//------------------------------//
// "Make your peace with that, and all will be well" 
// Story: Dead Space: Valor in Laughter 
// by Kishin 
//------------------------------//

Three weeks later

"Pinkie! Open the door! I must say, we are quite worried about you! Pinkie?!"

"Rarity, leave her alone. Maybe she's sleeping."

"Twilight, I cannot stand by idle while one of our dear friends is in despairing recluse!"

"We all want her to go back to the regular Pinkie. Just give it time," Applejack wisely advised.

Twilight shouted through the door, "If you're in there Pinkie, Mrs. Cake put your meal outside the door. You can talk to us anytime. Just....please come out, ok?"

Five mares walked down the stairs of the SugarCube Corner's second floor, and paced below in the bakery.

Rainbow Dash asked out loud, "Why's she so down? Nopony's talking about what happened over there! Doesn't she remember anything?"

Fluttershy whispered, "Maybe she doesn't want to talk about it-"

"But we're her friends! She should be able to talk to us about everything!"

Twilight defensively returned, "Rainbow, leave it be. Whatever happened to Pinkie when she was teleported....she just needs time to deal with it."




Good. They're gone. Now, back to work.

Pinkie Pie reached her hooves in a tin tub of soap water, scrubbing a long cloth of white, black, and blue striped crisscrossing across the fabric. She hoped that it's original color would reveal themselves, but the blood, bile, and chemicals from everything it had survived through were too embedded in the cloth to be removed. Pinkie got most of them off, but it left the shemagh in a lightish-red hue with pronounced strips of electric blue, something that she imagined would offend Rarity to her basic psychological core. Pinkie Pie sadly smiled. That would be a silly venture....for another day.

She slumped towards a mane-dryer to dry the shemagh, which it did quite quickly. Pinkie looked at a mirror, and adorned herself with the shemagh around her neck, just like Joon had.

It complemented her eyes and her coat color well, thought she would rather place it for safe keeping in a closet or under her bed then expose it to the outside world. It was....all she had left of a friend.

Pinkie Pie swiped off her neck the shemagh with a sluggish hoof and hopped onto her bed with as little amount of energy as possible. Next to her bedside was a discarded carton that emblazoned "Discord's 99.8% Pure Chocolate Milk", which Pinkie had recently purchased when she discovered that Discord was freed for helping somehow with her rescue attempt. He was doing quite well, last she heard that he was creating his own brand of processed food, joke merchandise, and...his own autobiography (with pop-ups). But what was more important was a dented, cracked, and ruined helmet of carbon-fiber alloy and titanium next to it. The helmet wouldn't fit an Equine head, but Celestia said that it violently ejected through the MIRoR portal when she attempted to go back to where the ship that Joon called "Valor" was last located before the portal malfunctioned, again.

Where the helmet, in place of a human's eyes, would normally glow blue, the light/camera mechanism was cracked, and had shut down once it had disconnected with its power source, the main body of the RIG. The damage it encountered on its perilous battle aboard Valor was still there, a testament of what it's user had experienced and perished for.

She promised herself that she wouldn't get teary, but she just couldn't take any more grief for the day. She lay her head on a pillow, and lifted the helmet up to her face. It was an image she was once so scared of, so horrified to greet. But it became a symbol of something that meant everything to her. A friend. 

She curled up around the helmet and closed her eyes. Right before her mind drifted away, she comtemplated for a while.

Maybe...maybe I should get out and talk to the Ol' Gang again? Joon would have wanted it. He said he wanted to meet them. So I guess tomorrow, I'll just have to meet them for him.

Pinkie Pie then quietly snored, her conscious mind arresting to a slow stop. In reality, she knew that she would never be able to see him again. But in her dreams....she dreamt of him. She dreamt that he would smile, and laugh, and dance in the tall grass. That he would be happy and endearing, and that she would be happy, too.

This was just a trough on a hill right? Sooner or later...

...you get to reach the top again.























Ponyville barely had any wind. The weather patrols took care of that easily, and the only turbulance that Equestria had was from the flutter of wings from passing pegasi or griffins. But the breath of a permanent spring wind blew along the curves of the open window on the second floor of Sugarcube Corner, almost alien in nature.

They were accompanied with whispers that sang as the wind met friction when they passed by obtrusive objects and buildings:


There are those that bequeath your name

And those that wish it dead in dirt

Don't ground your hoof into the gravel

You'll only get yourself hurt

But Heaven Found

 Isn't always Paradise Lost

Keep your face always towards the sunshine

And shadows will fall behind you

For an eternal summer that will not fade

Prevent it from

Keeping

Us

Apart.


The helmet's visual diodes lit up, struggling to emit a dying red light symbolizing either the near-death status of the user or its disconnection from the user's RIG. The audio system rebooted while emiting an automated message:


"Main RIG online. Life signs active. User in trackable vicinity...."

And the message continued, waiting for the arrival, or rather awakening, of its proper audience.
















The End