Morgue’s POV
Pinkie Park
Huh. When Princy said there were ponies, I pictured a lot more variety. Not a bunch of ponies that look exactly the same.
Surrounding me from every possible direction, some even peering down from the rooftops, were dozens of ponies all with the same big blue eyes and bright pink mane and coats cheering and celebrating at the mere sight of me.
Some of them wore party hats or other party gear of varying quality but they each had these toothy, Cheshire cat smiles that made them even more identical.
They were all talking a mile a minute, some asking questions to me while others were just shouting that “they found me!” or simply screaming in general.
“Well, they’re no clown cult,” I murmured underneath their shouting. “Unless pink is the color of clowns in this place.”
As they continued going crazy, I kept a neutral smile on my face as I thought to myself.
I remembered one of those Changelings turning into a pony just like these. I thought it looked a little too crazy to blend in anywhere but now that I was surrounded by them, I saw the genius.
Probably not a perfect copy though, I remembered. When that bug turned bright and pink it had a pretty serious look on its face.
None of these ponies looked remotely serious. So maybe a Changeling couldn’t copy how something acted perfectly.
I wonder if these ponies know there’s a bug in here pretending to be one of them. The bugs can’t read minds but they feed off of love or something. The ponies look like they’re full of that.
Wait. If Changelings feed on emotions, do they drain the emotion out of a person? Does that mean someone can run out of love or fun or whatever?
I put the question aside and put on my best poker face smile I could before holding up my arms in defeat. All the ponies went silent as I did.
Oh, sweet silence.
“Alright. Ya got me,” I cried out mockingly. “Great job, all of you! It takes a lot of work to track down someone as good as me. But be honest.” I scanned the crowd as I took a breath.
“...Who found me first?”
The silence was torn to shreds with shrieks of “ME!” as raised hooves blocked the sky. And like an alarm had gone off, all of them realized they weren’t the only ‘winner.’
“Ahehe. Sorry Pinkie, but I found Morgue first,” one pony said, pulling me beside her as if I weighed nothing. Huh, strong.
“Well. Yes, but actually no, Pinkie.” Then I was dragged towards another pony, which I assumed was also called Pinkie. “You might have seen him first but I still got here first.”
I nodded along, still wearing a smirk. “Yeah, you can’t just point someone out from across the neighborhood. Ya still gotta go up to ‘em. She’s got a point.”
“Thank you Morgue!” The Pinkie beamed at me. “You hear that? Morgue said I got a...point?” She blinked. “A point. I...I got the most points!”
Any chance I had of being the center of attention went straight out of my grasp as all of them started screaming at the top of their—
“I got a point for winning!” “I get four points for checking the ballpit!” “I got twelve for not getting lost in the ballpit!” “I jumped around the rooftops! Fifte—” ”I went up and down Trampoline Trail like sev—” “Nine points!” “—then I beat the other Pinkie’s at pie toss—” “—imbed the pancake tower and go—” “Eight points!” “—pancake parachute!” “I dove for the chocolate fountain! Way more p—” “Dang it, that was more fun!” “What’d you say?!” “—Rolled around in a barrel slide.” “In electrical the whole ti—” “I found the pogo—” “Thirty points!” “—two of them still work!” “You weren’t cheating, were—” “One plus two. Plus one. Then another two...” “Did anypony guess the number of jelly beans in the—” “They refilled the jelly bean guessing jar?!” “I didn’t get to eat any of—” “Revinto points!” “That’s a made up number!” “Which is worth more points!” “Ninety points!”
They kept cutting each other out as some just started screaming numbers while others kept going from subject to subject. Even the one who pulled me beside her completely forgot I existed as she was roped into counting random numbers.
This is the easiest group I have ever suckered...
I watched the crowd and realized that the pile of pink ponies were starting to thin out towards one end of the alley we were all stuffed in.
Welp, time to make like a thief and take my leave. I took a moment to straighten out my suit jacket before walking for the exit to get as far from this mob as I could.
But not before plucking a random Pinkie from the crowd.
“Woah, hey! Put me down!” She demanded. She tried to wave her hooves around as if she could swim out of my grip. “I need to figure out if I got the most points in fun!”
“No ya don’t,” I told her, suddenly realizing that I was carrying a pony nearly half my height under my arm like a small dog. “Besides, I need your help with something...fun.”
Her squirming stopped as she looked up at me with hope. “You do?!”
I smiled. This is too easy. “Of course I do. I need the grand tour of this carnival place! Then, we can play the ultimate game of hide and seek.”
“Even more ultimate than finding you?!”
I scoffed. “Oh. Definitely more ultimate. It doesn’t even use silly points like that last game. It’s just fun for fun.”
