//------------------------------// // 7. Limbo // Story: Pinkamena's Tribulation // by TheAccidentalBrony //------------------------------// Pinkie Pie hummed a cheery tune, a wooden pencil braced tightly between her lips.  The preparations for the super-amazing “Happy ‘Party Across Equestria Day’ Party” were almost complete, and the thought of the smiles all her favorite ponies would wear as they enjoyed it was enough to give her mane a little extra bounce. She swirled the pencil around with her tongue a bit, wondering if she had enough streamers in her closet, when a sudden clatter erupted behind her. “Hey, Pinks," a confident voice rose over the sound. “Oh, hey Dashie!” Pinkie leapt off her stool, bounding towards her friend.  “What’s up?” “Oh, you know, just...uh, busy being awesome!”   Dash's lips spread in a smile so wide that Pinkie felt even she’d be uncomfortable wearing it, and she was an expert at smiling.   The fact that the smile failed to touch her eyes at all only fueled Pinkie’s suspicions. “Hmmmmmmmm.  You sure you’re feeling alright?” Pinkie jabbed at her friend’s side repeatedly with the sharpest edge of her hoof, testing her like a bowl of gelatin that hadn’t quite set yet.  “Because...you don’t look alright.” “Nope, never felt bett—” Pinkie zipped between the words Rainbow was speaking, circuiting her svelte figure several times before she could even blink, frantically jotting down notes on a clipboard as she did so. “Yep.  Not okay at all.  Buuuut—” Pinkie adroitly snapped on a doctor’s lab coat and, to it, added a pair of thick, black-framed glasses. “Dr. P. D. Pie is on the case!” “Really, Pinkie,” Dash’s eyes darted back to the window uncertainly, slowly scraping a hoof down the fine hair on the back of her leg.  “I’m—” Pinkie slammed the errant tongue down with a depressor and, after scratching her chin a moment, withdrew a small device from her coat pocket.  Cocking an eyebrow, she nudged the implement with her nose, causing a bright light shine right back at her. “Oh-er ay, uh-uh” Dash choked out, “Oh-er ay!” “Uh, what’s that again?” Dash furrowed her brow, a black storm brewing in the depths of her cerise eyes.  After a moment of exchanging increasingly awkward stares, she swatted the wood intruder away, then placed her hoof somewhat more gently on Pinkie’s snout. “I said ‘Other way’!  Like, you need to turn that thing the other way to use it right, you know.  But, it doesn’t matter anyway, because I’m not sick, so you can just...just drop it!” “Oooh…I bet Discord got you again, didn’t he?” Pinkie deftly attached a moustache to her muzzle.  “I knew we couldn’t trust him!  We—I’ll have to go get Twilight right away so she can cast her memory spell thingy and then we'll have to figure out a way to get the Elements of Harmony back out of the tree so we can to turn him back to stone and—” Before she could finish the next word, Pinkie’s world shifted, suddenly seeming tilted and off-kilter.  She cringed as something hard and unforgiving pressed uncomfortably against her back, quickly realizing something equally firm—but also a little bit sharp—dug into her shoulders from the other side, pinning her in place. And Rainbow Dash just stared at her. Not with joy, nor with anger.   No…it was something that looked a bit more like…fear? But Rainbow Dash isn’t scared of anything, silly filly! Pinkie forced a little giggle from her throat, as she always did when things seemed a little funny or even a little scary.  Rainbow Dash’s eyes continued to drill into her, and even though a small voice in her mind told her that she should feel weird about it, for some reason, she didn’t seem to mind it at all. Her shoulders sure did hurt, though. Not wanting to take her eyes off Rainbow Dash, she felt around her chest with a hoof until she bumped into something cold and hard that dug into the fleshy part of her shoulder.  Hesitantly, she drew her hoof around the corner it formed and followed it up a bit, finding that the hardness faded to a soft fuzz, the coldness growing more and more warmish. “Oh!” She jerked her hoof back, her eyes widening with surprise.  Her heart thumped against her ribs jerkily, though she wasn’t quite sure why.  It certainly didn’t feel like the time Twilight had offered her to try ‘some’ of her coffee.  The pot looked as good as anything else…but it turned out to be a little teensy weensy bit more than she’d been expecting.  And also, the coffee didn’t quite make her mouth feel as dry as it felt right now.   “Dashie,” she squeaked, her mouth forming a weak smile, “Um, I’m not sure why you’re standing on me, but, I know you’ll think I’m crazy, but I’m really, really, really thirsty.  