An Infinite Number of Pinkies

by AugieDog

Chapter 8: Pinkfinity

Rarity cleared her throat. "The most beautiful pony you'd ever seen, you say?"

About this part at least, Pinkie didn't hafta do any lying. "Most beautiful earth pony. 'Cause, I mean, c'mon!" She grinned and waved her hoofs at Rarity and Fluttershy. "We've got the most beautiful unicorn and pegasus right here!" She turned to the others. "Am I right? Honestly, now, ev'rypony!"

Fluttershy was blushing, and so was Spike, trying so hard not to look at Rarity, Pinkie thought he might get a crick in his neck. Twilight rolled her eyes, and Applejack gave that low chuckle of hers. "You saying you and me ain't gonna win no pageants, Pinkie?"

That got Dashie laughing. "If it was baking or bucking, I'd vote for you guys in a second! But beauty?" Her grin showed all her teeth. "No way!"

Tossing her head, Applejack grabbed the brim of her hat as it came off; she swung it around, whapped Dashie in the snout with it, then flipped it back into place. "If'n you think, Rainbow Dash, that you can out-beauty-contest me,—!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Dashie held up both her front hoofs, a little panic in her face. "Not a picture we wanna put in anypony's head, AJ, especially not—!"

"Well, now!" Stars lit up Rarity's eyes. "I can see it already! The two of you parading about in evening gowns and swimwear—of my personal design, of course—while answering questions on current events! And, oh! The talent portion of the pageant alone would be worth the price of admission!"

Applejack was staring at her like she was a cloud of locusts. "What have I done?" she asked, her voice cracking.

The teeniest, tiniest bit of a second, and Rarity giggled. "You know, it would almost be worth going through with this absurd plan just to see how you two would manage to wriggle out of it." She looked back at Pinkie. "But tell us about this earth pony twin of mine; you've got us all on pins and needles!"

"Actually?" Pinkie couldn't stop a giggle of her own. "She wasn't your twin, Rarity..."

***

A muffled sigh, and a door opened in the white wall behind the lounging pony. "Bosky Twilight!" came a familiar, slightly peevish voice. "How many times do I have to tell you? There's nothing that can go wrong with a mirror!" And into the white room stepped Thagoras Pi, the black pegasus with a tool belt around her middle, her little glasses perched on her snout, her green kerchief tying back her white shock of a mane. "If it's not cracked, then it's—"

She stopped, her eyes going wide. And Pinkie had no choice; springing up from the pile of her twins, she flailed her front hoofs and shouted, "Surprise!"

"No." It came out of Thagoras more like a groan than a word, and she took a step back. "It...it can't be!"

"You see?" Bosky Twilight was asking, waving one perfectly formed hoof. "I'm supposed to be the only one in this mirror, Thagoras!"

Pinkie beamed at her. "Oh, that's all right. We were in it, sure, but we're not anymore!"

Bosky cocked her head. "Then perhaps you wouldn't mind moving a bit to the side? You're rather obstructing my view; I have a performance at the theatre tonight, and I must practice my—"

"No!" This time, Thagoras shouted it. "You've got to go back! You've got to get out of here before—!"

"Exactly!" Modesty had climbed to her hoofs, was smiling her big smile and using her calmest, friendliest voice. "Thing is, y'see, we kinda need you to come with us back through the looking-glass or, well, there's likely to be a couple thousand more of us pouring out in short order. And that's something no one here wants, believe you me!"

Khannie and Pinxie were standing now, Pinkie looking around with obvious amusement on her face, Khannie spinning to face the mirror. "No sign of pursuit," she announced, looking back over her shoulder.

Plinky was still crouched on the carpet, her ears folded, her eyes wide. "But...why? They must've figured out what we did by now! Why aren't they—?"

"Who??" Thagoras looked really, really upset, like she wanted to cry and scream and maybe even start smashing things. "What are you talking about?? How are you even here?? There isn't a pony alive who knows my methods, and I've sworn never to use them again!"

"Ah." Pinkie gave a sheepish grin, tried to keep her voice as calm as Modesty's. "That's kinda my fault, Thagoras. See, when you went back through my mirror after we had our visit—and I'm awful sorry I kept calling you my evil twin; I didn't understand how the whole twin thing worked till, like, this morning." She blinked. "Or was it yesterday morning? I've lost track a little, I think..."

Thagoras's back legs folded, dropping her onto her fanny in the thick carpet. "You...when I flew back into the bakery, you saw the pattern, and you've been...been—" She leaped up suddenly, her lips pulled back. "Are you insane?? Do you have any idea what you've done??"

Pinkie wanted to sink right into the carpet—well, sink even further into it—but Pinxie stepped forward, her hat and cloak still stained with sweat. "Enough," she said, ev'rything about her all stern and serious. "We've been through a great deal to come here and fetch you, Thagoras Pi, since you are apparently the only pony who knows how to stop the horror that even now is building up in the spaces between space."

That got Thagoras to stop yelling, at least, and Modesty began to tell her the whole story: the mirrors and Pinkie Prime and all the Pinkies and Pies she was gathering for her party and ev'rything. And even though she skipped over a lot of it, Pinkie felt so bad about how this was all her fault that she didn't even chime in with any of the missing details.

But listening to somepony else tell it, Pinkie found her twitches going off now and again, drawing her attention first to one piece of what happened, then to another. The pieces started adding up after a while, and Pinkie was absolutely vibrating, her head as full of ideas as candy is full of sugar, by the time Modesty was finishing up, saying, "So we all jumped through and popped in here."

