“Twilight?”

“Hmm?”

“You ever wonder if things would’ve gone very differently if we were all the opposite gender?”

Twilight lifted her muzzle out of a particularly riveting volume on metathaumics and gazed at Spike, lounging on the couch with a comic book in hand. “What brought this about?”

He shrugged. “Yesterday, some girls said that anything colts can do, fillies can do better.”

She frowned. “That’s not true at all. But if you want to get down to specifics, I’m sure that there’s going to be some discrepancy in skillsets, depending on the context. What are you thinking about?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to imagine Shining Armour becoming the Prince of Friendship if Princess Celestia had taken him on as a student instead of you.” He scratched the back of his head, then continued, “I mean, are you the Princess of Friendship just because of what you’ve done, or does being a girl have something to do with it?”

“That’s… a very complicated issue. There are hundreds, no, at least thousands of variables that could contribute to my experience and actions leading up to ascension. To isolate gender’s effect alone would be an incredibly difficult—”

Spike tilted his head. “I know that look. You’ve figured out a way to test it, haven’t you?”

Twilight grinned. “Test? No. Observe? Oh, yes. It’s pretty simple, actually. I know a spell that would enable us to visit an alternate realm where everyone was born or hatched the opposite gender. We sure could have a look.”

Spike blinked. “Umm, okay. But why do you even have a spell like that lying around?”

She leapt up and dashed over to her study, where she began flipping through her notes on the aforementioned spell. “For exact situations like this, of course. There's no such thing as a useless spell.” She squealed in delight when she found the right sheets. “Aha, there we go! Brace yourself, Spike.”

“Wait, what? We’re going right now?”

“Yes,” she replied, her horn already glowing brilliantly with the magic necessary to cross inter-dimensional and temporal barriers. “Don’t worry; we’ll be back in time for lunch, and I already know the perfect friendship problem to observe!”

“But—”

Blazing light engulfed the world. For a second or two, nothing existed beyond the blinding whiteness, until with a heavy lurch and a pop, they appeared back in normal space and thumped onto a patch of dirt in the middle of Ponyville.

“—I wanted to finish that chapter…” Spike finished lamely. He then glanced at his empty hands and sighed. “All right, where are—oh. I think I remember this…”

The male version of Twilight stood in front of the town hall, scowling at Trixie’s male counterpart as several dozen townsponies watched from all sides. Pinkie Guy sat forlornly on the ground a little ways off, gazing sadly at the pie in his hooves that he could no longer eat due to the lack of a mouth. A blue streak that was most probably Rainbow Dash with one hilariously oversized wing was spiralling and twirling drunkenly across the sky. Farther in the background, they could see the entirety of Golden Oaks Library hovering upside-down in the air, engulfed in an angry-red aura, spilling books all over the ground.

I’d forgotten about that…

It almost hurt to see her home again.

“Twilight, shouldn’t we be hiding or something?”

She shook her head and turned to find Spike glancing around nervously. “We’ll be fine; we cannot interact or otherwise tamper with the outcome of events in this universe at all. Nopony can even see us.” To demonstrate, she trotted over to the nearest townspony – a male Lyra – and put a hoof harmlessly through his head. “See? We’re actually incorporeal right now.”

“Oh.”

Just then, the light-blue stallion sauntered forward, stroked the Alicorn Amulet around his neck and drawled, “So, what’ll it be, Dusk Shine? It’s best not to keep the Great and Powerful Trixter waiting!”

Scowling, Dusk Shine growled in a voice that was just a tad higher than Shining’s, “Fine. Let’s duel.”

Trixter’s face lit up with glee. “Excellent!”

Golden Oaks righted itself and crashed back into its foundations just as a cloud of red mist washed over everypony affected by his malicious enchantments, reverting them to their original states. All except Pinkie Guy, who glared at Trixter and mumbled something whilst gesturing at his non-existent mouth.

Trixter grinned smugly. “If I lose, I’ll never set hoof in this dump of a town again. But if you lose, you’re the one getting banished!”

As Dusk Shine and Trixter faced off in silence, sizing each other up, Twilight glanced at Spike and nodded approvingly. Despite the fact that she was going to indirectly relive the humiliation of being thoroughly outmatched by Trixie in front of everypony, she couldn’t help feeling a little satisfied that everything had so far matched up with her memories. Friendship should be more important than gender roles, after all.

“Draw!” Trixter cried, sending a blazing beam of red magic right at somepony’s cart by the roadside.

Right on track.

Twilight hummed to herself as she watched history replay right before her eyes. Dusk Shine caught the cart before it could give somepony a concussion; he summoned a parasprite to devour the pies Trixter threw at him; he melted the mountain of snow that Trixter dumped over him, and then retaliated with a magical bolt of his own, causing Trixter’s mane to bloom into gleaming, luxuriant, sweeping waves that even Cadance might’ve envied.

