Six Mean Ponies

by Tangerine Blast


How to Stay Alive

The-Clone-of-Twilight-Sparkle had never actually teleported before. She had a vague idea of how to do it, a memory that wasn’t actually hers, but no practical practice. As such, she was immensely glad when she found herself in the very first clearing she had ever known; all limbs attached and the right side up. 

She desperately wanted to slump on the ground and breathe for a moment, she thought she had earned that much, but knew they weren’t out of the woods yet.

Literally or figuratively.

“Alright alright we have to think,” she muttered to herself, glancing around to make sure all of her sisters had been grabbed in the teleport too. Five other ponies. None missing obvious pieces. Good. Perfect. “What are our assets and disadvantages at the moment?”

“Chrysalis is gone,” Applejack spoke up, adjusting her hat as she regained her footing, “And ah don’t think she’ll be back anytime soon. That’s pretty good, at least.”

“But the Bearers know about us now,” Fluttershy pointed out, kicking a prone stump over in frustration, “So they’re sure to come hunt us down. We’re not that far away either so they could be on us in under an hour.”

“Eh.” Rainbow shrugged and settled onto a nearby branch. “It’s not like they know what we are or anything. They might just think they saw a bunch of random changelings or something. Then they’d be Chrysalis' problem.”

“But we lost the Elements!” Rarity wailed, “And my camping gear! How will we protect ourselves without our things!?! ” 

“We form a plan that’s how!” Twilight cried, interrupting Rarity’s dramatics and the rest of the clones’ ponderings. She began to pace, mumbling to herself all the while. “Things look bad at the moment but I can still pull us out of this. If we devise some sort of surprise attack we could catch the Bearers off guard and take their place. Or we could influence them by-”

“Wait wait wait! Why do you have to do something like that, Evening?”

Twilight stopped cold in both movement and words. The voice that spoke was much too chipper, too genuine with itself to be any of Twilight’s fellow clones.

Slowly, as if delaying the visual revelation would somehow change the outcome, Twilight craned her head to look at the group around her. 

There were five ponies alright. White, orange, yellow, blue, pink. But bright pink. Energetic pink that was looking at Twilight with a worried little frown and still clutching the Element of Laughter.

Twilight had brought the wrong Pinkie Pie.

She turned away again, briefly, and schooled her features out of terror-filled shock. Twilight had made a mistake, true, but she couldn’t let anypony know that. The most important part of being in charge was keeping everyone else convinced you could do no wrong. So what if this wrecked every possible previous plan? She could improvise!

Placing an irritated frown on her face, Twilight stalked over to Pinkie until the two were nose to nose.

“What? Did you call me?” She hissed at the pony. If she took the situation one issue at a time eventually she’d come up with something brilliant to the real problem. 

Being so close to Pinkie’s beam was sure to blind a lesser pony. “Evening! It’s a new name I thought up for you. See, I was thinking about how you said you wanted to be free from Chrysalis and be your own ponies and stuff and I was like; well they can’t do that having the same name as all my friends; so I’ve been brainstorming good names you can have that are all your own. That way you don’t just have to be clones you can be whoever you want to be!” She took a breath and gazed at Twilight with an innocent need for approval. “And Evening just seemed so pretty and mysterious. Perfect for you, you know?”

‘Evening’ took a step back, honestly caught off guard by the thoughtfulness of the gift. A name for herself? She hadn’t even thought about just how important that was. How the thinnest shred of individuality made her feel so much more complete. More real. But she quickly shook her head and returned to sneering before anyone could see her moment of touched weakness. “And why would you think I’d want a name from you?

Pinkie cocked her head, her smile slipping. “Well, I mean, I guess you don’t have to use that name. But I thought that since we’re friends-”

Evening cut her off with a sharp bark of laughter. “Friends? You think I’m your friend?” She swept a hoof around the woods surrounding them. “Take a look around you, you idiot! I took you away from your friends, to the middle of nowhere, without giving you even a hint of say in the matter. We aren’t friends.” She leaned down until she was once again nose to nose with the real pony. “You are our hostage.”

“Oh! Oh this was your plan!” Rarity cried, pulling both Evening and Pinkie into a sudden hug that left them both scrambling for breath, “Take something for us to have instead of them! That’s the best plan I’ve ever heard!”