"And that means—!" Pinkie shouted, but Thagoras was shouting even louder:

"It's impossible! In the first place, my method isn't magic: I'm a pegasus, not a unicorn! It's science, based on extrapolations I made from certain physical laws and principles that—!"

"Bosh!" Pinxie leveled a hoof at Thagoras. "This cantrip of yours is brilliant, and that isn't a word Pinxie often uses to describe anything she wasn't directly involved with! As near as I can tell, you somehow managed to tap into the raw power of the aethersphere itself to—!"

"Primey!" This time Pinkie not only shouted but also started jumping up and down. "She's the one! She's been behind ev'rything the whole time!"

***

"She what?" Applejack asked.

And at the exact same time, Twilight gave a gasp. "Of course! Pinkie Prime must've—!"

"Shhh!" Dashie scowled at both of them.

Applejack scowled back, but Twilight blushed. "Sorry," she whispered.

***

They all looked at Pinkie, but Pinkie focused her attention on Thagoras. "Primey can't come through the mirrors herself—she doesn't even like to look at 'em when they open! But she knows who we all are, has some way of—I dunno—peeking out through our eyes or slipping into our brains or something. And when she saw the mirror science stuff you were doing, Thagoras, she musta given your brain a little push here and there, mixed her magic in with your science so you could step through the mirror and into her cave! And when you did that, she pushed you a little more so that the next mirror you'd open would be mine: didn't you say you only shoulda been able to go to a mirror where there wasn't already a Pinkie or a Pie?"

"I—" Thagoras still looked scared and mad, but she also looked like she was thinking, something that made Pinkie feel a whole lot better. "You're right. All my calculations indicated that quantum feedback would prevent me from entering a universe where I had a living counterpart, but even though I scoured my notes after returning from your universe, Pinkie Pie, I couldn't find any flaw in my formulae. The risk of multiversal cataclysm, I felt, was much too great to attempt another passage, so I abandoned the project and went back to work on a machine I'm calling an internal combustion engine." An almost smile tugged at her snout. "It should revolutionize—"

"Yeah, that's stalwart." Modesty was looking at Pinkie. "But why should ol' Prime-puss send Thagoras here to you straight off? Whadda you got the rest of us don't?"

Pinkie looked back at the familiar balloons decorating her flanks. "I think I'm her first reflection."

***

Pinkie gave Twilight a little shrug. "So, see, that's why I didn't get all excited when you figured that out earlier." She grinned. "But you had a lot better words when you were talking about it! I especially like 'eigenvalue' 'cause it sounds like I'm getting a good deal on something!"

"Actually, it has to do with—" Twilight began, then she bit her lip. "Never mind. We don't want to be here all night."

***

"Yes," Plinky said, sitting up. "You and Primey have the same coloring, the same cutie mark, the same—" She stopped, a blush lighting her beige cheeks. "Forgive me, but you both have a similar outlandish way of leaping before you look."

"Yes," Khannie rumbled as well from where she was still standing guard at the mirror. "You said before, Pinkie Pie, that we are all of us crazy. You and this Prime of ours, however, you seem to be crazy in much the same way."

Pinkie had to nod, wishing a twitch or two would go off to tell her she was wrong about what came next. "And it...it means that—" She swallowed, her hair wanting to go flat and sad like a balloon three or four days after the party had ended, and she looked up at her twins, the whole group of them looking back at her. "She's thinks she's seen ev'rything worth seeing is the thing, thinks she's lived the lives of ev'ry one of our twins ev'rywhere and has done all the things she could ever wanna do. And thinking that, it...it's gotten her sour and grouchy, more sour and grouchy than anypony's ever been before."

Thagoras looked like she'd eaten something icky. "So she's what? Decided to gather us all together so she can pull the plug on the entirety of the multiverse? Is that it?"

Khannie was nodding slowly. "No more worlds to conquer," she muttered, "and nothing left to live for."

"Her horizons have shrunk," Pinxie added, her eyes unfocused. "She can feel the sky pressing against her snout each time she takes a breath."

"And the anger." Plinky shuddered, her voice barely a whisper. "That the world should treat her so badly after all the life and beauty she's tried to give it."

Silence filled the room, then Modesty gave a little snort. "So, death, destruction, and mayhem, is it?" The laugh behind her words made Pinkie look up, the unicorn in her black sneaky suit giving a sideways smile. "Sounds like a law firm to me, and for myself, I'd much prefer none of it." She jerked her head back toward the mirror. "So whaddaya say, gals? How 'bout we pop back in there and give her Phony Nibs something else to focus on?"

Pinkie felt her mane spring up faster than cinnamon rolls in a good, hot oven, and she leaped to her hoofs, saw Thagoras step forward to Modesty's side. "Yes," her black pegasus twin said. "We...we've got to stop this!"

"Indeed..." Pinxie shook her head like was she waking up from a bad dream, then said it more forcefully: "Indeed! And with our skills, we shall surely win the day!"

Plinky still looked scared, but she nodded and stood, Khannie clapping her front hoofs together. "Pinkie Pie!" The big pegasus grinned and gestured toward the wall-sized mirror. "Shall we dance?"

"Yes!" Pinkie sprang into a series of cartwheels, spinning into Khannie's arms; a whoosh and a rush and she felt herself leave the ground, struck the top of the mirror's frame in the by now familiar opening move of the dance. "Let's go, Pink Squad!" she yelled.

