Chapter 11: For I Am Me-na
I walked on. For how long? I didn’t care. My only companion the low buzz of static in my ears. My only guide amid the void I walked endlessly into.
The ever consuming darkness that was my second reality, that I had almost forgotten amongst the comfort of the fake, mental Rock Farm, was all around me. All I could see. Despite my searing rage that remained burning in me, I tried my best to march a straight line. Needless to say, I didn’t think anything through. Another part of me would have retorted I had thought too much for too long anyway.
Eventually, my irritation at all that was began to include the static, include the nothingness. I felt my face twitch and contort, culminating in a horrendous shout to the vacant, void heavens, as I brought my hooves harshly upon the void floor. Were it not for the understanding of the void, I could have sworn I felt something crack underneath my fury.
My eyes were screwed tight, as my not lungs oh, so wanted to heave and breathe. The urge increasing as the damnable static refused to leave, refused to alter, continuing on in its ever same unchanging drone. I growled like Mufasa and wrenched my eyes open only to be shocked.
Ponyville stood before me. Of course it wasn’t actually Ponyville, even I, enraged and irritated as I was, knew that. The sky was still void, as was the floor. But, from the void grew sparse green clumps of grass, buildings and other village iconography, all awash in fog, a wrought iron fence encircled the falsity, a rickety, yet intimidating iron gate stood open, with a circled table with two chairs standing beside the gate. As if gate guards had forsaken their post.
In my wonder the static slowly inked back into my observations, repeating its ever same loop, and I violently shook my head to no sensation, beginning my march towards the falsity. As I started to wander, I noted that technically, I had no idea what Ponyville was really like, not upon the world of physical, of three dimensional, of tangible, of real. All the same, the approximate buildings, empty and gray spoke to me somewhat, even as the static drilled into my skull.
My wandering eventually became overwhelmed by the damnable static. I wanted new noise, I wanted something ELSE.
So, I began to sing.
“Crumbling down
into a frown I once held,
thought I wore a smile,
seems the smile has been expelled.”
I vented musically, the static my orchestra, as I gazed upon the various indistinct Ponyvillian buildings. Background buildings from vague memories twisted from years of decay. The passive things that always surrounded the characters I adored, as they strolled along their stories, but never really paid much mind to. Never put even a single thought into. Except for the wonders of the town. Like the one that came into view.
A de-saturated Sugar Cube Corner appeared before me, its gingerbread pastel colors washed out, fog washing out of the ajar front door. Not really condemned, or left to rot, more like it was a memory, half baked. I scowled, words I could never speak for myself tangling into song.
“It doesn’t really matter right now
and doesn’t really matter how
but I’m fed up and I will not bow
‘til you see I’m sick of how
this is how you treat me now!”
I spoke to a charge who wasn’t there, who couldn’t hear me, speaking words I had no spine to say to her face. Words a part of me doubted I fully believed. Words another part of me thought I didn’t believe enough. I tore my gaze from the phantom bakery and marched on, though what it stood for stuck in my mind, much like the ever same static.
“I think you’ll find,
I’m losing all of my patience.
Simply on a dime,
with these tedious relations.
I can’t be me,
I have to be you!
No time to prepare.
Forced to play the parts of two!”
Hardly giving the gray Boutique a single glance, I grouched to myself, it was just a fraud after all. I started to become consumed by my verbal thoughts as my scarce few memories played over my mind’s eye. Pretending during meals, pretending during play. Absorbed into the recent memories, I let the vague memories of a place I’d never been pass me by, faded and still.
My eyes flicked to a new staple. One that clenched at my heart for some reason, one that spoke to me, though I could not decipher its words. Golden Oaks Library. A fantastical sight. A false fantasy before a real falsity.
“What role do I play
inside this great big story?
Do I get a say?
Or is it all just written for me?
It’s taking its toll now,
more than I know how.
How can I go now
if I don’t get my role?”
