I've Seen Things You Ponies Wouldn't Believe
Clink, clink.
"Mmm... Not quite."
Clink, clink, clink... Clink, clink.
"Almost got it... Just a bit more... Right... About..."
Clink
"There!"
With a heavy sigh, a young mare dropped a hammer and chisel down onto the table next to her, and wiped a hoof across her sweat-stained face. She took a few steps back from the table and gave the finished piece an appraising stare, her purple eyes focusing intently on every last detail. Satisfied with what she saw, the mare slumped down onto a well-worn chair, her gray mane and coat blending in with the chair's matted gray fabric. After brushing her matted, frazzled mane out of her face, she reached for a nearby glass of water, and was about to take a drink when there was a knock on the door.
"Inkie? Inkie Pie, are you there?"
"In here, Mother!"
Inkie stood from the chair just as her mother, Cloudy Quartz, stepped into the room.
"Oh Inkie, this is beautiful! Did it turn out as well as you had hoped?"
"Yes indeed! This is the first attempt at sculpting a pegasus, but it turned out better than I had expected. It's nearly done, thank the heavens; I just need to add some extra details with the rasps, then go over it with the Emery to polish it up."
As she spoke, Inkie walked in a slow circle around her creation, gently running a hoof over its stone surface. Standing about two feet tall, and carved out of solid limestone from the Pie Family's rock farm, the figure was Inkie's best work yet. A beveled, two-tiered base supported a striking pegasus mare, frozen in the midst of takeoff. The stone mare's forelegs were slightly raised, her weight shifted back to her rear legs in preparation for flight. As she rounded the other side of the statue, Inkie stopped to look again at the meticulously carved wings. Fully unfurled and swept back in a graceful arc, the wings complemented the joyous expression etched into the mare's face, the combined effect paying fitting tribute to the happiness that the pegasi found in flight - and the sheer power that coursed through their veins.
"Yep, it really did turn out well," Inkie said. "I think this will go over well with the judges at both schools."
"I'm sure that it will, Inkie." Cloudy drew her middle daughter into a tight hug, the kind that only a mother could give to a child. "You've got the skill, and Celestia knows you have the determination. After all," she added, "you didn't earn that cutie mark by flipping granite chunks around the fields all day."
Inkie let a small chuckle escape her lips as she shuffled out the hug. Turning her head back, she gave another look at her flank, which was adorned with an image of a chisel and a rasp layered on top of a boulder. 'Has it been nearly two years already?' she thought to herself. 'Seems like just yesterday I was in the fields with Pinkie and Blinkie, moving rocks from one field to another. Has time really moved that fast on me?' Inkie's reverie was broken by the sound of Cloudy moving back towards the door to the silo-turned-studio.
"Sweetie, I'm sure the judges at both schools will love it. Both Hulliard and Seaddle Art Institute are excellent schools, and they'd be fools to turn you away."
Inkie had heard that line a thousand times since she first mentioned design school to her parents last year, but she still couldn't help but blush a little at the effusive praise. Despite her momentary shyness, a warm smile crossed her face as she looked back to her mother. "Thank you Mother, and yes, I know they're both great schools." Inkie paused for a moment to put some of her tools back into their proper places on her work bench before continuing. "Just, please do me one favor? Don't send that letter that you keep mentioning."
Cloudy gave Inkie a look of mock-despair. "And why not? Can't a mother go out of her way to tell someone that their daughter is a talented mare that deserves to be in their school?"
Inkie returned the look with a small roll of her eyes and a sly grin. "Not when you're planning on telling the admissions judges that I'm the greatest designer since Falling Water and that my little pegasus sculpture is as good as the Hoofenheim. Somehow, I don't think that's going to win me any bonus points with them."
"Can you fault a mother for wanting her daughter to succeed?" Cloudy replied with a warm grin. "Still, if they say no to you, they'll hear a piece of my mind, mark my words. Now, if you're done for the moment, let's head back to the house; your sister is here to see you."
Inkie's eyes went as wide as dinner plates. "Pinkie?! She's here?? Why didn't you say so sooner?" Inkie turned into a blur of motion as she rushed to drape a protective sheet over her statue and put away the rest of her tools. Task completed, she dashed past Cloudy and out into the afternoon sun. "Come on Mother, let's go!"
"Now wait just a sec—" Cloudy barely got the words out before Inkie was gone in a cloud of dust.