Pinkie’s smile instantly traunced mine. “Now that’s the kinda fun we’ve been looking for! Big Mike wasn’t kidding; you really know your stuff about parties!”
I stopped mid step and held up this Pinkie in front of me like holding a stuffed animal. “Lo siento. Did you just say Big Mike?”
“Uh-huh!” She nodded. “He was the one that told us to go look for you in the first place!”
“Big Mike somehow convinced all of you to make a search party?” I took a second to wrap my head around that. How’d he corral all of these nut cases?
“Well, not all of the Pinkie’s, obviously,” she told me. “Only 72 of us. And that’s mostly because we’ve been looking for somepony to take Pinkie Park to the next level!”
Only 72? How many are— I shook my head. “Where’s Big Mike now?”
“He left.”
“What?” I frowned.
“I know, right?!” She gushed. “Seriously, when we heard that he and his other tall friends were leaving Pinkie Park, we were like ‘Huh?!’ and then he told us that there might be others outside of Pinkie Park not having fun and then we were like ‘Woah!’ , so a couple Pinkie’s led him to the bad side of town and then we—”
I set her down and held her muzzle closed, watching as she kept on talking regardless.
Already left huh? Must be trying to track us down too. And those ‘other tall friends’ are probably humans too.
I let go of her muzzle and she kept going. “And then I told Pinkie ‘we should probably take her to the High Pinkie.’ And she agreed with me so we brought her to the big to—”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s great,” I cut in.
“Completely random, goofy question,” I announced, making her excited. “Was one of those tall friends of Big Mike’s really thin with glasses and a heavy leather coat?”
“Nope,” she told me. Mala leche. “One was as big as Big Mike and another was a girl. I‘m not sure about her though. She looked kinda ‘un-fun’ to us.”
Probably more ponies-turned-humans. At least Big Mike’s not wandering alone.
“That’s too bad. I was really hoping Big Mike would be here.” I weighed my options. If Big Mike and Joe weren’t here, I didn’t have a reason to stay either. The only thing left was looking for Scootaloo’s friends.
“You don’t suppose there’s anyone else here that looks like me, do you? Tall, two legs, funny finger-bits?” I asked, moving my fingers around for emphasis.
“There is!” She told me. “One of them’s at the stage. Right this way.” Turning around, she didn’t walk off. She bounced off as if she were a bunny on springs. Complete with a little sound effect emitting from her.
“...” I took a moment to throw my hands up in defeat before walking after her. It was almost a blessing that I remembered Discord now. It kept me from being so confused and terrified of whatever this talking pony was doing as I followed behind her.
Every beat of the music shook the place harder than anywhere else in this carnival. Empty cups and bottles matched the napkins and paper plates that littered the floor worse than a music festival.
There were even smashed mugs and ceramic plates that were probably taken out of the houses whose opened doors or windows revealed destroyed homes.
At some point, there looked to be chairs set up in the area laid out ahead of the stage but so many of them were knocked over or smashed entirely. Everything looked like a worse battlefield than the chaos wreck I left before.
Ironically enough, the only place that didn’t look absolutely filthy was the stage proper. The stairs leading up and the front of the stage had some garbage and confetti remains but the rest of the stage looked in good condition.
The large curtains towards the back lacked any stains or tears in the fabric and resting in the center like a beacon of music was a state of the art DJ station.
And standing behind it, jamming along to the music she played, was a human woman with spiky hair that had bright blue highlights, some violet tinted shades, white and cyan headphones, and an obvious white horn jutting out the center of her forehead.
Surrounding her and the stage was another twelve Pinkies, dancing along and enjoying the music as they enjoyed their Apocalypse Carnival without a care in the world.
I turned to the Pinkie beside me but it was too late. She was already breaking into dance from the music. I lost a good tour guide that day.
I wanted to be angry but the fact that this woman was already making me shuffle in place made me forgive the pink pony. Oh. She’s good.
Curious, I danced my way to the stage and. without any of the Pinkies to stop me, leapt up onto the stage. As I walked over, the woman pulled her headphones down and smiled at me.
“Yo!” She called. “You the next act?!”
“Nah, sorry señora!” I shook my head. “If I had a guitar I might consider it though!”
“Acoustic or electric?!”
“You mean I’m supposed to choose?!” I grinned.
“Good answer!” She took a moment to adjust some of the controls on her soundboard and she peeled the headphones off her head, setting them on a stand in arm’s reach of her.
“Let me take a wild guess,” I said, still shouting over the music. “You were a pony. But you woke up like this and have no clue why.”
“Hey, that’s exactly right,” she told me, also shouting. “That what happened to you?”
