//------------------------------//
// Clone 
// Story: Student of Friendship 
// by zalla661 
//------------------------------//

Starlight stared at a most familiar pony, being. If the poofy pink cotton candy hair wasn’t the dead give away, the happy pop personality and large blue eyes and hyperactive ball of ADD voice was. 

“Pinkie Pie!?!”

‘Yeup! That’s my name!” 

“HEY! KEEP QUIET IN THERE!!”

Both Starlight and Pinkie cringed as the officer on duty yelled at them from around the corner. After waiting a moment Starlight looked back to Pinkie who was still wearing her coat with her hat in hand, smiling that same silly smile Starlight had come to feel comfortable around.

“So, Pinkie how did you get here?” Starlight asked her friend. “Did you come through the mirror too?”

To Starlight’s surprise, Pinkie’s hair deflated somewhat. The pink girl's posture lowered and she sighed sadly fiddling with the brim of her hat. 

“Can I ask you something?”

Starlight nodded allowing Pinkie to continue.

“Have you ever heard the legend of the mirror pool?” Pinkie asked.

Starlight thought back on this. She had heard mention of such a thing long ago but brushed it off as superstitious nonsense. Now, after meeting Twilight and her friends she wasn’t so sure about anything anymore. Pinkie being here as a ‘human’ was proof of that.

“I have heard of it.” Starlight replied to Pinkie.

The pink haired girl sighed sagging her shoulders.

“I was a mirror clone from the Mirror Pool,” She said looking Starlight. “After Twilight and her friends figured it out there was a competition to see which of us was going to be the real one. When the fakes were found out they were banished back to the Mirror Pool.”

“So, why are you here then?”

The Pinkie clone looked out the window at the sight of the sun. She smiled and allowed a sigh of content relief. 

“I managed to escape. I traveled across Equestria and took a job as an investigative journalist. Eventually, I found the other Pinkie, the original,” The clones paused allowing Starlight a moment to let things sink into her head. “When I was in Manehattan on a job I found the original Pinkie Pie in a dinner doing an interview with a popular journalist.”

The clone stood up and walked to the far side of the small room. There she crossed her arms and rested them against the cold walls and rested her head on them.

Starlight watched as the clone rubbed her head in her arms like a worried child. She then heard a faint hic like the Pinkie clone was crying. Starlight stood and walked up behind the clone and touched her shoulders gently rubbing them softly.

“Thanks,” The clone said wiping her eyes.

You know, I ran away after that. I didn't want to be found and sent back to the pool.” 

Starlight turned the girl around and looked into her sorrowful blue eyes. 

“Why? What happens when you go back?” 

“I don’t know. But I fear it would be oblivion,” The Pinkie clone replied with a shrug. “I don’t want to die. So I came here. Through the portal.”

Starlight smiled hugging the Pinkie clone. The poofy pink hair reinflated almost instantaneously as the Pinkie clone smiled and embraced Starlight with a hug of her own.

Just then the cell door behind them opened up with officer Shining Armor there. He was flanked by a young girl with violet hair wearing a white lab coat and glasses. On the other side of him was Sunset Shimmer with her new blue jeans, a blue blouse and a new leather jacket.

“Come on you two. We need to talk.” He said.