Despite spending most of the day working in the old silo, a chance to see her older sister gave Inkie a second wind, and she took full advantage of it as she nearly galloped back towards the house. Hours standing over her work in the stuffy silo had left her mane matted and her legs stiff, so the brief run was a welcome relief. The grin on her face only grew wider as she drew nearer to the small house that the Pies had called home for generations. Despite the speed she was carrying, her inner filly couldn't resist bounding up the front porch like a foal on a sugar-high. Pausing only to bump the already-unlocked door open, Inkie burst into the living room and skidded to a halt, the thump of her hooves on the old wooden floors sending yet another minor tremor through the ancient China cabinet in the far corner of the room.
"Pinkie? Pinkie, where ar— Ah!" Inkie's voice was cut short by an incoming pink missile.
"Oh my gosh Inkie! I'm so excited to see you!" Pinkie's voice was loud enough to crack the China in the cabinet, but Inkie could barely hear her, as she was caught in one of Pinkie's signature 'super-duper hugs'.
"Mmph... I missed you too Pinkie... Ergh... But I kind of need to breathe too, you know."
Pinkie released Inkie just as quickly as she had grabbed her, and Inkie nearly fell back onto her haunches from the sudden change of direction. Balance restored for the moment, Inkie flipped her now thoroughly-frazzled mane out of her eyes.
"Seriously, Pinkie, what brings you out here? We weren't expecting you until next weekend, when you had a couple of days off."
"Well, silly filly, I was helping Rarity with her fashion show in Manehattan, and we just got back yesterday, but I had to come here and tell you something really important! I knew I was supposed to come by next weekend, but if I waited until next weekend, I might forget to tell you this super important thing, and if I forgot to tell you that super important thing, I'd be like 'OH NOOO!' Because if I forgot, then you wouldn't know the super important thing that I have to tell you, and then I'd feel bad that I didn't tell you th—"
"Pinkie, slow down, I think I get it!" Inkie frantically waved a hoof in front of Pinkie's face in an effort to stop her sister before she got too far into her description of impending doom.
"You do?" Pinkie replied, her voice slowly coming back down from it's usual state of near hyper-ventilation. "Why didn't you just say so?"
"Wait, I just... Oh never mind." Inkie replied, her attempt to rebut Pinkie's rhetorical question dying on her lips. 'And Mother warns me about eating too much sugar?' she mused to herself. Inkie continued on before Pinkie could go off on another tangent. "So, what is this super-important thing that you had to tell me about? Wait, let me guess - you found a new Pinkie Sense? Or a new cupcake recipe?"
"Nooo, that's not it..." she replied. "Oh! But, now that you mention it, I have been feeling a new twitch in my leg recently; maybe it's from those new triple-chocolate double-fudge madness cupcakes I've been experimenting with?" Pinkie punctuated her words by bending down to examine her front legs, her neck bending at a seemingly impossible angle.
"Pinkamena Diane, what are you doing?"
Pinkie nearly jumped out of her own skin when she heard her full name, and only one pony in Equestria ever used her full name. "Sorry Mom... I was just trying to tell Ink—"
"And you can tell her whatever you want..." Cloudy said, the stern look on her face exactly as Pinkie remembered it. "But not until you've talked to Inkie about the reason you came here. Understood?"
Pinkie's hair deflated just a little at the admonishment, but even as a fully grown mare, she knew better than to say no to the matriarch of the Pie family. "Yes, Mom. Sorry, Mom."
Cloudy's face softened as she left the doorway and walked up to her daughters, giving them both a gentle hug. "It's alright Pinkie; just remember what you came here for. Now, why don't you and Inkie go talk?"
"That sounds great," Inkie said as she faced her two elder family members. "But I've been in the studio all day working, so I'm a bit of a mess. May I go wash up quickly?"
"Of course," replied Cloudy. "But don't be too long; Pinkie will need to get back to town before dinner."
"Yes, Mother!" Inkie shouted from the hallway as she trotted back to the small bathroom that she shared with her younger sister, Blinkie. The door to the bathroom closed with a small click, and a thud a second later, as Inkie gave the door a slight kick from the inside to keep it closed.
Pinkie let out a small chuckle at that. "Door still giving you trouble, Mom? I thought Dad was going to fix that?"
