Chapter 15: Feeling Pinkie Keen
I woke up with the mother of all headaches. Vael and I had been playing life-sized chess for about six hours straight after I fell asleep. The best part was that I got to actually punch and kick the other pieces like they were real people. It helps, having an ethereal demon creature living inside your head. It really releases the stress.
Eventually, though, it was time for me to wake up. Little did I know, beating the crap out of huge plastic blobs while you’re asleep does not count as actual sleep, and thus I got about an hour and a half of real sleep time on me. I groaned and rolled off the roof, using my back and legs to twist around and land on my hooves. As I knocked the bleariness from my eyes, I trotted over to the Wolves’ encampment. Danny and Nightstar were keeping watch this time. I had to hand it to Danny, he was teaching little Night well. I could barely even see him until they padded towards me.
“Hi, uncle!” Night said excitedly.
“Hey, Night,” I replied, ruffling his fur. He grinned.
“Uncle, Daniel’s been teaching me all about being a great hunter!” he exclaimed. “I even caught today’s breakfast!” he gestured to a line of rabbits laying out along the fireside.
“You helped,” Danny said affectionately. “In all fairness, you did catch half, though.”
“Wow,” I said. This kid had incredible potential. If Brenner was smart, he’d choose Night as his successor after he retires. If semi-corporeal spirits of Hope even age.
“Good job, Night. I’ve noticed you’re getting better at sneaking around. Using the shadows to hide with your dark fur –very impressive. Give it a few more months, and you’ll be the youngest member of the squad.” Night was glowing with pride and delight.
Before I continue, let me explain. The Element of Hope keeps constantly forming new wolves. There’s some kind of unstable magic variable that could possibly kill us all mixed in there, but whatever. So whenever a Wolf gets to the point where they’re tired of protecting the Element and its bearer, they’re just absorbed back into Hope and a new Wolf takes their place. The best part of it is, all of the sentient consciousnesses that are absorbed retain their mind and will, so I don’t have to feel guilty about “killing” my allies.
“Alright, then. Night, you’re with me today. Danny, sit down and sleep, for Christ’s sake. You’ve been up for three freaking days, and I can’t have my left-hand man tired as a sloth. Tell everywolf to wake up and eat while I head back to the Acres.” Danny nodded and returned to the camp, while Night jumped on my shoulder. I trotted back to the farmhouse and began cooking breakfast with Applebloom. She and Night chatted aimlessly for about a half-hour as the three of us set everything up. I noticed that Applebloom would stare at him for a moment or two longer than was necessary every once in a while. It seemed strange, but I chalked it up to my imagination. I made my average rounds after breakfast, stopping to get about twice the amount of lemonade as usual. That was when my Common Sense told me there was something about to fall above my head.
“Twitchy tail!” Pinkie screamed from nearby. I dove to the side as a piano nearly brained me.
“Derpy, watch it!” I shouted. Derpy, who was hovering sheepishly above me, gave an apologetic half-glance. I heaved a sigh and found the great Pink.
“Pinkie, how did you know that was going to fall?” I asked.
“My Pinkie Sense, of course,” she responded cheerfully.
“What exactly does this ‘Pinkie Sense’ do?” I asked curiously.
“Well, when different parts of my body move in different ways, it means things are about to happen. For example, when my tail twitches, it means something is about to fall.”
“Oh, so you mean like my Common Sense,” I remarked. Twilight walked up, looking at me oddly.
“What’s so special about common sense?” she asked. I chuckled.
“Come on, Twilight. All three of us know that common sense is so rare it’s a superpower. I have numerous examples: Jackass, Project X, the future production of Star Wars: Episode VII by Disney…” I trailed off as Pinkie groaned.
“Disney’s screwing with another good series?” she asked hopelessly. I nodded.
“Damn executives,” I sighed. Twilight looked at me oddly.
“Human thing.” I waved off her stares and returned to the main focus: Pinkie. Her tail suddenly twitched again, and my Common Sense detected several large, painful objects. We dove in opposite directions to avoid the death by falling evil, while Twilight just gave us an idiotic look.
“Oh, come on, that doesn’t even make se-” she was cut off as an anvil shattered on her head.
“Dammit, Derpy!” I screamed, looking up at the wall-eyed pegasus. She gave another apologetic smile and hurriedly flew away. “Twilight, you need to learn that in this world, nothing makes sense.”
