An Infinite Number of Pinkies

by AugieDog

Chapter 3: Plinky Pie

Stopping to take a pull on the curly straw sticking up from her glass of lemonade, Pinkie looked back at her wide-eyed friends, Spike with his mouth actually hanging open, the wind in the oak tree the only sound for a cupful of seconds. Then: "Tarnation," Applejack muttered. "I gotta say, Pinkie, if'n I hadn't seen what I seen yesterday, I reckon I'd be hooting right now about your wild imagination."
"Yeah," Dashie said way more quietly than Pinkie liked.
So she jumped to her hoofs. "C'mon, guys! It's all over now, remember? Ev'rypony lived happily ever after!" Which, she realized, was pretty much the first lie she'd told them so far, but, well, she needed the practice for parts of the story that were coming up.... "'Cause, yeah, some of what happened gets a little scary, but I don't wanna see any sad faces, OK?" She couldn't keep the tremble out of her voice. "Please?"
"Of course, darling." Rarity nudged Fluttershy, and the pegasus pulled her hoofs away from her eyes, a little blush touching her cheeks. "This is all so astonishing, however, I hope you'll not mind a startled gasp now and again."
Pinkie nodded. "Gasping's OK. And questions, too—just shout 'em out anytime."
Twilight cleared her throat. "I can't help wondering, I guess, about Pinkie Prime's laugh. Was it more a Princess Luna 'The fun has been doubled' laugh, or a Nightmare Moon 'The night will last forever' laugh?"
"Hmmm." Pinkie rubbed her chin. "Y'know, if you'd asked me that when I was standing right there in the cave with her, I woulda said—"

"Party!" Pinkie sprang onto her hind legs and threw out a few dance moves. "And with all my twins?? Epic!" Which turned her thoughts toward— "Thagoras!" She spun to face Pinkie Prime. "Can I give her her invitation first? It's just I prob'bly oughtta apologize for calling her my evil twin last time I saw her, but, I mean, that was before I had any idea how many twins I even had! Come to think of it—" She cocked her head at the big mare. "How many twins do I have?"
Pinkie Prime still had her wings fully unfurled, the sight sending a little tickle through the part of Pinkie's brain that always made her want to bow whenever she saw one of the princesses. She ignored it pretty easily, though; it wasn't like Primey really was a princess, after all...
Still, the winged unicorn's voice echoed all big and impressive when she announced, "One of your twins exists behind each light that shines forth within this cavern's darkness!"
"Wow." Pinkie looked up, down, backwards, sideways, and all around, little silver spots glittering just about everywhere over the dark-blue walls and ceiling and floor. "So which one goes to where Thagoras lives?"
Something like a growl rustled against Pinkie's ears, but when she turned her head back to Primey, that 'almost Princess Celestia' smile hadn't moved from her lips. "I'm thinking that Thagoras Pi will be something of the guest of honor at our little party," Primey said, her words as friendly as ever, "since her experiments led directly to our being able to meet like this in the first place. I'll ask, therefore, that her universe be the last place you visit."
"Okie dokie lokie!" Glancing out into the depths of the cave again, Pinkie shook her head. "But I hope you've gotta cubic mile or two of construction paper. 'Cause we're gonna need a lot of invitations!"
"Actually,—" Primey tapped one of her fancy pink metal shoes against the floor with a sound like wind chimes tinkling. "Given the nature of this party, I feel it would be fitting for you to deliver verbal invitations to all your twins in person."
It took Pinkie a few blinks to figure out what that meant. "You mean I getta go see all of them??" A vibration of pure happiness started in her middle, her mind already racing to sketch out the words and melody she'd need for her singing telegram:

