//------------------------------//
// Dark Clouds with Pink Linings 
// Story: Her Bitter Half 
// by Casketbase77 
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Sourced from Huussii on DeviantArt



Rain kept pounding down outside. Laughs and cheers rumbled from the faraway gym. And Starlight Glimmer was here, in the mop closet. Still hugging me. 

What's dragging you down today, Pinkie? That was what she'd asked. That was the million Bit question. And I was the pony with a hoof on the buzzer.

I slowly breathed in. Through the mouth, since my nose was still stuffed up by boogery scabs.

Then I slowly breathed out. 

And laughed.

"Me," I wheezed. "I'm what's dragging Pinkie down today. It's a... heh heh. It's a big cosmic joke, isn't it?" 

Starlight's hug stopped as I bent over, bitter giggles still spilling out of me like air escaping from a punctured party streamer. Pinkie didn't laugh like this. Desperate and defensive. No, she made big, trumpeting guffaws whenever she wanted and as often as she could. But Pinkie wasn't here. Starlight didn't know that, but I did. I knew it deep in my half-empty head and hollowed-out heart.

Comedy comes from tragedy Pinkie'd once read. And the tragedy is that there is no comedy. 

I laughed harder. I laughed myself hoarse in this cramped sweaty mop closet, draped over a sink that stunk from soap, snot, and streaks of drying blood. I laughed until I was empty, which didn't take very long. Finally ready to throw in the towel, I turned around to face Starlight. She was frowning. I guess she didn't see the funny side like I did.

"What... are you?"

“A Crisis with a capital "C"."

"I'm serious."

"Why? Take it from me, being serious is a one way train ticket to failureville." I rolled my shoulders and reclined against the sink. It felt so freeing to get it all out like that, to finally be able to no longer care. I'd given up now. I'd finally let go of hope. From this spot where my neck was tilted, my gaze saw ceiling tiles instead of my conversation partner. That was ayy okay by me. Ceiling tiles were nice, and didn't wait around for answers like stubborn Starlight did. Like stubborn Starlight was still doing. I sighed, shutting my eyes and slumping further over the sink's rim. Maybe if I really relaxed, I could turn to putty and wash down the drain.

"Starlight, you wouldn't believe who I was if I told you."

"Try me."

"Nah."

"Try me!"

Starlight was full of bluster and steam, but I waved her off. I guess because my forelimbs weren't yet putty like the rest of me. 

"Go away, Principal Glimmer. You should be at the pep rally with Twilight and the other ponies. Not in the janitor's hovel talking to some ghost."

As if to prove my point, distant cheers erupted and echoed down the hall. Twilight must've been really killing it with her performance today. That made one of us, I guess. The cheers were answered by a thunderclap so loud it rattled the faucet by my head. The world was still spinning without Pinkie, both inside the school and out. I didn't care. I was done with it all. At least, I thought I was until Starlight spoke up again.

"Listen, I know what it means when you have straight hair."

I slipped off the sink and hit the floor. Hard. I had a jawbone that ached where it'd conked the tile, and a tongue that recoiled when I bit it on impact. Both were proof this body was not made of putty. Neither were the flailing hooves and wild, swimming eyes that gawked up at Starlight.

"You know?" I choked out. 

That was impossible. I was Pinkie's most treasured secret. Or her most shameful, depending on which one of us you asked. And not the kiddie type of secret either. Not like Cadance being pregnant or Marble being scared of snakes. No, I was the type of bombshell that would get a pony stuffed into a straightjacket. Or blasted by the Elements of Harmony. Or whatever merciless magic cure the Kirin used to get rid of their Niriks.

"How," I mewled. "How do you know...?"

Starlight had no detective hat to take off or magnifying glass to put away. But she did bend down and reach out. Not to clamp a pair of shackles on me, but to lay a gentle hoof on top of mine. What made everything seem even more unreal, she didn't look triumphant or smug. In fact, she looked almost embarrassed.

"I um..." Starlight was chewing on her lower lip. "I know you weren't there for any of this. To be honest, I wasn't either. I only have Twilight and Spike's story that filled me in. But back when I... when I tried to stop the Rainboom that gave you and your friends all your Cutie Marks, at least one of the bad futures had you in it. With no cutie mark. And no curly mane either."

I was sitting up now, like a puppet suspended by tight strings of understanding. My ears were hot as I shook my head. 

"Unbelievable," I sighed. "You figured me out just from being told about that?"

Starlight shifted from one hoof to another. "I mean... for a pony paying attention, the puzzle pieces aren't exactly hard to put together."

She smiled playfully, which is what made me spring to my hooves in a full-on rage.

