sexy or could be sexier, and that you need to be closer to that sexiness! And here all of you are, flaunting around the most perfect butts in all of Equestria and now you won’t let me have them!”
                
She moved her leg down the row of mares. “Imagine no more apples, Applejack! Imagine no more dresses or parties or pegasi races! You all follow a passion in your life—something that makes life worth living! And all you’re doing now is denying me my one passion in life. I ask you: what else is Sexy Sparkle supposed to do besides be really, really, ridiculously good looking and want to give that sexiness over to others? Make others feel good and sexy in their own unique way? Don’t confuse me for some whore, because that is not how I see myself. I am not the monster here. Perhaps it is all of you who are—monsters that just happen to have wonderful behinds.”
                
As Sexy Sparkle her last statement hang in the air, Rarity wiped a tear from her eye. “That was perhaps the second best speech I’ve ever heard about butts.”
                
Sexy Sparkle perked up a bit. “So does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”
                
“No. But I’ll admit it was a nice speech.”
                
In a flash, Sexy Sparkle was back on her hooves, sniffing at the air.
                
“It’s close!” she shouted, before taking to the air with deft precision.
                
Rainbow Dash flew up to watch her go. “Now where’s she going?”
                
Applejack watched Sexy Sparkle change directions mid-flight as her heart sank. “Oh, no you don’t!” She then galloped forward, making the others follow close behind.
 

***


 

“Wow! She’s fast!”
                
Rainbow Dash kept to the skies to trail behind Sexy Sparkle, as the rest of the mares tried their best to keep up with them on the ground. The original Twilight had been an average flyer at best; Sexy Sparkle, it seemed, was born to fly… as long as she had a clear goal in mind.
                
“Please don’t be too late! Please don’t be too late!” Applejack whispered as she ran.
                
Sexy Sparkle took a quick dive from the air and disappeared behind a row of trees. Applejack and the others rounded a final corner and entered through the fence into Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack gulped dryly as her worst thoughts proved true.
                
“Umm…”
                
Big Mac stood with a bucket of apples still clamped in his mouth. Sexy Sparkle had landed right on his back, all four legs wrapped around him tightly. A new ‘SEXY’ sticker had already been slapped on his rear: a perfect 10.
                
Sexy Sparkle rubbed her head into Big Mac’s fur. “Mine. All mine.”
                
Big Mac set down his bucket and looked from Sexy Sparkle to Applejack, furrowing his brows. “Eeyup?”
                
Applejack cautiously approached them. “Now, don’t you panic, big brother. Keep your mouth shut and try not to make any sudden movements and we’ll have this Sparkle clone off of you as fast as we can.”
                
Sexy Sparkle turned to her, moaning contently. “Oh, I don’t think so, Applejack. This big stud of smexy stallion isn’t going nowhere. He’ll be staying right underneath me for some time. I wouldn’t dare let something like this get away from me.”
                
“Now that’s just creepy, Sexy Sparkle! Big Mac’s my brother and he—”
                
Sexy Sparkle raised a brow. “So what? Isn’t he old enough to be making his own decisions?” She buried her face into his mane. “And didn’t you want me out of your hair for a while? I can’t think of a better way than by getting to know your older brother a little better.”
                
A bit of Applejack’s soul chipped away and floated off towards the heavens; the thought that her brother would remain an innocent stallion for all time cruelly ripped away from her. But, alas, her and her friends still had a Dark Sparkle to contend with.
                
Removing her hat to hold by her chest, she asked her brother, “You okay with this Big Mac?”
                
Big Mac turned his head to face Sexy Sparkle, who tipped him a wink and gave him a playful hit with her tail. Big Mac’s cheeks burned red as a big goofy grin ate up his face.
                
“Eeyup.”
                
“Just make sure he’ll be able to buck apples tomorrow.”
                
Sexy Sparkle glared at her. “I highly doubt that.”
                
Big Mac then trotted them both towards the barn and shut the doors behind them. Only seconds later did a whole plethora of words Applejack had no idea Big Mac even knew float out the barn windows.
                
Covering her ears, Applejack ran back to the road beside her farm and in the direction they’d been heading in before.
                
At this point in time, she really, really hated clones.
 

***


 

Ponyville cemetery sat on the outskirts of town, scarcely visited with complete lack of grass. The whole area was either dull grey or brown, with overhanging trees blocking out most of the sun. As soon as the five mares took a step inside, they felt a small chill creep up their spines.
                
As they crossed the small graveyard, they noticed cracked and ruined grave markers; bits of stone flung in all directions. Even though the area was old, most dirt plots appeared as if only recently filled in. Had there recently been a mass accident in town that none of them knew about?
                
At the very back of the graveyard was a stone mausoleum. Standing on its steps was Dark Sparkle, wrapped up tight in a dark cloak.
                
From what Applejack could tell, her fur was of the darkest purple and her eyes burned in a haunting red glow. The bits of mane that they could see appeared jet black.
                
Resting on one of Dark Sparkle’s hooves was a book, dust covered and ancient. Slowly, she raised her head to stare at them all, not with apprehension or anger. Almost boredom.
                
Rarity took a shaky step forward. “Now… stop whatever is it you’re doing, Dark Sparkle, and come with us. You’re not allowed to be out and Twilight would like to have a word with you.”
                
Dark Sparkle stared at her blankly. “I will not be going back to that pit she placed me in.”
                
“Well… we can discuss that later. Away from the graveyard with all the dead things and such.”
                
“Ponyville will burn,” Dark Sparkle replied softly, “as will its inhabitants. There is no stopping it.”
                
Applejack shoved Rarity aside. “Stop talking like a weirdo! If you’re not coming with us, then that means you’re putting up a fight. So if you are, then let’s get to it and be done with it before you do something you’ll regret!”
                
Dark Sparkle slowly turned to her. “You think I have waited here just for you to come and stop me? What I have set out to do has already been done. In fact, I did it thirty-five minutes ago.”
                
Rainbow Dash chuckled uneasily. “Why doesn’t that sound very good, you guys?”
                
A second later, the earth shook and several grave markers toppled to their sides. The mausoleum behind Dark Sparkle caved in on itself and two burning red portals appeared beside her. The soft dirt covering most of the graves was effortlessly pushed aside as undead Twilight corpses clawed their way to the surface—more than two dozen of them.
                
From the red portals shot out a pair of Sparkle clones with the ears and wings of a bat, mouths dripping saliva and fangs as sharp as knives.
                
The remaining Elements each waited for one of them to say something—perhaps sum up all what had happened that day and how they should now proceed.

That pony ended up being Apple Sparkle.
                
“Apple?”
 

***


 

The stallion doctor stopped by his next patient’s door, grabbing their chart and giving it a once over. What he saw made him take pause.
                
He asked a nearby nurse, “Am I reading this right? Big Mac’s been checked in here?”
                
The nurse came to stand by the door. “Afraid so. Severe dehydration and exhaustion. We placed him a temporary coma just to be sure.”
                
“Is he expected to fully recover?”
                
“Yes, but he’ll need lots of bed rest until then.”
                
The doctor stuck his head inside the door. Big Mac had covers pulled up to his neck; a heart monitor and several glasses of water by his side. Even through the oxygen mask, the doctor could see Big Mac’s extra wide grin.
                
The doctor raised a brow. “How did Big Mac hurt his wrist? I see no other bandages besides that one.”
                
The nurse blushed. “Well, after hearing what happened to him, a lot of stallions have been sneaking in and giving him high-fives without his knowledge. It’s already caused a cramp.”
                
“High-fives? What in Equestria happened to him?”
                
“We’re not sure yet, but there’s a similar case in another wing. A stallion named Trevor Sparkle.”
                
The doctor brought a hoof to his chin. “We’d better get to the bottom of this, then, before others are injured in such a way. Anything relatable between the pair?”
                
The nurse hesitated, before answering, “A pair of ‘SEXY’ stickers stuck to their butts. Both receiving ten out of tens.”
                
The doctor removed his glasses to stare at a wall. “Then may Celestia protect the next pony that dare receives a ten out of ten.”
> Heart Attack Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trevor Sparkle jolted as he felt someone’s hooves close around his head. Opening up both heavy eyelids, he found the startled face of Fluttershy staring back at him, a faint blush on both cheeks.
                
She sat down on the visitor’s chair by his bed. “I’m… uh… sorry to wake you. I was just trying to fluff your pillow.”
                		
Trevor took a breath and tried to steady his heart. He leaned back into his hospital bed and wiped away the sweat from his mane.
                
“It’s all right. It’s fine. I just… I just thought you were someone else.”
                
Fluttershy could hardly meet his eyes. “Sexy Sparkle?”
                
Trevor hesitated before answering. “Yes. She got to me. I don’t even know how many days ago it happened, but she did. The whole horrible affair almost feels like a blur to me. A painfully long and hard blur.” He grimaced. “And also very, very, very purple.”
                
Fluttershy nodded faintly. “I hope you’re not mad, but I glanced at your chart before I came in. Nothing looks broken, I’m pretty sure, but the x-rays on some of your joints and ligaments… it’s almost as if you aged ten years in just a couple of days.”
                
Leaning forward and wincing from the strain, Trevor raised a brow. “And how would you know anything about x-rays and joints?”
                
“I take care of animals. A lot of them, actually.”
                
Trevor nodded, then chewed on his lip. “I haven’t seen a doctor yet. I must’ve been dropped off after… you know. Did anyone speak to you about how my… thing might be recovering?”
                
Fluttershy scooted her chair closer to him. “Your thing? What thing? Did Sexy Sparkle take one of your precious things and damage it? I hate it when ponies do that. Like when I leant Rainbow Dash one of my books on animal care for Tank, and when I got it back the spine was all twisted and there was a stain on the—”
                
“I meant my groin,” Trevor cut in bluntly.
                
Fluttershy’s blush reached maximum visibility. “Oh. That thing. On the way in, a nurse told me to be careful around… that, although I obviously didn’t come here for your… that. The nurse just said you’d need to take extra precaution from here on out.”
                
Trevor sighed. “It seems my first sexual experience almost killed me. I really don’t like being the only stallion clone of Twilight Sparkle’s.”
                
“I’m sure if you asked nicely, Twilight would make a second stallion clone. Then at least there’d be two of you to help balance things out.”
                
With a chuckle, Trevor said, “That’s not what I meant, but—” Then he paused as he noticed a helium-filled balloon on the nightstand next to him. Beside that was a bag with a large bow on its front. Stamped on the balloon was “FEEL BETTER SOON!”
                
Trevor smiled brightly. “Fluttershy, you really didn’t need to do that for me. That’s very sweet, though.”
                
Again, Fluttershy hid behind a lock of mane. “Those gifts didn’t come from me, actually. Those all came from—”
                
“Sexy Sparkle,” Trevor finished for her, a lump of ice forming in his gut. “She’s not done with me yet, is she?”
                
“It doesn’t look like it.”
                
Trevor swallowed dryly. “What’s in the bag?”
                
“A list of all the things she’s going to do to you once you’re released from hospital. It’s over three hundred pages and has its own index and glossary. Hardcover and first edition. It’s really organized and detailed, too, with illustrations and diagrams and cited sources and everything… but I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised with her being a clone of Twilight’s and all.”
                
More sweat formed on Trevor’s temples. “Anything else in the bag?”
                
Fluttershy stared at the floor. “A lot of little bottles of liquids. I’m not sure what each one of them is for, but they do smell rather fruity. Also… a few items I remember accidentally spotting in Rainbow Dash’s sock drawer once. Only, a whole lot bigger than hers.”
                
For close to a minute, Trevor judged the size of the bag with the bow on it and just how many items might be contained within. Then he asked himself if he could truly survive another intimate encounter with Sexy Sparkle, who seemed to have learnt another dictionary worth of nefarious sexual acts in only the past few days.
                
Realizing he could hardly feel anything from the waist down, he admitted to Fluttershy:
                
“You need to hide me.”
 

***


 

“Apples!”
                
Applejack turned to Apple Sparkle, grabbing another apple from her saddlebag and throwing it towards her. In one solid spin, Apple Sparkle turned and bucked with one leg, hitting the tossed apple dead center and sending in hurtling towards an approaching undead Twilight clone.
                
So far, Apple Sparkle’s aim had been near perfect, as the solid juicy apple struck the undead clone square in the eye before propelling out the other side of its skull; bits of mushy brain and sharp bone fragments falling to the cemetery dirt.
                
As the remaining Elements had soon discovered after becoming surrounded, it was that the undead were rather soft and breakable. The same could not be said for the pair of bat-like Twilight Sparkles that flew around the frenzied battle with highly aerobatic precision.
                
“A little help here!” Rainbow Dash called out, speeding through the air as both Twilight bats crisscrossed over and under her, both sets of fangs snapping at the air around her.
                
“Just a minute, darling!” Rarity trailed the soaring trio, illuminating her horn and directing it to the Twilight bat closest to the ground. A bright aura wrapped around the clone’s tail, pulling her a few more feet towards the ground. But she was still much too close to Rainbow Dash for comfort.
                
The Twilight bat underneath Rainbow nearly nipped at her belly.
                
“A little more help here!” Rainbow Dash cried.
                
Apple Sparkle turned to Applejack and immediately Applejack knew what she had planned. Crouching close to the ground, Apple Sparkle ran to her and leapt onto her back. The moment she pressed her hooves into her, Applejack shot her up and Apple Sparkle grabbed hold of the closest Twilight bat’s tail and dragged her to the ground.
                
Swinging the clone abomination in an arc, the bat pony’s head collided with a grave marker that quickly exploded into dust, before she collapsed to the ground unconscious.
                
Apple Sparkle stood over the body, blowing a bit of mane from her eyes. She said lowly, “Apples apple apple.”
                
Applejack exhaled sharply. “Now’s not the time for witty puns, Apple Sparkle! We still got a bunch more clones that need dealing with!”
                
While everyone else was either busy with undead clones or bat Twilights trying to snap at their necks, Pinkie Pie was the only one of them brave enough to approach Dark Sparkle and try and reason with her.
                
“So you’re telling me you’ve never, ever tried cake before!? Or ice-cream!?”
                
From deep within her cloak, Dark Sparkle rolled her haunting red eyes. “For the last time, no. I care not for sugary sweets, you simpleton mare. I only wish for the swift end of all those that do not belong in the new world of my creation. Your kind, for example. The silly, the idiotic, the… unnecessary.”
                
Pinkie Pie gasped. “Unnecessary!? How could Pinkie Pie be unnecessary? Without me, who’d remember everyone’s birthday and sing to them the Super Special Extra-Extravagant Colossally Impossibly Amazing Twelve Minute Long Birthday Song? Who, darn it!? Tell me! Maud? A piece of toast!?”
                
Dark Sparkle bared her teeth, a bit of blackened smoke escaping from her mouth and eyes. “In my new world of perfect ponies, no one will sing the Super Special Extra-Extravagant Colossally Impossibly Amazing Twelve Minute Long Birthday Song. Ever again.”
                
Pinkie Pie gasped even louder than before, retreating from her.
                
“You really are the most evil villain in Equestria!”
                
Dark Sparkle gave her the faintest of smirks.
                
“About time you took notice.”
 

***


 

Princess Luna’s loud hoofsteps echoed off one tall wall to the next, her hurried trot down the castle’s long hallways quieted only by the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears.
                
Just seconds ago in the middle of her sleep, the Princess had had a premonition—one so alarming and so terrifying the first thing she knew she had to do was inform her sister at once.
                
Outside her sister’s ornate throne room, Luna took a moment to catch her breath. Then she stopped breathing altogether as she heard the oddest of sounds coming through the doors.
                
It was of Celestia reading aloud… and the sounds of dozens of tiny fillies giggling at whatever she was saying.
                
Without caring about making a scene, Luna gave her back to the door and bucked it off its hinges. (True, she could’ve just knocked and entered like any other normal pony, but sometimes she found it was important to signify just how critical the situation was. Also, Luna had always been a proud supporter of Canterlot’s Door and Doorknob Repair Shop.)
                
“Celestia! We must share words! I fear something terrible might be happening in Ponyville right this moment and that we must make haste before—”
                
Celestia looked up from her book. So did the three dozen filly-sized Twilight’s sitting patiently on the throne room floor, watching and listening intently.
                
When Luna abruptly stopped speaking, each one of them turned to her and every one of their tiny mouths flew open in a gasp. Before she knew what was happening, all three dozen fillies had surrounded her, each vying to snuggle up to her and bury their heads into her fur.
                
Luna’s mouth hung agape. “Uh… Celestia? What is the meaning of all this?”
                
Her sister gave her a crooked smile. “The oddest thing, Luna. When I was preparing to meet some dignitaries before lunch, this giant red portal appeared out of nowhere and all these little Twilight’s popped out—all of them demanding that I read to them.”
                
Luna took a moment to glance down at the Twilight directly below her. The Twilight in question smiled up to her warmly. The filly told her sweetly, “You’re really pretty.”
                
Luna had to bite her lip to keep herself from hugging the mare hard enough to crush her bones into dust.
                
She turned back to her sister. “And you did not question any of it?”
                
Celestia shrugged. “Why? They’re adorable.”
                
A couple tiny Twilights broke away from the rest to grab books off the shelf to hold up to Luna, each of them asking for her to read to them in that sweet little voice of theirs.
                
It took more fortitude than she thought she had, but Luna actually managed to ignore them for another moment.
                
“Adorable?” she said to Celestia. “Obviously, they are adorable. But you never even questioned just why they are here? Or just why a portal suddenly appeared in your throne room out of nowhere?”
                
Celestia shrugged again. “Sometimes I find it best not to over think things. Especially when such things are just so freaking cute!” With her horn, Celestia scooped up the nearest filly Twilight to set on her lap and make funny faces at. To that, the filly laughed and laughed until tears dotted the corners of her eyes.
                
Luna grumbled, “You do not believe this to be a trap of some kind? To keep us occupied and docile while some terrible force threatens to lay waste to all of Ponyville alongside its innocent denizens?”
                
Celestia began tossing the filly Twilight in the air, catching her with both forelegs. “Twilight will take care of it. She always does. Besides, could you ever say no to such a face?”
                
She held the tiny Twilight out to Luna, who pursed her lips and regarded the Princess with such sweet innocence it robbed Luna of all her warrior-like tendencies in just a matter of seconds, thus destroying her very way of life from that day onward.
                
A single tear coursed down Luna’s cheek.
                
She told her sister, “I want to read the next story to them.”
 

***


 

“WHY WON’T YOU LET ME HUG YOU!?”
                
Sparkle Sparkle levitated off the ground in a blinding ball of light, her yellow and red fire mane and tail whipping around in a frenetic wind. She gritted her teeth and went to the next undead Twilight clone on the street.
                
“WILL YOU PLEASE MAKE ME A PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICH!?”
                
When the undead clone merely viewed her with curiosity before taking a stumbling step forward to lunge at her, Sparkle Sparkle aimed her horn at it and blasted it into ashes. So far, whichever undead clone she went to that wouldn’t do what she wanted them to, had been vaporized without a second’s hesitation.
                
Truthfully, Applejack couldn’t be happier by the demi-god’s temper tantrum.
                
Ten minutes ago, Applejack and the rest of the Elements heard shrieks and screams coming all the way from Ponyville. Leaving the ruined cemetery altogether, they ran back into town and found a near identical scene from the one they’d just left.
                
Dozens upon dozens of undead Twilight’s shuffled down the streets, lazily trying to grab at passersby to snack on their heads. In the sky, another half-dozen Twilight bats flew from rooftop to rooftop, waiting until some poor pony left their house so they could pick them up and carry them away.
                
Thankfully, the only time they almost succeeded, Rainbow Dash was able to fly higher than the Twilight bat and then plant two hooves into their spine, causing them to let go of their prey. Just below them, Apple Sparkle waited to cushion the innocent pony’s fall.
                
After Pinkie Pie had started her first song about the joys of cupcakes and brightly colored frostings, Dark Sparkle disappeared into a swirling vortex of crimsons and blacks. As she left, she never even said a word or gave them all a well deserved cackle. It seemed Dark Sparkle’s dark business was serious business indeed.
                
“Stand back!”
                
Janitor Sparkle inhaled a large batch of air into her lungs, straightening her posture before bowing down and letting loose a giant mass of churning flame. The four or so undead Twilights caught in the fiery mass scattered to ashes at once. A lone Twilight bat that had been flying too close to them singed the corners of one of her wings and struck the ground hard, knocking herself out.
                
Once the flames had dissipated, Applejack tipped the dragoness a wink.
                
Janitor Sparkle rolled her eyes. “Just so we’re clear: I am not cleaning this up!”
                
Rarity bucked a Twilight bat in the gut, causing her to double over in pain. She trotted over to Applejack to stand back to back with her.
                
“Lucky for us all those Twilight clones came to help.”
                
Applejack agreed. “I guess that makes one good thing about all these different Twilights. They all still have that part of Twilight Sparkle in them that makes them want to help.”
                
“Who wants pancakes!?”
                
Pancake Sparkle loaded a wooden catapult with another batch of cement pancakes, before Accident Prone Sparkle pulled the lever and sent them flying into another horde of undead clones. Some of the solid pancakes flattened soft heads at the way to their necks, while the rest of the hard projectiles effortlessly chopped the clones into pieces.
                
Applejack chuckled dryly, admitting to her, “I almost feel bad for these undead things. They’re so soft and mushy-like, I don’t reckon they ever stood a chance.”
                
“I know. Just look at what all those little Sparkle clones are doing to them.”
                
Applejack turned and found a half-dozen filly Sparkle clones jumping up and down on the flattened corpse of another undead monstrosity. After jump number six, only a puddle of purple goo remained underneath all their tiny hooves. Watching the act nearby was another filly Twilight wearing a thick set of glasses, yelling to them instructions of what to do next.
                
Rainbow Dash took a break from the battle to land next to Applejack and Rarity.
                
“What’s up with that tiny Sparkle with the glasses? She like the leader of them or something?”
                
Applejack licked the rim of her hat before flicking it at an approaching undead clone. Her hat effortlessly sliced through its neck, causing its head to topple to the ground.
                
Applejack answered, “I heard they all call her Heart Attack Sparkle or something.”
                
“Heart Attack Sparkle?” Rarity echoed. “But why? Does she have a history of heart disease?”
                
A moment later, the filly Sparkle with the thick-rimmed glasses turned to look at them, and all three of the mares gripped at the area above their hearts.
                
“Damn it, that’s cute!” Applejack moaned, closing her eyes from the pain.
                
Rainbow Dash pounded on her chest to get her heart moving again. “She’s so cute she makes Sweetie Belle look like hot garbage!”
                
Rarity glared at her.
                
Rainbow Dash tried to laugh it off. “I mean… not that hot garbage is all that bad… or anything… I mean…”
                
“Apples!”
                
Applejack turned just in time to watch as Apple Sparkle was lifted into the sky by a pair of Twilight bats and quickly carried in the direction out of town. Grabbing her blood-soaked hat off the ground, Applejack spit out a wad of phlegm and gave chase.
                
Her friends followed close behind her.
                
“I’m coming Apple Sparkle!”
 

***


 

“Ahoy, matey! Ready to plunder the seven seas in search of some ripe romantic booty?”
                
Sexy Sparkle took a seat inside the small makeshift tent and gave her mane a flick. She eyed the Sparkle clone seated in front of her at a table with a sultry grin.
                
“So I hear you’re Ship Captain Sparkle, correct?”
                
The Sparkle with an eye patch and pirate’s hat gave her a grin, displaying her yellow stained teeth.
                
“That be correct, my little landlubber beauty! Ah take single ponies like yourselves and pair them up with other ponies that ah figure might fit well together! Ah even make charts about it! What good-natured ship captain wouldn’t spend their time making charts?”
                
Captain Sparkle laid out a wide chart containing the picture of the single mare connected to another three other pictures—two stallions and a mare. Along the lines connecting the pictures together was a series of facts pertaining to the possible relationships.
                
Sexy Sparkle clapped her hooves together excitedly. “So where’s my chart?”
                
“One moment, my little powder monkey!”
                
Ship Captain Sparkle pulled out a larger chart than before—close to six times larger. At the very left was a picture of Sexy Sparkle, and covering the rest of the chart was the pictures of close to everyone in town (as well as a few out-of-towners) alongside a selection of ancient mythological creatures and soon to be reformed super villains. Obviously, more than a few Sparkle clones also dotted the picture-heavy chart.
                
Ship Captain Sparkle set her hat down and sighed. “Ah thought ah’d be visiting Davy Pones’ Locker before ah finished this accursed thing—ah guess that’s what happens when a pony has a dungbie as fanciful as yours.”
                
Sexy Sparkle giggled. “I don’t know what that is, but thank you.”
                
Ship Captain Sparkle laughed. “So which one o’ these lucky buccaneers will you be setting romantic sail with?”
                
As Sexy Sparkle scanned the mammoth chart of eligible mares and stallions for a third time, her heart gave a lurch. Slowly, she brought her head up to glare at the other Sparkle coldly.
                
“Why isn’t Trevor Sparkle on this list?”
                
Ship Captain Sparkle fiddled with her hook hoof uneasily. “Ah’m afraid that son of a biscuit eater has shown no interest in your poop deck, Ms. Sparkle. It seems he’s trying to hornswaggle on you with another mare.”
                
Sexy Sparkle’s whole body shook with unrelenting anger—her eyelids narrowing as her expression took on a venomous appearance. She curled her lips back and growled:
                
“Tell me who she is.”
> Speedy Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lyra and Bon Bon had no real idea what they were staring at. It was in the shape of a normal pony, only its fur had grown so long that it shielded them from head to hoof with several inches of extra fluffy fur. Its coat was purple and on its head was a horn. If it had wings at all, they would’ve been buried somewhere underneath all that fur.
                
“Phhhp… php… phpphph… gasp!”
                
The extra fluffy Twilight inhaled a large batch of air as a Twilight bat flew past her head. Thus far, Ponyville had been under attack by a horde of clones baring the resemblance of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Lyra and Bon Bon should’ve been more alarmed by this fact, considering that once again they were forced to fend for both their lives and their town, but, realistically, this was the eighth time this year something close to this had happened. And, if memory served them correctly, most events such as these worked themselves out just fine in around twenty-two minutes. Forty-four max.
                
Bon Bon pointed at the mound of fur from the bench they sat on. “Is that all it does? Hold its tongue out and make little farty noises?”
                
Lyra cocked a brow. “I guess. But it’s still kinda cute, right? At least mildly amusing.”
                
The fluffy Twilight stepped up to a flower on the ground and gasped all over again, before she began trotting in small circles and making that phhph noise some more. Less than a minute before this, she’d miraculously pulled a white pillow out from her fur and decimated an undead clone with it.
                
“I don’t know,” Bon Bon said, “it’s fun to watch for a couple of minutes, sure, but any longer than that? I dunno. It might get pretty stale, pretty quick.”
                
Lyra turned to her. “We could always switch benches, you know.”
                
“But I really like this bench! And it’s right in the middle of town, so we can watch all the destruction and everything from here!”
                
Lyra nodded. “True.”
                
In the clear blue sky, two speeding Twilight bats carried another Sparkle clone in the direction heading out of town. Bon Bon thought she heard the clone screaming out, “Apples!” but couldn’t be sure. Following close behind them was Applejack and the rest of Twilight’s friends.
                
When they disappeared out of sight, Lyra said, “We could always live somewhere else, Bon Bon.”
                
At that, Bon Bon sighed. “But where else would we get such low housing costs? And such good value on spontaneous disaster insurance?”
                
Lyra nodded again. “True.”
                
In a flash of bright light, a purple and light-blue draconequus appeared alongside Fluff Sparkle, lowering down to rub its face into her fur. By its touch, Fluff Sparkle scrunched her face up and stood still.
                
Snap!
                
Now the real Discord stood next to Sparkle Discord.
                
“Now just what in Equestria do you think you’re doing?”
                
Sparkle Discord detached itself from the purple mound of fur. “Hugging?”
                
Discord ran a heavy hand down his face. “Hugging? We don’t hug! Not unless under duress or if the situation demands it. Draconequuses don’t give out random hugs, all right? So knock it off!”
                
Sparkle Discord took a step away from Fluff Sparkle and ran a hand along its arm, looking downcast. “It just looked really fluffy, is all…”
                
Discord grumbled to himself, “And here I go spending all my free time trying to teach you the delicate art of chaos and all you do is go around ruining our reputation…” He sighed. “I almost think there’s more Twilight in you than Discord.”
                
With a pout, Sparkle Discord kicked at a pebble on the ground.
                
Discord rolled his eyes and wrapped a long arm around it. “I’m sorry, Discord Sparkle. That was uncalled for. I just thought a Discord clone would come with the software already installed and running. But, alas, we should probably practice snapping again. Why not give it another try?”
                
Discord Sparkle extended his eagle’s claw and snapped with them, starting a small fire on Fluff Sparkle’s back.
                
“…phhph… pphph… phphph… gasp!”
                
With amazing speed, Fluff Sparkle ran up the road, stopping at the town well to hop inside and extinguish the flames.
                
Lyra and Bon Bon watched this all unfold with mild interest, passing a box of popcorn between them.
                
Bon Bon whispered to her very special best friend, “I told you this bench was the best bench in town.”
                
Discord pulled on his beard. “Not bad, Discord Sparkle. Let’s try something else. Try something on them.” He pointed a sharp claw at Lyra and Bon Bon.
                
Before it snapped its fingers, Discord Sparkle thought for a moment.
                
Snap!
                
It seemed as if nothing at all had changed.
                
“Well, what did you even do!?” Discord fumed out.
                
Discord Sparkle turned to him. “That bench would’ve needed a new coat of paint in around six week’s time. I made it need a new paint job in less than four. Maybe a few new nails too. And don’t forget possible splinters.”
                
Discord stared at the purple draconequus blankly, an expression of boredom, hatred, anger, and itchiness all vying to let loose all at once. Instead of doing any of that, he sighed loudly and went limp.
                
“Let’s start back from the beginning, then. Lesson One: Putting the word ‘fun’ in chaos, even if it doesn’t belong there.”
 

***


 

Since leaving Ponyville behind, Applejack hadn’t let Apple Sparkle out from her sights. While sweat poured down from her mane and her temples, her heart beat like a jackhammer and her muscles ached something fierce. Even feeling all of that, she ran as fast as she could, keeping under the pair of Twilight bats that held tight to her marefriend.
                
“Put her down right now!” she yelled, but to no avail.
                
As she heard the rest of her friends start to close in behind her, a purple and rainbow colored blur shot down from the sky and planted a quick hoof into one of the Twilight bat’s side. Like a lead weight, the bat pony careened towards the ground and landed hard, writhing in pain.
                