"But," she heard Thagoras mutter somewhere behind her, "I'm not pink."

"Me, either," came Plinky's soft voice.

"No worries." Modesty gave a laugh. "Today, we're all pink!"

"Indeed," Pinxie said again. "And today we will show this Pinkie Prime the true power of pink!"

***

"That's it!" Rarity chimed in so suddenly, it shocked Pinkie right out of the story. "The Charge of the Pink Brigade!"

The others were blinking at her, too. She blinked back. "Earlier? Perhaps you'll recall how you were all offering your suggestions as to an overall theme for this presentation? 'The Elements of Pinkmony' and all that?"

A moment of silence, then Twilight said, "Umm, yes, I...I remember saying that. But—"

"My suggestion," Rarity went on, touching a hoot to her chest, "is somewhat more expansive, I feel, and will convey the intrinsic drama of the—"

"Jokes, Rarity." Dashie sounded like she was explaining something to a foal. "We were just making some stupid jokes, not trying to do...whatever it was you said."

Another moment, then, "Ah." Rarity folded her front legs and smiled sweetly at Pinkie. "Pray continue, Pinkie Pie."

***

With Thagoras right there watching, Pinkie was glad she'd had so much practice doing the mirror dance. Sure, maybe it was the main reason ev'ry world that ever existed was now about to get blown up or whatever, but, well, that didn't mean they couldn't do the thing in style.

Sure enough, she heard Thagoras gasp a couple times during the routine, and when she gave the last tap before dropping back into Khannie's arms and flipping out to land on all fours in the neat squishy carpeting, she couldn't help but smile at the black pegasus exclaiming, "Impossible!"

Pinxie's harsh laugh. "You may wish to retire that word from your vocabulary after all this."

"Quickly!" Khannie said. "Pinkie Prime is no doubt prepared for our coming, so we'll need to—!"

"Thagoras?" came a voice that didn't sound like one of her twins; looking toward it, Pinkie saw Bosky Twilight sitting up, wrinkles of confusion marring her perfect brow. "You're not going off and leaving my sink plugged, are you?"

A sigh, and Thagoras turned to look back at her, too. "It's fine now, Bosky. You just need to put that strainer in when you wash your mane."

"And my show tonight!" Something close to real fear crept over Bosky's face. "I never do nearly as well on stage if the rest of you girls aren't in the audience watching! You know that!" She leaped from her lounge more gracefully than any pony Pinkie had ever seen—

***

"And this time," Pinkie said, "I really mean any pony. You shoulda seen her! She was, like, the Rainbow Dash of being all pretty and floaty and empty-headed."

"Whoa." Dashie's mouth went sideways. "Is that a compliment or not?"

Rarity sniffed. "Well, actresses, you know."

Pinkie thought she might go on, but she didn't. So Pinkie went on instead.

***

And the look Bosky gave to Thagoras as she glided up to her was about the most heartbreaking thing Pinkie had ever seen. "Please, Thagoras," she whimpered, and even Plinky had never sounded so miserable. "Tell me you'll be back in time."

It was hard to tell with Thagoras's dark hide, but Pinkie was pretty sure the pegasus was blushing. She started to mumble something, but Modesty slid in between the two, that big smile on her face. "Tell you what, Bosky. If Thagoras isn't back for your show, like as not there isn't gonna be any show nor much of a universe to stage it in, either. That sound good?" She started pushing Thagoras toward where Pinkie was standing. "Now, you'll excuse us, but we've got a bit of the ol' stomping the villain we'd best attend to."

Plinky and Pinxie had already moved past her, and Pinkie turned to see them standing with Khannie right at the edge of the misty wall the mirror had turned into. Thagoras and Modesty reached her then, Thagoras staring at the swirling clouds. "I...I can't believe this is really happening..."

Pinkie fell into step with them and nudged Thagoras with her shoulder. "Just wait till you see what's on the other side! Even I can scarcely believe that!"

"Small one?" Khannie nodded to Plinky. "I'll have you and Thagoras follow Pinxie and me with Pinkie and Modesty bringing up the rear." Plinky nodded and took a step back while Khannie's gaze moved around to each of Pinkie's twins; she reached Pinkie last, and the seriousness in her eyes was thicker than any marshmallow chocolate fudge Pinkie had ever even tried to make. "Be prepared for anything," Khannie said, "and we shall have our enemies dancing to our music before the hour is out!"

Pinxie gave her bark of a laugh, and Khannie flared her wings, the two of them stepping into the mist. Plinky and Thagoras went next, both of them smelling nervous in totally different ways, and then Pinkie was shuffling through, Modesty beside her breathing the word, "Stalwart."

And for all that Pinkie had told herself she was gonna be ready—especially 'cause she liked the whole dancing thing Khannie had been talking about—stepping out into near darkness and complete silence wasn't one of the things she'd even thought possible, not after all the raucous ruckus they'd left behind them not that many minutes ago.

"Where—?" Plinky started.

But Khannie cut her off: "Recall, small one, that this Prime of ours can draw a cloak around portions of this place when she wishes to."

"Indeed?" Pinxie's horn flared. "Then let us fling back her cloak and reveal what she—"

"No!" Pinkie shouted, her twitches making her see what was about to happen, but Pinxie's magic was already spreading out from her in a purple glowing bubble; all Pinkie could do was throw herself sideways into Modesty and shout, "Shield!"

