“Twenty-four hours,” the rogue Pinkie responded. “I’m giving you twenty-four hours and then there will be no mercy for any of you! Well, except for me… er… you.”
The double pointing her hoof across the way to the original Pinkie, who backed away.
“Me, why?” the original Pinkie said.
“Because, you’re one of us,” answered the clone Pinkie. “All Pinkie Pies are sisters, and you’re the original edition, so you’d be the most honored of us all.”
Pinkie Pie blinked and stared blankly at her double.
The rogue Pinkie smiled and extended a hoof, though the original Pinkie was too far to grab it. “So, what do you say?”
Pinkie Pie began to walk forward, away from her friends and toward the clones. She moved slowly, her face still largely vacant. This was a strange occurrence that even Pinkie Pie’s mind was having trouble coming to terms with. Such things do happen on very rare occasions.
“Pinkie Pie, what are you doing?” Rainbow Dash said.
“I’m trying to take over the town,” rogue Pinkie said. “Where’ve you been for the last few minutes?”
“Not you, the other Pinkie!” Dash said.
“Fun?” some random Pinkie from among the clones said.
Dash slapped her hoof against her face. “No, the original Pinkie!”
Now Pinkie Pie stopped. She looked back at her friends.
“No, Pinkie, don’t do it!” Applejack called out.
Pinkie then looked to her copy.
“It’s only right for Pinkies to stick together,” the other Pinkie said. “It’s also more fun.”
Pinkie began to rub her chin. “Intriguing. I like fun.”
The other Pinkie nodded. “Yes, and you know we’re tons more fun than your so-called ‘friends.’ ”
“That’s true,” Pinkie responded thoughtfully. “There isn’t anyone who can do fun like Pinkie Pie. Especially when there are so many of me.”
“Pinkie, what are you saying?” Dash said in alarm.
“Fun!” a random clone called out.
“Not you!” Rainbow Dash yelled back.
Pinkie eyed her double with interest. “Okay, you’re starting to convince me. But I just have one question.”
“And what’s that?”
"Do you have cake?"
It was the rogue Pinkie’s turn to stare blankly at her twin. Her eyes began to dart back and forth, as though she was going through a mental catalog of some sort. Finally, the rogue Pinkie pounded her hoof against the ground. “I knew I forgot something.”
The sound of “Cake?” “Cake!” “Cake?” “Cake!” reverberated throughout the pink horde.
“Yes, we’ll all get cake!” the rogue Pinkie said in frustration. “As soon as we get done here.”
“What about balloons?” Pinkie Pie asked.
“Balloons! We love balloons!” shouted all of the clones together, causing all of the buildings in Ponyville to rumble at their foundations.
The rogue Pinkie Pie uncovered her ears. Her eyes narrowed. “Balloons? I haven’t had any time to get balloons! Do you know how much work it was just to get a giant army of ponies from the Everfree Forest into Ponyville without any of them wandering off? Especially when they’re all copies of us?”
Pinkie Pie just shook her head. “No cake and no balloons. You’d never make it as a party planner. And you call yourself my clone.”
“What does any of this have to do with anything?” the rogue Pinkie said.
“Wow, I thought I was the one pony I’d never hear say that about me,” Pinkie answered. “But what I meant was, a true party planner has to be ready to party anywhere, anytime, without even a moment’s notice. If you want to be Pinkie Pie, you have to know this sort of stuff.”
“I’m not trying to plan a party here!” the rogue Pinkie said. “I’m beginning to get really annoyed with you. Which is weird, because it means that I’m actually getting annoyed with myself.”
Pinkie Pie shook her head. “It happens. But, if you aren’t a party planner, then I guess you don’t even have a party cannon.”
“No.”
“Too bad, because I do!”
Swiftly, the cannon appeared from behind Pinkie Pie’s back. The rogue Pinkie did not even have time to process it before a large wrapped package came flying into her chest and launched her backward into the sea of clones.
“Guys, get out of here,” Pinkie called back to her five friends. “I’ll hold them off!”
The rogue Pinkie picked herself up. She sneered.