“Ap-apple!”
                
With one flyer gone, the remaining Twilight bat had hardly a hold left on Apple Sparkle, who now dangled from the end of one leg. In the air, the purple blur moved again and Applejack watched as the remaining Twilight bat was struck in the jaw and sailed into the trunk of a tree several meters away.
                 
Apple Sparkle descended only a few feet before the purple blur grabbed a hold of her and rocketed them down to the ground, stopping with only just centimeters to spare.
                
Once stationary, Applejack and the rest of them finally saw the blur with clarity.
                
“I just knew I could take those guys out!”
                
It was another Sparkle clone almost identical to the original, except with a rainbow-colored mane and tail done up in a messy-like style. In just one look, Applejack knew exactly who she was supposed to be.
                
She groaned. “Ah, crap. Now we gotta deal with a Rainbow Dash Sparkle, too?”
                
The new clone started doing pushups on the ground. “Speedy Sparkle, actually. You see how I took out those bat ponies? I was all like Pow! Blam! Smack! And they were all like, ‘No! Not my face! You’re too awesome, so stop hitting my face!’”
                
Safely back on the ground, Apple Sparkle rejoined the rest of them and gave Applejack a hug.
                
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Actually, I watched the whole thing and it didn’t go anything like that.”
                
Speedy Sparkle went from doing pushups with her legs to doing them with her wings. “I’m pretty sure it did. But that’s all right. Sometimes I tend to move a little too fast for the average pony to keep up with. Don’t go feeling slow, though. Compared to me, everyone’s pretty slow.”
                
Applejack spun around to glare at Rainbow Dash. “You just had to go making a clone for yourself, didn’t you!?”
                
Rainbow Dash took a step back. “What? No way! How would I have even known how? And why would I even do that?”
                
“Because you’re jealous of Apple Sparkle and I! Just admit it!”
                
Rainbow Dash shook her head angrily. “You think the only mare I’d be interested in would be one that acts just like me? That’s kinda rude, don’t you think?” She added a mocking tone to her voice. “Oh, Rainbow Dash just loves competition, so I’m sure she’d love a competitive mare! Also, one with a rainbow mane and tail! Flies fast? Check! Ego the size of Cloudsdale? Check!”
                
Speedy Sparkle came to join their little group, shoving Apple Sparkle aside. “You wouldn’t happen to be talking about me, would you? My level of hearing is quite impressive.”
                
Rainbow Dash told her, “I don’t know who made you, but all my friends here think that I did just so I’d have a Sparkle clone to call my own. But that’s just not the case!”
                
Speedy Sparkle narrowed her eyes. “So what are you saying, exactly? That I’m not good enough for you? Maybe it’s you who isn’t good enough for me? You ever think of that?”
                
Rainbow Dash snorted. “Impossible. I’m the fastest flyer in Equestria! There’s no way you wouldn’t want to be my marefriend!”
                
With a wink, Speedy Sparkle informed her, “Correction: used to be the fastest flyer in Equestria. And I’m pretty sure if I wanted to, I could get you to fall in love with me in ten seconds flat.”
                
Rainbow Dash frowned hard. “Not a chance! Not before you’d fall in love with me!”
                
“Fine! Then let the competition begin!”
                
Rainbow Dash came forward the same time Speedy did, mashing their noses together. Both narrowed their eyes as if searching for some hidden weakness on the other.
                
A few steps away from the odd scene, Rarity nudged Pinkie Pie in the ribs. “Just how in Equestria did we get here? I mean, really? The mirror pool was one thing, but… jeeze! This just keeps on getting weirder and weirder!”
                
Pinkie Pie detached a bit of her tail to pop on a cone and start munching on. “I know! Isn’t it great? And for once even I don’t know what’ll happen next!” She pointed her cone at Rarity. “Cotton candy?”
                
“No thanks.”
                
Back with the two Rainbow-colored mares, Speedy Sparkle had already begun a countdown from ten to zero.
                
“Eight… seven… six…”
                
A bead of sweat trickled down Rainbow Dash’s head. “I’m not just gonna fall in love with you because you bet I wouldn’t!”
                
“… five… four… three…”
                
Both of Rainbow Dash’s wings shot out to her sides, causing her to curse under her breath.
                
“… two… one…”
                
“Oh, just do it already!”
                
Tired from the unnecessary distraction, Applejack ran up to them and shoved their heads together, causing their lips to touch and both of them to close their eyes.
                
A moment later, both mares collapsed onto the ground, kissing passionately. As soon as one pinned the other against the dirt with a kiss, the one on the bottom then tried to reverse their positions.
                
They both mumbled out when they had the extra oxygen to spare:
                
“I told you you’d fall in love with me first!”
                
“No! Applejack cheated! If it wasn’t for her, you would’ve cracked!”
                
“Well, at least I’m a better kisser than you!”
                
“That’s not true! I’m just off my game right now! I can kiss so much more awesomely than this! Like twenty-percent more awesomely!”
                
Rarity turned to Pinkie Pie. “On second thought, I think I will have some of that cotton candy now.”
 

***


 

Taking a single step back into town, the five friends (and one Speedy Sparkle that zipped around their heads due to increased boredom) immediately spotted a very familiar sight.
                
“Thank Celestia!” Rarity cried, trotting ahead of them.
                
Waiting for them was another Twilight Sparkle; one with no noticeable differences from the original. Even her smile and little wave seemed much the same.
                
Rarity nearly tackled her into the ground with her hug.
                
“You have no idea how hard things have been, Twilight! I mean, just—”
                
Rarity cut her sentence short as she pulled away from her.
                
“You’re probably not the real Twilight, are you? Just another clone.”
                
Twilight chuckled lightly. “No, friend mares. It’s really me, Twilight Sparkle of the Princess variety. And I’m here to let you know that everything is now well under control.”
                
Not twelve steps behind Twilight did a hulking, story-tall, heavily muscled Sparkle clone scream at the top of its lungs before smashing an entire row of undead Sparkles into mush. Perched on her finely shaped shoulder was another Sparkle holding a tray of coffees, downing each of them with alarming speed as her eyelids twitched uncontrollably. Coffee Sparkle, Applejack mused. 
                
“I think you might be wrong about that one, Twilight,” Rarity told her.
                
Twilight’s smile never faltered. “Why would I lie? The real Twilight Sparkle does not lie. Everything is peachy keen, yes it is!”
                
Rainbow Dash landed beside them. “This can’t be the real Twilight. She doesn’t talk anything like this!”
                
Twilight turned to her. “Whatever do you mean, rainbow mare? I am so Twilight Sparkle. The same Twilight Sparkle that enjoys books… and tea… and, uh, books about tea… and, uh, fried shrimp!” She paused for a moment to retrieve a note card to read over. “I mean friendship! Yes, friendship! Glorious, glorious friendship in mother Equestria!”
                
Rainbow Dash flew upwards and crossed her forelegs. “I’m not buying it. This has to be some kinda trick.”
                
In a flash, Speedy Sparkle zoomed next to her. “I knew it was trick a whole sixty seconds before you did.”
                
“No you didn’t.”
                
“Wanna bet?”
                
Applejack glared at the pair. “Knock it off! Now’s not the time.” She went over to Twilight, stopping in front of her. “Listen, it’s no big deal if you’re a clone. We’ve already met dozens of them.”
                
Twilight’s smile started to falter around the edges. “No! It is me! Twilight! Honest! I just love—” She stopped as her eyes crossed and her mouth hung agape. “Excuse me for a second! I just need to—”
                
As Twilight whirled around to trot away, Rainbow Dash cut her off. “Just where do you think you’re going?”
                
Twilight hitched in a breath. “I just need to sneeze! So just let me—”
                
Achoo!
                
All six mares gasped at once. All except for Twilight, who stood stock still before them, hardened black outer shell out on display. Only her mane and tail remained the same, as the rest of her took on the exact appearance of a changeling underling.
                
A second later, the changeling erupted in a wash of green flames, taking on the appearance of Twilight again. She ran a leg across her nose. “Excuse me, comrades. That was a particularly nasty sneeze. Time for slumber party and marshmallow squares?”
                
Apple Sparkle pointed a hoof at her. “Apple!”
                
Everyone turned to Applejack for clarification.

She rolled her eyes. “She said ‘GET HER!’”
                
In one fluid motion, the six mares pounced on top of Twilight, effortlessly pinning her to the ground.
                
With sweat pouring from her mane, Twilight chuckled dryly. “Maybe there’s been a misunderstanding, friends.”
                
Applejack stood atop of her, two hooves pinned into her chest. “Tell us who you are! A changeling? A clone? A changeling clone?”
                
Twilight thought over the options. “None?”
                
“Not an answer.”
                
With her teeth, Applejack yanked a feather out of one of Rainbow Dash’s wings and began running it under Twilight’s nose. Struggle as she might, Twilight eventually showed the signs of a mighty large sneeze on its way.
                
Achoo!
                
Again the changeling dropped the Twilight guise, once more giving them all the sight of a changeling mixed with Twilight Sparkle.
                
Her light-blue eyes fearfully darted from one mare to the next. “I can explain!”
                
Applejack pushed a hoof into her cheek. “Then start explaining!”
                
“I was taken by Dark Sparkle! She wanted me to infiltrate your group and pretend to be Twilight! The only problem is I’m really bad at acting like Twilight!”
                
“Obviously,” Rarity muttered to no one in particular.
                
“Why?” Applejack asked.
                
“To lure you into a trap!” Tears started spilling from her eyes. “I didn’t want to! Honest! But if I didn’t bring you all back to Dark Sparkle, then she said she’d kill me! She’s so mean sometimes and no fun at all! I called her Grumpy Sparkle just one time and she threw me through a wall! Then she made me repair the wall that I was thrown through!”
                
Applejack looked away from her, turning to the rest. “This still doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why wouldn’t Dark Sparkle just get another Twilight clone to try and trick us? They all look like Twilight, right? So why a changeling clone? Can it even turn into anyone else besides Twilight?”
                
The changeling shook her tearstained face.
                
Rarity added, “Maybe Dark Sparkle thought that a changeling would be a good pony to side with her. Changelings have always had that villainous look to them.”
                
The changeling sniffled. “We’re not evil! We’re just misunderstood!”
                
“Is that why you just admitted to trying to lure us into a trap against a super villain?”
                
The changeling paused. “Once! I only did it once!”
                
Facing her friends, Applejack sighed. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
                
Pinkie Pie smiled wide. “A song and dance number to help introduce her to the town!?”
                
“No. It means we go along with the trap.”
 

***


 

Brittle twigs and tiny rocks were crushed underhoof as they made their way down the winding path. A fair distance out of Ponyville, the trees started growing closer together, cutting out much of the sun overhead. Soon the dirt path below turned to cobblestone, before becoming nothing more than bits of shattered rock and hard-packed dirt.
                
A rusted gate swung against a tall stone wall. The other part of the gate had been ripped off and left on the dried grass next to the large mansion looming over them, three stories tall and twice as wide as Applejack’s barn. Most windows of the mansion were either cracked or missing altogether; most of its paint weathered away some years ago. A large rickety porch hung along its front—a set of swinging chains holding a deck chair that lightly tapped against the wall.
                
Rainbow Dash hovered in the air and viewed the house with pursed lips. “So this is it, huh? Dark Sparkle’s hideout? Makes sense, I guess. All dark and spooky-like.”
                
With a hoof, Speedy Sparkle ruffled Rainbow Dash’s mane. “Is someone scared of a little ol’ abandoned house? I bet I could spend a whole night in there all by myself!”
                
Rainbow Dash pressed her face into hers. “Nuh-uh! Not when I could spend a whole two nights there! No candles or lantern or Daring Do books or anything!”
                
“Oh, yeah?”
                
“Yeah!”
                
“Oh, yeah!?”
                
“Yeah!”
                
Both Apple Sparkle and Applejack jumped into the air to nip at their tails, dividing them. The last six arguments that’d broken out between the rainbow mares had all ended much the same—a rather competitive and noisy make-out session that only extended their mission more.
                
If Applejack had thought of bringing a bucket of ice water along, she would’ve dumped it on them hours ago.
                
“So this is the place, Changey?” Rarity asked the changeling, back in her Twilight disguise.
                
Since none of them had wanted to keep on calling the changeling either “Twilight” or “the changeling,” they all settled on Changey once Pinkie Pie started calling her that.
                
Changey gulped dryly. “Yep. I was supposed to tell you that the source of Dark Sparkle’s power is located in the basement, and then we’d all go through those doors on the right. That’s when Dark Sparkle would’ve trapped you all in and then done something terrible.”
                
“So then what should we do?”
                
“Enter through the front,” Changey explained, indicating the set of double doors on the porch. “There’s nothing in the rest of the house, yet; Dark Sparkle’s only been working in the basement so far. If we entered through the front, then you’d all still have the element of surprise.”
                
Rainbow Dash laughed. “Maybe we should get a new member and call her The Element of Surprise.”
                
Rarity groaned. “I think we’ve always had that Element.”
                
Rainbow Dash furrowed her brows. “What do you—”
                
“Surprise!”
                
In an explosion of confetti and streamers, Pinkie Pie launched upwards and slapped a party hat on Rainbow Dash. Afterwards, Rainbow Dash shut her eyes and used two hooves to rub at both temples.
                
A short battle strategy later, the group of mares (and lone changeling) crossed the littered lawn and stepped onto the mansion’s porch, each wooden board bending underneath them.
                
Applejack pushed the front doors open and waited until her eyes got used to the gloom before entering. Inside the foyer was a set of dusty couches and a couple moth eaten rugs. Hanging from the ceiling was a chandelier incased in crisscrossing spider webs.
                
With a nod, Applejack said, “Seems normal enough. For a spooky mansion, I mean.”
                
Once she stepped into the entryway of the mansion, the rest of them did the same, breaking away from each other to inspect various old items in the room. The only one to stay behind on the porch was Changey, who glanced around anxiously while rubbing at a leg.
                
“I’m…” she muttered out. “I’m so sorry about this.”
                
Clang! Clang! Clang!
                
A set of thick steel bars slammed down across the entryway. Another dropped down to block another door inside the house, while a third set of bars sealed shut across the only window in the room.
                
Applejack hurried over to Changey—the two of them now divided by bars.
                
“It was still a trap all along,” Applejack said breathlessly.
                
Changey couldn’t look her in the eyes; eventually reverting back to her dark changeling form. “I had no choice. I needed a way to keep her from killing me.”
                
Applejack shook her head. “You just made a very serious mistake.”
                
“Not as serious as yours, I fear…”
                
An airy, haunting voice sliced through the silent house with ease—at once sounding as if spoken from far away as well as right behind ones head.
                
Applejack went to stand with the others as a swirling mass of blacks and purples congregated in a corner of the room. What stepped out from the ball of energy wasn’t Dark Sparkle as Applejack had feared, but rather a taller, thinner Twilight adorning black and silver armor. Her horn and wings were longer; a set of sharp fangs out on display. Her coat was a perfect midnight black and her purple tail and mane billowed out around her body like a carefully controlled magic aura.
                
The clone spoke barely above a whisper, yet all of them heard each word as clear as day.
                
“I am Nightmare Sparkle… and soon I will turn all of your darkest fears into reality…
            
“Not a single one of you shall leave this place…
             
“I will make sure your own worst nightmares devour you one by one…”
                
Scared stiff, it took Rarity a full ten second before she noted Pinkie Pie poking her in the face.
                
“What!?” she screamed.
                
Pinkie Pie took another bite from her cone. “You still want some cotton candy?” 
> Future Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

From a sea of black came the image of a barren field of withered grass. Hundreds of thin and twisted trees stood in long rows, not a single leaf to be found on a single branch. A hollowed out barn sat in the middle of it all, broken and left ruined.
                
In a daze, Applejack walked between the rows of trees, the tears she had cried many hours ago dried upon her cheeks. Although it had taken her some time, she eventually realized it wasn’t just some random barn and field she was walking through, but Sweet Apple Acres.
                
Was Sweet Apple Acres.
                
“Gone,” she managed to whimper out. “All gone.”
                
The nightmare Applejack had been trapped inside was far from perfect—the barn several meters from where it actually stood—but so far she hadn’t noticed a thing amiss. As she saw it, her life’s work had suddenly come to an end. And that was all there was to it.
                
Dreams always had the oddest ways of seeming more real than they should be.
                
In Pinkie Pie’s own nightmare, she strolled around in the heart of a mammoth candy store, much larger than Sugarcube Corner ever was. So large, in fact, that she couldn’t even glimpse a possible exit. Tall shelves that stood as tall as the sky itself held every type of sugary delight imaginable—all the colors of the rainbow and flavors that had yet to be invented.
                
For the longest time, Pinkie Pie merely danced from row to row, eyes bulging from their sockets in a bid to scan every single shelf, making a mental note of which ones to devour first.
                
On a pedestal illuminated by an unseen light was a green ball no larger than a coin. A sign below it read: “SUPER SOUR BALL—MOST SOUR BALL EVER CREATED.”
                
Cart-wheeling towards it, Pinkie Pie scooped it up and mashed it into her face, which she found rather odd, because she had actually been aiming for her mouth. Then something cold splashed inside her gut and she finally realized what was keeping her giggles at bay all along.
                
Somehow her mouth had been removed from her face.
                
Together on a puffy cloud, Rainbow Dash and Speedy Sparkle embraced one another, panting hard with their manes coated in sweat. Less than a minute ago, they’d both finished the greatest aerial races of their lives, including six Sonic Rainbooms apiece and the sight of Celestia crying tears of pure awesomeness from the sidelines.
                
Each member of the crowd had a foam hoof on and a matching t-shirt of Rainbow Dash and Speedy Sparkle. When the pair of rainbow mares crossed the finish line at precisely the same millisecond, the whole arena got to their hooves and stomped like there was no tomorrow.
                
Mayor Mare soon appeared before the pair of pegasi and hung a medal around them. Rainbow Dash gave Speedy Sparkle a quick pat on the shoulder, before looking at her prize. It wasn’t what she had been expecting at all.
                
“Participation award!?” she shouted, before Speedy Sparkle reacted close to the same.
                
Mayor Mare smiled at them and nodded. “We had a meeting this morning on the subject of competition and we’ve decided to eliminate it completely; too many ponies end up hurt or pained by not doing as well as others. So now everybody wins every single time!”
                
Fluttershy, Derpy, and Bulk Biceps crossed the finish line minutes later, and when they came to rest on the same cloud, Mayor Mare gave them all the same medal as Rainbow Dash’s.
                
Rainbow Dash felt something deep inside her break. “So every participant gets a medal now?”
                
Mayor Mare grinned wide. “Not just the flyers, but everyone everywhere!”
                
Rainbow Dash spun around to find the thousands of spectators surrounding them all with their own identical medals. Even Celestia had a participation award to call her own—one which she seemed to be wearing with pride.
                
That was when Rainbow Dash collapsed to the cloud in a miserable ball of anguish.
                

***


 

Nightmare Sparkle carefully stepped in-between the six unconscious mares along the floor, watching as they twitched from side to side and quietly moaned. Before they’d had a chance to react to the ambush, she’d unleashed a sleeping spell that quickly overwhelmed their senses and made them drop to the floor like bricks.
                
For the last hour, she’d been going from one mare to the next, peeling open their minds and distorting their dreams into that which they feared most. Once she’d learned of what they truly feared, she then increased its potency—first turning a dream into a nightmare and then into something even worse.
                
Soon she would begin the ritual that would finish them for good—extracting their emotions and their strength through their dreams. Once they all wholly succumbed to their nightmares, there would be no stopping her from draining them until they perished from this world.
                
Nightmare Sparkle stood by Rarity’s side; the only one she hadn’t begun forming a nightmare for.
                
“Let us see what makes you squirm.”
                
Then she pried open her mind to get an intimate glimpse inside.
 

***


 

As the six mares fell to the floor all at once, Changey ran away from the ancient mansion as fast as her legs would carry her. Not even half-way across the lawn did a bright ball of light erupt right before her, causing her to halt.
                
“Changey. You traitorous bitch.”
                
From the ball of white light stepped out yet another Twilight clone, clad in skin tight black spandex, torn up in several places. Over one eye was a black eye patch and a long, jagged scar ran from her temple to her jaw. Her mane and tail stuck out at odd angles and some parts of them looked scorched as if by fire. Heavy bags hung under her eyes and her expression could be labeled morose at best.
                
From the fright, Changey fell to the grass and shielded her face with her legs.
                
“Wh-who are you?” she whispered.
                
The Sparkle clone exhaled slowly. “Future Sparkle. From ten years from now.” She glared down at Changey. “You’re lucky I have business to take care of, otherwise I wouldn’t hesitate punching a hole through that hardened chest of yours.”
                
Changey shuddered. “Please! You… you don’t understand!”
                
Future Sparkle spat on the grass and grumbled, “I understand just fine. I’m from the future, damn it!” She shook her head tiredly. “Clones. Clones never change.”
                
From a pouch on her side, Future Sparkle brought out a grappling hook that she aimed at the mansion’s roof. Once she shot it up and it hooked around the rain gutters, she pressed a button on the device’s side that began reeling her in. Ten seconds later, after scaling the outside of the house, she stood atop the roof and sighed bitterly.
                
She yelled to Changey. “Don’t you go getting yourself killed now! You still have more to do in this story before the end!”
                
Changey grimaced. “What does that mean?”
                
Future Sparkle rolled her eyes. “It means get the hell out of here before I hit you so hard, Future Changey feels the effects!”
                
Changey did as she was bid, scampering down the road and out of sight.
                
From another pouch on her belt, Future Sparkle retrieved a silver circle instrument that she placed on a section of the roof. After retreating a couple steps, she trotted forward and leapt into the air, pressing another button on her side that detonated the small circle below her and created a rough hole into the house.
                
Inside the mansion, Future Sparkle landed on three legs with the last one left out for balance. She then cleared her shoulders of debris and spun around.
                 
Nightmare Sparkle stared at the new arrival blankly.
                
“Just who are you supposed to be?”
                
Future Sparkle smirked. “Your worst nightmare.”
                
As Nightmare Sparkle shot a purple wave of energy at her, Future Sparkle slid across the floor and hid behind a ratty old couch. A second blast hit the couch and shoved it against a wall, taking Future Sparkle with it. But by that time she’d already retrieved the weapon slung around her back.
                
Future Sparkle left the safety of the couch to point her silver blast ray at her.
                
“The nightmare ends now, you skinny jerk face.”
                
When the blast first struck her, Nightmare Sparkle tried to shield herself with a wing, only for that wing to instantly change from jet black to light purple. As she pulled that wing away, another wave of energy hit her chest, all at once crumpling her armor and sending it tumbling to the ground.
                
Nightmare Sparkle shrieked—the voices of both a spirit and a pony combined.
                
“What are you doing to me!?”
                
Future Sparkle grinned as she spun the dial on her gun, ramping up its strength. She took a cautious step towards the retreating villainess.
                
“What I’m hitting you with is the equivalent of a thousand doses of adrenaline mixed with hypocretin and a shot of espresso for good measure. You’re nothing more than a living, breathing nightmare, so now it’s time you woke up and realized what a bitch you’re being.”
                
Nightmare Sparkle howled again.
                
“I’ll terrorize you for all eternity!”
                
Most of her armor had already been stripped away from her, and over half of her coat had gone from a deep black to a faint purple color. Future Sparkle took another step to her and aimed the energy wave at her head, knocking off her helmet and toppling the tall alicorn to the ground and into a corner.
                
When everything was said and done, Future Sparkle lifted her weapon to blow at its steaming nozzle. Then she lightly poked at the curled up creature before her.
                
“What… what happened?”
                
During the short fight, Nightmare Sparkle had been completely turned from black to purple, all signs of horror and pure evil erased from her skin. She opened her mouth to speak again, but was halted by a hoof.
                
“I know what you’re going to say,” Future Sparkle informed her bluntly. “You’re confused; you don’t know why you’re here; you’re oddly awake and have an intense craving for moon pies, but I really don’t care about that. You’re a clone of Twilight Sparkle, same as I. Only you’re also part Princess of the Night.”
                
“Part… Luna?” Luna Sparkle stammered out.
                
“Yep.”

Using another gun, Future Sparkle created a large hole in the wall, allowing them a view of the damaged lawn outside.
 
“Now get your purple butt out the door and away from here before these mares start to stir. I have some things to inform them of and I’d rather you didn’t get in the way.”
                
Sluggishly, Luna Sparkle got to her hooves and trotted to the newly created hole. She turned back to tell her, “Although I am still rather confused about all this, I feel I must still thank you for what you have done.”
                
Future Sparkle chuckled dryly. “I’m just making sure things happen when they’re supposed to happen.”
                

***


 

After using smelling salts on the six mares on the floor, the group exited the large and decrepit mansion and formed a tight circle beside the porch.
                
From her pouch, Future Sparkle took out a rolled bit of paper and shot a bit of fire at it from her horn, igniting the tip. She took a slow drag and exhaled tendrils of smoke from her nostrils.
                
Rarity blanched at her. “You actually smoke?”
                
Future Sparkle paid her little mind. “After all the things I’ve been through, you’d do the same. Plus, it’s only rolled up grass.”
                
Rarity blanched harder. “Pot!?”
                
With a roll of her eyes, Future Twilight kicked at the lawn. “No. Like grass-type grass. The kind you eat. It still helps keep the mind clear, but that doesn’t matter. I came back in time for a very specific purpose and that purpose is to talk to all of you right now.”
                
Applejack finally finished rubbing some of the mansion’s dust from her hat. “So you didn’t come back in time to rescue us from Nightmare Sparkle?”
                
Future Sparkle took another puff from her joint, this time exhaling out a perfect circle that she then shot a smoke-unicorn through. “Happenstance, let’s call it. In this timeline, I rescue you from the nightmares. In another, Fluttershy and Trevor Sparkle do. In another, a group of Sparkle clones led by Sparkle Sparkle do the dirty work. In the last, you all escape the nightmares due to your own gumption and fortitude.”
                
“Things are getting a bit out of hoof here,” Applejack said with furrowed brows.
                
“Apples,” Apple Sparkle concurred.
                
Future Sparkle waved a hoof. “Doesn’t matter. Alternate dimensions, alternate timelines, Twilight clones as far as my one good eye can see—all that matters is who set this whole thing in motion and just what they’re planning on doing after everything comes to a close.”
                
Rainbow Dash hovered overhead of them. “You mean Dark Sparkle, right?”
                
Speedy Sparkle plopped down on her marefriend’s shoulders, resting her head on hers. “Yeah. Ditto what she just said.”
                
Future Sparkle shook her head. “Afraid not. She might seem like the one that’s causing all this nasty business, but she’s only just a puppet to someone else, same as that Nightmare Sparkle in there—created specifically to confuse and hurt anyone they can.”
                
With both hooves, Applejack shook Future Sparkle hard enough to knock the joint from her lips. “Then quit stalling and just tell us who’s responsible for all this!”
                
Future Sparkle chuckled. “All right, friendos. The one you need to look out for is—”
                
BLAM!
                
Another ball of burning white energy suddenly appeared in the center of the mares, causing them to shield their eyes and take a collective step back.
                
What stepped out from the light was another Twilight clone almost identical to Future Sparkle, only clad in a matching black and blue sweat suit and a good sixty pounds heavier.
                
“Stop!” she shouted, clearly out of breath from the trip. “Don’t tell them anymore!”
                
Future Sparkle’s mouthed popped open from the sight. “Just what the hell are you supposed to be? Fat Sparkle?”
                
The bigger Sparkle grabbed hold of Future Sparkle’s shoulders. “No! I’m you from the future! Two years after you come here! Twelve years from today!”
                
Looking more than a little mortified, Future Sparkle scanned her other self up and down. “What in Tartarus did I do to myself? Holy crap, I’m disgusting!”
                
Fat Future Sparkle huffed out angrily. “It’s not my fault! Really, it’s not! You know how tasty future food becomes? It’s ridiculous! They inject everything with butter in the future! Even putting butter inside of butter!”
                
Future Sparkle shoved herself away. “Get your greasy hooves off of me. I came back on a mission and I intend to see it through, no matter what Fatty Fat Sparkle might have to say about it.”
                
“That’s not my name!”
                
Future Sparkle cocked a brow. “So what if it’s not? Is Chunky Sparkle better? Om-Nom Sparkle?”
                
“Om-Nom Sparkle?” Rarity inquired.
                
Future Sparkle whirled to her. “It’s the sound fat ponies make when they eat.”
                
Fat Future Sparkle poked her with a meaty leg. “Make fun of me all you want, but don’t you dare forget it was actually you who did this to us. So just shut up for a second.”
                
Keeping quiet for a moment, Future Sparkle took the time prod at her own belly and thighs as a worrying expression found her.
                
After a breath, Fat Future Sparkle faced the rest of the group. “I came back in time to stop Future Sparkle for a very large reason. By telling you who’s behind everything right this moment, it only makes things so much worse years from now. So I’m sorry to tell you this, but I can’t let you know who’s creating all these clones.”
                
“Well, that’s just silly!” Applejack exclaimed. “Just why can’t you tell us? Or why can’t you just tell us and then warn us about what happens in the future so we could know what to look out for?”
                
Fat Future Sparkle shook her head. “Time travel is more complicated than it seems. Even thinking about it for more than a minute makes me tired.”
                
“I’m sure the same effect stairs have on you…” Rarity muttered to no one but herself.
                
Future Sparkle poked her plot one more time before speaking again. “So I can’t tell them anything? That’s just—”
                
BLAM!
                
Another ball of sharp white light.
                
“Wait! You’re both wrong!”
                
A third time-traveling Twilight clone stepped out from the light, near identical to the first Future Sparkle but with more scars along her face and less mane and tail to lay claim to.
                
Fat Future Sparkle gasped. “Oh, wow! I got thin again! But how?”
                
Future Future Sparkle regarded her wearily. “A really nice gym opens up across the street from our house. Also, the government shuts down that butter-injecting food company so everything gets a whole lot healthier pretty quick. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m from fourteen years from today and I’ve come with an important message for you all.”
                
Future Sparkle frowned at her. “Another future me, huh? If Thunder Thighs Sparkle is wearing a sweat suit, then just why are you back to wearing spandex? Is the clone war still raging on fourteen years from now?”
                
Future Future Sparkle shook her head. “No. Much worse. It’s the robot wars this time. But you can worry about that when the time comes. Here’s what I need to tell you all.” She closed her eyes and composed herself. “You can’t tell them who’s responsible for the clones, but you don’t need to tell them nothing, either. What you need to do is be very cryptic about it.”
                