“Yes,” Evening wheezed, untangling herself from the Unicorn, “We’ll use her as leverage to make the other Bearers meet our demands. And give us back our Pinkie. I guess.”

“And if they don’t,” Fluttershy added, shooting a cruel smile Pinkie’s way, “Then we get to have some fun.”

Evening raised a brow at her. “What happened to that Momma-Bear act not five minutes ago?”

Fluttershy shrugged and glanced away. “Toys aren’t fun when they’re broken.”

“Why do you even need to threaten my friends?” Pinkie spoke up. Her smile was gone but she didn’t look particularly frightened by them discussing her fate. The frown she wore was more a mix of sad and annoyed. “I thought you guys just wanted freedom, not power.”

“Power is freedom,” Evening explained slowly, as if talking to a particularly dim child, “If you control the world then there’s no one left to control you. The only way you can get what you want is by crushing all competition in your way. That’s how the world works.”

Pinkie shook her head and stuck out her tongue. “Nopie dope. No it’s not. And I don’t think you even believe what you’re saying.” She placed a hoof on Evening’s shoulder, like she was a wise sage telling a little kid that too much candy can make you sick. Evening had to fight the urge to smack her away. “I feel like I’m free and I don’t control anypony at all!”

Evening snorted and brushed her off dismissively. “Then you’re just delusional. Because you’re not free. You’re our prisoner.” She bit her lip and glanced away to stare disinterested in the distance. “Besides even if we did want to try it your way… we kidnapped you. I doubt Princess Twilight Sparkle would even hear out our case knowing we’re villains.”

Pinkie only frowned harder at the logic. “But you saved me! Chrysalis would have killed me if you hadn’t done something! I’m sure if we just go back and explain everything to Twilight she’d make sure you had your freedom no problem.”

“Oh yeah, that’s sure ta work,” Applejack pipped up in a mocking tone, putting on an overly fake smile, “We’ll just stroll up ta her and go ‘sorry we kidnapped your friend here and tried to steal your artifacts, but we’re real nice deep down. Honest!’” 

“Well… okay, maybe not just like that,” Pinkie relented, “But if I talk to her and tell her how nice you’ve all been-”

Evening snorted, interrupting Pinkie. “Then she’ll just think we’ve done something to you to make you say that. She has ever reason to think we’re her enemies, including making the assumption that we’re changelings. Peace isn’t an option.” Evening turned back to her fellow clones, signaling to the pony that their conversation was over. “The best thing we can do is steal our Pinkie back and use this one as a bartering tool for power and-.”

“Just try!” She apparently didn’t get the signal. 

Pinkie jumped in front of Evening so the clone had no choice but to look at her. “You can’t just give up and be be bad without even trying to be nice. You’re making Twilight seem no better than Chrysalis. If you just gave the ponies a chance…”

Evening met Pinkie’s meaningful look with a flat one. “Thank you for your input but I’m not putting everyclone at risk just for the chance they’d listen to us groveling for mercy.”

“Why’d we even wanna talk to those losers, anyway?” Rainbow asked with a disinterested eye roll, “No offense, but what I’ve seen of ponies so far makes them, like, the lamest things in the universe. And I’ve seen Chrysalis.”

“You don’t have to go to the ponies then. If you wanna be all alone that’s fine! Just don’t attack anyone.” Pinkie kept insisting, looking from clone to clone, trying to find an encouraging face, “You want to be free, right? Well, you can’t do that if you’re running and hiding from everypony all the time. If you just go your own way I can convince the girls to leave you alone. You could just go and be… idunno… hermits or something.”

“Would you just think for one second?” Evening snapped, her patience running thin, “We’d be completely defenseless and in the dark! If anyone ever decided we were a threat then we would be sitting ducks with no way to fight back.”

Pinkie blinked, as if she had just realized something. “Oh, well if that’s what you need then we can fix that! Defending is way easier than attacking. Just take this.” She thrusted her hoof towards Evening and all the clones collectively jumped back. 

Still tucked within the pink pony’s grip was the shiny blue gem of the Element of Laughter. 

Fluttershy dropped into a defensive stance, wings spread wide and legs crouched as if to pounce. “What the buck do you think you’re playing at? That thing tried to kill us!”

