A/N: Sorry guys, I only just now got to editing this! I couldn't really do it on my iPhone when Shadow sent it to me. I'm fairly certain everything is fixed now, but if you notice anything, PM me about it.
-Sky
Twilight just stared at Pinkie in shock, “The death hole?! What’s the death hole?”
Pinkie giggled, as if Twilight already knew the answer to her own question, “You know, that really weird, really deep hole you found in the Everfree!”
“Wait, how’d you know about that?” Twilight asked, though she was beginning to wonder if Pinkie had followed her through the forest that day. It was the only logical explanation… unless…
Pinkie Pie simply hummed as she bounced in place, “Well, you know that I have my Pinkie Sense, so how could I not know about the Death Hole if I did? Silly Twilight, I thought you’d have figured all of it out by now!”
Now Twilight was seriously confused, “Pinkie, you’re not making any sense! Figured what out?”
The pink mare quit bouncing and place, reaching for her nearby closet. She opened it up, reached inside, and wheeled out a full length chalk board into the bedroom.
Twilight’s jaw dropped as she watched Pinkie defy physics before her eyes, but then again, she shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, she herself had woken up, supposedly possessing her own Pinkie Sense. But still, seeing a full chalk board roll out of a closet half its size was unnerving to the purple alicorn.
As Pinkie brought out the chalk board, she procured a graduate’s cap and placed it on her head. “Now Twilight, my young padawan, I will teach you everything I know about the Basement.”
Twilight just stared at Pinkie, a hundred questions running through her mind at once. But, as she thought about it, she realized it might be better to remain silent and let Pinkie explain. So, the alicorn princess sat down on her haunches and listened to Pinkie as she began her lecture.
The pink mare grabbed a piece of chalk out of nowhere and began drawing on the board, “The death hole is a strange hole, one that exists as a sort of bridge between Equestria and the Basement. But not anypony can enter the Basement. The only way to enter it…” The lights in the room suddenly shut off, and Pinkie whipped around towards Twilight, her face spookily illuminated by a flashlight she held below her face, “… is to die.”
Twilight winced at that, taking a small bit of relief as the lights turned back on and Pinkie continued, “Both you and I fell down the death hole as we died, and we fell into the basement.
“Wait, Pinkie… You died?” Twilight asked, aghast to hear that her friend had supposedly died, yet she was standing before her in the flesh.
The pink mare nodded, “Yupper-do! But that’s a story for another time.” She pointed back to the chalk board, where she had drawn a little picture of Twilight, surrounded by a few other ponies, “Now, when you came back to Ponyville, you were officially in the basement, having died as you fell down the death hole. Everything else seemed normal, except you kept walking through doors and appearing in different random places.” She leaned in, nose to nose with Twilight, “Am I correct?”
Twilight nodded, and Pinkie retracted, a satisfied look on her face, “Well, you could say the Basement is a parallel world from our original one, yet it still exists in normal Equestria. The best way to explain it is that we are in our own little world, while everyone else can still interact with us while in Equestria. Our surroundings may be the same as before, but the physics of our original world no longer apply to us while in the basement.”
Twilight blinked as she digested what Pinkie said, “… Wait… So is that why you can defy the laws of physics like you always do? It’s not just a ‘pinkie’ thing?”
Pinkie blew a raspberry and giggled, “Oh, Twilight. It’s always been a ‘pinkie thing.' I mean, how many other ponies do you know of that have traveled through the Basement?”
Twilight stared at her, before sighing as she realized Pinkie would always be Pinkie, even if her tricks were revealed. “Right… So, I’m no longer affected by the laws of physics I knew before?” Twilight asked.
“Meh…” Pinkie scratched her chin with a hoof, “It’s more half and half. I mean, you’re still affected by gravity, but you can choose to not follow physics’ laws whenever you want to. See, look!” She pulled a serious face, “Phht, screw gravity."
Instantly, Pinkie’s body floated up off the floor and she drifted up towards her bedroom ceiling, leaving a jaw-dropped Twilight below her.