“Cryptic?” Future Sparkle spat. “Like… moving the plot forward using half-answers, riddles, or dumb metaphors?” She ran a hoof through her patchy mane. “What in Tartarus happened to me? First I get all fat and then I get all annoying.”
                
Rarity edged herself closer to Future Future Sparkle. “So what’s the message, then? For the love of Celestia won’t one of you future clones tell us something useful?”
                
Future Future Sparkle exhaled slowly. “Two clones have already lied to you already; one being far more important than the other. And understand this: the only way this ends is once you find the original Twilight Sparkle.”
                
“But where in Equestria is she even?” Rainbow Dash asked.
                
“That’s all I can tell you without disrupting the timelines or alternate dimensions.”
                
At that bit of knowledge, most mares groaned.
                
Future Sparkle spat in the grass. “Both you versions of myself! That’s it! We’re gonna have us a conversation about time travel and the rules of such, because I’m still not understanding much of this. So let’s go grab a coffee and talk.”
                
Fat Future Sparkle raised a hoof. “And cake?”
                
Future Sparkle growled at her, “You’re getting nothing but water until you go back to your own timeline. How could I even do something like that to myself?”
                
Hooking a leg around both future time travelers, Future Sparkle lit up her horn and the three of them disappeared from the lawn, scorching the area of grass underneath them.
                
Once gone, Rarity faced the other mares.
                
“So what did any of that solve?”
                
Applejack threw her hat onto the ground. “Nothing! That’s what! First we get tricked and almost die, then we get rescued and almost get some real answers before they’re taken away from us! Gosh darn it! I hate clones so much right now!”
                
“Apple?” Apple Sparkle asked her meekly.
                
Applejack took a breath and gave her a gentle hug. “You know I didn’t mean you, sugarcube. I just meant all these other Sparkle clones. It’s almost like someone’s making them up as they go along and are making us deal with them for their own amusement. And it’s just getting annoying, you know?”
                
Rainbow Dash landed beside them. “Not to ruin your little tantrum there, AJ, but anyone ever wonder what happened to Fluttershy after this all started?”
                
Rarity gasped.
                
“And here I’d completely forgotten about her...”
> Crusader Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trevor Sparkle set down his empty plate and fork, leaning back into the couch. He placed two hooves behind his head and sighed contently.
                
“I must say it’s peaceful here. Not once have I had that horrible feeling of being tracked down and attacked at any moment.”
                
Although Fluttershy only took a single bite from her slice of lemon loaf, she scooted her plate away from her. She nodded faintly. “I couldn’t imagine feeling like that. I’ve always had a history of nervousness, but having someone constantly looking for you to… you know, I don’t know how I’d react. The only times I get really nervous anymore is when I meet new ponies that I don’t know all that well.”
                
Trevor raised a brow and turned to her; seated next to her on the couch. “Do I make you nervous?”
                
She shook her head. “No. I think I’ve gotten to know you well enough to realize you’re very nice and polite.”
                
“Too bad all those other clones keep on giving clones a bad name; attacking the town and everything.”
                
Fluttershy took a moment to glance out her windows. “I haven’t heard anything in hours, so I’m sure it’s all been taken care of. Although it’s weird I still haven’t heard from any of my friends.” She looked downcast for a moment. “I thought they would’ve tried to find me after that part with Sparkle Sparkle, but I’m sure they just had more important things to worry about.”
                
Trevor Sparkle gently wrapped a leg around her shoulder, causing her to blush. “I’m sure your friends haven’t forgotten about you. Either they’ve been busy dealing with all this clone business or they knew you’d make it out all right on your own. You might think of yourself as shy and nervous most of the time, but I think you have a lot more strength than most ponies around here.”
                
Fluttershy lifted a batch of mane from her face. “You really mean that?”
                
Trevor nodded, then chewed on his tongue. “This is a rather odd question, but there’s really no other way to say it, so here it is.” He turned to meet her stare. “What do you see when you look at me? And, please, be honest.”
                
Fluttershy, not completely able to keep eye contact, instead stared at the coffee table. “I see Trevor Sparkle.”
                
“Not just a male version of Twilight Sparkle?”
                
Fluttershy hesitated, before elaborating, “I mean… you do look an awful lot like Twilight, but there’s really nothing you can do about that. You’re a clone and I understand that. But, truthfully, I see you more as Trevor than anything else.”
                
With a small grin, Trevor pulled her a little closer to him. “So it doesn’t bother you when I tell you that I like you? Or that I think you’re the most beautiful mare I’ve seen since being created?”
                
Fluttershy tried to hide her smile behind her mane. “I think you’ve seen more Sparkle clones than actual ponies since you left Twilight’s castle.”
                
“So it doesn’t bother you when I do this?”
                
Trevor leaned in to kiss her on the cheek.
                
In response, Fluttershy squeaked and turned a brand new shade of red.
                
Trevor chuckled. “Don’t tell me I’m the first stallion that’s ever done that?”
                
“…maybe.”
                
“Do you want me to stop?”
                
Fluttershy eventually moved her mane away from her face.

“…not if you don’t want to.”
                
Then she placed a hoof on his leg.
                
Smiling brightly, Trevor leaned in while closing his eyes, as Fluttershy did the same.
                
Knock-knock-knock!
                
Someone banged on the front of Fluttershy’s door and both of them turned to look.
                
“Expecting someone?” Trevor asked her uneasily.
                
Fluttershy shook her head. “Not really. Not unless it’s my friends seeing if I’m all right, but usually Pinkie Pie just enters without knocking. Sometimes she even breaks my locks doing that. No lock seems one-hundred percent Pinkie proof, yet.”
                
“That sounds terribly expensive.”
                
Knock-knock-knock!
                
“I know that you’re in there, Trevor! Don’t think I can’t smell you from here!”
                
Trevor Sparkle gasped as he sank into the couch, his body shaking uncontrollably. “It’s her! Sexy Sparkle! Somehow she’s found me again!”
                
Fluttershy squeaked again—not the good kind of squeak this time. “Then you need to hide! We’ll pretend that no one’s home and once she realizes that, I’m sure she’ll go away.”
                
Trevor hung his head. “If she came all this way, then she must know that I’m here, and I like you too much to have you try and cover for me. Sexy might try and get information from you about my current whereabouts, using less than ideal interrogation techniques.” He took a breath. “No. We’ll deal with this like rational adults: with some clear and concise reasoning.”
                
“You really think you can reason with her?”
                
“I have a fever, Trevor!” Sexy Sparkle screamed from outside. “And the only prescription, is more of your—”
                
Trevor quickly covered Fluttershy’s ears to block out the rest of Sexy’s statement. Sadly, using both of his hooves like that left his ears completely open to all the horrors that Sexy had planned for him.
                
He slid his hooves down from her ears to hold the sides of Fluttershy’s face.
                
“In case something goes wrong out there, remember me with this.”
                
Then he kissed her on the lips, and Fluttershy spent the next thirty seconds giggling like a filly on the floor.
 

***


 

“Get off Fluttershy’s property this instant!” Trevor Sparkle yelled, standing next to Fluttershy on the roof.
                
After Fluttershy had giggled her way through the very first kiss of her life, Trevor had teleported the pair onto the roof to glare down at Sexy, who, even angrier than usual, still struck an alluring pose the moment she saw them.
                
Sexy Sparkle pointed a hoof at him. “Not unless you come with me, Trevor! It’s useless to resist! Everyone falls for me eventually!”
                
After shaking his head, Trevor wrapped a leg around Fluttershy, hugging her to his side. “Well, not me, then! I want to be with Fluttershy and that’s all there is to it! So go find some other poor soul to call your own.”
                
Sexy Sparkle crushed a few of Fluttershy’s flowers underneath her hooves. “Don’t you understand, Trevor? We were made for one another! You and I forever and ever! In bed! And in areas in close proximately to a bed!”
                
Trevor shut his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. “Firstly: you’re insane. Secondly: you love way too hard. No normal pony could ever keep up with you.”
                
Sniffling obnoxiously, Sexy Sparkle sat on the grass in a pout and crossed her legs over her chest. “How is it my fault that I have a lot of love to give? I just want to be close to others—really close. Why are you denying yourself of my love, Trevor?”
                
Trevor sighed. “Because what you’re offering isn’t really love; it’s just sex.”
                
Sexy angled her head. “Sex isn’t love?”
                
“Not your version of it, at least. So, please, don’t press this anymore. Have a single shred of dignity for yourself and leave Fluttershy and I alone. Maybe try to form an actual relationship with somebody first before trying to break them with your thighs. See if that works out better for you.”
                
Sexy Sparkle wiped a tear from her cheek, standing up abruptly to face the pair.
                
“Fine! I’ll go, but don’t think this is over between us! I’ll just go and create my own Trevor Sparkle! One more lovable and durable than you could ever be! And one with a libido as ravenous as mine! And when you see how much we love and care about each other, you’ll just wish you never turned me down! You just made the biggest mistake of your lives—both of you! You stupid, stupid smexy little ponies!”
                
She turned and took a single step away, before whirling around.
                
In a much softer tone, she asked, “Could I watch, maybe? The first time you two—”
                
“No!” Trevor screamed. “Now get out of here before I turn the hose on you!”
                
Sexy fumed, but eventually she left, spreading out her wings and giving her plot a goodbye slap before rocketing away.
                
Once out of sight, Trevor let go of Fluttershy and ran a hoof through his mane.
                
“Sorry about that. I hope that’ll be the last of her, or at least the last of her for a while.”
                
Fluttershy stared at her hooves. “That’s all right. Really, it is.”
                
“Something wrong?” he asked, rubbing a hoof along her shoulder.
                
“Could you… could you do that thing again? That thing where you press your lips against mine?”
                
Trevor smiled, then knelt down to kiss her again.
                
Following their second embrace, Fluttershy crumpled to the roof in a brand new fit of giggles before she began tumbling away. Thankfully, Trevor was a fast enough flyer to catch her before she fell off the roof and landed in the flowerbed.
 

***


 

“Is she ready yet?” Sweetie Belle asked impatiently.
                
Accident Prone Sparkle gave her a soft pat on the head. “Another minute should do it… although I still don’t think helping you three with your project was the best idea.”
                
Apple Bloom stood in front of her. “But we won’t tell anyone! Honest!”
                
“Yeah! I’m sure everything will be fine!” Scootaloo added.
                
A little over an hour ago, after the clones invading town had been successfully defeated, Accident Prone Sparkle had returned to the laboratory deep within Twilight’s castle and found three tiny fillies wandering around. After explaining to her the multiple Twilight variants they’d seen around town, they wondered if they could create a Twilight of their own. At first, Accident Prone Sparkle remained adamant that no more clones would be created, but after the three Crusaders mashed their cute little faces together and added a faint shimmer to each one of their eyes, the Twilight clone reluctantly agreed to help them with their creation.
                
Could any good natured pony ever say no to such unrelenting waves of cuteness?
                
Accident Prone Sparkle actually did the math.
                
Answer: no.
                
The timer atop the cloning machine went off and its sealed doors swung out, a great mass of steam escaping and falling to the ground. What exited the clone-press was a Twilight about the same size as Sweetie Belle and her friends. Her large, expressive eyes appeared to eat up half of her head, giving her the same adorable expressions as the other three.
                
“It worked!” Apple Bloom shouted, running up to the new Twilight to wrap her in a hug.
                
“Radical!”
                
“And she’s cute!”
                
The other two fillies did the same, embracing the clone as she blinked sleep from her eyes and glanced around the room.
                
When they let her go, Sweetie Belle spun her around to check out the clone’s plot.
                		
She pumped her leg a single time in the air. “Yes! No cutie mark or anything! It all worked!”
                
“A real life Crusader Sparkle!” Apple Bloom added excitedly.
                
Scootaloo flapped her wings and managed to hover a few inches above the ground. “Now it’s like we have our very own alicorn princess to help us get cutie marks! Everyone will have to take our club seriously now!”
                
Crusader Sparkle glanced at the three of them. In a much higher and squeakier voice than normal, she asked them, “What’s a cutie mark? Is it something that goes on your butt?”
                
Apple Bloom grinned. “It’s a pony’s special talent. Whatever they’re good at—the moment they know what it is—they get a mark on their plot to let everyone else know what their special talent is. If someone is as shy and gentle as a butterfly, they might get a butterfly cutie mark.”
                
Scootaloo explained further, “And say if someone’s as fast as a lightning bolt, they might get a cutie mark in the shape of that!”
                
Crusader Sparkle nodded in understanding. “So what do you think my special talent is?”
                
Sweetie Belle thought for a moment. “Well, the original Twilight really liked books, so many it has something to do with—”
                
Crusader Sparkle picked up a book off a short stack of them. “A book like this?” She flipped to the first page and skimmed a line. “I think I like these book things. They even smell nice.”
                
Flash!
                
Crusader Sparkle’s plot was struck by a flash of bright light, leaving in its wake the image of a trio of books. All four fillies stared at the new cutie mark in different levels of awe; Crusader Sparkle the only one seemingly excited about it.
                
“I did it, you guys!” she shouted. “That wasn’t so hard!”
                
Apple Bloom glared at the clone as if someone had just trotted over Winona and come around to flatten her again.
                
Closing her eyes, she muttered out, “You have got to be kidding me.”
                
“That can’t be real! It just can’t!” Scootaloo complained, trying desperately to rub away Crusader Sparkle’s new mark.
                
“This doesn’t mean I can’t still help you all with yours,” Crusader Sparkle tried to explain. “It could still be fun…”
                
Sweetie Belle sighed. “I guess. I just didn’t think it would happen that fast. Let’s get out of here, then, and we’ll—”
                
BOOM!
                
The glass ceiling overhead shattered into a thousand pieces as a giant fireball rocketed through. Before the glass shards could reach the ground, Accident Prone Sparkle grabbed each of the fillies and shoved them against the wall, momentarily safe behind one of the lab’s thick metal consoles.
                
Once the ringing in her ears stopped, she took a look around the tall machine and saw just who was responsible.
                
With a blackened cloak concealing most of her features, Dark Sparkle pointed a golden staff with a red jeweled head at the cloning machine, encasing it in a dark purple aura. Eventually, the cloning machine and accompanying vat of goo disappeared wholly from the lab, leaving an empty space in its stead.
                
Even well hidden behind the consol, Dark Sparkle stared in their direction and whispered, “Now I shall create a new world, one pony at a time. A perfect world—devoid of imperfections and the weak.”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle raised a leg. “Could you not do that? Please?”
                
Dark Sparkle thought it over for a second. “No. I’d much rather destroy the world and start anew, rather than try and dig it out from the hole you’ve all buried it in. You only have yourselves to blame for this outcome. You created me, knowing full well what I would do. Everything comes to an end at some point, even Equestria. Why not greet your own demise early and with a smile?”
                
“But Twilight didn’t create you! Somebody else did!” Accident Prone Sparkle yelled to her, but already Dark Sparkle had vanished in a puff of smoke.
                
Alone again, Accident Prone Sparkle swept up the broken glass before escorting the four fillies out the door. Then she calmed herself with a thick stack of strawberry pancakes from upstairs before hanging up a large poster in the center of the bulletin board.
                
It read: “SPARKLE CLONE MEETING—ASAP! ATTENDENCE MANDATORY!”
                
Below that sign was a much smaller one: “YES! EVEN YOU, TARDY SPARKLE!”
                
Job accomplished, Accident Prone Sparkle tried her best to remember if she’d locked up the lab before she’d left. Not entirely sure, she found herself grateful not many ponies actually knew of the second cloning machine inside the castle.
 

***


 

Sexy Sparkle gave her immense stack of notes a quick scan, running a hoof around her abnormally disheveled mane. Although it had taken her all of that day and some of the night, soon—in just a few seconds, actually—she’d have what she’d wanted all along.
                
Next to a small pile of empty energy drinks, she sat on the ground. Grabbing an unopened one, she stabbed the bottom of the can with her horn before downing the entire thing in a single swallow.
                
As far as believed, she’d need all the energy she could get.
                
“Won’t Trevor be jealous?” she said to herself, a bit of edge creeping into her usually sultry voice. “Once he sees me around town with you, he won’t even… he won’t even know what to do with himself! He’d rather be stuck with that timid little pegasus? Please!”
                
She belched, then wiped at her mouth.
                
“I mean, sure, she’s cute—freaking adorable, even! But what’s she gonna offer him once the lights go out and she has no idea what she’s doing? I’ll tell you what! Nothing! Not even a ghost story! Too scary for her, I’m sure!”
                
Sexy took a breath.
                
She said bluntly, “I think I’ve lost my sexy mind.”
                
After flying straight back to Twilight’s castle, Sexy Sparkle ignored the other clones inside and gone straight to the laboratory. The original cloning machine had been removed for some reason, so she went to the backup one in the other corner of the room and removed the dust-covered cloth that covered it.
                
Rebooting the system took some time (getting the vat of goo to the perfect temperature and making sure all of its readings were exact), but what took the most amount of time of all was the preparation of her personalized masterpiece.

The one clone to end all clones… at least for her.
                
As much as she hated Trevor Sparkle at the moment—alongside all his sexy guts—he had placed a wonderful idea inside her head. Why not just create the perfect clone for herself? A stallion to call her own and make passionate love to forever and ever and ever?
                
Creating a perfect clone was all in the details—adding her own genetic makeup alongside a whole plethora of nuances. As Sexy waited for her immaculate coltfriend to finish baking, she spent her time strolling around the lab, reading from her long list of notes and ideas.
                
“Same basic model as Trevor Sparkle, only mane and tail three inches longer and straighter; jaw line more refined; purple coat combined with pure silk for that extra added softness; skeletal structure mixed with various durable metals and substances, allowing the clone extra maneuverability while still remaining durable; as flexible as the greatest gymnast around, yet also able to withstand the powerful brunt of my love, as many times as I desire. Two-hundred and sixty five horse pony; able to go from zero to a hundred and twenty in seven seconds or less.”
                
From the thought alone, she bit her bottom lip.
                
“Added energy and playfulness; a gentle voice that still has access to the dirtiest of vocabularies should the right moment arise; a libido to match my own, if not more.”
                
When pouring that particular chemical into the batch, Sexy had counted out the necessary drops before adding a couple more. As far as she was concerned, why make just a cheese pizza if all the toppings were readily available to you?
                
Behind her, the cloning machine went off and both of its doors opened with a hiss. From the mound of steam appeared a more streamlined Trevor Sparkle, perfectly honed muscles accentuating his already shapely figure.
                
The clone took only a single step out from the machine before collapsing to the floor.
                
Still a good three meters away from him, Sexy Sparkle tried her best to keep her legs from trembling from the sight.
                
“That’s gotta be the smexiest thing I’ve ever seen…” she moaned, trying not to slip on the suddenly wet floor below her. “Note to self: think of new word to denote someone even sexier than smexy. Smexican? No. That won’t work.”
                
As she made her way over to him, Sexy tried to keep her walk as graceful as she could, even as her thoughts screamed to her to jump up in the air and tackle him hard. But as this was to be their first introduction—before a lifetime of wonderful, sexy adventures together—she thought it best to start with a much softer display than she would normal give.
                
Only a step away from him, Sexy had to cram a hoof into her mouth to keep from screaming with excitement. Up close, the new Sparkle stallion was everything she had been dreaming of. Sleeping soundly on the smooth laboratory floor, Sexy didn’t think she’d ever seen someone sleep so overwhelmingly cute, sexy, and handsome all at once.
                
This new clone was like a sexy anomaly brought to life.
                
Gently, Sexy lifted up one of his legs to take a quick peek under the hood. Several hours ago, Sexy had gone back and forth through the clone catalogue, marking out clone parts she didn’t like before circling the ones she did. Underneath the stallion was “Option 63”, and all at once Sexy could tell she’d made the right decision.
                
That was when he first spoke.
                
“Huh? What’s… what’s happened? And why am I on the floor?”
                
Sexy Sparkle knelt down to him, running a hoof through his soaked mane. “I created you. You’re a clone, just like me—a clone of a beautiful mare named Twilight Sparkle. You may feel a tad disoriented at first, but that should wear off soon enough.”
                
“And who are you?”
                
“Sparkle. Sexy Sparkle.”
                
He clumsily got to his hooves. “And me?”
                
Sexy Sparkle pursed her lips. “I actually hadn’t thought of that yet, but I’ll get back to you on that.” She flashed him a smirk and tossed her hips to the side, tail swishing invitingly. “Anything you want to do together? Now that I’ve gone and created you?”
                
The stallion stared at her quizzically. “Together? Like grab a bite to eat or something?”
                
Sexy chuckled dryly. “I guess we could start with that, but why not just cut to the chase?” She flicked her mane away from her eyes and moaned out softly. “Nothing coming to mind, my stallion friend? No… urges you might wanna fulfill? Using me perhaps?”
                
The stallion thought for a moment. “Like go see a movie? Or take a walk? I’m sorry, but I’m really not getting this so far.”
                
Sexy Sparkle growled out angrily. “I mean sex! You do want to have sex with me right now, right here!? Wonderful and passionate and very, very loud!?”
                
He regarded her awkwardly. “Sex? With you? No, not really. I really don’t think you’re my type, but if there’re any stallions around, I wouldn’t mind getting to know one of them a bit better.”
                
Sexy Sparkle choked on air. “Stallions? I must not have heard that right.”
                
A dreamy expression found the new clone’s face. “No, you did. It only took me a while—after just being created and all—but I have the oddest feeling that I’m actually into stallions, because right now I’m picturing like dozens of plots. Stallion plots!”
                
She held up a trembling hoof. “You don’t… you don’t think you might just be bisexual? A lot of ponies around here are.”
                
He scratched at his perfectly sculpted chin. “Nah. Can’t see that. I’d rather have me a piece of that hunky stallion any day.”
                
Sexy Sparkle looked at if the entire population of sexy ponies had been suddenly teleported off the planet, never to return.
                
“So you’re gay?”
                
Gay Sparkle perked up at the term. “I guess I am! You happen to know any stallions you could hook me up with?”
                
Instead of falling to the ground and wallowing in a tight ball of pure anguish and pain, Sexy Sparkle decided to save herself the trouble and instead let loose a single tear from her eye. Inside that lone tear was all the emotion she had boiling inside her—every ounce of deep disappointment and regret, sorrow and despair. Once the tear splashed onto the ground, it began eating through the floor and continued on.
                
Some ponies say that that single tear of perfect sadness burrowed itself all the way to the center of the earth and out the other side. Yet most ponies say that’s just a fable and nothing more, because, honestly, who’d bother keeping track of such a thing?
                
Sexy took in a shaky breath to clear her thoughts. “Could I watch, at least?”
                
Gay Sparkle adamantly shook his head. “Afraid not. Whatever stallion I end up with, I’d want them to know I’m only interested in a committed relationship and nothing else, and that I care deeply about their feelings. Never would I want to put them in a situation that might comprise their trust or feelings towards me. Trust has to be at the foundation of every solid relationship, so I’d need to stay committed to my partner and their wishes. But, having said all that, it doesn’t mean that I’d hesitate for a second before rutting them into blissful oblivion… after I had their love and clear consent, of course.”
                
A second perfect tear of infinite sadness fell to the floor and started its journey towards the center of the earth, as Sexy Sparkle pretended not to notice as it slithered down her cheek.
                
She shook her head at him. “Where did I go so wrong with you?”
                
Then she gave her notes a quick glance before nodding a single time.
                
“It seems I forgot to carry the one again.”
> Cuddle Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Accident Prone Sparkle looked out from atop her podium, a seemingly never-ending sea of purple ponies before her. From wall to wall in the castle’s massive gathering room, Sparkle clones had huddled together, murmuring softly amongst themselves or trying to get a better view of the stage. Some clones were much larger than others—some smaller and cuter. Some looked practically identical to the original Twilight Sparkle, while others differentiated themselves with various hats or garments.
                
Only a single clone brought a chair along with them—one which they placed at the very front of the crowd before collapsing into it. Already, she was snoring.
                
Accident Prone Sparkle tapped on her microphone, gathering the room’s attention.
                
“Drunk Sparkle, could you stay awake for a bit while I talked?”
                
The sleeping clone in the chair jolted awake and grimaced, rubbing at her eyes. “It’s Hangover Sparkle now; I thought that’d be clear enough. And there’s no need to shout. I can hear you just fine.” She rubbed at her head with a hoof. “And why’s it so bright in here? Jeeze, my breath smells like crap. I wanna go back to bed. Can I just go back to bed?”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle shook her head. “Not until we’re finished here.”
                
Then she addressed the rest of the clones, trying her best to keep her voice even and clear.
                
“My fellow clones, it has recently come to my attention that a clone by the name of Dark Sparkle has stolen one of this castle’s cloning machines. Most likely, she plans on using the device to create an army of evil duplicates to destroy Ponyville or worse. Those creatures we all fought against just a short time ago? I have large reason to believe they were of Dark Sparkle’s creation. What we must do now—before it becomes too late—is band together and try to stop her before things can get any worse.”
                
She took a moment to drink from a glass of water by her side, blinking to get her pupils back to the center of her eyes.
                
“The one responsible for Dark Sparkle’s creation is still unknown, as is the whereabouts of the original Twilight Sparkle. We’ve had a clone task team out looking for her since this all began, but thus far they’ve all had no luck. But that doesn’t mean we as a unified group can’t help out and—”
                
“But who even says there is such a threat?” someone shouted over her.
                
The mass of purple clones parted in the middle to allow a single Twilight replica to step towards the stage. She angled her head to look up at Accident Prone Sparkle.
                
“I’m Exposition Sparkle, as I might have explained to some of you before. I’m in-charge of information here and so far I’m not even sure if a Dark Sparkle even exists at all. Has anyone besides Accident Prone Sparkle seen her? Even a single time?”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle furrowed her brows. “Yes, actually! Crusader Sparkle and the rest of the Crusaders did. I’m sure Janitor Sparkle did too. She worked just outside her holding cell.”
                
Exposition Sparkle tapped her chin with a hoof. “Or did they just see what you wanted them to see? Hmm? I spoke with Janitor Sparkle. All she did was clean up the mess this so called ‘Dark Sparkle’ made as she escaped. Crusader Sparkle? She can hardly remember anything involving an evil Sparkle; only a bunch of loud noises and bright lights as she hid behind a machine consol.”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle gritted her teeth, one of her pupils rising to glimpse the ceiling due to her increasing rage. “Just what are you driving at, then?”
                
“That perhaps it was you all along.”
                
A quiet gasp from the crowd of clones.
                
Exposition Sparkle narrowed her eyes. “Maybe you invented this ‘Dark Sparkle’ to take the blame for all your past mistakes and the ones that have yet to come. Let’s be honest now: how many clones in this room came to exist by some ‘accident’ on your part?”
                
A quarter of the room’s ponies threw up their legs.
                
“Either you’re sending us out on some wild pony chase in the hopes of erasing more clones you made by accident, or there really is a Dark Sparkle—one accidentally created by you—that now needs to be taken care of. One way or another, I don’t believe we should waste our time on something we can’t be entirely sure of. Whether or not Accident Prone Sparkle actually created some new unstoppable threat; I’m sure the rest of the Elements can take care of it.”
                
Accident Prone Sparkle glared down at the clone. “I had nothing to do with Dark Sparkle. And the fact that you wouldn’t want to stop a potential threat is very un-Twilight of you.”
                
Exposition Sparkle rolled her eyes. “Just because I’m a clone doesn’t mean I’m not free to live my own life… not spend it cleaning up after others. I’m not the only one that feels that way, either. I’m just the one that’s best suited at explaining such a thing to others.”
                
“So you won’t help?” Accident Prone Sparkle spat.
                
Exposition Sparkle smirked. “No. And neither will the rest of us.”
                
With that said, close to half of the Twilight clones moved towards the room’s backdoors and shuffled through, most not saying a word. The clones that remained stared at each other quizzically, before redirecting their sight to the stage.
                
By the sudden act, Accident Prone Sparkle was at a loss for words.
                
Hangover Sparkle jumped awake again and glanced around.
                
“Everyone gone? This mean I can go back to bed?”
                
One rather rancid burp later, she, too, exited from the room.
 

***


 

As soon as Pinkie Pie knocked on her door, Rarity opened up and quickly pulled her inside, taking a short second to scan the street outside her shop. After closing the door behind her, Rarity ran a shaky hoof through her disheveled mane and turned to her friend.
                
“Tea? Coffee?”

She gave Pinkie Pie a crooked smile, before levitating a tea cup to her.
                
Pinkie Pie took a sip and stuck out her tongue. “Not to make a big deal out of it, Rarity, but this tea is kinda cold. And now that I think about it, I’m not even sure this is tea at all.”
                
Rarity snatched the cup away and looked inside.
                
“Oh, of course!” She glanced up erratically. “In my stupor, I made this random warm drink three days ago and forgot all about it. Care for some random cold drink, then?”
                
Pinkie Pie shook her head. “That’s okay. But what did you want to see me about? And why couldn’t I tell the others I was coming here?”
                
Taking a quick stroll around her boutique, Rarity eventually sat on the edge of her couch with a sigh. Then she turned to Pinkie Pie, eyes dry and red.
                
“Clones, Pinkie,” she told her friend. “That’s what has me losing sleep and unable to concentrate on anything at all. All those damn Twilight clones.”
                
Pinkie Pie took a seat next to her and wrapped a gentle leg around her. “But we already dealt with all those nasty clones, silly! Don’t you remember? We smashed ‘em good!”
                
Rarity turned to her. “I’m not talking about the evil ones or the creepy ones. I meant the other ones that have already gotten to our friends—the romantic Sparkles.” Rarity stood and went to a wall loaded with sets of pictures connected by lines of string, resembling something close to train tracks.
                
Eyelids twitching, Rarity started from the first picture.
                
“When we first went to Twilight’s castle, we figured out that Applejack had been dating a clone named Apple Sparkle and just like that they’re getting married that same day. And even I must admit, they seem more in love than most couples I’ve seen.”
                
She pointed at the next set of pictures.
                
“Next, Speedy Sparkle joins our little group and instantly Rainbow Dash falls for her. All this week, I’ve heard them zipping around town, egging each other on. I dare not look up to see what they might be doing in the clouds when they think no one’s looking—then again, knowing Rainbow Dash, I doubt she’d care all that much about an audience.”
                
She moved to another set.
                
“Then when everything finally calms down around town, Fluttershy announces one ‘Trevor Sparkle’ to be staying with her, planting cute little kisses on her cheeks. Sure, he seems like a nice clone—some bizarre stallion Twilight, I guess. But now this means Fluttershy’s also totally in love with some clone?”
                
A bit of Pinkie Pie’s mane flattened against her head as she watched her agitated friend.
                
