Through the Mirror Pond
Chapter 1: I’m me, not you
It was a fairly normal day in Ponyville. The sun was shining, the clouds were mostly clear, with the exception of the ones Rainbow left around for napping. It was a simple day, and it was a day that Pinkie Pie had to herself. Ever since the whole ‘clone’ incident she had worked very hard to make it up to the ponies of Ponyville. She spent a lot of time after work doing odd jobs for everypony. She did this for nearly four months, before all of Ponyville threw a huge, “we forgive you Pinkie Pie” party. Since then she still helped out whenever she could, but she spent more time hanging out with her friends. After much consideration she had decided that today was a day for hanging out with Twilight.
Pinkie bounced over to Twilight’s house, eager to spend some quality time with her friend. “Hello Twilight, wakey wakey.” Pinkie said, while knocking at the door. Twilight opened the door, despite not having done her mane yet. “You know Twilight you really should take better care of your mane, Rarity’ll be furious.” Twilight smiled and let Pinkie inside.
Books were strewn around the library, indicating that Twilight’s disheveled state was the result of an all-night study session. Pinkie sat herself down in the middle of the room on top of a pile of books. “So Pinkie Pie, how have you been? How’s life at Sugarcube Corner?” Twilight asked. Pinkie’s expression deflated somewhat, “The twins still don’t recognize you?”
Pinkie nodded solemnly, “I tried to throw them a party yesterday and they just cried, I don’t get it.”
Twilight hugged her distraught friend, “Someday, it must’ve been emotionally traumatizing to them to see your clones, it takes time for that kind of trauma to heal.” Pinkie returned her hug with a smile, “Good, now let me get us some tea.” As Twilight left the room Spike entered, a red bowtie wrapped around his neck.
“Heya Spike, going somewhere ‘fancy’.” Pinkie said, adding a Rarity impersonation on the last word.
“Hi Pinkie, and yes, Rarity wants to pay me back for all of the hard work I’ve done for her, so we’re going out to lunch!” Spike responded in a giddy tone. “Twilight doesn’t think that it’s a date, but it totally is.”
“No it isn’t.” calls a voice from the kitchen.
“Yes it is.” Spike calls back. “Anyway I’ll see you later.” But as Spike opened the door a grey pegasus burst through it.
“Message for Pinkie Pie.” she said as she left a message on the table for Pinkie. And with that the grey pegasus flew off, just as quickly as she came.
“I wonder what it says.” Pinkie giggled aloud to herself. The envelope containing the message was colored pink and dotted with hearts. Pinkie opened the letter, and read its contents aloud. “Dear Pinkie Pie: I’ve watched you from a afar for a long time now, but I want to be honest with myself and you, I love you.” Twilight walked back into the room with the tea tray, and sat it down in front of them. “I want to talk with you for the first time, I want to show you how much I love you. Please meet me near the barn at Sweet Apple Acres tonight, and I can show you something amazing, me.”
Twilight shivered at the letter’s contents. “Well that felt unnecessarily creepy.”
“Oh come on Twilight, whoever it is they’re just nervous.” Pinkie said.
“’I’ve watch you from afar’” Twilight mimicked, “’I can show you something amazing, me’.” A shiver shot down her spine, “This is insanely creepy, and you really should just ignore it.”
Pinkie inhaled sharply, “But Twilight I can’t hurt this poor pony’s feelings.”
Twilight face hoofed, “They didn’t leave their gender or their name!”
“Like I said, nervous.” Pinkie rebutted.
Twilight’s face met her hoof again, harder this time. “Alright fine, but let me and the girls come with you.” Twilight stopped her before continuing, “A Pinkie Promise.”
Pinkie rolled her eyes before saying and motioning, “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”
Journal entry #2 of Sebastian King
After finding the cave with the pink pony trapped inside I’ve become more and more interested in it. The poor dear is trapped underneath the waters, seemingly beyond some kind of dimensional barrier. I don’t know why, but I’ve found myself drawn to the pond. It’s almost like I know it from somewhere else.
The rest of the day had passed without much of anything happening. Pinkie Pie went to all of her friends and showed them the letter, receiving the same response every time. She didn’t understand how they could be so afraid of a love struck pony. Clearly whoever wrote this letter was just a scared pony, it was probably the first time that they had asked a pony out. And while she did promise, Pinkie Promise no less, that she would let them be there with her, she never promised that she couldn’t be there a little early. “I’m only going a few minutes early, that’ll give the pony time to confess…” She stopped once she reached the barn and found her mystery suitor, or suitors. One was a pony, hidden behind the other creature. The other creature was a human; something that Pinkie had assumed wasn’t real. “Um… hello.” And in that one instance Pinkie started to regret coming out here alone, particularly when she got a good look at the pony.