Well, she'd keep working on it. Especially since— "It'll hafta be a pretty short song, though, won't I? If I'm gonna be popping through ev'ry wunna these spots, I mean..."
Primey was tapping her shoe harder, the crystal tone of it starting to get a little clanky in Pinkie's ears. "Time has no meaning in this place, Pinkie Pie, so no matter how long you spend delivering the invitations, the cake here will never go stale nor will the punch go flat. And once you begin fetching your twins, they can set off as well, each to a different universe! So whenever you return, you will in essence logarithmically increase your invitation-issuing abilities!"
Which got Pinkie blinking even more. "Y'know, you sound a lot like Twilight sometimes. Are you sure you're me?"
"I am not you!" Primey snapped with a stomp, pink steam gusting from her nostrils. "You are me!" Her eyes squinted closed immediately, and she held up a front hoof. "By which I mean," she went on in her regular voice, "you are more precious to me than jewels and puppies and that sort of thing." Her smile came back, but it seemed a little ragged around the edges. "Forgive my excitement. I'm just very, very anxious for you to begin so we can get this party started. That sounds good, doesn't it?"
"You bet it does!" The enthusiasm that flooded Pinkie helped her ignore the two or three unhappy little half-twitches itching at her; she bounced in place and let her head tip back to take in the sparkling little spots, more of them than even the stars in Princess Luna's night, she thought. "Where should I start? Should I just pick one?" She rushed forward, poked at one of the lights, and almost leaped out of her hoofs when it sprouted from the floor into a silvery rectangle almost exactly the same size as the mirror she'd stepped through back in the bakery. "OK!" She whirled to check with Primey. "Is this good?"
Squinting again, Primey had turned kind of sideways, like maybe the silver shimmer was too bright for her. But— "Yes," she said, "that ought to be fine." She flared her wings and peered over her shoulder at Pinkie through the veil of their feathers. "Whichever Pinkie or whichever Pie you find, bring her back here. I'll begin baking the cakes."
"Whoo!" Pinkie leaped onto her hind legs, started into the dance she'd come up with for Thagoras's mirror moves: tap, slide, tap, double-tap, tap, slide, tap, double-tap, double-tap, tap, tap! The rectangle went through all the same changes as before—brightened, deepened, went cloudy, then went misty—and she skipped through into—
The stink whapped her across the snout like the time she'd helped Fluttershy catch fish for some little otters whose mother and father had the flu. The fish, it turned out, hadn't really wanted to be caught, and by the time they'd gathered a bucket for the otters' dinner, Pinkie was soaked and laughing and smelling fish every time she took a breath.
This was worse, though, something smoky mixing with the fishy stink and making Pinkie cough. The sound echoed, and she blinked at the alley she was standing in, the mirror she'd stepped out of propped against the wall behind her, a few trash cans slouching around it.
But who would throw away a mirror? And the walls, they were tall and straight and boring, not like in Ponyville where even the plain ol' regular walls had some color to them. These were all just gray—
Like the sky, clouds as solid overhead as the walls that stretched up toward them. She wanted to sniff the air, see if it smelled like rain, but all the smoke and fish got in the way. Still, she wasn't getting her usual pre-rain twitches, so she prob'bly had plenty of time to find her twin!
Bouncing along the rough paving stones of the alley—the first time, her hoofs seemed to be telling her, that a pony had ever bounced here—Pinkie came out into the street, ready to greet any ponies she saw, introduce herself, and ask for directions.
Except that the street lay quiet and deserted, the shops closed, some of them so rusty and dusty, she started wondering how long it had been since they were last open. Something else about them didn't look right, either, and she was just rubbing her chin and trying to think what it might be when an almost familiar voice shouted behind her: "Hey! You can't be out on the street without a pass!"
Pinkie turned, a smile bursting over her snout to see a blue pegasus winging down to land on the street, violet eyes glaring from beneath the rim of the big metal helmet she was wearing.
"Rainbow Dash!" Pinkie cried, rushing forward to—

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Dashie leaped into a hover. "You're saying it was me??"
"Well?" Pinkie shrugged. "With all those Pinkies out there, it wouldn't be any fun if they didn't have the same number of Dashies, right?"
"No way!" With a sharp whoosh, Dashie sliced a front hoof through the air. "There's only one Rainbow Dash, and you're looking at her! Anypony else says she's me, she's lying!"
Searching for the words to explain, Pinkie was really glad when Twilight spoke up: "It's OK, Rainbow. It wasn't really you anymore than this Pinkie Prime pony was really our Pinkie. It's like a picture. Or like when you look in a mirror, or—" Her face lit up. "Or like when you play Commander Hurricane in the Hearth Warming Eve pageant. It's you, but it's somepony else at the same time."
Still frowning, Dashie slowly settled back onto the ground. "I just don't like anypony saying she's me when she isn't!"
Which gave Pinkie a way out. "Oh, but she didn't say she was you! As a matter of fact, when I called her your name, she said—"

