Through the Mirror Pond
Prologue: A prison of glass
I’d lost track of time somewhat. That happens when you’re trapped in an eternal prison with no way of escape. Well, no escape on your own. When Twilight and the others mistook me for one of my clones I thought of it as karma. I had done so much damage in a few short hours that I thought of it as the universe’s equivalent of sending me to the corner. But as days passed with no rescue in sight, I began to panic. Life underneath the mirror pond was static. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t breathe, I didn’t, or couldn’t, do anything. Nothing would happen to me, nothing could happen to me. It started off boring, but then it became scary.
“But they’ll come for me.” I would say to myself, “I know that they will.” My thoughts drifted to Twilight Sparkle, the unicorn responsible for all of this. “She’d never leave me behind.” I thought back to that hydra, in Froggy Bottom Bog. She could’ve just left me there. She could have just escaped with the others, but she ran back and saved me. Days went by as I repeatedly replayed that scene in my head. But she never came for me.
After a month, my thoughts drifted again. This time Fluttershy filled my thoughts. “She could never leave me behind, she would never leave any pony behind.” Again, days went by, and I just kept saying to myself, “She’ll come for me.” More and more I started to lose track of time. Days felt like weeks, weeks like months, I started to dig my hoof into the ground and make lines in the dirt to count the days. The days themselves I would spend counting seconds as they turned to minutes, minutes as they turned to hours. But even more time passed, and Fluttershy never came for me.
It had been two months (approximately) since I became trapped under the Mirror Pond. I started to rationalize why they hadn’t come for me yet. I needed to find a reason, lest the fear of an eternity under a small pond continue to gnaw away at my sanity. “Maybe they just haven’t realized that they have the wrong Pinkie!” It was a conclusion that I didn’t want to believe at first. But now, faced with the alternative, the idea that my friends wanted to leave me down here, I was all too accepting of it. “But they will come for me once they figure that out.” I began counting the seconds with renewed vigor. Images of my teary-eyed friends rescuing me, hugging me and begging for forgiveness began to circle my mind. And I would forgive them, I would embrace them and throw parties for them again, everything would be back to normal. But still I remained alone.
“Dashie will come for me, we’re bestest friends. She has to notice that I’m not me.” I thought as my thoughts drifted to Rainbow Dash. I remembered my birthday. How I was so down in the dumps, but Dashie kept at it. I could distinctly remember each prank we pulled, and all the pranks we would pull once she rescued me. But more and more time passed me by, and she never came.
Another month passed me by. At least I think so. My thoughts drifted once again. “Rarity, she has a serious eye for detail, she’ll notice that the Pinkie out there is a clone.” Again my fear was soothed. I thought back to the Crystal Fair, and how Rarity was able to use everything in the vicinity to make more stuff to keep the ponies occupied. I remembered that contest between Flim and Flam and the Apples. Rarity was able to keep up Granny Smith, who’s worked with apples all her life, in rejecting the bad apples. “If she can notice one teeny weeny spot on an apple, she can certainly notice that I’m not me!” But another month passed, and I remained alone.
It had been four months, four months that I’d spent in the Mirror Pond. I desperately perused my brain for any reason that the girls hadn’t noticed the ‘fake’ me yet. “Maybe time works differently out there than in here?” The idea seemed silly, even to me, but it was becoming all that I had. There was no one, not a soul, in the pond with me. The possibility that time worked differently in the pond was one I would consider, and then dismiss. There was a possibility, however minute, that time worked differently, but I knew that I just thought that in order to calm myself down.
As more time passed I began to lose hold of any rationality I once had. I thought less and less about, “They’ll save me”, and more “Why haven’t they?” Hatred began buzzing around my head, I tried to stay positive, but found myself unable. Applejack was the first to be subjected to my ire. “She’s the Element of Honesty for crying out loud. How can she not know that the fake me is lying about being me?” I mentally spewed hatred at my other friends too. Rainbow Dash, my best friend, hadn’t realized it yet either. Twilight Sparkle, supposedly one of the most brilliant minds in Equestria, couldn’t figure out the difference. The hope drained from my heart, leaving only hatred and sadness to comfort me.
