//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: A New Change // Story: An Unexpected Surprise // by Salnalus //------------------------------// Pinkie and Trixie were traveling down the streets of Manehatten, the sky clear of clouds and the sun shining down on the city below. The hyper pink mare bounced along happily while the light blue one merely walked. “So where are you taking me? do we get to do something fun there? What is it? Are you going to be my new friend? What are we going to do? Tell me, tell me, tell me!” Trixie rolled her eyes. Trixie finds this annoying, but this should be quick. I only wish to see what this is about. There’s no way what she said is true. She must be hiding something, and Trixie intends to find out what. “Hush, you. Trixie is bringing you back to her carriage to interrogate you.” “Interrogate? Like, ask me questions? Ooh ooh, are we going to play Twenty Questions? That’s a fun game! Me first, me first! Ask me something!” “No, that is not what Trixie meant. It is no game. It is an important matter we must discuss. You say you are not friends with Twilight Sparkle anymore. Trixie knows there is something behind that.” She stopped bouncing, as this hit her again like a pie to the face, only it wasn’t a joke and not fit for giggles. “Why ask about that? I don’t need Ponyville. I’m staying here where ponies actually want me!” As she said that, she wrapped a hoof around the neck of a random stallion, who got rather annoyed and removed her hoof. Pinkie stared at him as he walked away, then shrugged. “His loss. So where’s your carriage?” “It’s at the edge of the city, about two blocks away from a park.” Pinkie gasped, as if this sounded familiar and something came back to her mind. “I know what you mean now! You mean that carriage I saw as I made my way from the train station to the park! It looked weird, if you ask me. Are you poor, or something?” “P-Poor?! How dare you insult the Great and Powerful Trixie!” “Powerful? Not to sound rude or anything, but you don’t exactly have big muscles or anything.” Trixie bared her teeth. She was getting really annoyed with this Pinkie character. “It is part of my title, you inconsiderate oaf! I’m not having any more of this. You shall sleep, now!” “Sleep? But I’m not even--” Before she could finish her sentence, a bolt came her way. It was lightning-fast, and she couldn’t react fast enough to avoid it. It hit hit her square between her eyes, and she flinched back. Her sight became blurry as she started to feel woozy. “Woah... what happened? What’s happening to me...” She collapsed with a thud. ---------- Wake up. Huh, a voice? It sounded like a voice was heard. It sounded strangely familiar... Trixie knows you can hear now. Wake up, or she shall force you up!” Trixie. It was that blue unicorn mare from earlier. Pinkie remembered her. Her eyes opened slowly to the sight of the magician from earlier. Trixie looked down at the pink Earth pony as she laid on the tiny couch. “Good, you are awake. We are now in my carriage. Relax here, and do nothing. Trixie has things to ask you.” Pinkie shook her head to clear her vision and regain her senses. She looked around the room to get a view of her surroundings. It looked just like any ordinary carriage, though one of the larger variety that looked more like a large caravan than anything else. It was populated with various cheap items, possibly used for magic shows. One one side of the room, there was a mirror and a small dresser next to it with a brush on top. On the other side, a map of Equestria was taped to the wall, probably just there for decoration. Her gaze returned to Trixie. “So you live in here?” “Yes, this is where Trixie sleeps. It is not much, but it is liveable for a traveling pony such as myself.” Pinkie nodded in understanding, though something about Trixie’s speech confused her. “Trixie, why do you refer to yourself in the third person?” Trixie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Is that any of your business? Trixie is the one who shall be asking the questions here, Pinkie Pie! You are to just lay there and answer Trixie.” Pinkie scratched her head in confusion of the unicorn’s statement. “How do you know my name? I never told you. Did Filla, Jitters or Aero tell you my name? No wait, they weren’t with us. Wait, did anypony from Ponyville come here and see me, and they told you? Do they know I’m here?! I’m not going back!” Her expression changed to one of frustration, and a bit of fear. Trixie herself wasn’t expecting it, and was left quite surprised by the reaction. “Calm down. We are the only two ponies here. Trixie would rather not see anypony in Ponyville herself, though Trixie plans to return sometime once Trixie raise the necessary bits to purchase a certain artifact from a certain merchant... but enough about that.” “Ooh, I can help if you want! Raising bits sounds like fun!” “It is not fun. It is a lot of hard work, which you would not know since all you do is bake sugary junk food all day.” Pinkie shook her head. “Nonononono, the real Pinkie Pie does that--” After suddenly realizing what she said, she clasped her hooves over her mouth. Trixie raised an eyebrow at the suspicion that Pinkie was hiding a lot more than she was saying. “Real Pinkie Pie, you say? Are you saying you are a fake? A doppelganger? A mimic? Trixie suggests you talk, now.” The pink mare lowered her head worriedly. She didn’t want to get caught, but it looked like Trixie was on to her. It would've been no use to try and hide it further. She wasn’t going to say anything. However, Trixie was giving off a deep glare that intimidated Pinkie to the point that it was scaring her. The pressure was getting to her, and she couldn’t take it anymore. “Ok ok, I’ll talk, I’ll