//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Pinkie Prime // Story: An Infinite Number of Pinkies // by AugieDog //------------------------------// A crow cawed somewhere in the distance, the afternoon breeze rustling the leaves and making the oak tree sound just like the little brook flowing beside it, something that always made Pinkie smile. Of course, most everything made Pinkie smile, especially now, and she let herself shiver at how wonderful it all was: the blue sky, the green leaves and grass, the way the breeze didn't smell like rotting fish... "I gotta say," Applejack drawled into the silence, "it still makes my neck all goose-pimply. I mean, who was this Thagoras character anyway? Where'd she come from? And if'n that mirror weren't magic, how'd she—?" "Yes, yes." Pinkie waved a hoof and gave a sniff. "All will be answered in good time, my dear Applejack." Dashie snorted, and Pinkie grinned. "That's how Fetlock Shorns would say it, right? When things're about to get even weirder and more mysterious? I mean, after the part you already know about 'cause you were all there...." *** The next day brimmed over with horn glows from Twilight, hoof stomps from Dashie, narrowed eyes from Applejack, nervous laughter from Rarity, and little squeaks from Fluttershy. "It's OK, guys," Pinkie kept trying to tell them. "She wasn't even that evil an evil twin." "Not the point, Pinkie!" Dashie was hovering over the kitchen at Suger Cube Corner like she was a storm cloud made of bumble bees. "Whoever or whatever this Thagoras was, she's got no business walking outta mirrors! And what if it's a manticore or a dragon comes out next, huh??" She aimed a front hoof at the quiet silver frame still leaning against the wall. "We needta get that thing outta Ponyville! Maybe, like, five hundred feet straight up and let it find its own way down!" Eyes as big as frying pans, Fluttershy peered from behind the wall of the corner booth at the far end of the bakery. "But Rainbow! That'd be seven years bad luck!" Rarity took a delicate bite of her croissant. "And think of the mess!" She gave Dashie a tight smile. "I agree with you about the mirror, Rainbow, but perhaps hiring a cart and pony to haul it to the dump would be more efficient." Dashie folded her hoofs and gave a snort while Twilight, in front of the mirror, shook her head, purple light wavering from her horn. "It's not magic," she said for what Pinkie guessed was the 78th time since yesterday. "Thagoras said what she was doing had more to do with physics, and while the books on quantum theory that I was looking at this morning offered some interesting ideas..." She sighed and looked back over her shoulder. "I need to do more research." Applejack nodded, stepped up beside her. "Reckon you'll need any help getting the consarned thing back to the library?" Which almost made Pinkie's mane blow up like a balloon. "What?? Wait a minute!" She threw herself across the room, slid on her hind legs to press her back against the mirror, her front legs splayed to protect it. "Guardian of the portal here, remember??" She pointed a hoof at each of them in turn. "'Cause it never did anything all those years it was in your barn, Applejack, and it did even less when you had it, right, Twilight?" Twilight's ears fell. "That's true..." "Horse apples!" Applejack gave a stomp. "That don't matter at all!" Pinkie settled onto all fours and put on her serious face. "I know this is all kinda scary, but it was my evil twin who came outta this mirror, not any of yours. And that means it's my responsibility, don't you see?" A wonderful idea came to her then, and a good thing, too, 'cause she really didn't think she could've held her serious face for another second; she busted out a smile and told them, "But if you gals wanna help me guard the portal, that'd be great! 'Cause I'm guessing it'll mean sleepovers!" Her friends looked at each other, and Pinkie couldn't help but notice how they weren't squealing with excitement. "Umm, Pinkie?" Twilight bit her lower lip. "I know this is really important to you, but you have to understand that Thagoras wasn't your evil twin." "Oh, Twilight." Pinkie reached out, took Twilight's hoof and patted it gently. "It's half of one, six dozen of the other." Which didn't sound right, but Pinkie kept going anyway. "You were there when Thagoras said she only came out of the mirror 'cause she thought I wasn't here, and you saw her run back into the mirror when I told her who I was. So evil twin or not, her and me are connected with, like, big strands of invisible salt-water taffy." Which made her stop and lick her lips—till a horrible thought occurred to her. "Unless maybe invisible salt-water taffy tastes invisible, too? 