"Is that all Pinkie Pie is to you?!" I barked. "A pile of toy puzzle pieces to put together?!"

Starlight smile was gone in an instant, and she took a terrified step back. 

"How dare you crack jokes about your friend being gone!!" I was snorting steam, rattling the mop closet's walls even more than the rain pounding down from above. Starlight took several more steps back, tripping over an empty bucket and sprawling onto the floor. I towered over her, ranting and furious. 

"That Rainboom was Pinkie's birth, you hear me?? That blast of bliss and wonder was the moment I stopped being me, and started being somepony who actually mattered! How can you know all of that - how can you know me and how awful I am - and laugh about it behind Pinkie's back?" I put my hooves on Starlight and pulled her wide-eyed face to mine, mashing our noses. Mine was bleeding again. 

"I want to stop existing, Starlight! I want Pinkie to be free, and for my old, useless, hanger-on half of our mind to die!! It's all I've ever wanted from the moment that Rainboom blasted Pinkie to life, so why is she the one who vanished instead?? Why did..." It was getting impossible to yell through my wracking sobs. "Why did she abandon me? Oh, Pinkie, were you even real to begin with...? Pinkie... Pinkie... you were my mask of hope, and now you're gone. I don't think I can make you come back this time and... it makes me scared. I'm so scared, so horribly lost and alone without you..." 

I gave into wordless bawling like an infant now, the last of my fire finally spent. I knew, deep down, that my wretched daylong mental breakdown wasn't Starlight's fault. She was just the pony who'd been unlucky enough to always be nearby. But I was crying too hard to apologize. All I could do was hold her close, like a frantic filly in the arms of her mother. Never mind the fact we were two grown ponies in a musty, miserable mop closet. 

This was it. This was me finally hitting rock bottom.

After a moment, I felt Starlight pat me gently on the back. After another moment, I heard her speak.

"Um... wow. Okay then. Turns out I don't know what it means when you have straight hair. I thought it just meant that you- oh sorry, it just meant that Pinkie Pie was feeling down. I didn't think it meant... that."

She nudged me off her, and I meekly let it happen. My nose had left a smear of blood and snot on Starlight's shoulder, but before I could gurgle something that sounded like a 'sorry,' Starlight hushed me and levitated a tissue box down from a nearby shelf. She wiped her fur. I wiped my face. Then Starlight tilted her head with cautious curiosity.

"You... must have a name, right?"

"Whu-?"

"A name. You were yelli- erm talking about Pinkie in the third person, so I'm guessing you... um... consider yourself a different pony than her. So do you have a name?"

I blew my nose so I wouldn't have to answer right away. Saying my name to someone else scared me. It was like an admission I was real. I tried to change the topic. It was a cowardly move, but I did it anyway.

"You're ridiculously relaxed for someone who just learned her friend has a freaking split personality."

That earned a coy shrug from Starlight. "More that my friend is a split personality. And don't get me wrong, its definitely a lot to take in. Especially with the not-so-gentle way you decided to explain it."

I hunched down, as if I could hide my embarrassment behind the soiled tissue clutched in my hooves. 

"But at the same time," Starlight hastily added. "I've seen a lot of weird stuff in my days. Time travel, an all-powerful alicorn baby, bird-snakes that turn things to stone with their eyes." Starlight risked another playful smile, and I made sure I didn't attack her this time. "Honestly, I'm just happy to know you're the real Pinkie Pie. Before Ocellus came back with her report, I was getting flashbacks to the time you and the others all got replaced by Changelings and it took me way too long to notice."

I hugged my knees dejectedly. "I dunno if you can consider me the 'real' Pinkie Pie. I definitely don't." 

"Well, Pinkie Pie is the only name I have to call you. Unless you want to remedy that."

Horseapples. Well played, Starlight.

"My name... is Pinkamena."

"Well then. It's nice to meet you, Mena."

"Don't lie. And don't shorten it like that either."

As if by some cosmic cue, a gymnasium's worth of laughter echoed from down the hall.

Starlight peered in the direction of the sound, looking pensive. Then she stood up. 

"Sounds like Twilight's speech is being received pretty well. I told her it would. C'mon, let's go."

"Huh?" I didn't move from my spot. "Whaddya mean, 'let's go'?"

Starlight extended a hoof. "I mean just that, Mena. Let's go to the pep rally."

"B-but... What about Pinkie? She's still missing!" Thunder rumbled outside, like it was agreeing with my point.

"So you say. But I doubt we're gonna find her in this mop closet. I think we'll have better luck in the gym."

"Around... all those ponies?" The thought of following Starlight into such a packed room churned my stomach. 

