Pinkie Pie's Evil Clone Saves Equestria

by owlicious

I'm Desperately Trying to Stop a Tragedy!

That guard was right; the door was locked. I don’t have much time.

I bucked the locked door off of the hinges.

That hurt. Did I sprain something, or pull a muscle?

I kept smiling and hopped into the building, continued to imitate Pinkie Pie, and looked around at the Princess Flurry Heart and seven Prince Shining Armors.

Is that goth mare's cutie mark a milkshake? How'd that happen?

Anyway, lying about being Pinkie Pie is probably the safest thing I could do. Wait, my Finger Food Sense is going off and the wrongness is getting stronger. How would a lie about being Pinkie Pie make things even worse? What would happen if I did that. I’d better just tell them a bit of the truth.

“Hi, I’m Finger Food! My Food senses told me there was going to be a tragedy AND free Maneican food in Ponyville today!”

The wrongness is definitely from somepony within this building, so this wasn’t a pointless risk.

“Oh, good, it’s the right building this time! I’m getting too old for this.”

It’s a good thing I can think faster than I speak, and I can do both of those things super-fast! If Flurry Heart or Shining Armor notice that I’m Pinkie Pie’s evil clone, then I’ll lose everything I have. But maybe they won’t notice?

And the sweaty, nervous looking Shining Armors’ eyes are red instead of blue. Maybe they’re possessed by an otherworldly demon, or maybe they’re just holding another cursed item? Either way, Twilight would know what to do.

I should try to deescalate this. Why isn’t Twilight here when her brother’s in danger? And if the Princess decides not to banish her brother’s clones, then maybe I can stop hiding from everycreature. That’ll be so much more fun!

Turning to face the goth Princess Flurry Heart, I keep up my fake smile, and yelled, “Don’t do anything hasty! You should tell Twilight that her brother was cloned and ask her to help!”

Is the tragedy going to happen because of the Alicorn Amulet? Or even the “I Love Corn” choker? That last one’s influence is probably why her cutie mark is a milkshake. Her destiny and special talents are probably horribly messed up, and she’ll probably regret it when their mind altering influence disappears. Maybe their effects are the cause of this wrongness and her banishing all of the clones? Or maybe she’s perfectly fine, and just following Twilight’s advice from the book.

Anyway, I can’t admit that I know the amulets and choker are cursed. She’ll think I’m trying to take them away from her. I mean, I plan to steal the amulet if I can, but I’m not stupid; I’d do it much later, when I wouldn’t be a suspect!

I continued, “And probably take off those cursed looking amulets?”

Twilight’s Journal of Friendship mentioned that Shining Armor was a huge nerd in college. Maybe he and his daughters like Ogres and Oubliettes? Maybe this is the pie emergency that Pinkie was worried talking about?

“I know! I brought snacks, manuals, quills, and paper in case of an Ogres and Oubliettes emergency. They could form a party!”, I exclaimed, then I took out the five precut pies that Pinkie Pie gave me earlier today. I also took out my personal collection of Ogres and Oubliettes supplies from under my mane, and put them on a nearby table. The Shining Armors took down their barriers and each levitated a slice of pie towards themselves, leaving four more untouched pies. Flurry Heart was also eating a slice of pie.

Good, everypony’s eating now instead of trying to exterminate the clones. Nopony laughed at my joke, though. I thought it was good.

More importantly, the wrongness is gone and I can leave. But my Finger Food Senses tell me that I’m still in danger.

I tried to zoom out of the room, so that I could get the buck out of Ponyville before anycreature could recognize me or send me back to the Mirror Pond, but my copy of Pinkie’s power wasn’t working.

“Sorry, Princess Twilight Sparkle can’t be in Ponyville for the rest of the week. By the way, are you good at escaping from locked rooms?”, the goth Princess Flurry Heart inquired, nibbling at a slice of pie.

Great! Does she like escape rooms, too? It sounds like we have something in common to talk about! Maybe we can pretend to be friends, and she won’t exterminate me the way her aunt would.

“How did you guess that?! I’m the best at it! I once won Los Pegasus’s escape room championship in 10 seconds flat, then threw the gamemaster a party to celebrate how fun and difficult the puzzles were. He wasn’t sure how I got into the locked observation room, but he loved the pie!”

Celestia damn it! Why do I keep blurting out random, naive things before thinking for even a second about why she was asking me about escaping? Is it because I’m Pinkie Pie’s clone? Flurry probably realized that I’m a clone, and now she knows that I’ll try to escape! She’s just as ruthless as her aunt!

If I kill her now, I won't get out of here alive! And I sense that it would make the wrongness worse!

Meanwhile, seven Shining Armors stood around, contentedly continuing to eat their slices of pie and doing absolutely nothing to help me, or even themselves, oblivious to their situation and my attempts to help them survive. How could they do that to a fellow Mirror Pool clone?

I know! I’ll try to deescalate this, by telling Flurry and every-Shining the rest of my story about Puzzle Box, and tell some funnier jokes!

“We then met and…”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Flurry Heart finish casting a spell. My fake smile disappears, replaced by my terrified expression.

NO! I need to get out of the way! I still can’t zoom away! What else can I do? I can’t duck or run in time, and I’m not carrying anything big enough to block the spell! I left my only Party Cannon outside, and I gave Lyra my last pie!

Accepting my inevitable demise, I ponder about it super-fast.

