The Pinkie Paradox

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 3
Epilogue

Chapter 1

You deserve an explanation for what happened to you. I hope I can give you one.

Wet. It’s the first thing I can remember. The water of the Mirror Pool dripped off me as I took my first breath and stepped out. After that, it was all sort of a blur for a while. I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t remember everything.

I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’ve done.

I mentioned that I was pretty out of it for the first few hours. There were only scattered impressions: blinking as I bounced into the sunlight for the first time, for instance. Bumping my head on the ceiling of Rarity’s shop didn’t help matters, and I began to stumble aimlessly around until I slumped down at one of those mushroom tables by the café. I was shocked out of my stupor by a voice behind me.

“Ugh, this is hopeless!”

It’d be too far to say that I perked up, but I started paying attention. Another voice responded: “Maybe that’s the real Pinkie.”

“Please. The real Pinkie never sat that long in one place her entire life!”

“I’m going to ask.”

Hearing this, I made a half-hearted attempt at turning my head towards the voices, but contented myself with flickering my eyes in that direction. I vaguely recognized them from having wandered by the library. It was a purple unicorn and a baby dragon. The dragon walked up to me.

“So, lemme guess. You’re the real Pinkie Pie.”

I shrugged and offered a reluctant response. “Heck if I know. Could be any one of us, if you ask me. And even if I said I was the real Pinkie Pie, you wouldn’t believe me.”

I’d been at the library long enough to realize that all the duplicates were convinced they were the real Pinkie Pie. To be honest, I was so out of it that I could have been the real Pinkie Pie without even realizing it. I concluded: “So just leave me alone. I’ve got some important poking the ground with my hoof to do.” The dragon recognized that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me, and rejoined the unicorn.

“Oh Spike, how are we going to do this? I can’t risk sending the real Pinkie back into the pond.”

Back into the pond. Back into the pond? What was there in the pond? As far as I knew—as far as I know—there is nothing in the pond. My mind started racing as I worked out the implications. I didn’t want to go back. There’s nothing to go back to, I thought, terrified. I didn’t, and don’t, know that I’d survive going back into the pond.

In what was either a temporary fit of insanity or a flash of brilliance, I yelled at the departing pair. “Hey! Hey!”

They turned, and I continued talking, a bit too fast, not entirely sure of what I was saying. “What if you gave them a test? Pick something really hard for a Pinkie to do, something not fun at all! Any Pinkie that can’t do it goes back into the pond.” I paused at this, remembering that stark beginning to my existence, and the void that lay before it. I gulped uneasily, and finished. “But whoever wants to stay the most, that must be the real Pinkie!”

I wasn’t actually sure that the real Pinkie would pass that test, which was after all the point of me proposing it.

“You know, that’s not a bad idea,” she said, walking away.

I was horrified at what I had just done. For one, I didn’t know whether I’d be any better than the real Pinkie at doing something “not fun at all”. I had the advantage of being scared and concussed, but I had nothing going for me other than fear of that pool as far as motivation went. Pinkie had friends and a life here. I was a duplicate, a cipher. No name, no past, no connections. Did I even deserve to stay around?

In any case, a rainbow-maned pegasus dragged me into the town hall about a half-hour later. I took a seat—well, slumped down in the back—and tried to listen as the unicorn explained the purpose of the test. The haze of anxiety, if not outright terror, settled in quickly. I could only make out one scrap of what she said: “Whoever passes gets to stay.”

To stay. To survive, I thought.

“The test will be watching paint dry!” the unicorn announced. I breathed a sigh of relief. They obviously hadn’t picked up on the fact that only the real Pinkie would know, say, anything at all about her past. Heck, I couldn’t even identify all the ponies here. Watching paint dry, though? That I could do.

So I stared at the paint like it held all the secrets of the universe in it. My attention remained unbroken even when the beam of light shooting from Twilight’s horn vanished a duplicate in front of me. My eyes clung to the paint like a drowning pony to a rope. Dozens of flashes of light and poofs later, though, my eyes flickered towards the last remnant of pink in the room. This, I assumed, was the real Pinkie Pie. It didn’t matter to me, or at least that’s what I convinced myself, and stared at the paint until it consumed the whole of my vision. A voice from another universe barely registered. “Ugh! I can’t take it anymore! Look! Somebody’s making balloon animals!” There was a flash of pink at the periphery of my vision, and a sudden poof that echoed through the room. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the paint, but I allowed myself to relax subtly.