Modesty gasped, but her horn had barely started glowing when Pinxie's bubble stopped with a clank, cracks spiderwebbing over it like it was ice on the lake during Winter Wrap Up. And then it popped—though it was less a pop and more a roar, blinding white light hotter than any oven crashing into Pinkie from all sides.

Another gasp beside her, and the heat vanished, Pinkie blinking to see a shimmery pink bubble spreading out from Modesty, her eyes and teeth clenched, to surround all Pinkie's friends, ev'rypony's manes a little singed at the edges, a big slash of soot smeared across the fancy silver threadwork of Pinxie's hat.

Silence, then Plinky asked, "A...a trap? Was she—?"

"Primey!" Pinkie couldn't keep the anguish out of her voice, pressed her front hoofs against the glassy surface of Modesty's shield spell. "You don't hafta be mean like this! We...we just don't want the party to end!"

A sigh echoed from the depths of the cave, a breeze that washed over Pinkie and blew Modesty's bubble away like dandelion fluff, Pinkie dropping to all fours on the blue-black stone with its silvery spots. "And yet..." Primey's voice rolled out of the darkness so tired and sad, Pinkie felt her eyes tear up. "All things must."

"But—!" Pinkie tried to think of something to say. "We only just got Thagoras! The guest of honor, you said! How can you end the party now??"

"Ah." The laugh that came then was as soft and cynical as any of Pinxie's. "You wish to discuss your treachery and betrayal, Pinkie Pie? Is that your desire?"

"Look!" Modesty was panting, but her words came out loud and clear. "Nopony's betrayed anypony! We just—!"

"Ha!" The darkness ev'rywhere swirled away like smoke to reveal Pinkie Prime striding toward them with her wings tight against her body, her horn and eyes as bright and angry as a sunburn. But what made Pinkie gasp—and at least a couple of the others, too—were the partygoers Primey was weaving through, all the Pinkies and all the Pies all frozen in place, happy expressions stretched over their faces, pizza and pastries in their hooves. "I gave strict orders," Primey was shouting, "that Thagoras Pi should not arrive until the time had come for the closing ceremonies!" She stomped up, thrust her muzzle down into Pinkie's face. "Did I not, my own??"

Pinkie found a smile, though she could tell it was a pretty wavery one. "Surprise?" she more asked than said.

Primey's grumpiness seemed to waver, too, the feverish glow of her eyes fading till they were just regular sky blue again, and for two-and-a-half heartbeats, Pinkie thought that maybe...just maybe—

But— "No," Primey said, her voice even scarier now that it was quiet. "It's too late for that, I'm afraid." She stepped back, cocked her head, her too-serious gaze moving, Pinkie realized, to acknowledge the other five. "Still, a valiant effort on all your parts. I would surely look back upon this moment with pride and fondness if, well, if there were going to be any future from which I could look back..."

***

"But why??" Fluttershy blurted out, just enough of The Stare flashing in her eyes to make Pinkie suck in a breath. "The way you were talking earlier, it...I mean...you made it sound like she was going to destroy the world and ev'rything because...because she was bored!"

And about this, Pinkie didn't need to lie at all. "That," she said quietly. "And a little more, too."

***

"Please," Plinky Pie whispered, so much music in so soft a sound. "You...you don't have to do this, Pinkie Prime."

Shaking her head, Primey fluffed out her wings and rose toward the roof. "Look at yourselves, after all," she murmured, then she was rearing back, pink light bursting from her in waves. "All of you!" she shouted, and the frozen ponies around Pinkie shifted, blinked, dropped their cups of punch and their sandwiches, their eyes going wide, their heads turning till ev'ry pony Pinkie could see—and, she was betting, all the ponies she couldn't see, too—were looking in utter silence at Primey, the winged unicorn hovering like a big pink pony-shaped sun in the middle of the cavern.

"Consider the lives you live!" she was yelling now. "Petty, paltry, pushing into untold wretched depths with every foul breath you take!" She brought her front hoofs up, crooked them at her own chest. "I know the truth of this for I have been you all, have slogged through the fetid swamps of your hearts from history's earliest dawn to the final whimpered heat death of the multiverse! But no more!" She swept her hoofs out like she was trying to push away from ev'rypony in the whole cave. "No more will you twist the gifts I have given you! No more will your braying, hollow laughter echo down the marrow of my bones! No more will your stink fester in the formerly sweet and pristine air! For you were once mine, but now you have gone astray, gone squalid, gone jejune! And I will take you back, will take you in, will use the power I so foolishly squandered on you to erase every trace of this poor cosmos that you have so benighted and besmirched!"

And suddenly Pinkie found herself looking straight into Primey's eyes, harder and more awful than biscuits left way too long in the oven. "And perhaps," Primey said, her voice quieter but still carrying, Pinkie was sure, to ev'ry part of the cave, "just perhaps, I can finally rest in peace...." Lowering her head, she raised her front legs, and the light that began to pulse from her made Pinkie feel queasy all the way down to her fetlocks.

Ahead of her, Khannie spun, her ferocious gaze fixed on Thagoras. "This is your time, wise one! What must we do to stop her??"

Thagoras took a step back, nothing but fear in her scent, and for the briefest of instants, Pinkie thought her twitches had all been wrong, that Thagoras didn't know how to work this place, that ev'rything they'd tried to do to save the world was all gonna fall to pieces right here and—

"There!" Thagoras took the step forward, waved her hoof at Primey. "Pinxie! Modesty! You need to ionize every oxygen atom in the air around her! That'll disrupt the quantum pattern she's initializing!"