"That's Captain Thunder Flash to you!" The pegasus was dressed kind of like Commander Hurricane from the play, too, though her armor wasn't nearly as fancy or as shiny. Her eyes darted from side to side, then she slid a step closer to Pinkie and whispered, "Did you come through the underground?"
For a second, Pinkie wanted to say that she'd come through the mirror, but the nervous smell jittering up from the captain's coat made her stop. This pony was more than a little scared about something.
"Typical," Captain Thunder Flash was muttering now, her eyes rimmed with white. "I mean, sure, we don't do these patrols for real here in Ponyville, but that doesn't mean you can just come walking right into town, y'know! We could all get in a lotta trouble if there's any snoops from Canterlot sneaking around; doesn't anypony but me get that??"
It was just about then that it all sank in: Pinkie was in Ponyville, but not the Ponyville she knew; this jumpy pegasus, she was as much Dashie's twin as Thagoras had been Pinkie's; and—

"Ummm, Pinkie?" Fluttershy raised a hoof. "I don't know; maybe I missed a part, but...the way you described Thagoras Pi, she...she didn't sound like she actually looked like you at all."
Pinkie nodded. "That's a really good point, Fluttershy."
Fluttershy hid behind her mane, but she was smiling her happy little smile, so Pinkie was happy, too. "But the thing is..." Again, Pinkie tried to find the words. "Thagoras looks so much not like me that she couldn't be anything else but my twin. Y'see?"
From the way all their foreheads were wrinkling, Pinkie guessed that they didn't see. "That's OK," she told her friends. "You'll get it here in a minute."

But thinking about twins made an idea blossom into Pinkie's head like some sort of magic lily pad. "I'm not here because of anything that's underground," she whispered just as sneakily to the pegasus who wasn't Dashie. "I'm here to get a pony who maybe reminds you of me. Her name prob'bly has a 'pinkie' or a 'pie' in it, and once I find her, we'll both be—"
"Plinky Pie?" Captain Flash looked even more confused than before. "But...I don't think she's ever left Lady Verity's inner court! How could you—?" Her mouth went sideways, and she blew out a breath. "Well, I hafta take you over there anyway since that's where the viceroy is tonight. C'mon." She started up the street. "Oh, and if anypony asks, you're my prisoner, OK?"
"OK!" Pinkie moved quickly to trot alongside the captain. "D'you wanna put me on a leash?"
The hard scowl on Flash's face made her look even less like Dashie than before. "I got myself assigned to Ponyville," she said through clenched teeth, "so I wouldn't hafta do things like that anymore. So don't even joke about it!"
A few twitches shivered up Pinkie's spine, and she suddenly felt like she'd just cut open one of those cantaloupes that looks fine on the outside but is all stinky and slimy inside. It got even worse when she and Flash rounded the corner and came into Ponyville's town square, as empty of ponies under the overcast sky as the street they'd just come down, but the other changes almost made Pinkie rattle to a stop right there.
The shops and homes all squatted instead of stood, their windows and doors droopy like they weren't feeling well—except for two big buildings at each end of the square, both of them gigantic swirls of silken color and bright paint. One had swallowed up the whole couple of blocks that would've surrounded Carousel Boutique, Pinkie realized, and the other spread over the area where the library's tree should've been growing.

The gasps from Rarity and Twilight made Pinkie raise a hoof. "Just wait; it gets even weirder."

Captain Flash was plodding toward the fancy building on the Boutique's end of the square, the front door more like some sort of huge pastry than anything else and bigger all by itself, Pinkie was sure, than Sugar Cube Corner. A group of six or seven pegasuses—

"Pegasi," Twilight said, her voice so quiet, Pinkie guessed it was more automatic than anything else.

Six or seven pegasi in armor were standing outside the door, and when Flash ruffled her wings, the others all did the same. One of them flew up to the top of the big door, tapped a hoof against a golden button; the door shuddered, folded open with the rustle of a pony wearing the swankiest dress she'd ever worn in her whole life, and on the other side lay a hallway all shiny with gold and marble, more pegasi standing along the walls like they were pretending to be statues.
Flash headed down this hall, then turned down another one, then another one, then another one, more unmoving guards everywhere, and by the time Pinkie was sure they'd walked halfway to Canterlot, they came into a great big room. Except it was more an indoor park, green with the first grass Pinkie had seen in this Ponyville, a little stream flowing through, a bunch of earth ponies in filmy robes lounging around on the ground a dozen or so yards away.
Music was playing, Pinkie realized with a start, quiet and slow from some sort of stringed instrument: a hammered dulcimer, she guessed, the way it was gentle and twangy at the same time. She could hear singing now, too, somepony with a soft, sad voice that Pinkie almost recognized:

"No more," another oddly familiar voice said, and Pinkie, wiping the sudden tears from her eyes, saw two sofas among the crowd of earth ponies, the only pieces of furniture in the whole place. On one of the couches lay the fattest unicorn Pinkie had ever seen, her white coat and purple mane telling Pinkie whose twin she was, and—

