Here is the disclaimer: I don’t own MLP: FiM, aside from my Pinkie, Rainbow, and Applejack figures. Oh, oops! I don’t own the RIGHTS to MLP: FiM. That belongs to Lauren Faust and Hasbro.
You Wouldn’t Believe Me if I Told You
Chapter 9: Of Princesses and Pinkie
“Why did that happen?”
Discord continued poking at a small bundle of warped time-space he had been staring into for the past few minutes. He had managed to create it with the power he had, and although it was not terribly useful, he found the tiny window into utter chaos and nonconformity calming and relaxing.
He glanced up momentarily at the flaming embodiment of evil, slightly irritated. “Why did what happen, oh great and powerful Occu-lord?”
Sauron flared at the jab. “You know precisely what! That sparkling display of dissolving pony players. What are you up to?”
Yawning and stretching as if he had just been woken up, Discord got to his feet. “If you really must know-“
“I must.”
“-I am merely trying to liven things up for myself and those involved. I don’t plan on doing the same flare for all of them, you know. Besides, this also clears up the field, in a spectacular way, of all of the corpses, which would have otherwise clogged up the game.”
“I see your reasoning, although not the necessity for this to occur. However, I did find this enjoyable. It adds, as you said, a flare to the game as a whole. Proceed with your ... alterations as you wish. Just do not interfere with the gameplay itself.” Sauron turned his focus back on the game at hand. “I shall not warn you of it again.”
Discord paused, smiling to himself.
“Promise?”
* * * * *
“Pinkie! Slow down! We must act cautiously!”
Luna and Celestia galloped after the pink blur, which had been streaking towards the statue garden. They would have been there somewhat sooner had they flown, but they decided it was most prudent to approach Discord’s statue as stealthily as possible. For if he was indeed free from his prison, and because they did not have 5 of the Elements of Harmony, they would only stand a chance if they had a totally separate element; the element of surprise.
Pinkie, exasperated at her Princesses’ pace, reluctantly circled around back to their sides, and easily maintained a steady pace with them. She was not truly upset with them in particular, but rather the whole situation. Her friends had vanished from the face of Equestria with no warning, right on the eve of Rarity’s birthday party bash at the castle no less, and coupled with all of her daily stress of her jobs around the palace and elsewhere, she was in no mood for shenanigans from Discord this time, chocolate rain or no chocolate rain. Years past and responsibilities gained had taught her the valuable lesson of “time and place” for her eccentric behaviours and excessive gleefulness. She was not happy, not happy in the slightest.
She was an angry Pinkie. And she meant business.
Luna signalled a halt of the group as they neared the final bend before Discord’s stone prison would be in plain view.
“Pinkie Pie,” Celestia began, “allow for Luna and myself to lead around the corner. We can shield you from him with our wards should he attack suddenly.” Pinkie nodded.
“Luna,” she continued, turning to face her younger sister of the night, “prepare your wards and attack spells, but nothing too draining for now. We must not weaken ourselves before the battle even begins. However, if you can get the shot in, do it.” Luna also nodded, her horn already glowing in preparation for her spellcasting. Celestia had already begun doing so as she spoke.
“And,” Luna whispered, “he may still be posing as a statue to throw us off our guard. Be prepared for any eventuality.”
“Spells at the ready, Sis. And you?”
“Done and done Ti. Are you ready to go, Pinkie Pie?”
“Party cannon locked, loaded, and eager for action.” Pinkie replied shortly with a rap on her trusty pink wheeled contraption, a cross look on her face, mane in a ponytail, and extra rounds of some kind of large, package-like ammunition had appeared in a sash over her shoulder. She gestured with her foreleg, “After you.”
Celestia and Luna needed no further invitation. They dashed around the corner, side by side with Pinkie hot on their heels. The statue was indeed still there in plain view; his face still as contorted as it had been a few years back when the group had made him such after his brief escape. Nevertheless, horns were glowing furiously with their spells, and cannon fuses burned brightly, hopeful for the chance to fire the payload.
They slowed their pace as they neared it, gaining confidence as they did. Spells began to dwindle from their horns in spite of their owners, and the cannon remained unfired. Celestia ran a scanning spell on the statue, but Pinkie piped in first, dousing the fuse on her heavy artillery.
“It’s the strangest thing,” she stopped in front of both alicorns and next to the statue, and paused to think, scrunching her face at the same time. “He is there, but yet not there. Like in body, but not in spirit.”
Luna and Celestia both froze in shock as they realized the implications of their pink friend’s statement, but again she beat them to saying such.
“This is not good. He is dimension jumping.” She pulled the pink scrunchie free from her tangled mane. “He could literally be anywhere, or anywhen for that matter!” Pinkie fell to her haunches, hair deflating significantly. From behind her, Luna and Celestia did not need to see the tears in her eyes to know she was crying. Her head was hung low, and her shoulders were stooped over and racked with soft sobbing.
Luna approached her slowly from behind, and, placing one leg over her shoulders, said, “But my dear friend, do you not do the same thing, such as for tuba-portation and other such feats?”
Pinkie shook her head dejectedly. “No, this is different.” Her voice wavered as she spoke. “Tuba-portation only works by bending space within the same dimension. Discord has broken the fourth wall and entered a new dimension altogether, something I haven’t done for a few years now.”
