//------------------------------// // Episode 46: "Pinkie Pie Prologue" // Story: Pony POV Series Season Four: Generation Transitions & Origins // by Alex Warlorn //------------------------------// My Little Pony Pinkie Pie POV Side Story Prologue (Optional-Canon) So you really wanna know? Okay. I didn't know why I always got all nostalgic when I used my balloons to fly, but it always felt so good. Of course the trio of flutter ponies thought it was a hassle to always have to bring me down, but it was all in good fun. It also provided me a chance to spot any new faces in Ponyville, I did have a reputation to keep as everyone's best friend of course and that meant knowing everyone in town before I could be friends with them. Rainbow Dash thought I could use some more glamor in my steps if I wanted to be the town's most popular pony, she said I'd be 'Simply dashing.' But fashion sense was Dashie's special talent, not mine. And I didn't want to be the most good looking, just everyone's best bud. Thankfully, while Rainbow Dash wasn't one to ever hold back her high culture opinions, she wasn't one to impose them. StarSong's latest performance at Celebration Castle had gone well. It never ceased to amaze me how StarSong could be so in command of an audience on stage, but be so shy around ponies when offstage. Spike, however, was in the castle wearing his reading glasses, running about reading notes and cards in his own claw writing mumbling to himself, "My word, not right, not right at all, something is definitely wrong here. I know I keep getting my stories mixed up, but these don't make any sense." But the intellectual dragon wouldn't let any pony get a word in edgewise, not even his 'Princess' Wysteria. Of course I wanted to celebrate. "How about a party?" I suggested at once on the way back home. "We had one yesterday." StarSong pointed out causally. "Yeah isn't it great?" "How about one of Cheerilee's story-times instead? After that concert, I could use some quiet time." I wondered. 'Which friends to invite?' At the time, I missed StarSong's implication about 'quiet time.' Didn't matter which friends I invited since they were all great. Maybe Toola-Roola, she did help StarSong with the decorations for the show after all. "Pinkie Pie, look." The pegasus StarSong whispered shaking me, her friend, out of my planning. I finally noticed the town around us. Things were very wrong. The world's colors looked muted, desaturated, like someone had put a thin sheet of gray over everything. The ponies themselves were either looking a bit confused about it themselves or trying to ignore it. Some galloped to Celebration Castle to see if the ponies there knew what was going on. Then I saw Toola-Roola come running like mad towards us. She bumped past two ponies, but they looked around as if they had been shouldered by 'The Invisible Mare.' The pony looked outright panicked. "GUYS! Can you see me?! You know it's me?!" "Toola-Roola? Of course we can see you!" StarSong said, confusion plain in her face. "Thank goodness! I came back from the market with new paints and my house was gone! I tried to ask everyone what happened, but it was like they couldn't hear me! Rainbow Dash bumped right into me! I said 'Sorry Rainbow Dash' and she seemed confused a second before noticing me and asking if we had ever met! And . . . look." She showed us a picture we had all taken of our core seven group of friends. Me, Dashie, Cheerilee and her sister Scooaloo, little Sweetie-Belle, StarSong, and Toola-Roola. Only Toola-Roola wasn't there anymore. "What's happening?! I'm so scared!" We hugged our friend, not sure what else to do as she looked on the verge of tears. "Dang! There you are! I've been looking all over for you! I don't get why I was told in particular which ones to deal with." Said a causal somewhat snarky voice hold a trace of attitude. "Ya bunch of soulless identical Mary-Sue Clones." The three of us looked in shock at the . . . thing before us. It had the body of a furred snake, it had the tail of a rattle snake, it had the head of a horse, and the wings of a dragonfly on one side and a vulture on another, its legs were those of a dingo, fox, coyote, and raven, its eye were green in yellow. It was like a bad dream come to life. Before any of us could speak he grabbed hold of Toola-Roola's head from behind and said like he had scored a goal at a soccer game, "Character retgon!" Toola-Roola didn't even scream, she just looked at us sadly as she vanished like a magic trick. StarSong gasped, "What did you do to- . . . to .. . " The Pegasus singer/dancer realized with horror; she couldn't remember the name of her friend who had been standing there a moment ago. She tried to remember what she looked like but it was all coming up blank. A horrible feeling came over her. "What did you do?" "Meh." The mix of animals shrugged, "We're just cleaning out the closet. Cutting out the dead weight. And now I've got to do more work to erase what Miss Deleted did while I was looking for her! Great, just great! And I was almost done too!" "Friends aren't dead weight!" I shouted. "Pst. You're all identical anyway, why so upset?" "SHE-" StarSong said as she grappled with her memories, biting and kicking away for the precious bits still there, "SHE WAS AN ARTIST! She painted! She has a taste for design none of us have! You can't just call her nothing!" Finding it horribly, horribly hard to focus on her friend who had been standing there a moment before, StarSong looked around, her sense of wrongness growing, like shadows were moving among them. Ponies were arguing, okay nothing too special there (you should have seen me and Minty bash heads at the Spring Promenade), but ponies were having different ideas of how to do things and not compromising like we always do! I saw some ponies vanish and their