“That’s where you’re wrong; there is a scientific explanation for everything,” said Twilight, nursing a large welt that split her mane. “Pinkie Pie’s powers must come from some magical source. Or, maybe they’re an inherited trait from the generations of Pies. Or…” she trailed off as another mental train went away from the station, so to say. I had to knock her over the head to get her out of her twisted, bookish mindscape.
“Explain to me how the fuck magic makes sense in the first place? Oh, and how did we temporarily create life? Or maybe I should ask how ponies can grab things when they don’t have fingers?”
Twilight looked stumped. “See?!” I almost shouted. “Nothing makes any freaking sense in this world!”
“Well at least I’m trying to make it so!” Twilight yelled at me, her eyes flashing. I smirked.
“Oh, how the knowledgeable have fallen, resorting to lame excuses,” I said smartly. Twilight’s eyes widened, before shrinking and becoming angrier than ever.
“Now I totally forgot the argument I was going to give you!” she screamed, drawing attention from several of the mares perusing the marketplace. Her mane and tail began to smoke as a fire lit in her eyes.
“Pinkie, let’s get out of here!” I shouted, just before Twilight shot a blast of fire at me. Pinkie grasped my hoof and dragged me through the void between dimensions, inspecting other rifts carefully. After about a minute, she dived through one, and we popped up in Sugarcube Corner. I immediately began to barricade the door with non-flammable items.
“Pinkie, help me out here!” I said rapidly. “You know how Twilight gets when she doesn’t understand something!” Pinkie nodded and ripped the entire front counter off the floor. As I barricaded the door with it, I cast a shield spell against the doors and windows, hopefully fending off any magical attacks.
Not two minutes after we closed the doors, a tumultuous crash emanated from the doors. “Pinkie!” Twilight shouted. “Come out here! I only want to run some tests on you!”
“She’s lying, Pinkie!” I injected. “She really wants to dissect your brain and use it for her evil magic!”
“Uh, Andrew?” Pinkie asked. “You’re a unicorn. You can use magic, too.”
“That’s beside the point!” I shouted as Twilight once again pushed against the doors. One last strong push later, and Twilight burst into the room, a manic gleam in her eyes.
“Pinkie…” I said, very shakily. “Back away slowly. Do not make any sudden movements, and do not scream. Scream, and you’re dead.”
Pinkie screamed.
Twilight burst into action, seizing Pinkie while simultaneously casting a paralysis spell on me. I was surprised at her action; Twilight usually wasn’t so… aggressive when it came to her experiments. I could only guess that it had to do with Pinkie’s abilities. Normally, divination and scrying were some of the hardest magic spells even adept unicorns could cast. The fact that Pinkie could do it by instinct probably left Twilight feeling endless combinations of anger, curiosity and jealousy. I disabled the spell with a quick flash of magic and leapt to Pinkie’s defense. I summoned Oathkeeper and slashed at the air, creating a golden barrier that separated Twilight and Pinkie. I cautiously lowered the blade.
“Twilight, calm down,” I said gently. “You’re going batshit insane right now.”
“NO!” she roared, startling us. “I WILL GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS!”
“Twilight.” Twilight quickly turned for the source of the voice. Brenner, Daniel, and Starlight were staring at her, eyes glittering with pride. “You will set her down. Now.”
“And if I don’t?” God dammit, Twi. You just had to let your curiosity consume you, didn’t you?
“If you do not, we will not hesitate to tear out your eyes, slit your ass in two, shove your eyes up your ass, and watch them slowly dissolve in stomach acid through the web of intestines we see when we rip your abdomen open with only our teeth,” Danny stated calmly. That shut Twilight up. She glanced back and forth between Brenner and Pinkie. Sweat broke out on her forehead, and the mad gleam slowly faded from her eyes. With a sharp gasp, she let Pinkie down.
“Oh my Celestia!” she squealed, hugging Pinkie. “I’m so sorry! I was really curious, and then I kind of…”
“Went overboard and tried to kill us?” I supplied. Twilight wilted in front of us, and a small pang of guilt stabbed through me.
“Okay, even I’ll admit that was a bit harsh,” I said apologetically. She flashed me a sad, yet grateful smile, and returned to hugging Pinkie with the force of a small bear.
“Alright, now that’s over with, what next?” I asked.
“Um… if it’d be okay with you, Pinkie… I’d still like to run a few tests,” Twilight babbled. Very bipolar today, she is.
