//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: The Pinkie Paradox 
// by SpaceCommie 
//------------------------------//

	You deserve an explanation for what happened to you. I hope I can give you one.

Wet. It’s the first thing I can remember. The water of the Mirror Pool dripped off me as I took my first breath and stepped out. After that, it was all sort of a blur for a while. I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t remember everything.

I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’ve done.

I mentioned that I was pretty out of it for the first few hours. There were only scattered impressions: blinking as I bounced into the sunlight for the first time, for instance. Bumping my head on the ceiling of Rarity’s shop didn’t help matters, and I began to stumble aimlessly around until I slumped down at one of those mushroom tables by the café. I was shocked out of my stupor by a voice behind me.

“Ugh, this is hopeless!”

It’d be too far to say that I perked up, but I started paying attention. Another voice responded: “Maybe that’s the real Pinkie.”

“Please. The real Pinkie never sat that long in one place her entire life!”

“I’m going to ask.”

Hearing this, I made a half-hearted attempt at turning my head towards the voices, but contented myself with flickering my eyes in that direction. I vaguely recognized them from having wandered by the library. It was a purple unicorn and a baby dragon. The dragon walked up to me.

“So, lemme guess. You’re the real Pinkie Pie.”

I shrugged and offered a reluctant response. “Heck if I know. Could be any one of us, if you ask me. And even if I said I was the real Pinkie Pie, you wouldn’t believe me.”

I’d been at the library long enough to realize that all the duplicates were convinced they were the real Pinkie Pie. To be honest, I was so out of it that I could have been the real Pinkie Pie without even realizing it. I concluded: “So just leave me alone. I’ve got some important poking the ground with my hoof to do.” The dragon recognized that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me, and rejoined the unicorn.

“Oh Spike, how are we going to do this? I can’t risk sending the real Pinkie back into the pond.”

Back into the pond. Back into the pond? What was there in the pond? As far as I knew—as far as I know—there is nothing in the pond. My mind started racing as I worked out the implications. I didn’t want to go back. There’s nothing to go back to, I thought, terrified. I didn’t, and don’t, know that I’d survive going back into the pond.

In what was either a temporary fit of insanity or a flash of brilliance, I yelled at the departing pair. “Hey! Hey!”

They turned, and I continued talking, a bit too fast, not entirely sure of what I was saying. “What if you gave them a test? Pick something really hard for a Pinkie to do, something not fun at all! Any Pinkie that can’t do it goes back into the pond.” I paused at this, remembering that stark beginning to my existence, and the void that lay before it. I gulped uneasily, and finished. “But whoever wants to stay the most, that must be the real Pinkie!”

I wasn’t actually sure that the real Pinkie would pass that test, which was after all the point of me proposing it.

“You know, that’s not a bad idea,” she said, walking away.

I was horrified at what I had just done. For one, I didn’t know whether I’d be any better than the real Pinkie at doing something “not fun at all”. I had the advantage of being scared and concussed, but I had nothing going for me other than fear of that pool as far as motivation went. Pinkie had friends and a life here. I was a duplicate, a cipher. No name, no past, no connections. Did I even deserve to stay around?


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In any case, a rainbow-maned pegasus dragged me into the town hall about a half-hour later. I took a seat—well, slumped down in the back—and tried to listen as the unicorn explained the purpose of the test. The haze of anxiety, if not outright terror, settled in quickly. I could only make out one scrap of what she said: “Whoever passes gets to stay.”

To stay. To survive, I thought.

“The test will be watching paint dry!” the unicorn announced. I breathed a sigh of relief. They obviously hadn’t picked up on the fact that only the real Pinkie would know, say, anything at all about her past. Heck, I couldn’t even identify all the ponies here. Watching paint dry, though? That I could do.

