Where am I?
Pinkie opened her eyes, and seconds later, she felt a massive headache. It was weird. She’d been dreaming great, until her tail started wagging in the ‘Important information to get you out of jail,’ shake, and it bolted her out of sleep.
Looking around, she was in darkness, aside from the tiniest rectangle of light on the floor to the right of her. It was a damp, lukewarm room, and feeling the dirt and rock ground, she assumed it was a cave of some sort.
“H-hello! Is anypony there?”
A short while after she said it, Pinkie could hear cackling from far away, muffled by the walls. They didn’t respond, but they were getting closer, their voices heading towards the rectangle of light. Pinkie got up unevenly from the ground, and walked towards it herself.
Before long, she’d reached a wall. The voices were much louder, and she could make out words. “...Ahnd so, tha’nother pretty pony has been capturad at last! Tick it off tha list, Miss Heartstrings, heh, heh…”
Pinkie picked up another, much more perky voice. “Top Dog, Mr. Skunky! There’s only one more on the list. She’s called, ‘Rainbow Dash’. Huh… what a crazy mane!”
“Ah, so crazy indeed! She will navar be noticed. She sleeps all tha day, yes? No one will be the whyzar. Parhaps, heh heh, we cald make har say, ‘Snore, Snore,’ whenevar she talks, har starter, heh!”
“Top Dog! I’ll go deliver this water pail to the still-asleep prisoner then, sir!”
“Af course, af course. Ahnd remembar, tha new Pinkie… har starter is ‘Cahndy ahnd Cakes’, yes? Don’t feed the wrong one, we don’t need anathar robo-pony being overflown with watar!”
The weird voice started cackling again, and it eventually disappeared back the way it came. In the meantime, the door opened, showering the grey-brown cave with light. The mint-coloured robo-pony walked in with a pail of dark-coloured water hung on a crane extended from her body. “Top Dog! Say... I thought you were asleep. How’re you doing, Prisoner Pinkie?”
Pinkie almost spoke, before shutting herself up quickly. Wait. My tail totally just wagged, remember? Maybe something I’ve just heard is crucial to getting me outta here! She thought about it some more, before a burst of realisation came to her. She knew what she had to do.
“Candy and Cakes, I’m not a prisoner, silly!”
The pause was terrifying. Pinkie looked at Robo-Lyra, Robo Lyra looked at Pinkie. I hope she doesn’t notice I’m sweating, or I’m toast....
“Top Dog.... well… huh!” Lyrabot smiled cheerfully. “How’d you get there, Robo-Pinkie? I thought you were still in the machine facility getting a last minute check-up.”
“Candy and Cakes, I, uh… got lost? Yeah, that’s it. This is a… really big place! Mind showing me around?”
Lyrabot nodded. “Sure! Let me just get rid of this bucket,” she said, using the crane to lower the bucket to the floor. “There we go. C’mon! I’ll show you the way around.”
Lyrabot was more than happy to show every part of the cave complex with bright and happy commentary. “Here’s the workshop facility, where hundreds upon hundreds of roboponies just like me and you are made! They kinda get some wrong every now and then, but you can’t blame the masters! Their eyesight is kinda poor from staying in these caves all this time.”
Having assumed that Pinkie said her conversation starter, she continued by saying “Why does everyponybot have to say stuff at the start?”
“Top Dog, duuh! In order to program us bots with AI, we need to have a starting prompt to get all the gears moving in the right direction. Plus, it distinguishes us from the normies. Double plus,” she said, catcalling a couple of bots over, “It makes our masters laugh. Whatd’ya say to that, Zecorabot?”
The weird thing about Zecorabot was her ‘hooves’ and her tail, both replaced by a griffons like a draconequus. “Ponies Suck, it’s very true, Lyrabot. As if by luck, I don’t mind having a good laugh about it either.”
The other one, Big Macinbot, spoke up. “Zebras Suck Too, but it sure does get problematic a’times. If I ain’t within close vicinity of Zecorabot here at all times, well, my sayin’ just don’t make a lot o’ sense… yuup, that’s why they hauled me on down here ‘stead of the ground-level.”
Pinkie turned to the two of them. “Uh, cool! So… how about those... prisoner normies, huh? The ones that you’re modelled after, where are they?”
Zecorabot answered. “Well friend, they all closed them up on the right wing. I’m sure Lyrabot can assist you there, yes?”
Lyrabot squealed like an excited keyboard. “Of course! Anynormie you were looking for particularly, Pinkiebot?”
Pinkie thought for a moment. “Well, now that y’say it… yeah. I was meant to guard… Twilight Sparkle. Could you take me to her?”
~~
As soon as Lyrabot shut the door, Pinkie rushed to her now famished friend. “Twilight! Are you okay?”
Twilight squinted at her as the light from outside disappeared. Pinkie could tell that she tried to light her horn up, but she seemed to be struggling. She could just barely see the steel manacle fastened on her horn.
“P, Pinkie...” Twilight muttered, her voice echoing through the caveroom. She looked distraught. “No, wait. You’re one of them. I heard you say it down the hallway, ‘Cakes’ and, and whatever.”
Pinkie sternly shook her head. “False. Incorrect. I’m Pinkie Pie, silly! The real deal, the intrepid detective, the one and only Pink Pony! And I’m here to save your rump. Lemme get that thing off your head.”
“C-careful… it’s tight.”
Pinkie shrugged off her friend’s worries, and went to pulling off the manacle. She tried pulling it off for a short while, not finding any real progress, before she realised that there was a small, indented button on the middle of the manacle, too small for a hoof. She thought on it for a second.
“Pinkie… what’re you- don’t lick my head, t-that’s gross!”
“Sto’ squir’ing!” Pinkie replied. She pressed the button, and it made a satisfying ‘click’. “Annn…. don’.”
The manacle fell. As soon as it reached the floor, Twilight glowed her horn. She was wide-eyed, worn, tired, and looking at Pinkie in disbelief, before lunging at her with both hooves into a passionate hug. “Oh, thank you so much, Pinkie, I’m so-so-so sorry I doubted you! Thank-you thank-you thank-you!”
Pinkie blushed. “Heh, well… just doing my job. Wha’d’they even feed you down here? You don’t look near as perky and purple as you usually do.”
“Dry grass and water for days, Pinkie… they’ve hidden everypony in Ponyville down here, those horrible replica-ponies. I’ve been stuck here for days, and I just don’t get it… what’s all this for? You know, right?”
Pinkie thought for a second. She cringed. “Eh…. not exactly. But well, what I do know, is we and every other pony need to get outta here, stat! Grass and water… not even a cupcake? Ponies can’t live off’a that, that’s crazy!”
“Don’t worry about an escape plan,” Twilight said. “All the while, I’ve had plenty of time to think up dozens of different methods. All of them were stopped by one little thing, and that isn’t a problem anymore. Let’s go.”