I mean, really. I was shoved into a Saturday Morning Cartoon Show. An intrusion upon the very reality that was before me. I knew the broad strokes of the script, I knew the waves that would wash upon the whole. Was I accounted for? Could I be anything? Was I just ink on paper? Was I something less? Were I a greater fake compared to the now piles of atoms that were once nothing more than pixels and dreams? I turned away from the Library.
“What role am I to you?
A puppet master
or fellow dancer,
there up on the stage.
Of this life I could not gauge,
this life I could not choose.
The life that I have lost,
this life that I can lose.”
I grimaced and slouched on, briefly wondering what Pinkie really thought of me. If she saw me as a person. I could hardly get a read on her, or, well, anyone-pony. Turning my eyes skyward, only to see the sky void, I couldn’t help but feel bitter. Everything happened so fast, relatively speaking. My past life went right out the window without so much as a kazoo fanfare. With how fast time had been kicking me, any day now Pinkie and I would become vigilantes, kicking criminals out the same window my life did.
If I didn’t die, or make Pinkie die, or ruin her life, or ruin the future.
My grimace turned to a scowl, and I looked away from the void sky, only to instead see the void ground. Such difference.
“Victim, victor.
truther, trickster.
A friend or a fiend.
These feelings climbing,
feelings binding.
Will wills begin to bend?”
And that’s if I go back at all. It’s not like Pinkie really knows me. I couldn’t keep up a customer service facade for even a month and I expect to last all the way to the Summer Sun Celebration and beyond? My emotional faculties weren’t built for that, not with how things were going.
I glanced from my downward gaze as I sang and wandered. Oddity shops. Food locations among the fantasy fair tent things. That Sofas and Quills place. Plasticine fakes of what might be. Real people don’t shop there. Real people don’t live there. I don’t live there.
“From whence am I?
Oh Heaven high,
or even Hell below?
I don’t have wings
or other tellings.
Should I even know?”
Had I even been a good influence? Was I a net positive to Pinkie’s life? Would she have been better if I had just faded into the black of her mind? If I did?
For a brief moment, I wondered what it would have been like, if I had been born in this world normally. Would Pinkie even have wanted to be my friend? Are we just a product of proximity?
I was broken out of my melancholy ponderings by the sight of a fountain. Never had much interaction with fountains. Seen them, never enjoyed them. Never got the chance. Don’t think I ever saw one like this, fancy statue spilling out water into a basin. Granted I would never had the opportunity to see a fountain with water frozen in time, hovering undisturbed before. But I still had never seen a fancy fountain, sat by one, played with the water. Even standing there, I still hadn’t.
I stared up at the pony statue, such glee on its stone face, and felt my grimace harden even more.
I needed to be myself. Everything that happened, what brought me here was trying too hard to not be me!
“Please bring forth the truth!
I beg of you!
I beg of me!
Will I finally get it?
Finally see it?
Finally BE!
BE myself for I am Me! ...na?”
I felt my eyes twitch erratically, could almost feel my legs shake as if they were going to give out from under me as a horrifying question came to mind and refused to leave me alone in the silence.
“What’s… my name?” I barely whispered to the illusion that surrounded me.
My head dipped without my input, forcing me to stare into the fake face of ‘myself’. Pinkie’s future body, blue eyes, a pane of straight pink mane. The only real signs that I was in there was the face appeared more gaunt, lines under my eyes, and shaking.
I couldn’t think, so I sang.
“It’s all gone so fast,
how could this pass me by?
I thought such things would last.
Have parts of me begun... to die?
Am I anything more than a lie?”
It made no sense, I wasn’t in Equestria that long, I could replay the first two episodes in my mind with decent clarity, all beats accounted for, how could I have forgotten my own godsforsaken name?
Everything was jumbled, my head felt hot, what inane lyrical waffle I had spout out came naturally before, but after the strike to my very soul, I began to stumble.
I pushed away from the fountain on unsteady legs, lungs screaming to hyperventilate as I tried to take shaky steps around the fixture.