Pinxie turned a wide-eyed look over her shoulder, and Modesty stomped the ground. "And what in the bright blue above does that mean??"

"This!" Primey aimed her horn at Pinkie, and the fire that lanced from it was the pink of skin scraped raw by a fall down a mountainside. "For I shall absorb you first of all!"

Pinkie couldn't look away, but a flash of darkness, and Modesty sprang into the space between Thagoras and Plinky with a cry of "Huddle!" Pinkie slid forward, pressed herself into Thagoras's side, saw Khannie leaping, her wings unfurled to cover them all, Pinxie scrambling back to stand with Modesty, both unicorns' horns flaring so bright, Pinkie had to look away.

So she saw the exact moment that Primey's fire engulfed them all, saw it lick against the eggshell thin flicker of purple and rose colored magic, heard Pinxie and Modesty cry out and collapse to the rocky floor beneath Khannie's outspread wings, Thagoras and Plinky throwing their arms around the unicorns and trying to cushion their fall, and Pinkie found herself pretty much buried underneath the other five. "We need more time!" she heard Thagoras shout. "Need to coordinate our actions, know each other's strengths! Otherwise, we'll be—!"

"That's it!" Pinkie struggled upward till she could see the others above her, more twitches clattering through her than she'd ever felt before. "Guys! Do you trust me??"

Modesty and Pinxie, their faces clenched and sweating, looked at Pinkie like she was crazy, but Khannie gave a crisp nod while Plinky sang out, "Yes, Pinkie, of course!"

Pinkie focused on the two unicorns. "'Cause you need to drop the shield," she told them. "And I mean right now!"

Pinxie stared at her, then at Modesty, and Modesty, her eyes closed, tendons standing out all along her neck, gave a little laugh. "Yeah, all right, Pinkie. Anything for a weird life, y'know?"

"You can't be—!" Pinxie started.

Reaching up between their tightly pressed bodies, Pinkie managed to touch a hoof to Pinxie's lips. "It'll be scary," she said. "But it's the only way."

Primey's fire roared all around them, so it wasn't exactly a moment of silence, but Pinxie jerked her head into something like a nod. "On three, Modesty. One, two—"

Their horns flickered out together, and Pinkie couldn't help shrieking as the fire rushed over her, the entirety of her being—mind, body, hair, teeth, spirit, hoofs, and ev'rything—dissolving into nothingness.

***

"What??" Dashie had jumped into the air again, her wings beating furiously. "You dissolved??"

"Yep-a-rooty!" Pinkie tried to grin, but the memory of that horrible, horrible moment caught at the edges of her mouth, kept them from curling up the way she wanted them to. Twilight, Spike, and Fluttershy were staring at her with gigantic eyes, and when Applejack and Rarity both at the same time reached out and touched her hoof, she felt safe enough to give up on the whole smiling thing. "It, uhh..." She swallowed. "It wasn't any fun at all. Not even a little."

And looking around the group of her friends, she vowed once more to make ev'rything extra-specially good and fun for them from now on since, well, since this was pretty much where all the serious lying had to start... "But, see, I was her first reflection, right? And that, well, that's always meant I can do things no other ponies can."

***

Still, it was kinda hard and scary for Pinkie to reach out with her hoofs when she didn't really have hoofs anymore, to use those non-existent hoofs to grab the less-than-smoke that her friends were now, and to take them into herself just like Primey had been talking about.

She did it, though, 'cause she knew she could, knew she was the only pony anywhere other than Primey who could pass under and around and through regular space this way, and with each stretch, with each grab, with each strange and wonderful crash as one of her friends stopped screaming and dying and flowed into her, added their strength to hers, their knowledge, their power and their personalities, their thoughts and their astonishment, Pinkie felt herself pulse and grow, felt Khannie's mighty wings join with Thagoras's clever ones as they unfurled from Pinkie's back, felt the delicate touch of Modesty's magic mix with the brass and flash of Pinxie's to spiral to a point from the middle of Pinkie's forehead. And when she and her friends realized what was happening and that it was working, the laugh that Pinkie gave rang with Plinky's music.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard Primey shouting, "And so you shall all be disintegrated and reintegrated into me! For without me, you are nothing! And I am all that you shall ever be!"

"Excuse me!" Pinkie called, bursting the barrier between non-existence and existence with a toss of her mane and scattering the thorns of Primey's magic from her flanks like water after a bath. She spread her wings, her pinions singing with joy, and lit the cave around her with a mother-of-pearl splash from her horn that danced through the air like hundreds of unpoppable soap bubbles. "But that's not entirely accurate!"

***

Pinkie paused, her audience staring at her with their mouths open and their eyes wide. "Any questions?"

"Wings?" The word came all shivery outta Dashie.

"Horn?" Twilight asked.

"Just wait!" Pinkie did a quick drum roll over the grass in front of her. "It gets better!"

***

Primey's jaw dropped, and Pinkie knew exactly what the big winged unicorn was seeing: another winged unicorn, just as big and just as pink, with the same fancy pink crown thingee and neckpiece as well as those sweet pink metal shoes. Though we're much cuter, of course, the part of her that was Modesty said silently.

By that time, the Khannie inside of Pinkie's new self had risen to the fore. "My fellow Pinkies and my fellow Pies!" she announced, Plinky stepping in to add her honey to Khannie's thunder. "You have heard from her own mouth how this Pinkie Prime of ours has lured us here with the intention of destroying not only us but all that we hold dear in every world from which we have come! I, however, say that this will not happen!"

