The Curious Case of the Unicorn Twilight Sparkle

by The Rising Tide of Night

Twilight's Statement

I guess I should start with the real cause of this. I mean, you’ve been part of the case since the first… death, so you know about those, and you’ve already read my journal, so you sort of know what happened and what I did. However, there’s a part of this that I’m pretty sure no other pony has figured out.

I’ll give you a quick synopsis of what happened leading up to the party, and where I’m pretty sure the real trouble began… Oh, I don’t need to do that? Ok, that’s fine. Suffice to say, then, that the party was just to cheer up Pinkie Pie. She was so down; we had to do something for her. The real problem was the research I was doing before all of this.

You see, I wanted to study the effects my spells would have with magical water. The only water I could think of at the time that I could easily get ahold of was from the Mirror Pond, so I sent Spike out to get me a bottle of that water. I know, I know, I said I wasn’t going to use it, but it was just too good a chance to pass up, you know? I just… wouldn’t tell any of my friends about it. Maybe later. Maybe never. I don’t know…

Anyway, Spike was able to get me some of the water, and I’d stored it in the refrigerator. I guess in hindsight I should have kept it somewhere else, but nopony usually goes into the kitchen without asking me, so how was I to know? Besides, I already had plenty of water out for everypony, so who would be looking for another bottle in the back?

I guess I should have realized that the spell combined with the water negated the normal effects of water on a pony’s body. Hey, can I make a note of that? I don’t think I recorded that anywhere…

Sorry about that. I get carried away sometimes.

Anyway, I think what happened is that while the rest of us were… passed out… the night of the party, Pinkie Pie must have woken up and gone looking for some water. She’s smarter than we give her credit for sometimes, I don’t think any of the rest of us thought to get any after the cider was opened. Based on what she said to me a few weeks after the party, she found the bottle I had and… drank it.

I guess the Mirror Pool has a different effect when somepony drinks it. Pinkie said it made her the happiest pony ever, and that’s saying something for her. She’s always happy, and it takes a lot to make her sad. I guess losing some of her best friends had that effect on her, since she asked me for more of that water later…

Sorry, I digress. So it sounds like what really happened when she drank the water is that the water created a duplicate of her. But since the water was unable to make a duplicate out of the pool, it ended up creating a duplicate of her from within her. She was split into two different ponies, with two different psyches. One full of excessive happiness, the other excessively cruel.

…I think we can all see where this is going.

Obviously, no one suspected a thing until Fluttershy… died. She talked about hearing giggling in the middle of the night in the days leading up to her death, but we never thought much of it. The only thing we considered was that she wasn’t getting enough sleep. Nothing about the sound itself! I didn’t even make the connection until after Junebug was killed!

If I’d just said something…

But then I heard the sound itself, and it was horrible. I had a hard time sleeping at night after hearing that sound. I even saw Pinkie Pie out that same night, but didn’t make the connection at all. How could I? She hadn’t told me about the water yet, and I still had no idea what had happened to it by then.

Of course, it wasn’t until after Rarity was attacked, and I was able to hear her story that I made the full connection to everything. When Rarity threw Pinkie out of the hospital room, screaming like that… Oh, Celestia, I thought… Two of my friends…

I’m sorry. I need a moment.

…

Thank you.

That’s when I truly made the connection. I had Rainbow Dash take Pinkie Pie back to the library and had her tied up. But when Rarity told me just what had happened between the two of them, I knew something else had happened. Rarity said she managed to slash Pinkie’s foreleg rather deeply, but Pinkie didn’t have any injuries. Well, aside from being thrown into a wall, but that was nothing.

Then Rainbow was attacked, and Pinkie was still confined in my home. That’s when I made the decision to go find her duplicate and end this all. I tried to track her down using a tracking spell and Pinkie’s hair, but it kept fizzling out – it wasn’t meant to track two individuals with the same magical signature at the same time.

I was finally able to get a lead on her by asking around to see if anyone had seen Pinkie Pie running around. It took a while, but I finally managed to narrow down her trail heading out of town and towards the Everfree. I was even able to find a faint blood trail on the pathway, probably from her wounded foreleg. I was so intent on following the trail and keeping an eye out for Pinkie that I didn’t notice just where the trail was leading me.

Finally, I found myself in front of Fluttershy’s cottage. Fluttershy’s cottage! How in the name of Tartarus could this horrible creature dare to use the home of Fluttershy, one of the sweetest, kindest, ponies I know, as a home! It was maddening, it was –

I’m sorry; I’ll put your partner down now. There we go, all better, right? Right? I’m really sorry; I don’t usually lose control like that.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The cottage. Nopony had been out there since you finished investigating the place, so it was a little run down. It felt… dead, like all of the joy and life that had been there had gone with Fluttershy. I guess in a sense it had. I opened the door and carefully crept into the cottage, hoping that I would be able to find her first. The main room had been demolished, the furniture torn up, her lovely decorations smashed, all of her books shredded...