“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie said Cheerilee (heh, see what I did there?). The three of us trotted back to the tree-brary, with Twilight using a combination of apologies and excited muttering to get her point across. As we entered, Spike stuck his head around the corner.
“Uh… is Twilight okay?” he asked awkwardly. “She kind of burst into flames and ran after you screaming bloody murder.”
“Don’t freak, little dragon thing,” I said. My smartass-o-meter was still a bit on the high end from the verbal ass-handing I’d given Twilight and the adrenaline slowly fading from my veins. With this information in mind, it wasn’t really a surprise when he glared at me with the force of a thousand burning demons from the deepest planes of fiery hell. “I’m kidding, Spike. Twi is fine. She just had a selfish moment because of Pinkie’s impossible abilities. Where is she, anyway?” Twilight had disappeared, as had Pinkie.
“No idea. I think I saw her going down to the basement, but that’s where she keeps all of her lab equipment. Why would they be down there?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I looked around. “Speaking of which, why don’t we get this place cleaned up? It looks like the inside of an oven.”
Spike sweatdropped. “Yeah, it does.”
I was almost done with my newest book when Spike started to get worried.
You see, Twilight and Pinkie hadn’t some out of the basement in several hours, and given what kind of industrial machinery Twilight has down there, I was a little nervous too. In the end, Spike and I decided to take a quick peek.
Of course, the moment I get to the door, it slams me in the face.
Twilight walked out, looking confused. “What did I just hit?” she asked. Like she didn’t already freaking know.
“Uh, that was Andrew,” Spike began. He smiled sheepishly as I unpeeled from the wall and returned to being three-dimensional. Ouch. You guys don’t know just how painful being stuck to a wall can be, can you? It hurts.
A lot.
“Did you guys plan this?!” Twi shouted. I must have forgotten to drink my lemonade that day, because all I grumbled about was Twilight not apologizing.
Okay, at least three painful things had already happened, so I was sure nothing else could go wrong. I was actually right for once, you know. I successfully followed a fuming Twilight out of the door, all the way through town and into Sugarcube Corner without anything bad happening. I lasted a whole six hours, which was pretty good in my book.
Twilight, on the other hand, got so angry I could have sworn I saw her hair smoke a few times. Flaming unicorns; great. It was around four or five in the afternoon (because apparently this chapter is already at 2500 words) when Pinkie finally chewed Twilight out. Well, I say chewed out. Pinkie can’t really do that seriously, so that’s what I’m going with.
All of a sudden, Pinkie began to twitch. The infamous Pinkie Sense came to a blisteringly intense peak when her whole body began to spasm like an epileptic on an acid trip.
“It’s- it’s-” Pinkie tried to spit out. Every time she jumped, she would bite her tongue, making it effectively impossible to talk.
“Out with it, woman! What’s out there?!” I shouted.
“It’s… a doozy!” she yelled back, quieting the rest of us.
“A doozy?” I asked. she nodded. “That’s it? A doozy? Please, I can handle fifty doozies with a single nonexistent hand. While the other one’s tied behind my back. On fire. In a volcano. With acid lava. And crying babies. On the Sun.”
Getting a little on the sadistic side, but it works,” Danny barked from behind me. Twi and I (hehe, another rhyme) whipped around, while Pinkie bounced around Danny, still occasionally spazzing out.
“Hold on, you’re calling me sadistic?!” I said. “This is coming from the guy, who not a few hours ago, decided that he was going to make a horror movie from dissecting Twilight and dissolving her with her own acid. Hypocrisy, bro.”
“I’m a hypocrite, and I’m proud!” he shouted, striking a pose. I snorted as Pinkie began bouncing off.
“Come on, guys! The doozy’s this way!” she gleefully said. I sighed and tried to pinch the bridge of my muzzle.
“She deliberately goes towards danger… I swear, without me, you people would all be half-dead by now.” I followed her, with Twilight quickly following up the rear.
We ran like no tomorrow towards a swamp, trying to catch Pinkie. Every time one of us got close, she would twitch and rocket forward, leaving us to catch up. After maybe another thirty minutes of galloping, I caught her tail (still tasted like cotton candy –what kind of shampoo did she use?) and yanked her back. She skidded to a stop, just as I looked up and noticed that there were frogs.
The frogs were freaking everywhere.
I’m dead serious. I was literally standing on a pile of frogs. Kind of gross, but it was nowhere near as bad as what was underneath the frogs.