“Pinkie, you can look away now,” the unicorn said. I looked cautiously around the room. I was the only one left.

“I… passed?” I asked, in a small voice.

“You passed. You’re the only Pinkie who kept staring at the wall.”

Say something, say something, I thought frantically. “I had to, I just had to!” I half-screamed, half-sobbed. Some emotion I couldn’t place flickered over the unicorn’s face. Calm yourself before they suspect anything.

“I, uh, couldn’t leave my friends! I just couldn’t!” I said enthusiastically. I tried to smile widely but couldn’t manage it, settling for a faint grin. Before they could say anything, I ran out the door and onto the street. Somepony called out behind me, but I couldn’t make out anything past the rushing of blood in my ears. I wanted to run as far and fast as I could… but I couldn’t do anything that would seem suspicious. So I curtailed my pace to a quick trot and started to think of where I could go. An idea occurred to me. Where would the real Pinkie live?

Where had the real Pinkie lived? I corrected myself. Something about that rephrasing bothered me, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted. What kind of house would that frenetic pink pony have lived in?

Somepony yelled “Pinkie!” and I spun around to see a blue mare waving at me. She was standing next to a gangly yellow pony with an intensely worried expression. He shouted “Are there any more of you?”

Not anymore, I thought, and yelled “Just me!” I started trotting towards them reluctantly. For better or worse they were the first ponies to have talked to me outside the group in the town hall. I noticed the building they were standing outside. It was a somewhat uneven looking house with what looked like a frosted gingerbread roof and…

I was surprised to notice what could only be described as a pink cupcake tower perched on the house. So this is where she lived, I thought. It had to be. So who were these ponies? Pinkie’s parents? The thought was uncomfortable for reasons I couldn’t exactly define. They ushered me into the building hurriedly. It looked like a store of some sort. The walls had been slammed into by something, and the display cases smashed and their contents… stolen? No, eaten, judging from the crumbs and frosting stains everywhere. It’d explain the cupcake sign outside.

They noticed me staring. “Oh, I know, it’s a mess. You don’t have to clean it right now though,” the blue pony said gently. Have to clean it? Employers, then. I was so sure this was where Pinkie had lived, though. “Mrs. Cake and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go up to your room and…” the yellow pony said, and paused. It was evidently an open question what exactly I’d be doing in my room.

“Rightie! Thanks so much!” I said. I promptly walked to the nearest door and opened it.

“Uh, dearie?” the blue pony—Mrs. Cake, it seemed—said. “That’s a closet. Your room is that way.” Mr. Cake rolled his eyes knowingly. I did my best to beam a Pinkie smile and bounced up the stairs.

It was an odd experience walking into Pinkie’s room for the first time: inappropriate, like I was intruding. Which I suppose I was. The sweets decor seems to have been kept for this part of the house, with a licorice railing on the staircase, giant lollipops inexplicably placed inside a pot like houseplants, and candy cane pillars. Still, it looks like Pinkie had made some personal touches. There were balloons strung up all over the place, and streamers on the floor. It looks like she had a party recently- although judging by how the balloons were deflated, not too recently. A glance at the trashcan revealed it to be full of more balloons, streamers, and cupcake wrappers.

I practically fell onto the bed, exhausted. I jumped off it suddenly. There was something underneath the covers! I flung the sheets off to discover some sort of creature standing on the bed, seemingly inert. A purple eye looked at me.

“Hi, alligator. Or crocodile. Whatever you are,” I said tiredly. I picked the reptile up and put it on the couch. Without bothering to get under the covers, I fell onto the bed and slept.

I got up early the next morning. It was still dark outside. I was cold—why hadn’t I gotten under the covers?—and disoriented. Where am I? I thought, and glanced around momentarily before seizing on the sight of the alligator from last night. It was, strangely, sitting right where I had put it, staring right at me. Spooky.