faces and names vanishing from my memories, some were (better? worse?) changed into completely different ponies. I saw Rainbow Dash trotting confused to the edge of town, maybe she was trying to figure out why she knew she should have known the pony she bumped into earlier? A shadow passed over her, this one, however, took shape; it was a pegasus. It moved about as if blind, moving towards the first warm body it sensed. It became a transparent image: its mane blue and its hide pink while it's cutie mark was two blue lightning bolts. Then it seemed to overlap Rainbow Dash! "Dash it all! What is--" Rainbow Dash gasped out in her high-culture accent, looking ill. Her customize designed scarf and hat vanished, her coloring changed. Then her cutie mark, the definition of her soul became a single cloud and the rainbow arch became a lightning bolt. Her eyes widened as I saw maturity, experience, all her high culture experience and diction drain from her as a pair of pegasus wings sprouted from her back and her entire figure changed, her lady-like voice turning to a rough-and-tumble one. I felt like I was looking into the eyes of a stranger rather than one of my friends. The (new?) Rainbow Dash flew away in a daze, not knowing what she had been doing there. I felt a weird form of inverse sickness, I don't know what else to call it, like I the world was changing and I wasn't a part of it anymore. The dutiful and ever present trio of flutterponies were in a panic as they tried to figure out what was wrong with the much larger ponies. "Flutterponies!" StarSong yelled at them. "StarSong?! What's going on?" Zipzee asked as she fluttered her wings. Starsong blew them a kiss, "Run, stay safe. Get back to Breezy Blossom Way and tell the others there to stay clear of Ponyville!" "We can't just-" "Please do it!" The tiny fairy like ponies looked at each other, finally nodded and fled as fast as their wings could carry them. The mix-and-matched thing asked like it discussing cake. "What makes you think there's anywhere they can run to?" StarSong felt anger. I had never seen it before so greatly, but I recognized it all the same. It was confusing. But she held onto it. "I WON'T LET YOU HURT THEM!" The mix of things scratched his nose, "Meh. Don't get so worked up. They're not my department. You girls sure didn't give us this much hassle when we did a semi-retool last time . . . but just goes to show; some things just can't be fixed, you just need to tear it all down and start from scratch! This entire age of Equestria must be cut out of the story books. I mean, I told those stuffed shirts that they were just making this universe worse with their 'improvements' they handed down. At least this place was interesting before they had to throw in a bunch of political correctness! You were at least a little bit CUTE before! And I thought a well-spoken scholarly Spike was a nice change of pace. Ugh! Of course, who'd listen to one of the Draconequi? Of -course- we'd want to get back to rebuilding something we just finished 'patching' with bad ideas!" "Who ARE you?" StarSong cried out. "I'd say that doesn't matter since you won't remember this, but I never get tired of saying it. The name's Anarchy. Got it memorized? Yeah yeah, and I'm in a pecking order by commission, so sue me. "I'm called a Draconequus, Draconequi for plural. We're called in along with the Alicorns by those in charge to 'fix up' things if a reality has turned hopelessly static and all nearly the souls become generic. Of course my parents never do a thing all day! Ya'd think being the embodiments of primal fear and heat-death that pops-Havoc and ma-Entropy would do more than sit on their tails parroting orders all day. Oh well. Time for you to go." "No!" StarSong shuddered. "Oh don't worry girlie, didn't mean you. Ya see, you have a tiny bit of depth that can be explored. That makes you a bit interesting. You got something that can grow and evolve. That means you get to become a somebody, opposed to a nobody destined to fade into the heartless darkness, unversed in your own emotions. You're unique, so you get to stay," He pointed at me. It was like my heart stopped. "But nobody cares about a pony whose always happy and who makes friends with everyone fixated on parties like everyone else every day here. Talk about boring and generic! That's the kind of thing that have got to go!" I felt a spark of something well up inside me. "We throw parties to GET TO KNOW each other! Each party is based on that pony's heart! And we don't do them every hour of every day! I just like them! We did a lot in a row because a lot of us met in a row! Of course I helped with everyone's else's party so much that I nearly ruined my own until everyone helped and-" "-and Bye-bye." StarSong rammed him from below the jaw, making him shut up. "Mah toaung, yoh made me bit mah toaung!" He rattled his head. "Hey you little punk! Watch it! You don't want to make me angry!" "I won't let you touch her!" StarSong said tears in her eyes. "What makes you think what can effect anything of what's going to happen next?" He asked almost sternly. Anarchy teleported right behind her right in my face, StarSong however proved just a little bit faster and kicked him in the back of the head making him grunt. His rattle snake tail lashed at her but she dodged nimbly as only a dancer can. I couldn't take this anymore! We didn't fight! We comprise. We hug and make up. This is all wrong. I just curled into a ball and whimpered wanting it to end. "Alright, now you're just getting in my way!" Stated Anarchy angrily as he snapped his fingers and a dozen giant swords fell from the sky, StarSong was past being terrified, past being afraid, everything she knew and loved was dying around her, if she could protect one thing, then nothing else mattered. It was like I was