"Not just any ponies. Our friends are there. Applejack, Trixie, Fluttershy... even Twilight. They'll help us, Mena. They'll help you. Because this is the School of Friendship. I'm honestly surprised you didn't come clean to us right away."

I still didn't budge. "But what if there's nothing they can do?"

"There will be. You think it's just some freak accident that all your friends are in one place together on the exact day you need them the most? Twilight is only in town one day per year, Mena. Whatever is happening to you must be happening for a reason. We can solve this the same way we solve everything. With friendship."

I closed my eyes and breathed in. Rain was still pounding, harder than ever, on the School of Friendship from above. But laughs, cheers, and applause filled the School of Friendship from within. Between the two, the empty and the crowded, the oppressive and the welcoming, was silent Starlight. And me, gathering my courage.

The swing of the opening closet door jolted my eyes open. Then made them squint again.

"Blegh," Starlight commented. "These garish overhead lights out here are way more harsh and bright than I remember."

I was nearly ready to stand up and face the world again. But I had one last question left before that.

"Starlight?"

"Hm?"

"Why... are you being so nice to me? You have to understand, I'm not... I'm not Pinkie Pie. I'm a stranger."

Starlight Glimmer, principal of the School of Friendship, stood tall and proud.

"Isn't showing friendship to strangers the whole reason this place was built?" She ran a hoof over her head and smiled warmly. "Besides, I can relate to someone using a change of hair to leave the bad part of herself behind."

I reached up to accept Starlight's kindness. I swear that I did. But before our hooves met, the roof was ripped off the School of Friendship like a lid off a peach can.

Deafening stormwinds shredded shingles and tossed support beams sky high. Huge filthy hailstones blasted the interior halls where they shattered light fixtures, dented lockers, and cracked the tiles on the floor. One of them hit my flank, stinging from cold and sheer speed of impact. There was no sun, only roiling pitch black thunderclouds that blotted all light from the sky. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see Starlight. 

I tried to call her name, but a blinding lightning strike and deafening thunder clap shocked me senseless for moment. Over the ringing in my ears I heard screams of schoolponies. Past the blotches in my vision, I witnessed an airborne uprooted tree hurdling towards me just a split second before it made impact. 

Pony chests weren't supposed to make crunching noises. Mine did. 

Mashed onto my stomach by a log ten times my size, I gasped for air. Any air at all. My lungs were having none of it. Not through a pulverized ribcage and Faust knows how many pounds of pressure from the wreckage crushing down on top. 

Black rain was slicing horizontally through the air, polluting the topless halls of the school like dirt skidding into a freshly open wound. Another lightning flash, another split second of illumination. My bugged-out pressure-popped eyes saw a purple princess, flapping high above in the tempest. Her hornlight was tiny but unsnuffable, warding against the howling whirlwind of darkness all around.

After the lightning came another thunderclap. This one so loud it rattled my teeth. But after the echoes faded, I heard, through frantic sips of air getting past my chapped lips, Twilight Sparkle's royal Canterlot voice:

"Any teacher who can hear me, escort every student you can find to the nearest basement entrance now! Any student who can hear me, find a teacher! This storm isn't natural!!"

The galeforce picked up and roared through my pinned ears. It was like the storm itself was annoyed at Twilight's attempts to save people from it. Twilight's response was to focus her horn's light, casting a brave glow through the fresh ruins all around. My tree was visible now, but Twilight was being pelted by freezing rain so she didn't see me. I had no strength to yell for help, and it's not like I could have been heard over the still screaming students and the hoofbeats of the staff trying to heard everyone to safety.

Starlight. Where was Starlight?

My tree wasn't the only piece of torn and tossed destruction that got scattered around. One of the School of Friendship's purple-spired tower tops had crashed near the spot I was trapped in. In fact, it was right where Starlight had been standing when the chaos began.

The thought that came from seeing this was too horrific to imagine. Ditching it from my mind, I reached my forelegs feebly upward at Twilight. No one else was close to me. No one else was coming to my rescue. I waved my battered hooves, pink in their fur, but blotched purple where they'd begun to bruise. 

Twilight didn't see me. She didn't even look down. Though to be fair, she was occupied by a massive leering face finally forming in the churning maelstrom up above. One of a gleeful, monstrous stallion. I hadn't thought the surrounding screams could get any more frenzied. They noticeably did.

"You," Twilight gasped.

"Me!" 

The voice of King Sombra thrummed so loud it shattered the remains of a window pane near my head. The glass splinters showered down, and I prayed for none to get in my gaping mouth. I was getting so little air gasping like this, I couldn't afford to shut my jaw for even an instant. 

High above, Twilight and the storm monster stared each other down.