It took a moment for Twilight to regain her composure, before shouting up to her friend who was now hanging upside down from the ceiling, “How did you do that, Pinkie?”
“Easy.” The mare replied, as she proceeded to walk along the ceiling, and then down the wall until she was back on the floor, “I just chose to ignore the law of gravity, and then ‘Air Pinkie, you’re free for take-off’! I even decrease gravity’s hold on me most of the time, just so I can bounce around longer than anypony else can.”
Twilight put a hoof to her chin, “Hm… interesting. This does certainly explain a lot… So, you’re saying that I can do this, too?”
“Yup!” Pinkie grinned at her with an expecting smile, “So, what smarty-pants law of physics are you going to break now?”
“Um…” Twilight cringed, “I think I’ll hold off on that for now. I’d rather try to keep myself partially in normal Equestria.”
“Okie Dokie!” Pinkie chimed, “Just go ahead when you feel comfortable to do it.”
She suddenly bopped herself on the head with a hoof, “Oh, yeah. Oops, I forgot. I’ve only shown you the fringe benefits of being in the Basement. It’s high time to show you the main part of our little world. Follow me!” Pinkie bounced out of her room, beckoning her confused friend to follow.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
“Um, Pinkie? Why are we in the Everfree?” Twilight asked. It seemed almost like yesterday she had gone in her, only for all this madness to begin.
Pinkie smiled back at Twilight as she led the way, but something seemed… off about it. From Twilight’s view, it seemed as if it lacked the usual enthusiasm from before. “Well, in order to show you everything about the Basement, we need to go inside it first. So, we need to go down the death hole again.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow, “Wait, I thought I was already in the Basement.”
Pinkie shook her head, “Actually, you’re not, Twilight; neither of us are at the moment. Even though you fell down the death hole, you can still get knocked out of the Basement and into Equestria again. And since you developed your Twilie Sense-“
“Twilie Sense?”
“Yup, I’ve got my Pinkie Sense, Cheese Sandwich has his Cheesy Sense, and you have your Twilie Sense now.”
Twilight gave Pinkie an incredulous look, “Cheese Sandwich has been in the Basement too?”
Pinkie nodded, “Yup, but I’ll tell you about that later. As I was saying, since you’ve developed your Twilie Sense, you must have been knocked out of the Basement recently ever since you first fell down into it.”
Soon after a few minutes of walking, the duo found themselves standing at the mysterious death hole. Twilight wasn’t sure if Pinkie felt it, but suddenly knowing what this hole really did caused the hair on her back to stand up on end.
Shaking the feeling away by declaring it as a ‘For science!’ matter, Twilight turned to Pinkie, “So… all we have to do is fall in again to reach the Basement.”
Pinkie froze for a moment, wincing slightly, “Eh, sort of. You see… when I said you needed to die while falling down the death hole…” She began scratching the top of her mane, hesitantly, “… I meant that as a full-time requirement.”
Suddenly, Pinkie withdrew a knife out of her mane and rammed it through Twilight’s back.
Twilight screamed in pain as the knife pierced perfectly through her heart, only to feel Pinkie push her body forwards into the death hole. As Pinkie did so, she yelled after her friend’s falling form, “Find your way back to Ponyville Square! I’ll meet you there!”
Adrenaline coursed through Twilight’s veins, causing her mind to hyperactively race. None of her thoughts were coherent, but all of them leaned towards the thoughts of Why would Pinkie do this? Why would she stab me in the back? and Am I really dying again?
Soon, the darkness overtook her as her heart stopped beating.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Instantly, Twilight’s eyes flung open in shock as she began hyperventilating. She clutched her chest and sat up from where she lay. After a few quick breaths, she noticed that she was once again sitting on her bed back in her room at Canterlot; the place she had woken up when she first went into the Basement.