"Fat??" Rarity had leaped to her hoofs. "How dare you insinuate such a thing about me??"
"It's not you!" Pinkie sighed and wished she could borrow Twilight's brain for a couple minutes so she could once and for all explain this mirror stuff. "Remember? She looked so much not like you that she had to be your twin!"
Dashie gave a little laugh. "Don't know how to break it to you, Pinkie, but that didn't make sense the first time you said it, either."
Desperate, Pinkie fixed her pleading gaze on Twilight. "Like a play, right? Or like wunna those fun house mirrors! Real, but not real! The same, but not the same!"
Twilight was nodding. "A fun house mirror. That's probably the best way to think of it. You see, in quantum physics, the 'many-worlds interpretation' states—"
Spike gave a little groan. "Can we please just get back to the story? All these interruptions are driving me crazy!"
"Yes," Fluttershy said, then immediately covered her mouth. "I mean, I...it's just that mirrors are never exactly the same. It's like Rarity said: you put on an outfit and look at yourself in the mirror and it looks fine, then you get home and put it on and it...it's like a whole different dress! Sometimes better and sometimes not, but always backwards and always a little bit fuzzy." She shrugged. "If that makes any sense..."
Rarity had her lips pursed like she did when she was thinking. "It does, actually." She settled back into the shade of her parasol. "The ponies you meet through these mirrors, they're all the ponies we could have become if we'd been put together a bit differently."
"Hooray!" Pinkie clapped her hoofs together. "And it's because of those differences that you can recognize your twin in one of the mirror worlds! The less she looks and acts and thinks the way you do, the more your twin she is!" She tapped her glass. "Spike? Another round for ev'rypony, please, 'cause Twilight's twin's coming up next!"

The big white unicorn had one front leg stretched dramatically across her face. "Must we hear this ballad every week, viceroy?"
"It's tradition," a pinched voice said from the other couch, the unicorn there purple and magenta but looking a lot sourer than even Twilight in one of her real sour moods. "Decreeing that 'The Defeat of the Din' be performed once a week is the only thing the Council has done correctly in twenty-five hundred years, and I'll have no pony in this province ever forget the sacrifice we unicorns made for Equestria."
A little snort from Flash, and she muttered, "Like that'd ever happen..."
Both the unicorns' ears flicked, and they turned on their couches, a smile lighting the big white one's face. "Captain Flash! How delightful! What have you brought for us today?"
Flash bowed and started across the field, Pinkie hopping beside her, all the earth ponies perking up as well. "Viceroy Gloaming, Lady Verity, I came across a stranger wandering down South Bridle Way. She didn't have a pass, so I—" Her shoulders slumped, her head shifting as she glanced from side to side. "I thought maybe the underground had sent her," she finished in a whisper.
Viceroy Gloaming's thin face got even thinner. "I've had no word from Hard Cider about any ponies coming to join us." A purple glow came over her horn, the wavering color darker than Twilight's ever was but just as tingly along the back of Pinkie's neck. "Did it occur to you, captain, that she might be a spy sent by the Council? Although..." Gloaming's brow wrinkled. "There's something...odd...about her...."
"Yes." Lady Verity had put a hoof to her chins. "She has a certain je ne sais quoi, does she not?" She motioned with her other front hoof. "Come closer, young lady, and tell us of yourself."
Pinkie thought for a second about launching into one of the several song and dance numbers she'd put together over the years to introduce herself to other ponies, but, well, wanting to get back for the party, she really didn't have the time! "That's OK, Rarity—I mean, Verity. I'm just here to invite Plinky Pie to a—"
A gasp so tiny, Pinkie had to listen twice to be sure she heard it: it drew her attention to the other side of the two couches, the hammered dulcimer in the grass there, an earth pony Pinkie hadn't noticed before sitting still and quiet behind it, little gloves over her front hoofs with the hammers attached. And looking at the beige pony—her long straight mane a slightly lighter shade of beige, her big frightened eyes a slightly darker shade—Pinkie saw her mirror image, as backwards and different from her as Thagoras had been.
"It's all right, Plinky, darling," Lady Verity cooed, stretching to touch the little earth pony's shoulder. She looked back at Pinkie, then, her gaze sharpening. "I don't know who you are, madame, but if you mean ill to my Plinky, you and I shall have words!"
And that was all it took. Yes, this mirror world had some things wrong with it—the smell and the clouds and the way ev'rypony seemed so worried—but the ponies right here, Pinkie's twitches were letting her know, these were good ponies.
So she told them ev'rything.