'Cause that wouldn't be any fun at all!" "OK," Dashie said, settling to the floor. "Hoofs up all ponies who think we should stop listening to Pinkie and get on with some mirror smashing." "Rainbow..." Twilight rolled her eyes, then those eyes lit up in a way that made Pinkie's ears twitch in a happy way. "How about this, Pinkie: we take the mirror over to the library at night and have our sleepovers there? That way, you can still watch it during the day while you're working, but the Cakes won't have to trip over all of us laying around on their floor in the morning when they're trying to open." Bounding forward, Pinkie wrapped as tight a hug around Twilight as she could. "You're a smarty ev'ry day!" Another snort from Dashie. "And maybe somepony'll, oh, I dunno, accidently drop it when we're moving it or something..." *** Leaning back against her cloud in the shade of the oak tree, Dashie waved a front hoof. "But did we? No! Nine or ten times we musta carried that stupid mirror back and forth between Sugar Cube Corner and the library, but—!" "We?" Rarity arched an eyebrow. "Odd, but I don't seem to recall you being involved in any of our little parades last week, Rainbow Dash." She touched her chin. "I can quite distinctly see Pinkie strutting along in front followed by Applejack with the mirror standing upright on her back due to the magic myself and Twilight were applying to it while Fluttershy flew along steadying the top. Yes." Her eyes got all narrow. "Nine or ten times, as you say, marching past our bemused friends, neighbors, and family members. Just not all of us, it seems to me..." "Yeah." Applejack pushed back her hat. "Reckon I noticed that, too." Dashie's mouth went thin. "Hey! I was there! I just—" She stopped and glanced sideways at Pinkie. Pinkie patted her hoof. "It's OK, Dashie. I saw you." "What?" Twilight blinked back and forth between the two of them, so much surprise on her face, Pinkie wished she'd had an empty ice cream cone so she could collect the surprise if it started dripping off. "I thought you said you had to work early and late those days, Rainbow!" "Ummm..." was all Dashie managed. So Pinkie reached out her other hoof to pat Twilight's. "It's OK," she said again. "Dashie was just being extra-super-special careful. She was up on a cloud watching the whole time we walked, and I mean, wow! You shoulda seen her! She was all like—!" Pinkie leaped up and took a stance like a pony getting ready to start a race. Or even better— "Like she was a bow and arrow, see? Aimed right at the mirror the whole time and ready to fire herself—ka-zang!" Pinkie sprang forward to sprawl in the grass in front of a cringing Fluttershy. "So if any monsters came out, she could slam 'em before they knew what was going on!" She turned a grin back at Dashie. "Isn't that right?" A little red touched Dashie's cheeks. "I...I just wanted to be ready, y'know?" In the silence that followed, Rarity cleared her throat. "I owe you an apology, Rainbow Dash. I shouldn't've—" "Forget it." Dashie blew out a breath. "It's not like anything happened." "Excuse me?" Pinkie jumped to her hoofs again. "Five great sleepovers at the library happened! You and Fluttershy even danced on the ceiling that first night!" That got Fluttershy blushing, and Dashie waved her hoof again. "I mean nothing came outta the mirror!" "Yeah," Applejack added quietly. "Nothing came out. But that last night—" "Morning." Pinkie tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry all of a sudden; she moved back to her place, took a sip of lemonade. "Just before dawn, actually." *** The sleepovers had been great, and each one had been a little different, too, since after the first party when everypony had laughed and played games and cuddled into their sleeping bags on the library floor with the mirror propped against the wall beside Twilight's writing desk, they'd all started taking it in shifts. Pinkie stayed over each night, of course, after they'd promenaded the mirror down the street, and Twilight and Spike did, too, since, well, they lived there. But that second night, it was only Dashie with Pinkie downstairs, nothing but her four hoofs visible around the edges of the cloud she'd made in the middle of the library's main room; the third night, Rarity curled herself into a mountain of comforters in the corner; the fourth night Fluttershy, her legs tucked under her like a cat; and the fifth night Applejack stretched out snoring lightly on the other side of the room. It made Pinkie's heart buzz like a hummingbird to know that her friends were there to help her guard the portal when most of them didn't really think it was a portal. Even Twilight who spent most of the evenings paging through books, making notes, then stepping up to poke at the mirror before frowning and going back to get more books, even she seemed to get more discouraged as the week went on. "It's just a mirror," she said at least five times a night. To tell the truth, though, Pinkie wanted to agree with her. Not that her life had changed all that much since the daunting responsibility of being