Personas of Harmony

by EricStarstorm

Chapter 19: Think of the Pink

The next morning was surprisingly quiet. Twilight expected Pinkie to be an early riser, but when she woke up, Pinkie was still fast asleep. For some reason, she was sleeping in Spike's basket, holding the little dragon to her chest with her forelegs like a teddy bear. Twilight stifled a laugh at the sight and decided to let them sleep in. She went downstairs and poured a bowl of cereal, given that Spike wasn't awake to make something. She had learned long ago not to try cooking herself--the last time she tried that, she nearly burned down the library.

Just as Twilight sat down, however, Pinkie suddenly burst out of her bowl, sending milk and pieces of cereal to every corner of the room. There was no indication whatsoever that she'd been sleeping. "Good morning, Twily!" she exclaimed.

Twilight was surprised, but she knew that it was pointless to question how and why Pinkie did things. "You seem pretty happy."

"Why shouldn't I be?" Pinkie asked as she climbed out of the bowl. "I slept GREAT last night! Probably better than I have in weeks!"

"Well, yeah, but...the Shadow? The nightmare we were trapped in? The time we spent thinking that our friends were being tortured to death?"

"Water under the bridge!" Pinkie accentuated her words with a wave of her hoof as she sat down across the table.

"Someday I hope to be as optimistic as you are." Twilight used her magic to pick up a towel and started wiping the milk off the walls.

A half-asleep Spike appeared at the top of the staircase. He let out a cavernous yawn and descended the stairs groggily. "Mup," he said.

"Hey there, champ!" Pinkie yelled. She grabbed Spike in her front hooves and hoisted him into the air. "Twilight, go long!"

Twilight dropped her towel in surprise. "WHAT?!" she demanded.

Pinkie threw Spike towards Twilight. As he flew through the air, Twilight noticed that he was still half-asleep. Twilight caught him nonetheless, and Pinkie cheered heartily.

"Spike...you don't look so good," Twilight said.

"Yeah, but...the french toast..." Spike droned.

"...What?"

"...Cheese Sandwich...and the check marks...so many check marks..."

Twilight gently nudged Spike with her magic. Spike's eyes suddenly opened wide, and he stretched his arms and legs. "Morning, girls!...Why am I in the kitchen?"

Pinkie skipped past the two, headed for the pantry. "'Cause you're not a morning dragon!"

"...I'm confused."

Twilight put Spike down. "Well, as long as you're up, do you mind making something for us to eat?"

"Oh no you don't!" Pinkie exclaimed. She turned around and faced Twilight, looking past a bag of flour in her hooves. "I'll take care of that today."

"Wait, really?" Spike asked. "I do this all the time...it's no trouble. In fact, I like doing it."

"You guys let me spend the night, silly!" Pinkie tossed the bag of flour into the air and produced a chef's hat from her mane. She plopped the hat onto her head and raised her back left leg, catching the flour on her hoof. "I'll do this, and we'll be even!"

"Well...sure, I guess. Go ahead."

---

Had a bystander entered Twilight's home that morning, they would have thought that Twilight was painting her kitchen yellow. Twilight and Spike had lost count of how many eggs Pinkie had inexplicably taken out of a bag or pocket that they couldn't see only to smash them with reckless abandon. Twilight knew after that morning why Pinkie usually handled the register at the bakery.

That isn't to say that Pinkie couldn't bake, however. She had made three apple strudels for each of them--though why she had needed eggs for that was anyone's guess--and they were among the best things Twilight had ever eaten. The taste of the pastries captivated her, and she had eaten through the first of hers much faster than she had intended. She restrained herself from devouring the other two treats so messily, and was now only part of the way through her second one. Meanwhile, Pinkie had eaten all three of hers in a single bite.

"And here's some for the coolest guy I know!" Pinkie said jovially as she slid a plate of strudels towards Spike. He caught it, and upon closer investigation, he saw that these weren't like the others.

"Are these...rubies?" Spike asked.

"They sure are!" Pinkie rubbed the top of Spike's head. "They go great with sweet stuff."

"Wait, where did you even get those?" Twilight asked. "I don't have any rubies...just emeralds."

"Same place she got those eggs, I bet," Spike said as he took a huge bite of his first strudel.

Pinkie smiled at Twilight, accompanying the action with a high-pitched squeak. Twilight rolled her eyes. "We should go to the barn as soon as we're done eating today."