“What are you saying, Rarity? And what do the rest of the pictures mean?”
                
The last three sets of pictures included Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight Sparkle placed next to a blank box with a question mark inside.
                
Rarity closed her eyes and tried to steady herself.
                
“I have a horrible feeling a pattern is taking hold. In less than a couple of days, half of our group has been romantically paired with clones of Twilight Sparkle—two of them almost made specifically for that particular pony.”
                
Pinkie Pie looked at the floor in thought. “Applejack likes apples, so she gets Apple Sparkle. Rainbow Dash likes competition, so she gets Speedy Sparkle.”
                
Rarity nodded. “And we still don’t know what Twilight’s been up to. For all we know, she might’ve already been paired with someone; a book clone, or a tea clone, or a dictionary clone or whatever. But what if it doesn’t stop there? What if there’re elements at work outside of our control? Manipulating things so that the next set of clones we run into, you and I instantly fall in love with them no matter how we truly feel about it?”
                
Pinkie Pie raised a brow. “You think there’s someone in the sky just watching us and waiting to pair us up with Sparkle clones? Like just take our heads and mass ‘em together?”
                
Rarity took a quick step towards her. “It’s already happened three times, hasn’t it? What’s stopping it from happening again?” She raised her chin and held a leg to her forehead. “It’s not that I fear love, my darling Pinkie Pie, it’s only the idea of someone else making the decision for me that causes me to fret like I am. If a Sparkle clone that loves fashion and jewels and all the things I love shows up at my door, will I able to control myself? Or is there another clone that’s even better suited for me? One that I’ll spend the rest of my days with, growing more and more in love with during each passing moment between us?”
                
Pinkie held a hoof out to her. “But Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy all seem so happy with their clones. You wouldn’t want that?”
                
Rarity thought for a moment. “Only if I completely agreed to whom I was partnered with. I wouldn’t want it to be some crazy surprise; like I wouldn’t want some new clone just breaking through the ceiling and declaring their love for me on the spot.”
                
Both mares turned to stare at the ceiling, curious if some clone would break through. When none did, they looked at each other again.
                
“That’s why I asked you to come here today,” Rarity continued. “I think I’ve figured out a way to ‘distance’ ourselves away from all these clones. If it looks like you and I are in a seriously committed relationship, then any curious clones won’t be so forthright with their declaration of love, and maybe that’ll mean we’ll stay out of that instant love business that seems to be spreading around town. Then, once we’ve both figured out for ourselves which clone or non-clone we want to date, then we’ll pretend to break up and go to them.”
                
Pinkie Pie stared at her with unease. “That plan seems highly complicated, Rarity, when we could just say we’re uninterested to any clones that come by.” In thought, she tapped her cheek with a hoof. “But on the other hoof… does that mean we get to hold hooves and nuzzle and kiss and all that type of stuff?”
                
Rarity nodded briskly. “To keep up appearances, I’m afraid we’ll have to.”
                
Pinkie Pie brightened, flashing a smile. “Then I’m willing to do what is necessary, Rarity.”
                
Rarity tipped her a wink. “Now that’s what I call a good friend. Now come over here and let’s practice our kissing routine so it looks believable.”
                

***


 

Carefully, quietly, Princess Luna pried herself off the floor, first removing the four peacefully sleeping Twilight fillies off of her as not to stir them. On the tips of her hooves, she crossed the room and gently nudged open the door to the hall. Before she left, she turned and watched the two dozen or so small Twilight clones sleeping peacefully in the room—some spread out on chairs or carpets or near the fireplace with several more pressed up to Princess Celestia, who’d passed out some minutes ago after finishing up another long story session.
                
Moments ago, Luna had seen the opportunity to escape and took it willingly.
                
The mini Twilights were cute; there was no doubt about that. But to Luna they were nothing more than a distraction. Something else was in the works. Something sinister, she knew. And now she was determined to figure out just what it was.
                
Nearly trotting down the hallway towards the entrance doors, Luna stopped cold as a nearby guard loudly read from a scroll.
                
“Now introducing to Canterlot Castle! Cuddle Sparkle!”
                
The entrance doors parted apart and a normal looking Twilight Sparkle took a step across the threshold. She held a rather warm and fuzzy looking leg out to her side.
                
“Cuddle?” she inquired sweetly.
                
Luna gulped dryly and shook her head, trying to ignore the clone’s warm demeanor alongside their brilliantly soft and pleasant looking coat.
                
“No! No more cuddles!” Luna exclaimed. “You have only been sent here to subdue my sister and me, but now that all comes to an end! I will figure out what plagues this land with no more interruptions!”
                
Cuddle Sparkle frowned. “So no cuddles?”
                
The guard by the doors read from his scroll again.
                
“Now introducing to Canterlot Castle! Snuggle Sparkle!”
                
Luna whirled around to find another Twilight clone already waiting for her. Like her very similar counterpart, Snuggle Sparkle held out a silky smooth leg and asked softly: “Snuggle?”
                
Annoyed by the continued interruptions, Luna slammed two hooves into the floor.
                
“No! No more of this! You Twilights will not delay me anymore! My sister and—”
                
Luna gasped as someone hugged her from behind. The embrace was so warm and soft it made her legs turn to mush and caused all disparaging thoughts to drift out from her head.
                
She turned to glare at her. “Damn you, Cuddle Sparkle. I knew I should never have let you out of my sight.”
                
A second pair of legs wrapped around her front and—try as she might—Luna eventually began descending towards the floor, the overwhelming amounts of softness and fuzziness too much for even the alicorn Princess to triumph over.
                
Cuddle Sparkle and Snuggle Sparkle gently buried their heads into Luna’s sides, each one of their legs wrapped tight around the softly thrashing mare.
                
Luna bared her teeth to hiss at the cozy pair. “Damn both of you and your horrible softness! When I get out of this, I will make sure you are both sentenced for your crimes against the kingdom!”
                
Both Cuddle Sparkle and Snuggle Sparkle took turns whispering into her ears:
                
“Embrace the cuddles…”
                
“Residence is futile…”
                
“No bed sheet will ever feel as nice as we do…”
                
“Snuggles are love… snuggles are life…”

“All hail, Dark Sparkle… the one true Sparkle clone…”
                
Standing just fourteen steps away with his back against the wall, Canterlot Guard Number Forty Seven watched as Princess Luna fell to the ground with an anguishing cry. Both mares that looked an awful lot like Twilight Sparkle then curled up next to her, wrapping her up in-between them.
                
Guard Number Forty Seven pursed his lips from the sight. “Hmm.”
                
To his left, Guard Number Forty Six asked him, “You think we should do something about this?”
                
Forty Seven thought for a moment. “Well, she didn’t technically ask for us to help, and it’s also pretty damn cute, so I’m not about to jump right in and put a stop to it. Plus… Princess Luna totally forgot my birthday last month, so I’m not really in the mood to help her out.”
               
Forty Six turned to him. “She forgot your birthday too?”
                
Stuck in the very center of scientifically perfected warmth and fuzziness, Princess Luna desperately fought to regain the smallest amount of control to her own thoughts. What came to mind wasn’t as helpful as it could’ve been.
                
“Why do all these stupid Twilights need to be so cute!?”
 

***


 

Keeping her blinds shut against the morning sun, Ugly Sparkle woke up late into the day and took a single step in front of her mirror before deciding she’d spend the day inside again.
                
What an ugly, ugly Sparkle.
 

***


 

The large black doors to Dark Sparkle’s secret hideout creaked open and a Twilight clone stepped inside, her breath ragged and her ears pressed flat against her skull. As the doors behind her snapped shut, the clone gasped and quickened her pace to the ornate black throne in the center of the room.
                
Dark Sparkle sat with one back leg crossed over the other, her black cloak flung to her side as she busily twirled her golden staff in her magical aura.
                
“Greetings, Exposition Sparkle,” she said coolly.
                
Exposition Sparkle took a bow. “Greetings, oh great one; I come baring news. The clone known as Accident Prone Sparkle has been spreading rumors about you, but I successfully make it look like she was lying about it all.”
                
Dark Sparkle absently watched her spinning staff. “As I heard, but what you neglect to mention is that not all of the clones actually believed you. If you were smart enough, you would’ve killed that annoying clone on your own and made it look like an accident of her own doing. But that can still be arranged, I wager.”
                
Exposition Sparkle took a shaky step back. “But I had no orders to do such a thing… and I know the clones won’t be looking for you anymore… I promise!”
                
The golden staff stopped suddenly in the air as Dark Sparkle turned to her.
                
“I’m releasing you from your duties, Exposition Sparkle. You have done well, but not well enough. I demand perfection at all costs… especially since perfection can now be created from scratch.”
                
Mouth trembling, Exposition Sparkle said, “But I thought I was going to be your propaganda minister. I was going to speak for you and explain things in detail to the masses! I love explaining things in detail! That’s the whole reason I exist!”
                
Dark Sparkle cocked her head to the side. “All right. Then I will give you one last thing you can explain. Explain to me the nature of death.”
                
The hovering golden staff pointed in Exposition Sparkle’s direction and shot out a red beam that blew the poor clone into nothing more than a puddle of goo.
                
Dark Sparkle regarded the clone goo on her floor tiredly.
                
“So… what you’re saying is that death is messy?”
                
Another Twilight clone in a lab jacket concealing a rather large hump sidestepped the purple puddle to stand before the throne.
                
“Master,” she croaked out, safety goggles strapped tight to her forehead, “the calculations are complete and now we just need to start the machine. Do you wish to go over my work or can I proceed?”
                
Dark Sparkle flashed the faintest of grins. “I trust in your work, Assistant Sparkle. This new clone… you promise me that it’ll finish off those Elements of Harmony for good?”
                
Assistant Sparkle wiped away a bead of sweat. “I hope so, Master. There’s never been anything like it before, so I don’t believe they’ll stand a chance against it.”
                
Dark Sparkle chuckled deeply. “Sounds wonderful. Then go ahead and start the machine. And while you’re waiting for it to cook, make me a new Exposition Sparkle—one with more common sense, if you can.”
                
With a bow, Assistant Sparkle turned and nearly slipped in the clone puddle on the floor before disappearing back into the dark recesses of her lab.
                
Alone once more, Dark Sparkle started twirling her staff again, accidentally smacking herself in the face with it.
                
She sighed. “Now I wish I had another clone to explode.”
> Nega Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trixie Lulamoon stopped her trot a single step inside town, her traveling wagon bumping into her plot as she did. She held her head high and sniffed at the aroma in the air.

She could smell it. Of course she could. Now the question was whether anyone else could. It was change.
                
Change was in the air.

After being twice defeated by the likes of Twilight Sparkle, Trixie had gone back home and holed up with her parents as she lamented to them until her tongue went dry. Two days of this later and her parents threw her out. Since then it’d been a life on the road. Not that Trixie minded. While traveling the world, she’d perfected her craft and wowed audiences of all sizes.

Yes. If Trixie actually had sleeves to speak of, she most certainly would have several new tricks tucked away inside them—tricks so tricky and dark and clever that even smart little purple bookworms would have trouble figuring them out. Or… that was the plan, at least.

Taking in another breath of fresh air, Trixie laughed, angling her head to the sky as she did. “Twilight Sparkle! Trixie will find you and she will make you—”

Trixie choked on air and did a double take. Right in front of her—right directly in front of her—sat Twilight, pleasantly enjoying a daisy sandwich on the town bench not twelve steps ahead of her.

Trixie growled deep within her throat and stormed ahead, leaving her traveling wagon behind. She kicked up a mound of dust when she came to a stop.

“Enjoy your sandwich while you can, Twilight Sparkle!” she announced. “For it shall be your last! For after today, each sandwich you eat will only remind you of the day you lost to the Great and Powerful Trixie!”

As Trixie’s words rang clear down the street, Twilight Sparkle looked up at her and took another bite from her sandwich. She swallowed. “All right.” Then she took another bite.

“Umm….” Trixie scratched at a leg. “Well, you don’t have to finish your sandwich right this second, Trixie guesses. Trixie just thought some gentle taunting might help things get started. Magic duel and everything.”

Twilight licked a bit of mustard from her hoof. “Magic duel? Why? I’d much rather eat sandwiches. Do you have any sandwiches I could eat? That would be great if you did.”

Trixie furrowed her brows. “Did you fall on your head at some point while Trixie was away?”

“Nope.” She pulled another sandwich out of a paper bag by her side. “Just been eating sandwiches. They don’t call me Sandwich Sparkle for nothing.”

“Sandwich Sparkle? As in with a capital S?”

“Yep.”

Another Twilight Sparkle galloped up the road, waving a hoof at the Twilight on the bench. “How’s it going, Sandwich?”

Sandwich Sparkle waved back absently. “Can’t complain. Got another sandwich, don’t I?”

The galloping Twilight laughed. “Oh, you. It could be the end of the world and you’d still be happy as long as you had your sandwiches.”

Using a hoof, Trixie shoved her hanging chin back into its upright and locked position. “Two Twilights? Since when?”

Sandwich Sparkle happily munched on what looked like an eggplant parmesan sub. “Since like a week ago. Although there’s definitely more than two of us.”

Trixie grimaced and felt a cube of ice drop into her gut. “How many more Twilights?”

“Come one! Come all! Come see the greatest magician Equestria has ever known!”

A flash of light and a river of fog erupted at Trixie’s side, causing her to turn. Set up on a rickety stage pressed against the side of a building was an upright black box with purple stars on its front. The rectangular box was struck by a crack of lightning and a third Twilight climbed out, a purple magician’s hat and cape tied around her shoulders.

“Greetings, citizens of Ponyville! Who’s ready for some magic?” the Twilight exclaimed. “For the Astute and Naturally Talented Twilight’s first trick, she shall need a volunteer from the audience! How about you, blue mare! How would you like you disappear and never return!”

With a black cane, she pointed directly at Trixie. To make it abundantly clear who she had picked, Twilight even struck her with a spotlight.

“Trixie… umm…” Trixie began, before she heard Sandwich Sparkle loudly chewing by her side.

“I wouldn’t go on that stage if I were you,” she warned her between bites. “The last pony that volunteered actually didn’t return. And the less said about the one she sawed in half, the better.”

In the bright spotlight, Trixie remained as still as a statue. “That’s not the real Twilight, is it?”

Sandwich Sparkle shook her head. “Nope. Trixie Sparkle. Wait. Didn’t you say your name was Trixie?”

The gentle snap in her brain told Trixie to beat it out of town before she either ended up stuck in limbo for all eternity or divided down the middle. Forgoing her traveling wagon altogether, she screamed as high as a tea kettle and bolted from the scene. With any luck, she thought, her parents could dig out their old air mattress again.

Trixie Sparkle scanned the one-pony audience. “No volunteers?”

Sandwich Sparkle raised a leg. “As long as you do your saw-in-half trick next, my foot-long sub volunteers. Damn thing’s too long as it is.”

The Sparkle clone thought for a moment, before fireworks erupted from the stage.

“You got it!”
 

***


 

Sexy Sparkle narrowed her eyes at the inhabitants inside the bar. Her vastly sexy and superior brain collected all the data she needed in a matter of seconds and turned it into a neat list.
                
Bar: The Prancing Pony.
                
Drink Specials: Pineapple Splash Cocktails and half-priced shots.
                
Attendance: 64 ponies—not including the bartender.
                
Male/female ratio: 60:40.
                
Minutes until closing time: 271.
                
Maximum number of possible sexual encounters in 271 minutes….
                
Sexy Sparkle’s last calculation was interrupted when Gay Sparkle handed her a drink and waved a hoof in front of her eyes.
                
“Anyone awake in there?” he asked, sipping from his hollowed-out pineapple cup.
                
Sexy knocked back a single shot of hard cider and slapped her cheeks. “Sorry. Just trying to calculate the room. You and I could do a lot of damage here. I look around and all I see are drinking and happy mares and stallions. Any one of them would be more than lucky to come home with us… or find themselves shoved inside a bathroom stall suddenly… or out in the alley… or perhaps in that carriage I saw parked outside.”
                
Gay Sparkle held up a hoof. “I get it. You think anyone might be interested in me? It’s hard to tell if a stallion might be gay or not just from looking at them.”
                
Sexy rolled her eyes. “Please. Consider yourself the male version of me. Once a stallion gets a load of the package I attached to you… it won’t even matter if they’re gay or not.”
                
“Really?”
                
She tipped him a wink. “Really. But if I help you tonight, that means you need to help me, remember?”
                
He nodded. “I remember. But I can’t see anyone turning you down. Tonight should be a cakewalk for you.”
                
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? That was before everyone started ruining my reputation around town.” Sexy added a mocking tone to her voice. “I heard Big Mac can’t walk because Sexy Sparkle broke his crotch! I heard Sexy Sparkle doesn’t have any internal organs because she shoved so much stuff in there! I heard that once Sexy Sparkle gets you cornered, she sucks out your very life essence!”
                
Gay Sparkle cocked a brow. “That last one, I’m pretty sure it was you that told me that.”
                
With a sigh, Sexy admitted, “Maybe I did. I just wish ponies understood what I meant by ‘life essence.’ Then maybe they wouldn’t be so scared to tango with me every once in a while.”
                
“You could always be gentler to them. Like me.”
                
Sexy chuckled. “Nah. I like to see fear in their eyes. It’s a turn on for me, if you’d believe it.”
                
After finishing half his drink, Gay Sparkle motioned to an empty table near the center of the bar. “Let’s grab that table and come up with a game plan. Hard to say how you want to handle that other clone.”
                
“There’s a Sparkle clone here?” Sexy spun around and gasped, grabbing another cider shot and gulping it down. With a mischievous smile, she told Gay Sparkle, “Looks like fate has something in store for us tonight. Follow my lead and try and keep up.”
                

***


 

Using a stern hoof on his rump, Sexy forcefully pushed Gay Sparkle along the way until they stood  next to Fluttershy’s and Trevor Sparkle’s table. They arrived just as Trevor was finishing up a story, ending on a joke that made Fluttershy spit was little liquid was in her mouth onto the table and keel over with laughter. Her cheeks were flushed red.
                
“Hello again, Trevor,” Sexy greeted coldly, before eyeing the giggling mare. “Fluttershy.”
                
“Oh, hello again!” Fluttershy said, still giggling through the hoof she held to her mouth. “Trevor was telling me the funniest story before you came!”
                
Trevor Sparkle patted Fluttershy’s leg. “It’s wasn’t all that funny, dear.”
                
Fluttershy’s eyes went wide. “Really? Not even the part about the mongoose and the hole in the log? I mean… and then it gets stuck!” Try as she might, Fluttershy couldn’t get her laughter under control. She hung her head close to the table and snorted.
                
Smiling thinly, Sexy asked Trevor, “What’s gotten into her?”
                
He sighed. “About half a glass of cider. And that’s it.”
                
“Lightweight, huh?”
                
“Pretty much.” He finally noticed Gay Sparkle by her side. “Not going to cause any trouble, are you, Sexy? I thought I made things pretty clear last time we spoke. This is Fluttershy’s and mines first date out of the house, actually.”
                
Sexy waved a hoof. “Nope. Sorry, Trevor. Afraid that ship has sailed, hit an rock, and sunk. You wanted these hot and toasty buns all to yourself?” Like a well oiled machine, she shot her plot out to the side, causing a waiter carrying a load of drinks to glance over and upend his tray. “Well, these buns belong to someone else now. Meet… um… Suave Sparkle. Yes. Right here.”
                
Sexy propelled Gay Sparkle forward with a hard slap to the butt. He yelped and stared at her. “Uh… yes. I’m Suave Sparkle, I guess. Pleased to meet you.”
                
Trevor held out a hoof and Gay Sparkle shook it, giving it a quick kiss before letting go.
                
All three of them froze on the spot.

Fluttershy continued to laugh to herself about the mongoose and the log.
                
Sexy patted Gay Sparkle’s shoulder. “He’s really friendly, this one. I was lucky to nab him like I had. Come here and give us a smooch.” She puckered her lips and watched as Gay Sparkle paled.
                
He hurriedly shook his head. “I’d rather wait until we’re back home, honey bun.”
                
“Sexy Sparkle doesn’t wait until she’s behind locked doors to do what she wants. Public displays of affection have always been a turn on of mine. So has nibbling on ears.”
                
Before he had a change to pull away, Sexy grabbed hold of his shoulders and shoved her head next to his. She nibbled on the tip of one ear before whispering to him, “Just act natural. I’m only trying to make Trevor jealous. Once he sees all the stuff he could do with me and not that shy little mare, I know he’ll come running back to me.”
                
“Uh…” Gay Sparkle whispered sheepishly, “…what else do you want me to—”
                
That was when Sexy shoved her tongue into his mouth, wrapping her hoof around his head to keep him still. She closed her eyes and leaned into him. He shuddered and whimpered, trying his best not to gag on her expertly trained and powerful tongue. A single tear crept down his cheek. It seemed Gay Sparkle had a rather large aversion to making out with mares.

Or maybe it was only Sexy Sparkle that was causing such a reaction.
                
Hardly winded from the act, Sexy unhooked from Gay Sparkle and immediately locked eyes with Trevor. Once he had the chance, Gay Sparkle inhaled again and crumpled to the floor, his face a dark shade of crimson.
                
Trevor Sparkle looked at Sexy with a raised brow. “Doesn’t seem like he liked it too much.”
                
Sexy scoffed, “He’s still getting used to it. But he’s amazing in bed! And we just have the best time together! Truly, he can’t get enough of me. Isn’t that right, gummy bear?”
                
She glanced down at the Sparkle clone still panting on the floor.
                		
She smiled at Trevor. “See? True love. Now don’t you wish you could’ve had me when you had the chance?”
                
“I did have you. And it was terrifying. And painful. And I hope never to do that again.”
                
“But…” Sexy turned her head to the side, playing with her mane “… I could be gentle, you know.”
                
Trevor disagreed. “I doubt it. But I better get this girl home. I had no idea half a glass would turn her into this.”
                
As he stood, Fluttershy lifted her head up off the table and wrapped her hooves around Trevor’s shoulders, still giggling like an excited filly. “Did I ever mention that time I turned into a vampire bat? Not like a blood sucking one, but a fruit one. It was fun. I had fangs and I was biting things and eating all these apples…”
                
Using a hoof, Trevor helped her to stand. Once upright, Fluttershy latched onto his shoulders again and set her head near his neck.
                
“…but I was so hungry, I couldn’t stop. Like right now!” Fluttershy began playfully munching on Trevor’s neck, making small gnawing noises between laughs.
                
Trevor sighed, staring at Sexy. “She’s usually not like this. Honestly. It was only half a glass!”
                
Sexy Sparkle couldn’t hide her smirk. “Vampire bat Fluttershy? Damn it. That makes it official now. You’re now on my smexy list.”
                
A purple aura wrapped around Fluttershy’s middle and lifted her onto Trevor’s back. He gave the other two clones a half-hearted salute. “Well, as usual, it’s been weird. Goodnight.” He gave Gay Sparkle a quick glance. “And good luck to you, you poor, poor soul.”
                
As Trevor left with Fluttershy on his back, Gay Sparkle stood next to Sexy and took in the short lived scene—his eyes trained on Trevor’s round plot while Sexy took in everything she could. Sadly, instead of mentally cataloging the sight for later, Sexy stomped a hoof against the ground and grumbled, “Just try and keep your perfect plot out of my sight, Trevor. Just try. I’ll get you one day, my smexy stallion, and your little mare, too.”
                
Gay Sparkle glanced around a bit. “Were you talking to me or to only yourself just then?”
                
She exhaled sharply. “Never mind. We have a bar full of ponies to deal with, so let’s get to work.”
 

***


 

Two hours later and Sexy Sparkle had nearly cleared out half the bar. Every five minutes, another mare or stallion would send her a drink and she’d take a dainty sip before leisurely going over to greet them. The deal was sealed in the walk, the way she shook her hips from side to side as she made her way over. Sometimes (if the pony in question was one of the better of the bunch) she’d pretend to drop something on the ground and take her time retrieving it, giving the special pony and anyone nearby a sneak peak of what lay underneath the hood.
                
Ponies gasped at the sight. Some whistled. Many glasses smashed to the floor.
                
And Sexy loved every minute of it.
                
Once she’d corralled her targets and got her hooves around them, she’d either motion them to the washrooms at the back or to the alleyway behind the bar. Sometimes she went with only one pony, sometimes with whole tables full.

No families though. That would just be weird.
                
The bar, Sexy Sparkle thought, as she exited the stallion’s washroom after another round, leaving behind a pair of exhausted ponies on the floor. Why hadn’t I thought of this earlier?
                
She laughed, pulling out her personalized stamp card and poking out another two holes. Another six sexual encounters and she’d get a free plate of pancakes at Pancake Sparkle’s restaurant. They’d actually become good friends since being created days apart.
                
Then a sight by the end of the bar made her stop altogether.
                
Gay Sparkle sat alone at a table with a tall drink between his hooves, his head hung low. Sexy leapt up and flew to his side.
                
“Tough night?” she asked him gently.
                
He nodded and didn’t elaborate.
                
“Want to talk about it?”
                
He shook his head.
                
“Want me to take a guess?”
                
When Gay Sparkle made no motion either way, she took a seat next to him, resting her hooves on the table.
                
She titled her head. “No gay ponies for Gay Sparkle?”
                
He nodded, taking a large gulp from his drink.
                
“I find that surprising. Given how accepting this place is to every type of sexual orientation.” Sexy leaned back in her chair. “You need to change up your game, me thinks. I know you’re the ‘gentle’ version of us, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bend the rules a bit in your favor.”
                
He finished off his drink and pushed the empty glass away. “You can’t make someone gay in a single night, Sexy. Contrary to your bizarre sexual expertise, it really doesn’t work that way. I don’t think this place is really my scene. I’d have fit better in that dance club across the street. They have glow sticks. I like glow sticks.”
                
She patted his hoof. “Of course you do. But you tend to forget you’re a clone of my own creation, remember? Meaning I created you to be the sexiest little thing you could possibly be in any situation. I guarantee you I could get you a guy tonight.”
                
He ears perked up at that. “Really?”
                
“Sure.” Sexy smiled devilishly. “Pick out a stallion. Go ahead. Anyone that’s by themselves would be best.”
                
“All right.” Gay Sparkle fixed his sights on the rest of the bar, giving it a quick scan. He nodded to a table a few meters away. “Him. He seemed nice, as briefly as we spoke.”
                
Sexy turned and saw a light blue unicorn using his horn to flip the pages of a book he was reading. To his side he had an order of hay fries and a coffee. “Why him?” she asked.
                
“Because he’s reading and I like ponies that read.”
                
Sexy roughly flicked Gay Sparkle’s horn. “So does every Sparkle clone. What else?”
                
He smiled as he thought. “He’s also drinking coffee in a bar, meaning he isn’t a big party pony. Sure, I like to dance, but I don’t like to go crazy. I also like unicorns. It means we can stay up late and talk about different kinds of magic together and read to each other by the light from our horns and—”
                
Sexy held a hoof up to him. “I get it. You’re gay. Like super gay. I see that now. I’ll go and butter him up and when I give you the signal, just do a little twirl. And don’t be afraid to show off the assets.”
                
“The assets?”
                
She glared at him.
                
“Oh. Okay.”
                
Using her wings to make things easier, Sexy performed a smooth back flip right from her chair to the pony Gay Sparkle had indicated prior. Without a word, she took a seat beside him.
                
“What you reading?” she asked.
                
He didn’t look up from his book. “Earnest Hoofingway.”
                
She nodded. “Sounds boring.”
                	
“It’s really not. Books are a gateway to unlocking the mind. Ask anyone.”
                
“I’ll make sure to do that.” Sexy thought for a moment. “You know who likes books? My friend over there.”
                
“That’s nice.”
                
“Maybe you should actually look at him.”
                
When the stallion made no motion to do so, Sexy grabbed his horn and yanked him up.
                
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? See that purple stallion over there? The really good looking one? He likes books, too!”
                
“Oh.” The stallion frowned. “Yeah, I know. He came and talked to me earlier already. Sorry. As I told him, I just don’t swing that way.”
                
Sexy frowned. “What a sad swing you must be.”
                
He finally turned to her. “What was that?”
                
“I asked if you thought he was attractive.”
                
He furrowed his brows. “Well… sure, I guess, as far as stallions go.”
                
Sexy’s teeth clicked together, irritated. “You know how long I spent piecing that hunk of meat together from the clone catalogue?”
                
“What?”
                
“Nothing. Getting back on track, you do find him attractive. Maybe there’s something more there.”
                
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that.”
                
Sexy slid her chair closer to him. “Seeing any mares at the moment?”
                
“No. My last relationship ended six months ago.”
                
“Hmm. So that means that at the moment, since you’re not married and aren’t seeing anyone, that your success rate at dating mares is at a paltry zero. Oddly enough, I think that makes your success rate of dating stallions exactly the same.”
                
He looked at her with rising alarm. “I… don’t think I’m following you on this.”
                
She smiled. “All I’m saying is that maybe it’s time you changed up your game a bit. If mares haven’t been working…?” She rubbed her hooves together suggestively.
                
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
                
With a huff, she stopped tapping her hooves. “It’s supposed to indicate bumping uglies, but it doesn’t really work with hooves. Anyways, maybe it’s time you admit defeat in the world of mares and play for the other team? If you haven’t even tried it, how can you say you wouldn’t like it?”
                
She raised her hoof into the air and gave it a twirl. Gay Sparkle took the hint and left the table he was sitting at.
                
The unicorn by her side dog-eared the page he’d been reading, closing his book. “Look. I’m sorry I’m not interested in your friend. He seems like a great guy, but—” His jaw snapped shut as he caught sight of the display by the bar. His chin quivered out from his control.
                
“But what?” Sexy asked him with a grin. “Oh. Oh, wait. When you said ‘but,’ did you mean his butt? The one that you can’t seem to take your eyes off of now?”
                
Across the room, Gay Sparkle was standing at the bar, ordering another drink. The way he stood gave the unicorn next to her the perfect view of his rump. Gay Sparkle hid his face with a leg, clearly embarrassed by displaying himself in such a way.
                
A bead of sweat rolled down the unicorn’s face. “Why can’t I look away? My mind… it’s picturing things! A lot of… irregular things!”
                
Sexy chuckled. “When I created Gay Sparkle, I equipped him with a hypnotic gluteus maximum. Or in simpler terms—a booty that steals your attention and doesn’t let go. Having a change of heart about stallions, perhaps?”
                
He gulped. “I… might be.”
                
“Maybe you should go introduce yourself.”
                
After quickly glancing down at the table, he shook his head. “I think it would be better if he came over here. I really don’t want to stand up and make a scene.”
                
