//------------------------------// // Chapter 36 // Story: The Siren // by McPoodle //------------------------------// Ponyville. Sugarcube Corner. March 5 of the Year 2. Saturday. After “Read It and Weep”, “Sweet and Elite”, “Dragon Quest”, “A Friend In Deed”, “Hearts and Hooves Day”… Seven days after “May the Best Pet Win!”. “Party of One”. It was Pinkie Pie’s birthday. And her friends wanted to throw her a surprise party. But she seemed to be acting…odd. Each of her friends could attest to her odd responses to their own odd behavior. Because they were trying to set up a party that was supposed to be secret from the party pony who seemed to know every secret in Ponyville. The party in Applejack’s barn was finally ready. And Rainbow Dash was given the job of getting Pinkie to that barn on a false pretense so everypony could leap out of their hiding places and yell “Surprise!” at her. And then learn if she had known it all along or not. It didn’t take long for Rainbow Dash to find Pinkie Pie, having spotted a shadow stalking back and forth across the window of Pinkie’s loft bedroom. Something about that shadow gave off an intense feeling of wrongness, but Rainbow Dash shook that off easily. After all, Rainbow had always had all sorts of feelings pop into her head growing up, and about half of them turned out to be “hooey” (as Applejack would say). She entered the shop, to see Mr. and Mrs. Cake looking nervously over at the side staircase that led up to Pinkie’s room. “Hey, Cakes!” Rainbow exclaimed. Then she stopped to laugh at herself…haycakes. “Is Pinkie up there?” “Yeah, but…” Mr. Cake began before tapering off. “She’s, uh…it’s not, um…” Mrs. Cake tried to say. “Safe,” Mr. Cake supplied. Mrs. Cake nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, safe. It’s not safe to see her when she’s in one of her moods.” “She has moods?” Rainbow asked, trying and failing to even imagine what that might look like. “Well, maybe I can help.” The married couple looked at each other. “Well…” Mrs. Cake began. “You two do appear to be close friends,” Mr. Cake said. “I guess you might be able to get through to her this time. But be careful.” “Yes. Be careful.” “Okay!” Rainbow said brightly as she climbed the stairs to the third floor of the shop. When she got to the second floor, she could hear the pacing. Plus, muttering and the occasional crash of broken ceramics. Rainbow paused. She knew that Pinkie had certain abilities absent from most ponies. (And sometimes, even some alicorns.) But she had never worried, because Pinkie Pie was always happy, and always wanted to make everypony else happy. But what if, sometimes, she wasn’t happy? What if…what if for once she wanted to use her incredible cosmic powers to hurt somepony? Somepony who had allowed a certain prank to go out of control last week? Rainbow Dash swallowed audibly. She looked over her shoulder, considering whether she should just fly back to the barn and tell the others that she couldn’t find Pinkie. I mean, I’m not exactly the Element of Honesty, she thought to herself. Then she had another thought: I’m the Element of Loyalty. And loyalty means going in there and taking my lumps, because that will make Pinkie more like herself. But that didn’t mean she had to barge right into the room, either. Slowly, silently, she crept up the steps, and finally stopped right below the open passage to the next floor, to try and hear what was going on inside. What she heard was a nonsensical argument between several individuals about which pony was or was not a “traitor”. Most of the voices were obviously Pinkie playing pretend. But one of them…either Pinkie had some sort of electrified tin can to alter her voice…or…well Rainbow Dash didn’t even want to think about that “or”, so instead she boldly… Knocked on the wall of the staircase so the owner of that disturbing voice had plenty of time to hide in the closet or something. “Hey there, Pinkie Pie!” she said loudly. “Sorry I was in such a rush earlier. Had…some place to be and couldn’t slow down and say, you know…‘Hello’ and all that. Y…you know how it goes.” She carefully poked her head up and looked around. In the room was a Pinkie Pie that was…wrong. Her coat and mane were subtly off in color, like she was sitting in an otherwise-invisible shadow. Her mane…was straight. That was so intensely wrong that it nearly made Rainbow shake. But worse was the awful, hateful expression on Pinkie’s face. “I know how it goes, all right!” this…“Pinkie” exclaimed. Rainbow had no choice—she couldn’t possibly label the pony before her as Pinkie Pie without using scare quotes around the name. “Pinkie” turned and stalked away from her. “Yeah…” Rainbow said as she fully entered the room. There was a table laid out as for a filly’s tea party, with the usual empty cups and plates that presumably held imaginary food—the same table that all of them had used in Pinkie’s party from the day before. And the day before that, and the day before that… There were guests to this party, but instead of the dolls you might expect, there were instead rocks, a lump of lint, and…a bag of flour? “So…” Rainbow said, having a lot of trouble forming her words given all of the alarm bells ringing inside her head, “Why don’t you come with me over to Sweet Apple Acres?” “Pinkie Pie” turned on her and threw up her snout in contempt. “No thanks. I’m spending time with my real friends!” And with this she gestured at the various objects on the chairs. “Isn’t that right, Madame le Flour?” Her eyes crossed as she changed characters. “Oui! Zat iz correct, madame,” said “Madame le Flour”, aka the flour bag, complete with equipomorphic gestures and a thrown voice both provided by Pinkie Pie. Only Pinkie Pie was on the other side of the room, standing next to Rainbow Dash. So only the voice made any sense. Rainbow began to get a headache. “Uh…Pinkie