“Okay, fine, so be it. You want to side with those foals, then fine!” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re no longer a Pinkie Pie. I excomm-Pink-icate you. You’re un-Pied. ”
Then she looked to her fellow clones. “Girls,” she said, “let’s have fun!”
And, just like that, the wave of clones burst forward and the sky practically turned pink from all the leaping Pinkies. The original Pinkie Pie quickly began firing her party-cannon in response.
“I said get out of here!” Pinkie called over her shoulder.
“You can’t fight them alone!” Twilight said as she rushed up beside her.
Twilight’s horn began to glow. Soon, Pinkie Pies were disappearing left and right, zapped by Twilight’s magic. For a moment, Twilight even began to believe that this all might be easy.
Then she realized that, even though she must have taken out twenty clones by now, the army did not seem to have gotten any smaller. Indeed, when one was zapped, ten more clones just seemed to bounce out in her place.
“There’s just too many of them!” Rainbow Dash said, flying past. “We’re never gonna stop this many!”
“Rainbow’s right, y’all!” Applejack said. “Even Twilight can only blast so many at a time.”
“Girls, get back to the library!” Twilight said. “Me and Pinkie will cover the rest of you!”
Just as she said that, Twilight noticed something at the edge of her vision, something only slightly too far above her to be clearly visible. She looked up to see a bounding Pinkie Pie clone about to land right on top of her. Twilight tried to shoot a beam, but the clone was already too close. Fire at the clone now, and she might take out herself and the original Pinkie with it.
“Hey, that lighty-up horn looks fun!” said the clone. “What’s it–”
Just then, the clone fell away, having made contact with a blue hoof. Rainbow Dash came into view.
“Nice plan, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said, “but we all have to get out of here quick. Those clones aren’t slowing down.”
With Rainbow, Pinkie, and Twilight bringing up the rear, the six made it back into the library. Twilight slammed the door closed just as a Pinkie clone was about to jump through. A loud thump immediately followed.
Spike walked out of the kitchen. “Hey guys, what’s going on out – Aaaah!”
Spike pointed to one of the upper windows, were four grinning Pinkies were peering in. Soon Pinkies had appeared at all the other windows as well. The whole library began to rock as clones jumped up and down from every branch and the ever-repeating refrains of “Fun?” “Fun!” echoed through the wooden walls.
“What are we gonna do, Twi?” Applejack said. “I don’t think this place is gonna still be standing for long at this rate!”
“Leave it to me,” Twilight said. Her horn began to glow again and the tree was covered in a dark pink light. It pushed its way outward, sending Pinkies flying back in all directions, until the wave of light stopped a few feet away from the tree.
“What’s that? Is that a bubble?” one of the Pinkies outside said.
“Oooh, I love bubbles!” another responded.
“There, that should keep them out for a little while,” Twilight said. “Basic grade force-field. Works every time.”
Everyone began to relax. A smile came to Twilight’s face. But it soon disappeared as she threw her hoof up to her forehead and squirmed in pain.
“Twilight!” was the common cry of everyone else in the room.
Twilight shook her head and picked herself up. “It’s fine, I’m fine. It’s just–”
Loud bouncing noises came from high above.
“Whee, this is fun! I love jumping on random things!” said the distant, lofty voice of a Pinkie Pie. “Come on up, guys! It’s so soft and bouncy!”
Soon, the pounding had intensified several-fold. A look of severe pain filled Twilight’s face.
She did her best to stabilize under it. “If they keep doing that,” she said, “eventually it’ll give me such a headache that I won’t be able to hold up the barrier any longer.”
“Well, how do we stop ’em before that happens?” Applejack asked as she and the others rushed to help Twilight steady herself.
Twilight pushed past the proffered hooves and moved toward the nearest bookshelf. “By figuring out how to get rid of them,” she answered. "It'll be harder without the notes in my diary, but I'm sure I can find something."
Books began to float, hover, and spin around Twilight’s head. They opened, the pages turned, and then they closed. They then went back into the shelf and several more came flying out. Between this and the headache, it took Twilight a while to realize that Fluttershy was also floating above her head.
“Now, isn’t ‘getting rid’ them a bit harsh?” Fluttershy said in that way of hers where each word seemed to apologize for having been spoken. “I mean, I know there are certainly a lot of them, but they’re all still Pinkie Pie, and Pinkie Pie wouldn’t hurt anyone. Are they really putting Ponyville in that much danger just by trying to have a little fun?”