Apparently, some sort of weird beast native to swamps was sleeping under the nest of frogs. I blinked as it raised three serpentine heads and yawned some seriously foul breath. Then it focused on me and roared. I backed up, hastily erecting a shield with magic.
“Guys, on the count of three, run,” I shouted. They glanced at the hydra. The back at me. Then back at the hydra. Then back at me. Fortunately, the hydra wasn’t me. That would have raised some questions, not to mention how weird it would look if I had three heads that wiggled around like that. “One… two… five!”
“Three, sir!” Pinkie yelled as we took off at a breakneck pace. The hydra broke my shield in mere seconds and stomped after us. Bloody bastard, I worked hard on that barrier!
Pinkie was still having seizures every now and again, so she was stuck a little bit ahead of us. She was the one that spotted the gorge ahead. I jumped just as my feet hit the edge and rocketed over. When I landed, I pulled Pinkie out of her jump and began swinging her like a rope (by the tail, of course). Of course, Pinkie just giggled the entire time. I threw her at the hydra, which stumbled back from the force of the blow. Pinkie curled up like a pinball, rocketing back and forth along the canyon and bonking at least two of the hydra heads. Finally, she rolled to a stop and jumped up next to me, not looking the slightest bit dazed.
“Alright, let’s do this!” I shouted. “LEEROOOOOOOOYY…”
“JENKIIIIIIIINNS!” Pinkie screamed. We charged the beast (now lovingly named Leroy), Pinkie trailing streamers as wisps of Vael’s influence trickled from my mane and tail. We slammed into it together, bringing it down to the ground. Pinkie ran around it, tying it with her streamers, while I hacked away at its body with Oblivion.
Five minutes later, Pinkie and I sat back, admiring our work. Leroy was in a bruised and bloodied heap on the ground. His body was half covered by ribbon and confetti, but the little part of his face(s) I could see clearly told he was out for the count.
“That was… an experience,” I said. I was personally heaving for breath; taking down a hydra is a lot more physically demanding than yelling at a bunch of animals. Pinkie nodded, still not looking fazed. She swiped a bit of blood off her face and lapped at it, not noticing the horrified stare I sent her. Even Vael felt a bit scared.
“That doesn’t taste like punch at all!” she said, eliciting a sigh of relief from me and my tenant. Unnoticed by us, Twilight walked over. She cuffed us both over the head.
“What the hay is wrong with you two!” she ranted. “You could have gotten yourselves killed!”
“Ouch! You’re gonna get us killed if you keep abusing my head like that, woman…” I grumbled. She hit me again. “OW!”
“Still, that was one doozy of a doozy!” Pinkie shouted, bouncing around my agonized form. She suddenly began twitching again. Oh dear holy things…
“Guys, I d-d-d-don’t think th-that was the d-d-d-doozy,” she stammered, trying to regain control of her muscles. I saw
Twilight’s mane begin to smoke again, and silently edged away.
“WHAT?!” Twilight screamed as she burst into flames. “What do you mean that wasn’t the doozy?! What could be doozier than that?!” I could think of a lot of things doozier than that, actually: Rarity falling from the sky, Discord breaking free, me exploding into a ball of fire as I re-entered the atmosphere… wait, what?
“I dunno,” Pinkie began, “but whatever it is, it must be really, REALLY big!”
Twilight sputtered for a moment, then dropped to the ground and sighed. Her mane extinguished, and she looked so utterly defeated that I almost felt bad for her.
Almost. That mare almost killed me!
“Oh, shut up about it and listen to the dialogue,” Vael muttered from the back of my mind. I promptly mind-crushed him and returned to conversation.
“I give up,” Twilight grumbled. “I can’t explain it! It’s just… Pinkie being Pinkie!”
Pinkie’s jittering rose to new heights. She seemed to phase in and out of existence for a few moments, then all of it sudden, it stopped.
“Is it gone?” I asked. “Has it stopped?” Pinkie nodded slowly, testing out her limbs.
“Yeppers!” she cheered. “All gone! I know what the doozy is, too!”
“So, what was it?” Twilight asked. Pinkie pointed at her.
“It was you! I never ever ever ever ever thought that you’d not question my Pinkie Sense. That was a doozy!”
“And what a doozy of a doozy it was,” I muttered. Everyone laughed, and, picking myself up, we trotted out of the bog and back into town. I stared up at the sun as it set, thinking about Pinkie’s mysterious powers.
A doozy of a doozy, indeed…