It was she. It was a complete copy, the pony in front of her was Pinkie pie. The only difference was a silvery glint in this other Pinkie’s eyes. “Hello ‘faker’.” The other Pinkie crooned. The other Pinkie started towards the clone Pinkie, “It’s been a while, how’s it been, being me and all.” Clone Pinkie slowly backed away, allowing the love letter to drop to the ground. “Now is that anyway to treat another pony’s feelings.” She dramatically clutched her chest, “I’m hurt faker.”
The clone stopped, her eyes welling with tears. “You wrote that?” The other Pinkie nodded, “Why?”
The human stepped forward, “Because she wants her life back, and we needed to get you away from your friends.” He extended a hand, a silvery substance floating around it. “They’d try to protect you after all.”
The clone Pinkie didn’t waste any time, she bolted in the other direction. She locked her eyes on the Apple family residence, she didn’t even look back to see how close the two were to her. A chuckle from behind her signaled that they had yet to give up their quarry, pushing her forward, faster. Once she was within earshot of the building she started to scream, “HELP, HELP ME.” She screamed and screamed, hoping that somepony would hear her and help her. A large red earth pony stallion rushed forward to greet her, and the clone collapsed into his arms. “HELP, THEY”RE TRYING TO KILL ME, HELP.” She kept screaming and crying into Big Macintosh’s coat, and he cast his glance towards the two figures chasing clone Pinkie.
Although they were chasing her they didn’t seem to be in a hurry. The human and the real Pinkie Pie were just walking towards the clone. “I’ll handle the stallion, you can have the clone to yourself.” Pinkie stopped the human and glared at him, “I’m just going to scare him, honestly you think too little of me.” Big Macintosh stared at him and took a fighting stance, “I’ll give you a chance to step aside” the human said, “just because I’m a nice guy.”
Big Mac continued to stand his ground and said, “You said you were going to scare me, I don’t scare easily boy.”
The human summoned up the silvery substance again, “Good, I need a challenge.” The silvery substance swirled around his hand, forming into a small mirror.
Pinkie approached the clone Pinkie at the same time, “You like him, he’s the one who rescued me from the pond.” Clone Pinkie realized what her other self meant. The Pinkie Pie in front of her was the ‘original’ the one that spawned the clones, one of which was her. “He’s getting a little too much into the whole ‘bad guy’ role, but I couldn’t ask for a better friend.”
The clone sobbed and muttered, “I’m sorry.” The original Pinkie Pie stopped, “I’m so sorry, and I’ll get Twilight to put me back into the pond, please just don’t hold it against them.”
The real Pinkie Pie found herself questioning her newly found vengeance motive. She was still mad at her friends, but this clone didn’t do anything wrong. The clones all thought that they were the real one, so it was just doing what she would’ve done. But if that was the truth, which she assumed it was, then she shouldn’t be mad at the clone. The hatred started to subside; she started to find herself scared that she came out here, wanting to murder her clone. “But she deserves it.” A voice in Pinkie’s head called, “She’s the reason that you were trapped under that pond for seven months."
“That wasn’t nice.” Pinkie muttered.
“I know, and I’m really sorry…” the clone started to say.
“She’s just a clone, she shouldn’t exist, but while she’s here don’t you want her to feel just a fraction of the loneliness, and the despair that you felt?” the voice murmured.
“Yeah, kind of.” Pinkie admitted. She did want them to feel what she felt. She wanted them to understand how scared she was, how hopeless she felt. The clone had walked up to her and wrapped her in an apologetic hug. She hated it. She wanted to kill the clone, and now she was showing kindness. “What do I do?” Pinkie asked the voice.
“Show her what you went through.” The voice said, egging her on. “She wants to go back to the pond, show her what it was like.”
The clone Pinkie looked up at Pinkie Pie, whose eyes started to turn silver. “Um, is everything OK?” Pinkie’s eyes turned completely silver, they seemed almost liquid in nature. And the clone Pinkie made the mistake of looking straight into them. When the clone’s eyes met Pinkie’s they weren’t met with her normal blue eyes. What she saw was a mirror, and what she saw in that mirror was fear.
The first thing she saw was a dark void. It was nothingness, no other ponies, no critters, not even a small bug. It was empty, true emptiness. “Lonely” that was the only word that crossed her mind, the only word that escaped her lips. She looked around, but found nothing. There were no homes, there were no shops, just nothing. Just the ground, and the sky, completely devoid of life; a sight that scared her so bad, all she could do, was scream.