Twilight sighed, It’s okay, Twilight. Get ahold of yourself. As Pinkie said, the only way I could have gone through the death hole was to die… She clutched her chest in uncertainty, Still, I didn’t think she’d pull a knife on me… Why does she even keep a knife in her mane anyways?! Isn’t that dangerous?!
Twilight shook her head as she hopped off her bed, “No, Pinkie is still my friend. She was only helping me, so I can’t blame her for that.”
Looking around, Twilight scanned the inside of her Canterlot room, “Hm… I guess I’m back in the Basement.” Only the bad feeling the place gave her confirmed her guess, causing her to shiver a bit, “Putting that aside, I wonder if I’ll pop up here every time I come in here.” She tapped a hoof to her chin, “I’ll have to ask Pinkie about that.
“Oh, speaking of Pinkie, I should meet up with her back in Ponyville Square… But how did I get there before from here?”
Twilight looked towards the only door out of her room, “Well, last time I went through there, and I ended up in Ponyville.” Making way to the door, Twilight gulped, “I sure hope this takes me there again.”
Mustering a bit of courage, Twilight opened the door and galloped through it. Suddenly, she found herself surrounded by darkness. But that only lasted for a second as the darkness receded and the purple alicorn found herself in the center of Ponyville square.
Twilight breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the familiar sight of ponies and vendors exchanging bits for products. Fortunately for her, no one seemed to notice her sudden appearance. “Looks like I got lucky.”
“No you didn’t, silly.” Twilight nearly jumped out of her hooves as Pinkie suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Twilight clutched her chest as her heart raced to unmatched speeds for the 2nd time that day, “Oh my- Pinkie! Where did you come from?”
Pinkie giggled, “Oh, sorry. I just had to walk through a few doors to get here; nothing special.”
“Doors? What doors?”
Pinkie bounced on her hooves like her usual self, “Well, now that we’re in the Basement together, I can show you! Follow me again!” She pronked away from the Ponyville Square, with a more than confused alicorn in tow. (Yes, pronking is a word, as it refers to the movement of an animal that travels by bouncing.)
But as Twilight followed Pinkie, she wondered, The Death Hole, The Basement, dying, doors, and defying physics? I never thought everything behind Pinkie would be so… She glanced around the Basement Ponyville, as if searching for the right word, …demented.
It was true, she didn’t like any moment she had been in the Basement so far. It was most likely because it seemed like this random thing out of nowhere turned every place she knew and loved into someplace where the only thing she felt was doom and gloom. Places of solitude and peace now only seemed to yield discomfort and wariness, all because of the feeling that permeated through the air.
I really hope I don’t have to stay in here longer than I have to. Twilight consciously muttered to herself, … Although, now that I think about it, how did I get out of the Basement last time?
She turned to Pinkie and asked the question on her mind, and the pink mare explained, “Oh, well you know how I said the Basement and Equestria could interact with each other? Well, if a big enough interaction with the normal world comes along and you get caught up in it, then you’ll get pulled out of the Basement.”
Twilight tapped her chin with a hoof, A big interaction? Hm… what did I do that got me pulled out of the Basement? Suddenly she remembered, Back when I ran into Big Macintosh! I don’t know if that was the interaction that pulled me out, but I know the feeling of the Basement left after that happened.
Twilight looked to Pinkie again, “Pinkie, could running into somepony be considered a big enough interaction?”
Pinkie stopped her bouncing and pursed her lips in thought, “Hm… Yup! But it’d depend on who you run into, or who runs into you.” She leaned into Twilight’s face, “Why? Who’d you run into?”
Twilight recoiled a bit, “Um, Big Macintosh… and I kind of knocked him over.”
Pinkie immediately burst into giggles, “Wow, you knocked him over?”
“It was an accident!” Twilight defended, “I didn’t see him in front of me.”
Pinkie giggled again, “Well, if you knocked a big guy like that over, then that’d do the trick.” She began pronking on her merry way, “Now follow me, Twilight! We’re almost there. First we need to reach my bedroom.”
Before long, Pinkie led Twilight to the front door… of Quillsand Sofas?