a mystical guardian had fallen onto her shoulders. But she could almost pretend that everything had changed because of the twitches that kept rattling through her. And each dawn—or not dawn, but the silent, itchy darkness of an hour or so before dawn when the sky felt like Princess Luna was ready to go to bed but Princess Celestia wasn't quite ready to get up—right at that time every night, Pinkie would find herself coming awake, would find herself lying on her side and staring at the mirror— And it would never be glowing, would never be buzzing, would just be sitting there, the ash-gray light not swirling in it but just laying over it like dust. That didn't fool her, though. She knew that her evil twin—or whatever—had stepped out of that mirror just like in one of those books Pinkie had devoured ever since her earliest days on the rock farm, the ones where space ponies or fairy ponies or ghost ponies or whatever showed up and the heroine had to stop them or help them or make friends with them or whatever. Staring at that mirror then with just about everypony in the whole world asleep somewhere around her, she would remember those books and wonder if she should grab the mirror and shake it, do a dance for it or sing it a song or maybe one of her comedy routines. 'Cause how do you make a mirror smile? How do you make friends with it and convince it to tell you its secrets? Applejack gave a mumbled sort of snort, and Pinkie looked at her in the dingy light, realized that they'd gone through one complete shift, that they were about to circle back around to Dashie again, her friends ready to spend another week helping Pinkie with her appointed task. But, well, she was the heroine of this story, wasn't she? She was the one with the magic mirror, the one with the evil twin, the one who'd watched and memorized the hoof motions Thagoras had used to open the mirror up and step through— So why was she just laying there, she wondered, squirming out of her sleeping bag. If her destiny wasn't gonna come to her, why shouldn't she go, ring its doorbell, and introduce herself? That was how Pinkie Pie did it, wasn't it? Yes, it was! Touching the first spot on the mirror's frame felt completely regular: just metal, a little cold, a little hard, a little slippery. The second spot Thagoras had touched, though, seemed to splash when she tapped it, and sweeping her hoof diagonally along the glass to a spot near the bottom while she stretched to poke the very top with her other front hoof, that tingled almost like all the times she would dare herself to brush her tongue against the socket while changing a lightbulb. Continuing the pattern brought the hum she'd heard that first night, and her reflection in the mirror started to get smoky—like a fog had rolled into the library. The mirror got deeper, too, suddenly looking to Pinkie more like a window, the mist swirling on the other side. And when she gave the last of the proper taps, she saw that the glass wasn't glass at all but something more like mist rising from a waterfall. Easy enough to step right through. So she did. *** "Just like that." Applejack's face had a clenched look to it. "Me asleep not five yards away, and you don't even gimme a 'toodle-oo' or nothing??" "Wait." Twilight, on the other hoof, seemed more shaky than clenched. "You memorized Thagoras's pattern?? After only seeing it once??" Pinkie shrugged. "All the songs I do and the dances and the jokes and the recipes and the things I hafta know about other ponies when I'm talking to them: I've gotta be able to memorize stuff, or I wouldn't hardly be me." Pressing a hoof to her forehead, Twilight gave a little groan. "And you didn't think to mention this to me while I spent the whole week trying to figure out how to work that mirror??" Again, Pinkie could only shrug. "I was getting ready for stuff to come out; it wasn't till right that minute that I thought about going in." Looking at Applejack, though, that was a little harder. "And I'm real sorry about just leaving you there, AJ, but, I mean, I was the heroine, right? It was my destiny!" She swallowed, her throat dry once more. "And once I got in there, well, I think it's probably a good thing nopony else was with me..." *** Stepping through, Pinkie's hoofs settled onto something that felt almost like the sort of ice that covered the lake in the deepest parts of winter: blackish-blue and hard as rocks. It wasn't cold, though, but it wasn't warm, either, and the dark blue mist swirling around her was the same way, like it didn't have any temperature at all. In fact—she took another step, blinked, craned her head around—it didn't even look like mist anymore. She could see walls now, dark and blue like the floor, and what she'd thought was mist seemed to be more like the ripples of sunlight on the bottom of the lake when she would go swimming in summer and would open her eyes so she could make googly