Twilight ran in the direction of the screaming, her friends in hot pursuit. Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and even Mr. and Mrs. Cake had shown up to discuss the love letter. All of them had deemed the letter suspicious at best, rapey at worst. And now screams were coming from the direction of the farm, where the letter said to meet her. “If anything happened to her…” Mr. Cake muttered as they ran, “I’ll deck the one responsible.”
Rainbow Dash flew beside Twilight, slowing her pace down to match the unicorn. “Who would want to do anything to Pinkie Pie?” Her question seemed reasonable, “you think it has something to do with the whole ‘clone’ thing?”
Twilight nodded, “I can’t imagine another reason, though still, the idea that they want to hurt her.” Twilight shuddered, “But we can’t worry about why, not right now, we need to focus on getting her out of there.” Another scream echoed through the night sky. This scream was more masculine, one that Applejack knew too well.
“BIG MAC.” AJ screamed. She ran ahead, moving faster than even Rainbow Dash. The group followed closely behind her, pushing themselves to go faster. Once they arrived Applejack continued to rush towards her brother’s attacker. A human man stood nearby, a globe of silver liquid floating in his hand. “You dare touch mah brother.” She screamed as she charged at him.
The human dodged out of the way, and the globe in his hand glowed brightly. “So you’re the sister, something tells me that you’ll be the same as him.” The globe sprouted a long winding, almost tentacle-like, appendage that shot out at Applejack. The tentacle pierced the center of Applejack’s head, spearing through her skull.
“APPLEJACK.” Rarity cried out and turned to the human, “I’LL DESTROY YOU.” Rarity charged at the man, screaming a battle cry. A similar liquid flowed into the man’s free hand, and it formed into a small club. He flicked the club upwards as Rarity grew closer, hitting her under the chin and sending her stumbling backwards.
“This isn’t even a fraction of what you did to her.” He pointed over to the barn entrance, where two Pinkie Pie’s were entwined in a hug, and one was screaming. The human flicked his hand to the side, causing the tentacle to retract from Applejack’s skull. The strange thing being that there was no hole where the appendage had struck. “You trapped her in purgatory, and now you’re going to sit here and wait, for her judgment.”
The two Pinkies’ broke off from their hug, with the one who was screaming falling to the ground. The Pinkie Pie left standing turned to her ‘friends’, the silver glint having left her eyes. The clone Pinkie curled herself into a small ball, still sobbing softly. The original Pinkie Pie looked from Big Macintosh to Applejack, and refocused her attention to her human friend. “Sebastian, you said that you wouldn’t hurt them!”
Sebastian shook his head and said, “Not true, I said that I’d just scare them, which is exactly what I’ve done.” Applejack started to get up, with Rarity running to her side. “Your are strange, I can honestly say that I was surprised.” Applejack growled under her breath at him.
“What have you done with Pinkie Pie?” Rainbow Dash screamed as she flew into the original Pinkie Pie’s face. The real Pinkie backed away, tears welling in her eyes. Her mouth turned to a sad frown, which quickly turned into a horrifying scowl.
“I am Pinkie Pie.” she said, “The one you knew for the last seven months, was a fake.”
Everything clicked in Twilight’s head. “You’re the real one, you’ve been in the Mirror Pond, for seven months?” The real Pinkie Pie nodded, “Oh Celestia, we did this to you?”
Sebastian stood between Pinkie and Twilight, “Yes” he said, “and now, she gets her revenge.” Pinkie Pie walked up to him and put a hoof on his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
Pinkie Pie stood facing Twilight, her eyes burning. “I hate you.” she said, “I hate you so much.” Twilight backed away, but Pinkie kept walking towards her, “You couldn’t tell, You, the smartest unicorn I know, couldn’t tell the real me from a fake?” Pinkie spat at Twilight, “I can’t believe you.”
“HELP, HELP HER.” Rainbow screamed as she flew towards the clone Pinkie Pie. The real Pinkie Pie glanced over at the clone’s prone form, nearly throwing up in the process. The clone Pinkie’s eyes were glazed over, her irises as white as the eyes around them. Her mouth was covered in blood, the red sticky substance flowing openly from her mouth. Twilight rushed to the clone’s side and pushed her onto her back, only to discover that the clone had bitten off chunks of her legs, which was causing much of the blood loss.
“I don’t want to be alone I don’t want to be alone I don’t want to be alone I don’t want to be alone I don’t want to be alone.” The clone kept muttering over and over.
“You aren’t alone Pinkie Pie.” Rainbow Dash assured, “We’re here for you, I’m here for you.”
The clone’s eyes returned to normal, and met with Rainbow Dash’s. “Dashie?” She closed her eyes, and her breathing stopped. Rainbow Dash’s screams were heard throughout the night.