“Well, there goes town hall up in flames,” Spike said as he looked out of the window.
Fluttershy smiled in embarrassment. “Oh, then forget I said anything.”
At this point, Rainbow Dash flew up beside her. “Fluttershy, they are not Pinkie Pie!” she said. “There’s only one Pinkie Pie, and she’s here with us. I don’t care if they look and act like Pinkie Pie. They aren’t. You heard what that one said. They want to take over the town and they’re willing to go through us to do it. They’re out to get rid of us, so I say we just have to get rid of them first!”
“Fluttershy, Rainbow,” Rarity said. “I don’t think those clones – at least most of them, at any rate – really want to harm us. But they are certainly a very big threat.”
Both Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash looked confused. “Just whose side are you on here?” Dash said.
Rarity shook her head. “Girls, we’re not choosing sides here. We’ve got much bigger problems than that. I’m just saying that you both are right, to an extent. I agree with Fluttershy in that those clones still have Pinkie Pie’s basic personality and are not looking to hurt anyone. They do seem to be only concerned with having more fun. But we all know that even with one Pinkie Pie, fun can sometimes get frightfully out of hand.”
Turning to Pinkie, she added, “No offense, darling.”
Pinkie smiled. “None taken.”
“Rarity’s right,” Applejack said. “An’ as soon as Twi finds a spell powerful enough, they’ll be all taken care of.”
“I’d find it a lot faster if all of you would start helping me look,” Twilight said without stopping her search.
From the tone of her voice, they could tell she was serious. Quickly, they rushed to her call. No one was quite sure what they were looking for, but they all knew that they had to put the utmost effort into finding it. It was quite a sight to see Rainbow Dash flying around the top of the bookshelves, pulling out books, skimming through them briefly, and then throwing them toward the ground. She was lucky that, just this once, Twilight had a larger crisis to deal with than the wanton destruction of her meticulous filing system.
At one point, one of the books Dash tossed down landed on Applejack’s head, leading to a string of colorful expressions from Applejack and further remarks from Rarity about unladylike attitudes. Applejack was about to say a few even more colorful things when it occurred to her that getting into more than one argument with Rarity a day was just not worth the aggravation. So, swallowing her pride (and it took much swallowing to get it to go down), Applejack put down the book she was currently flipping through and walked over to the window to cool off.
There, she found that there was one other pony who was not busy searching for some unknown and unknowable magic solution. Pinkie Pie was, instead, starring absently out the window.
“What’s up, sugarcube?” Applejack said. “Why aren’t you searching through the books with the others?”
“What? Huh?” Pinkie Pie turned and seemed surprised at Applejack’s appearance by her side. “Oh, I wouldn’t even know what to look for.”
“Hasn’t stopped the rest of us,” Applejack said.
Pinkie Pie sighed. “I was just sitting here, thinking that this is all my fault. If I never would have used that mirror pool, this could never have happened.”
“Now, sugarcube, you know beating yourself up over it ain’t gonna do anypony a lick of good. Besides, I reckon that we all contributed a little to the current mess. If the rest of us had done a better job rounding those clones up in the first place, one wouldn’t have gotten away.”
But Pinkie Pie did not seem to be listening. Rather, she was looking at the window. Not through the window at the world outside, but into one of the reflective beams running along the window panes.
“When you said I shouldn’t beat myself up over it,” Pinkie said, “I thought I saw… in the reflection…. I thought I saw….”
“Saw what?” Applejack asked.
Pinkie Pie shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. But you’re right! I should be looking through those books! After all, I feel like it’s my responsibility to fix this somehow.”
“Pinkie, Ah said that you can’t go taking the responsibility on yourself alone,” Applejack said.
“Pinkie might be right.”
Applejack looked over to one of the bookcases, where Twilight was excitedly reading through a large, rather old tome.
“I think I might have found something that Pinkie, and the of us, can do to get rid of those clones,” Twilight said with a smile. “But you’re all going to have to do exactly as I say. Understand?”
What was Twilight planning?
Read on.