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// Prologue: When Pink Met Pie 
// Story: Pinkie Anonymous 
// by Daemon McRae 
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Prologue: The waffles are only BARELY worth this.

Pink Press glanced around the diner, a restaurant she hadn’t ever visited before, giving it an appraising glance as she looked for an appropriate seat for her and her boss. She didn’t get long to look, as the aforementioned pony, an older gentlecolt named Buried Lede, trotted past her disinterestedly, carrying with him his notepad and pencil, and took a seat in what appeared to her to be a perfectly random booth.

She followed his lead, getting ready to sit across from him, when he quietly shook his head. “I’d rather you sat in the booth right next to this one. You know, behind the ponies we will be interviewing. I find it’s easier to get straight answers from somepony when they don’t have to decide who they’re talking to. It will also be easier for you to take notes when you’re just listening. Visual cues are important, yes, but they can be distracting. I’d like you to listen to what they say, get a good ear for how they say it, that kind of thing. You’ll get more detail that way.”

Press nodded. “That… that sounds good. So here?” she gestured to the booth with its back to the one Buried had sat across from. Receiving a nod from her boss, she sat down as directed, fidgeting slightly. She was really hoping to ask questions this time around, but being so new to the office, in fact, still an intern, she had little say in her assignments. Honestly, she was just happy to be here.

Her stomach growled slightly as she took a glance at the menu. “Also, it’s impolite to eat in front of your interviewee, and I could hear your stomach growling the whole way here. Go ahead and order something.” She turned her head to glance over the booth at him, and saw a wry smile on his lips.

She grinned sheepishly to herself, returning he gaze to the menu with renewed vigor. A waitress came to gather their orders, and she heard Lede simply ask for a cup of coffee. She still couldn’t stomach the stuff herself, not really having a palette for bitter things. The waitress said something in confirmation, and trotted up to Press’s table. “And what can I get for you, sugar?”

Press looked up, brushing a lock of fluffy pink mane out of her eyes, and lifted her wide-brim purple hat to get a better look at the waitress. She was that typical kind of diner-cute that you saw in picture shows and read about in crime novels and stuff. Pretty but forgettable, which she probably would, given how busy she expected to be with taking notes. “I’ll take… just like, a big stack of pancakes. Or waffles. Whichever is a better excuse for eating syrup.”

With a knowing smile, the waitress took the menu, saying, “Waffles it is. You’ll get ‘em faster and they hold more syrup. Trust me, I know.” She winked and walked away, leaving a glass of water to tide Pink over while she waited.

A few moments passed, with the bell over the door ringing a few times as customers came and went. Then, with another ring that almost went unnoticed as background noise, she heard Buried Lede behind her. “Ah, Miss Pinkie Pie! Over here!” Press flinched. Not just flinched. Almost took the table with her as she tried on sheer instinct to dive for the nearest window. Of course, she also made a valiant attempt to not move at all, which resulted in the most restrained full-body convulsion anypony had ever seen, had they been looking at her.

Pink Press, of course, was in fact Pinkamena Diane Pie. Or, used to be. In a way. A long time ago, she had found herself being pulled up from a large pool of water by somepony who looked exactly like her. She had a much simpler mind, and was surrounded by ponies exactly like her. Which rapidly went downhill in the most annoying way possible. She had been asleep in a tree when the rest of them had been rounded up and disappeared back into the pool, a fate she had gone out of her way to avoid, and so she had fled Ponyville on the next train.

Of course, she wasn’t the only clone with this idea. There had been an entire train car full of Pinkies, which had led to some rather awkward conversations with a very scared conductor. That train had led to Manehatten, where a small swarm of now rather scared, confused, and slowly more intelligent Pinkie Pies had been set loose on the unsuspecting populace.

That had been over two years ago, and through a crash course in the real world, and some solidarity with, well, herself, Pink Press had since settled into a quiet position as an intern at a respectable newspaper. She had done well to keep her head down, had maintained her weekly meetings with Pinkie Anonymous, and had in fact found her own true calling: bringing warm-hearted stories to a populace that was bombarded all too often with negative press and disaster stories.

Of course, the pony now taking a seat literally two inches away was the greatest chance possible to ruin all of that. All she had to do to avoid this, mind you, was to not draw attention to herself at all. Just… stay quiet.

The waitress brought her a small stack of waffles and a rather generous carafe of maple syrup, and she nodded politely with a small smile. She tightened her hat on her head, pulled out her notebook, and listened carefully to Pinkie Pie recount her adventures in her friend’s boutique. Making small notes whenever she caught a snippet of something resembling fact, as her “original” had a tendency to ramble like tumbleweed in a hurricane. She was able to piece together a narrative of things going, well, less than stellar, but it was a bit difficult to get an accurate recount of events from her rambling.

Press gave a small smile as the waitress noticed the striking similarities between her and the new arrival. Opening her mouth to say something, she was quickly hushed by Press shoving a hoof in her mouth with a pleading look in her eyes. Pink shook her head, slowly pulling her hoof back and crouching into the booth to make herself as small as possible. The waitress gave her a curious look, but nodded despite herself, and moved to take Pinkie’s order.

“Oh I’ll take like a HUUUUUGE stack of pancakes I love pancakes they’re the best things to eat syrup with-” Press rolled her eyes at this point, and noticed the waitress politely scribble down the order and disappear while Pinkie was still rambling.

Lede coughed politely, somehow getting Pinkie’s attention. They talked at length for some time, Press making a valiant effort to put together some notes from the consistent stream of consciousness her original was spouting. There was a clatter as the waitress brought a heaping pile of pancakes to the interview table, which was met with a few ‘Thank Yous’, barely interrupting the conversation.

“"Yeah... Making copies of yourself always sounds like a great idea, but before you know it, you're locked in a room with fifty Pinkie Pies watching paint dry,” Pinkie Pie noted, quickly shoving half the stack of breakfast into her face. Press gave a worried look over her shoulder at her boss, silently pleading to him not to say anything. If Lede noticed, he didn’t say a word, or give any sign. Which might have been a good thing, she wasn’t sure.

It sounded after a few minutes that the interview might actually be over, at which point Press almost heaved an enormous sigh, the finish line in sight. Then her boss opened his mouth.

“Oh, boy. That’s uh... that’s quite the bill. Whoo boy those pancakes really, um, stack up, don’t they? Press, can you help me out here?” he called.

Pink Press looked over the back of the booth with a terrified expression as Pinkie Pie turned to see who her interviewer was talking to. Their reactions overlapped, though they couldn’t have been more different.

“UUUUUAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH OH MY GOSH!”

“SUNUVABITCH!”