Pinkie cocked her head in confusion and glanced down at the gem. “What? Nuh uh, that was the tree. The Element of Laughter won’t hurt you.” She giggled to herself. “Especially if I give it to you instead of you trying to steal it.”

Evening’s eyes narrowed. Her horn was lit just at the edge of a defence spell. “And you think we can trust you on that? You didn’t think the tree would attack us either.”

Pinkie flinched and bit her lip at the accusation. “Okay… uh that was a bit of an oopies on my part. But I’ve barely been around the tree! It’s a weird thingy that’s like a billion years old. But Laughter...” She pressed the gem to her cheek and smiled. “I’ve had this baby for a long time. It’s my friend! I know it’ll never hurt you.”

Evening relaxed, almost unconsciously. She didn’t know why, for all intents and purposes Pinkie was her enemy, but she trusted the weird Earth Pony. If she was confident that the Element wouldn’t hurt them, then Evening believed her. But that didn’t mean she’d drop her suspicious glare. “Then why give it to us? Surely if you know it as well as you say you could use it to escape?”

“Oh, probably,” Pinkie agreed with a rapid nod, “But I wanna make sure you guys are going to be okay if I just leave. If you take this with you then you can just Harmony Zap any bad pony that tries to hurt you!”

All five clones stared at her as if she had just spoke of running to Canterlot and spitting on the Princess’s face. She was just… handing it over. Essentially a weapon that they would undoubtedly use on ponies Pinkie wouldn’t usually label ‘bad’. And she was just giving it to them.

“Why would you do that?” Rarity piped up, “Why would you go out of your way to help us?”

Now it was Pinkie’s turn to stare, but it was a strange look. A combination of pity and genuine confusion that made Evening feel almost embarrassed to be on the receiving end of. “Duh! Because you’re my friends!”

***
Twilight Sparkle, the real one this time, had already gone past panic mode and was now heading down the slippery slope to a full blown freak out. Not only was her perfectly planned picnic completely ruined, her friends all on edge from fighting in the forest, the Element of Laughter missing, and Pinkie apparently kidnapped, but now she was dealing with potentially the most annoying bundle of changeling magic ever known to pony kind.

The thing that looked like Pinkie, in a very sad funhouse mirror type of way, had been absolutely and completely uncooperative in helping Twilight understand what, exactly, was going on. No matter what information she tried to wheedle out of it, the magic construct would only answer like a bored student who never even glanced at the homework. 

A disregard for everything sacred in this world.

“So,” Twilight tried again, breathing deeply in an attempt to keep herself under control, “You’re saying that, somehow, even though you are saturated with changeling magic, you are not, actually, a changeling? Is that correct?”

Twilight had never seen such a strong expression of contempt in her life.

“If I was a changeling why would I be in this boring Earth Pony body?” The not-changeling flopped onto her back with a groan. “Having magic would make this situation at least a little exciting. Cause right now it’s sooooo boring.”

Twilight felt a strand of mane pop out of place. She was unsure if the thing was insulting her, Pinkie, or somehow both at once.

“Well… at least now we know why everypony was acting so weird,” Dash spoke up giving Fluttershy, who hadn’t talked to her the whole walk there, a hopeful grin, “Just some mistaken identity... again.”

“I guess,” Fluttershy sniffed, rubbing her eyes clear of leftover tears, “It… does make more sense that changelings were involved than everyone just being mean all of a sudden…”

“I suppose that is comforting,” Starlight remarked from where she was inspecting the Pinkie-imposter, “But what are these things? And what’s their plan?”

“Heck if I know,” The Pinkie thing mumbled, rolling onto her side when Starlight experimentally poked her, “Planning’s boring. I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

Twilight felt like her emotions were being pulled apart between the comforting relief that none of her friends were actually mad at each other and the burning frustration that their only clue was almost entirely a dead end. “Listen, you... whatever you are. If you don’t bring Pinkie back safe right this moment than I’m going to-”

She didn’t get to finish her most likely disingenuous threat before a bright flash of light interrupted her and the cavern was suddenly six ponies fuller. 

When she had finished blinking the lights out of her eyes Twilight was face to face with her own grumpy looking reflection. A reflection surrounded by mirror images of the rest of her friends and holding a bright blue gem suspended in her magic. 

“We surrender,” said reflection said, right before Twilight was knocked over by an excited pink missile.