Pie?” she asked with a rising degree of panic. “Another slice of cake, Sir Lintsalot?” The lint ball, “Sir Lintsalot”, spoke in a low voice. “I’d love one.” Again, it hopped up and down all by itself, while Pinkie Pie moved a hoof as if to move it but was way too far away to pull this off. Rainbow looked in vain for some kind of horn on Pinkie, now that her mane was flat enough to reveal even a tiny one. “Alrighty,” Rainbow said slowly. “What say we get on out of Creepytown and head over to Applejack’s—” A turnip shoved itself into her face. “She’s not going anywhere,” it said, in a filly’s imitation of a stallion. “We’re her friends now.” Rainbow gently pushed the floating vegetable out of her personal space. “This is all a huge misunderstanding, that we can clear up real simple.” “No!” “Pinkie Pie” insisted. “I’m having a wonderful time right here.” Rainbow sighed and tamped down the panic with a mental effort. “Right, so…” She pointed at each of the puppets: “Madame le Flour. Sir Lintsalot, …” “Mr. Turnip,” the flying turnip said. “And Rocky!” the rock said, with a stereotypical gangster’s accent. “Of course,” Rainbow muttered. “See, a true friend always tries to learn the names of her friend’s friends. No matter what she thinks of them. Whatever you think of the others, I’m doing the right thing here. I’m sorry for the…probably very long list of things I did wrong to you…” The pause was supposed to be Rainbow thinking of the next thing to say. “Pinkie” took it entirely differently. “Pinkamena,” she said curtly. Rainbow recognized the birth name of Pinkie Pie and paired it to her story from six moons ago about how she got her cutie mark (I’m sorry, created Equestria), and what she looked like when that happened. “Pinkamena,” she then repeated without a pause, “so what more do I need to do to make amends?” “Nothing!” Rocky declared. Rainbow sighed. “Alright, that’s enough,” a new voice declared—the voice that Rainbow Dash really didn’t want to learn the source of. Rising up from behind Pinkie’s head was a disgusting, pulsing pink tentacled blob. With a single bleary eye. And a primitive mouth. And a tiny little naked brain on top. And not even a pony brain—Rainbow remembered what those looked like. No this was some kind of alien brain from a bad science fiction movie. Only this was no special effect. “I’ve allowed this tantrum to go on long enough.” Pinkamena looked up at the floating, glowing—yes, it was now glowing as well as pulsing—brain slug in contempt. “They abandoned me!” she accused, shoving a hoof into Rainbow’s snout. Rainbow calmly made one step backwards, and just stopped herself from falling down the stairs. By this point her emotional brain had completely shut down, and she was just waiting for the giant hole to open beneath her so that she could fall into the fiery pit, as she so often did in her nightmares. “They got tired of your parties, which had become exhausting.” “What…really?” Pinkie Pie asked. And for a moment, just a moment, it was Pinkie Pie who was standing there under the glowing tentacle-blob and not Pinkamena. But at Rainbow’s next blink she reverted. “Is this true?” Pinkamena demanded of Rainbow Dash. Rainbow had been hoping that the duo…or maybe trio…would maybe have forgotten about her existence. “Um…yeah, you were going too far,” she admitted. And then quickly added, “But only a little!” “Why didn’t you say anything?” Still demanding. “Well, we know how much you…how much Pinkie Pie…loves throwing parties. And we didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” she stated with complete honesty. “Huh,” said Pinkamena, mulling this over. “And when you pushed too far, your friends decided they needed a time out,” the metallic voice stated. Rainbow noted that the creature didn’t have a mouth to speak with. But didn’t use telepathy either. It was more like that thing that Twilight did in the timespace when she ordered the Elements around. She wondered if the thing had learned how to do that from watching Twilight. “Well, not exactly,” said Rainbow, “but close enough. So, would you like to patch things up?” “Are you going to hurt me again?” Pinkamena said. Only this time she was the little filly from Pinkie’s story. Rainbow sighed and lowered herself to the filly’s level. “I can’t promise you that I won’t, I’m afraid. Life is just like that. But we’ll always be really sorry afterwards.” Pinkie Pie sighed. “I guess that’s the best I can hope for.” Rainbow Dash got back to her hooves, to discover that the tentacle-blob could no longer be seen. Because Pinkie’s mane completely covered the spot where it once was. Meaning that that…thing had always been there. Speaking of which… “And you’ve got your, uh, friend to give you good advice. Right…?” Again, her pause was misinterpreted, because the muffled metallic voice responded with the name “Rozetri.” “Rozetri,” Rainbow repeated. “You know, that’s actually a rather nice name!” “Thank you. It’s the only memory of myself I still retain. Now, I’m sorry to do this, and it’s terribly hypocritical, but I will have to strip your memory of this conversation out of your brain before you can take Pinkie Pie with you to Applejack’s abode.” “Oh thank you!” Rainbow exclaimed. “I’d really rather not try to keep a secret like this.” She closed her eyes, and tried to open her mind. Some sort of warm beam swept back and forth over her head. “Oh hey, Rainbow Dash,” Pinkie Pie said somewhat shyly as Rainbow opened her eyes. “What are you doing here?” “I want to say I’m sorry, and that I’m here to take you to Sweet Apple Acres, where everything will be explained. And-also-that-you-sometimes-go-a-tiny-bit-overboard-with-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-parties.” “Oh. Okay. Well lead away!” Pinkie proclaimed. Rainbow turned and walked down the stairs in a cold sweat. Because Rainbow Dash remembered everything.