When Gay Sparkle got his drink and left the bar, Sexy tipped him a wink and left the table so he could sit. From a distance, she watched the two stallions chat and even read a bit from that book he’d brought along with him. Thirty minutes later, they left the bar together to get ice cream, holding hooves as they went.
                
Before Sexy sized up her next target, she gave herself a pat on the back for a job well done. Too bad she wouldn’t be around to see their wedding in seven days time.
 

***


 

Pancake Sparkle shut the door behind her and pulled a thin pancake from her saddlebag, rolling it into a tight joint and using her horn to light the end. She stuck it into her mouth and took a drag—the maple syrup coating the inside adding a honey flavor to the smoke.
                	
She leaned her back against the wall of the restaurant she’d been volunteering at for the past few days. She’d already done a fourteen hour shift and customers were still lined up out the door. Once the town heard she’d be working there, business had increased to the point of hiring new staff with thoughts of expansion. The owners of the place had offered her a great rate with benefits, but she’d shrugged them away. As long as she was making pancakes, she was happy. As long as ponies were enjoying the pancakes she was making, that would be all the compensation she’d need. Pancakes was life to her.
                
Deep in thought, a most alarming sight made her drop her rolled up pancake to the ground.
                
Two eyeballs with perfect black pupils floated in front of her, hovering at eye level.
                
When she took a step towards them, the eyes retreated in turn. Someone spoke to her.
                
“I was wondering where those had gone off to.”
                
Pancake Sparkle turned and gasped, her plot hitting the wall of the restaurant behind her. Without making so much as a whisper, another Twilight clone had entered the alleyway and walked until they were only three feet from her. The clone’s coat and mane were a perfect white, as was her tongue, gums, and hooves. It was as if she had been ripped right out of a black and white film strip and somehow brought to life. The only parts of her with anything but white were a stripe of thick black on her tail and mane, and the small trickle of blood escaping from her empty eye sockets.
                
The all-white clone grabbed the eyeballs from the air and popped them back into her head. She blinked a couple times to set them straight and smiled at her. “That’s better. Sometimes I send out my eyes in order to get a view of things from afar. I can see without them, but from what I understand it’s less intimidating if I keep them in.”
                
Pancake Sparkle remained motionless, trying to determine how close the rear entrance to the restaurant was to her.
                
The white clone kept on smiling. “How rude of me. I’m Nega Sparkle. You’re the first clone I’ve run into. Lucky you, I must say. Now you won’t need to witness the death of all your friends.”
                
She extended a hoof to her. Pancake Sparkle glanced at it, but didn’t move.
                
Nega Sparkle’s smile faltered a bit. “This is the part where you shake my hoof.”
                
A powerful force gripped Pancake’s hoof and brought it up, giving the clone a quick shake before she grabbed it back and held it to her chest.
                
Nega Sparkle nodded, never looking away from her. “Manners are important to me. Manners maketh pony, or so says my master. My master’s the one that sent me here—to do away with all the clones of Twilight Sparkle. Dark Sparkle wants to create a world in her image and she can’t do that unless all of your kind has been done away with.” She tilted her head to the side. “Please, don’t think of your death as personal. I hold no grudge against you personally and I’m sure your pancakes are excellent. I would offer you one last pancake before you go, but I can’t risk you alerting others of my presence. For that, I apologize.”
                
Pancake Sparkle’s eyes darted to her sides, her breath ragged and quick.
                
Nega Sparkle caught her looking. “You seem distracted. Are you looking for a way out? I assure you, you will not find one. May I offer advice? This may all be easier if you accept your fate.” She lifted a hoof and it softened into a liquid-like form, before reforming itself into an eagle’s claw. She snapped her fingers and the entrance to the restaurant was swallowed whole by the brick wall surrounding it.
                
“What… what are you?” Pancake chirped out.
                
Nega Sparkle smiled, displaying her blindingly white teeth. “I am a lot of things. I could even be you, if I wished.” Quickly consumed by green and black flame, Nega Sparkle took the form of Fluttershy, then Rainbow Dash, then a colored-in version of Twilight Sparkle in rapid succession. One last burst of flames turned her back into her perfect white self. “I also feed on many things—fear, chaos, love, power, magic. This town is full of such things and as I devour you and your fellow clones whole, I will grow more and more powerful.” The smile on her lips dropped and her brows creased. “I would like to lie and tell you that it will not hurt, but dishonesty is impolite. And I abhor impoliteness.”
                
Pancake Sparkle finally found her voice. “Help! Someone!”
                
Nega Sparkle nodded. “Yes. If it makes this any easier, you may scream. You smell of fear, so that is what I shall devour from you. It is so potent, now.” A billowing trail of purple smoke floated out from each eye.

Shoving a leg that felt as hard as steel under Pancake Sparkle’s chin, she lifted her up the wall as Nega Sparkle unhooked her jaw and elongated it three times its normal size.
                
“Hooves off the pancake mare, you hideous clone!”
                
Nega Sparkle shut her muzzle and turned to the direction of the noise. Applejack, Apple Sparkle, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Speedy Sparkle stood in a tight row by the mouth of the alleyway, legs bent and ready to charge.
                
Nega Sparkle looked at each of them in turn. “Interrupting someone is impolite. So is name calling. Luckily for you, I will forget such indiscretions as long as you leave us now. For the time being, I am only after the clones of Twilight Sparkle. It is only after they have been devoured that am I to deal with the Elements. Although Twilight Sparkle is to be left untouched.”
                
Applejack spit a wad onto the ground. “I don’t care what you want, whitey. You mess with one of Twilight’s clones, then that means you mess with all of us.”
                
“Apples!” added Apple Sparkle.
                
“So be it.”
                
Nega Sparkle let Pancake Sparkle fall to the ground as she made her way towards them. As Rainbow Dash and Speedy Sparkle flew into the air to charge, Nega Sparkle reformed a hoof into a lion’s paw and snapped her fingers, creating two dozen circular portals around the pair of pegasi. When one of them flew forward to attack, one of the portals would jump in front of them and shoot them out of another one in an opposite direction. Speedy Sparkle charged through one portal only to exit against a brick wall, knocking herself out.
                
“Come on, girls!” Rarity cried, leading the rest of them as she lit her horn.
                
Nega Sparkle’s lion’s paw formed back into a hoof and she pointed it to the left side of the alley. A moment later, it extended another fourteen feet and became as thick as a fire hydrant. As if effortless, she flicked that same leg to the right, colliding into every mare besides Pinkie Pie and smashing them into a dumpster.
                
Pinkie Pie managed to avoid the leg and ran until she was dead center with her. “Stop being such a big meanie!” she screamed, before grabbing Pancake Sparkle off the ground and helping her up.
                
Nega Sparkle’s returned her leg to its normal size and softly pressed it against Pinkie’s head. The same black and purple tendrils of smoke drifted from her eyes.
                
“What are you afraid of, my pink friend?” she asked almost softly. “The end of all joy in Equestria? Here, let me show you a glimpse of the future.”
                
Tears stood out at the corners of Pinkie’s eyes and she hitched in a breath. By that point, Applejack and the rest had gotten back to their hooves and rushed over to them. She wrapped a leg around Pinkie Pie and dragged her away, never taking her eyes off of Nega Sparkle.
                
With Pancake Sparkle in the middle of them, the group formed a tight knit circle at the center of the alley, Rainbow Dash keeping hold of the unconscious Speedy. Applejack roughly straightened out her hat. “Don’t think you’ll catch us off guard again! There’s no way you’re getting through us!”
                
Nega Sparkle sighed. “As much as I hate lying and the liars that tell those lies, now is not your time. I will return for you once all clones have been consumed.” Her eyes hovered over Apple Sparkle and Speedy Sparkle. “Say goodbye to them while you have the chance. Things will be ending very soon. Can’t you feel it?”
                
A white portal opened up underneath Nega Sparkle and she dropped into it. The moment she was gone, it sealed shut.
                
For a long, long while not a single mare uttered a word, keeping their backs pressed together to keep an eye on the alleyway. Applejack was the first one to break the silence.
                
“Well, that was probably the most messed up thing I’ve ever seen.”
> Iron Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Well, any ideas?” Applejack started, staring expectantly at the rest of them.
                
Applejack, Apple Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Pinkie Pie had all gathered in the ornate meeting room on the upper floors of Twilight’s castle, each taking a chair and saying little. Before they met, it was decided that Speedy Sparkle spend her time hovering around the grounds incase Nega Sparkle made a surprise appearance outside. More than anything, she was instructed to keep her distance and alert the others instead of trying to engage her. Rainbow Dash had to make it abundantly clear that this wasn’t the time for competition. She even went so far as to hold out snuggles until she promised she’d keep herself safe.
                
Rarity stepped away from the crystal table to walk around the room. “As Nega Sparkle herself said, she’s a creation of Dark Sparkle’s. That means she’s supposed to be the one that takes all of us out for good.” She grimaced at the next thought. “And I think this Nega Sparkle has a good chance of doing just that.”
                
Applejack set her hat on the table. “Talk like that ain’t helping, Rarity.”
                
“I’m only being honest. You saw what she could do—equal parts Discord, Tirek, Chrysalis, and Sombra all rolled into one… and Twilight, if we want to get specific.”
                
“Plus she can stretch, too,” Rainbow Dash added from her spot near the window. She watched Speedy Sparkle do another loop around the castle before she flew out of sight. “You think someone dropped an elastic band in the clone goo?”
                
“It’s more than just stretching—it’s also forming,” Applejack said, “but we’re getting off track. We know what we’re up against—or as much as we can. Now we need to know what to do about what we’re up against. Last time, we caught her by surprise and we still got clobbered. The only advantage we have now is the rules she mentioned.”
                
Rarity cocked a brow. “Rules?”
                
“Yeah. Like how she’ll do away with the clones before she’ll get away with us. That might help us get in her way without being in really serious danger, as long as she sticks with Dark Sparkle’s wishes.”
                
Rainbow Dash left the window to take a seat. “And if we piss her off enough for her to break her rules? She did seem to have a manners fetish.”
                
Applejack sighed. “Then I guess we’ll deal with it as best we can.” She looked up at Pinkie Pie. “You know if all the clones returned to the castle?”
                
Pinkie Pie plucked a clipboard and pencil out from her mane. “I think so. You wouldn’t believe how many more clones I found! There was Cough Sparkle and Tired Sparkle and Runny Nose Sparkle and—”
                
“That was actually only one Sparkle, Pinkie. Icky Sicky Sparkle. She’s seeing Doctor Sparkle as we speak.”
                
“Oh.” Pinkie Pie giggled. “Guess I’ll need to cross off a few names.”
                
Pinkie erased a chunk of notes from her clipboard as Rarity came up beside her and gave her a peck on the cheek.
                
“Tell us, sweetie. Who hasn’t come back to the castle? That might help narrow things down.”
                
Applejack viewed the pair curiously. “Still a couple, I see.”
                
Rarity waved a hoof. “Why of course, dear! I simply love my little bundle of fun right here.” She rubbed her nose against Pinkie Pie’s, making her blush.
                
Pinkie Pie shrunk in her chair and laughed again. “She means me! I’m her little bundle of fun!” She looked up at Rarity while her pupils formed into hearts, uncaring that pupils don’t actually work that way.
                
I wonder if there’s a bit of Pinkie in Nega Sparkle, Applejack thought curiously.
                
“Pinkie.”
                
She was still busy watching Rarity.
                
“Pinkie. The clones that haven’t come back?”
                
“Oh. Right.” Pinkie scanned her list again. “Discord Sparkle and Trevor Sparkle. We had Janitor Sparkle send them both letters, but neither of them has replied. Why do you think that is?”
                
Applejack frowned. “It might have something to do with Nega or it might not. Hard to say. All I know is that no clone is safe on their own out there; not until we find a solution to this. We need someone with enough power to take her on, head to head.”
                
Rainbow Dash moaned aloud. “Seriously? I know Celestia and Luna have been MIA since all this started, but you’re telling me none of you have thought about using the most powerful clone we have at our disposal?”
                
Applejack stared at her hooves. “She’s just a filly, Rainbow Dash.”
                
“A filly that’s constantly on fire! Would it hurt to just ask her?”
                
Applejack remained silent for a moment.
                
Rainbow Dash tried a different approach. “If it means saving Speedy or Apple Sparkle, isn’t it worth at least trying? If you’re afraid of getting her hurt, I wouldn’t be. I don’t think it’s even possible she can get hurt.”
                
“That’s not what worries me, Rainbow Dash. What worries me is whether she’ll actually help us or not.”
 

***


 

The moment the five of them left the meeting room and made their way to the stairwell, another Twilight clone flew out from behind the doors and loudly landed next to them. She hadn’t used her wings to fly. Instead, wrapped around the bottom of each leg was a silver and purple piece of high-tech machinery that was powerful enough to propel her off the ground. Her mane and tail were cut short, some ends even burnt. She had a smarmy expression at the ready.
                
“Sup,” she greeted. “Couldn’t help but overhear your little meeting in there. Special little club, right? Only Elements allowed? I can’t remember. Are you all the elements of air? Hot air, to be specific?”
                
Applejack growled deep in her throat. “We really don’t have time for this. I gave you an appointment earlier in the day and you never came. Not my fault. Yours. Now, if you’ll excuse us.”
                
“Sorry about that,” she said, even if she seemed anything but. “Busy working on a project. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about before.”
                
Applejack sniffed at her muzzle. “You were working on your project while drinking?”
                
The clone smirked. “What can I say? Shot Sparkle is great with tools and beverages. Plus, my best ideas come from a well-lubricated brain.”
                
None of the group looked impressed.
                
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. All I want are another half-dozen clones to help me in the shop. Also extra material. If you want my help with Nega Sparkle, you’ll need to—”
                
“But we’re not asking for your help,” Applejack interrupted.
                
“Okay then. When you ask the fire filly to help and when she replies by shitting herself and going nappy nap, you’ll know where to find me. I’ll pick the clones I need out myself and dismantle whatever I need from the castle for parts.” She barked out a laugh. “You have no idea how lucky you all are. Here I am offering you my superior firepower and all I see are annoyed faces staring back at me.”
                
“I’m not annoyed!” Pinkie Pie clarified. “I’m just trying to fit in!”
                
Rarity patted Pinkie’s shoulder and told the clone, “No offense, but I think the only way of stopping a magic user like Nega Sparkle is with magic in turn. Not… whatever it is you had in mind.”
                
The clone started counting on a hoof. “Bombs. Rockets. Heat seeking missiles. Flamethrowers. Eye lasers. Power-punch gloves….”
                
She continued on as Applejack led the rest of them towards the stairs. Once out of earshot, she muttered, “I really hate that Iron Sparkle.”
 

***


 

Discord finished his plate with a slurp, eyeing the piece of thin cloth close to him on the table. He picked it up as if studying a strange artifact. “What in Equestria is this?”
                
Discord Sparkle looked up from their plate. “A napkin.”
                
“But why?”
                
“To wipe at your mouth with.”
                
“But that…” Discord gagged, “…that makes sense! I don’t like that! Actually, now that I think of it, I don’t like this meal at all!”
                
Discord Sparkle put their head down, dabbing away bits of sauce from their mouth with their napkin. “What’s wrong with my spaghetti?”
                
“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong with it! And that’s the problem.” Discord snapped himself to a standing position. “It’s so… normal! I don’t like normal. It tastes good, yes, but that’s not what creators of chaos are supposed to eat. They’re supposed to eat chocolate mixed with gravy! Served in a bathtub made of bad decisions! Not… whatever this is.”
                
“Napkins and plates?”
                
Discord frowned. “So civilized, you are. Thankfully I have another trillion years or so to teach you the wonderful art of chaos wielding. Until then, why don’t you clean up these dishes you seem so attached to?”
                
With a sigh, Discord Sparkle left the table and gathered the dishes together. Through a nearby door, they entered Discord’s kitchen and blinked a couple times to get used to it. Every inch of the kitchen moved and squiggled around like an oil painting brought to life. Discord Sparkle started the water in the sink and got soap from the cabinet. Next to the soap was a giant mound of purple fur with a face.
                
“…phphphph…gasp!”
                
Discord Sparkle brought a finger to its lips. “Shhh! You know you’re not supposed to be here. If Discord knew I brought you across dimensions to his home, he’d probably…” They trailed off and scooped Fluff Sparkle up into their arms, squeezing her tight. In response, Fluff Sparkle made more farty noises and seemed not to care.
                
Discord Sparkle smiled. “You always know what to say to make me feel better.” They gave her another hug and rubbed their head into her fur. “You want to help with the dishes again?”
                
“Phhhphhph.”
                
“That’s what I thought.”
                
By that time, the sink had filled with warm water and bubbles. Discord Sparkle grabbed the first dirty dish and ran Fluff Sparkle against it until it glimmered. Fluff Sparkle truly was the greatest sponge they’d ever used. Perhaps the cutest too.
                
“Gasp!” said Fluff Sparkle, by the sight out the window.
                
Discord Sparkle looked up to find a perfectly white Twilight clone standing in the center of Discord’s lawn. If the sight wasn’t odd enough, the fact that she wasn’t screaming in pain while her hooves stood on jagged metal grass and burning bushes surrounded her on all sides only added to it.
                
The clone smiled and gave them a little wave.
                
By the way Fluff Sparkle was shaking in the sink, Discord Sparkle knew something wasn’t right. They turned around and hardly got out a word. “Dis—”
                
The white Twilight was already standing in the kitchen.

“Why didn’t you wave back?” she asked pleasantly.
                
“I….” Discord Sparkle’s throat went dry. They shoved Fluff Sparkle directly behind them.
                
“I waved at you, so why didn’t you wave back? That’s rather impolite, you know. But I guess so is lack of introductions. I’m Nega Sparkle.”
                
Discord Sparkle tried to remember some spells—any of the ones Discord had taught them since being created. They thought of the one they were best at.
                
Snap!
                
Nega Sparkle’s mane caught on fire. She seemed not to notice as it ate its way down to her scalp. Once it burnt down to her skull, her skin and mane reformed almost instantly.
                
“How did you even get here? Even I don’t know how I got here.”
                
Nega Sparkle chuckled. “It was easy, really. You think you and Discord are the only ones capable of inter-dimensional travel? Silly. All I had to do was follow my nose! Two masters of chaos in one house? The place is practically radiating chaos. Tasty, tasty chaos.”
                
Fluff Sparkle gasped again inside the sink.
                
Nega Sparkle glanced at her and happily tapped her hooves together. “And two clones for the price of one! I must say this visit is off to a great start.”
                
“Discord!” Discord Sparkle finally yelled out.
                
Discord exited from a doorway on the ceiling, his head in a book made of pizza slices. “Yes? Did we run out of milk again?”
                
His upper lip curled as he caught sight of their guest. “You seem… different. Not in a good way, I mean.”
                
Nega Sparkle turned to him, her smile faltering a bit. “This does not concern you. If you would kindly turn around and leave—”
                
“I most certainly will not!” He angrily flung his pizza-book against a wall. “What in Tartarus do you think you’re doing here, scaring poor Discord Sparkle? And don’t you dare say you’re selling door to door chocolates, because I don’t see a single box of chocolate on you. And I would know. That’s the first thing I looked for.”
                
“Sorry. No chocolate. I’m actually here to devour the pair of clones you have here.”
                
“Pair?” Discord exclaimed, whirling to Discord Sparkle and the hiding Fluff Sparkle. “What’s that doing here? If I told you once, I told you a thousand times, Discord Sparkle! No pets allowed!”
                
Discord Sparkle raised their hands. “She’s not a pet! She’s my friend! And she’s really fluffy, and for some reason you won’t let me have fluffy things.”
                
“That’s because draconequuses aren’t meant to have fluffy things!”
                
“What about Fluttershy?”
                
Discord pointed a sharp claw at them. “Don’t you dare bring her into this! Fluttershy’s an exception! But if you’ll excuse me, I have a weird pony to boot out of my dimension.”
                
He faced Nega Sparkle and faked a smile. “No offense.”
                
She nodded. “None taken.”
                
He snapped his fingers and not a thing in the kitchen changed. After he snapped them a few more times, he glared at his fingers as if they were some kind of unruly child. “What’s wrong with these digits? Send her away, damn you!”
                
Nega Sparkle tipped him a wink. “Sorry, but as long as I know that you’re trying something, I can dispel it almost instantly. Making someone vanish has to be one of the more simplistic of chaos magic abilities. Maybe try and catch me off guard next time? That might work.”
                
Discord lowered his head to her. “Off guard?”
                
That was when a grand piano fell out of swirling portal above his head, slamming him into the kitchen floor. Only the bottom of his legs and tail where visible beyond the wreckage.
                
Nega Sparkle took a breath. “I apologize for that. You should’ve left when I asked you to. But I won’t take up much more of your time.”
                
One of her forelegs extended to the other end of the kitchen, snaking around Discord Sparkle’s arm and lifting them off the ground by it.
                
The ruined bits of piano played a haunting three note melody before Discord exploded out the middle of it, a sword made of churning fire held in both hands. He brought it down on Nega Sparkle’s elongated leg, slicing it in half.
                
The part holding Discord Sparkle fell to the ground and liquefied, sluggishly making its way back to Nega Sparkle’s leg to be reabsorbed.
                
Still with sword held above his head, Discord watched the whole scene with growing worry. “You’re not even playing fair anymore.”
                
Nega displayed her glowing white teeth. “I wouldn’t say that. It’s still three versus one.”
                
“That mound of fluff doesn’t count!” Discord screamed, before he pulled at his beard in thought. “What was that thing you mentioned earlier? About paying attention, I think it was?”
                
She paused for a moment. “About being caught off—”
                
An entire wall of Discord’s kitchen was blown inwards as a giant wrecking ball attached to a cable careened through it, colliding with Nega Sparkle head on and hurling her into the distance. Bits of white goo coated the side of the ball where she hit, already pooling back together again.
                
Discord faced the destroyed wall and gave the operator of the wrecking ball a thumbs up. The Discord double clad in a hardhat returned the gesture.
                
Without wasting another moment, Discord snapped his fingers again and a portal appeared behind Discord Sparkle and Fluff Sparkle. He went up to them and ran a shaky hand behind his head, straightening his hair.
                
“I might not be able to send that thing away from here, but I can at least send you away. Find the Elements and let them know about this. I’ll distract her as long as I can, then I’ll come find you. Okay?”
                
Clumsily, Discord Sparkle grabbed Fluff Sparkle and hooked her under their arm. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
                
Discord rolled his eyes. “Please. I’m too good a character to be killed off by the last act’s half-rate villain.”
                
“You’re breaking the fourth wall again, I hope you know.”
                
“Well, then that’s just fine. My house doesn’t even have a fourth wall anymore anyways. And before I forget….” He hesitated a moment, glancing down. “I’m sorry I got mad at you earlier. You know I just get passionate about chaos. But just know that I love you and want you to stay safe. You’re too good looking to die.”
                
“I look exactly like you.”
                
Discord held up a finger. “Now’s not the time for flattery. So get going!”
                
With that said, Discord gave his clone a quick hug and kicked them through the portal. The last glimpse Discord Sparkle saw was Nega Sparkle reentering the house through the front door, not a single strand of hair out of place.
                
Whirling and swirling between dimensions, Discord Sparkle hugged Fluff Sparkle close to their chest and hoped that everything would work out fine in the end.
 

***


 

“NO!”
                
Applejack gritted her teeth, trying her best to keep it somewhat resembling a smile. Even from a good six feet away, she could feel the heat radiating of off the little filly, as well as the bits of electricity in the air that caused her fur to stand on end.
                
“Now listen here, Sparkle Sparkle,” she told the filly calmly, “we need your help now. I reckon you like helping others, right? I know the real Twilight did.”
                
Sparkle Sparkle never glanced up from her book. She was lying on her belly at the edge of her steel crib, another six heavy books surrounding her. “LEAVE ME ALONE! I AM READING!”
                
“We know. From what I’ve been told, you’ve been reading for quite a while now. Don’t you want to take a break and fight villains for a bit? I’ll make you some fresh apple pie if you do.”
                
“I HATE APPLE PIE!”
                
Applejack swallowed back the pure rage that had entered her mouth like venom. She quivered out a breath. “For the sake of everyone, I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just talk slander in front of me.”
                
Thankfully, Rarity stepped up to talk with the filly. “Maybe you’d like some cookies, then? Hmm? Hot and fresh chocolate chip cookies?”
                
Sparkle Sparkle flipped to another page. “AFTER I FINISH READING!”
                
“Maybe a cute little dress to wear? I’m sure I could find some flameproof materials to use.”
                
“NO!”
                
With a grimace, Rarity hissed at Applejack, “Well, this isn’t going anywhere. Any other ideas?”
                
“She has to stop reading at some point, right? Maybe she’s just in the middle of a good book that she wants to finish first. Twilight was a fast reader. Maybe she’ll be done by dinner time.”
                
Rainbow Dash leafed through one of the books in Sparkle Sparkle’s crib. “I doubt that. Looks like she’s reading that series about the colt wizard—Hairy Plotter. From what I hear, everyone’s reading it these days.”
                
Applejack sighed. “How many books in total?”
                
“Seven.”
                
“Damn. Well, maybe she’s almost done with them anyways.” She knelt down to Sparkle Sparkle again. “You sure like that series, huh?”
                
Sparkle Sparkle nodded without looking up, drinking from the juice box under her head.
                
“Almost done with them all?”
                
She nodded again.
                
Applejack sighed. “That’s a relief, then.”
                
“THEN I’LL READ THEM AGAIN! LIKE THE LAST FOUR TIMES! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE HAIRY PLOTTER AND WHEN I GROW UP I’M GOING TO MARRY HIM!”
                
Cursing under her breath, Applejack let the filly be and rejoined her friends.

“So that’s a bust,” she stated flatly.

“We could always take her books away, hide them somewhere,” Rainbow Dash suggested.

Rarity shot her a look. “We want Sparkle Sparkle to get mad at Nega Sparkle, remember? Not us and the rest of ponykind. If she wants to read, it would be wise to let her.”

“But that still doesn’t solve anything!”

Applejack rubbed at a cheek. “You think she’d be willing to break away from her books if she knew someone was in trouble? Say, someone she cares about a little more than others?”

“Who are you referring to, darling?” Rarity asked. “You don’t mean Fluttershy, do you?”

“Sort of. I mean, she did read her a story and rock her to sleep that one time. I don’t see anyone else doing that. I think most ponies try and keep their distance from her.”

“So you want to put Fluttershy as bait in the off chance Sparkle Sparkle decides she likes her enough to come save her? Better question: why would Nega even go after her? She’s after clones at this point, remember?”

Pinkie Pie jumped onto Rarity’s back, wrapping her hooves around her neck. “We could always paint her to look like a clone!”

Applejack nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. Nega Sparkle will think it’s just some Shy Sparkle clone and Sparkle Sparkle will hopefully be able to see through it and come to help. But still, that means—”

Someone mumbled something out of earshot. They all turned to a Twilight clone with a flowing pink mane and tail backed into a corner of the room.

“You say something, sugarcube?” Applejack inquired.

The mare mumbled again, hiding most of her face behind her mane.

“Come again?”

When the mare repeated her sentence a third time not much louder, Pinkie Pie scooped her up and set her in the center of their circle.

“There you go!” Pinkie told her. “Now everyone can hear you, because now you’re the center of attention!”

“Umm… all right…” By the look she gave all of them, it seemed as if it that was definitely not all right. Regardless, she stuttered out, “I’m… Shy Sparkle. I think I’m based off one of your friends, actually. I’d… I’d like to help if I could. I mean… only if that’s okay with you.”

Applejack gave her a hard stare. “You realize that by helping us, you’d be tangoing with a clone that removes their eyeballs from their sockets and sucks the life out of clones, right? As well as the combined powers of most of our past villains. You sure you’re up for that?”

The group could tell at once that Shy Sparkle wasn’t really up for that. She hid most of her body behind her mane and tail and whispered to them, “Upon reflection, this was a bad idea. I’m going to go slink away now and hide inside that pillow fort next to the bookcase. Okay. Bye-bye.”

They let her slink away to the safety of Fort Comfy.
Pinkie Pie pulled out a bingo card and stamped another box. “Bingo!”

Rarity snatched the card away. “Now isn’t the time for bingo, Pinkie.”

“What about ‘clone’ bingo?” Pinkie asked, rubbing her face against hers. “I actually got a straight line across because I found Shy Sparkle! Now if only I could find Sombra Sparkle somewhere. You’d think with who’s running the show, we would’ve run into one by now. How quaint.”

“Quaint?” Rarity repeated.

Choosing to sidestep that conversation, Applejack said, “So it’s settled. We’ll try and lure out both Nega Sparkle and Sparkle Sparkle into a fight using Fluttershy. But in order to keep Fluttershy safe, I think we should have some backup plan just in case. Like all the heavy hitting clones, willing and able.”

“Do we even have heavy hitting clones?” Rarity inquired. “I mean, vampires and undead Twilights are one thing. Nega Sparkle, well….”

“Maybe that’s where I come in?”

They all turned to the doorway, Applejack grunting from the sight.

Iron Sparkle took a pull from her flask and smirked. “If you want to protect your friend while she acts as bait, you’re going to need my firepower. Don’t be stupid now. Doing something smart might feel good for a change, you know.”

Applejack took a moment to weigh her options, finding she had very little to weigh with. Begrudgingly, she told her bitterly, “Fine. You’ve got the job. Now let’s figure out how best to blow up this bitch and make sure she doesn’t return.”
> Fish Head Sparkles
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Next, please!”
                
Rarity shouted for the next applicant, clipboard in hoof and watching expectantly as the room’s double doors parted and another clone stepped through. She sat next to Pinkie Pie along a narrow table, together with Applejack, Apple Sparkle, and Rainbow Dash. Although no one had called themselves a panel of judges, that’s exactly what they were that day.
                
“Name?” she asked the clone once the doors snapped shut behind them.
                
“Triple Threat Sparkle,” the Twilight clone replied.
                
“Oh! That sounds great!” Rarity exclaimed. “As you know, we’re looking for the very best of fighters for the battle coming up and by the sounds of it you seem like someone we’d most certainly want.”
                
Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes at the clone. “Three threats, you say? Well so far, I don’t even see one threat.”
                
Triple Threat Sparkle chuckled. “That’s because you haven’t given me a chance to demonstrate. Ready? Okay!”
                
The clone began tapping her hooves against the marble floor, creating a quick rhythm with an up-tempo beat. She added all four hooves into the mix, and began twirling around the room.
                
To stop her, Rainbow Dash whistled loudly. “Sorry, but… where’s the threat again? The three of them? Since when is dancing supposed to save the day?”
                