"No!" Primey shrieked. "You can't!"

The anguish in her words pulled at Plinky and Pinkie's hearts, but— Stay focused, Pinxie cautioned. The less control this one feels she has over the situation, the more dangerous she'll become.

Then stand by, Khannie rumbled internally. We're about to push her over the brink. And while Pinkie couldn't help smiling at that, she knew it was Modesty's sardonic grin that showed on their collective snout. Out loud, then, Khannie and Plinky went on: "I therefore call upon everypony here to lend your strength to our cause! For it is only united that we can prevail!"

"Pinkie!" a voice called below, and Pinkie looked down to see Slinky Pie, the fancy dancer pony she'd met way back during one of her first trips through the mirrors with Plinky. "What can we do to help??"

"Betrayer!" Primey aimed her horn at Pinkie. "You cannot stop me from taking you into myself!"

Which was when Pinkie turned things over to Thagoras. So, her snooty little voice came from somewhere inside Pinkie's head, ionization is when you do this. And dipping into the magical reserves Modesty and Pinxie had brought to them, she launched a tiny ball of pink fire from their shared horn. Little crackling tendrils began arching out from it immediately, and even though Pinkie was pretty sure she hadn't known what an atom was till about a minute ago, she was sure she could see millions and billions of them spinning and churning as the fiery tentacles leaped from the little ball.

A weird sort of gas began filling the space between her and Primey—Not gas, Thagoras corrected her. Plasma.—and the tendrils of the fire ball really liked it. 'Cause they went crazy, became a streaming swarm of criss-crossing purple lightning bolts that washed over Primey and made the sickly pink glow forming around her horn snuff out like a campfire under a bucket of water.

Primey made a strangling sort of noise, but the rest of Thagoras's plan was already moving through Pinkie's mind and body: Modesty and Pinxie joining Thagoras at the horn to prepare the next layers of spells, Plinky and Khannie using the voice to call out, "Those who would join us in opposing Pinkie Prime's designs for us, signal your willingness, and we will gather you up for the final and decisive battle!"

"No!" Primey cried again, but the uproar from below almost drowned her out:

"Yes!" Pinkie's twins were yelling, or "Here!" or just waving and stomping their hoofs to get her attention, the clamor growing larger and larger, Pinkie's eyes misting up.

Ready? Thagoras asked.

She nodded and called, "Thank you! Thank you all!" Another little ball popped from her horn, and this time, the effect spread at something like the speed of light, snapping outward through the sea of electrons freed by the ionization spell and carrying Pinkie's awareness to the very farthest corners of the cave. And from there, it was a simple matter of reaching out to the near-infinite number of upraised hoofs, slipping the spell over them with another whispered, "Thank you," and drawing them all up, back, and in, ev'ry single Pinkie and ev'ry single Pie in that whole unfathomable space leaping forward with a cheer to add what she could to the force opposing Pinkie Prime.

Two instantaneous flashes of light, one outbound, the other incoming, and Pinkie drew a breath, felt herself even fuller and more energized than when she would eat an entire chocolate cake for breakfast and burst out into the morning, ready to show another day as good a time as she knew how. The entire cavern, she saw now, stood dark and empty, all her myriad sisters settling into place inside her, and she turned toward Pinkie Prime, vibrating in fury a few dozen yards away. "I should've killed you when I first laid eyes on you," Primey growled.

Pinkie shrugged. "Yeah, I get that a lot."

"And the worst part?" Primey swept a hoof over the vastness around them. "You've only made things more unpleasant for yourself. For I am your Prime, and even united, the rest of you haven't a fraction of the power I command."

Uh-oh, came Thagoras's voice, and calculations that even now Pinkie could barely understand began racing through her brain. Because if she's warping quantum space in a logarithmic rather than arithmetic fashion, she might be right about—

Incoming! Modesty shouted, and Pinkie slipped with Khannie into their wings, all her pegasus and earth pony twins adding their expertise to the flips and dives they spun and twisted through and into so they could evade Primey's blasting beams of energy, the air screaming in their wake.

Steady... Pinxie was muttering, and the spell that slashed from Pinkie's horn in the instant she next looked at Primey hit the other winged unicorn hard, knocked her back a good dozen yards, and stopped the magical onslaught. There. And Pinkie could hear Pinxie's mean little smile. Now for a bit of payback.

No! Pinkie shouted, and she pulled them all into a hover. "I don't want to hurt you," she called across the cavern.

The laugh that trickled out of Primey then didn't have anything fun or funny in it at all. "Which is another reason you'll fail."

"But—!" Trying to think quickly, Pinkie came up with: "If part of this is 'cause you've already done ev'rything in ev'ry universe, well, I mean, what about this right now?? Doing a big aerial martial arts scene with yourself?? That's gotta be new!"

Primey's eyes glowed with the pink of gums around an infected tooth. "I've been fighting myself for more millennia than you can safely imagine, my own. But if I must end it all one universe at a time, then so be it." Sparks began snapping from her horn like boiling oil from a griddle.

Pinkie felt the defensive spells from her unicorn parts gear up, but Primey turned her head away, blasted a jagged hole in the wall of the cave. "We'll start," she shouted, streaking toward the familiar-looking room on the other side of the hole, "with your universe, Pinkie Pie!"

The main room of the Ponyville library, Pinkie realized. And without another thought, she dove after her twin.