The memories of yesterday were still clear in my head—at least some of them—but they had this air of unreality to them. In retrospect, it felt something like waking up from a bad dream. There was something about the room that reminded me intensely and uncomfortably of Pinkie Pie. So I crept down to the shop and started to clean up the shards of glass and frosting splatters. They… we… really did a number on this place, I thought, and remembered the look on Mr. Cake’s face when he first saw me. People would be scared of me if they ever found out, even if it weren’t for the fact that I had taken Pinkie’s life. Did we hurt anyone? I wondered uneasily.

By the time the sun had cleared the horizon, I had managed to restore the shop to something approaching order, although much of the damage would take more than that to repair. They’d have to replace the display cases entirely. There was a knock on the door.

“Who are you?” was, unfortunately, the first thing out of my mouth. I mentally kicked myself. She looked confused, but said “It’s Rainbow Dash…”

Rainbow Dash.. The name was familiar. Where did I know it from? Maybe when Pinkie had—

“Are you okay, Pinkie? I can come back later if—"

I interrupted tiredly. “Oh, no, don’t worry about me. What is it, Rainbow?”

“What is, Dashie?” I asked, assuming the usual Pinkie enthusiasm.

“Oh, well, Derpy was…” Rainbow said, and looked down with a frown. “She’s hurt pretty bad after what happened yesterday.”

I started to say something cautiously, but couldn’t really manage it. “The uh…”

“She got in the way of the duplicates, and…” Rainbow Dash said flatly, and stopped, picking up on my discomfort. I felt sick.

“I was thinking you might want to go cheer Derpy up,” Rainbow Dash said uncharacteristically quietly. I had been trying to maintain a half-smile up to that point, but it vanished with a trace at that.

“I’m the last pony she’d want to see right now,” I said morosely. “Sorry Dash, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I’m sure she’d know it wasn’t your fault,” Rainbow Dash said unconvincingly. “It wasn’t you, it was those duplicates!”

That did not help. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said, cringing a bit. “Maybe later?”

Rainbow was visibly disappointed, but tried to hide it anyways. “Of course, Pinkie. See ya around!” she said in a fakely jovial voice. I muttered something to the same effect and turned to go back inside, then thought better of it.

“Dash?” I said, getting her attention as she was about to fly away.

“Yes?”

“How…” I said, unable to finish the sentence. “How… bad is it?”

Rainbow Dash suddenly looked very worried, and she started reeling off a list of injuries, a bit uncertainly- probably quoting someone else. “Four of her ribs were broken, and she has um… lacerations and serious bruises on her legs and torso. It looks like her head got hit pretty hard too.” She blinked a bit, her eyes starting to water up. “And she’s… she’s unconscious. The doctors don’t know when she’ll wake up.”

I toyed awkwardly with a few sympathetic responses to that, but none of them seemed appropriate, and something gave me the impression that asking Rainbow Dash how we would manage to cheer her up wouldn’t go over well. “How’d it happen?”

“You—” she started, then started over. “No, you wouldn’t know. She was just in the way of the duplicates when they came into town. They ran over her for a while, knocked her head around. I guess they thought it was fun,” she said, spitting out the last word. I could say nothing in response to that. What could I possibly say?

I turned away from Dash and began walking back. When I got inside, I latched the door and sat down in front of it. Did I do this? I wondered. There was nothing to suggest I hadn’t. A swell of guilt surged over me, and I glumly endured it. I stared at my hooves. Were these the hooves that did so much damage to Derpy’s body?

That’s when I got the idea for this. Call it what you like: a diary, my confused attempts to make sense of this all, maybe even a confession. This is the truth, my truth. If anyone’s entitled to it, you are. I’ve stolen a life, and there’s nothing I can or will do about that now. But I draw the line at lying to Derpy, whoever you are. So this is for you, Derpy. I hope you can forgive me. Maybe even understand me.

Chapter 2

Not having to throw a party was evidently too much to hope for. So there Fluttershy was, standing right in front of me. Ruining my day.

“You were going to help me throw a…” Fluttershy said, and hesitated. “Superiffic Breakfast Fun Party for my animals. Are you sure you’re okay? You seem…” she trailed off uncertainly.

“Super-duper!” I said excitedly, and beamed a smile that probably exposed every single one of my teeth. “Just give me some time to get all my funeriffic party stuff!” The smile stayed on my face until the door was securely shut. It slid off pretty quickly after that. A party. A “Superiffic Breakfast Fun” party, no less. “I’ve never even been to a party!” I despaired silently. I slumped against the closet. Huh.