“Haven’t you ever seen Hoofloose?” the clone asked earnestly. “Anyways, that’s only one of my threats. I can also sing and act, and I hear I’m not too bad at improv either. Quick. Someone shout out a location and emotional response!”
                
Angrily, Applejack set down her clipboard and rolled her eyes. “How ‘bout outside that door and disappointed? Think you can manage that?”
                
With the drop of her shoulders, Triple Threat left the room while another clone took her place. Once again identical to Twilight, this clone distinguished herself by carrying a clear glass of red liquid inside with her.
                
Rarity raised her clipboard again. “Name?”
                
“One Punch Sparkle.”
                
“Oh! Now that sounds—”
                
“Come on, Rarity,” Rainbow Dash cut in. “You can’t keep on getting excited by every candidate.”
                
Rarity laughed awkwardly. “True. Perhaps I’ve been spending a little too much time with Pinkie Pie recently. She does make most everyday things sound rather exciting.”
                
“I do!” Pinkie Pie cheered, extending her head close to Rarity’s. “Maybe that’s because when we’re together, things are always exciting!”
                
Rarity gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Yes. Of course, dear.”
                
“So, One Punch Sparkle,” Applejack spoke, “what does that name mean, exactly? That you can punch an enemy a single time and they’ll actually go down? Because if that’s the case, then we can stop all these silly auditions right this second.”
                
“Oh, no,” One Punch Sparkle said, holding a hoof to her mouth. “Why does everyone always think I do that when I tell them my name? No. I’m sorry. My name actually means I only drink one glass of punch a day—like this glass of punch I’m holding now. If I drink anymore, I just know I’ll need to use the washroom, so I make sure to only drink the one.”
                
Applejack roughly slammed her head onto the table. With her face nicely flattened, she mumbled out, “If that’s all you do, then why’d you bother to audition in the first place?”
                
“Because I saw the line outside and wanted to feel included.”
                
As Apple Sparkle ran a delicate hoof through her marefriend’s mane, Applejack informed the clone, “I have a feeling you’re going to make a lot of ponies very, very unhappy in your lifetime.”
                
One Punch Sparkle frowned. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
                
Applejack removed her head from the table. “Someone get her out of here. And give us a minute before sending in the next one. I think I lost too many brain cells in the last minute to think all that clearly.”
                
Once the doors closed, she asked the rest of them, “Well, it’s been a couple days now, so I have a terrible feeling that those clones that left the castle earlier won’t be coming back. Which ones couldn’t we find again?”
                “
Coffee Sparkle and Tea Sparkle,” Rarity answered. “From what I heard, they left together and haven’t been seen since.”
                
“Why in Tartarus would they leave the castle in the first place?” Applejack spat. “They must’ve known we were on lockdown.”
                
“To get more coffee and tea, obviously.”
                
Applejack sighed. “Just when I think these clones can’t get any worse. Who else do you think Nega Sparkle might have gotten to? I know no ones seen Invisible Sparkle for a while….”
                		
Rarity yawned. “Just Expendable Sparkle. But, truthfully, I can’t say I’m surprised.”
                
Pinkie Pie jumped up from her seat, accompanied by a flourish of brightly colored streamers. “Expendable Sparkle? Who’s even writing this stuff, am I right?”
                
The others only stared at her.
                
Pinkie Pie indicated the paper attached to her clipboard. “I meant: whose terrible penmanship is this? I can’t even read it!”
                
Rarity gave her a small pat on the head. “It’s yours, sweetums, but let’s continue on before we get sidetracked. Bring in the next clone, please!”
                
The doors parted and a clone carrying an art easel and a mound of paintbrushes entered, setting them up at the center of the room. Her mane was frizzed so bad it almost resembled a giant purple dandelion.
                
“And you would be?” Rainbow Dash started.
                
“Paintbrush Sparkle,” the clone answered happily. “And I’m here to let you in on what might be the greatest coin making system of all time. First: look at this.” She removed the black tarp that covered her canvas. Underneath it was a painting of Twilight sitting in the middle of a forest. “What you have here is a happy little clone surrounded by happy little trees.”
                
Pinkie Pie giggled. “Don’t forget the happy little sun!”
                
Paintbrush Sparkle gave her a nod. “Oh, don’t you fret. It’s right here at the top, happy and cheerful as always. Now, as an expert, a painting of this magnitude might run anywhere from twenty to fifty bits, depending where you bought it. But what if I told you, I could copy this exact picture for less than two bits and replicate it as many times as I want.”
                
“I still wouldn’t be interested,” Applejack told her thickly. “Plus, why would I want a hundred paintings of the exact same thing?”
                
Paintbrush Sparkle grinned. “You do realize half the population of Ponyville is made up of Twilight clones at the moment, right? Clones that look exactly like one another? Clones that just might want a nice painting of themselves? Think about it! One painting that covers almost everyone! The idea practically prints out bits! Happy little bits!”
                
Rarity leaned across the table. “What kind of investment would you be looking for? And what kind of overhead can you offer? And would we be able to swap out the background if someone—”
                
Applejack held a hoof up. “Enough of this! This isn’t an audition for possible business ventures! It’s an audition for battle! Can you fight, Paintbrush?”
                
She paled a bit at the question. “I… could paint the battle, if you want. As long as it’s a happy little battle.”
                
With an annoyed grunt, Applejack left her seat and made her way to the doors. “If anyone wants me, I’ll be feeding those damn clones in the basement. Let me know if you actually find anyone useful.”
                

***


 

Before Luna’s eyes was a never-ending sea of purple; legs twisting and touching and gripping and petting. So soft, she thought. So dastardly soft. Luna knew she had important business to take care of—business involving the end of Equestria, if her instincts proved true. But each time she tried to grasp at that single thought of helping others, another of the Twilight clones would find a better position against her to help distribute their warm and soft cuddles.
                
“Ow!” said Cuddle Sparkle.
                
“Ow!” exclaimed Snuggle Sparkle.
                
“Stop that! You’re playing too rough!”
                
“I don’t like you! You’re being mean!”
                
For the first time in days, clear thoughts found their way into Luna’s mind like a splash of cold water. She opened her eyes and found both snuggle partners with only a single leg around her; their other legs in the tight grasp of an armored alicorn clad head-to-hoof in glimmering bits of purple and silver armor.
                
The cuddle clones left Luna alone on the floor and attempted to wrap their cozy bodies around their attacker. Both slipped off their armor to land on the floor with a thud.
                
Snuggle Sparkle scowled at the alicorn. “That’s not fair! Take off your armor and let us smother you!”
                
The alicorn inside the suit laughed. “That is the point of the armor, evil clone. No snuggles for you today!”
                
Snuggle and Cuddle Sparkle gasped in unison. “No snuggles or cuddles?”
                
The alicorn shook their head gravely. “No! Now the castle dungeons will host you two. Snuggle whichever prisoners you wish, only know that most have gone weeks without a bath.”
                
Cuddle Sparkle bottom lip quivered.
                
As a pair of castle guards in armor led the clones away, the alicorn gave Luna a hoof and helped her stand. Then she removed her helmet and let her flowing mane billow out into the air.
                
“Oh…” Luna started, before attempting to find the right word. “Crap.”
                
The Twilight clone in armor stared at the floor. “I know this may be hard to understand, Princess Luna, but I was once a creature known as Nightmare Sparkle. Now I have come to call myself Luna Sparkle, here to do good and vanquish all evil in Equestria. That is why I have came here today—to find you and your sister and bring you to the fight that will be unfolding soon. The clones and I knew something was wrong by your absences so far, but we had no idea how truly bad it was.”
                
She motioned towards the area on the floor where Luna had been snuggled into submission.
                
Luna gave her a curt nod, a slight blush on her cheeks. “Thank you, then. My sister and I have been experiencing trouble over the last few days—clones not designed to hurt or kill us, but rather stall or interfere. Sadly, they had been doing a rather good job of it.”
                
She whipped her head to the side with a frown. “You! Guards!”
                
The two guards stationed in the hall visibly flinched.
                
“You are both fired! Effective immediately! You did not help your Princess when she was being smothered into fuzzy oblivion not twelve feet from you!”
                
One of the guards shrugged. “But I thought it was cute.”
                
Luna glared at them. “So will the tales ponies tell of Luna Sparkle and me hoof stomping you unless you get out of my sight in the next ten seconds!”
                
Both guards scrambled away, letting their spears slap to the ground.
                
Luna turned back to the clone. “So you are like me, in a way?”
                
“Yes. At least as far as our pasts are concerned. And our manes. And our love of battle.”
                
A single nod later, Luna told her, “Most excellent. Now let us find my sister and do away with these rotten clones once and for all.”
                
Luna Sparkle shut her eyes. “I… am afraid it is not so simple anymore.”
                
“Whatever do you mean?”
                
“Before I could rescue either of you, another Twilight clone under the orders of Dark Sparkle had already gotten to Celestia, working her over for days before I could thwart her.”
                
Luna’s pupils shrunk. “Who!? And what have they done to my sister!?”
                
Luna Sparkle took a breath. “Cake Sparkle. They have been feeding her cakes high in fat and sugar over the last several days—hypnotizing Celestia to make her think she likes cake more than her own citizens.”
                
The ears atop Luna’s head flattened. “But Celestia was on a diet….”
                
“Not anymore.” Luna Sparkle shook her head. “Celestia is not fit for war at this time. Or her armor. Or stairs. Or sitting up. Or for chairs not reinforced with steel. Or for—”
                
Luna held up a hoof. “I get it. Then it seems just you and I will be joining the battle on behalf of Canterlot. And with any luck, we will find a Dietician Sparkle before the war is through.”
 

***


 

The moment Applejack opened the basement doors, two sets of chains rattled against the floor before suddenly coming to a halt. From the top of the stairs, she could make out glimpses of the two figures kept locked up in the dark. One’s fur was covered in bits of dirt while the other’s dark blue skirt-thing had been damaged near the ends.
                
Just thinking about them sent a shiver up Applejack’s spine.
                
Why does one of them wear clothes while the other doesn’t? I just don’t get it.
                
Hanging by the side of the stairs was an empty bucket. She unhooked it from the pulley and rope system they’d set in place and put a new bucket in its stead, filled with fish heads covered in salt. She lowered it down until it reached the basement floor. Both figures below her pulled on their chains until they caught, then looked up at her.
                
“Why are you doing this? We’re not that different from all of you!” screamed the Twilight clone in a purple skirt and blue blouse. Somehow she stood on her two back legs with ease, clad in boots that almost reached her knees. Her mane was done up much like Twilight’s, but underneath her hair was a face not equine at all—more flat and apelike.
                
Applejack rolled her eyes. “I told you before and I’ll tell you again: I don’t wanna hear nothing about no magical high school full of dances and talent shows and creatures that look just like you. No one believes it! And no one likes the sound of it, either!”
                
The clone shook her head defiantly. “That’s not true! I know at least some ponies like me! Honestly, they do!”
                
“Well, I don’t care. I got bigger things to worry about right now. Once the real Twilight is found, I’ll let her figure out what to do with you. Now go on and eat your fish heads.” Applejack grumbled to the other clone, “Unless you have something to add?”
                
The second bipedal clone gave her a pleading stare. Like her cellmate, she stood on her back legs with no problems whatsoever. Unlike her friend, her entire body was covered in fur and her head had the normal shape of a pony’s. While her back legs ended with hooves, her forelegs—or what she called arms—ended with five smaller joints. Hands, as Applejack had been reminded repeatedly. Above her butt was a standard tri-colored tail.
                
Applejack had to avert her gaze to stop staring at the two balloon-shaped mounds protruding around the top of her chest.
                
The naked Sparkle clone spoke sheepishly, “Well, I might not have as many fans as High School Sparkle, but I know quite a few ponies like me too.”
                
“A bunch of weirdoes,” Applejack spoke to herself, before pointing at the bucket of fish heads on the ground. “Now eat up and stop singing that ‘Winning the Crown’ song you keep on going on about. No one cares!”
                
Applejack trudged up the stairs and slammed the door behind her, casting both of them back into darkness.
                
Anthro Sparkle turned to High School Sparkle. “If it makes you feel any better, I thought your third movie was a lot better than your second.”
                
The other clone rubbed at her temples with her fingers. “Please stop talking.”
 

***


 

Another drop of sweat rolled down Trevor Sparkle’s temple. He didn’t take his eyes off the odd figure in front of him—the one seated quietly on the loveseat against the wall. Trevor sat in the middle of Fluttershy’s couch, too afraid to move or do much of anything. In the nearby distance, he could hear Fluttershy humming to herself as she did her chores around the outside of the cottage.
                
Trevor Sparkle had elected to take a nap instead. What he woke up to wasn’t all too pleasant.
                
“Nega Sparkle.” He didn’t state it like a question.
                
The all white Twilight nodded. “Yes. And you are Trevor Sparkle. What makes you special, I wonder?” She smiled thinly.
                
“Nothing. I’m just a male version of Twilight. That’s… it, as sad as that sounds.”
                
Her smile dropped a bit. “That’s rather unfortunate, isn’t it? Earlier today, I found Coffee Sparkle and Tea Sparkle. Now I know all the secrets of making excellent tea and coffee. Would you care for a cup of something before we begin?”
                
Trevor shook his head. “I’m good.”
                
He angled his head slightly when he heard Fluttershy’s humming getting closer. He exhaled in relief when he didn’t hear any doors open. As much as the brief distraction Fluttershy might have on Nega to give him time to try something, he honestly didn’t want to put her in any form of danger. If she came back inside and found the two of them gone for good, he thought he could live with that.
                
Trevor hadn’t had all that much life to lay claim to anyways, being created a little over a week ago.
                
“Are you the reason I haven’t seen many clones around town lately?” he asked casually.
                
Nega Sparkle nodded. “Probably. I tried to stop as much communication as I could, but some still slipped by. Although you’re still here, I see. Unprotected. Unguarded. Unaware.”
                
He raised a brow. “Royally screwed?”
                
Nega smiled at that. “Oh, yes. Very much so.” She rose to stand. “Shall we start?”
                	
Trevor stood and lit up his horn the moment she did. A single step to the right and it felt as if the gravity in the room had increased a hundredfold. Or maybe only he felt it like that.
                
“Can’t have you running away, can I?” Nega chided.
                
The bay windows directly behind Nega Sparkle exploded inward, showering her and the floor with glass. She turned to confront whoever had done it, only to get a face full of purple legs instead. Swinging off a rope, Sexy Sparkle had leaped into the room and directly onto Nega Sparkle’s neck, her large thighs clamped around her head.
                
Nega stumbled for a moment until Sexy brought her legs together with a twist, crushing her skull and breaking her neck. The insides of Sexy’s thighs became coated with white fluid.
                
Nega’s headless body fell to the floor, the trail of white exiting her neck already sluggishly pooling back together.
                
Trevor was so stunned by the sudden scene, he barely realized Sexy shaking his shoulders.
                
“You and that mare of yours need to get out of here,” she told him sharply. “Don’t think. Don’t speak. Just move.”
                
Slowly, his brain began to chug again. “What about you? What about her?” He pointed to the white puddle on the floor.
                
Sexy smirked. “I’ll deal with her while you two get out. What good are having thighs of steel unless you can use them once in a while, right?”
                
Trevor was forcefully pushed towards the front door. “But… but how did you even know she was here?”
                
“Security cameras, sweetie. Had ‘em set up for a while. Backyard, living room, bedroom, shower.”
                
He furrowed his brows. “What were those last two you said?”
                
Sexy sighed. “You want to live another day? Or do you want to ask more questions and die like the sexy idiot that you are?”
                
By that point, she’d managed to push him a foot outside the door and onto the welcome matt. She grabbed the doorknob and pulled, until Trevor stopped her with a hoof.
                
“She’ll kill you, Sexy!” he told her anxiously. “We can all get away! Right now, we can!”
                
Sexy shook her head, her eyes shimmering a bit. “I don’t think so. If someone’s not distracting her, then she could get all three of us by the time in takes to get to the castle. And I… really want you to stay safe, Trevor.” She looked up at him, biting her lower lip. “I know you don’t really like me very much, but it should come as no surprise that I’ve always liked you. And I feel like there’s a little piece of you, deep, deep inside me—maybe because there actually was a piece of you deep, deep inside of me once upon a time.”

She sighed tiredly. “Maybe it’s because you were the first male Sparkle clone, I don’t know… but all I know is that that ship between us has sunk and I for one would rather see you happy with someone else than with no one at all. I’ve had enough sex to fill up a whole lifetime, so maybe… maybe it’s okay if this is where my sexy tale ends.”
                
Trevor disagreed. “This isn’t like you, Sexy. Not at all.”
                
She smiled. “Just tell me that sacrificing yourself is sexy, okay?”
                
He smiled in return, pained. “It’s very sexy. But—”
                
“Good,” she finished. With her horn, she teleported the stunned and confused Fluttershy out from the garden to stand by Trevor’s side. Before she had a chance to speak, Sexy leaned in and gave her a kiss, then hooked a leg around Trevor and did the same, although with a tad more vigor and much more tongue.

“I’m gonna miss that,” Sexy reflected, before slamming the door shut and locking it with her horn.

Trevor Sparkle watched what happened next through the small window by the door. In the background, Nega Sparkle rose with her new head fully formed and glared at Sexy. Too quiet to hear, she asked her something and Sexy replied, popping her plot out to the side. That was when Nega shoved a bookcase against the door and the window, blocking his view.

Fluttershy lightly tapped his shoulder. “Umm… if it’s not too much trouble, could you tell me why it looks like a fight between good and evil is breaking out in the middle of my living room?”
                
Before he cast an aura around her and teleported them away, he informed her, “Because that’s exactly what’s happening.”
> General Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clones. Clones as far as the eye could see.
                
Tightly packed together, row by row they stood. While most looked completely identical to the original Twilight, a few stood out from the rest—some larger with extra muscle, some taller and lankier. An entire row was packed with patiently watching Twilight fillies, the one at the center of them all adorning a pair of oversized glasses above her nose.
                
General Sparkle took a quick glance at the filly with glasses and grunted in pain, her heart trying to slow down until it stopped. In front of the troops, she came to a halt and readjusted the green camo helmet atop her head. She spat a wad of chewed up grass onto the dirt.
                
“Now isn’t this a sore sight!” she announced, effortlessly slicing through the air with her words. “What a ragtag bunch of—”
                
“What did you say? Can you speak up, please?”
                
General Sparkle rolled her eyes. “Put a cork in it, Deaf Sparkle! You can’t hear anything anyways!”
                
“What was that?”
                
General Sparkle put a hoof to her forehead and pressed on. “I was about to go into detail about how much you all suck—about how Nega Sparkle is going to cream the lot of you unless you grow a backbone and manage to work together—but I think it’s high time we get this battle underway. I won’t do you the disservice of sugarcoating it, clones: for one, I’m not a baker, and for another, I’m not a very good liar. So here’s the skinny: there’s a good chance a lot of you will die today. Possibly chopped up into a hundred little pieces or devoured until there’s nothing left. You may be crushed, set on fire, impaled, have your very soul sucked out your mouth, or have nightmares so real and terrifying forced into your skulls that swift death with feel like a pleasure. I don’t mean to scare you—”
                
“But that’s exactly what you’re doing!” shouted Obvious Sparkle.
                
General Sparkle spit a wad onto the ground again. “I say all this for a rather good reason. Many of you have been left to simply blend into the background, myself included. This hat and this spitting bit? That’s basically all I have. Most of you don’t even have that. You’re cannon fodder, simple as that. The clones that have had scenes to themselves might actually make it out of this. If you were just mentioned in passing, say for a pun or something like that… things may go sour for you real soon. I’m looking at you, Deaf Sparkle.”
                
“What did she say? Was it important?”
                
“Never mind. By this point in time, I’m only rambling on to help my chances in surviving. Long speeches tend to be remembered. Then again, considering Sexy Sparkle bit the bullet less than two hours ago, it doesn’t seem like anyone is all that safe.”
                
General Sparkle took a curious glance to a clone in the front row with a curved red horn and red-and-green eyes, watching her closely. Floating in front of them was a notebook and quill, held close to their face.
                
General Sparkle gulped dryly. “Any questions before I divide you into groups?”
                
A clone in the second row raised a hoof. “How is it possible that one single Twilight mold is able to create all these different sized-and-shaped clones? I mean, that seems rather impossible, doesn’t it?”
                
General Sparkle titled her head. “I, uh, really don’t know. But I don’t think that’s all that important right—”
                
“How was Dark Sparkle able to get traces of Chrysalis, Sombra, Tirek, and Discord in order to create Nega Sparkle? And how it is she’s able to heal and stretch like she does?”
                
“That’s something I also don’t know. But moving on—”
                
“Why wasn’t someone sent to Fluttershy’s house the moment everyone was brought to the castle? Just so Sexy could sacrifice herself for no reason whatsoever? And why couldn’t the three of them simply teleport here? Does Nega have some teleport-halting powers that were never mentioned? Is she just making up her powers as she goes? And how is no one watching the cloning machine after all the terrible clones that have been created? You would have thought that by this point someone would be guarding it, right?”
                
General Sparkle strolled to the talkative clone and smiled at her thinly. “And your name would be?”
                
The clone nodded proudly. “Plot Hole Sparkle.”
                
“I see.”
                
General Sparkle turned to the right and saw the clone with the curved red horn drop their notepad to the ground and gasp. They locked eyes with her and slid a hoof across their neck, angling their head to Plot Hole Sparkle.
                
General Sparkle whistled, signaling for her second in commands to appear. Plot Hole Sparkle was promptly gagged and dragged away towards the castle, kicking and muttering the entire time.
                
She spit out the gag and shouted at the clone with the red horn. “Everyone knows what you’re doing! You’re not being clever! You know what this story and Swiss cheese have in common? Holes! Holes everywhere! And don’t get me started on the shifting tones!”
                
General Sparkle rolled their eyes and looked at the clone in the front row again. “You owe me for that. I don’t want no longwinded death scene, you hear?”

The clone picked up their notepad again and sighed, then scratched out a bit of writing before restarting.
                
Taking a breath, General Sparkle stood before her army of clones and spoke clearly.
                
“Let’s go to war!”
 

***


 

“So what’s the plan?” Rarity asked, pacing around the castle entryway as clones of all shapes and sizes scurried in all directions.
                
“Well…” Applejack said slowly, “we get in formation and then take it from there. We’ll lead Sparkle Sparkle outside and, if things go according to plan, she’ll come face to face with Nega and that’ll be that.”
                
Rarity cocked a brow. “What is ‘that’ supposed to mean? Sparkle Sparkle suddenly destroys Nega Sparkle with the flick of her horn and that’s that?”
                
“Hopefully, but still doubtful. Which is why we have all the clones on standby incase she needs some help. Although with someone like Sparkle Sparkle on the battlefield—someone not really in control of their powers—it might be best to just stay out of her way.”
                
Rarity nodded, glumly. “How is Discord doing?”
                
“He’s all right, I guess; tangoed with Nega for as long as he could until she cornered him and sucked out a good chunk of his chaos magic. I’ve never seen the draconequus look so pale before. He’s upstairs resting with Discord Sparkle and that mound of fluff they keep carrying around.”
                
“Will Discord Sparkle be apart of the battle?”
                
Applejack nodded. “They said they would. He, she, it, whatever they’re classifying themselves as.”
                
Rarity anxiously rubbed at a hoof. “Pinkie Pie’s painting Fluttershy as we speak, to look like a clone.”
                
“Yeah. She should be done soon. Right when Sparkle Sparkle should be in position. Rainbow Dash and Speedy Sparkle are taking care of that… hopefully.”
                
Rarity sighed. “I feel awful with what happened to Sexy Sparkle.”
                
“I think that’s why Fluttershy’s going along so well with everything. I know she didn’t like the mare—heck, no one actually liked that mare if we’re speaking the truth—but, still, what she did for Trevor and her was good. She saved ponies, and I really didn’t think she had that in her.”
                
Rarity pursed her lips. “Neither did I. She seemed pretty selfish, honestly. If I had known things would’ve ended like that, I might have even reconsidered that proposal of hers from earlier.”
                
Applejack frowned. “You’re not talking about that orgy she wanted to have with the five of us on the way to stop Dark Sparkle, are you?”
                
Rarity grunted. “I said might have reconsidered, Applejack.”
                
Applejack’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry. I get what you mean. All that horny little mare wanted was some good loving from anyone that was willing to give it to her. And can you really blame her for trying to get some of this?”
                
She playfully slapped Apple Sparkle’s butt as the clone stared out a window.
                
“Apples!” she yelped, before tipping Applejack a wink.
                
From a doorway exited Trevor Sparkle, his head held low. “Fluttershy’s almost ready, but I still don’t know if this plan’s all that great. You’re putting Fluttershy in danger just by—”
                
“We know what we’re doing, Trevor,” Rarity cut in sharply. “You’re going to have to trust us, is all. We’ve known Fluttershy longer than you, so the last thing we’d want to do is put her in harm’s way. We’ll be waiting just out of sight, same as everyone else the moment something should go awry.”
                
He nodded. “So we’re clear, I’ll be teleporting her out of danger the moment I see something’s off. I’ll stay and fight, but Fluttershy isn’t really the type for that.”
                
Rarity smiled warmly. “You really have a thing for her, don’t you?”
                
“I do. If I manage not to die in the next couple of hours, I’ll be asking her to marry me.”
                
Rarity snickered. “I have the oddest feeling this all ends with a grand wedding of some sort.”
                
“Including you and Pinkie Pie?”
                
She hesitated before replying, “We’ll see about that.”
 

***


 

Every clone jammed into every nook and cranny around town kept their heads low and their voices hushed. Ponyville had been evacuated earlier in the day and most shops, stalls, houses, and even town hall were filled with dozens of watching clones.
                
At the very center of town was a very particular clone with a dripping purple coat. Her mane and tale were bubblegum pink and she waited on the ground. Fluttershy was already shaking like a leaf.

Her head jerked from one direction to the next, eyeing up her friends ducking behind a series of barrels across the street. Behind her, she could hear one of Sparkle Sparkle’s books being carefully tugged another few inches along the road. She turned to watch.
                
Rainbow Dash hovered several feet in the air with a fishing poll in her hooves, pulling the fishing line back inch by inch as Speedy Sparkle made sure the line didn’t catch on anything. At the end of the line was a hook embedded into the cover of “Hairy Plotter and the Search for Warm Socks”. Every six inches or so, Rainbow Dash would stop and let the trailing Sparkle Sparkle catch up and leaf through a few more pages before the book was pulled away from her again and she was forced to continue forward.
                
By how slow they’d been moving, Fluttershy thought they must’ve been leading her out of the castle for hours already.
                
A few minutes later, the book found its way to Fluttershy’s side and Rainbow Dash cut the line to it. Sparkle Sparkle sat down next to her without looking up and started to read again, seemingly unknowing or simply uncaring of the change in surroundings.
                
Fluttershy let out a sigh of relief. At least the plan seemed to be on track. As far as she knew, Sparkle Sparkle was the most powerful being on the planet currently, and was thankfully on their side. The sooner this was all over, the sooner she could go back to her cottage with Trevor. The sooner she could do that, the sooner she could put all this nasty clone business behind her and—
                
“Hello there,” greeted the all-white Twilight in front of her.
                
Fluttershy yelped, then hitched in a breath. It was as if Nega Sparkle appeared in front of her in the blink of an eye.
                
Nega Sparkle angled her head. “Not going to say hello back? That’s mighty impolite.”
                
“Umm…” Fluttershy swallowed, before uttering barely above a whisper, “Hello.”
                
Nega Sparkle smiled. “That’s better. What brings you out here? I thought everyone was trying to avoid me? Have you accepted your fate and decided to greet death with a smile?” When Fluttershy didn’t smile in return, she added, “Or… a bemused expression, perhaps?”
                
Fluttershy had trouble meeting her eyes. She turned to her side. “Sparkle Sparkle? There’s someone here I’d really like you to meet. Could you put your book down for a moment?”
                
Sparkle Sparkle flipped to another page and paid her no mind.
                
Fluttershy quivered out a breath and tried to stop staring in the direction of her hidden friends.
                
Nega Sparkle regarded Sparkle Sparkle curiously. “Oh, I almost missed you there. You must be a clone as well. Not all that purple, though. That’s neat. That’s super. That makes my job a little more interesting.” She knelt down until her face was up close to the filly’s. “And you’re on fire! Very nice. I’m wondering now. What sort of clone are you supposed to be? Albino Sparkle? Powdered Sugar Sparkle?”
                
Her smile slipped from her face as Sparkle Sparkle completely ignored her existance.
                
“You know it’s not polite to stay silent when someone is speaking to you, especially an elder. I could be a lot meaner if I wanted to be. I leave that up to you. You want to tell me what you do, little one?”
                
Again she was met with a wall of silence.
                
Nega Sparkle sighed. “Fine. Maybe this will grab your attention.”
                
The book in Sparkle Sparkle’s hooves disintegrated into black ash, covering her hooves and specking her face. Her mouth went agape and her eyes began to water.
                
Fluttershy was almost tempted to start yaying as loud as she could, her eyes darting back and forth between the two Sparkle clones. She waited nervously for the moment when Sparkle Sparkle would explode, tearing Nega to bits and getting revenge for all those poor clones she’d destroyed—poor Sexy Sparkle included.
                
Nega watched as Sparkle Sparkle hitched in some air and saw her jaw quiver. When the first tear streamed down Sparkle Sparkle’s cheek, she bawled as loud as an air siren and ran into Fluttershy for a hug. From her tiny forelegs alone, all the air was forced out of Fluttershy’s chest instantly.
                
This wasn’t part of the plan, Fluttershy thought dourly.
                
Fluttershy returned the embrace and tried to console the tiny filly, stroking a hoof along her back. “It’s okay. It’s okay now. We’ll get you a new book, I promise. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
                
“I WANT NEW BOOK NOW!” Sparkle Sparkle wailed for all of Ponyville to hear.
                
Two thin rivers of tears stained Fluttershy’s chest, washing away some of the purple paint.
                
Nega Sparkle looked at the pair awkwardly. “Now the tiny clone is just being loud. Painfully so. What have you all set up here, anyways? I can sense hundreds of clones not within the castle walls. Is this an ambush of some sort? Then why am I left with only you two to contend with?”
                
Fluttershy patted Sparkle Sparkle’s back and glared up at Nega. “Because you just hurt the feelings of the wrong clone, you big meanie! Why… I’m sure at any moment, she’ll make you regret being such a big jerky jerk!”
                
Nega Sparkle shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t see that happening. But if you’ll excuse me, I have quite a few hiding clones to deal with.”
                