"Oh, I'm sure he will, sweetie." Cloudy said wistfully as she led Pinkie back to the kitchen. "But you know Igneous; he'll get to it eventually." A sly grin tugged at the corners of her mouth as she continued. "Perhaps I should tell him that the faulty door will affect the East field... He'd have it fixed before supper time today."
"Mother!" Pinkie replied, doing her best to feign indignation at Cloudy's comment.
"Tell you what," said Cloudy. "When your father fixes that door, you can come throw a... What would you call it... A 'Igneous finally fixed the door' party for him. I'm sure he'd appreciate it."
Pinkie nearly burst from laughter, and she started bouncing in place on her hooves. "Hehe, that would be awesome! I'll be sure to load the party canon with extra streamers too! Dad loves streamers, especially when they get caught in the curtains! You've got it, Mom!"
The moment of laughter was cut short when the sound of running water stopped in the bathroom, and the small thunk of the towel basket's lid announced Inkie's imminent return from the bathroom.
"Looks like your Sister's finished." Cloudy said, a serious look returning to her face. "Are you sure about this, Pinkie?"
"As sure as the sun rising in the sky," Pinkie replied. "I know what I saw there Mom, and I Pinkie promised myself not to sugar-coat anything for Inkie."
Cloudy smiled a bit as she looked to her always-exuberant daughter. "Well, I've learned never to doubt you, Pinkie. I may have questioned that first party that you threw for us, but now you have five friends who trust you with their lives, and Princesses that trust you to help protect Equestria in its times of need. If that's really what you saw, then I hope you can change Inkie's mind... For her own sake."
Cloudy's last words had barely left her mouth when Inkie rounded the corner into the kitchen, her mane and coat returned to some semblance of order. "Alright, that feels much better! Ok, what do we need to talk about?"
"You sit here at the table with your sister, Inkie." Cloudy moved from around the table, pulling out a couple of chairs as she did so. "You two can talk in here. I need to go out to the West field and check on your Father, so take as much time as you need. Oh, I left a pitcher of lemonade on the counter, so help yourselves to it."
"Thanks, Mom!" the sisters said in unison as Cloudy exited the kitchen and moved out of the front door.
"Lemonade sounds great!" Pinkie said as soon as the front door closed. "Let me get some for us." Pinkie bounced over to the counter and returned with two glasses of lemonade before Inkie even had a chance to sit down. 'How does she do that?' Inkie thought to herself as she sat in a chair. It's like she has a super-speed power or something...'
"Thanks." Inkie said as she took one of the glasses from Pinkie and took a healthy sip, savoring the cool drink against her parched throat. "Now, what do you want to talk about? It's nothing bad, right?" Inkie punctuated her question by leaning forward in her chair a bit, focusing intently on her sister.
Pinkie cleared her throat and reached for her own drink, using the moment to clear her head a bit. "No Inkie, it's not bad, but it is very important. It's about your education." She fixed Inkie with a serious stare of her own.
"It's about Manehattan."
Inkie's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets at the mere mention of the metropolis. "Manehattan?! What about it? Wait... You were just there with your friends, right? Oh oh, what did you see?! Did you see the Hulliard campus? I've heard it's so beautiful!" Inkie was nearly shaking in her chair as her mind raced off into hundreds of tangents at once.
"Inkie, it's not ab—"
"Oh, wait... I know!" Inkie exclaimed, her mouth somehow outpacing her mind now. "You went to a fashion show! Hulliard has a fashion program too, so you must have run into some of the school administrators! Oh, how were they? Were they--"
"Inkie! Inkie, listen to me - you can't go to Hulliard."
Inkie's chatter came to a screeching halt, her expression as frozen as her mind was at that moment. "Wh... WHAT?! What do you mean I can't go!" Inkie's eyes narrowed to pinpricks as she glared at Pinkie, her face a mixture of shock, confusion, and a quickly-building anger. "No offense Pinkie, but who put you in charge of my schooling! Have you talked to Mother about this? I'm sure she--"
"Yes, I have talked to Mom." Pinkie replied, her measured voice reinforcing the serious look she gave back to Inkie. "And she agrees with me. Hulliard is a great school, but you can't go there."