outside my body knowing all this. She felt one of the swords slice her leg open, it was the most horrible horrible horrible pain she had felt in her entire life, she wanted to break down and cry then, but the adrenaline running through StarSong was keeping the pegasus going. She rammed him in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. "ENOUGH!" He snapped his fingers, she fell to the ground skinning her belly. She looked behind and saw with horror her wings were gone. "Now time-out you! Now, back to business! One less generic cookie cutter ponies -delete-." He made a grab at me, I didn't try to run. He'd stop trying to hurt StarSong if I just disappeared. StarSong screamed and leapt at his face, by sheer reaction he grabbed her, he realized his mistake too late. "AW DAMMIT!" I finally looked up StarSong looked at me, she began to mouth one final song, but she vanished into nothing before the air could leave her lungs. "Ah fudge!" Anarchy cursed. "Bring her back! Take me and bring her back!" I cried desperate trying to hold onto the image, voice, and songs of my friend. I began hammering at his body with my fore hooves blindly. "I can't dumb horse! She's gone! " For a brief moment, it looked like Anarchy was -scared- of me. "Anarchy! Stop torturing them! You're here to do a TASK remember? This entire world needs to be revised before the 'improvements' from before cause it to collapse totally! And where's that donkey you call a brother Discord?" Boomed a stern but young(ish) female voice. It was a horned pegasus/winged unicorn, she was a lot larger than any other pony I had seen. Her cutie mark was a spiral galaxy. Her horn was longer than any pony's I've seen. Her coat a mix of silver and black. Her mane sparkled white. I didn't even try to comprehend this new being's appearance, the unifying happiness of my world gone, they had ruined it, I had nothing. "Meh, I saw him making some blue flower or another, or turning those butterfly ponies into fast multiplying bugs, I forget which. Let him do his thing." "'His thing' tends to cause more damage than good! And I don't remember him having orders to do anything to the Flutterponies!" "Pst. You didn't, maybe he did. Ya can't pick your family Your Starriness or whatever yer title is. Or I'd have put myself up for adoption by now. At least it's six relatives and not an organization of nobodies." "Did you return the ponies to the source as you were supposed to? We don't have time for your slacking with this entire world's fate at stake." "That eager to know that a couple of the Perfect Ponies went bye-bye?" "I am eager to have this horrid business over with!" "Yeah, yeah I did." Anarchy lied perfectly. "And now it's getting hard to even remember their names now isn't it? Surprise?" I asked meekly, "Whose Surprise? Wait, how'd I know you meant a pony named Surprise?" The horned pegasus/winged unicorn one pointed at me. "What about her? Pinkie Pie? Your orders were to make them all unique individuals." "She's the last one. That makes her unique now. I'm finished with the ponies, you can start on the setting." I had never cried before, but now my eyes were gushing rivers. "Please! Change them back! Change them all back! PEASE! What did we ever do to you?" The flying unicorn/horned pegasus looked me in the eyes, it was like I was looking at every star in the sky, I felt so small as she lowered her head. "I'm so sorry my little pony. You've done nothing to deserve this, but what's done can't be undone. If there was another way to stop entropy, we would have already done it. We can't simply 'undo' the misguided 'improvements', too much damage has already been done." "Preaching to the chorus 'lady rainicorn', if there was an easier way to fix this whole mess, I'd be the first one to suggest it," grumbled Anarchy, looking rather annoyed. "A total retool is just way too much work for my tastes." I could tell from the mean way he said it that that wasn't her real name or species. The horned pegasus gave a look to Anarchy before returning her gaze to my eyes, a somewhat compassionate look in her eyes. "I am afraid what we're doing now is kind compared to what happens if we do nothing. There's nothing else that can be done. The only thing I can do for you is have it so that you won't remember this life." "NO! I don't want to forget them! They're my friends!" I screamed. The flying unicorn/horned pegasus startled in full surprise at me. She then lowered her head to look back into my eyes, a serious look on her face. "... Listen closely to what I am about to say... Your world will never be the same and some of your friends will no longer be with you, and those that do will be different than you knew them. But I promise you parts of them will live on, as they always do..." "I... I don't understand..." I replied, confusion clear in my eyes along with the tears. Anarchy grunted at me annoyed as I prepared to say something else and grasped my head in a dingo's paw. He lifted me off the ground. "On second thought. Maybe a depressing childhood to balance out all that cheerfulness." I realized what that meant. "NO! Please! Leave my mother alo-" And I felt my inner self torn asunder. I felt new memories flooding into me. A new truth. A new reality. But I remembered the old ones too. I still do. Though I don't know how much I remember is true anymore and how much is just me trying to fill in the blanks. And I held onto the image of StarSong trying to sing her last melody. Goodbye~ Funny how that's such a hard thing to say Now it's time to let go but Never thought I'd feel this way Promise not to be sad but We both knew I'd be lyin'. Gotta fight back the tears, cuz Can't let you see me cryin'. You're more than just my best friend! What makes me misty most of all In my final curtain call Is knowing that I won't see you Aga