Pinkie pulled the front door open, “Follow me! Hi ho, Pinkie!” She jumped through the door, leaving Twilight at the door, once again, extremely confused.
“Um, Pinkie?” Twilight tried to call after her friend, “I thought we were going to Sugarcube Corner!”
But the pink mare was out of sight.
Twilight sighed at Pinkie’s antics, deciding to follow her inside the shop. This wasn’t the place she had been expecting to go, but at least she could stop by with the store clerk and see if his new shipment of quills came in today. That’d-
Suddenly, as Twilight entered through the door, she was swallowed by the darkness, and she reappeared walking into Pinkie’s bedroom at Sugarcube Corner.
Twilight’s eyes widened, “Whoa! How did I get here?!”
Fortunately for her, Pinkie was already waiting, leaning against the far wall on her hind legs like a punk in an alley, though a punk wouldn’t have had the largest of smiles plastered to their face, “Took you long enough, silly goose!”
Twilight was about to ask how they had gotten there, but Pinkie put a hoof over the alicorn’s mouth before any words were let out, “We’ll have time for questions later, but first!~”
Pinkie bounced across her room and opened up her closet. She then stood like an usher at a door, encouraging Twilight with a hoof to enter it, “~After you, Princess!~”
Though slightly confused, Twilight complied and entered the closet. However, as she did so, she was surrounded by a familiar darkness.
Did Pinkie just lock me in her closet? Twilight wondered, as she realized she couldn’t even see the light behind her from the bedroom.
But her question was answered as she suddenly walked out of another open door… Except it was nowhere near Pinkie’s closet. She had just walked out the front door of Cheerilee’s school house.
Twilight glanced around her surroundings, abnormally startled, “What the hay? Not this again!” But hay, what else had she been expecting? Captain Hook the Biker Gorilla? Nope, nothing.
She turned around, to see Pinkie suddenly appear in the doorway of the schoolhouse as well, a wide grin on her face. Thankfully there was no school today, otherwise Twilight feared they would have given a poor foal a heart attack.
Pinkie grinned at Twilight, “See? This is what the Basement is, in its most basic form. The physics of Equestria aren’t followed in here, like I said before. When you go through a door back in the old world, you just wind up on the other side. In the Basement, you go through a door, and you go to an entirely different place.”
Twilight winced a bit, “So, stepping through doors will always take you to different place than it did before?”
“Yupper Doodle Doo!”
Twilight glanced back towards the door of the schoolhouse, “So… If we walked back through that door, it’d take us back to your closet?”
Smiling, Pinkie trotted over to Twilight, leaned in about an inch away from her face. Once she was happily positioned in Twilight’s personal space, she simply said, “Nope.” Instantly, Twilight felt her body rise off the ground as Pinkie picked her up in her arms, only to be brutally tossed back through the schoolhouse door.
Once again, as Twilight yelped at her landing, the darkness consumed her, and she popped out of another door. She looked up, and sure enough as Pinkie had said, she wasn’t back in Pinkie’s room. She was sitting in a gutter, having come out of the front door of Pony Joe’s Doughnut Shop… All the way in back Canterlot…
Twilight didn’t even dare get off the ground, putting both arms over her head. She winced as a headache formed in her skull, from over exposure to randomness and inconsistency. “Ugh! This doesn’t make any sense!”
Pinkie giggled as she walked ‘out’ of the Doughnut Shop, “Silly Twily, sure it makes sense! Getting to places in the blink of an eye is really helpful, but it wouldn’t be very helpful if I didn’t know the pattern it uses.”
Twilight was afraid to ask, “What’s the pattern, then?”
“It all depends on the point of entry.” Pinkie explained, “You see, going through my closet takes me to Cheerilee’s school, where I can always be on time to ring the morning bell. Then going back through the school’s door takes me to Pony Joe’s Doughnut Shop, where I usually get a doughnut or two. I’ve become a regular customer here ever since the Grand Galloping Gala, because Joe makes the yummiest doughnuts in the world!” She began rubbing her hooves together mischievously, “And when I finally get that recipe from him… Ho, ho, ho, nothing will stop me from making the perfect desert.”