Now Inkie was on the verge of tears. "M... Mother agrees with this?! How... How can she just agree to this now? I've been working on my applications for Hulliard and Seaddle Art for weeks! Mother was helping me polish the Hulliard entrance essays just the other day!" A thought hit Inkie just then, and she shot a withering stare to her older sister. "Pinkie... what did you tell Mother, huh? Answer me now - what did you say?!" she punctuated her demand with a slap of her hoof onto the table, nearly toppling their glasses of now-forgotten lemonade.
"Sis, you need to calm do—"
"Calm down?! How can I calm down, Pinkie?" Inkie's voice was rising more by the second as her anger kept pace with her sadness and confusion at the situation. "You know Hulliard is my dream; you and Mother have known that since the day that I got my cutie mark! Wh... Why would you take that away from me?!" Inkie's voice broke a bit as she tried in vain to fight back more tears.
"Inkie, listen to me." replied Pinkie, her voice falling as flat as her hair at the sight of her sister's anguish. "I didn't tell Mom anything; this isn't about what I said, but what I saw." She leaned across the table to ensure Inkie heard what she was about to say. "Hulliard isn't what I'm worried about, Inkie. It's Manehattan."
"Hu... Huh?" replied Inkie as she used her hoof to wipe a few tears off of her face. "Wh... What does Manehattan have to do with any of this?"
"Sis... I know this sounds crazy," Pinkie said as she moved around the table to sit next to her forlorn sister. "But you need to hear me out on this, ok?" Inkie offered a sniffle and a small nod of her head in response. Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Pinkie laid a hoof on Inkie's lap as she continued.
"On the surface, Manehattan is a great city. Billboards and lights everywhere you look, ponies of all stripes crowding every square inch, and seemingly endless things to do and see. Rarity was right when she called it 'the city that never sleeps'. But there's another side to Manehattan that's not glamorous or glitzy. Frankly, Inkie, it's a dark side to the city, and it does things to ponies... Bad things."
"Bad things?" Inkie's voice was calmer now, but her eyes betrayed her continued confusion. "What sort of bad things?"
"It changes them," said Pinkie, her voice growing darker than Inkie had ever heard it. "It takes good ponies and it twists them; it twists them into big meany mcmeany-pants and then it twists them more and more, until they become bad ponies altogether."
"Wait, bad ponies? Surely, you must be joking," Inkie replied. "How many times have you said that everypony is a good pony; that there are no bad ponies, just ponies who need a friend and a laugh?" Inkie waved a hoof in the air to emphasize her point. "You're the Element of Laughter, for pony's sake! How could anypony stay 'bad' around you?"
A small shudder ran down Pinkie's spine as images of her experience in Manehattan flashed in her mind. "Trust me Sis, they can, and I don't think they'd even laugh for me. Outside a single cab driver and a couple of tourists, every single pony returned Rarity's generosity with rude behavior and indignant stares, as if she had done something wrong by trying to help them. Twilight tried to hail a cab for us and nearly got mobbed – and she's a Princess!"
"They ignored Princess Twilight?!" exclaimed Inkie. "Don't they know who she is??"
Pinkie let out a heavy sigh at the thought of her friend being ignored like she was. "You'd think so, but they didn't seem to care at all! Everypony that Rarity met at the fashion show was rude to her, and if they weren't snickering about her coming from Ponyville, they were stabbing her in the back to win the contest!"
"No! They wouldn't!" Inkie was in shock at what her sister was telling her. Granted, she had not traveled outside of the Ponyville area very often in her life, but she couldn't imagine such cold behavior was possible of anypony.
"Oh, they did alright, and then some!" Pinkie continued, her mind growing darker just thinking about the fashion show. "Another designer, Suri was her name, acted like she wanted to borrow some fabric from Rarity, and then used it to copy all of her designs for herself! With her original designs stolen, we offered to help Rarity make new ones, but then we saw that Rarity had changed too."
"Rarity too?! What happened?" asked Inkie, her eyes glued to her sister, who matched Inkie's forlorn look with one of her own.
"Rarity... Well, she became just like Suri... Just like the ponies on the street - mean, cold, and uncaring. She made us work nearly all night to finish her designs with no breaks at all, not even for dinner. And she stood over our shoulders the entire time, correcting us like a bunch of foals even if we were doing everything right. When we finally finished the new designs, she grabbed the new pieces and ran off to the show without so much as a thank-you!"
"Dear Celestia, that's terrible!" Inkie replied. "I can't believe she would do that to you and your friends! Did she ever apologize?"