Hey, I could have used those books, you know! No need to destroy them…

I heard a noise upstairs, but I had to pause before I went up there. There was blood on the stairs. A lot of it. Much of it old, but there were some new patches. I carefully tried to step around the blood, going up the stairs as quietly as I could until I came to Fluttershy’s old bedroom.

SHE was there. Pinkie Pie. The duplicate, at least. Should I call her Pinkie Pie number two? I guess that works as well as anything. Anyway, Pinkie Pie two was there. Sitting in the remains of Fluttershy’s mattress and blankets, covered in dried blood, whimpering like a wounded animal as she stared at her foreleg. I saw the cut that Rarity had made. It was a deep and ragged one, and must have hurt like mad. She was clumsily tearing up Fluttershy’s quilt, probably trying to make a new bandage since I saw an old bloody one on the floor next to her, alongside a long, sharp knife.

As I tried to approach her, readying my spells, I saw her ear twitch three times, and she suddenly looked over at me. Damn that Pinkie sense of hers! If she hadn’t had that twitch, then I might have been able to bind her up without having to see those eyes…

Her face was hideous. A twisted shadow of the normal Pinkie Pie, her teeth bared in a rictus grin, dried blood spattered all over her cheeks. Her eyes… her eyes were the worst. I never want to see eyes like those ever again. That giggle was bad enough, but those eyes… They’re going to haunt my darkest nightmares forever. Please don’t ask me to say what I saw in them. You’d never sleep again.

Those eyes pinned me in place. I couldn’t move from the sheer intensity of them. I barely noticed that she had stopped trying to bandage herself and had stood, reaching for her knife, until it was almost too late. Once that blade flashed in the sunlight, the spell was broken and I saw the danger I was in. I tried to cast my spell on her, but she somehow was able to dodge before she started towards me.

I’m not ashamed to say I almost fainted right there. I’m pretty sure I left a puddle on the floor as I scrambled back, falling down the stairs. I’m glad I had the presence of mind to tuck myself in so that I didn’t break anything. It took me a moment to get my bearings again after landing on the bottom, but I was able to get up and get my spell ready as she rushed down the stairs. She had just turned the corner when I let loose with my spell, catching her right in the chest as she launched herself at me, knife shining in her hoof.

The hard part was when I realized that the spell didn’t work.

Well, it almost did. It puffed her up like a balloon for a moment and spun her around in a circle, just like it had with all of the other duplicates. But then it dropped her back on the ground, back to normal. Then I got another look at those eyes, and just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse, she did it.

She giggled.

It was that same giggle I had been hearing those nights, that horrible, cruel giggle, somehow made that much worse by seeing where it came from. It was that giggle that chased me as I turned and ran from that cottage as fast as I could. I ran up the path into town, hearing that giggle behind me the whole way. I didn’t want to turn back and look for fear of seeing those eyes once more, since I knew that if I did, I would be paralyzed and she would be on me in a flash. I think I passed a few ponies on my way back – I honestly couldn’t tell you. I was too focused on getting away and I wasn’t really seeing where I was going.

I finally got back to the library and slammed the door behind me. Immediately I felt ashamed of myself for that. What if Pinkie took out her aggressions on some other pony since she couldn’t get to me? I couldn’t take that chance anymore. I had to face her, and I couldn’t let her get to anypony else.

I opened the door and let her into the library.

I think that actually worked to my advantage. I don’t think she was expecting the door to open by itself. She flew into the library, caroming off of the table in the center and slamming headfirst into a set of shelves. The old Pinkie Pie might have shaken off a hit like that, but this one just flopped to the floor unconscious.

At that point, I was at a loss. I was expecting a fight with a twisted shadow of one of my best friends, not a comatose body on the floor in front of me. I will admit I was a little irritated. I mean, that’s how it always goes in the stories, right?

You’re right, ok, I get it. I got off easy. Stop glaring at me.

Anyway, I closed the library door and cast a binding spell on her. I still didn’t know what to do with her just yet, so I levitated her body down into the basement where I do many of my experiments. I also blindfolded her. If she woke up again while I was trying to figure out what to do, I really didn’t want another look into those eyes.

At this point, it was evening and I was exhausted. I made sure that Pinkie two was secured as tightly as I could manage and headed back up into the library to check on Pinkie one. She was still secured up in my room, looking confused but oddly happy. At least Spike had managed to get her some food before leaving to go stay at the hospital like I’d asked him to. I wanted him there in case Pinkie got away from me and tried to finish Rainbow and Rarity off again. He’s a tough little dragon.

Anyway, she was sitting in my room, her leg bound to the bed with a tough chain. As soon as I entered the room, she started bouncing in place, the clanking of the chain contrasting with the happiness in her step. I looked at her face, so bright and happy, and for a second I saw the Pinkie Pie of old, before I looked into her eyes. Her eyes were as vacant and blissful as Pinkie two’s eyes were horrible and frightening. At that point, I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

I broke down and cried.