“What was that, Pinkie?”
“Oh, nothing, Twilight.”
Twilight frowned as she thought of something else, “But, Pinkie… How do you get into Pony Joe’s shop if you go somewhere else when you enter his front door?”
“Simple!” Pinkie exclaimed, “Just hop through a window! That’s what I do.”
Twilight gave her a curious look, “You just hop through window to get past the doors? Why aren’t they affected too?”
“Because they’re not doors!”
Twilight facehoofed.
Shaking her head, the alicorn grumbled, “But Pinkie, I can’t go jumping through windows while I’m in the basement. Ponies will think it’s weird for me, a Princess, to do that. I have enough trouble with paparazzi as it is.”
Pinkie merely shrugged, “Suit yourself. You can come up with your own way, so long as it doesn’t involve going through doors.”
Twilight glanced back at Joe’s Doughnut Shop, tapping a hoof to her chin, “Hm… get inside… without using the door…” She gasped, “I’ve got it.” Her horn began glowing with magic, until it burst, teleporting both Twilight and Pinkie inside the shop.
Pinkie giggled at Twilight, who looked rather pleased with herself, “Well, that worked. Definitely is way super-duper-cooler than my way!” Now that they were situated inside the shop, Pinkie glanced towards the front counter, where Pony Joe stood behind a cash register. The pink one’s mouth began salivate from looking at the delicious treats lined behind the shop owner, “Hey! Now that we’re in, we should get doughnuts! After all, teaching about every little detail of the Basement sure takes a lot out of ya!”
Nodding, Twilight followed Pinkie up to the front counter, until they were standing right in front of Pony Joe.
But when they reached the counter, Pony Joe seemed… like he was looking right through the two of them. Twilight frowned a bit, since every time she had come here in the past, Joe had always been vigilant at greeting ponies as they came in. Maybe he was just zoned out?
“Hiya, Joe!” Pinkie shouted, “Imma here for some doughnuts!”
Joe suddenly jumped in place, as if he hadn’t seen the two mares in the first place. He glanced down at them, before recognizing them, “Oh, Pinkie Pie, Twilight, two of my frequent customers! Sorry, I didn’t see you there. But then again, how could I have missed my best customer and the Princess of Friendship herself?” He chuckled, “Oh well, what can I get for you two?”
Pinkie’s hoof immediately shot in the air, “Ooh, ooh, me first! I’ll get a cake sprink-smish-for-lunatics!”
“Like you?” Joe joked, before turning to Twilight, “And can I get for you, Twilight?”
“Oh, um, the usual will be fine.”
“Okay, one Sprink-smish and one maple bar, coming up.” Joe turned around and retrieved the doughnuts, which Twilight paid for with her bits. After all, ever since becoming royalty, she now had more money from the royal reserves than she knew what to do with.
After thanking Pony Joe for the doughnuts, Twilight and Pinkie sat down at a booth and began enjoying their pastries.
Nibbling on her treat, Twilight frowned a bit as she recollected, “That was weird.”
“What?” Pinkie asked with a mouthful of doughnut, which turned out to be a chocolate doughnut with only a cluster of sprinkles on one side of its frosting.
“It seemed like Pony Joe couldn’t even see us, even though we were standing right in front of him… almost as if we were invisible.”
Pinkie giggled as she finished the last of her doughnut in a single bite, “Well, we’re in the Basement, and we can interact with the normal Equestria, but to them, we’re almost unnoticeable. Only a few ponies, like Princess Celestia, could see us in the Basement, but for everypony else, they wouldn’t notice us until we directly interacted with them.” Pinkie suddenly began giggling to herself again, “We could walk right through the front doors of Canterlot Castle without an appointment, and the guards at the doors wouldn’t even notice us.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow, “And you know that how?”
“No reason.” Pinkie replied innocently.