"She apologized," Pinkie said, "but not before she had her moment in the spotlight, wowed the crowd, and as it turns out, won the competition. By the time she came running back to the hotel, we had already left to find something to do, since we overslept and missed the show that we wanted to see on Bridleway."
"Oh, I'm so sorry Sis." Inkie used her free hoof to pat Pinkie's shoulder. "Did Rarity find you all?"
Pinkie let out another sigh. "Yes, she found us, and we forgave her, of course. We are best friends after all, and we know that the Rarity we saw that night wasn't the Rarity that we all know and love. Still though..." Pinkie leveled another serious gaze at Inkie, her blue eyes bearing down on the younger mare like a spotlight. "We saw a side of Rarity that we never knew existed, and even the Element of Generosity turned mean and vicious, if only for a night. I shudder to think what that city does to a normal pony, much less to a young, innocent mare like you."
Inkie let out a sigh of her own as the implications of Pinkie's words settled in her mind like a rockslide. "So, you're afraid that I'll change if I go to Manehattan? Is that it?"
"I know you wouldn't change yourself like that, Sis" replied Pinkie. "But after what I've seen, I fear that the city will do the changing for you. Ponies go to Manehattan all the time, but the ones that look past the tourist attractions never come back the same... I know I didn't. I used to think that everypony was good at the core, and that there was no pony too grumpy or mean for me. Well I was wrong, Inkie. I've faced down Discord, Nightmare Moon, and tons of other meanies, but the ponies I saw in that city scared me more than anything in my life."
Pushing the chair out from the table a bit, Pinkie leaned over and wrapped Inkie into the biggest hug she could muster from her seated position. "You're a good mare, Inkie, and I know you'll succeed no matter what you do or where you go. But whereever you go, we all just want you to come back as the same Inkie that we know today; older and smarter, of course, but still the same Inkie Pie on the inside."
Releasing the hug, Pinkie gave a quick glance to the clock on the wall, then stood from her chair and walked over to the couch in the living room, where her saddlebags were waiting for her. After shrugging them onto her back, Pinkie turned back to her sister, who had stood from the table as well. "Mom and I agree that Manehattan is not the city for you, or anypony, for that matter. But, at the end of the day, the choice is ultimately yours to make. Whatever you decide though..." Pinkie's face brightened into a warm smile. "Make sure that my sister comes home when you're finished."
Pinkie turned towards the door, and had a hoof on the handle when Inkie trotted over and wrapped her in another hug. "I'll think about it, Sis. I promi— no, better yet, I Pinkie Promise to think about it." A smile crossed both of their faces as Inkie performed the required motions to affirm the taking of a Pinkie Promise. "Thanks, Sis... for everything. I'll see you next weekend?"
"You bet!" Pinkie replied. "I'll bring some of those new cupcakes for everypony to try, and my new party streamer collection too! Gotta run though – see you later!"
"Bye!" Inkie yelled after her sister, though she probably didn't hear her as she bounded down the path back towards town.
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Later that night, after everypony else had gone to bed, Inkie sat at the small desk in her room, a thin candle the only light around her so as not to wake her younger sister from her sleep. She stared intently at her application packets for both schools – Hulliard, and Seaddle Art Institute. 'Mother's right, both of these are great schools.' she thought to herself. But, Hulliard is an artist's dream school. Shouldn't I at least apply anyway? Then again, if a city can cause even Pinkie to doubt the ability of a pony to be happy and kind, what else is it capable of doing?' Inkie's gaze narrowed further as she chewed her thoughts in her head. 'I know what I want to be when I graduate, but exactly who will I be when I finish? Myself, or somepony else entirely?'
Muffling a small sigh, Inkie looked to the corner of her desk, where a family picture lay inside of a simple frame. It was taken when the family went on a picnic, not too long after Pinkie had received her cutie mark. The four of them were sitting around a great picnic spread, and all of them were smiling and having a good time; even their usually-dour father had cracked a smile. Just looking at the picture brought a smile to Inkie's face, as she briefly replayed the happy scene in her mind. She looked down at the papers again, and then back to the picture one more time.
Grabbing a stack of papers, she folded them in half and dropped them into the wastebasket next to the desk. Snuffing out the candle, she stood and quietly slipped into her bed on the other side of the room.
"Looks like I better get used to rainy days."