***

Twilight's ears folded. "I remember it...it sounded like Spike had knocked one of the bookcases over again."

Spike gave her a tight-lipped glare. "When have I ever?"

"But when I looked down the stairs..." Twilight swallowed. "For half a second, I thought it was Princess Celestia standing there, but she was pink and snarling. And when she looked up at me, it was like...like everything exploded. I mean, I could feel the heat, feel the pressure, could almost feel it...tearing me apart." She shook her head quickly. "But then I blinked, she was gone, and things started exploding outside. So I ran downstairs to see what was going on."

Pinkie considered lying about this part, but no. Not with all the lies she hadn't gotten to yet. "Primey blew up the library tree the very first thing."

"What?" Twilight's eyes got huge. "But...no, no, she didn't! It came through everything just fine!" She leaped to her hoofs. "Or are you saying she came back and—??"

"It's OK!" Pinkie jumped up, took Twilight's front hoofs in hers. "But when I came flying outta that hole she'd blasted in the cave wall, I saw her standing there laughing with the fire and the wreckage all around! And—" Pinkie couldn't stop a shiver at the memory. "And I saw wunna your arms, Twilight, sticking out from under a big chunk of burning wood. And I...I...I wasn't gonna let that be true."

Silence from the others, but Pinkie kept her eyes focused on Twilight. "It was Thagoras who fixed it, and I can't even tell you how. All I remember was I was screaming inside our head, and she was flashing through these calculations about how to use our infinite energy to reverse entropy or something. And then she had the unicorns cast a spell, and it...it split us in two! Except I was inside both heads along with all my twins, and then suddenly one of me saw the library flying back together around me till it was all fixed and there was Primey coming through the hole!"

"Whoa." Spike's tail swished like a cat's. "You went back in time?"

"Kinda. See, 'cause when the one of me who went back saw Primey come through, I tried to rear up and push her back into the cave! And that stopped her from blowing up the library, so the one of me who hadn't gone back in time found herself standing with that first Primey outside the non-blown-up library 'cause the Primey in the past hadn't been able to blow it up!" Pinkie grinned weakly at Twilight. "See?"

A twitch pulled the corner of Twilight's left eye, and Rarity cleared her throat. "I may not be a scientist, Pinkie, but I believe I can say with a fair degree of certainty that that makes no sense whatsoever."

Applejack nodded, Fluttershy's brow wrinkling like wet laundry that had been sitting in a heap for too long. "Then...," the pegasus said slowly. "There were...two of...each of you?"

"Exactly!" Pinkie sat back down. "Except that then, Primey did the same thing and sent another of herselves back to stop the me in the past from stopping the Primey in the past, so I had to send another me back to stop her! But while I was doing that, the first Primey jumped into the sky and started trying to blast more parts of Ponyville! So I had to chase after her while the ones of me in the past were chasing after the other Primies, and—" Pinkie stopped, took a breath, gave a shrug. "It got really, really confusing really, really fast."

Nothing but the late-late-late afternoon breeze rustling the leaves, then Dashie said, "So that's why I thought I saw a buncha these Pinkie Primes? 'Cause some were her and some were you and some were from then and some were from the past?"

Pinkie clapped her front hoofs. "See?? You guys do get it! There must've been, like, five hundred million of us flying around here before we were done, and all the ones of me stopped all the ones of her from hurting anypony. Except—" She swallowed, turned to Applejack. "We had to pick and choose when and where to fight, see, 'cause she was just too much faster than us. So I'm really, really sorry, AJ, that we couldn't keep her from burning down some of Sweet Apple Acres. I kept having to be ev'rywhere else—that was me who saved you, Fluttershy, not Primey—and we just...we couldn't..." The lump in her throat got too big for any more words to come out.

A sigh, and Applejack reached over to pat her hoof. "'Sokay, Pinkie. Like I said, we'll get by. Gotta wonder, though: all the kerfuffle this morning hit hard, then just plain disappeared after maybe three minutes. What'id y'all do to finally get rid of her?"

***

Again! Thagoras was shouting somewhere, Pinkie grabbing Fluttershy and knocking Primey away from Carousel Boutique and joining a couple more versions of herself to summon rainclouds in the past so Primey couldn't start any of the fires in downtown like she had a couple hundred times already. One more of us to the point of initial entry! If we can carry her with us back into the cave, it won't stop whatever the last round of damage was, but it will pull all ourselves and all herselves out of this universe and into the realm between!

Beyond exhausted, Pinkie turned, sprinted through the confines of time and space, pink fire scattering from her like a spray of cherry blossoms, and streaked into the library—how many times had she stopped it from blowing up at this point?—aimed herself like a comet at the chest of the first Primey emerging from the hole, rammed her hoofs into her and shoved like she was kneading all the bread dough in all the bakeries in all the mirrors ev'rywhere. The other hundreds of thousands of Pinkies there managed to hold off the other hundreds of thousands of Primies, and wrapping herself around Primey's head, Pinkie bent her over backwards, flipped her horn over fetlocks by sheer momentum, and tumbled with her onto the floor of the cave, the hole into the library sealing shut with the sound of a million pickle jars all popping open in reverse.

Unable to move, Pinkie lay there panting, sweat pouring off her like she was a melting iceberg, Plinky's quiet voice coming to her from inside: Did...did we do it?