PINKAMENA DIANE PIE’S CLOSET OF REALLY AWESOME PARTY SUPPLIES

How did I not notice that the day before?

I grabbed a bag of balloons and decided that would do it. I turned towards the kitchen- maybe I could find some sort of breakfast for Fluttershy’s party—but then glanced at the door again. Pinkamena Diane Pie.

It fit her. It didn’t fit me. I don’t think it ever will.

In any case, I hurried out to follow Fluttershy. I had no idea where I should go for this party, and it wouldn’t look good to have to ask her where it was. She noticed the sound of me bouncing towards her, and turned around, only to look a bit confused. What now?

“Is there a problem?” I asked sweetly.

“No, of course not, but…”

“But?”

“You always throw the best parties, Pinkie, but I, uh, sort of expected you to bring more supplies than a bag of balloons.”

Oh. Apparently there’s more to parties than balloons. Hmm. I could have played it off as having been tired and absentminded, but that would have been entirely too logical. “Why would we need anything more than balloons?” I said with enthusiasm. “Balloons are fun!”

Fluttershy didn’t look too sure about this, but she evidently decided to defer to my—well, Pinkie’s—expertise and didn’t object. So far, so good, but she would still probably expect me to pull a fun party off with just balloons. That wouldn’t go well.

“What else would you like me to bring to the party?” I said, although in a tone that suggested that we didn’t really need anything else.

“Your parties are always lovely, Pinkie. I’m sure…” Fluttershy started, then thought better of it. “On the other hoof, it’d be nice if we could have games and dancing and… well, not ice cream and punch, since it’s breakfast, but—“

“Got it!” I said eagerly. “Be right back with you!”

I ran back to the closet, still aware of the necessity of not losing track of Fluttershy. Hmm. Games. There was a bucket on a shelf labeled 'apple bobbing,' but in the absence of any apples, I opted to take a poster marked 'Pin the tail on the pony'. I’d spent enough time on this already, and I ran out the door towards Fluttershy. Or at least I would have, if it weren’t for the door slamming hard into something in front of it. I left it slightly ajar and walked cautiously outside. The purple unicorn from earlier was, improbably, slammed flat against the door.

“Are you okay?” I asked, although sort of hoping she wasn’t. She groaned, but managed to extricate herself without any apparent injury. “What happened to ‘ear flop, eye flutter, knee twitch’?” she asked, exasperated. “Never mind, doesn’t matter," she said in a clipped sort of way. “We need to block off the Mirror Pool.”

“What? Why?” I said, confused. In my defense, I was still trying to figure out what had happened between her and the door.

“If I’m right, the duplicating effect might not be confined to ponies. If, say, Discord got to the pool somehow, there could be hundreds of him all over Equestria! You need to lead me to the Mirror Pool.”

A bit taken aback, I said “Uh… can it wait? I’m sort of… working on a party thing with Fluttershy.”

“Pinkie Pie, of course it can’t wait! We’re going to go get Big Mac and close off that Pool as soon as we can. Fluttershy will just have to wait.”

“Okay!” I shouted enthusiastically, suddenly aware that I hadn’t been sounding anything like Pinkie during this conversation. Besides, anything to get out of the “Superiffic Breakfast Fun” party.

Several weeks later

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Rainbow Dash asked disbelievingly.

“I mean she’s gone. No one’s seen her since yesterday,” Twilight Sparkle responded.

“The Cakes?” Fluttershy said quietly.

“Ditto,” said Applejack. “I went to find out if they’ve seen her.”

“And?”

“Haven’t seen Pinkie, but they found this in her room,” Applejack said, retrieving an envelope. “It’s addressed to all of us.”

To be completely honest, Derpy, I don’t think you’ll ever read this. I left Ponyville last night on the train to Manehatten. I don’t know much about it other than it’s far away from Ponyville and there are a lot of ponies there. It seems like a good place to get lost in the crowd.

So add this to the list of things you have to forgive me for. You might never know why this happened to you. I’m so sorry.

You know, I had intended to hold out until you woke up, at least. That’s not to say that it’s easy being Pinkie Pie. I’m reminded of the first time I tried to host a party. Rarity finally insisted that I help her put together a “fashion soiree” despite my claims of… what was it that time? Hay fever, I think. Anyways, it was a complete disaster. I thought Rarity was going to kill me.