talk. Just stop looking at me like that!” Trixie groaned a bit before leaning her head back a bit away from Pinkie. She raised her head back up, although she was still feeling discomfort from the atmosphere given off in the carriage. “Then let’s start with the first question: are you a fake?” “Umm, well... I am, and I’m not. You see, I’m actually a double Pinkie, or like a copy. A clone? Whatever you want to call it.” Trixie was dumbfounded. There was no way a simple Earth pony was able to make an artificial copy of herself. There had to be some sort of magic involved. It was time for Trixie to get more details about this mysterious business. “Keep talking.” "Ok. There is this pool in the Neversee Forest...” Trixie cut her off. “It’s called the Everfree Forest.” “Right, Everfree Forest. Anyway, there was a sort of pool inside a cave in there that contained magic. The magic allowed anypony who said a certain phrase of words to clone themselves. It’s called the Mirror Pool.” There was no way a mere body of water could contain magic that made clones of ponies. It was just too unbelievable-sounding. Perhaps it was all this pony’s mere imagination. She heard about how wacky this particular pink mare’s antics were. From what she knew, Pinkie Pie loved parties and sweets, and did anything to cheer up anypony. However, something did seem different, but Trixie hadn’t personally met the pony. It was nothing but more listening for now. “As soon as a pony said the phrase and looked at their reflection, said reflection would climb out of the pool as another pony. I was the very first one. It felt so good to come out of that pool and into the real world from inside. And I could remember the reason why I came out in the first place: to have as much fun as a Pinkie Pie could have!” Trixie rolled her eyes. As if a pony couldn’t deal with too much fun. If this copy is that annoying, the original must be far worse, and with two of them? Trixie couldn't begin to imagine the chaos that could ensue with that. “Let me guess, the Ponyvillians couldn’t handle two of you?” “Actually, they didn’t even know yet. We were trying to do two things at once. The real Pinkie Pie was going to hang out with Rainbow Crash while I try to help out Applesauce with raising the barn.” Rainbow Crash? Applesauce? Those are Great and Powerful mocking names! Trixie must remember those and come up with more. “But then there was Fluttershutter with the cute little animals, and they invited me to have a picnic with them. Oh, who could resist all that fun?! But I couldn’t do those two things at once! It was either one or the other, and I couldn’t choose! So, the real me had a brilliant plan: make even more of us! Or more of me, or more of her? Something like that.” “So you two made even more of yourselves with that pool?” “Yup! But... things got out of hand. You see, the real me, after we copied ourselves so that we have two double hers, or a double her with another double double her, or a  double double double her if you will. We weren’t too careful with the whole business, and thought that the whole copying process was going to create more fun than we could ever have. So, we made even more Pinkies. A lot more. Like, about thirty of them.” Trixie’s pupils became small. If two were too much, she’d expect to see Ponyville in ruins by now if there was thirty of them. “How exactly could all of Ponyville handle thirty of you?” “Exactly! So you know, here comes Applesauce to try and chase us all, along with a cute little dog and a small yellow filly. While we were running, i saw a butterfly and started to chase it! I think they were trying to keep us in, but I somehow managed to make my way out to follow that butterfly. I kept chasing it all the way to a nice meadow where I found a whole bunch of  butterflies! Oh, it looked so beautiful!” Pinkie looked at the ceiling in thought as she remembered the beautiful sight of the meadow. About over two hundred butterflies were gathered around each other near a large patch of flowers. When Pinkie witnessed the view, her eyes widened hugely, and her grin grew very big. What else was there to do than jump in on the fun? And she enjoyed playing around with them for about the whole hour. So much fun was had in that hour, almost as much fun as baking treats, or pulling harmless pranks on unsuspecting ponies. How did she stray off into the Everfree Forest? “And well, after all that, some of the butterflies flew away, and I saw them. So I followed them while yelling, ‘hey, where are you all going?’ But they wouldn’t listen  to me, so I chased after them! I mean, who wouldn’t right? So they went into the Everfree forest, and I followed them inside.” “You went inside the Everfree Forest just like that? For no reason?” “Pretty much! But, I lost the butterflies after some time. I then saw a cute little squirrel up in a tree, and so I jumped up to try and catch it! But when I got up there, it just like, disappeared out of nowhere! It must’ve been my imagination or something. It was then that I heard hoofsteps not that far away from the branches I was on.” Her face lowered to a frown at the memory. “There I was up there, and from what I could see, there was Twilight, Applesauce’s brother, and the real me. You know what they did?” Trixie sighed. She was going to open her mouth to guess, but like expected, Pinkie said the answer herself. “They took a giant rock, and covered the entrance to the cave that had the pool in it! Something told me they brought back all the other Pinkies back to that cave and covered it up so we couldn’t make more. no more Pinkies, no more fun.” Her ears slumped downward as she buried her head into her hooves. Trixie could care less about the pink mare’s feelings. All she wanted were answers. “So