Twilight blinked.

Okay, that’s a little different from the moustache…

After Dusk’s friends had finished sniggering at the sight, Trixter haughtily sheared off his excess hair and growled, “Spice, Sugar, to me!”

Two fillies that she recognised as Snips and Snails nervously trotted over to him, and as expected, he turned one into a foal and the other into an elderly mare.

“An age spell? No way. That’s only for max level unicorns!”

Trixter smirked. “Ready to give up, Nerd?”

She bit her lip and winced as Dusk tried to reverse the spell, only to fail and slump in defeat just as she had.

“Hah! Trixter is the max level unicorn!” He cackled maniacally. “And now, it’s time for you to leave Ponyville – forever!”

Like clockwork, Dusk’s friends came to his defence, standing between him and the rogue unicorn.

“That’s enough, Trixter!”

“You’ve made your point, but you can’t possibly expect him to leave Ponyville!”

Trixter snorted and grabbed Dusk bodily in his magic. “You fools, he’s already—”

“Wait!” Dusk yelped. “You initiated three challenges and I only got one. At least give me one more chance!”

All eyes turned to him, and Twilight felt her brain grind to a halt. She did not remember coming up with a Plan B at that point. Not at all. And that was a massive deviation from her experience.

Spike had clearly noticed, too. “Huh. I don’t remember that.” He proceeded to grin at her. “I guess guys really do things differently.”

“Not enough data,” Twilight murmured, shaking her head. “Let’s see how this plays out.”

Trixter gave him a condescending smirk and unceremoniously dropped him on his rump. “Oh, this’ll be good. Fine, you get one more challenge, and the Great and Powerful Trixter will even allow for the same terms. If you can beat me, I’ll never come back.”

Female Spike dashed over to Dusk Shine and whispered, “Dude, he’s totally decked out with magic. You want us to go look for Zareco while you stall or something?”

“Nah, Barb,” Dusk whispered back, gazing determinedly at his opponent. “I’m pretty sure I got it this time. We just need to get him to take off that amulet.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Dude, any dungeon master knows a super-charged magical artefact when he sees one. Just look at that thing; it practically screams chaos magic!”

“Well? Don’t keep us waiting, Nerd!” Trixter jeered. “Anything you can do, I can do—”

“I bet my horn’s bigger than yours!” Dusk shouted.

“Say what?” Applejack blurted.

Once again, everypony stared at Dusk in silence. Trixter in particular still had his mouth half-open, and whatever words he’d meant to say had already died off on his tongue.

“Are you for real?” some mare in the crowd cried out.

At that point, Trixter had recovered enough of his composure for his tongue to work again. “Seriously? Of all the things we could be doing, you’re challenging me to a horn-measuring contest?”

Dusk retaliated with a slightly off-kilter smile. “You got a problem with that? Worried about something, maybe?”

“No, it’s just that—argh, fine,” Trixter sputtered. “Let’s just get it done with, you unimaginative buffoon. When this is over, Trixter will have revealed your woeful inadequacies in more ways than one!”

Dusk sighed. “Elusive, you happen to have anything we could use to… you know.”

Rarity’s counterpart nodded and levitated out some measuring tape. “Right here, Dusk.”

He nodded and lowered his head. “Somepony care to do the honours?”

Elusive glanced around and found that everypony had retreated a couple of paces away from him and Dusk. He rolled his eyes and shook his head as he proceeded to measure Dusk’s horn. “To be quite frank with you, I feel mildly… sullied by all of this.”

“Just get on with it, already!” Trixter called out. “Less chatting, more announcing!”

“Patience, friend,” Elusive huffed. “His horn is nineteen-point-seven centimetres long.”

“Aw yeah. Totally good size for a bro,” Rainbow Guy cheered. “Beat that, you glorified pylontechnician!”

“It’s pyrotechnician, you imbecile.” To Elusive, he added, “Now get over here and measure mine, pleb.”

Elusive flushed pink, but retained his calm as he trotted over to take Trixter’s measurement. After a moment of flicking his gaze between Dusk and the measuring tape, he bit his lip and nervously announced, “Uh. Well… Trixter’s horn is twenty-one-point-three centimetres long.”

A collective gasp of disbelief swept through the crowd. Trixter’s grin widened to horse apple eating proportions, but before he could crow out in victory, Rainbow snorted and said, “I call bull! There’s no way yours could be that long. You must’ve used that necklace thingy to enhance it!”

“Are you accusing the Great and Powerful Trixter of cheating?”

“Blitz is right,” Dusk said. “I’ll bet it shrinks the moment you take it off!”

