“Rise,” Sweetie Belle cackled in a most serious and terrifying evil voice, and not at all one that cracked when it got too high that Apple Bloom pretended not to laugh at. “Rise, my minion of darkness! Rise!”

This moment would have been accentuated perfectly by a bolt of lightning tearing the night sky or a thunderclap, but those were hard to achieve for a filly.

In the middle of the day.

With perfect weather.

Indoors.

“Rise, my dark minion!” the soon to be overlord pranced back and forth gleefully in front of her cardboard box, an unearthly blue light emanating from it. “Rise, and do my bidding! Mwa, ha ha ha ha!”

For several seconds, nothing happened.

For several minutes, still nothing happened.

Sweetie Belle checked the old book, carefully peeling back the cover of the cardboard box an inch to peek inside. Surely she'd used enough cloning potion, the ancient 'grimoire' that she had 'stolen' from the library that Twilight Sparkle most certainly did not kindly help her check out and remind her of the return date with a little sticky note on the cover with a smiley face displayed everything she needed for her evil plans to work. Sweetie Belle paced back and forth around the corners of her brightly lit room, frowning at the semi-functioning egg timer.

Perhaps she wasn't supposed to use the entire bottle?

Sweetie Belle frowned even harder, thinking. That might have been the problem, considering that she'd used quite a bit more than just one bottle. The emptied out and reused expensive shampoo bottles that belonged to her sister that were littering the floor were testament to that.

Then, the cardboard box exploded.

An identical slightly glowing Sweetie Belle was blasted out of the box with an excited wheeee!, her joy at temporary flight swiftly forgotten when she hit the ceiling. Hard. For some reason, she didn't come back down. Then she was followed by another. And another. And another. And another.

Within seventeen seconds, Sweetie Belles were practically being rapid fired out of the cardboard box, each one blasting out with a Whoomph! Whoomph! Whoomph! Whoomph!

The original Sweetie Belle found herself gasping for breath as she attempted to pull herself out from underneath half a dozen giggling excited clones.

Then, the egg timer went off.

“Right,” Sweetie Belle classic stumbled to stand, still a little dazed but eager to begin. “Where was I? Oh, right. Rise, my dark minions! Rise!”

“Yay!” squealed one of the first Sweeties to emerge. “Raise the roof!”

“There's no music!” said another.

“It's imaginary, raise the roof anyway!”

“Per fliffle mig flerfle merf!” the muffled voice of one Sweetie Belle with her face still stuck to the ceiling agreed.

“Focus, my evil servants and darkness and shadow and scary stuff!” vintage Sweetie Belle clapped her hooves together gleefully, almost forgetting her soon to be super spooky evil overlord of Equestria smile. “For we have... a mission!”

“Yay!” one of the clones squeaked. “I'm great at emissions!”

“No, no, she said confessions,” the unicorn filly crawling out from underneath a pile of identical fillies insisted. “I heard her, say it again.”

“Per fliffle mef fiffle mif?”

“No, not nuclear fission!” stamped the hoof of one of the Sweeties near the middle. “She said somepony is missing!”

“Fliffle mif fif flerf!”

“Yes, we know you never actually left, it's an emergency! Somepony has gone missing!”

“Fler mifferflif fin?”

“No, not circumcision!”

Sweetie Belle clapped her hooves together furiously to get the attention of the squabbling mimics.

“Right,” she said loudly, a little irritated. “Our mission – mission,” she reiterated very clearly. “Is to... take over the world!”

“Of course!” one of the clones clapped a hoof to her forehead. “It seems so obvious now!”

There was a rousing chorus of nods and agreements. Then, it fell silent.

“... How exactly do we do that?” piped up one of the Sweeties from the back again.

“Easy!” Sweetie Belle carefully snapped on her supervillaness black cape, throwing a short and stumpy (but still extremely scary and intimidating, probably) shadow across the wall. “We march on Canterlot itself!”

It was silent for a long pause.

“... I see no flaws or issues with this plan whatsoever,” a Sweetie copy near the front nodded thoughtfully.