"Okie dokie loki!" Pinkie sat down and wiped the apple filling from her face by rubbing her cheeks on the table. Twilight would have said something, but she was going to have to clean the whole room anyway, so she didn't mind.

Spike finished his food before Twilight did. Twilight took much longer, given that she wasn't eating her food like a pack of starving timberwolves. When she was done eating, Pinkie immediately became a pink tornado of water and suds. She went around the room like this, making everything she passed over completely spotless. She stopped by the door and smiled as if nothing had happened whatsoever. It took Twilight and Spike a minute or two to process this.

"Well, we'd better get going," Twilight said. "The others are probably waiting for us by now."

"Right you are!" Pinkie exclaimed. "TWILIGHT! SPIKE! TO BATTLE STATIONS!"

The three of them left the library in rather high spirits and headed for the outskirts of town, where Sweet Apple Acres awaited their arrival.

---

As Twilight had guessed, she, Pinkie and Spike were the last to arrive. It was evident, however, that only Applejack had been there for any length of time--Rarity was putting a hairbrush in her saddlebag, as if she had just been brushing away the knots and loose strands that travelling brought; Rainbow had just finished brushing cloudstuff from her wings; and Fluttershy was only just now sitting down. As soon as everyone was seated, Twilight cleared her throat. "All right, for our first order of business...Pinkie Pie, do you remember anything that has no place being there?"

"I don't think the murderer planted anything, if that's what you mean," Pinkie replied. "But I might've been too focused on what was going on in the foggy-fog world to have kept it in mind."

"Hmm...I'll have to scan, then. Just to be certain."

"Before you do that, though..." Rarity smiled. "Tell us more about your Persona, Pinkie! Her name was Aurora, was it not?"

Pinkie nodded. She launched herself out of her seat and cartwheeled over to where the others usually showed off their own Personas. then brought her Party Cannon out as her Arcana card floated down to her eye level. She blasted the card with an eruption of confetti and streamers, and Aurora flew across the room. She bounced off the walls several times before screeching to a halt just above Pinkie's head. "Watch this!" Pinkie chirped.

Aurora flew over to Spike and sat on his head. Spike was thoroughly confused, but Aurora didn't care. She smacked Spike on his foremost spine, and he was suddenly surrounded by an aura that glowed in all the colors of the rainbow. He suddenly jumped up to the rafters, knocking Aurora off of his head. "This is AWESOME! I feel like I could wrestle a hippopotamus!" He dropped down onto the table. "Let's go find a hippopotamus to wrestle."

"What's up with you all of a sudden?" Rainbow asked.

"Aurora boosted his power, defense, and speed all at once!" Pinkie exclaimed with a huge grin.

Spike ran over to Applejack. "AJ, I need you to do something really quick for me! What, you ask?! Simple! PUNCH ME IN THE FACE!"

"Wh-what?" Applejack backed up ever so slightly. "Whaddya mean?"

"You heard me! Punch me in the face! Just one punch, right in the jaw!"

"Ah'm not gonna--"

"No buts! HIT ME!"

"Spike, yer bein' ridiculous!"

"I'm waaaaitiiiiing!"

"What in the name of Celestia are we watching?" Rainbow asked.

"Rainbow!" Spike zipped over to Rainbow Dash. "Just one punch, really fast!"

"Spike, you really need to--"

Spike suddenly grabbed Rainbow's foreleg and lifted it so that her hoof was on the table. He then grabbed her hoof and slammed his head into it full-force. He ran to the center of the table and spat out a few embers as if they were a tooth. "YEEEEEEEEEAH!"

"...I think I made a horrible mistake," Pinkie whispered.

"Well, can Aurora do anything else?" Rarity asked. "Surely we haven't seen everything."

"Oh! Yeah, watch this!"

Aurora flew back over to Pinkie. She grabbed the heart that was on her head and pulled at it, eventually removing it with a comical pop. She put it over Pinkie's eye, and it turned translucent, allowing her to see through it.

"What's that supposed to do?" Fluttershy asked.

"I CAN SEE EVERYTHING!" Pinkie shouted. "I can see what elements your Personas are weak to! I can see what your Personas can do! I can even see what Twilight did on the night of the 14th!"

Twilight's face turned bright red. "I-I didn't mean to do that! I had no idea that thing was--"

"Just joking!" Pinkie took the heart off of her eye and dismissed Aurora.

"...Don't joke about that, Pinkie." Twilight's face was still red even as she glowered at her friend.