then why did you come here?” She lifted her head back up, but the sad face was still there. “Well, that’s not hard to explain. Once I figured out all the other fake Pinkies were taken back, I had a feeling it was all because of that Twilight Spittle’s fault.” “No, it’s Twilight Spar--” Trixie stopped suddenly. Perhaps she could have a bit of a laugh from this. It’s not everyday she heard something she could use to mock Twilight from somepony else. “I mean, yes. Twilight Spittle. It is most definitely her fault.” “Finally, you get it! I thought I was alone here.” If there was a time for a brilliant plan to arise from the current situation, it had to be now. And in an instant, such a brilliant plan hatched in Trixie’s mind. it was one that would solve both the Pinkie clone and Trixie’s problems, but she would have to get the sad pink mare’s attention. “Very well. Trixie has a proposal for you. We may be able to help each other out.” Pinkie blinked in confusion. What could Trixie mean by this? Was there really a way she could help the Earth pony, or at least cheer her up? At this point, Pinkie could go for anything right now. And if there was a possible chance of fun, why not take it? She climbed herself out of the tiny couch and onto the floor. “OK, so what kind of proposal do you have? Is it a fun one?” “Trixie thought she said--” Wait, she had to get this pony on her side, which wouldn’t work well if she kept up that attitude. She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Yes, it shall be a fun one.” Pinkie made another grin with an audible squeal before the unicorn continued, but she turned around think before doing so. “Since you are not the real Pinkie Pie, you don’t know who I am. I have told you before that I am the Great and Powerful Trixie. You see, Trixie is a showpony that aims to be the highest-level unicorn  all of Equestria! Trixie proves her skills in her magic shows. Trixie prevails in almost every show. But as of late, these ponies do not appreciate my talents. Or they do, but not as much as Trixie demands. Trixie wishes to wow her crowds, and for that, I must perform awe-inspiring tricks.” She turned around to face Pinkie, only to see that she wasn’t in her previous location. She looked around the room to find that Pinkie had been standing in front of the mirror, looking at  her reflection. However, she didn’t look like herself at all. She knew herself as the copy of the pink mare with magenta hair, baby blue eyes, and yellow and light blue balloons for a cutie mark. There were major differences now. Her coat was no longer pink, but now a clean white color. Her magenta hair was now a bright yellow. Her baby blue eyes, changed to purple. Even her cutie mark was altered to look purple instead of the normal yellow and light blue. The look on her face was complete and utter shock, and Trixie could see that well. She walked close to the now white mare with a smirk on her face. “Trixie sees you have noticed a change. Do you like it?” She kept staring into the mirror. “What... dd you do to me?” “Ha, just one of Trixie’s Great and Powerful magic spells! See, it’s a spell that changes the appearance of every single part of your body from your head to your hooves. Impressive, isn’t it?” Trixie had a look of confidence on her face. “Oh, and you have a little something on your backsides. No, it isn’t an illusion. They are real, but only temporarily.” The Earth pony blinked, and looked back to realize she wasn’t an Earth pony anymore, but a pegasus. On her back were a pair of real pegasus wings. “I have wings?” “Yet another spell created by Trixie. They are real, but the spell is so powerful, it drained a large sum of my magic energy. Trixie can keep the spell active, but her magic won’t recharge as a result. If I don’t keep it active, it‘ll only last for about three hours. Until then, I’ll allow you to enjoy them as you please.” “It’s awesome! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She tightly hugged Trixie, who was having a hard time breathing as a result. “Back away from Trixie! Trixie does not tolerate this...” “Oh, sorry!” Pinkie let go of the unicorn, who let go a few inhales and exhales. “Trixie was not intending on making this a favor. It is all a part of Trixie’s plan. This disguise was so nopony here in Manehatten could recognize you. The other part of the plan is a proposition Trixie wishes to have with you. Trixie has explained earlier while you were busy staring at yourself in the mirror. Trixie requires your assistance in her magic shows as her Great and Powerful assistant.” “You want me to be an assistant in your magic shows? Ooh, this is going to be so fun!” Trixie hopes this doesn’t become a failure. The last thing Trixie needed was a helper, but desperate times call for desperate measures. “One more thing: since you are under a disguise, and therefore nopony shall recognize you, you’ll need a new name to complete your new identity. Trixie has not come up with anything yet, but...” Before she could continue, she was interrupted. “Surprise!” Trixie jumped back in recoil from the sudden response. She felt like her heart stopped, but only for a brief moment. “Excuse me? What reason have you for startling Trixie? And what sort of ridiculous name is Surprise?” “Oh, I didn’t come up with it. Jitters did! Oh wait, you probably don’t know who that is. She is one of the fillies I met earlier! What do you think?” Well, Surprise was an odd name for a pony. Then again, this is a clone of an odd pony. It seemed fitting. “Very well. From this day forward, you are now known as Surprise, Trixie’s Great and Powerful assistant! Don’t make Trixie regret this decision.” Pinkie, or now Surprise, raised a hoof to her forehead in a salute. “I shall not let you down!”