She took a single step to her side before halting in place. On her forehead was a small red dot that slowly grew into the six of a bit, then the size of her head as if she were cast in a red-tinted spotlight.
                
She glanced up and Fluttershy’s world went white. When her vision cleared, Fluttershy was a good dozen meters away from Nega Sparkle, watching from the steps of Twilight’s castle. Before she could utter a word, a ray of blinding red light the size of a small house crashed down onto Nega and sent dirt, wind, and debris flying in all directions. The explosion lasted for close to thirty seconds before it seemed to suck back up into the sky. In its wake was a crater meters deep and the entire street wide.
                
There was not a trace of Nega Sparkle to be found.
                
Below Fluttershy, Sparkle Sparkle wiped at her tearstained cheeks. “She hurt my book, so I hurt her back,” she said in an oddly small, childish voice.
                
Fluttershy kissed her forehead. “That was very good of you, Sparkle Sparkle. I’m very proud of you. You did the right thing.”
                
“Is it over?” a clone yelled, after they left the safety of a store.
                
“I think so. That was it, right? She’s gone?” asked another clone standing in the street.
                
No. Not quite.
                
A white portal formed at the bottom of the crater and Nega Sparkle rose out of it, head bent and breathing deeply. She slowly marched out of the pit and stood at street level again, her eyes scanning all the clones that had left their hiding places.
                
Nega exhaled as if she’d spilled a drink on herself. “I tried to be nice. I tried to be reasonable. All I wanted was the complete and total annihilation of every clone in Ponyville, but I guess that was too much to ask for. So be it. Here’s where I stop playing nice.”
                
She formed her hoof into an eagle’s claw and snapped, creating a half-dozen portals in the air. What came out of them was every make and model of creature and monster rotting in the deepest dungeons of Tartarus… and more.
                
At that moment in time, Fluttershy was thankful she’d turned down that one cup of punch from One Punch Sparkle, otherwise she might’ve been sitting in a puddle by the sight alone. She looked down and gave Sparkle Sparkle a quick pat on the head.
                
“I sure hope that Nega Sparkle doesn’t hurt anymore books…” she goaded the demi-god desperately.
                
“Hurt… MORE BOOKS!?”

That was when Sparkle Sparkle disappeared from her lap in a bolt of lightning and uppercut Nega Sparkle through the second floor of the building across the street.

A moment of awestruck silence later, the battle of the clones began.
> Bearded Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nega Sparkle exited from the first floor of the building she’d been thrown through, brushing off bits of debris from her shoulders before glaring down at Sparkle Sparkle. The moment she could, Sparkle Sparkle shot out a beam from her horn that pierced through Nega’s chest and out the other side, obliterating another section of the ruined house behind her. Nega ignored her melting chest and snapped iron chains around Sparkle Sparkle’s legs, keeping her close to the ground. Nega lifted one foreleg up and stretched it out twenty feet, thinning it until it was as thin as blade. She turned and slashed at the base of the house behind her, effortlessly slicing through it like butter. The house rumbled as it caved inward and toppled over, bits of brick and glass pelting the street.
                
Sparkle Sparkle shot out another beam to the chains around her legs, but the crumbling house had already cast a shadow over her. Before it leveled the filly, she sealed herself in a yellow shield. When the demolished house settled, she shot out through the rubble and back into the air.
                
As much as Applejack wanted to continue to watch the battle of titans across the street, she had her own threats to occupy her time. Near the end of the street was a small army of floating hard-to-see ghosts, wrapped in tattered purple cloths and with bones for limbs. Surrounding them were fifty or so Twilight fillies corralling them and standing on each other’s backs to better aim their horns. Led by Heart Attack Sparkle, the fillies attempted to encircle the apparitions and force them into an empty house that they could temporarily contain with a shield.
                
Or that was what she heard the plan was, at least.
                
Applejack ducked as a red-shirted clone was ejected from the battlefield and thrown through an orange cart. She looked up and held her breath as the five heads of the purple hydra towering above spotted her and snarled. She turned to her side and found Apple Sparkle looking at her.
                
“Apple apples?” she suggested.
                
Applejack nodded, before she tossed Apple Sparkle her extra lasso and whistled for Rainbow Dash and Speedy Sparkle to come pick them up. Keeping the hydra’s heads occupied, both pegasi circled the mammoth creature while giving it a wide birth—every kick or punch carefully timed and controlled. The hydra managed to nip on one of Speedy Sparkle’s wings while she soared by, thankfully only losing a few feathers in the skirmish.
                
Rainbow Dash landed for less than a second and Applejack leapt onto her back, mouth clamped around her lasso. They shot upwards and one of the hydra’s heads lunged for them, missing them by a good few feet. Applejack coughed out her lasso and waited until it lunged again. When it did, she threw it around its jaws and knotted it. Still gripping the rope, she leapt off Rainbow Dash’s back and managed to pull the hydra’s head down with her. Using whatever slack she could, she hurriedly tied the rope to something she hoped wouldn’t give way—namely, the copper statue in the center of town.
                
With Apple Sparkle on her back, Speedy Sparkle did much the same as Rainbow Dash had, circling the remaining hydra heads before angering one enough to attack. Once that head left the safety of the others, Apple Sparkle wrapped it up with her lasso and tied it to the same statue on the ground. Noticing their strategy, the hydra pulled its body away sharply, only for the statue to hold and for their torso to come crashing to the ground. Once there, another dozen clones took to finishing it off, including a Sparkle ten feet tall and ripped with muscle.
                
“Oh, yeah! Punching things!” she yelled, before she indeed started punching things.
                
Once Apple Sparkle was safe again and by her side, Applejack gave her a friendly shot in the shoulder. “Nice plan, Apple Sparkle.”
                
Her marefriend nodded. “Apples.”
                
“I knew you’d say that.”
                
A scream from ahead pulled at their attention. Paintbrush Sparkle’s easel and paint supplies had been thrown to the ground as another Sparkle clone tackled her to the ground. Another clone jumped on top of the pair and tried to grab at every inch of Paintbrush. The two clones mumbled out “cuddle” and “snuggle” on a continuous loop.
                
Applejack sighed and wrung her hat. “Darn it! I thought those two were locked up! What the hay?”
                
Two figures descended to stand beside her. Luna, clad in sparkling armor, told her, “It appears that Nega has released everyone she thought could be of use, including those two.”
                
Luna Sparkle put a hoof on Applejack’s shoulder. “I would not fear them, Applejack. You have bigger worries to contend with. We will deal with these two quickly and return to the fight posthaste.”
                
Applejack gulped. “What ‘bigger worries’ do you mean?”
                
Luna Sparkle motioned up the street, where a twelve foot tall bipedal monster shook the earth with every step it took. Its back legs were those of a goat, while its upper-half was half equine and half whatever High School Sparkle was. More of those creepy fingers that made Applejack uneasy.
                
“Fine,” she muttered, before her and Apple Sparkle charged headfirst towards it.
 

***


 

Fluttershy tried to hush the sniffling filly in her grasp, carefully placing a Princess Celestia band-aid on the scrape she’d received in battle. To try and make her feel better, she kissed her injury and gave them a smile. The filly ran a hoof under her nose and smiled back, before charging back out into the fray.
                
A shadow fell atop Fluttershy and she turned. Standing over her was a tall, thin creature that resembled a bird crossed with a pony. It had wings and greasy hair down to its shoulders. At the end of its wings were claws that must’ve been used as hands. Jutting out from its mop of hair was a bird beak, sharp and jagged by its tip.
                
It slashed at the air in front of Fluttershy, seemingly uncaring it they found their mark. The second slash was halted by a purple shield erected just in time. The bird thing glared at its claws, now chipped and broken from the hit.
                
Fluttershy was shoved backwards by an unseen force and Trevor Sparkle took her place, staring down the tall monster. He turned to Fluttershy. “You all right?”
                
She nodded, visible shaking from the fright. Her eyes widened and she tried to speak.
                
The bird thing struck Trevor’s shield again, but this time passed through. He felt claws rake across his chest and avoided the worst of it by leaping back. Four thin and bloody lines crossed his chest.
                
He took another step back to buy him some time, but fell to the ground once he tripped over Fluttershy. Laying down next to her, he looked up as the creature prepared to slash again… only to stop the moment their wing was raised.
                
It seemed to be thinking about something… or hearing something only it could.
                
It lowered its wing and turned, searching for another victim to prey upon. Trevor took the opportunity given and collected Fluttershy off the ground. Before he could speak, she slapped four more Celestia band-aids atop his cuts. “What was that all about?” she asked him.
                		
He frowned. “I have no idea, but somehow not being sliced to death just now made me even more worried than before.”
 

***


 

From a distance away, Applejack watched as Nega Sparkle shot out an elongated leg and hooked in the small Crusader Sparkle while her back was turned. Before anyone could get to her, Nega pulled a bendable straw out of thin air and literally drank away Crusader Sparkle’s book-trio cutie mark. A moment later, a bolt of pure energy passed through Nega’s chest and impacted the dirt on the other side. Sparkle Sparkle powered down her horn and shook her shoulders of the excess goo, before she teleported Crusader Sparkle back to the group of fillies.
                
As the wound in her chest sealed up, Nega sighed. “You again?”
                
Sparkle Sparkle stuck her tongue out at her.
                
“Clear the way!” someone shouted overhead.
                
Applejack glanced up in time to find Iron Sparkle in full form. The same type of metal instruments she’d had wrapped around her hooves previously had now spread out to the rest of her. A tight-fitting helmet completed her suit, with glowing yellow slits for eyes.
                
Sparkle Sparkle ran for cover as Nega looked up in annoyance. Iron Sparkle pointed a leg at her and shot out a half-dozen glowing orbs that struck the ground next to Nega before exploding six feet in every direction.
                
The first blast cut a perfect half-circle into Nega’s foreleg and head. Still she kept coming.
                
The second blast disintegrated her lower-half and she was forced to walk on what legs remained to her, performing a creepy type of hoofstand. With all remaining hooves busy, she used her horn to form a lion’s paw and snapped.
                
Applejack noticed what she had in mind before Iron Sparkle did. “Iron Sparkle! Above you!”
                
Iron Sparkle looked up and zoomed away in search of cover as a bathtub full of cement sailed by her head. Another laundry list of heavy items followed, each trying to crush the metallic Sparkle underneath. The last item to drop clipped one of her metal-covered wings and caused her to barrel roll in the air. Almost fully formed again, Nega took the opportunity and hit her with a hoof that shoved her through a house and out the other side.
                
Watching Iron Sparkle come crashing onto the steps of Town Hall, Applejack didn’t notice Apple Sparkle standing right next to her. “Now where have you been?” she asked tiredly.
                
Apple Sparkle cocked her head. “Apples?”
                
Applejack gave her a hug. “Awe shucks. I’m just glad you’re all—”
                
The pony she latched onto erupted into green flames. What stood before her now was a pony of white.
                
“Are you starting to understand why you can’t win this?” Nega Sparkle softly spoke.
                
“Where’s Apple Sparkle!” Applejack roared.
                
“She’s fine. I really don’t know where she is. This was only a test. If Sparkle Sparkle really is what your laying all your hopes on, then what will you do once she falls? I can assume the likeness of everyone you hold dear, so do you think you’ll ever truly feel safe? Give up, Applejack. Give it all up. Tell the clones to stand down. Tell them to submit to me and to Dark Sparkle and… perhaps Dark Sparkle will see it in her heart to keep you and your friends around. Not your marefriends, of course.”
                
Applejack spat in her face. “I’d never hoof over Apple Sparkle to you.”
                
Nega absorbed the spit on her cheek and smiled. “Love. I taste it. I can’t wait to suck out every last drop of love from Apple Sparkle… and then you, once Dark Sparkle grows tired of tormenting you and your friends.”
                
Applejack had grown tired of talking with crazy ponies. “Knock knock.”
                
“Who’s there?”
                
“Sparkle.”
                
“Sparkle who?”
                
“Sparkle Sparkle.”
                
Nega frowned. “I don’t get it.”
                
That was when Sparkle Sparkle sliced into Nega’s back horn-first and tunneled inside of her. A split-second later, Sparkle Sparkle wrapped herself in a shield that expanded rapidly, showering Applejack and all those nearby with bits of Nega goo. Already those bits were pooling back together.
                
Sparkle Sparkle angrily glared at her mucky hoof. “I HATE BEING STICKY!”
                
Applejack patted her head. “Then I promise once this is all over, you can have a nice hot bubble bath as long as you want. I’ll even read to you.”
                
“AND COOKIES!”
                
“Sure. And cookies. Why not?”
                
“AND RUBBER DUCKIES TO MAKE SPLASHY SPLASH!”
                
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Fine. Just as long as you keep Nega busy. We gotta figure something out soon or—”
                
“Apple!”
                
She turned and found Apple Sparkle again, panting and with another clone by her side. Applejack checked to make sure Nega was still busy reforming before embracing her. She turned to the clone by her side, one identical to the rest besides a long grey beard and wizard hat.
                
“Apples apple!” Apple Sparkle informed her.
                
“You’re saying she knows how to deal with Nega?”
                
“Apple ap-apples!”
                
“And you’re sure about this?”
                
“Ap-a-apapa-apples! Apple-ap-a-a-a-a-a-apple!”
                
“Okay. Hold on a second. You’re starting to apple-stutter. Let me talk to her.” She turned to the bearded clone. “What the hay’s she trying to tell me?”
                
The clone cleared her throat. “That you’re going about this the wrong way. No matter what you throw at Nega—Sparkle Sparkle, Iron Sparkle, all those clones combined—she’ll just continue to get back up and wear then out until she devours them. That’s what she was created for: to be nearly defeated time and again and still continue to live. You need to think back where she began her quest for clone blood, back where she was created.”
                
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
                
The clone pulled on her beard. “She was made in the depths of Dark Sparkle’s lair. Only there can she be unmade.”
                
Applejack nodded a single time. “I’d call you a cuckoo bird, but I have a feeling you might be on to something. All Sparkle Sparkle and Iron Sparkle have been able to do so far is annoy her at best, and it’s hard to tell how much longer they’ll be able to go at it. Maybe just enough time for us to figure this all out.”
                
The bearded clone straightened out her hat. “Then I’ll be off. I have a dragon to slay.”
                
“A what?” That was when Applejack saw the two-story purple-and-blue dragon spewing fire down the street, blackening the first four buildings on either side. Janitor Sparkle encircled its head and shot her own fireballs at its eyes, to little effect.
                
The dragon took a step closer to where Applejack stood when Bearded Sparkle made a stand. “You! Shall not!” she yelled, before thinking for a moment. She shrugged. “Get through me or something similar to that effect!”
                
Regretfully, Applejack had to turn away from the scene and pry Apple Sparkle away from a herd of insect-like Sparkle clones with sharp pincers for hooves.
                
“Apples?” she asked as she was carried away.
                
Applejack told her, “We got a game plan. Sort of. But first we need to find a clone.”
 

***


 

Accident Prone Sparkle sighed as she looked out the window. Clones and monsters clashed not a dozen feet from the castle’s windows and she felt utterly useless. Sure, she could go out there and try and shove a monster away or punch it in the gut, but again and again she had to remind herself that something like that was most likely to get her killed. She wasn’t a fighter. She wasn’t a powerful magician. She was a thinker, and if saying that was a stretch.
                
She was basically Twilight Sparkle with a learning disability. If she concentrated on something enough, she could master it within minutes, improve upon its design and upgrade it to her heart’s content. But that was only if she had it in focus. And keeping things in focus was the hard part.
                
Her mind wondered and slipped. Same with her eyes. For every ten minutes of pure concentration, she spent the rest of the hour trying her best to remember what she’d been doing—trying desperately to get back to that blissful place known as perfect awareness. Maybe when Twilight was finally found, she could do something to help her. Even a pair of glasses that could help her eyes would be a welcome change.
                
Again Accident Prone sighed, then yelped as Twilight Sparkle and Spike walked through the front doors.
                
Spike’s eyes found hers. “What’s going on out there? And what’s with all the clones?”
                
He didn’t sound as alarmed as she thought he might. Nor did Twilight.
                
“That looks bothersome,” Twilight commented indifferently. On her head was a sports hat and around her chest was a t-shirt stating: “Visit again anytime!” The saddlebag on her back appeared on the verge of ripping open, a dozen knickknacks and miniature snow globes visible through the tears in the fabric.
                
Twilight brightened when she thought of something. “Want to see our vacation pictures? I could set up a slideshow in the living room, should only take eight hours or so to go through them all. We just took so many pictures in the Griffon Empire! And bought so many souvenirs!”
                
Accident Prone became tempted to slap her. “You went on vacation? When all hell was breaking loose? What’s wrong with you? And now that you’re back, you want to look at pictures?”
                
Twilight stared at her blankly. “Why not? It was a great vacation. Right, Spike?” She knelt down and rubbed noses with the dragon. “Why you’re so cute I could just eat you up!”
                
Spike blushed and then blushed harder by Accident Prone’s venomous stare. He coughed awkwardly into a claw. “Well, we didn’t think something like this was going to happen. We were only gone for… what? A week? We can’t have a single week off without something terrible happening in Ponyville?”
                
Accident Prone could tell he was trying to sidetrack things.
                
She shook her head, scrambling her eyes in the process. “That’s not Twilight Sparkle at all, is it?”
                
Spike chuckled. “What? Of course she is! She’s purple, and smart, and… purple….” His sentence quickly died. He hissed at her, “Okay, so maybe she’s technically not Twilight. So what? What gave it away?”
                
Accident Prone glanced to the living room where Twilight was setting up a projector and adorning the fireplace mantle with Griffon Empire bobble heads. She looked at Spike again. “Everything?”
                
Spike angrily snorted out a batch of flames. “Fine! She’s Vacation Sparkle! She loves to travel and she’s super nice. And when she was looking for someone to travel with, I said I would go. And then we… sort of….”
                
“Fell in love?”
                
“Yeah. Kind of.” He rubbed at an arm. “I mean, I knew I didn’t have much chance with Twilight Twilight, so why not have a relationship with the closest thing, if not better? At least Travel Sparkle makes time for me and isn’t always reading or studying. We have fun and explore, and yes the constant souvenirs and pictures are annoying, but it’s something I’m willing to put up with. You have no idea how many postcards I sent out during our trip. My tongue has so many paper cuts right now.”
                
Accident Prone shook her head. “Sorry. Don’t care. You should’ve told someone you were leaving. We’ve been on the lookout for Twilight and you for days—hoping that once we found you both, we’d be able to end all this insanity.”
                
Finally, Spike’s momentary joy gave way. “What? What do you mean you can’t find Twilight? I spoke to her right before Travel Sparkle and I left. She said it was fine! She said not to bother telling anyone before we left!”
                
A lump of something cold wedged its way into Accident Prone’s gut. “I have a feeling that might not have been Twilight telling you that, then.”
                
Spike was about to say more, but the castle doors were pushed inward and Applejack and Apple Sparkle entered to greet them.
                
“Hey, Spike,” Applejack said quickly.
                
“Hey.”
                
“I’ll hear your story later, but right now we gotta grab this mare and beat it on outta here.” She hooked a leg around Accident Prone and pulled on her.

“Me? You want me?” Accident Prone stuttered out. “I’m… not very good at the whole fighting thing.”
                
“That’s fine. We need your brains right now. You just might be the one pony that can finish off Nega for good.” She paused. “No pressure now.”
                
Accident Prone whimpered from the job at hoof and let herself get dragged from the castle.
 

***


 

Accident Prone and company dodged and ducked their way through the battle. Dozens of Twilights ran up and down the streets, climbing on monsters and creatures and striking them until they went down. Some of the creatures had wings and horns and claws, while some were more similar to normal looking clones, only engineered towards mayhem and destruction. One evil clone had had their hooves replaced with different parts of a multi-tool: a serrated blade, a pizza cutter, a cork remover, an ice pick. It wouldn’t have been nearly as intimidating if their sharp instruments weren’t all two feet in length and spinning as fast as saw blades.
                
Janitor Sparkle took the brunt of this clone in particular, her hardened scales clipping its blades while sparks rained down on them. After she’d worn down the instruments on its forelegs, she grabbed hold of the clone’s head and locked her jaws around its, shooting fire down its throat and quickly turning it into a burnt husk.
                
Accident Prone wanted to feel bad for the creature. Did feel bad, actually. But not once did she see one of the creations cry out in pain or in fear. They’d been brought to life for a single purpose, to hurt and to kill. Death or pain didn’t matter to them, it seemed.
                
During their trek towards a safer part of town, Applejack filled her in on their plan… or the outlines of it. A bit piece was still up in the air.
                
“You still need to find Dark Sparkle’s lair,” Accident Prone spoke while running.
                
Applejack nodded. “We know. We’ll just go back to that creepy old mansion from before. I just gotta remember where—”
                
“She won’t be there. Or I doubt it. If she wanted to remain hidden, she would’ve set up operations somewhere new. We need to find out where.”
                
Applejack stomped a hoof. “Darn it all! How we supposed to do that? I don’t think I’ve heard one of these monster thingies say a single word in total, so I doubt they’d be the ones to tell us. So where does that leave us? Kicking in every door in town? What happens if she set herself up on a mountaintop or something?”
                
Applejack fumed, until Apple Sparkle poked her. “Apple?”
                
Applejack looked up. “Really? Here?”
                
All three of them turned and found a lone figure that stuck out above the rest. The whole street was a sea of purple and shades thereof. In the thick of it stood a single black and purple clone, her hard insect shell pressed close to the ground. The moment one of the clones on the good guy’s side passed her by, Changey would quietly follow them around before shoving them and running back to her hiding place. That was about the extent of her contribution to the fight.
                
“Changey?” Applejack snarled. “You little jerk! Get over here!”
                
Changey caught sight of her and squeaked, taking the form of a Twilight clone and scampering away. To keep track of her, Applejack stopped blinking and got her rope out without looking. One lasso toss later and a bound Changey was promptly dragged back to them.
                
Applejack stood over her and glared. “Still fighting for the bad guys, huh, Changey?”
                
Changey wouldn’t drop the Twilight guise. “Who is this Changey you speak of? I fight for pro-Equestria team. Go Equestria, yes? Celestia number one! Dark Sparkle, boo! Yes? Comrades, can we not settle this misunderstanding with pudding cups and some kissy-bottle-shenanigans?”
                
Accident Prone looked at Applejack. “I think she means spin the bottle.”
                
“I got what she meant,” Applejack answered, her eyes still locked on Changey. “Drop the act before we start tickling you again. And by tickling, I mean punching you in the gut. I’ve had it up to here with annoying clones, you hear me?”
                
Changey’s body sagged and she revealed her true form. She turned away from Applejack as her eyes watered. “Please. I don’t want to be on the bad side, but… Dark Sparkle made me. I don’t even know how to fight. I just push ponies over and run away, honest! I’ll… I’ll go away now. I promise.”
                
Applejack shook her head. “No, I’m afraid that applecart’s already rolled down the hill and got mashed into applesauce. Now we actually need you, Changey. Quite bad, as a matter of fact. You say you still work for Dark Sparkle?”
                
Changey sniffled and nodded. “Yeah….”
                
“Then whether you like it or not you’re gonna lead us right to her.”
> Twilight Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trevor Sparkle couldn’t fully grasp what was happening, but that didn’t mean he was about to question it much. Once he’d tested his theory out a couple more times, he plopped Fluttershy onto his back to keep her out of reach of any monsters nearby. To the clones fighting around him, he tried to add his support. Sadly, having been created only a week ago and having spent most of that time inside and neglecting to do much of anything, his magic skills left much to be desired. Mostly he hung back and threw large rocks at them with his horn.
                
“Can we go home now?” Fluttershy whispered into his ear, half of the purple paint on her coat already rubbed away. “I could make us hot chocolate?”
                
Trevor spun around and bucked the knees out of a purple minotaur, making Fluttershy latch onto him. Once its knees hit the ground, a Twilight clone with a samurai sword and rice hat descended upon them to hack and slash until the creature couldn’t rise again.
                
“Better save the sweet talk ‘til later, Fluttershy. We’re still needed here.”
                
He trotted up the road to get a better view of the battle, and noticed two familiar figures still and silent on the sidewalk. One was General Sparkle, a gaping wound in her stomach that looked like an injury from a horn. She was dead, her hooves wrapped around the neck of another clone with a warped red horn and red-and-yellow bulging eyes. The clone must’ve been strangled quite effectively during General Sparkle’s last seconds of life.
                
“What is it?” Fluttershy asked, as Trevor picked up the notepad next to the bodies.
                
At the top of the page was scribbled: “What have I become?” Below that was a series of crude drawings involving the clone with the red horn and Sexy Sparkle. Perhaps oddest of all was that not a single drawing was sexual in nature. More… awkward? Was that the word that Trevor was searching for?
                
He set the notepad down. “I have no idea. Maybe I don’t want to know.”
                
Fluttershy abruptly stood on his back. “Applejack! Applejack! Over here!”
                
On a connecting street, Applejack, Apple Sparkle, Changey, and Accident Prone Sparkle stopped in mid-sprint and came to them. The three of them put Changey in front, most likely so she wouldn’t run away.
                
“Are you both all right?” Accident Prone asked.
                
Trevor nodded. “We’re fine. Actually, I think I might’ve found something out. I—”
                
Applejack shoved a hoof into his mouth. “Sorry, Mr. Sparkle, but we got important business to attend to here. We’re off to get the jump on Nega by finding out where Dark Sparkle lives. I’d like to stay and chat, but….”
                
Trevor roughly spit out her hoof. “If you’re doing that, then I need to come too. Something’s not right. Something doesn’t feel right, either, and I think it has to do with me.”
                
Applejack grumbled. “I know you’re one of the only male Twilight clones around, Trevor, but I kinda doubt that makes you—”
                
“Everyone get behind me!” Trevor screamed, before he bucked Fluttershy off his back and leapt to the head of the group.
                
The tall dragon from before had touched down on a rooftop across the street, raising its head to inhale air. One of its eyes was a gaping hole, and Luna and Luna Sparkle brought down bolts of pure energy onto its head. Both mares’ sets of forelegs were stained a deep crimson.
                
The dragon slid its long neck down the side of the building until it nearly rested on the street. It opened its jaws and Trevor glimpsed right down its throat at the bright, burning fire contained within. Once its good eye caught sight of him, it stopped.
                
A disgruntled roar later, the dragon soared back into the air and began clashing with the pair of Lunas again.
                
Trevor turned back to the group. “You see?”
                
Applejack furrowed her brows. “See what? That we’re not tasty enough for dragons to eat?”
                
“No! Don’t you get it? All day long, not a single creature of Nega’s has taken a swipe at me. Or if they did, they stopped immediately and went somewhere else.”
                
Applejack chuckled. “Maybe they know you’re just a woosy.”
                
“Now that’s not nice, Applejack!” Fluttershy trumpeted.
                
“I’m only kidding. Trevor can take a joke, can’t he?”
                
Trevor ignored the barb. “Something—someone—is keeping me safe. And if you’re all about to end everything right now, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be there. Me and Fluttershy.”
                
He wrapped a leg around her and held her close.
                
“Why me?” Fluttershy whispered.
                
“Because you’re a main character, silly!”
                
Everyone turned and watch Pinkie Pie bounce towards them. While she looked no worse for wear, the trailing Rarity behind her had soot coating most of her face and chest, almost like a bomb had detonated right in front of her.
                
“Hello,” Rarity greeted them dryly, apparently so ‘over’ current events she couldn’t possibly care any less. “If you happen to come across Iron Sparkle or one of her bombs by chance, could one of you please shove one of those little explosive devices down her throat for me? Please?”

“Will do,” Trevor said. He looked at Pinkie. “What was that about main characters, again?”
                
Pinkie Pie smiled and leapt onto Rarity’s back. “You see Rarity and I? We’re main characters. You see that clone over there?”
                
They all looked. “Which one?” Applejack asked.
                
“Doesn’t matter! They’re not a main character!” Pinkie giggled. “If my Pinkie-sense is telling me anything right now, it’s that things are about to wrap up soon. So that means that all the main characters need to come back together before it’s too late!”
                
Applejack chewed on her tongue. “All right. So is this everyone, then?”
                
“Nope! You’re forgetting Rainbow Dash and Speedy Sparkle!”
                
“They really need to be a part of this?”
                
“Not really, but it would be wise to at least give them a task.”
                
Pinkie Pie left that up in the air to ponder. Applejack thought for a moment and spoke to Accident Prone, “Any chance we could get them to lead Nega to the hideout once we figure out what we’re going?”
                
Accident Prone nodded. “They’d be the best to handle that, and too fast for Nega to harm. Until then, we’d have to hope Sparkle Sparkle and Iron Sparkle keep Nega on her hooves and not finding out what we’re doing.”
                
“Fine. So it’s settled.” She looked at Rarity. “Can you stay and deliver a message for us?”
                
Pinkie Pie angrily squeezed Rarity from behind. “No, she cannot!” She shut her eyes and huffed. “She’ll be accompanying us, Applejack. She is a main character, after all.”
                
“I… guess,” Applejack muttered. She scanned the clone-clogged street until finding Janitor Sparkle. “Hey, can you deliver a message for us?”
                
Janitor Sparkle punched an evil clone-bot in the throat before looking her way. “As long as I don’t have to clean this mess up!”
                
“Don’t worry. Spike’s back. We’ll just make him clean it up.”
                
At that, they all laughed. Even the clone-bot with the messed up throat.
                
Then they continued on with their plan.
 

***


 

“None of you are playing fair!” Nega Sparkle screamed, as another patch of earth first reddened and then exploded from the ground below her, just steps away.
                
Standing on a rooftop overlooking Nega was Discord Sparkle, their jaw clamped in a look of grim determination. They snapped another dozen portals above the street before erecting more barriers to surround Nega with: brick walls, panes of glass, barbed wire fences. Up above, Rainbow Dash and Speedy Sparkle soared in and out of the portals Discord Sparkle had created, legs loaded with all the mini-thermal bombs Iron Sparkle could give to them.
                
The pair flew so fast and with such deft precision, Nega had trouble locking onto them. For every portal she’d snap shut, Discord Sparkle would open two more. Add to the annoyance from above, Nega also had to deal with the likes of Sparkle Sparkle, perched on the rooftop opposite Discord Sparkle.
                
Using her horn, Sparkle Sparkle created batches of highly concentrated energy and planted them like landmines into the earth. Once Nega took a step in the wrong direction, she set it off, blowing away another chunk of her liquid-like body. In the time it took Nega to repair herself, the four of them took a breather and readied for the next attack.
                