I can’t tell you how long I cried there, listening to the sounds of the bouncing chains and Pinkie’s hooves hitting the floor of my bedroom. Long enough that the sounds eventually stopped as Pinkie finally got it through her addled brain that I just wasn’t happy. It was a little while after she stopped bouncing that I finally mastered myself enough to try the spell once more. Maybe it would work this time.

Well, it didn’t. The same thing happened. Nothing changed.

There was only one more thing to try, but at that point, I was too exhausted to even contemplate the amount of effort it would entail. It was probably a stupid thing to do, but I grabbed the blanket from my bed, went downstairs, and fell asleep on one of the reading couches. Or tried to, at least. It seemed like every time I started drifting off, I saw those eyes in my mind and there would go any chance of sleeping for the next hour. I don’t think I truly slept more than half an hour total that night.

Finally, morning rolled around, and I gave up on getting any more sleep. After dragging myself into an upright position, I headed upstairs to my room to get Pinkie one for my last attempt at restoring her to normal. She came willingly as I unwound her chain from my bedpost and guided her downstairs into the basement. Pinkie two was right where I had left her, bound and blindfolded, making animalistic noises as her muzzle turned this way and that, like she was trying to catch a scent.

She must have smelled us as we approached, since she immediately turned her head in our direction and stopped, a feral grin spreading across her face. I shuddered at the sight of that, extremely glad that I couldn’t directly see her eyes. Unfortunately, my mind was extremely adept at superimposing those eyes on the blindfold, and I couldn’t look at her for more than a few seconds before I would mentally make the connection between the two.

It’s amazing I managed to spend most of the day down there with the two of them without going completely mad.

I tried every spell I could think of to fix things. I tried the duplicate reversal spell. I tried a disenchantment spell. I tried a counterspell. I even tried my failsafe spell, which just… failed. Nothing worked. Nothing at all. They stayed exactly where they were. By the time I had run through everything, I felt defeated. Hopeless. A failure. I’m supposed to be one of the brightest unicorns of this age! Everyone says so! But I couldn’t save my friend!

I just couldn’t…

…

…

Sorry. I’ll continue.

…

I finally made a mistake.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but something I did caused Pinkie two to get loose from her bindings. I almost didn’t notice; I was so wrapped up in my misery. But I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye, and the movement was wrong. She was loose, and she was coming for me with those eyes and that feral grin.

I panicked, I know. I teleported out of that basement as quickly as I could and up into the library. I stopped there, shaken to the core, trying to catch my breath when I heard the sounds. The rhythmic clop of bouncing hooves on the floor, the jingling of the chains, followed by the most animalistic roar I had ever heard. Some more… horrible sounds. Then a sudden squelching, as if something large and wet had impacted on the floor. Many, many more wet sounds.

I really didn’t want to look. I really didn’t. But I wasn’t given a choice.

The basement door burst open, and she stood there, covered in blood and… other things. I had a brief glimpse of the ghastly trail she had left behind her before I panicked once more and ran out of the library. I heard her following right behind me, the hard clop of her hooves stampeding across the library floor. It felt like death itself was following me.

I ran as fast as I could, away from the library. I knew she would follow me. Somehow I ended up in town during midafternoon market, this horror right on my tail. I skidded to a stop as I saw all of the ponies in front of me, and for a brief moment of forever, we all just stared at each other. Then I heard her coming up behind me, and I turned around, determined to keep her from anypony else. Time stopped as she launched herself at me, blood coating her pink fur, her mane fluttering in the wind, teeth bared in an expression of pure, twisted delight, and horrible eyes locked onto mine with the promise of painful death. I cast the first spell I could think of to get rid of her, the very first spell I had cast on her.

This time it worked.

She swelled up into a balloon, spun around in the air, and flew away in a burst of magic, back towards the library.

The only thing I can think of is that when she killed Pinkie one, the spell finally had somewhere… wet… to send her to.

At that point I felt something break inside me. She was gone. It was finally over. I’m pretty sure I was caught between laughing hysterically and crying like a foal in the middle of the market in front of all of those ponies. I felt trapped and free at the same time, and the panic started to set in. I couldn’t go home and I couldn’t stay there. I ran once more, away from everything, from everypony, from my memories, from those eyes and that giggle. The only thing on my mind after that was she was gone. It was the only thing as I ran, the only thing that mattered as I hid under that haystack, trying to escape everything that had happened.

I lost track of how long I hid there. I didn’t even know night had fallen until you pulled me out of the haystack and told me that I had been missing for an entire night and most of the morning.

I guess that brings us back to here.

…

I’m sorry.

Comments

[shallow15]

Damn. Jekyll &Hyde cranked up to 11. Nicely done.