“What on earth were you thinking?! Bobbing for apples at what was supposed to be a sophisticated event like this?! I’m fortunate they didn’t walk out on the spot! After that dreadful party, nopony will ever respect me again! I’m ruined! And that music!” and so on.

I didn’t get much better at it, which brings me to why I had to leave, I guess. Not being able to throw a good party was one thing. But my cutie mark is disappearing. So I had to leave. I just…

~~You know, I came to see you in the hospital before I left. You looked so beau~~

I'm not gonna do this right now. I'm ripping this page out of the notebook.

“Open it already!” Rainbow Dash cried.

“Hold on, sugarcube, I’m workin’ on it,” said Applejack patiently.

Dear friends,
I’m so sorry about this, but I’ve felt for a while now that I have to get away. It has nothing to do with you; this is just something I have to do. I’m leaving, indefinitely. Please don’t try to follow me, and take care of Gummy for me.
-Pinkie Pie

It was all lies. Well, most of it. I did want them to take care of the alligator, and I was leaving.

Twilight Sparkle slumped at her desk, despondent. It was finally getting through to her. Oh, sure, she had understood that Pinkie was gone, intellectually, but it was that first terrible day of complete absence that had broken through the layers of denial to reveal the one solid truth about the situation: Pinkie had left them. Pinkie had left her. Still, she couldn't help but smile when her friends came in.

"Oh, hi girls. What's going on?" she said.

Rainbow Dash started talking excitedly. "Twilight, we think we have an idea about why Pinkie left! Did you—"

"Idea is maybe a bit much," interrupted Rarity. "But surely you noticed that Pinkie started acting odd after that incident with the duplicates?"

"You think that might be connected to why she left?" Twilight said, curious. Rarity and Rainbow Dash nodded.

"Speakin' of which, what have you learned about that Mirror Pool, Twi?" Applejack said.

"This book does an adequate job of explaining what the Mirror Pool does, but it doesn't really explain how."

"Magic," Dash stated flatly.

"Well yes, obviously, Rainbow," Twilight said, a bit annoyed. "But it's not the sort of magic I can do."

"What do you mean?" asked Rarity.

"Umm. There are a number of spells that duplicate things, but none of them really work on living things."

"Why not?" asked Fluttershy, causing Twilight to cringe a little bit.

"They, uh... don't come out right, Fluttershy," Twilight said carefully.

"Oh?"

"There's..." Twilight tried to respond, but putting it in a way that wouldn't upset the pegasus too badly. "Fluttershy, with the duplicate animals, there wasn't really anything going on. All the lights on, nopony home."

Fluttershy seemed placated for the time being with that response. Please don't let her think through that too quickly, Twilight silently pleaded.

"That's basically what I figured the duplicates were: just sort of... Pinkie-shaped shells," Twilight continued. "But now, I'm not so sure."

"Are you kidding?" Rainbow Dash said disbelievingly. "Do you remember what they did to the town? Or to Derpy? Pinkie would never have done that!"

Twilight suddenly looked very tired. "I don't have all the answers, Rainbow. It just seems less likely that our Pinkie would leave us than that we got the wrong one."

The implications of what she had just said didn't immediately register on Twilight, but Rainbow was somewhat quicker to the punch. Still, she couldn't do much more than pose those five terrible words as a question.

"We got the wrong one?" Rainbow Dash said, in a voice suddenly devoid of certainty. It made sense, even if it was unthinkable. “Then where’s Pinkie Pie?” she added in a sort of broken desperation.

These three words were difficult for Twilight to say at any other time: under these circumstances, it was almost impossible.

“I don’t know.”

Chapter 4

Good news, Derpy! I have a name! Well, sort of.

I would have gotten to this earlier, but I was a bit caught up in the whole issue of having left the only place I’ve ever known fearing for my life. Wasn’t that silly of me? But when I woke up this morning, I realized something. I’m free!

I don’t have to worry about being Pinkie anymore. New city, new me! So when the mare at the front desk asked me for a name, I proudly said “Diane Pie.”. Not terribly creative, I’ll admit. But it feels wonderful to be Diane. “Pinkie” was... confining, somehow. It always seemed like I had to live up to it by being bubbly and quirky and lively. As long as I went by Pinkie, I had to be her. Well, no more! No more parties, no wild smiles, and I will be exactly as enthusiastic as I want to be. Although I'm pretty darn enthusiastic right now.