“Will I even know
who am I-
supposed to-?
expected to-?
Who am I?
I was-?
Who I’ll turn ‘to?”
I continued to stumble, even partially falling against the fountain to stay up, before I felt something snap, again. I slammed a hoof onto the rim of the fountain as I grit my teeth, straightening back up, taking back control.
“Mena, Mena,
swirls my brain,
what feels like eternity.
Pinka, Pinka,
such a strain,
obscuring my humanity
What once was my reality.”
I jumped onto the fountain’s rim, forcing myself to move gracefully upon the edge, trying to offload whatever I could from thinking to anything else. The effect, quite limited. It failed to drive off my swirling thoughts, my forming words.
Answers, hypotheses, theories, they all eluded me as I tried to think on it all. Tried to come up with some inkling of where my memories went, what it meant to have lost them and my overall standing with reality.
Even as I spun about the fountain’s edge, I couldn’t think of anything. Again.
“Was it taken
or just forsaken
to the frantic passage of time?
Am I starting to lose my mind?
Were it ever there?
I thought I knew who I was.
I thought I knew what was real.
But if I can’t recall,
does it matter at all?
Do I?”
My lyrical pondering only delved me deeper into knowing nothing, and amid another spin I slumped down, staring into the frozen water. Such selective memory loss was troubling. That I didn’t notice was worse.
I had, more or less, accepted that I would never see my world again, but losing my immediate self was… something. Even as I sang, my mind would flicker to other aspects of Earth. Iconography, Wonders, well known history were all still there.
It was almost like using an internet search. Plenty of what everyone else knew, but nothing on you.
Aimlessly, I flicked the fountain water, droplets flying slightly only to freeze in the air after a moment. A wonderful moment drowned among problems, and lost.
“Just bring forth the truth.
The role I lost.
The die that’s cast
deep into the sky.
Am I just a vision,
voice or fission,
here inside the mind?
So much I can be.
But can I choose me
when the time comes to fly?”
Was I even real? If the Rainboom hadn’t already happened, I would have feared the possibility that I could have delusion-ed up everything about what was in the future. I mean, how much of me is me if I couldn’t even remember anything personal?
Could so many stories, ideas of things that blatantly could not exist within the world of Equestria spontaneously form without cause like this? Though, I suppose anything would try to rationalize, cling to what is ‘reality’ even in the face of reality. Layers upon walls forming a maze of ‘what should be’ to keep out ‘what is’.
“Human, Mena
both who I are,
vibrant sepia.
Truth or fiction,
peace or friction,
piling up hysteria.
Am I has been?
All I’m askin’ is
are we all we are?
I am breaking?
All I’m getting is
I don’t know what must.”
Could I just be a fractured piece of Pinkie herself? I pondered, as I let my face fall completely upon the false stone of the fountain, squashing my fake cheek on it as I gazed at the time frozen waters and its reflections.
The obvious answer would be to justify it by looking at what Pinkie would be capable of in the future, even when that future had become well and truly suspect. An expert opinion might have been nice, were it not for me not trusting the coin flip of my supposed home’s health care, and knowing jack squat about Equestria’s system. Fiction or not, fake or not, I couldn’t jeopardize things like that.
No matter potential failings, no matter what I was, Pinkie had to come first in that area. Always.
“Is it us?
Is it we?
Is it you?
Is it me?
Am I wrong?
Are you alright?
Did I snap?
Will you fight?
How’ve I been brought to this?”
I tried to ground myself, running my hoof along the water’s surface, leaving grooves, as if it were sand. The various shapes and lines started to connect into various images, like connect the dots with anomalous factors. I felt like I should remember this, as if something like this should stick out in my mind. But there was nothing. Jamais Vu.
Thinking was becoming more difficult, the splintering between obvious fact and filtered should was beginning to hurt.
Why was I even here? I already knew the answer to that one.
“Bottle breaking
from whence it’s taking.
I think that it’s done.
Was it too weak to bear?
Did it even care?
Did I?