“And why have you not?” Luna inquired.
“Because,” Celestia began, “I forbade it. Every time she did it, she left a small rift in space-time, which, might I add, are a pain in my royal plot to fix. Not to mention the things that sometimes came back through.”
Luna looked at her sister with wide eyes. “Such as?”
She shrugged. “Mostly harmless humans from various times and places, very few monsters of any consequence.”
Pinkie gave a smile through her tear-dampened, distraught face. “I may be out of practice with this dimension jumping by now, but I think... no, I can! Or, I should be able to track his signature through his rift in space-time to wherever he has gone!”
The princesses looked at her with growing hopeful smiles. “Are you sure, Pinkie?” Luna asked.
The pink pony scrunched up her face with concentration and closed her eyes. “Wait... yes! Found his essence trail. It looks like he dragged all of the ponies he abducted through this very portal. That should make this a bit easier. Now I’ll need some time to follow his footsteps through dimensions and...” She paused.
Celestia leaned in eagerly. “Yes Pinkie? And what?”
“Bad news, Ti,” she said without altering her expression. “Looks like he made a few stops along the way. In some rough neighbourhoods, too. You two better go get some snacks, this could take awhile, maybe a few hours depending on just how many stops he made.”
Luna, somewhat let down by the news, shrugged her shoulders and replied, “If you say so.” She looked to Celestia, “Do you wish to come with me?”
Celestia nodded, and with a glance at the now sitting, but still focussed pink pony, they teleported into the castle’s pantry. The pantry was chock full of some of the finest ingredients available in all of Equestria; from fresh farm produce to premade meals and baked goods. Evidence of Pinkie’s experimentations into the culinary world was everywhere. They each grabbed a basket and began to fill them with various fruits and munchies.
“Ti?”
“What is it, Lu?”
“How does she do things like that? Those are some pretty intense powers for a regular Earth pony.”
Celestia looked at Luna, who also stopped gathering food to return the gaze.
“That’s precisely it. She is not a regular pony.” She paused, debating on how to continue. “Before I accept anypony to work in the castle, I have a background check done. No records exist of Pinkie Pie beyond 8 or 9 years ago. She literally just appeared in Ponyville one day and began a career as a confectioner.”
Luna sat down at a nearby table and set her basket down. “So you have no clue as to where she came from?”
Celestia shook her head. “Some down in Ponyville seem to think she was a rock farmer somewhere in Equestria with a rather drab family, but no records of any rock farms ever having been in existence could be found. After I heard that, I confronted her mare to mare on the issue and, after much persuasion, I got the truth.”
“And?”
“She isn’t form Equestria at all. She is from another, more chaotic dimension. A dimension full of enough sweets and candy and varying rules of possibility and physics to make a sane pony go mad.”
“Why would she leave such a place?” Luna wondered aloud. “It sounds like a paradise for her.”
“It was, but then she learned of other places with less parties and laughter, and this made her upset. So she vowed to travel to new planes of reality to spread smiles and laughter and cakes to beings in these sadder realms.”
Luna dawned in realization. “Which landed her here, of all places. I must say she does have a knack for making ponies smile.”
“Yes,” Celestia nodded in agreement, “yes she does. Now, back to gathering refreshments. We mustn’t stay here too long.”
“I agree, Ti.” Luna replied as she got back to her feet, scooping up her basket in the crook of her foreleg. “We must be there with her and prepared to depart at a moment’s notice.”
And with that, they continued about their task.
* * * * *
Twilight was wasting no time getting organized. No surprise there.
She had already taken inventory of her bag, in which was a pair of binoculars.
“These should come in handy,” she had said to herself, absent-mindedly.
Not only that, but she had divided the forest on her map into a grid, and was systematically searching for other ponies to team up with. She had already recruited Bon Bon with a paper fan, and a broken up and mildly singed Ditzy Doo with her belt of five hand grenades. It had been 6, but Cheerilee had been curious about the devices, and had discovered how they worked by holding the grenade in her mouth and pulling out the pin with her hoof. Ditzy had been too absorbed in studying Cheerliee’s weapon, a semi-automatic Uzi with 30 rounds, to have witnessed the tragic incident.
And for that she was thankful beyond words. “I... I just don’t know what went wrong...” she repeated to herself for the 15th time since.
It was that explosion that had attracted Twilight and Bon Bon, who had met unexcitingly enough. And it was Twilight who checked on the smoldering pony’s corpse for anything useful, and had ended up obtaining a new star for her collar with three flowers etched into its surface. The body and its missing appendages evaporated into small clouds of chocolate bubbles which popped in confetti.
The three walked along in silence, aside from the occasional regret muttered by Ditzy. Twilight was in the lead, constantly referencing her map and using her binoculars to scout ahead of them.
“Don’t you worry, you two,” she said to her followers. They looked up at her. “We just need to keep rounding up the survivors and find my friends, and then we can find a way out of this mess. I promise.”
Neither felt reassured. Ditzy looked down at her hooves again as she repeated her depressed mantra. Bon Bon, aside from the general feeling of despair, was missing her home, her sweet shop, and her roommate, Lyra. She wondered if she was still alright.