//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: Mirror, Mirror, in the Pond // by AhriSafari //------------------------------// Fun fun fun fun fun fun fun funfunfufunfunfun!!! At the time that was the only thing I was thinking about. Really when you’re only an hour old and have the personality copied from a pony that is perpetually high on sugar that’s the only thing you CAN think. Looking back on it, I would call it quite monotonous really. What I didn’t know at the time was that my, admittedly quite short, life was about to get turned topsy-turvy, and not in the fun lets-mess-with-the-laws-of-physics way. You see I’m nothing more than a copy of a pony named Pinkie Pie, who one day decided that it would be a good idea to make a bunch of copies of herself with only her base, hyperactive personality and none of the memories or experience to know (or for that matter care) how to control themselves. At the time I didn’t really know why, I was too busy having “fun” to pay attention when the original Pinkie Pie told us and I didn’t care enough to waste time asking. Of course by “fun” I mean running around Ponyville, causing more permanent mayhem and destruction then Discord, at least his mess got cleaned up by the power of friendship and rainbows! Right about now you’re starting to ask yourself, “hey mysterious narrator? If you’re a clone of Pinkie Pie then why are you such a snarky plothead?” Good question! You see it’s always been my philosophy that experiences and memories have a greater bearing on your behavior than your base personality, and boy do I have different experiences then Pinkie Pie. I mean how well-adjusted would you be if you were born in a world you knew nothing about where everypony was trying to kill you? But I’m getting ahead of myself here. So I was running around being an idiot and somehow I managed to make my way onto a roof. Then I attempted to do a stage dive, without a crowd, guess how well that turned out. Though it ended up hurting like hell I’m pretty sure this dumb move was the thing that saved my life, because at the same time all the other copies were getting rodeo’d into the town hall. After about a minute I woke up and saw a flash of purple light coming from said town hall. I assumed it was more interesting than lying on the ground in pain and rushed to investigate. I stealthily, and by stealthily I mean I’m still shocked I wasn’t discovered and fried right there, peaked in one of the windows. “Oh hey look, all the other Pinkies got together to have some fun! Hi everypony!!!” I said waving my hoof around to try to get somepony’s attention. Fortunately for me, only the Pinkie closest to me noticed. Unfortunately for her she turned to look at me with a huge smile on her face… then immediately was blasted with some of Twilight Sparkle’s magic, causing her to swell up like a balloon and explode with a magical ‘pop’. Immediately my jaw dropped to the floor and my mane and tail deflated like a month-old inflatable toy that’s been stabbed by a needle. Why would someone ever do that? What had she done wrong? Part of me wanted to run away right there but instead I ducked down and peaked through the window, hoping to find some answers. Upon closer inspection it looked as if all of the various Pinkies, the few that were left anyway, were staring intently at the town hall’s stage. On the stage was a movable set wall with what appeared to be… drying paint? How horrid must these friends of Pinkie Pie be to put them through such torture! The 6 of them, 5 ponies and a dragon, surrounded the other mes on all sides and watched them intently, but for what? I got my answer when one of the Pinkies turned to the other and challenged her to a crazy-face making contest. Both of them were then blasted with the same deadly spell from the purple murderous unicorn. This almost caused me to shriek in fright but thankfully I managed to stuff my hoof in my mouth in time to stop myself. At this point I managed to use deductive reasoning, despite not actually knowing what that was, to figure that they’re only blasting the Pinkies that looked away. If that was the case, what horrors would they do to me? I was never looking at the wall in the first place! Surely they’d come up with some new horror to subject me to before blasting me into oblivion! A little while later there were only 2 Pinkies left staring at the wall. I could see the sweat collecting on their faces as they tried to avoid their certain demise. You could taste the tension in the air (incidentally, tension tastes like candy corn). “Ugh, I can’t take it anymore!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed from the back of the room. She flew up behind the Pinkie’s and pointed to the window I was looking in through, causing me to duck down out of sight. “Somepony’s making balloon animals!” I heard her say. “Hey! That’s cheating!” I whispered to myself. I didn’t dare to look back through the window and possibly reveal myself, so I only heard my cheerful other say “What? Where?!” only to be answered by a blast of purple light that illuminated the window I was crouched under. So then that left only one, what horrors would they inflict upon her for defying them for so long? My morbid curiosity compelled me to peak through the widows again. “Pinkie, you can look away now,” Twilight Sparkle, the killer of my people, said to the one remaining me. I pitied the poor thing, how scared must she be right now? I readied myself to watch the only other pinkie besides me die just as I had watched the rest before. “I passed?” the other Pinkie said. Huh? “You passed,” replied Twilight Sparkle, “You’re the only Pinkie that kept staring at the wall!” What? So it had all been some sort of sick test?! What could they have been testing for that necessitated such brutality? “I had to. I just had to!” Pinkie said, “I couldn’t leave my friends, I just couldn’t!” This apparently traitorous Pinkie was pleading to her friends as if SHE was the bad guy here. At the time, however, I thought it was just an act to avoid becoming another victim. “But I guess sometimes I will have to choose between them…” Pinkie said, leaving me more confused than ever. What did that have to do with anything? “Knew you’d be up to the challenge,” Twilight said with a know-it-all smirk that just made you want to slap her. “I’m me! I’m me! I’m MEEE!” Pinkie jumped up in the air with glee before landing and having a one second long Identity crisis, “Or am I? Ya, I’m pretty sure I am!” This apparently satisfied Pinkie as she broke out into a huge smile, which just left me with a deep frown. If she was me than who was I? For all my life up to that point (about an hour and eleven minutes) I had been operating under the assumption that we could all be me, but apparently that was wrong. Only she could be me, and if she was me didn’t that mean I was next to be blasted by the great purple destroyer? All these questions distracted me from what they all said afterwards, so the next thing I noticed was them all walking towards the door. I knew I couldn’t let them find me, but I didn’t know what to do, in fact this is when I first began to realize that I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t know anypony’s names (I’ve been using everypony’s name in my retelling of this tale just so I don’t confuse your simple little heads with the ever-changing nicknames I was using at the time. You’re welcome), I didn’t even know that I was in Equestria or even what Equestria was! So I just did the first thing that came into my mind: I ran.