Do you?
These bonds I tried so hard to make,
did I begin to forsake?
Will it not be strong enough?
Will I?
Will you?
As my memories turn to dust,
lost time tinkling down my hour glass.
Anxieties rule, though we can’t see,
ne’er relenting, though they should be.”
Remarkably, my fake cheek started to sting against the mind fountain, so I pushed myself up and away from the fountain’s edge. I gazed down upon the half assed doodle that had formed amongst my hoof dragging, the time frozen water creating such texture and oddity in the shape of something I couldn’t bother to play Rorschach with.
Half assed like every I ever did. Running away from my problems. Being a bad friend. Reasons be damned with no good will leverage to my forgotten name. Acting as if my emotions mattered, as if I knew anything.
But… I supposed I’d better try anyhow.
“I’ll bring forth the truth.
Fix this mess we both have laid.
Turn things back before it gets too late.
I May have lost myself.
But I can play my part,
before we fall apart.
Because I haven’t lost you… yet?”
I saw my eyes widen in my mangled reflection, before I turned, looking down the way I came. I didn’t bother to ponder whether anything had changed, if the architecture placement was logical, all I processed was the extremely faint light of the faux Rockfarm I had left behind, shining ever so slightly through the iron gate.
Would Pinkie care? Want me back? Even notice I was gone? Had a single moment burnt my only reliable bridge into cinders and I was so stupid I didn’t even notice?
I felt something hot trail down my left cheek.
How much had I hurt my only friend?
“Will she want the truth?
A war inside the mind,
is one that will last for all time.
If it comes down to the last,
if there is no second chance…
I guess I’ll turn without a peer.
Succumb to my own deepest fear.
Without a choice,
I’d choose to disappear.”
Though my legs still felt like jelly, I stood, using the fountain’s edge as a crutch, never once taking my eyes off the small light of the far away Rockfarm.
Could I fix it? Logic says no, but I had to try, right? Would Pinkie even want me to try?
No, NO. None of that. Not yet. Not until judgment is properly laid down. I-I can handle this like an adult, maybe. I could head back, maybe fix some of it before things went too far. I-surely Pinkie would… If she accepts me back, why she’d want to do some kind of party, w-w-we could bake another cake, I could shittily sing another song!
But if she doesn’t… well. I did know the answer to that one.
“While you shoulder some blame,
I can’t afford to give to hate.”
My stance became firmer, the faintest taste of certainty, true certainty, no matter what or how small gave me resolve, finally, truly grounded me. I practically could feel my mane billowing, as my lungs filled to the brim, and dare I say, a small smile crossed my stupid, stupid face.
Possibility endless, some perhaps even not bleak stood before me, as I began to trot to the possibility, until my trot became a full on gallop, my hooves carrying me past the iron gate and towards the friend I hurt, the friend I wanted to help, truly help this time.
“I refuse to fall!
I guess, well, after all...
You’re the one who gave me my name.”
As she ran, crossing the fence line of the empty Ponyville, the time frozen droplets she had kicked up, ever so gently fell, until the face of the fountain’s water was flat and undisturbed once more, and silence loomed among the foggy streets of the newly abandoned town.
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Thank you for the update! It was well worth it!
Sweet existential crisis!
Dragged on for a bit, and felt a bit like filler in some spots, but it was still enjoyable enough, and I felt like I followed along with the character musings fairly well.
Good chapter.
feels musical number, man
Thank you for the chapter! Loved it!
I know that pinkie will want her back but I can't help but doubt it with what if's...
And I hope that it hasn't been too long in real time since the incident...
Excellent work keep it up
At first thought some lyrics were from an actual song or perhaps poem and was going to look it up after I finished the chapter, then I got to the end and the explanation.
Don't want to discourage you, but musicals never translate well to a page in my opinion. From what I read in the A/N, you put a lot of effort into the lyrics, but because I came expecting a chapter and not a song, I unfortunately wasn't very interested in them.