Less than ten seconds later, Nega was whole again and visibly pissed. She used her horn to create a dark purple orb that expanded a hundred feet in all directions.

What lay inside the orb was a nightmare made real.
 

***


 

“Seriously?” Rarity asked, as her and the rest of them looked at the latest hideout of Dark Sparkle. “The Hay Burger shack?”
                
Applejack shrugged. “Why not? It’s been closed ever since all this clone business started and it’s not exactly health food, so it’s still somewhat evil, I guess. But let’s not go thinking about things too much. That’s bound to get us into trouble.”
                
Trevor Sparkle pointed at the roof. “You all seeing what I’m seeing?”
                
“The place that fired me after eating a month’s supply of fried pickles?” Pinkie suggested happily.
                
“No. Behind the logo, there’s something metallic there. Almost like a—”
                
“A bomb?” Accident Prone finished for him, before grimacing. “I didn’t think they’d try something like this, honestly. Didn’t know Dark Sparkle had the smarts for it.”
                
Applejack came to Trevor’s side to investigate. On the roof of the Hay Burger was a silver-and-red rocket-like device complete with launching pad. It only had a single decal on its side: a pink heart.
                
Applejack gulped. “We should end this before things get any worse. Changey? Which way’s best to get in?”
                
The group turned to Changey, who automatically shrunk to the ground. “Her lair’s down a set of stairs in the back. The rest of the restaurant was left intact incase anyone came by. Use the back entrance to get in.”
                
Applejack nodded. “Sounds good. Only this time you’re leading us. At least then if we get ambushed, I’ll have plenty of time to punch you in the face repeatedly.”
                
Changey whimpered. “Why are you so violent?”
                
“That’s the apple bucking industry for you. Now let’s get moving.”
 

***


 

Changey lit up the tip of her horn and led them down a spiral stairwell at the back of the restaurant. Applejack couldn’t tell how far they’d gone down; only that Dark Sparkle’s lair must’ve been several stories below the earth. At the bottom they came to a lone hallway that fed out into a larger room. Even from a distance they could hear machines softly humming and bolts of electricity striking things.
                
Changey poked her head out into the larger room. “I see Dark Sparkle. She’s alone. She’s on her throne and just sitting there.”
                
“Any chance of catching her off guard?” Rarity inquired. “Could we loop around her throne or something?”
                
Changey shook her head. “No. It’s one of those big thrones that are impossible to move once you set it down. How they got it down here, I have no idea.”
                
“What did I tell you all about thinking too much?” Applejack snapped at her. “Doesn’t matter anyways. You can go out there and we’ll watch from here—look for an opening. If one doesn’t come up, we’ll leap out anyways and improvise, same as always.”
                
Changey nodded shakily. “Okay.” Then she made her way into the larger room.
                
Shrouded in darkness, Dark Sparkle sat atop her black marble throne, her golden cane resting on her lap. She head hung down to stare at some area on the floor; her bright red eyes more subdued than usual.
                
Changey gave her a bow. “Greetings, oh dark one. I… uh… have come with news! Yes, news! The fight goes well and… uh… Nega sure is scary, eh? I don’t think many ponies were expecting that… erm….”
                
She waited for a reaction. For Dark Sparkle to whisper another insult at her or throw her through a wall for annoying her, but neither of them came. Instead Dark Sparkle sat in silence and did nothing at all—didn’t even register her existence or that someone was in the room with her.
                
“What’s going on?” Applejack whispered to Changey from the hallway.
                
Changey shrugged and took a step towards the throne. She jolted as another clone exited from a side door with a toothbrush wedged into their mouth, brushing vigorously.
                
“Sexy!?” the group of mares hidden in the hall collectively gasped.
                
Sexy Sparkle took notice of Changey and gave her a ‘one second’ indication. She went to a bucket and spat out the toothpaste in her mouth before taking a sip of mouthwash and sloshing it around. Once she spat that out, she turned to Changey with a minty fresh smile.
                
“Hey, you weren’t supposed to come back yet. Why you back?”
                
Changey looked from Sexy to the mares in the hall. “Uh… for more instructions?”
                
“Oh. Okay, then. Tell the rest of your friends to exit the hall before I fill it with toxic gas. I’ll give them… five… four… three—”
                
Applejack and the rest trotted from the hall to stand in the center of the room. Pointing a leg at her, Applejack huffed out angrily. “Now just what in the hay is going on here, Sexy? Everyone thought you were dead!”
                
Sexy giggled, circling the throne in the center of the room. “I was dead. Or in everyone’s heads, at least.” She turned to Trevor and licked her lips. “Hey, Trevor. How’s it hanging?”
                
It took him a few moments to get his emotions in check. “Hanging!? Really? Clones are fighting and dying in the streets and you’re asking me how it’s hanging!? You’re dead! I watched you die!”
                
She waved a hoof. “You saw what I wanted you to see: Nega preparing to attack, myself being as sexy as always. Did you see me die, Trevor? Did you really?”
                
Trevor’s silence was answer enough.
                
“Sadly, I couldn’t let Nega have her fun with you, though,” Sexy continued. “I’d forgotten to tell her you were off limits. That’s why I had to interrupt your little get-together. Can’t have anyone doing harm to my little smexy stud, now can I?”
                
Trevor took a step towards her. “So that’s why none of the monsters were willing to hurt me today. It was you! You were controlling them!”
                
Sexy nodded and played with her mane.
                
“If you’re behind the monsters in town,” Rarity spoke, “then what else are you behind?”
                
“Everything,” Sexy moaned. “Every itty bitty thing, my beautiful mares.”
                
“But… but why?” Fluttershy croaked.
                
Sexy gave them all a smoldering stare. “What’s sexier than heroes, I ask? I’ll tell you: villains. Total control, never ending loyalty, skintight outfits, sex, drugs, and rolling rocks. All I wanted all this time was your love—everyone’s love—and now I’ll have it whether you want to give it to me or not. Soon I’ll rule this world. And then I’ll be a part of the biggest open relationship of all time, with Trevor and Fluttershy and Applejack and…”
                
She trailed on until she lost interest in naming ponies.
                
“There’s still a lot I don’t understand,” Rarity said. “Like how you were able to get away with it all and why there’s so many clones.”
                
Sexy narrowed her eyes at her. “You want a standard villain monologue where I fill you in on every little thing that you don’t know about?”
                
Again Pinkie Pie hopped onto Rarity’s back, this time with a box of popcorn. “Yes, please! I love overly long, convoluted stories!”
                
Sexy sighed. “Fine. Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? At first, Twilight Sparkle created two clones by pure accident. She’d been researching into clone creation when a frisky night between her and a grey mare with silly eyes happened to create myself and Accident Prone Sparkle.”
                
“We were the first two?” Accident Prone said.
                
“Yes, but don’t interrupt.” Sexy Sparkle sat on Dark Sparkle’s lap and ran a hoof along her chest. Dark Sparkle didn’t move an inch. “For a time, things were fine. I was experiencing life for the first time and it was amazing. But then I got used to it, and then I wanted more. So much more. Later, I secured a relationship with Twilight, more as a research subject than anything, and during our late nights together, she’d tell me stories of past villains that would excite me to no end. It was clear what I had to do next.”
                
Applejack stomped her hooves. “What did you do with Twilight!? It’s obvious you’re the one that’s been hiding her from us, so what did you do?”
                
Sexy tilted her head. “Can’t you recognize your dear old friend? I must admit she looks a little different, but I’m not the type that keeps track of the color of one’s coat. Do you, Applejack?”
                
“No….” Applejack’s mouth went agape. “Not… her.”
                
“Yes. Her.” Sexy licked the side of Dark Sparkle’s cheek. “One night, I told Twilight of my interests in the origins of villains and she showed me the Alicorn Amulet she’d kept locked in storage. I stole it and broke it into pieces, and bit by bit I ground it up and slipped it into her tea. The effects weren’t fast in any regard—she was only more irritable than anything—so one night after a solid round of love making, I took the Alicorn Amulet and shoved what remained where the sun don’t shine. Twilight changed instantly.”
                
The group all groaned together.
                
“It was great. Twilight had become Dark Sparkle and was not only out of the way, but completely under my control. I fed her love and directions and let her basic dark nature take control. At the moment, she is directionless and without an order, so she will only sit and wait until one is given to her.”
                
Accident Prone’s eyes were split between Sexy and Dark Sparkle’s. “What about the other clones, then?”
                
“I created them,” Sexy answered bluntly, “some to help Dark Sparkle in her conquests and others merely to confuse and stall the rest of you. I may be sexy as sin, but that doesn’t mean my brain isn’t just as brilliant as Twilight’s in the art of clone creation. You even met my first creation of all—Exposition Sparkle. It wasn’t all too hard to convince her to side with Dark Sparkle and feed you all lies.”
                
“But the timing still doesn’t make sense,” Accident Prone interjected. “I spoke with Twilight. I worked with Twilight. A lot!”
                
“You dealt with me, snookums; the entire time,” Sexy snickered. “I dried my mane and tail off and lifted my voice—simple as that. That same Twilight was the one that told Spike to get lost for a while and even convinced you to lock up Dark Sparkle until it was a good enough time to begin. How terrible you must feel now, having imprisoned and fought the real Twilight all this time.” She grinned at them. “Hadn’t any of you wondered why I never helped out against Dark Sparkle? Why I distracted you while you went to go battle her that first time?”
                
“Because you’re an evil, selfish bitch?” Applejack suggested.
                
“Apples!” Apple Sparkle concurred.
                
Sexy Sparkle rolled her eyes. “I guess I am, but a damn sexy one at that; one that will have the pony populace under her hooves in less than ten minute’s times.”
                
Rarity cocked a brow. “How? With Nega?”
                
“No.” Sexy shook her head. “No, Nega is only a distraction and a means to get rid of those annoying spare clones. The only clone I ever truly wanted safe and sound was Trevor, the first of the male Twilights.”
                
“Thanks,” Trevor muttered sarcastically.
                
“You’re quite welcome, sticky buns.” She tipped him a wink. “Did you happen to see the silver rocket outside? That’s a love bomb, set to soar into the stratosphere before crashing back to earth and delivering its payload. It’s large enough to cover half of Equestria and anyone caught in it with fall under my spell instantly—a little something I thought of while in the bar a few days ago. And all those affected? They’ll do just about anything to please me. Anything at all.”
                

***


 

After traversing the twenty-nine layers of the nightmare realm tailored to her particular worries and anxieties, Rainbow Dash soared through the nightmare dome and checked to see if anyone had made it out as well. On the lip of a roof sat Discord Sparkle, their legs dangling over the edge. She flew to them. “Made it out all right?”
                
They gave her a nod. “Discord’s house is worse than anything in there. By a lot. You might still want to get your friends out, though. You should be able to soar in and out without the nightmares taking hold.”
                
She cocked a brow. “You making this up or do you actually know what you’re talking about?”
                
They shrugged. “Half and half?”
                
“Good enough.” She turned to the twisting nightmare dome on the street again, narrowing her eyes to make out the three figures in the swirling void. One was busy hovering in the air, not swaying to either side. Speedy. She glanced down and saw a smaller shape. Behind her were the outlines of something she could only describe as a pony crossed with a spider, twelve feet tall. Sparkle Sparkle and Nega.
                
Rainbow Dash could grab them both if she was quick. With any luck, Nega wouldn’t get a grip on her before she exited. With any more luck, Sparkle Sparkle wouldn’t fry her when she scooped her up, mistaking her for someone else. Whatever. Plans weren’t all that much fun to Rainbow unless there was a mild chance of dying.
                
She told Discord Sparkle, “I’m going in. When I get them back, Nega should be following. We’ve wasted enough time out here, so we’ll try and direct her to Dark Sparkle’s lair.”
                
“You think we’ve bought them enough time?”
                
Rainbow shrugged. “Doesn’t matter anymore. Nega’s gonna wear us down if we continue on like this, so now’s the time we end it.” She smiled thinly. “In case one of us doesn’t make it, I’ll just tell you now: I like you a lot better than Discord. For one thing, you’re not a dick.”
                
They chuckled. “I’ve been hearing that a lot.”
                
Then they got ready to continue the battle with Nega once more.
 

***


 

“Would you all care for some champaign?” Sexy Sparkle asked them, retrieving a bottle from an ice bucket nearby. “This is a celebration, in a way.”
                
Applejack and the rest of them hadn’t budged from their spot in the center of the room, tense and tired and confused. Applejack said to her, “So that’s it? You’re celebrating already? Not gonna sick Dark Sparkle on us again?”
                
“Why?” Sexy questioned calmly. “There’s nothing left to be done. There’s nothing that you can do to stop me: Nega is beyond your control; my love bomb will be launching any minute. Enjoy your freewill while you can.” She glanced at Accident Prone. “Feel free to use my cloning machine in the meantime. Not much material left, but if you’re looking for something to do, go right ahead.” She indicated the bubbling, steaming vat of clone goo pressed against the wall on the opposite side of the room.
                
Accident Prone took a look at it before heading on over.
                
Sexy took a sip from the bottle. “Here’s an idea! Who wants to say goodbye to Twilight before things come to an end? The real Twilight, I mean?”
                
She gave them a Cheshire cat grin that made Applejack uneasy.
                
“It’s simple, really,” Sexy continued. “Every clone I made, I also put in a failsafe device just incase. Same with Dark Sparkle. Want to know what it is, my yummy-nummy little mares? I guess Trevor too, just so he doesn’t feel left out?”
                
“The power of love and friendship?” Fluttershy ventured.
                
“The power of sugar and sweets!” Pinkie Pie screamed.
                
Sexy smirked. “Tickles. Go ahead. Make her laugh. Make her laugh until she cries.”
                
That last statement got Dark Sparkle’s attention. Sluggishly, she turned her head to Sexy, a hint of worry in her expression. “Master? Why would you tell them?”
                
Sexy frowned. “Because dark coats are so last week. And you’re rather… boring, to put things delicately.”
                
Sexy nimbly stepped away from the throne as Applejack and Apple Sparkle trotted up the steps. Yanking a feather out of Apple’s wing, Applejack went to work finding the softest spots on Dark Sparkle’s torso to hit. Pinkie Pie arrived next, using her curvy mane and tail to hit her behind the knees. Like a scoop of ice cream left out in the sun, Dark Sparkle went limp against her seat, legs thrashing as she laughed and laughed, tears welled in her eyes.
                
She tried to slap them all away to no avail. “No. No! No! Stop! I can’t—” She was laughing too hard to speak, her voice traveling from a guttural pitch to one more reminiscent of the original Twilight’s.
                	
When Applejack and Pinkie saw her coat brighten to purple, they doubled their efforts, uncaring of Dark Sparkle’s pleas. Now the villain’s cheeks were shimmering with tears.
                
The last act of Dark Sparkle’s reign was a mighty belch that shot out half of a silver-and-red object before it tumbled to the floor. The Alicorn Amulet.
                
A mostly normal looking Twilight Sparkle collapsed against the back of the throne; Dark Sparkle’s robes quickly disintegrating into ash. Twilight pried open her tired eyes and found her friends staring back at her. “Something bad happened, didn’t it?” she asked.
                
They nodded.
                
“Shit.”
                
“I’d fill you in on all the details, Twilight,” Applejack spoke, “but we really can’t waste much more time. You were cursed and used and Sexy’s the one responsible. Now she wants to turn the whole world into a big love fest with her at the center of it.” She scowled down at Sexy. “You’d probably call yourself Queen, wouldn’t you?”
                
Sexy thought on that. “Queen Sexy? Now doesn’t that just roll off the tongue? Speaking of tongues, anyone want to make out for a bit before the bomb drops? I’m sure I could make it fun. Best kisser gets to become my personal slave? Who’s first?”
                
Rarity stormed over to her. “This is not over, Sexy! The Elements will find a way! Just like they always have.”
                
Sexy yawned. “Boring. Dull. Redundant. Trevor? You paying attention, sweetie? Get stretching. You and I have some unfinished business to attend to once I’m done here.”
                
Trevor gulped. A loud hiss pulled at his attention and he turned to the cloning vat on the other side of the room. Accident Prone was fiddling with its controls, turning dials to their max despite its alarming effects. Burning hot clone goo splashed to the floor and splattered onto the walls.
                
“Get away from there, you retard!” Sexy yelled.
                
The entire room went silent.
                
Pinkie Pie shook her head at her. “Too far, Sexy. Much too far.”
                
“Umm….” Sexy awkwardly scratched at a leg. “Okay. Let’s try that again. Get away from there, you special needs pony!”
                
This time Accident Prone did just that, stepping away from the erupting vat. The damage had obviously already been done.
                
Sexy exhaled sharply. “No matter. I didn’t want anymore clones anyways. I want new bodies to explore.” She spoke to everyone in the room. “There is absolutely nothing you can do to stop me. Get that through your thick skulls. Not unless something catches me completely by surprise.”
                
That was when a section of the roof caved in and Nega Sparkle fell to the ground with Sparkle Sparkle clawing at her chest. Rainbow Dash and Speedy Sparkle zoomed in after them, followed by Discord Sparkle, who used an inside-out umbrella to slow their decent.
                
“Oh, crap! Something surprising!” Sexy screamed, before she galloped behind the throne for protection.
                
Accident Prone whistled loudly, getting their attention. “Over here! Throw her into the vat! That’s the only way to destroy her!”
                
A round of nods later and Speedy Sparkle and Rainbow Dash began to fly in a tight circle together. Their flight soon picked up speed and their combined efforts formed a purple and blue cyclone that took on a life of its own, sucking up Nega and propelling her against the stone roof, flattening her head down to the neck.
                
Nega’s headless body landed a dozen steps from the vat, her body starting to repair itself all over again.
                
Discord Sparkle and Sparkle Sparkle worked in tandem to push her headless body towards the cloning area. Discord Sparkle snapped together a mazelike jumble of obstacles that her torso collided with. Sparkle Sparkle, for her part, shot out round after round of pure energy to slice through her midsection and drive her back. Even under such heavy resistance, Nega was reforming faster than she was falling apart.
                
Discord Sparkle snapped a portal underneath her that led to the movable stairs set around the cloning machine. Without any head to see, Nega fell into it and landed out the other side atop the ring around the vat. When her head was made whole again, she found Discord Sparkle already waiting for her.
                
She gave them a mock smile. “You’re all so impolite, attacking me when I can’t even see.”
                
Discord Sparkle looked at her coldly. “This is for Discord.” They then used their sharp claws to pluck out one of Nega’s eyes, before doing the same to the remaining one. “And that’s for scaring Fluff Sparkle.”
                
In the palm of their hand, Discord Sparkle crushed both of Nega’s eyeballs into mush as she brought her hooves up to her face. Discord Sparkle noted the red dot on their back a moment before stepping aside. That same red dot appeared on Nega’s chest before it bloomed out and covered her.
                
Across the room this whole time, Sparkle Sparkle had been charging up her horn into a cannon of pure destructive force. With everyone clear, she let it rip and shot out a five-foot-wide rainbow-hued beam that tore through Nega and plastered her against the far wall. Soon those pieces and parts of Nega began to slip away and splash into the boiling clone goo below. Each drop of Nega hissed and disappeared into the unstable concoction.
                
Everyone held their breath to see if Nega would resurface and attack them once more. Only she never did.
                
Sparkle Sparkle blew on the smoking tip of her horn. “That was for Mr. Booky Book.”
                
Speedy Sparkle nudged Rainbow Dash. “What did she say?”
                
“I SAID ‘THAT WAS FOR MR. BOOKY BOOK!’”
                
Speedy Sparkle brought a hoof up to her pained ear. “Got it, kid. Thanks.”
                
“Let’s not get cocky all a sudden, girls,” Applejack warned them. “Nega was only half the trouble here. Now we gotta deal with a villainess hell-bent on global destruction.”
                
They could all hear Sexy giggling to herself behind the throne. “They called me a villainess! Awesome! That’s so sexy!”
                
Rainbow Dash blanched. “Wait. What? Sexy’s alive now?”
                
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Yes. And she’s also a huge bitch that’s basically been the one responsible for everything. So could someone just go grab her already?”
                
In a flash of rainbow streaks, both pegasi did a loop around the throne and came back with Sexy in their grasp. Sexy’s giggles faded away as everyone in the room glared at her.
                
“What?” she asked them innocently. “You think this is over because Dark Sparkle has been ousted and Nega’s been destroyed? Please. Don’t let those award winning butts of yours forget about that little ol’ bomb on the roof, ready to launch.”
                
Accident Sparkle raised a hoof, a tad out of breath. “About that. When all the commotion with Nega was going on, I went back outside and dismantled the launch pad’s wiring. That love bomb isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”
                
It suddenly looked like Sexy was chewing on something sour. “Doesn’t matter. I press the button, my bomb goes off and everyone in Ponyville and around for miles is forced under my spell. I would still have an army at my disposal! A sexy army where not a single butt dares to be hidden by armor!”
                
“Where’s the button, then?” Applejack inquired.
                
“Why, right here!” Sexy reached behind her and came back with a tiny black box that held a single red button. Everyone in attendance groaned again.
                
Applejack turned to her group. “Someone wanna grab that before she presses it?”
                
“I’m not touching that!” Rainbow Dash answered. “Where’d it even come from? It’s not like she’s wearing clothes.”
                
“Ditto,” Rarity added. “I know it might be the end of the world and all, but still, ew.”
                
Discord Sparkle sighed and snapped their fingers, zapping the remote from Sexy’s hoof to their hand. Discord Sparkle gagged a single time before dropping it to the floor and crushing it with a hoof.
                
By the sight of her ruined remote, Sexy’s shoulders slumped and she sat on the ground in a pout. “You guys are lame.”
                
On the steps of the throne, Apple Sparkle was helping Twilight down. Once on the floor, Twilight looked over them, stopping at both Speedy Sparkle and Apple Sparkle.
                
“You made more clones.” She didn’t state it as a question.
                
Accident Sparkle nodded. “Sexy did. A lot of them for various reasons.”
                
“That’s not good.”
                
“We can figure out what to do with them later. Most are friendly, honest. We’ll—”
                
Twilight shook her head. “No. I mean any clone is bad. That’s why I stopped right after I accidentally created Sexy and you. Because….” She hung her head.
                
Accident Prone hesitated, before asking, “Because of what?”
                
Twilight sighed. “Because any clones coming out of that vat were never meant to survive for more than a week. Eight or nine days, tops. I was planning on finding a cure or reconfiguring the formula…” she indicated the throne next to her “…but obviously things went way out of control. I’m sorry, I really am. But I honestly don’t know if there’re be enough time now.”
                
Rainbow Dash looked from Speedy to Twilight. “What? You mean… all the clones are going to die soon?”
                
Twilight nodded without meeting her eyes.
                
Sexy Sparkle gasped. “What!? Why didn’t anyone tell me this? I wasted so much time! I need to find someone! Anyone! Just one more lay before it’s too late!”
                
“Would the two of us do?” Luna asked, after she stepped out from the shadows underneath the hole in the ceiling. Luna Sparkle stood next to her.
                
“Yes! Anything! Let’s go!” Sexy trotted to the pair, only for magic hoofcuffs to clamp around her legs. She glanced at them. “So you like the rough stuff?”
                
Luna Sparkle shook her head. “Afraid not. From this day forward, you will be spending your days in Canterlot’s worst multi-sex prison. No guards. No rules. No way out. Only the top ponies get to make the rules there. The rest become sexual partners to whoever they think can protect them.”
                
Sexy thought about it, then brightened. “Sounds like fun! Let’s get going!”
                
Behind her, Apple Sparkle collapsed to the floor in a series of violent coughs. In an instant, Applejack was by her side, supporting her head with a hoof. Apple Sparkle’s breathing quickly became labored.
                
“No. No, no, no, no,” Applejack whimpered, her voice cracking. “It’s can’t be this soon. Not like this.”
                
Apple Sparkle looked up at her in confusion. “Apples?”
                
A single tear rolled down Applejack’s cheek. “Don’t talk, Apple Sparkle. Save your strength. We’ll get you back to the castle and Twilight will figure something out. Just don’t—”
                
“Apple?”
                
Applejack shook her head. “Don’t start talking like that. You’re gonna get out of here. You’re gonna go on and we’re gonna get married, just like I promised you. You’re not gonna die here. You’re gonna die an old mare in bed, but not here, not when I need you so badly. Promise me, Apple Sparkle. Promise me you won’t leave me today, okay?”
                
But Apple Sparkle had already grown still, her unblinking eyes staring up at the ceiling above. Her chest didn’t rise.
                
Applejack moaned and began to sob. She brought Apple Sparkle to her chest and held her tight as Twilight put a hoof on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Applejack. I never wanted anything like this to happen.”
                
Accident Prone came to her next, and instead of getting emotional like the rest, she instead kicked Apple Sparkle in the ribs. “Now cut that out! I know for a fact there’s no way you’re dead.”
                
Apple Sparkle snorted and rubbed at the spot she’d been kicked, before quietly chuckling to herself.
                
Applejack’s sorrow flipped to anger as she held Apple Sparkle away from her. “You little jerk! That was an act? That was an act? Why would you do that? Why!?” She was simultaneously furious and happy all at once. “When I get you home, I’m gonna slap that hide of yours so hard you’ll be seeing stars! Don’t ever do that to me again!”
                
They kissed, before all eyes fell to Accident Prone. She told them earnestly, “I knew of the clone problem right after being created. I found it while studying the code. Considering it was a life and death matter, I concentrated on fixing it as fast as I could. In less than a day I figured it out and gave the antidote to myself and any new clones that were created before I could readjust the formula. Every clone after Sexy and I should be fine.”
                
Across the room, Sexy raised a hoof. “What about me? Did I get the cure?”
                
Accident Prone held her tongue until Sexy literally quivered at the knees. “Yes. Even though you were mean to me, I gave you the cure without you knowing.”
                
“Huzzah! Sexy lives to tightly embrace another day!” She slapped her butt in support of her good fortune. The cold looks she received quieted her and she sighed. “In jail, I mean. Goody….”
                
As Luna and Luna Sparkle flew away with Sexy in tow, Twilight turned to the rest of them. “So what do we do now? There’re clones everywhere, living and breathing and existing on their own. What are we supposed to do with them all?”
                
Pinkie Pie pleasantly mashed her face against her friend’s.
                
“Why don’t we let the epilogue deal with those pesky questions?”
> Epilogue Sparkle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The music from the organ echoed loudly off the castle walls. All eyes in the room were on the numerous pairs of ponies standing in a long row at the front of the room. Princess Celestia, still bound to a wheelchair and sporting more rolls than a bakery, was sluggishly shoved to the podium where she was able to look upon the happy couples before her.
                
“We are gathered here today to witness the union of several couples…” she began cheerfully.
                
In the long row of eager couples stood Twilight Sparkle and Derpy Hooves, Applejack and Apple Sparkle, Fluttershy and Trevor Sparkle, Rainbow Dash and Speedy Sparkle, Discord and Discord Sparkle (both wearing matching suit-dresses), Luna and Luna Sparkle, Spike and Vacation Sparkle, Bacon Sparkle and Eggs Sparkle, Shampoo Sparkle and Conditioner Sparkle, Peanut Butter Sparkle and Jam Sparkle, Sparkle Sparkle and her latest edition of “Hairy Plotter and the Search for the Perfect Cup of Coffee”, alongside another exhaustive list of partners that complimented each other nicely.
                
“Do all one hundred and four of you say ‘I do’?” Celestia asked.
                
They did.
                
“And do the other one hundred and four say the same?”
                
The other half did too.
                
“Then I now pronounce you pony and clone and book and whatever else may have snuck in while I wasn’t looking. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat some ice cream because honestly this whole thing is beyond creepy. Good bye!”
                
Rarity’s eyes watered, watching the scene unfold from the stands.
                
Pinkie Pie looked over to her. “Awe! Don’t cry, Rarity. Wedding’s are supposed to be happy fun times, remember?”
                
“Tears of happiness, Pinkie, nothing more. Times fifty, I guess.”
                
For a moment, Pinkie Pie stopped bouncing by her side. “Umm… I know you don’t really like talking about it, Rarity, but… what exactly happened to us?”
                
Rarity turned to her. “Whatever do you mean, darling?”
                
“I mean, we were a couple for a while, but not really a couple. Only pretending to be one.”
                
“And what else?” she asked. “We were trying to stop all those clones from interfering with our lives, simple as that. But now that the clone war is over….”
                
Pinkie frowned. “That means you don’t want be my marefriend anymore?”
                
“I….” Rarity paused. “I thought you were only pretending, Pinkie. You mean… you actually want us to be a couple?”
                
“Only if you want to be, I mean. I’m not asking you to marry me or anything like that, but even just pretending to be close to you… I found I really liked it. A lot. Didn’t you, even a little bit?”
                
Rarity blushed. “I… did. Of course I did. Maybe it’s only a matter of looking at you in a different light—not pretending to be involved, but actually committing to something. I’m not saying you and I will work out in the long term, but…”
                
“So you’re saying you’ll still be my marefriend and we can snuggle and kiss and watch movies and all that other stuff we were doing before!?” Pinkie started bouncing again.
                
Rarity smiled. “Sure, Pinkie. All of that. Can’t hurt to try, can it?”
                
Pinkie Pie wrapped her up in a hug.
                
Twilight came to greet them. “Am I missing something here?”
                
“You’ve missed a lot, Twilight,” Rarity admitted. “But I won’t hold that against you. Come up with a solution to all the clones yet? I know all of Nega’s creations were sucked back to Tartarus when she was destroyed—rather convenient, if you ask me—but that still leaves hundreds of clones with no place to call home.”
                
Twilight nodded. “I’ve been talking with Celestia, and we’ve decided on building a small town outside Ponyville for them—Cloneville, with shops and grocery stores and even a Clone High for anyone that wants to attend. Not saying that clones have to live there, but at least it’s an option for them.”
                		
“Sounds like you have everything well under control,” Rarity told her brightly. “I think that about wraps things up, don’t you?”
                
“Wait! Wait for me!”
                
Someone was yelling outside the castle, so Twilight and Rarity trotted to the windows to get a glimpse. Running full-tilt towards the building was a mare dressed in a skintight red-and-black costume with a pair of swords swung around their back. The mask they wore had black circles around their wholly white eyes.
                
“Who could that be?” Twilight mused.
                
Rarity shrugged. “I dunno. Not anyone on the guest list.”
                
The running clone screamed again. “Wait! I have a scene all planned out! It’s gonna be awesome! Don’t cut to the Author’s Notes yet! Don’t you even think about it!”
                
Rarity turned to Pinkie Pie. “You have any idea what she’s talking about?”
                
Pinkie nodded. “I’m afraid I do. It means things are about to—”
 

END