“Indeed,” said another. “They'll never stand a chance against the might of the Sweetie Belle Armada!”

“Battalion,” corrected the previous one. “Sweetie Belle Battalion.”

“We should be the Cutie Mark Canterlot Crusaders!” one near the back stamped cheerfully.

“Armada!”

“Battalion!”

“Inquisition!”

“See Em See See!”

“Flif fif mig fliffle mif!”

“Everypony, everypony!” Sweetie shouted at the top of her lungs, slamming the potion book down like a gavel for order. “Those are all good names! But we can settle on naming ourselves after we conquer Canterlot. For now, you are my minions!”

“Can we get lunch first?” a clone asked after a minute. “I'm kinda hungry.”

“Yeah, me too,” nodded another, then another.

“Okay,” Sweetie Belle esquire the first agreed. “Lunch first, then global domination!”

“Yay!” cheered the crowd of clones, following her down the stairs two at a time.

“Rarity,” Sweetie Belle poked her head into the kitchen where her sister was calmly reading the newspaper with a cup of coffee floating before her in a magical grip. “Would you mind making me some lunch, sis?”

“Oh, no problem at all, dear,” Rarity smiled, glancing up from her paper. “How does peanut butter and jelly sound?”

“Great!” she beamed back at her. “But... can you make more than one?”

“Certainly,” Rarity blinked as another Sweetie Belle came around the corner, shortly followed by three more with the rest close behind. “That's-that's, um... uh...”

“About a hundred or so, actually,” Sweetie Belle informed her seriously. “We're kinda in a hurry.”

“We're gonna take over Canterlot!” one of the clones cheered.

The coffee cup hit the floor before Rarity did.

“... Okay, the conquering of Canterlot first, then lunch!” Sweetie Belle cast back her cape in what she hoped was a magnificent and impressive fashion.

“Pfff. Pleh. Fleh,” the clone directly behind her spit out the cape unperturbed. “To Canterlot!”

“To Canterlot!” echoed the rest of the clones, bounding right out the front door after Sweetie Belle the Dark and Terrible.

“And also lunch!” one at the back skipped along, but nobody paid any attention.

Today would be a dark day for Equestria, indeed!

Sweetie Belle could already imagine just how perfectly her attack on Canterlot would go; in fact, the Princesses were probably already writing up their letter of surrender. That would be the smart thing to do. It occurred to Sweetie that there might be some fuss over who got to sit on the big fancy throne of Celestia's first, but she even planned for that.

Sweetie Belle knew the rule of dibs. Nopony could possibly disrespect dibs.

It was then that the totally going to take over all of Equestria filly realized something very important.

All of the clones were simply gone.

“- And in case of emergencies,” Sweetie Belle read aloud as her brows furrowed, trailing her hoof slowly over the page. “Temporaries can be disposed of by direct sunligh- aw, manure!”

“I heard that, Sweetie Belle!” Rarity poked her head in, nodding once at the cleanup job that Sweetie had spent the entire day on.

Sweetie clammed up promptly, making a zipping motion across her mouth.

“No more bottles or scorch marks?” Rarity inquired, poking one spot on the wall that had taken over an hour of scrubbing.

“I even got the ones that rolled under the bed,” Sweetie sighed, letting Rarity lift the ancient book out of her hooves and place it on the nightstand.

“Oh, don't be so down,” Rarity patted the disappointed filly on the head. “You've still got all summer.”

“You really think I can be super duper evil?” Sweetie perked up immediately with a poorly hidden squeak.

“Oh, definitely,” she tucked her in without pausing. “And after that you can finish your summer book report for Miss Cheerilee.”

Sweetie groaned and flopped back into her cushy pillows.

“Good night, Sweetie Belle,” Rarity put out the lights with a quiet smile.

“Good night,” Sweetie stifled a yawn. “I love you, sis.”

“I love you too, Sweetie Belle.”

Within minutes, Sweetie was comfortably asleep, probably dreaming something terrible and awful befitting of a dark overlord.

At long last after a long day, it was finally peaceful.

And then, “FLIF FLIFFLE MIGH FLIFFLE FLIF!”