faces at the fish. A third step, and things shifted again, the shimmery ripples not reflections under water as much as the silver light of a big harvest moon shining through the wavering leaves of an apple tree. But one more step, and it was like when Twilight would show movies on the old projector at the library, Spike twisting the lens till the fuzzy picture on the screen jumped into sharp focus: Pinkie was in a huge cave, the walls, floor, and roof dark-blue but sparkling with gray lights. It made the whole place very shadowy and flickery, and she almost expected to hear spooky music in the background. Silence settled over everything, though, and Pinkie was just starting to think that maybe a song would be good when one of the flickering shadows ahead of her moved in a different way, became a silhouette of a pony: tall, slender, wings tucked along her flanks, what could only be a horn spiraling up from her forehead— Twitches rippling through her, Pinkie gave a little squeal. "Princess! What are you—??" But she stopped when the dancing lights seemed to shiver and turn to focus on the figure, as big as Princess Celestia but as pink as Princess Cadance, her eyes big and solid white like Princess Luna in a scary mood, her mane a glowing puffy mass of strawberry and bubble gum. And her cutie mark— Wait. How could that be her cutie mark? A yellow balloon flanked by two blue ones? That was—! "Ah," the impossible pony said, the white of her eyes darkening, deepening, becoming as blue as the cave around them. "At long, long last, I can bid you welcome." Her voice flowed like the most perfect buttercream frosting, and Pinkie began wishing she had an oven so she could bake a cake worthy of that voice. Not that she could, though, she found herself thinking. Why, compared to this pony, Pinkie was nothing more than an evil twin... But that couldn't be right, either! "Ummm," she said then, picking one of the questions bouncing around in her head like so many squirrels chasing flying nuts. "Are you me?" The big mare smiled. "It would be more correct to say that you are me: a reflection of me, at any rate. For you are Pinkie Pie, are you not?" "I am!" Pinkie gasped. "Are you a mind reader, too?" That smile got a little strained around the edges. "I am Pinkie Prime," she said, cocking one front leg and spreading her wings. "I am the original of all Pinkies and all Pies everywhere throughout the multiverse, the source who casts you shadows into the past, the present, the future, and all possible times and places in between." "Wow!" Pinkie darted forward, just noticing the big pink crown thingee Prime wearing. "Can I try that on? It looks really shiny!" But Prime suddenly wasn't standing there, had flashed like a silvery lightning bug to a spot behind Pinkie. "I'm afraid we're on something of a schedule, my own, for a very important event that I—" "A party??" Bubbles popped through Pinkie like bread dough rising. "'Cause what could be more important than that??" "Exactly." Prime gave Pinkie a little bow. "Right here in this cavern, we shall gather all my shadows, all you Pinkies and all you Pies, and we shall stage the biggest party the multiverse has ever seen!" Pinkie's mind switched immediately into planning mode, and she gave the cave a quick glance. "Well, we'll definitely need some decorations around here, Primey, 'cause, I mean..." She gestured with a hoof. "A little drab, y'know?" "Oh, now, Pinkie Pie." Prime gave Pinkie a look kind of like Princess Celestia was always giving Twilight, all warm and nice and motherly. But Pinkie couldn't help but notice how Prime's eyes didn't wrinkle at the corners, how they stayed every bit as temperatureless as the cave around them. "Let me worry about that. The reason I caused Thagoras Pi's experiment to go slightly awry so that it would bring you here before any of the others is because you, my own, are the only pony in all the multiverse to whom I could entrust the most vital element of my plan." Her destiny! Pinkie was vibrating so fast, so wasn't sure her hoofs were touching the weird cave floor anymore. "Baking the cake?" she asked, barely able to get the words out. "Better." Prime flashed again, stood directly in front of Pinkie, bowed her long, long neck with that solid and massive cotton-candy mane so she could whisper in Pinkie's ear. "You must issue the invitations." She leaped back, then, her eyes exploding with light, and Pinkie could suddenly see every inch, every foot, every furlong, every mile of the whole gigantic cavern, those little silver lights twinkling everywhere along the wall, the floor, the ceiling. "You must journey through these mirrors, my own, must gather your sister, your twin, your counterpart from wherever she may be on the other side, and you must bring each one of them here for our party!" Prime's laughter rang in Pinkie's ears. "A party that all baryonic matter will never forget!"