Like, not just a little thirsty, like when you’ve had a super sticky caramel-cream-cheese-frosted cupcake and all the frosting is glued to your the top of your mouth and you’re all like ‘Oh my gosh I need a drink’ but more like whemrflgerndfmr—” The air she’d been forming words a moment prior now being drained from her lungs in an instant, her eyes springing open as she felt an uneven warmth press tightly against the cool saliva on her lips. Hot breath gently puffed through the fuzz covering her muzzle, and in front of her, Dash’s crimson eyes burned strongly, now only inches from her own— I’m kissing Rainbow Dash! A giggle burst from her throat, causing the lips of both ponies to flap against each other as it gushed out of her muzzle.  Rainbow Dash drew back slightly, looking quite perturbed by the sudden gust of air that had blown into her mouth. Pinkie made sure, then, that her next actions were unmistakable.   Flinging her forelegs around Rainbow’s muscled neck, she brought their bodies together, her thudding heart fully in the driver’s seat.  Her snout pressed up to Rainbow’s, she smiled softly, pushing her lips out to meet Dash’s softly.  Slowly, she kneaded them into Dash’s, taking the opportunity to send her tongue darting through the passageway into the warm, moist chamber that lay ahead. As she did, she realized to her great amusement that Rainbow tasted perfectly Rainbow-y!  Somewhere, back in one of the dustier corners of her mind, a little Pinkie voice told her she’d have to remember the flavor and try to duplicate it in a cupcake someday. But, that little corner aside, the rest of her mind—and body—was absorbed by the sensation of actually experiencing happiness with another pony, rather than just watching it from afar.  Pinkie reached her hoof up, dragging it through the jagged hairs of Dash’s vibrant mane, pressing it into the back of her head as if to keep her there forever. But it was not to be.  Just as suddenly they’d began, Rainbow pulled back, drawing away from her once more and turning to face out the window.   "Awww, but we were just getting started!” Pinkie stood up, looking in Rainbow’s direction with her head cocked.   The pegasus flicked her ear, but otherwise offered no response. “D-Dashie?” She lifted her foreleg, reaching out to her, but Dash seemed to flinched away at the lightest touch. Pinkie swallowed, hesitantly bringing a shaky hoof to her cheek, dabbing away the spots of moisture it found there.  Her heartbeat was still rapid and forceful, a painfully loud thuda-thuda-thuda that echoed in her head; a reminder of the bliss she’d just had. “Did…is it—?” “I,” Rainbow interrupted, giving her wings an impatient flap.  “There’s something I need to do.” She hopped from hoof to hoof, a scowl darkening her face.  Pinkie licked her lips uncertainly, the minutes to ticking by without motion or sound from either of the pair, with the exception of the occasional twitch of Rainbow's prismatic tail.   “Oh—oh well...” she murmured softly to herself.  She fought the muscles in her cheeks, forcing them to pull her lips up, even just slightly.  She had to put on the brave face, the happy— “Well, come on,” Rainbow broke the stillness once more, spreading her wings. “Oh...” So this was it, then.  Rainbow Dash was leaving, and there was nothing to do to stop her.  The fur along her neck prickled as long strands of silky hair settled against it, an unusual force seeming to pull against her, drawing every part downward.  In place of the heat radiating out from her just moments ago, she was now consumed by a hollow cold inside, an uncomfortable emptiness that ate away at her like she was cotton candy and it was some kind of cotton-candy-eating monster. She sucked a deep draught through her teeth, her eyelids falling shut.  She could ignore the emptiness… Giggle at…the ghostly…  “Well, okay,” the breath she’d been holding rushed out through her lips. Pinkie made her best attempt to hop over to Rainbow’s side, even though she didn’t feel like hopping at all. She didn’t know if she ever would again, really. “Hey,” she said, ruffling her limp mane with a hoof, “Have you ever eaten a cupcake, you know, like a really big cupcake?  Maybe like a cupcake that you had for a long long long long long time and every time you eat a bit of it you always notice that it never tasted right but you could never figure out why?  And then suddenly, one day, somepony gives you a little bit of cream cheese frosting and you realize that’s what was missing all along?  But when then when you go to make the frosting for the rest of the cupcake you realize that you’re all out of cream cheese?” Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow, but otherwise held her silence.  