I was angry with my friends, but my anger focused much stronger on another source. “How could the Cakes, my surrogate family, not know?” If I could’ve cried I would’ve. The Cakes treated me like a daughter. I was part of their family, I worked and lived under the same roof with them. They trusted me enough to let me live in their home, even when they knew almost nothing about me. I had struck out on my own and failed, but the Cakes redeemed me. In the sixth month of my imprisonment they were all that I thought about. I was sad that they couldn’t tell the difference, but then I was angry. Angry at Mr. and Mrs. Cake, angry at their children, angry at every patron who couldn’t tell me apart from a clone. I stewed in that anger for a while, it was all that I could think about, all that I cared about. But then something strange happened in the middle of my seventh month of exile, I had a visitor. Though my visitor wasn’t the kind of pony I expected, in fact he wasn’t a pony at all, he was a human. Even despite all of that, he was still kinder than my friends. He was brimming with honesty, and generosity, willing to spend time just keeping me company, and telling me embarrassing stories from his world to try and make me laugh. He was loyal too; he would come back every single day, every single day. He’d study the pond, he said that he wanted to help me get out.
The strangest thing about that was that he succeeded.
Journal entry #1 of Sebastian King
I finally did it! I created a portal through space and time! I’m writing this in another world! I can prove that magic exists. All I need is time, that and another miracle would be nice.
Sebastian King’s first day in Equestria was very strange. He’d popped into existence in the middle of a forest, a particularly dark and creepy one at that. He frantically shoved his hands into the pocket of his brown trench coat, hoping that his revolutionary device survived the trip. “Oh thank any Omnipotent beings who might be listening.” He pulled out a stop watch, embedded in a large circular plastic casing. The Zoner, name subject to change as he would say, was his greatest achievement. Granted it was currently his only achievement, but that was soon to change. He breathed in a huge amount of the local air, still stunned that he wasn’t in his dingy apartment building. He patted himself down to make sure that everything was still as it should be.
Sebastian was fairly above average in the looks department. He had sapphire blue eyes, combed and styled dark brown hair, and a chiseled stubbly chin. He was the kind of guy that girls back on Earth would try to talk to at a bar, albeit that usually ended around the time he spoke. Sebastian had always believed in magic, not simply religious miracles, real magic. For all of his life he tried and tried to find traces of real magic in the small Massachusetts town he grew up in. But in the end all of his efforts proved fruitless. Once he was in high school his parents insisted that he start looking towards a career path that wouldn’t end him up on the SyFy network. So in the end he chose to go into various scientific fields, the closest thing to magic that he could find. Eventually he was given a college scholarship to Harvard and once there he found his true calling. One of his professors told him that the best scientists in the world, the ones remembered at least, always started off with radical ideas. When Sebastian told his professor about magic and other worlds his professor didn’t scoff like others, he told Sebastian to make it his life’s work to prove that hypothesis.
He worked with his professor to make what he considered to be the ultimate example of, as his professor put it, ‘scientific magic’. He wanted to create a device that would take him to other worlds, one that would allow him to explore the universe without the aid of a huge ship. That dream eventually became the small disk-shaped apparatus he held in his hands. He kissed the machine repeatedly, not paying attention to where he was going. He tripped over a stump and tumbled down a hole. He rolled down the small enclosure, down spiraling columns until, at last, he reached the bottom. He grunted in pain as he hoisted himself off of the ground. Those grunts of pain turned to gasps of awe, once he finally got a look around the area. It was a small cave, illuminated by an unknown light source, and in the center was a small pond. Sebastian carefully edged himself towards the pond, despite the logical flaw of approaching a pool of water in an unknown land where mermaids or other horrible creatures could be waiting to eat him. His scientific interest quickly turned to teary-eyed empathy when he saw what was in the pool.