This isn't to say that this chapter soured my view on the story as a whole, or to discredit the work you've put into pumping out this chapter. I just think this chapter would have been far more effective if it followed the format of the previous chapters in this story. Thanks for the update, and I eagerly await the next!
... Not one of the chapters I enjoyed reading but I can see how this needed to happen.
pretty nice chapter and song was also great, so mena might not be "real"?
Nice
So glad this is back! I appreciate the song and although music doesn't really translate well through writing, it felt appropriate.
I love your song! It beautiful and full of emotions!
Great song, but it completely breaks the pacing of the chapter. Lyrics never work in books. Especially when spilt up like this.
So... It's too early for theories, but I would prefer that Mena was actually some powerful manifestation of natural powers and be the source of Pinkie's abilities. But not a part of her, more like a natural spirit, existing in a spiritual realm. And memories came from subconscious knowledge about the origin world that created this one. As a source of 4th wall breakage.
Of course, that's extremely loose idea, and imposes a certain structure onto the story. I suppose, it's how I might have done it if I was an author.
Hype that this back!
Pog.
a heartfelt song
Nice to see a update, and a interesting chapter
I can't remember what happened to cause this
Will Mena get her own body if pinkie goes into the mirror pool?
Once more time to wait for a update
YEY!!!!!
The song was very nice. Unfortunately reading off a page doesn’t lend well to knowing the tune that goes with it, but I think whatever my mind came up with was alright at best.
I have no clue what's happening in this chapter
11256851
Mena is depressed that they are living a shell of an existence. Mena continues to push away the hurt because "Pinkie need me." Mena then returns to Pinkie (I theorize that we're about to witness a timeskip, and we are in ponyville now. Maybe. If we were going to get a time skip, this would be the perfect opportunity).
11257367
Ah, thank you for explaining
11257369
Also of note: Mena cannot remember any detail about themself. Humanity yes, previous identity, no.
I'm very glad I've just picked this up.
that is a hell of delima
I like the music
Ok, someone needs to actually sing this song and put it on YouTube or something. Hell, I'd be willing to pay money for it.
11252948
Maybe. I think her opinions, beliefs and non-specific memories like the Twitter art are too extant and divergent from Pinkie’s to be a full figment, especially since (if I’m interpreting it correctly) she did perceive something in whatever she drew in the fountain towards the end there.
11254402
Mena has social anxiety and probably some degree of depression, and Pinkie kept shoving her to the front in stressful social situations due to a combination of Pinkie being a child and Mena having been actively masking for basically all their interactions. When Pinkie pulled Mena out of decompression/spoon polishing from the “everyone’s watching me do math” thing and into an argument with Limestone that Mena hadn’t been paying attention to and was thus even more unprepared to deal with than normal, Mena finally snapped and retreated into the darkest recesses of Pinkie’s mind. Then this chapter happened.
Anyway, I perceive an additional layer of tragedy in that the “safe space” she summoned was Ponyville rather than any Earthly location.
I very much enjoyed this! The musical number was very well constructed. It felt like it could've belonged in the show, and I could hear the faint strains of a possible tune for it in my head as I read it, which is always a sign of well-written lyrics.
Beyond that, Mena getting a bit of time alone to consider their situation was really cool, and probably quite necessary, considering the breakdown. I'm getting the feeling there's going to be some interesting conversations with Pinkie coming up.
I love it!
Is this dead?
Beautiful chapter. Magnificent song!
👍
A chapter well worth the wait
Very impressive original lyrics. It’s obvious that a lot of work went into them. Best I’ve seen on this site by far.
Style wise, they would work just fine as show songs.
!!!Spoiler!!!
And there goes my hearth, broken in million pieces… someone hand me the superglue please… 😖
Nice music
Geez, that is a proper mental breakdown.
Mena is in such a horrible situation for her psyche, in so many different ways, it is no wonder they have cracked.
At least this happened early, and had (Hopefully) no negative conseuences on Pinkie. It is good they came out of it with a positive attitude.