And everypony here would just hunt me down to blast me even if I somehow escaped; they aren’t finding me funny. At least the wrongness is still gone, but I won’t be around to figure out what it even was. My husband won’t know what happened to me; he’ll think that I just vanished! Nocreature in Ponyville will even realize, or care. Furthermore, I didn’t even taste any of the free food being given out in Ponyville!

Look at the positives. The debt collectors for the rest of my student loans probably won’t find me in the Mirror Pool. The princess is going to wipe out every clone without asking questions first, in some form of genocidal speedrun, but I think that the things I like about Equestria are at safe?

And now I know that Prince Shining Armor isn’t some type of evil villain like the rumors say. Evil villains like myself have schemes, and we do whatever they can to make them succeed.

Instead, he’s a terrible, bumbling, evil clown, and not the fun kind of clown! The stupid kind! His own daughter is wearing cursed, mind-influencing necklaces, and he probably just thinks that they’re goth accessories! He brought clone life into the world and taught them everything they knew, only for them to fail to accomplish anything, then die in terror! That clown might still get himself sent to the Mirror Pool by his own goth daughter, and the wrongness starting the same day he cloned himself makes me think that he somehow almost doomed all of Equestria without realizing it! And every-Shining just keeps standing around there doing nothing and waiting to be eradicated!

I’m glad I did my best as an evil villain, unlike those useless clowns! But what was the cause of the wrongness that I was trying to stop? And why did I need five pies to stop it?

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Princess Flurry Heart watched as her pink ray of magic hit the evil, annoying, terrified, sweating pink magical construct, and it bloated up, then returned to the Mirror Pool as a trail of pink smoke.

Author's Note:

This is the final chapter of a dark, tragic story set around the end of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, in a universe where Shining Armor is a Terrible Dad (competition) of Princess Flurry Heart. This story shows Shining Armor's actions from Pinkie Pie's clone's (a.k.a. Finger Food's) perspective, and describes how a potential threat to Equestria would perceive Shining Armor for interfering with her long-term plans, before being sent to the Mirror Pool.

The fate of Mirror Pool Clones is left uncertain in this story, though Finger Food was pessimistic about it. I'm planning a sequel/spinoff where Twilight would find out about the situation in the Mirror Pool, and reverse the banishment. Princess Twilight Sparkle had no idea that there were any clones left, due to Finger Food hiding, and didn't realize that there were any clones in Ponyville when sending Princess Flurry Heart the steps for the spell.

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The dark, random comedy prequel Too Many Shining Armors (are Terrible Dads) tell more about Shining Armors, Flurry Heart's, and Twilight's thoughts and actions. The prequel is a less serious story, written in a different genre and writing style (third party limited perspective focused on Flurry Heart's thoughts and actions), and many characters are deliberately flawed in some ways. Those flaws include the ways that Shining Armor was being a terrible dad (contest link) of Princess Flurry Heart. The final chapter of the prequel contains the rest of the events in that building.

This story uses a more serious writing style than its prequel (though the main character is a clone of Pinkie Pie). It contains Finger Food's thoughts on the flaws in the characters in the prequel, and mentions many of them from the perspective of a character that considers herself an evil villain.

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Characterization of Finger Food: Finger Food is a magical construct that has thought processes and values that aren't like ponies, and prioritize their own ability to have fun, which includes surviving for as long as possible. Because they are a clone of Pinkie Pie, they have some of Pinkie's habits, mannerisms, optimism, cheerfulness, tendency to make jokes and pop culture references, and similar abilities.

She also assumes the worst case scenarios about Twilight's friends and extended family based on incomplete information available to her.

Finger Food could be dangerous to all life in Equestria and beyond if she had ever succeeded at stealing artifacts, because of her prioritization of their own life, her plans to use powerful magic or cursed items and other methods to survive, as well as the corruption those items can cause.

The last scenes in Ponyville take place around the time of the finale of the last season of Friendship is Magic. All characters in this story are adults.

Series overview (blog post)

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Feedback welcome.

Comments

[Chibalt]

So, with the whole end of this...

How long until Flurry realises she basically killed someone's wife, clone or no? The whole clone thing here has to be discovered eventually.

[owlicious]

11886887

How long until Flurry realises she basically killed someone's wife, clone or no? The whole clone thing here has to be discovered eventually.

I had plans for sequels, but they're just outlines right now.

Timeline-wise, it'd probably be the same day, or the day after, between the promises she made, the guards overhearing her name, and her husband noticing she was still gone

The sequel makes a brief reference to their fate in a single paragraph, off-handedly, thousands of moons later.

TA New Generation Reads About My Terrible Dad

• MLP: FiM
• MLP Gen 5
• Comedy
• Horror
• Random

I'm Princess Flurry Heart, and I've been petrified by the Elements of Harmony. After thousands of moons, a group of five best friends visit me.

• Death
• Shining Armor
• Flurry Heart
• Izzy Moonbow
• Sunny Starscout
• Mane 5

owlicious · 4.2k words  ·  22  1 · 398 views

Twilight also sent me and Shining Armor to Magic Kindergarten, which was thankfully just a nickname for extra magic and ethics classes for unicorns. And she’d brought back all the clones I’d sent to the Mirror Pool, and worked things out. In retrospect, it should have been completely obvious that I shouldn’t have banished clones that acted exactly like real ponies.