Inside the pool was an equine of some sort. An equine with remarkably human facial features, like the smaller snout, rounded eyes, and humanish lips. Her mane was a bright bubblegum pink, which matched the rest of her body, and it was remarkably bouncy looking. But despite the pink coloring the creature didn’t look too happy. In fact she was crying, and banging against the water as if it were glass. Her face was scrunched up in a look of frustration and anguish, she pounded her hooves against the water ceiling, but she never broke free. “Hold on, I’ll help.” Sebastian shouted. He clawed at the water, splashing it every which way, but came no closer to helping the equine. It was like she was a reflection in the water, but with a mind of her own. Eventually the equine stopped struggling, sitting back onto the ground.
“Come on, you can’t just be giving up?” The pink equine nodded. “But I can help. Can’t I?” The pony, it certainly looked like one, nodded again while mouthing something. “Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s impossible.” Sebastian racked his brain for something, anything that would help in this situation. “My name’s Sebastian, what’s yours?” the pony didn’t respond, “Can you understand me?” The pony nodded and tried to speak, but while her mouth moved no words came out. “You can understand me, but I can’t hear you respond, that’s bloody irritating.” He seethed, he just met a creature from another world and he couldn’t converse with it. He decided that he needed a name for the pony of the pond, at least until he knew her real one. “Well you are very pink, maybe your name is Pinkie?” The pony jumped up and down, nodding all the while. “Don’t know how I guessed that, well I have always been good with names.” He decided to leave his astounding ability to guess a pony’s name at that, he figured it wasn’t important. “Alright, I’m going to explore the area around here for a bit, but don’t worry I’ll come back.”
Strangely enough though, he did come back. He came back every day and every night. He talked with the mysterious Pinkie, and told her all about himself and Earth. All the while though, his thoughts were with her strange pond prison. For a man who only knew the basics of how magic on Earth should work, Sebastian was a remarkably good study on the magical properties of Equestria. He would spend his days just looking around the forest he had found himself in. Analyzing and documenting the creatures of the forest, their eating habits, how they differed and yet reminded him of creatures from Earth. But still he came no closer to finding anything about the weird pond, or how to free Pinkie from it. After a month of living off of berries and such from the forest he decided that he needed to think about this from a different perspective. It was the thirtieth day that he had been trying to free Pinkie when he realized that he needed to go home. Not forever, but for a long enough while where he could look at things from a different point of view. He walked into the cave with a sad look on his face. He didn’t want to leave Pinkie alone, goodness knows how alone she had been before he came along.
He walked to the edge of the pond, where Pinkie was. As usual the pink pony bounded with joy at his arrival. “Pinkie, I need to go away for a while.” As he started his declaration he could already see the happiness drain from Pinkie’s face. “Not forever, just a week, then I should be able to help you out of there.” Pinkie seemed to understand, as much as he was sure that she would hate being left alone again, she still knew that he wasn’t lying to her. “So listen, do you have any friends that I could call?” Pinkie shook her head violently, a look of hatred adorning her usually bright features. “So you do, but you don’t want me to call them?” She shook her head again, less violently though. “You used to have friends, but then they died?” The shaking was more violent this time, he was getting colder. “You used to have friends but they did something to hurt you?” The little pink equine nodded, but the rest of her body shook. She outstretched a hoof and motioned to the emptiness that surrounded her. “They did this to you?” Sebastian screamed, and Pinkie nodded yes. He wished he could’ve reached out and hugged the poor creature. To be locked away in this horrid place by people that you thought were your friends. He couldn’t even imagine what that must’ve been like for her. “All right, I’m going to get you out of there, and then, you’re going to give your ‘friends’ a piece of your mind.” He stormed out of the cave, his purpose clear, to help his new friend with revenge.