Well, enough about me. It’s probably worthwhile to talk about you. I guess I do have to cop to the fact that your predicament is bringing me down a bit. My happiness feels illegitimate while you’re still- you know. Still, there’s not a lot I can do for you. I’ve left a standing order at Sugarcube Corner to make a daily batch of muffins, so when you wake up you can have as many as you want. They say you’d like that. So I guess in between free muffins and the expert ministrations of Nurse Redheart, you’re in pretty good hooves.

Of course, you still need to get this letter—get this apology. That’s, uh, not something I’ve quite figured out yet. You absolutely deserve it, so I promise I’ll work something out, and soon.

Twilight Sparkle was intensely nervous, as she usually was when the Princess paid her an unexpected visit. At this moment, she was acutely aware of every errant speck of dust and misplaced book in the entire library. What if the Princess thought she was shirking her responsibilities as the town’s librarian?

In the absence of the duplicate, she had redoubled her efforts to discover anything that might be useful about the Mirror Pool. Inquiries to the major Equestrian libraries for other editions of the book Spike had found? Utter failures. What about the author? Not only had he not written anything else, but the Canterlot library was convinced that he never wrote anything, on account of not having existed.

Unwilling to admit defeat, though, she had dug deeper into the book, a miner in search of truth diamonds. What a terrible metaphor, she thought. Maybe she was absorbing bad writing by osmosis. The section about the Mirror Pool really had been an outlier... which aroused her suspicion. She had become convinced that the scraps of doggerel had some sort of hidden meaning. Maybe the section that started “When pony circle” was a reference to—

“Twilight Sparkle?” Celestia said.

“Oh, sorry Princess! I was—”

“Don’t be concerned about it. On the other hoof, Twilight, I do have to ask... why is it that it has been weeks since I’ve received any letters from you?"

“I’ve been working,” Twilight said, a bit too tersely.

“On what? This nonsense?” Celestia said, levitating the tome. “‘Mysteries of the Mysterious Forest,’ by Beerswirl the Mustached?”

“That’s not the name of the book or the—”

“What happened two weeks ago?”

“Pinkie Pie left Ponyville a couple of days before that. She didn’t even say goodbye, not really. I think she's in Manehatten now.”

Celestia thought that over. “Manehatten?” she said. “The Element of Laughter is over 200 miles away?!”

Twilight looked even more worried, remarkably. “Yeah...” she said, and shrank back uncomfortably. “Not exactly, Princess. We thought so for a while...” Twilight explained the situation to an increasingly worried Celestia.

“...so that’s what I’ve been doing,” Twilight finished lamely. Celestia sighed, and felt unutterably old.

“I suppose I must help you get your friend back. Twilight, the Pool stores all of the ponies sent back into it as magical imprints. If I read the report on your investigation into ‘Pinkie Sense’ correctly, you already have readings of Pinkie’s magical signature?”

Twilight was, unusually, somewhat lost. She probably knew more about magic theory than any mortal pony in Equestria, but even she didn’t know much about what the Princess was telling her. “I guess. So...”

“Twilight Sparkle, I’m sure that my most gifted student will have no trouble finding Pinkie Pie’s imprint in the Pool. Let me know when you do, and I’ll get her out myself,” Celestia said, and turned towards the door, then paused.

“Is it possible that the Pinkie in Manehatten is not acting on her own accord?" Celestia asked, in an oddly formal tone.

"I suppose it's possible, but-"

“Good. That’s all I need to know.” The Sun Goddess walked out of the library.

‘Good’? Twilight Sparkle trusted, even loved, the Princess. That’s not to say that she wasn’t scared by her sometimes.

“You okay there?” Applejack asked, concern clearly visible on her face.

Rainbow Dash looked up at her and scowled. “If I say yes, will you go away?”

Applejack chuckled mirthlessly. “If I believed it, maybe. As is, not a chance. Also, if my memory serves me, you’re in my house, ‘cause you wanted to hang out here.”

“Point taken,” Rainbow said unhappily, then was silent.