Trixter threw them all a look of disgust and ground his teeth. For a moment, his eyes glowed red and he looked ready to start blasting at his adversary with magic. Dusk sweated bullets as everypony retreated to allow for a twenty-pace blast radius around him, but Trixter’s glowing eyes eventually petered out as he tore off the amulet.

“There, measure it again and this time—”

“Now, Blitz!” Dusk roared.

In the blink of an eye, Rainbow Blitz ripped forward through the air and swiped the Alicorn Amulet out of Trixter’s magical grasp, leaving a trail of rainbow-lightning in his wake. He zipped back around and tossed it to Dusk, who conjured a lockbox to catch it and offered it straight to Barb for her fire breath. One second later, a plume of green fire and smoke rose into the sky, heading towards Canterlot.

Trixter gritted his teeth. “Oh, now you’ve done it. Prepare to suffer!”

Purple lightning forked out from his horn and struck Dusk and all his friends, but instead of writhing in agony, everypony fell on their backs giggling and flailing about. That continued for about ten seconds or so whilst Trixter stared at them, slack-jawed, until Dusk righted himself and zapped away Trixter’s lightning with a counterspell.

“Okay, that’s enough. Game over, buddy,” he said, grinning as he wiped tears away from his eyes.

“But… but how?”

“Dude… Evil. Magical. Artefact.” Dusk gestured to all his friends and the townsponies. “Did you even stop to think about what you were doing to everypony?”

“You…” Trixter looked around at everypony’s disapproving frowns and hung his head. “Trixter supposes you’re right. I wasn’t thinking straight… I’ll just be leaving now. Sorry.”

And just like that, the whole town erupted into cheers. That gave Twilight the perfect opportunity to pick her jaw up from the ground. “Well, that was… educational.”

“Twilight?”

“Huh?”

“I thought you said nopony should be able to see us.”

“That’s right. They can’t.”

“Uh…”

Twilight followed Spike’s gaze and saw a still mouthless Pinkie Guy squinting at them.

“Time to go?” Spike asked.

“Time to go,” she hastily agreed as Pinkie Guy began trotting towards them.

They popped back into the crystal palace in a flash of light and smoke. Twilight promptly collapsed onto the couch and stared at the ceiling as she attempted to process what she had just witnessed.

Everything had been going so well…

“Well, that settles it, I guess. Guys are totally better at solving friendship problems than girls,” Spike concluded with a smirk. “He figured out what was up with Trixie and got her—him to take it off before he even got banished!”

She frowned. “But that’s the thing. He didn’t utilise friendship to solve it. There’s no way this Dusk is on the right track to becoming the Alicorn of Friendship at this rate!”

“Dude, are you kidding?” Spike threw his arms in the air for emphasis. “Didn’t you see the way Dusk and Blitz kept communicating just by looking at each other? There’s no way they could’ve pulled that off so nicely without a bit of coordination. Either that, or they’re such good friends that they could plan it out on the go without saying anything!”

“But I… I must’ve missed that,” Twilight admitted. Then, she raised an eyebrow. “Also… dude?”

He shrugged. “It fits what I want to say. It’s kind of cool, and it just sounds right when Dusk says it.”

Twilight felt a twinge of jealousy and annoyance that Spike was already gravitating so much to her male counterpart after just one visit to his world. She shook her head. “Still, that’s just Rainbow. Elusive might’ve helped a bit with the measuring, but Applejack, Pinkie and Fluttershy didn’t really do anything!”

Again, Spike shrugged. “Maybe they’ll do more in solving other problems where you just needed one friend, I dunno. Like you said, we’re working with limited data.”

She stared at the floor. “I… I’m going to need to think about this.” She grinned weakly at him and added, “I’m having a hard time coming up with a conclusion to what we’ve learned. A serious one, I mean.”

Spike rubbed his chin in thought. “Everything’s different but still the same if we’re all the opposite gender?”

“Huh. That could work.”

“Lunch?”

“Yeah.”

As they trotted down the stairs towards the dining hall, Spike sighed and said, “Would’ve been nice if we’d stayed a little longer, though. I want to know whether Trixter’s horn was really bigger than Dusk’s.”

“What? Why?”

Spike grinned. “Come on, did you see the look on his face when Elusive said Trixter’s was longer? He’s totally insecure about it.”

“I am n—ahem—I am sure that he’s not too bothered about that,” Twilight huffed. “Horn length is superficial.”

Spike’s footsteps immediately ceased, and Twilight turned back to find him stroking his chin as he gazed at some point above her forehead. “Hmm. I wonder…” he murmured.

Twilight felt heat rising to her cheeks, and she quickly whirled back around to continue down the stairs. “No, Spike. We are not measuring my horn.”

“Boys…” she muttered to herself as Spike giggled behind her back.

Author's Notes:

Ah, just the cheap, tactical brain fart I needed to demolish some nasty writer's block.