It had been about a week since Sebastian left. I started to lose hope as I counted the seconds to his return. I wanted to believe him, but after everything that I had gone through. Just as I counted that it had been exactly a week since Sebastian left, a bright light engulfed the room, and after it left he was standing in its wake. He held a book of some kind in his hands; he ran up to the edge of the pond and smiled at me. “I’ve done it Pinkie, I know how to get you out of there, and how to help you get back at your so-called friends.” He said the last few words with a noticeable amount of venom in his voice. Normally I would be against revenge, or payback, or whatever you want to call it. My job, my purpose in life as dictated by my cutie mark, was to make people smile. But sometimes, you can’t stop yourself from doing something you know is wrong. So I smiled and nodded to Sebastian, and mentally prepared myself for the eventual revenge.
As Sebastian started to set up some sigils and chant something from the book I started to imagine my revenge. “Maybe I just won’t invite them to my parties for a while, then again how long is a while, a year?” I shook away the thought, “A year is way too long, maybe a month, not too short, maybe…” My internal ramblings were cut off by Sebastian.
“All right we are all set.” he said, “time to save you.” He threw off his normal trench coat, leaving his T-shirt that said “Pink Floyd” on it, and his jeans. He chanted another spell from the book, and removed his shoes. Finally he took off his shirt and pants, leaving his naked body exposed to the elements. “This has to work, this has to work.” He started chanting to himself, while using his hands to cover his manhood. “All right, here we go.” He walked on the water of the pond and stood in the center, once there he yelled, “Yeht llac em Raef, deeh ym llac.” And the world around us changed.
The water of the pool began to rise and swirl around Sebastian. It roared and screeched, causing blood to flow from my ears. He extended his hands, causing the water to swirl around his hands. Finally he said something that I couldn’t hear and the water began to flow into his fingers. The veins in his arms glowed a bright white, before fading to a soft silver. His sapphire blue eyes changed to the color of his veins, a metallic silver. He turned his attention to me, and extended a hand. The water of my prison rose to meet him, pulling me along. Finally as I was lifted into the air in a small bubble of water, he flicked his hand to the side, causing the water to deposit me on the ground nearby. Sebastian pointed in my direction, and the water flew into my chest.
The water punched a hole in me and began to spread throughout my body. It poured into my veins and mixed with my blood. I looked up at Sebastian who was faring worse. He was bent over, blood was pouring from his mouth, and bit by bit his veins lost any hint of red. I realized that he was bonding with the Mirror Pond. And, to a certain extent, so was I. I could feel the rush of magic, powerful magic. It was filling me, drowning out the pain of the hole in my chest. I could only imagine how Sebastian was feeling, as he was bonding with the entire pond. Through a mix of euphoria and pain, the bonding process finished, and I passed out.
Once I awoke I could already tell that I had changed. I could feel the magic of the pond flowing through me. Sebastian was lying in the spot where the pond once was. Not a single drop of the pond was left in the crater that once housed it. In it’s place a large puddle of human blood, and a little pony blood, was all that I could see. “Are you okay?” I called. He lifted his head, grumbling while he did so. “Sebastian?”
“Pinkie! You’re okay.”
I smiled, that was a true friend, one who put his friend before himself. I walked over to him and embraced him tightly. He blushed a little at this, as he was still naked, but returned the hug. “What happened Sebastian?”
“I absorbed the Mirror Pond, and all of it’s magic. With the exception of a small amount which I gave to you.” As he said this he forced some of the water out from his fingers. The water formed into a small ball, floating above the center of his hand. I looked into the ball, and inside was me. It was me, trapped beneath the pond again. “I haven’t quite gotten the hang of how it works yet, but it should be more than sufficient for you to go and get some payback.” he said as he crushed the ball in his hand.
“Well then I guess we’d better get moving.” I said, turning to allow Sebastian the opportunity to put back on his clothes. I guess that’s one aspect of Earth that I’ll never understand, the whole ‘nudity as a taboo’ thing.
“Where to first?” Sebastian questioned as pulled up his jeans.
Inside me the magic of the pond pulsed, it almost felt like it was licking its non-existent lips in anticipation. “Well clearly we have to go and give me a piece of my mind.”