"Well done, my own," Primey whispered right into Pinkie's ear, and with a cry she stumbled up, somehow got her hoofs under her, looked at her twin standing beside her, Primey's cotton-candy-and-bubblegum mane barely mussed even after ev'rything that'd happened. "That was indeed something I'd never done before."

Pinkie couldn't get air into her lungs for long enough to work her voice box, so she didn't say anything.

"And as your reward," Primey went on, "I shall give you two more minutes to catch your breath before I open that hole again and go through it to destroy your universe."

"What??" ev'ry Pinkie and ev'ry Pie inside her screamed aloud at the same time.

"Oh, yes." Primey gave a nod. "That time travel trick was quite clever, but I'll not let you get away with it a second time." She cocked her head, her smile like the cut left by a rusty knife slicing a honeydew melon. "If you're ready?"

"No." The twitches that rocketed through Pinkie then were diff'rent from any she'd ever felt, and she flexed her aching neck, pointed her horn at the ceiling, and let those twitches spurt out the end of her horn, emerald green fire swirling up from her to form a whirlpool in midair above them.

The whole vast cavern fell completely silent, Primey and all her interior twins staring at it. "I—" Primey whispered after a minute, a look of wonder on her face. "I've never— That isn't— What...what...what—?"

"There." Pinkie's gasping had slowed just enough for her to choke out the words. "Silly Primey. Why'd you think...this was the only...multiverse, huh?"

Primey was still gazing at the whirlpool, her ears trembling. "Another—?" She spun, her hoofs dancing like a filly at her birthday party. "A whole entire new and different multiverse?? You...you mean it??"

With what felt like her last bit of strength, Pinkie waved a wing at the whirlpool. "It's all yours."

Rearing back with a whinny, Primey launched herself upward, passed through the green fire, and it vanished with a lilac-scented breeze that toppled Pinkie right over sideways and into unconsciousness.

Comments

[AugieDog]

It's still:

October 8th in my time zone for another 40 minutes, so here's chapter 8! Next will be the conclusion, chapter 9, on or about October 18th.

Mike

[danail24]

I'd sure love to meet a sexy anthropomorphic Pinkie... lol

[MLP BRONY 27]

1054491
Hermes : DOOOOMED!

Bender: *gasps* DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO- *gets cut off*

[banjo2E]

And looking around the group of her friends, she vowed once more to make ev'rything extra-specially good and fun for them from now on since, well, since this was pretty much where all the serious lying had to start...

...yep, Pinkie Prime's the one telling the story.

[Pawn Heart]

This... is.... AWESOOOOOOOME!

Can't wait for the conclusion!

[Chuck Molesta]

Kinkie Pie

pls

[ShadowBro]

Oh my God.

The Doctor just had an aneurysm.

[RaisingShad0ws]

Omniverse Pinkie Pie? That's the next step I'm guessing.

[uncommented]

I don't think its possible to read this without hearing the theme from the ending of Gurren Lagann in the background.

[Samdamandias]

Well. That was ... odd

[AugieDog]

1413134

And it's not:

Finished yet!

Mike

[Levana]

WHOA. WHOA. I'M STILL RECOVERING FROM THE AWESOME. They broke my awesome buffers, and there are hull breaches caused by the impact of the awesome everywhere.

[Rarityshy]

Will Pinkie ever tell us what was a lie? She keeps mentioning lying and I don't know what to believe

[Gamerteen13]

@Author:
Y U GIVE CLIFFHANGER?!
RAEG!
Okay, enough memetics. in case you couldn't tell, I'm excited for the next chapter, and I wish you luck in it's writing.
May your works be high-quality, and may the words always flow.
~Gamerteen13

@Everyone else:
Okay, random WMG time:
(About the lying Pinkie keeps mentioning)
1. Pinkie is dead, and this is her way of coping before heading onto the afterlife.
2. Pinkie is really Pinkie Prime.
3. Pinkie turned into Pinkie Prime.(Yes, there's a difference. In 2. she was Pinkie Prime the whole time, in 3. by combining with the other Pinkies and Pies, she basically became Pinkie Prime)
4. That isn't really Pinkie.
4.5. That isn't really Pinkie, she's in the Realm Inbetween, holding the multiverse together.
5. By combining all the Pinkies and Pies into one, the universes are combining, and Pinkie doesn't want to tell them.
6. Most of the other Pinkies and Pies died, and Pinkie Pie is lying in an effort to keep her friends from hating her.
7. The multiverse is dying, and Pinkie is telling her last good-byes.
Okay, so, any other theories? If we keep guessing, odds are we're going to guess right eventually.

[Ekevoo]

Dude.
I shouldn't have read that before I slept.
I am so not going to sleep tonight.
Curse youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!
(I actually mean praise you, wow, great work! *_*)

[paintom_phan]

Only Pinkie Pie can break herself out of a time paradox.

1411830 That's not how you spell orgasm.

[kajisora]

OOHHH!
Massively Multiple Multiverses!
ITS AN OMNIVERSE!

one world = fun
two worlds = fun x 2
universe = fun ^ 2
multiverse = fun^3
omniverse = fun^4
THE FUN HAS BEEN TESSERACTED!

[AugieDog]

1414459
1415933

That's a:

Pretty good list of possibilities there, GT13. Especially of couple of them...

But all will be revealed Thursday if I keep to my schedule!

Mike

[Shumiry]

So awesome!
Definitely looking forward to what happens next!

Please keep writing, I'll keep reading!

[Lurks-no-More]

I'm getting the same feeling as in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann when they punched a hole in the space-time continuum.

This is awesome.