"How did you come back this time, you brute?"

"Trying to bait me into a monologue, tiny princess? Consider the bait bitten clean off your fishing reel!"

An impossible pillar of blackness made solid jetted out from the storm's eye and struck Twilight square in the face. Her wings went limp and her hornlight sputtered and she spiraled downwards. I actually managed a squeaking whinny of horror at the sight. This was insanity. A ridiculous nightmare shredding away at the world around me. How and why in the wide world of Equus was King Sombra here, in Ponyville, on today of all days?

The black pillar was forming into a pony-like shape as it chased Twilight down. Her horn was still sputtering, but moments before she splatted onto the bleachers in what used to be the gymnasium, Her wings flared, her light reignited, and she swooped to a safe landing on the central court. The writhing mass of solid Sombra smoke smashed down near her like some smug meteorite. He shook his brittle obsidian hooves free of the impact craters they'd each formed, eyeballing one of them with a smoldering green torchlight that swiveled in his eye socket.

"Cracked," he announced dismissively. "Though I shouldn't be surprised to see the only pony who can damage me is, well, me!" The Sombra golem tossed back its head and laughed. Its sound mixed with thunderclaps all around. Twilight however, was back on her hooves and not intimidated in the slightest.

"I have to say Sombra, this is a sloppy ambush and even sloppier resurrection. You call that heap of rocks a working body?"

The golem stomped at her insult, sending out a shockwave that Twilight easily hopped over, but I couldn't. I was maybe twenty strides away from them. Unnoticed, pinned, helpless, and dying. Now on top of it all, I'd been blasted in the face by a sooty pulse of coaldust.

"Meh, so this form is a bit of a fixer upper," Sombra conceded joylessly. "Hardly matters. I'll splurge on a more complete rebirth later, after I'm done wringing your defenseless little neck."

Twilight pawed at the rain-slicked gym floor while she and the monster circled one another.

"Will you, now? Tough talk for a pony whose butt has been blasted to bits going on... what is it? Three times now? Four?"

The golem roared and a lightning strike singed Twilight's tail hair. The bolt would have definitely split her in half if she hadn't dodged when she did. The stench of soot lingered on everything now. I could taste it on my tongue, and not even the relentless rain was washing it away. 

The hero and the villain kept going with their outrageous banter. I meanwhile squealed silently as my log shifted and yet another rib audibly cracked.

"I think I picked a terrific day to rain on your parade, Twilight Sparkle. I had to wait a long time for you and your old friends to all gather again in one place."

"And you're stupid for trying to get the drop on us when we have each other's backs!"

It hadn't been Twilight who announced that, but a bright blue blur. Rainbow Dash plowed directly into the side of the Sombra golem at high speed. His response was to shrug her off and conjure a lattice of barbed black crystal rods,  pinning her to the floor.

"Pipe down, you. The adults are talking."

"Dash!" Twilight's cry was cut short by a warning shot from Sombra's horn. Not aimed at her, but instead scorching the ground barely a hair away from Rainbow Dash's restrained head. The message was clear: don't make any sudden moves, or the hostage gets it.

"Dash," Twilight groaned, "you're supposed to be firing up the Treehouse of Harmony downstairs with the others."

"I know!" Rainbow Dash wailed," But we can't find Pinkie! She didn't show up to the pep rally, and without all of us, the tree's magic won't wo-mmph!"

A fresh lattice of coal crystal covered Rainbow Dash's mouth. Her eyes bore up at Sombra like daggers, and her nostrils snorted steam. But that was all she could do now.

For the first time since the standoff began, Twilight Sparkle looked genuinely afraid.

"Can't find the pink one, eh?" Sombra relished that he was in a position to gloat. "What a terrible stroke of luck for you, princess. Then again," the rain was intensifying above the gym now. "What if I told you it wasn't luck at all?"

What precious little air I had was suddenly no longer coming through. It was caught in my throat. 

"What..." Twilight was openly terrified now. "What did you do to Pinkie?"

My vision was fogging with the purest, angriest red ever seen by a mortal mare.

"Oh gee," Sombra knelt down to tickle a furiously thrashing Rainbow Dash under the chin. "What did I do to the pink one? Probably something horrible. Like pocketing a pony-sized dose of nightmare magic as I clawed my way back from the void. Oh wait, did I say pony-sized?" He spat the next words with glee. "I meant continent-sized. And then I stuffed it into your friend's head. She's was the easiest target, being the heaviest sleeper of you lot. And she definitely didn't wake up from that this morning. In fact, as long as my hex holds, I doubt the drooling pink vegetable will ever wake up again." 

