//------------------------------//
// Part 2 
// Story: Omega Pony 
// by AdrianJNovelle 
//------------------------------//

	Now panicked, Belief darted from the apple tree and rushed over to Twilight who was on her back, but still conscious. She groaned from the pain.
“I’m really sorry,” Belief mumbled, her voice sounding like Twilight, but her tone was so calm, it was if she were Fluttershy. She stressed out the “really” when she spoke. “I meant to only get your attention.”
“Eh…huh?” Twilight asked, her vision coming into focus. She finally got a glimpse of Belief, a pony which she did not recognize. Her eyes shot open. “Ah! Who are you?” she asked, panicked, struggling to get to her hooves.
“My…name…is…Belief,” said the almost-identical-looking pony, her voice practically inaudible. But Twilight seemed to not make that connection to when she met Fluttershy upon her arrival here in Ponyville.
“What?” Twilight asked, now standing, putting her right hoof to her head, straightening her eyes.
“My…name is…Belief,” Belief repeated.
“I’m sorry?”
Belief gulped. She blurted: “My name is Belief.”
“Do I know you?” Twilight asked.
Belief shook her head. “No,” she replied sternly, “but I know you.”
“You do? How?”
“I’ve been watching you, Twilight Sparkle.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I said I’ve been watching you, Twilight Sparkle. And it’s not hard to learn a pony’s name when she’s the only pony in Equestria….other than myself. But I have seen your past, when you were with your friends, and-”
“Wait. Friends? What friends? I don’t have any friends!” Twilight exclaimed.
Belief sighed, stepping around Twilight, pacing. “You truly don’t remember, do you, Twilight?”
“Remember what? What are you talking about?” Twilight asked, turning herself around to make eye contact with Belief.
“Your friends, Twilight Sparkle,” Belief snapped. “You know: Rainbow Dash and Applejack and Rarity and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie?”
Twilight gave Belief a blank look, her pupils shrunken, her ears pointed downward. She did not speak.
Belief sighed again. “I know this is going to be hard to believe, but you don’t belong here, Twilight Sparkle.” Silence from Twilight. “Allow me to explain: everything about your life that you have been experiencing is nothing more than a falsified reality.”
“I’m still lost,” Twilight remarked.
“Come with me,” Belief said, starting in the direction away from Sweet Apple Acres. She led Twilight to Sugarcube Corner.
“What are we doing here?” Twilight asked upon their arrival.
“This is Sugarcube Corner,” Belief answered. “Your friend, Pinkie Pie, worked here for Mr. and Mrs. Cake. She lived in the attic upstairs. Come. There is much to see.” Belief walked up the stairs into Sugarcube Corner, climbing up the stairs in the back, which led straight to the attic to where Pinkie Pie was supposedly present, along with her pet toothless alligator, Gummy. But there was no Pinkie Pie or Gummy. Her furniture: the bed, the fireplace, the table-and-chair setup she had since her birthday party were all still there. But Pinkie was nowhere to be found. Stranger still: there was no evidence of time passing on the furniture. No dust gathered, no deterioration occurred, and the cake left on the dining table near the staircase was still fresh. It was as if Pinkie Pie had just bolted from her living quarters in a moment’s notice.
“I don’t get it,” Twilight began, looking around, “what is there to see?”
“There is nothing to see,” Belief replied, “so therefore there is tons to see.”
Twilight looked confused. Belief turned around to face her. She guffawed. “I mean that figuratively,” she added, “clearly, if there’s nothing to see literally, then there’s nothing to see. But what I mean is the fact that there is nothing to see here means there is much for you to see.”
“I don’t see how that makes any sense,” Twilight remarked, “if there’s nothing to see, how can I see anything? I can’t see if there’s nothing for me to see.”
“You’re speaking literally,” Belief said, “I’m speaking figuratively.”
“That doesn’t help!” Twilight yelled.
Belief groaned. “I know it doesn’t!” she stopped suddenly, sounding like she was confident in what she had to say next, and she was cutting herself off. “Twilight, you have been studying magic this whole time, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you recall how to perform the spell which allows you to look through things?”
Twilight shook her head. “It seemed pretty useless to me: why would I ever have the need to look through things?”
“Normally, you would be correct,” Belief began, “but under these conditions, you are wrong. That spell is the only way for you to understand, Twilight Sparkle, what my intentions are. I hereby dismiss you for today. Go home and learn that spell. You will be needing it if you are ever to be freed from here.”
“Be freed?” Twilight asked. “Freed from what?”
“Good day!” Belief exclaimed in dismissal.
Twilight sighed and exited Sugarcube Corner.
“This is going to be harder than I thought,” Belief said to herself after she was sure Twilight was not within hearing range. “Twilight, as expected, is a wise pony. But even she does not realize the danger she is in. And it is as if she craves loneliness, and that friends will only get in her way. This is not like the Twilight Sparkle I was expecting. But once she is fond of that spell, she shall know what is happening here. The successfulness of my mission is low. Very, very low. But between my teachings and Twilight Sparkle’s smartness, we just might find the answers.”





Belief returned to the shadows of Ponyville until the following day, where she reported to the library. Twilight was out front, reading. She closed the book and rose to her hooves, turning around to face Belief.
