//------------------------------// // Pinkie // Story: Pinkamenian Rhapsody // by BitTune //------------------------------// Pinkamena stared at the stranger. The filly bounded up to her. “I made you some muffins for breakfast!” the filly smiled. Pinkamena uttered something that sounded like it wanted to be a word, but got a case of stage fright and refused to be said in its entirety. “They’re fresh out of the oven, too!” the vivid stranger continued. “And that’s when muffins are the best, but you don’t want to eat them right after they come out because then they’d be too hot and then they’d burn your tongue, and that’s not fun at all, so you should probably let them cool off for about five minutes or so, so that when you eat them they’re still all warm and fresh and toasty and yummy!” Pinkamena, taken aback by this run-on sentence, gave the newcomer a look of equal parts confusion, suspicion and resentment. When she finally found her tongue again, the words she spoke were slow and deliberate. “Who are you, and how did you get into my house?” “Well, I tried your door, but it was locked, and you never leave windows open, and I didn’t want to break one because then somepony would have to clean up all that broken glass, and that’s not fun, especially when it gets in your hooves and then it hurts when you walk and you have to use tweezers to get it out, and you don’t have a chimney in your house, so I had to come in through the mirror!” The filly beamed once again at Pinkamena. “The…mirror.” Pinkamena had started to get the sneaking suspicion that either she herself or the strange cotton-candy pony in front of her was completely insane. “Uh huh!” beamed the strange pony. “You see, I was hopping around through time and space, when all of a sudden I came across this alternate universe and I saw you being all sad and I was all like ‘Awww, what a sad universe where I’m all mopey all day! And I didn’t want you to be such a great big Frowny McMopeyPants so I decided to hop in and cheer you up!” “…Wait…what?!” Pinkamena tried but failed to make any sense out of the stranger’s rambling explanation. “Oh, silly, don’t you see?” The filly began to rhythmically trot in place, and then she began to sing. I was hopping around the multiverse and saw you feeling dooooooooown… Pinkamena was becoming more bewildered by the second. I couldn’t stand the sight of all your sadness and your froooooooowns… I couldn’t let this happen to any alternate me... So I popped in and dropped on by to help you, can’t you seeeeeeeeee? “Wait—wait, hang on,” Pinkamena interrupted the stranger’s little song. “Are…are you saying that…that you’re me?!” “Yeah! Well, I mean, I’m you from a different universe, but still!” “Wha-” Pinkamena mouthed, before a look of realization slowly but surely crept across her face. “Ohhhh! I get it now!” The stranger smiled at her once again. “This,” Pinkamena continued, “has to be the number-one weirdest dream I have ever had! I’m going back to bed.” She turned around to start up her stairs again. “Wait! Don’t! Then the muffins will get cold!” her doppelganger pleaded. “I’m not hungry.” Pinkamena rolled her eyes. “But Pinkie--” Pinkamena stopped. She turned around and looked at the “other Pinkamena” with a bewildered expression. “...‘Pinkie’? Since when has anypony ever called me that?” “Well, that’s your name, isn’t it?” “...Kind of?” Pinkamena raised an eyebrow. “Pinkamena Diane Pie?” “How...how do you know that!?” Pinkamena was beginning to feel extremely uneasy. She began to get the feeling that somehow this wasn’t a dream. “I’m you, silly, remember?” “Uh, no. I’m me, and you’re...whoever the hay you are. Aaand...I don’t know you, aaand...I’d really appreciate it if you got out of my house.” “But Pinkie, don’t you remember the rock farm?” The rock farm. Of course, she remembered it very well, although the less well she could remember it the more preferable to her. But she still had the memories. Memories of tedium, despair and resentment. Really not entirely unlike her current life. “You remember Mama and Daddy and Inkie and Blinkie, don’t you? And the old house and the rock fields and the Sonic Rainboom?” “Wait...the what??” “The Sonic Rainboom! You know!” The brighter pony began to make a series of vocal sound effects which, as far as Pinkamena could tell, approximated the sound of a hummingbird exploding. “And...” The smile suddenly vanished from the stranger’s face. “Oh, uh, I guess you don’t know, then,” she said with a nervous giggle. “...Hey, that would explain it, wouldn’t it?” “Explain...what?” Suddenly, Pinkamena started to feel, although she didn’t know why, a good deal less suspicious. “Everything! Why you’re so grumpy, why your mane’s so droopy...!” The bubbly newcomer suddenly gasped, her eyes focusing suddenly on something that was, or rather wasn’t, on Pinkamena’s flank. “And why you’ve got no Cutie Mark!”