"You what??" at least three voices shouted, and Twilight's went on from there: "Pinkie, they were already suspicious of you! If you start talking about walking through mirrors and meeting your twins and all that, they're likely to lock you up!"
"Huh." Pinkie blinked at her friend. "I never thought of that." She gave them all her biggest smile then. "Good thing they didn't think of it either!"

Viceroy Gloaming's eyes kept getting bigger and bigger. "Of course," she said when Pinkie finished. "That's why you seem to stand out so oddly against everything else here."
Pinkie shrugged. "Well, they call me odd back home, too."
A little annoyance flashed across the viceroy's face. "It's that you don't truly fit anywhere, Pinkie Pie, unmoored from all normal time and space by the influence cast upon you by this transdimensional being who calls herself Pinkie Prime. Much like..." Her voice trailed off, and the tenderness in the look she gave to Plinky, still cowering behind her hammered dulcimer, made Pinkie want to put pointed hats on ev'rypony's heads and throw them all a party right here and right now. But with the other earth pony shivering worse than Fluttershy at her scardiest, Pinkie decided that might not be the best idea.
Lady Verity had also been looking at Plinky, but she turned now to look at Pinkie. "Could you?" she asked softly. "Take her away from this awful place? Please?"
"Awful?" Pinkie looked around. "It's actually pretty nice in here. I mean, yeah, the town could use a little perking up and ev'rything smells like oily fish, but I'll bet if you got summa these pegasuses working on the sky—"

"And yes," she told Twilight. "I know. But 'pegasuses' is what I said, and, well, you wouldn't want me to tell you I said something that I didn't say, would you?"
Twilight sighed. "I guess not..."
Pinkie nodded.

"We can't." Viceroy Gloaming's mouth was a thin, tight line. "Tucked up against the Everfree Forest, we're far enough out in the wilderness that the Council doesn't pay us any real attention, but if we had nice weather or seemed to be a bustling town, they might take a closer look at us. That's a thing we cannot afford, not the way we ignore most of the Council's policies."
Pinkie waved a hoof. "If this Council is being a buncha meanies, why don't you just tell the princesses? They're always real good at having talks with ponies who need talking to."
"Princesses?" The viceroy's brow got all wrinkly again.
More twitches along Pinkie's spine. "Yeah! We've got Princess Celestia who raises the sun ev'ry morning, Princess Luna who works with the stars and the night, Princess Cadance who—"
"Ah." Viceroy Gloaming gave a curt nod. "The members of your Council call themselves princesses, then." She shook her head. "In our Equestria, we haven't had a princess since the days of Princess Platinum, back before the coming of the Din and the Great Sacrifice."
"The Din?" The word made Pinkie think of— "You mean Discord?"
Ev'ry last bit of sourness came back into Gloaming's face. "I mean a creature born of malice and dark magic, a creature who invaded our beloved land, enslaved our ancestors, and would certainly have destroyed everything we hold dear had not we unicorns sacrificed ourselves to defeat him."
The whole inside park had gone completely quiet, Pinkie not even sure she was hearing the stream anymore. "Yes," Lady Verity said, her voice more easing the silence aside than breaking it. "If you'd arrived a bit earlier, you could have heard Plinky's wonderful rendition of our national ballad."
"I..." Pinkie swallowed at the memory of the sad song she'd heard when she'd first come in. "I heard some of it, I guess. But...but what happened?"
The two unicorns looked at each other, but it was Plinky who spoke, her voice soft and musical even though she was just talking: "Clover the Clever summoned the power of all unicorns everywhere, not just those unicorns then alive but those unicorns yet to be born. The spell turned the Din to stone and freed Equestria from his evil reign, but it required so much power, it literally drained the life force from each succeeding generation of unicorns. In the thousands of years since, in all of Equestria, there are no more than twenty-five unicorns alive at the same time: no unicorn foal is born until one now living has passed on, and we venerate them rightly for the magic they bear, raising the sun and the stars for us each and every day and night, and for the sacrifice they made to save us all."