Pinkie quickly licked the beginnings of a tear from her eye, deciding it was probably just best to start again. “Well, I guess it’s time for you to leave, then?” Pinkie’s eyes fell to the floor, watching sadly as she traced circles on it with her hoof.  “I mean, unless you changed your mind.  You can…you can stay too, you know.”   “Uh, what?  I...couldn’t really hear you there, Pinkie...” Pinkie sighed, folding her legs under her body as she settled against the hard floor.  Her thin, silky mane pooled beside her like a vast ocean of pink, nearly deep enough for her to drown in.   “It’s okay, just…just go.  I understand if you don’t want to hang around with a stinky-twinkie Pie…” “Where in Tartarus would you get that crazy idea, Pinkie?”  Rainbow said, wrapping a soft, downy wing around her body.  "You do remember I kissed you, right?" Pinkie's cheeks burned furiously, but her eyes turned up hopefully towards the pegasus anyway.   “Now, get up here,” Rainbow Dash ordered playfully as she tapped her back.  Her eyes met Pinkie’s with a playful, warm gaze, a wide grin displaying her full set of opalescent teeth.  “You spend all your time down here; today, you're coming with me, to see my Equestria.” Rainbow swung her foreleg around to point outward, up towards the bright blue sky that painted the world just outside her window. "Coming...with you?"  The words rolled out of her mouth slowly, the intense emotional swings of the last few minutes catching up with her.  "Coming...with you!"   Her lips turned themselves upward this time, a full, brilliant smile formed without even the slightest hint of coercion.  Pinkie could feel the weight against her haunches lift a bit as her mane slowly regained its normal volume, feeling a little bit more like maybe the emptiness-monster inside her wouldn’t eat up all the cotton candy after all.  In fact, if she forgot to look, she could probably pretend there wasn’t any monster at all.  Letting out a brief titter, she sprung onto the pegasus’ back with a single mirthful bounce.  Rainbow nodded approvingly, and set them aloft with a powerful flap of her wings. "You know, Dashie," she murmured softly after a few minutes had passed, running her hoof through the mare's feathery mane absentmindedly. “You’ve always talked about how great flying is, and sure, I’ve been up in the balloon a time or two, but this—this really is something else.” "Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty awesome.  But…you should probably knock off whatever you’re doing back there...unless you want me to drop you." What Pinkie was doing at that precise moment was balancing on one hoof, her forelegs spread wide apart as though they were wings, laughing the entire time. "Hee hee hee...well, okay!" Without warning, Pinkie suddenly plunged off the mare's back.  "Catch me!" Pinkie could almost hear her friend’s eyes rolling as she plummeted past her, but, as she’d expected, she found herself perched atop Rainbow’s back barely a moment later. “Jeeze, Pinkie!” Dash growled playfully, shooting a stern but not unkind glare in her direction. “You keep pulling stunts like that, maybe I will let you see what landing feels like, capiche?" "Okie dokie lokie!”  She sighed effusively, allowing her body to fall gently against the cyan mare’s supple coat.  A rare wave of relaxation washed over her like a warm breeze as her muzzle flopped into the wind-whipped strands of brightly-hued hair flying behind Rainbow’s neck.  She drew in deeply through her nostrils, a fresh rain-like scent punctuated by a distinct musk filling her senses.  Reaching out with her hooves, she wrapped her forelegs around her…her marefriend’s (hee!) chest.  The rippling muscles tensed as her cool forelegs pressed against them, but softened quickly.   But yet, there was something bugging her.  Something that started as a little itch in her mind.  And that something had only spread as she watched Ponyville lazily drift past beneath them. It was a something that wanted…more. “Hey...um, does this thing go any faster?" "Faster?  You’re asking moi if I can go faster?  Heh; you want fast, I'll show you fast!" Rainbow spun her wings, their hometown disappearing behind them in the wake of a prismatic contrail. “Wheeeeeeeeee!” Pinkie threw her forelegs out into the wind rushing past them, squeezing Dash's barrel tightly with her hindlegs as she flung her barrel at the sky.  The air tugged at the corners of her mouth, stretching it into a huge I-just-got-the-best-birthday-present-ever-even-though-it’s-not-my-birthday smile, the world around her fading pleasantly into a blurry streak of color. “Oh wow!  And this is what you do every single day?” “It’s pretty great, huh?” Dash replied.  “It doesn’t hurt that you’re up here with Equestria’s best flyer, either.” Pinkie's face flushed a bit as she giggled in response.   She was catching the full force of the air now as Rainbow Dash banked, presumably rounding back around to take them back towards Ponyville.  She could feel the breeze pulling at her skin, separating each follicle of hair from its neighbor. The warmth of the afternoon sun did a bit to help cut through the chill that the air had at these altitudes, but it didn’t really bother Pinkie, anyway.  She'd just been given the biggest cup of the super-duper yummiest hot chocolate ever, her insides doing more to keep her warm than the sun outside anyway. "Hey Dashie!" she shouted through the rushing air, "Don’t you think we’re a perfect fit?  Like frosting on a cupcake?" “What?” Pinkie made big circles with her hoof over Dash's back, then over herself.  It really did feel like Rainbow Dash was a cupcake, and she was the frosting that had always been missing.  Maybe a cupcake wasn’t quite right (maybe something like a muffin would work better, and she could be the chocolate chips, but then she’d have to cut herself into itty bitty pieces and that just sounded icky!), but she’d have plenty of time to work on the analogy later.  Dashie raised an eyebrow in marked confusion and held it there for an extended moment, but her expression quickly faded to something more subtle; Pinkie was sure a smile was hidden there, somewhere.   "Yeah, Pinks,” the pegasus finally replied, “Yeah, I think we are." Content, Pinkie let her attention drift downward.  “Ponyville is so eensy-weensy from up here!  You know, I gotta say, I don’t think we ever took the hot air balloon up this high before.” Dash chuckled.  “Nope.  Those things can’t get this high.  Only things with wings can.”   A blue feather struck Pinkie directly in the snout; she drew it down gently and held it in her hoof, examining it closely for a few seconds.   “Uh, hey, I think you lost a feather!” “Oh, yeah.  That happens.” "Okie dokie, lokie!” She giggled, looking down at the feather in her hooves.   Hmmm…if she loses feathers all the time, maybe I should keep this one for myself.  Yeah!  I can put it in my scrapbook; it'll be my super-special Dashie feather from the first time she took me flying after— Pinkie’s body suddenly jackhammered against her friend’s back, powerfully thrusting up and down from snout to tail, head to hoof.  The motion carried enough force that it was evident even to Pinkie that their flight path had been altered by it. “Oh my gosh!” she gasped, covering her mouth with a hoof as the tingle began fleeing from her body, “That was a real doozy!  Something really bad’s gonna happen to somepony, I just know it.” A beat. “Rainbow,” a hint of nervousness crept into her voice, “maybe we should head back to Ponyville.  I don’t know what the doozy is, but we should warn somepony.”  The silence between them was palpable. “Rainbow?” Nervously giggling to scare away any hint of fear that might have been sneaking up on her, Pinkie leaned over her friend’s muzzle.   Her eyes were closed. “Rainbow! Wake up!  You have to wake up now!”  She lifted a hoof to smack her friend back to her senses, when she saw it. Her entire foreleg was coated from top to bottom in bright red paint. She blinked, her mind grinding at what she was seeing. Not paint, it told her.  Blood. Looking down, it was clear they were on a collision course with the growing landscape beneath them.  “Oh no, no no no!” She gasped for air as they plunged downward, but breath was impossible to hold on to as the air rushed by far too quickly, and her head beginning to twirl.  Something slipped from her hoof as everything flooded past her, her eyelids falling closed as she wrapped her forelegs as tightly as she could around the limp body of her friend, liquid squeezing out between them from unseen incisions all around her barrel. She knew it would be over any time now.  And this time there was nothing she could do about it. At least I’m with my friend, some corner of her managed to come up with. Right as her mind sat on the precipice of consciousness, blackness swallowing everything from the periphery in, she noticed an odd, tingly numbness scaling her body from her hind hooves up. Her head spun as Pinkie slowly blinked her way to consciousness.  The world swam before her, an unrecognizable blur that slowly congealed into distinguishable shapes.  As her vision snapped into focus, she instantly recognized the place she now seemed to be in—she’d been here before.  By the odd shape, size, assortment of bookshelves and scientific equipment, it could only be one place. This was the basement of Golden Oaks Library.  