“I am ready,” she said.
“Very good,” Belief replied, “now we return to Sugarcube Corner. It is time to reveal what is hidden in front of your eyes for far too long, Twilight Sparkle.”
Belief led Twilight back to Sugarcube Corner, and back to the loft where Pinkie Pie lived, completely ignoring the whole first floor of the building. Twilight noticed that. Belief knew that the first floor would be futile. Twilight did not know that, but she figured there was a reason behind Belief’s methodology. Belief positioned Twilight in front of the table-and-chair set with the birthday cake and the unusual arrangement of objects on chairs: a fallen triplet of rocks, a sack of flour, a bucket of turnips, and a dust bunny.
“What happened here?” Twilight asked.
“Cast the spell, and you shall find out,” Belief said.
Twilight gulped and lowered her head, closing her eyes and concentrating. Her horn illuminated, and, after a few dramatic moments of undivided attention to the spell, a small explosion occurred in front of Twilight. An intangible object – like an abstract window – appeared in front of Twilight’s eyes. Within the window-like object was an exact duplicate of the table-and-chair set, the color completed erased, the image within the window animated and alive.
There was Pinkie Pie – a pink-furred pony with a magenta-colored mane and blue eyes, her otherwise light and fluffy mane popped and dangling from her head and her flank like curtains. She was in a funk, alternating from serving the inanimate objects beverages and cake, and total insanity. Her eyes parted from each other completely, her irises too vibrant for optimal vision, and her behavior too bizarre to describe. The scene only lasted in front of Twilight for only seconds before spontaneously disappearing from sight, like the popping of a bubble.
“What was that?” Twilight asked, turning her head from the table-and-chair set to Belief.
“That was Pinkie Pie, one of your many friends in Ponyville,” Belief replied.
“That was Pinkie Pie?”
Belief nodded. “Indeed it was. It was during her Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome.”
“Her what?” Twilight asked.
“Pinkie Pie was under the impression that you and your friends no longer wished to attend her parties and did not want to be her friend anymore, so she, well, popped and threw a party for Gummy with only her, her pet crocodile, and a random assortment of objects she found in her loft. Naturally, when you guys persuaded her otherwise, she inflated back into normality.”
“I noticed you said ‘popped’ and ‘inflated’ as if this Pinkie Pie were a balloon,” Twilight remarked.
“Pinkie Pie’s cutie mark was a picture of three balloons – did you not notice that?”
Twilight shook her head. “It all happened so fast.”
“That is out of our control,” Belief remarked, “you shall learn of your past, and learn to see what has become of you now, Twilight Sparkle, one memory at a time. Come! There is much more to see!”
Belief led Twilight all around Ponyville. She saw glimpses of her past from who knows how many weeks. One was from a race Applejack and Rainbow battled each other in during the fall. Another was from when Twilight had been given tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala; another led to a scene from the Grand Galloping Gala. More showed images from an attack from a species of parasite called the Parasprite, a scene of Rainbow Dash performing the legendary Sonic Rainboom, and one of the ponies of Appleloosa in a war with buffalo native to the land. Altogether, Belief had Twilight perform the spell twenty-eight times. And twenty-eight different images haunted Twilight as she and Belief returned to the library.
“Well?...” Belief asked, having hardly spoken a word since they began exploring Ponyville, “anything you have to say, Twilight Sparkle?”
“I…I don’t understand,” Twilight replied after a long pause, unsure of what to say. “I thought this whole time…everything in the world was right.”
Belief shook her head. “You are wrong, Twilight Sparkle. You have been living in another world: a world identical to the real one you’re supposed to be living in, but without any memory of anything that is externally important to you, such as your friends. Your fondness of magic stayed with you because you have been studying magic long before you met your friends, so it became an internal part of your well-being. But your friends are just friends.”
“So…everything I have seen…that all happened?” Twilight asked.
Belief nodded. “Not necessarily in the order you witnessed them, but everything you have seen has happened. You were there for all of it. You were the center of attention, Twilight Sparkle: the newbie who needed the fellowship, guidance – and, most importantly, friendship – of those five other ponies who dedicated their lives to your well-being and understanding of the magic of friendship.”
Twilight was silent. Her mind raced with doubt and uncertainty. She grew cold with disbelief and misunderstanding. Something inside her snapped. She began to back away.
“No…no! This can’t be true!” she exclaimed.
“It is, Twilight Sparkle. This is your life: as it should be. Everything you believe now is an illusion. What you’ve been taking glimpses at is your real life.”
Dark clouds quickly formed in the skies above the otherwise clear and sunny world of Equestria. Thunder rolled and lightning crackled above, rain beginning to pour interminably from the black sky. The ponies’ manes drooped with water. 
Twilight was as neutral as the sky: not believing that this world was not false nor true. Now her mind was made up. She believed in this world, and not what was reality. The sky reflected her confusion.  A heavy wind picked up, the tress of Equestria leaning from the gale. Visibility plummeted. Twilight retreated from Belief that very moment, disappearing into the distance as a thick fog rolled in. 
“This is not good,” Belief mumbled as the storm of chaos ushered itself in.