“Nope. I was born this good.” I gestured to all of me. “We’re called humans by the way. These are fingers, this is a thumb and we walk on two legs.”
“I gathered,” she told me, pointing to her own legs. “These ponies have had me playing for them for hours. Thank Celestia I woke up with my set in front a’ me. It’s got, like, seven hours of past gigs saved. Plenty of time before I need to start putting a spin on things. Heh.”
“They letting you take a breather?”
“Nope.” Her smile cracked slightly. “I tried to step away when a longer song played but they did not like that. They practically glared me back up here.”
I let out a whistle. “Tough crowd.”
“You’re telling me human-guy,” she said. “I’m gonna need somethin’ to chug down sooner or later.”
They won’t let her leave, I thought. And if she’s been stuck here since waking up that pretty much clears her being a bug demon. Still, I think I can do something here.
“Let me help ya, señora.” I put two fingers to my mouth and let out a high whistle, catching the attention of a random Pinkie. As she ran up, I told the woman to watch closely.
“Yo. Pinks?” I held my hand as if I was holding a glass and pretended to drink something. “When this charming lady here does this number, it means she needs a drink, alright? She’s gonna need it to keep these beats coming.”
She nodded happily. “Gotcha! Be right back!” A cloud of pink dust kicked up and she had vanished.
I turned back to the woman and already she was practicing the motion a couple of times, nodding along in approval. “Sweet! What is that anyways?”
“It’s called sign language,” I told her over the music. “It’s something a French human made up. Pretty useful, huh?”
“Yeah, that was cool.” She nodded. “Ya got one for food?”
As I showed her the sign, the Pinkie rushed back with a plastic cup full of milk. The woman took it and started chugging while I told the Pinkie the food command before sending her back to the ‘dance floor’ to tell the other Pinkies.
That outta make this ‘fun prison’ a little more bearable, I figured.
The woman let out a loud sigh of relief before crushing the cup over her head before tossing it away. I would have said something but with all the other garbage the one cup wasn’t gonna matter.
“Wow, I needed that! Thanks, uh...heh. Never got your name.” She reached for her headphones again.
“Everyone calls me Morgue,” I told her. “And the charming señora I’m talking to?”
“Nice try dude,” she shot me down with a laugh. “Literally just found out what I am two minutes ago. Name’s Vinyl Scratch.”
“Good name.” Before she could get her headphones back on, I stopped her. “Before I go, have you seen any other humans like us? Me and someone else are trying to round up who we can.”
“Yeah actually.” She frowned. “When I first started up, there was something that looked like us shouting at all these lookalikes. They were older, and had a blonde and orange mane with large orange wings on their back. Might’a been a mare; couldn’t tell for sure.”
“They still around?”
She shook her head. “Don’t know. Those ponies gave her the same glares they did me. Then they took her off into that giant tent over there.” She pointed out towards the big top. It was only a road or two away from where we were. “That was, like, two hours ago.”
Orange wings, huh? Sounds like pony-turned-human alright. But if those cheek-to-cheek grinning Pinkies got so angry they pulled her off, there’s no telling what happened there. Doesn’t sound like I could do much anyhow.
“...Hey, uh. You gonna be alright? Hangin’ around this place, I mean. These Pinkies seem a little harmless but...”
She stopped me with a stern grin before making sure to turn the volume up just enough where no one could hear us. “I’m good. I feel the sketch too but I can manage my own. Not the first weird venue I’ve done. Really, this whole human thing’s probably got this gig reaching top three for weirdest though.”
“Only top three?” I asked with an interested grin.
“When we’re outta here, I might just tell ya number two.” She gave me a wink before reaching for her headphones.
“Well then I have something to look forward to. But until then, I think I’ll be on my way.” With one last nod I turned towards the stage’s edge.
“Wait, you’re leaving now?” She made sure the music was loud enough to keep the Pinkies from hearing us. “I don’t think those ponies would be cool with that. That’s what that human-pegasus wanted before they took her to the tent.”
“Eh, I think I’ll be fine. I got my methods.” I told her.
“And those are?” I could see her eyebrow peeking out from behind her violet shades.
I chuckled before giving her a winning smirk. “Hey, when you’re outta here, I might just tell ya how I did it.”
She didn’t fight me any further on that. She just smiled. “Fair enough. See ya Morgue.”
“Same to you Vinyl.”
I gave her a wave before hopping down and walking past the dancing Pinkies and smashed chairs. I even started walking in tune with the music as Vinyl switched it up to something more energetic.
Meanwhile, the Pinkies were way too distracted to notice me scoop one of them up and keep walking without another word.