Spike ran over to Pinkie. "If you saw everything, does that mean you saw how PUMPED I AM?!?" he demanded.

"I didn't need the scouter to see that," Pinkie replied with a giggle. "You're bouncing off the walls, Spikey."

As if in response, Spike ran over to the wall and tore out part of one of the planks with his teeth. He turned back towards the group and snapped his jaws shut, shattering the wood into hundreds of splinters.

"Spike, stop wreckin' the barn!" Applejack yelled indignantly.

"THIS BARN CAN'T HANDLE ME RIGHT NOW! THE CLUB CAN'T EVEN HANDLE ME RIGHT NOW!"

Twilight picked Spike up and held him in the air. "Let's get back on task, okay? This will wear off in a little bit. Pinkie, I need to run a quick scan on you."

"Go ahead!" Pinkie replied. She sat down, narrowed her eyes, and scrunched up her nose.

Twilight got up and walked over to Pinkie, handing Spike over to Rarity. She closed her eyes and focused on the memory spell. After a few seconds, she was staring into Pinkie's mind. As she had suspected, the memories surrounding her disappearance had been removed. She looked both directions, but still saw nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed as though the culprit hadn't planted anything after all. She withdrew and sighed heavily.

"Nothin', huh?" Applejack asked.

"Nothing at all," Twilight replied. "I guess he knew we were on to him after the last time."

"I've been wondering more and more lately regarding the killer's intents," Rarity said. "So far, our theory is that he is trying to cease our involvement...but his perseverance in kidnapping us and that which he planted in Applejack's mind are evidence to the contrary. There is no way he thinks we're going to stop now, and what his taunt said is practically a direct contrast to the theory."

"Well, yeah, but what in the world could he be trying to accomplish?" Rainbow asked. "Is he just kinda hoping that a big enough Shadow will take us all down?"

"I don't think so," Twilight interjected. "If he thought that, then he probably would've just kidnapped Pinkie in the first place. Her Shadow was definitely the most powerful."

"None of the Shadows were exactly easy. Except maybe Spike's."

"What if he wasn't trying to kill us at all?" Fluttershy asked. "What if he was trying to get us to face ourselves?"

"That's preposterous. If that were the case, then why simply kill Filthy Rich and Lotus?" Rarity's eyes lit up with intense focus as she thought. "Though...it is a possibility that Filthy Rich and Lotus were killed by accident. In the first case--and the first case alone, before you get the wrong idea--the culprit may not have known the exact nature of this world."

"I don't think that's it. He was probably at least suspicious that the other world was dangerous," Rainbow pointed out. "Besides, even if he didn't mean to kill them, he still kidnapped them and threw them in. That's enough of a crime in and of itself."

"We can worry about this creep's intentions later," Applejack said. "Right now, we don't have enough to make an educated guess. Rainbow, when's it gonna rain again?"

Rainbow shifted her weight to make herself more comfortable. "I think it's twelve days from now. But don't quote me on that."

"But now that we've all been targeted...who's the killer going after next?" Fluttershy asked. No one had an answer for that.

The aura around Spike finally dissipated, and he blinked a few times in confusion. "What...just happened?"

"Oh, good, you're not crazy anymore," Twilight said. She put Spike down beside her.

"Yeah, sorry about..." Spike's voice trailed off, and he suddenly grabbed his forehead. "OH CELESTIA, THE PAIN! MAKE IT STOOOOP!"

---

After putting ice on Spike's forehead and letting him go to bed early, Twilight wasn't really sure what to do. Usually, she would go to Looking Glass and Siren to relay the new information regarding the case. However, this time there was no new information that she could share with them. The killer hadn't left any clues, and it would be a waste of time to tell the detectives that. As such, she was just wandering aimlessly around town.

While she was lost in thought, she almost smacked right into someone as they were leaving the market. This snapped her out of her trance, and she managed to stop herself just in the nick of time. "Sorry!" she said frantically. "I know, I need to watch where I'm going!"

"Think nothing of it, your Highness," a familiar voice replied. Twilight then realized that, as luck would have it, she had nearly run into Ruby.

"Hi, Twilight!" Diamond Tiara exclaimed. If Twilight didn't know any better, she would've thought that this was planned ahead of time.

"It's good to see you again," Twilight said. "What brings you here?"

"Just picking up a few things for the weekend." Ruby gestured to her saddlebags. "What about you?"