So I stared at the paint like it held all the secrets of the universe in it. My attention remained unbroken even when the beam of light shooting from Twilight’s horn vanished a duplicate in front of me. My eyes clung to the paint like a drowning pony to a rope. Dozens of flashes of light and poofs later, though, my eyes flickered towards the last remnant of pink in the room. This, I assumed, was the real Pinkie Pie. It didn’t matter to me, or at least that’s what I convinced myself, and stared at the paint until it consumed the whole of my vision. A voice from another universe barely registered. “Ugh! I can’t take it anymore! Look! Somebody’s making balloon animals!” There was a flash of pink at the periphery of my vision, and a sudden poof that echoed through the room. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the paint, but I allowed myself to relax subtly.

“Pinkie, you can look away now,” the unicorn said. I looked cautiously around the room. I was the only one left.

“I… passed?” I asked, in a small voice.

“You passed. You’re the only Pinkie who kept staring at the wall.”

Say something, say something, I thought frantically. “I had to, I just had to!” I half-screamed, half-sobbed. Some emotion I couldn’t place flickered over the unicorn’s face. Calm yourself before they suspect anything.

“I, uh, couldn’t leave my friends! I just couldn’t!” I said enthusiastically. I tried to smile widely but couldn’t manage it, settling for a faint grin. Before they could say anything, I ran out the door and onto the street. Somepony called out behind me, but I couldn’t make out anything past the rushing of blood in my ears. I wanted to run as far and fast as I could… but I couldn’t do anything that would seem suspicious. So I curtailed my pace to a quick trot and started to think of where I could go. An idea occurred to me. Where would the real Pinkie live?

Where had the real Pinkie lived? I corrected myself. Something about that rephrasing bothered me, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted. What kind of house would that frenetic pink pony have lived in?

Somepony yelled “Pinkie!” and I spun around to see a blue mare waving at me. She was standing next to a gangly yellow pony with an intensely worried expression. He shouted “Are there any more of you?”

Not anymore, I thought, and yelled “Just me!” I started trotting towards them reluctantly. For better or worse they were the first ponies to have talked to me outside the group in the town hall. I noticed the building they were standing outside. It was a somewhat uneven looking house with what looked like a frosted gingerbread roof and…

I was surprised to notice what could only be described as a pink cupcake tower perched on the house. So this is where she lived, I thought. It had to be. So who were these ponies? Pinkie’s parents? The thought was uncomfortable for reasons I couldn’t exactly define. They ushered me into the building hurriedly. It looked like a store of some sort. The walls had been slammed into by something, and the display cases smashed and their contents… stolen? No, eaten, judging from the crumbs and frosting stains everywhere. It’d explain the cupcake sign outside.

They noticed me staring. “Oh, I know, it’s a mess. You don’t have to clean it right now though,” the blue pony said gently. Have to clean it? Employers, then. I was so sure this was where Pinkie had lived, though. “Mrs. Cake and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go up to your room and…” the yellow pony said, and paused. It was evidently an open question what exactly I’d be doing in my room.

“Rightie! Thanks so much!” I said. I promptly walked to the nearest door and opened it. 

“Uh, dearie?” the blue pony—Mrs. Cake, it seemed—said. “That’s a closet. Your room is that way.” Mr. Cake rolled his eyes knowingly. I did my best to beam a Pinkie smile and bounced up the stairs.

It was an odd experience walking into Pinkie’s room for the first time: inappropriate, like I was intruding. Which I suppose I was. The sweets decor seems to have been kept for this part of the house, with a licorice railing on the staircase, giant lollipops inexplicably placed inside a pot like houseplants, and candy cane pillars. Still, it looks like Pinkie had made some personal touches. There were balloons strung up all over the place, and streamers on the floor. It looks like she had a party recently- although judging by how the balloons were deflated, not too recently. A glance at the trashcan revealed it to be full of more balloons, streamers, and cupcake wrappers.

I practically fell onto the bed, exhausted. I jumped off it suddenly. There was something underneath the covers! I flung the sheets off to discover some sort of creature standing on the bed, seemingly inert. A purple eye looked at me.

“Hi, alligator. Or crocodile. Whatever you are,” I said tiredly. I picked the reptile up and put it on the couch. Without bothering to get under the covers, I fell onto the bed and slept.