Twilight’s basement. “Whew!” she sighed, a relieved, but jittery smile stretching across her muzzle, “that was some nightmare.  I’ve had bad ones before, but—” Halting her speech, any hint of cheerfulness bled from her face as she realized she couldn’t lift her left foreleg. Or her right. Or anything else, for that matter.  Darting downwards, she could see that her hooves were encased in a purplish glow, not unlike— “Pinkie Pie!” a voice growled through halting, panting breaths.  “Why?” From behind the shadows that obscured an array of flashing lights across the basement, Twilight Sparkle slowly stepped out, her eyes bleary and red.   “Why—why did you do it, Pinkie?” “D-d-do w-what?” Pinkie’s felt a hard knot form in her throat, large enough that it obstructed even the shallowest of breaths, leaving her gasping for air. “Pinkie…I feel…I feel like I don’t even know you, anymore.  And yet still, here I am, like a fool, trying to protect you.  Because you are—or at least, you were—my friend.  So please…please, don’t lie to me.  Just tell me the truth.  What happened?” Pinkie stared at her friend, whose eyes were narrowed and full of fire, even as she could feel her own brimming with tears. “I…I don’t know…we were flying…and then…” Twilight shook her head, and in a sparkle of magic, a crimson-spattered knife clattered to the floor. “You were still holding it when we caught you.  We saw you falling from a mile away, but there was nopony to fly up to catch you.  So when you got close enough, I caught you, and then I saw—” Twilight’s voice caught, whatever willpower she’d been using broken as tears streamed down her cheeks.  Her chest heaved, and it was only after performing several repetitions of her breathing exercises that she’d calmed enough to turn towards Pinkie once more. “I saw what you did to Rainbow Dash.” “What!?  No, Twilight, no, it wasn’t me,” Pinkie cried, “You have to believe me.  You have to! I watched her, I watched it happen, I watched her fall—” “No!  You did it; don’t you dare deny it!  You are responsible for the death of our friend!” Twilight sobbed, her horn sparking wildly.  She took a step towards Pinkie, a menacing snarl forming on her face.  “How could you!  How—How could you!” Twilight’s jaw moved up and down, but her words seemed to have been lost somewhere between her brain and her mouth.   “T-T-Twilight—” “I—I could kill you, you know…” She sniffled, wiping a string of mucus from her snout.  “If…if I was a monster like you!” Twilight slumped downward, bowing her head until her lips nearly touched the floor.  With great effort, she lifted a single hoof and gently touched it to the tip of her horn, instantly extinguishing the magical fire that had been building around it.  Pinkie watched in silent regard as her friend sucked breath after breath in and out, until finally she lay her hoof against the ground and lifted her gaze back to Pinkie. “Pinkamena Diane Pie, you’ve made it clear to me exactly what you are.  You can save the rest of your lies for the courts.  I was hoping—hoping beyond anything my rational mind told me—that you had some reason for what you did, that something had happened, anything, any reason for Princess Celestia not to add you to her statue garden.  But I...I was wrong.” She sighed.  “The Royal Guard will be here for you in the morning.  I recommend you take the time in between to really think about what you’ve done.” With that, Twilight turned and left. “Wait!” she called out, but the click at the top of the stairs was answer enough. Pinkie Pie was alone. She swiveled her legs around as fast as she could, or at least, gave her best effort to do so, but no amount of effort seemed able to break the bonds holding her in place.  Her energy quickly wore down, though, much more so than usual; falling 20,000 feet must have taken its toll on her. Pinkie let a single, silent tear trickle down her cheek, finally giving in to her weakened body’s demands.  She supposed it didn’t matter really now, anyway.  If Dashie was gone, she was as good as dead herself too.   Dead.  She repeated the word to herself.  Dead, dead, dead. The word tasted sour as it fell limply off her lips; she usually avoided it altogether.  Even the parties that went with it were more sad than happy.  But this time, there was something else, a poignancy to the concept of death that gnawed at her mind.  It was as if a part of her had blocked it off; like she’d locked it away, dug a hole in the ground, buried the key, covered up a hole, and built a house on top of it. Pinkie clacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, the random sounds eventually falling into steady rhythm.  The seconds crawled by, each one seeming to take hours to pass.  