"No reason, really. I was just walking around." Twilight turned to Diamond Tiara. "You seem awfully happy today."

"Do I?" Diamond asked. "I didn't even notice."

"She's been visiting Filthy's grave a lot over the past few weeks," Ruby explained. "She always returns a bit brighter than the last time."

"Makes sense." Twilight smiled. "I can't speak from experience, but I've heard that kind of thing is very therapeutic."

"It's certainly helped me in the past. In fact, I was the one to suggest it in the first place."

"Sometimes I bring flowers, and sometimes we just talk," Diamond Tiara said. "Or...well, I talk, anyway. I like to think that he listens."

"Of course he's listening! If he could see you now, I bet he'd be so proud," Twilight replied. "You've come so far since we first met. At the time I was worried you would stop sleeping at night forever."

Diamond Tiara suddenly looked a bit guilty as Ruby's expression contorted in confusion. "What do you mean by that?" she asked.

"Wait, you didn't know? Diamond Tiara went a few days at a time without sleeping before."

Twilight hadn't expected Ruby's reaction to be what it was. She turned towards her niece, a stern glare on her face. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I-I didn't want you to worry..." Diamond Tiara replied. "I know how this kind of thing affects you..."

"That doesn't matter! You should have told me. It's my responsibility to take care of you!"

"Umm...did I miss something here?" Twilight asked nervously. "Why is this such a big deal?"

Ruby thought for a moment, her eyes clouded with doubt. Diamond Tiara was the one to speak up. "Have you heard of 'sporadic fatal insomnia?'"

Twilight nodded. "It's an unbelievably rare mutation that causes incurable sleeplessness and eventually leads to death...are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Diamond Tiara nodded. "Uncle Moneybags died from it last year. The doctors said--"

"That's enough, Diamond Tiara!" Ruby yelled. "You shouldn't go around telling everypony about what happened to my husband. That's no way to behave!"

Diamond Tiara shrunk a little bit and looked guilty. "S-sorry..."

"And you and I are going to have a long talk about keeping your own lack of sleep a secret. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am..."

Ruby sighed and turned to Twilight. "We should go."

Ruby left without another word, and Diamond Tiara was about to follow her. Twilight knew that she couldn't let her leave like this. "Wait a second," she called.

Diamond Tiara turned towards her. "Wh-what?"

"I'm sorry I brought that up...I had no idea that it was like this."

"No, it's all right...you didn't know." Diamond Tiara sighed. "I'd better get going...Aunt Ruby's gonna be even more angry if I don't."

Without saying anything else, Diamond Tiara turned and ran off as well. Twilight considered going after them, but it was obvious that Ruby didn't want anyone to encroach on family matters. She just knew that if she caused family problems between the two of them, it would keep her up at night.

She silently reminded herself to have Spike smack her for that pun when he was feeling better.

Author's Note:

The first parts of this chapter were waaaaaaay too fun for me to write. So much so that it wasn't at all healthy.

Comments

[Raizuo]

Oh... my... The pinkie hyperactivity... it's contagious! It has also possibly affected the author writing this!
Or it could just be him having a lot of fun with writing Pinkie, but I still stand by my first assumption!

[Jlargent]

"I can even see what Twilight did on the night of the 14th!"

Is there something you're not telling us Twilight?
Nothing, nothing at all!

[shinigamisparda]

At first I thought Spike's rant was a reference to Face McShooty.

[EricStarstorm]

4440806 I didn't know what that was, so I looked it up
It made my day

[Breakdramon]

you know what I just came up with that would be funny as hell?

spike, on a super tough shadow, asking pinky for a boost from her. then, him and his persona just going buck wild on it, destroying it easily while at the same time making hyper as heck comments.

[G2PLAY]

4436558 it's ether the note or the latter so hard teh tell:/

[Kauetheadventurer246]

Jeez spike...... Cool down.

[RP422]

"What if he wasn't trying to kill us at all?" Fluttershy asked. "What if he was trying to get us to face ourselves?"

"That's preposterous. If that were the case, then why simply kill Filthy Rich and Lotus?" Rarity's eyes lit up with intense focus as she thought. "Though...it is a possibility that Filthy Rich and Lotus were killed by accident. In the first case--and the first case alone, before you get the wrong idea--the culprit may not have known the exact nature of this world."

Aaaaaand this is the part where I remembered that the killer in Persona 4 was only responsible for the first two cases.

[sonictj3]

Ok so Pinkie is gonna be the navigator of the group....