"Then..." Fluttershy's voice, quiet as the breeze through the oak leaves. "They don't have princesses?"
"Which means," Applejack added just as quietly, "they ain't never had no Elements of Harmony, neither."
"And..." Twilight, absolutely breathless. "Only twenty-five unicorns?"
Pinkie nodded, her throat so tight, she couldn't talk any louder than them. "Of all the mirrors I went through, the one into Plinky's world is maybe the one that makes me the saddest. Because all my twitches were telling me her story was true. And then Gloaming said—"

"As proper as it is for our fellow ponies to hold us in such high esteem..." The viceroy had her teeth clenched. "Too many among our unicorn brothers and sisters would denounce me as a traitor simply for using the phrase 'our fellow ponies' when talking about earth ponies and pegasi."
Lady Verity heaved a massive sigh. "It's perfectly awful to see how grotesquely most unicorns behave! Ordering the others around like they're children! Refusing to treat them with any respect whatsoever! And even worse—" She reached out to touch Plinky Pie again, the earth pony's eyes downcast. "The abuse they will often direct toward them! It's why I've chosen to live in this out-of-the-way spot, and why the viceroy took the posting as governor here: to create an oasis, however small, where such shenanigans will not occur, and to welcome in all whom our agents in the underground deem worthy of us!"
"That's great!" Pinkie jumped up. "'Cause you're gathering your forces, right? So you can march on Canterlot and show those mean ol' unicorns that they've gotta play nice with ev'rypony! Right??"
Both Verity and Gloaming had expression on their faces like Pinkie had just grown wings and a horn. "I beg your pardon?" Gloaming asked after a moment.
"Well, yeah!" Pinkie waved a hoof. "Captain Flash and all those guys out in your hallways with their armor and ev'rything! They're totally your air force! And us earth ponies, well, when you gotta get tough with somepony, we're the guys you wanna have on your side! And you!" She aimed her hoof at Gloaming. "Back in the mirror that I come from, my friend Twilight is, like, the greatest unicorn magician ever! And here, I mean, since there's so much fewer of you guys, you're prob'bly even better!" She started dancing around like she was a marching soldier pony. "You just go right on up to those Council unicorns, and you tell 'em, 'Hey! Cut it out and be friends with us! Or we'll just hafta start poking you in the nose!'" She spun in place and sat down facing the two unicorns. "That's what you gotta do!"

Looking out at her gaping friends, Pinkie pointed the end of her straw at them. "Y'know, that's exactly the look all the ponies in Lady Verity's park gave me, too! Well, except Plinky Pie."

And sure, Plinky Pie was staring at Pinkie the same as the rest, but fear wasn't shimmering in her eyes like it was in the others'. Pinkie wasn't even sure what was glimmering there—hope or excitement or determination or something—but Pinkie liked seeing it, liked knowing that her twin wasn't completely lost in the sorrow that hung around her like a cloud of pepper around a shattered pepper pot.
"You..." Gloaming finally stammered. "You can't be serious! It would be the height of madness for just the two of us to pit ourselves against the Council!"
"Ah." Pinkie raised a hoof. "But it wouldn't be just the two of you. It'd be you and all your fellow ponies."
That seemed to stop the viceroy, and she looked away, her thoughts almost loud enough for Pinkie to hear. Lady Verity, though, she still looked more shocked than anything else. "Please," she said, her voice breaking. "I'm not looking to start a revolution. I'm just...I just want my Plinky to be happy for once in her poor little life." She turned to where Plinky still sat behind the hammered dulcimer. "Wouldn't you like a party, Plinky? A party with Miss Pinkie here and all your twins from the mirrors?"
Plinky had shut right back down as soon as Lady Verity had begun paying attention to her, Pinkie noticed, that wonderful spark completely doused in less than an instant, everything about her as fragile as a spun-glass statue again. "I..." she more whispered than said. "Do you want me to go, my lady?"
Lady Verity's eyes wavered. "It's not about what I want, darling. It's about what you want."
"I..." Plinky's long beige mane almost seemed to twitch, another hopeful sign as far as Pinkie was concerned. "I'm allowed to want things?"
Viceroy Gloaming slapped a hoof against the cushions of her sofa. "All ponies are allowed to want things! And they're all allowed to do everything reasonable to get what they want, too!" A sour little trickle of fear rose from her. "At least, that's how it ought to be..."
More silence, but the air around Pinkie seemed to hum with the energy of ponies making decisions, a feeling even sparklier than Applejack's bubbliest apple cider.
"Then yes," Plinky said suddenly, her voice maybe a touch louder than before but still on the shaky side. "I...I would like to go to Pinkie Pie's party!"
Pinkie couldn't keep from leaping up. "Whoo-hoo!" she shouted even though she knew it would make Plinky wince. "'Cause a Pinkie Pie party is always the right decision!" She turned her big grin at the teary but smiling Lady Verity. "You got a mirror we can borrow?"