She could feel her eyeballs drying out as she hung, but she couldn’t find a way to fall asleep.  Eventually, her skin grew irritated where the magic gripped her, just around the coronet.  Silently, she wished Twilight would at least have allowed her at least enough range of motion to relieve the itch.   Instead, the irritation just blended into the background of the torture she was subjected to.   She shook her head back and forth, desperately trying to find something to busy her mind with to avoid the thoughts that kept trying to creep in.   What to do, what to do…oooh, I know!   “I spy with my little eye something that is…green! Ha ha, found it!” Her eyes darted away from the green tank full of...well, whatever it was Twilight kept in there...as quickly as they fell on it, seeking something more interesting.  Her teeth chattered together anxiously as she tried to think of the next thing she could task herself to seek, her eyes zipping desperately from one side of the small room to the other.   Something that would, she hoped, keep her attention a little longer. Before... Nope, nope, I won't let this get me down. For I am Pinkie... In that instant, she felt a wave of cold relief flood over her, the corner of her eye falling on the shimmer of reflected light. “Ooo, ooo, I know, I spy with my little eye something that is shiny!” She tilted her head ever-so-slightly upward to find her "shiny" was nothing more than a mirror hanging precariously from the ceiling.  It wasn't even a fancy one, like one of those gold-rimmed ones Rarity had. Instead, it just looked to Pinkie like a normal rectangular mirror with an unadorned—but really dusty—black border.  Her eyes narrowed as they moved towards the center, though, noticing one thing that was peculiar about it:  the image its borders framed wasn’t hers, not exactly, at least.  In place of the grown, bedraggled, frizzy-maned mare she’d expected to see, she instead found a small, meek, glassy-maned filly.   A filly looking directly at her. “Huh,” Pinkie said to nopony in particular, “You must be some kind of enchanted mirror or something.  Twilight’s got so much neat stuff down here; she should take people on tours or something!  It’d be like a museum...” “Pinkie,” she heard a squeaky voice utter from above. “Noooooo way!” She grinned widely, her eyes meeting her younger doppelgänger.  “This is too cool!” “You’re on the wrong side.” the voice whispered.  The statement was so quiet, in fact, Pinkie could have pretended it was just the breeze.  If they weren’t in a basement, where no breezes could get to, that is. “Uh…what?” As the word came off her lips, she felt her insides twist unnaturally.  Fixing her gaze on the mirror-version of herself, she could see that the small filly was pointing a hoof directly at her, a maniacal grin spread across her previously impassive muzzle.  Looking down, her hooves began to tingle, her heart trilling in her chest.  Pinkie tried to force herself to grin, as she didn’t even know what she was afraid of, but something—something that was decidedly not her Pinkie Sense—told her that something very unnatural was happening.   A cold feeling, like a ghost, passed through her.  She intensified her struggle against her bonds, tugging at them desperately to get away from the filly whose eyes seemed to her apart inside, but her hooves didn’t move an inch.   Eyes wild, a thought occurred to her. “Twilight!” she screeched, “S-s-save me!” She was answered only by the silence of the basement, and the growing cackle of the filly in the mirror. Then, impossibly, the world skewed sideways. With a jolt, she felt herself be pulled as though sucked through a straw, her surroundings scrambling into an unrecognizable blur.  Her body stretched and pulled in ways she didn’t even know existed, seeming to exist in two places at once.  Color, then darkness filled her vision, but strangely, she felt no pain.  Surrounded by blackness, she suddenly slammed into a crystalline wall as though she was traveling at a high rate of speed, and found herself once again face-to-face with the same clone of her younger self. Except, she thought as she squinted, not exactly the same.  Instead of the filly she’d looked at before, the pony she now faced was a fully-grown mare, with a mane as straight as glass and fur a few shades less saturated than her own. And instead of the flattened reflection she’d seen before, the mare before her appeared to be a real, living, breathing pony. “What-what happened?” she squeaked, her voice far too high.  