I got up early the next morning. It was still dark outside. I was cold—why hadn’t I gotten under the covers?—and disoriented. Where am I? I thought, and glanced around momentarily before seizing on the sight of the alligator from last night. It was, strangely, sitting right where I had put it, staring right at me. Spooky.

The memories of yesterday were still clear in my head—at least some of them—but they had this air of unreality to them. In retrospect, it felt something like waking up from a bad dream. There was something about the room that reminded me intensely and uncomfortably of Pinkie Pie. So I crept down to the shop and started to clean up the shards of glass and frosting splatters. They… we… really did a number on this place, I thought, and remembered the look on Mr. Cake’s face when he first saw me. People would be scared of me if they ever found out, even if it weren’t for the fact that I had taken Pinkie’s life. Did we hurt anyone? I wondered uneasily.

By the time the sun had cleared the horizon, I had managed to restore the shop to something approaching order, although much of the damage would take more than that to repair. They’d have to replace the display cases entirely. There was a knock on the door.

“Who are you?” was, unfortunately, the first thing out of my mouth. I mentally kicked myself. She looked confused, but said “It’s Rainbow Dash…”

Rainbow Dash.. The name was familiar. Where did I know it from? Maybe when Pinkie had—

“Are you okay, Pinkie? I can come back later if—" 

I interrupted tiredly. “Oh, no, don’t worry about me. What is it, Rainbow?”

“What is, Dashie?” I asked, assuming the usual Pinkie enthusiasm.

“Oh, well, Derpy was…” Rainbow said, and looked down with a frown. “She’s hurt pretty bad after what happened yesterday.”

I started to say something cautiously, but couldn’t really manage it. “The uh…”

“She got in the way of the duplicates, and…” Rainbow Dash said flatly, and stopped, picking up on my discomfort. I felt sick.

“I was thinking you might want to go cheer Derpy up,” Rainbow Dash said uncharacteristically quietly. I had been trying to maintain a half-smile up to that point, but it vanished with a trace at that.

“I’m the last pony she’d want to see right now,” I said morosely. “Sorry Dash, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I’m sure she’d know it wasn’t your fault,” Rainbow Dash said unconvincingly. “It wasn’t you, it was those duplicates!”

That did not help. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said, cringing a bit. “Maybe later?”

Rainbow was visibly disappointed, but tried to hide it anyways. “Of course, Pinkie. See ya around!” she said in a fakely jovial voice. I muttered something to the same effect and turned to go back inside, then thought better of it.

“Dash?” I said, getting her attention as she was about to fly away.

“Yes?”

“How…” I said, unable to finish the sentence. “How… bad is it?”

Rainbow Dash suddenly looked very worried, and she started reeling off a list of injuries, a bit uncertainly- probably quoting someone else. “Four of her ribs were broken, and she has um… lacerations and serious bruises on her legs and torso. It looks like her head got hit pretty hard too.” She blinked a bit, her eyes starting to water up. “And she’s… she’s unconscious. The doctors don’t know when she’ll wake up.”

I toyed awkwardly with a few sympathetic responses to that, but none of them seemed appropriate, and something gave me the impression that asking Rainbow Dash how we would manage to cheer her up wouldn’t go over well. “How’d it happen?”

“You—” she started, then started over. “No, you wouldn’t know. She was just in the way of the duplicates when they came into town. They ran over her for a while, knocked her head around. I guess they thought it was fun,” she said, spitting out the last word. I could say nothing in response to that. What could I possibly say?

I turned away from Dash and began walking back. When I got inside, I latched the door and sat down in front of it. Did I do this?  I wondered. There was nothing to suggest I hadn’t. A swell of guilt surged over me, and I glumly endured it. I stared at my hooves. Were these the hooves that did so much damage to Derpy’s body?

That’s when I got the idea for this. Call it what you like: a diary, my confused attempts to make sense of this all, maybe even a confession. This is the truth, my truth. If anyone’s entitled to it, you are. I’ve stolen a life, and there’s nothing I can or will do about that now. But I draw the line at lying to Derpy, whoever you are. So this is for you, Derpy. I hope you can forgive me. Maybe even understand me.