Log wood creaked and strained. The leg strength of a berserking pink Earth Pony pressed against the planet. Slowly, desperately, by painfully imperceptible degrees, the fallen tree was beginning to lift.

"Well, that's the long and short of it, I suppose." The Sombra golem clicked his nonexistent tongue and aimed his horn at the dumbstruck, devastated Twilight. "It's honestly taking a lot out of my reserves to keep one of your precious keystone friends out of action. Plus, bluey here ruined the big speech I wanted to give. But to Tartarus with theatrics; my plan remains unchanged. I'll mop up the two of you, finish off your friends, then put some work into a proper flesh and bone body to rule my new emp-"

Sombra was interrupted by the splintering crack of freshly fallen birch tree followed by an ear-splitting, skypiercing, bloodcurdling screech of righteous feral fury.

I need to make a sort of confession at this point. I need to say that it's been several years since the day where all this awfulness all happened. Several very long years since this horrible, humiliating day that Pinkie and Starlight have dubbed "Mena's Undercover Adventure." I can remember almost every detail of what I saw, and what I did. Everything up to the last few minutes. Which were the next few minutes.

So for this short chunk, I have to pull from Twilight and Dash's stories of what went down. Starting with what I looked like as I charged. Twilight says that I was foaming from the mouth. And by her "estimation of the bubble consistency," the foam probably wasn't caused by the gargling gasps of air I was gulping.

Meanwhile, Dash says my charge was more like a shambling, tripod limp. Heaving the tree away had revealed that my left hind leg was broken so bad, there were bones sticking out in at least two places. 

Both agree though, and I guess it must be true, that I made it to Sombra's golem body without him making any move to stop me. In fact, according to them, he didn't really do anything except gawk at my shambling frenzied approach and mutter "This isn’t possible... I got rid of you... I got rid of you...!"

I don't know. I can't say. But however it happened, I made it to him. 

Dash's description of what came next uses these words: "It was kinda like a yak in a china shop, with one pony-sized vase that the yak really, really hated in particular." 

Twilight's description was shorter: "Mindless, animalistic pugilism." 

You'll just have to use your imagination. I know I have to, since the only part I really remember came right at the end. It was when the rain finally stopped coming down and the dark clouds faded away to let the sun be seen. 

My hooves and face were caked with coal dust, or at least something very close to it. There was a pile of the stuff in front of me. Enough that if you scraped it all together, you could make a life-sized sculpture of a bigger-than-average unicorn. Except now that my aching hooves were done doing what they did to it, the pile was just empty ashes. All of its magic beaten and chased back into the void where it belonged. And as it faded, so did all its nasty ongoing curses. 

My shoulders straightened and my hair began to curl. 

"Holy moly Pinkie, that was awesome!" Rainbow Dash was shaking herself off, brittle bits of her crystal tethers crumbling to dust. "I had no idea you could throw hooves like that."

Through eyes I was slowly fading from, I peered at her. Dash had this huge goofy grin distorting her dirtied face, and her legs were shaking from adrenaline. This was a look I knew super well. Pinkie was also the type to fall back on a forced chipper attitude when she'd just been seen something disturbing. Or rather, she was the forced chipper attitude.

"Pinkie, you're hurt!" Twilight was on my other side, skidding to a stop and openly queasy at the sight of my caved-in chest and mangled hind leg. "Does it feel bad? Nod if you can't speak."

I could feel my half of ourself going back to sleep. Which was good, right? It was good that soon Pinkie could laugh and hug her friends and play off any suspicions that somepony else had gripping the wheel for awhile. Plus, I could finally rest feeling satisfied that the mystery was solved. This was supposed to all feel correct. This was what I'd wanted from the start.

"Can you hear us okay?"

"Yeah, you look like you're about to cry."

How come I was feeling so deathly scared to go? This wasn't my life. These weren't my friends I was leaving.

Were they?

With a jolt, I suddenly remembered somepony who was. Since Twilight the closest, I pawed at her and poured everything I had left into forming a few desperate words.

"St... Starl..."

Twilight leaned down, frowning with worry. "What now? Pinkie, if hurts too much, don't try to talk."

Darkness framed my vision, as did a mane of fully frizzy hair. I knew I had a few seconds left at the absolute most.

"Find... Starlight."

Rainbow Dash heard, and was in the air in an instant. "You were with Starlight when we couldn't find you? Oh jeez, she could be buried anywhere in this mess!" In a burst of blue, she was digging through the nearest pile of rubble. Twilight meanwhile, stayed by my side. She had a different kind of worry coming off of her now.

"Pinkie... are you lucid right now?"

A giggle of relief escaped my mouth. A giggle that wasn't mine.

And then I was gone. For now.