Her eyes widened fearfully, drawn downward to a set of shrunken hooves that were far too small to be her own, except...they were. “Like I said, Pinkie, you were on the wrong side,” the other mare snarked. “Now, you’re back where you belong.” “B-but,” Pinkie squeaked, her voice shattering like glass, “I…” “You,” Pinkamena growled, “are nothing; just a figment of my imagination!” Pinkie gasped for breath, but—air didn’t really seem to exist in the transparent prison she found herself in, nor did she seem to need it.  Each passing moment left her felt more and more a part of the false reality she’d been trapped in, more as the reflection and not the reality.  But if I wasn’t the real me, we would have figured that out at the mirror pool, right?  Screwing her eyes shut, Pinkie’s mind raced, her eyes brightening as it finally landed on the answer she was looking for.  “Ah ha! This isn’t real; this is just a dream!  And if it’s my dream,” she said, jostling her foalish frizz as she bounced up and down, “then all I have to do is wake myself up.” Squeezing her molars down, she bit her cheek until she could taste the iron running into her mouth. In that same moment, the ground beneath her fell away, and she felt herself plunge into a black abyss. “You can’t hide from the truth forever, Pinkie…” the familiar voice echoed from all around her. It was the last thing she heard before her mind faded into a dull buzz, her consciousness swept off in one clean stroke. Pinkie’s eyes shot open, her face twisted with horror as she shot forward as though from her party cannon.   Or rather, that was what she'd intended, but for the fact that she was already suspended in mid-air. If that wasn’t peculiar enough, taking brief stock of her surroundings only served to make the situation seem stranger to Pinkie.  Assuming this wasn’t a dream too, she now found herself in a room the likes of which, well, she’d never seen before.  Certainly, she wasn’t in Ponyville.  In fact, in all of Equestria, she’d never seen anything that even came close!  Her immediate surroundings seemed to be some kind of clear shell, perfectly round and large enough to hold about eight Pinkies stacked wall-to-wall-to-wall.  Harsh, bright lights shone into the sphere, lighting her on all sides.  Beyond that, the walls of the place were painted in a flat white color, but were very finely textured.  Squinting her eyes to get a closer look, she realized her initial impression was slightly mistaken; what she’d first taken as random texturing actually looked like intentional decoration.  Strange symbols and shapes were embossed across every surface of the place; she wished Twilight were here to tell her what it all meant. Bringing a hoof to her forehead, she noticed that her fur looked strangely fluffed out, and there was a strange resistance when she moved her limbs.  Curious, she pushed against it, waving her leg back and forth.   Wow.  There must be a lot of magic in this place, she thought to herself as she watched hundreds of tiny ripplets follow behind the motion of her foreleg.   Now that she was looking for it, she noticed even her breathing caused cute little ripples to appear, but she could really only see those ones when she crossed her eyes enough to look right at them. “Wait a minute!” she shouted, except, instead of shouting, all that came out was a burble. And then it all made sense. She wasn’t suspended. She was floating.  In water. But she was still breathing…did that mean she was breathing…water? She took in a deep breath, covering her mouth, and blew out as hard as she could. No bubbles.  Not a single one. It didn’t matter what Granny Pie taught her at that moment.  There was only one thing to do. She screamed soundlessly, beating against the water with all four of her limbs. Wait, she thought, taking great pains to slow her mind, sensing that her breathing wasn’t the only thing about her that was off. She took a deep breath, and held up her left foreleg. One. Blinking slowly, she held up the right. Two. Pinkie swallowed deeply, and called on her right hindleg. … Left? Still nothing. Clamping her eyes shut, she folded her body in two, reaching to the end of her tail and clasping it between her hooves as firmly as she could manage.  Rather than the soft fluff or silky smoothness she might normally find there, she instead felt something slick and rubbery.  Licking her lips tentatively, she traced her body with her hoof, starting from that point and proceeding all the way up to her neck.  As she did, her mind began to overload as her senses bombarded her with a singular, urgent message—one that hardly seemed possible.   She had to know for sure, though, and there was only one way to do that. Resigned, she peeled her eyelids as far open as she could manage, her blood turning to ice as her forehooves leapt to her muzzle. Huh.  Look at that...