Shrugging Pinkie’s reply away, Twilight turned back to her thoughts, which she immediately voiced, “But Pinkie, why the Basement? Why does it even exist? Where did it come from?”
Pinkie’s smile instantly vanished, which almost shocked Twilight as much as the time her friend had driven a knife into her back. The party pony sighed, “That’s… something I don’t like to think about.”
“Why not?”
Pinkie paused, but then answered, “I’ll just tell you, then you’ll know why.”
She cleared her throat, but by then, her mane was beginning to droop, “Equestria itself is generally good, great even. There are hardly any really bad things, but if there are, they don’t last long. That’s only because there’s a lack of dark energy, or how it’s often called, ‘Evil energy.'
“Everywhere there must be darkness and light. They’re both two halves of the same coin, and neither could exist without the other alongside them. But for some strange reason, only good energy and light prevails in Equestria. Like I said, light energy can only exist alongside dark energy, so that dark energy has to come from somewhere, right?”
Twilight nodded her head slowly. “I think I follow… but how does the Basement tie into all of this?” She asked cautiously.
Pinkie’s head drooped a bit, “The Basement- For all the light energy in this world, all the dark energy exists in the Basement. For some reason, it can’t exist naturally in Equestria, so it must be held in the Basement for order and harmony to be restored.”
Twilight felt herself freeze in shock as she registered what Pinkie had said, “You mean… we’re surrounded by this dark energy?”
Pinkie shook her head, “Not only surrounded, but we’re ingesting it as well. We’re both absorbing more and more dark energy from the Basement as we speak.”
Twilight winced for a moment, unsure, “Is that bad?”
Sighing, Pinkie shook her head, “Not really, but it’s just unsettling is all. Even after all my time in here, I can’t quite get over it. So, I’ve just blocked that fact out whenever I’ve come in here. But that has been kind of hard, since the Basement pretty much runs on dark energy.”
Twilight scratched her chin with her hoof as all the pieces of this puzzle began to come together, “Runs on dark energy? Does that mean everything, defying the laws of physics, the portal doors, the Pinkie Sense, all of it comes from the dark energy in the Basement?”
Pinkie nodded, “Everything we can do in the Basement, we can only do because of the dark energy we’ve taken in. Even after leaving the Basement, I can still defy physics minimally, until the dark energy I’ve stored inside me is used up.”
“And then you have to come back and recharge.” Twilight guessed, “That’s why you act so random sometimes, isn’t Pinkie?”
A tiny smile grew on Pinkie’s face, “Well, most of the time it’s only because I just want to see my friends smile, and that has nothing to do with the Basement. But since I’ve fallen down here, it’s become part of my life, and I can’t turn my back on it either.”
Twilight lifted a hoof and ruffled her mane a bit, “I always wondered why you had Pinkie sense and could do what you do… but I didn’t think it was this… I don’t know, dark.”
Pinkie smiled, her usual cheerful expression slowly returning, “I know, but my friends usually make it all better for me. But now that you’re here with me, I finally have someone I can relate to about all this.”
That made Twilight pause for a moment. Honestly, dark energy? From what she had studied in Celestia’s records, dark energy was essentially broken and dormant energy of some mysterious and terrifying creatures from the country’s myths: demons. She wasn’t sure if Pinkie knew this… but why wouldn’t she know. After all, she seemed to know the answer to everything thus far. Maybe that was the reason why she didn’t like to think about the dark energy; Because of the demons?
Pinkie chuckled, breaking Twilight’s train of thought, “Aw, look at me, getting all wishy-washy.” Her normal smile and bouncing mane swiftly returned as if a leaf blower had been taken to it, “Before the day ends, we need to get you an artifact!” She suddenly grabbed Twilight’s arm and pulled her from the booth they sat at.
“A what?!” Twilight yelped.
“An artifact! It’s another way to travel back to the Basement, which doesn’t involve dying! I mean, who wants to die every time they come down here? Talk about painful!”
“But wait! I didn’t finish my doughnut!”