“So...”

Rainbow exploded. “Of course I’m not okay! I’m responsible for all of this! If I hadn’t dragged that duplicate into the town hall, none of this would have happened!”

“Is that what you’ve been beating yourself up for all this time?” Applejack asked. “Well, buck up sugarcube. There’s plenty of blame to go around. An’ how do ya think Twi’s feelin’?”

“What are you trying to get at, AJ?” Rainbow Dash said irritably.

“To be honest, I have no idea. But listen to this, because it’s important. You know that Twi’s been studyin’ that Mirror Pool. Well, she says that we need to get the duplicate back here for some tests. Somethin’ about her magical signature, whatever that means. Twilight checked the train schedule, an’ the only city that she could have gone to was Manehatten. So we’re gonna go there.”

“I’m guessing that when you say ‘we’ you mean...”

“You and me,” Applejack said, managing a grin. The same couldn’t be said for Rainbow Dash.

“That worked out so well the first time, after all.”

Applejack ignored Rainbow’s sarcasm. “Come on, Dash. Let’s go get her.” With that, she offered a hoof to the pegasus laying on her floor, and the two walked out of the house.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack stepped out of the train. “I’m telling you, AJ, this would have gone so much faster if we had just done it my way!”

“You ain’t carryin’ me nowhere, Rainbow. What’s wrong with trains, anyhow?” Applejack paused suddenly.

“This ain’t how I remember Manehatten,” she said uneasily. There were Royal Guards patrolling the train station, at least ten within every few dozen yards. There were more outside, one to every street corner. Strangely, they were all pegasi.

“That’s the Crisis Response Division of the Royal Guard,” Rainbow Dash said, with a bit of awe. “They’re the first on the scene of large-scale emergencies, and-”

Applejack was looking at the weatherpony a bit skeptically. “What? I mean, obviously the Wonderbolts will recruit me in a couple years, but it’s never a bad idea to have a fallback. Especially an awesome one.”

“Ooookay then. Well, I don’t see any emergency.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said an armored pegasus as he alighted next to the pair. “Searching for fugitives doesn’t exactly fit our usual portfolio of assignments. Although lately, you lot have been getting to our assignments before we have. Captain Kicker, of the Day Guard,” the pegasus said, extending a hoof.

“Charmed,” Applejack said drily. “Y’all are lookin’ for a fugitive?”

“Well,” Kicker said, as the professional mask slipped a little. “In honesty, I don’t know what to call it. Pink fur, excitable, ‘poofy’ mane?”

Rainbow Dash and Applejack exchanged a look.

“Anyways, our orders were to retrieve the bearer of the Element of Laughter and bring her back to Ponyville.”

“And how are y’all planning on findin’ her? It’s a big city.”

“We’ve got procedures,” the Captain said, a bit too vaguely.

"I'm sure you do," Rainbow Dash said wistfully.

I’ve never been so scared in my life. If you haven’t guessed yet, I haven’t been having a very good day. It started with the door to my seedy motel room being smashed off its hinges.

“People usually knock,” I announced, taking a look at the door smashers. They were wearing some kind of military uniform: armor, helmets with silly plumes, the works. One of them seemed to be stoically nursing a very recently incurred head wound, if by 'stoically nursing' I meant 'irritably rubbing his head while muttering buck over and over again.'

“Is there a Pinkamena Diane Pie on the premises?” the other pony demanded.

Ain’t nobody here but us chickens, I thought inanely, then giggled inappropriately. Then I ran, because I really didn’t want to find out why they were so interested in me just then. It turns out that I can run really, really fast when I’m sufficiently motivated.

After no doubt confusing bystanders for several blocks with the sudden appearance and disappearance of a pink blur rushing past them, I ducked into an alley. Because it’s been that kind of a day, there was a Guard standing right in front of me.

Hmm. Not a lot of options here. “Jogging’s great, isn’t it?”

Yeah, he wasn’t buying it. On the bright side, he was alone...

I knocked into him at somewhere around light speed, sending him to the ground. Strangely, I was fine. No time to waste, I thought.

“Why are you looking for me?” I screamed. Well, he looked terrified, but the results weren’t forthcoming. So I kicked it up to eleven and got right in his face. “Tell me!” I said, trying to sound insanely unbalanced. It wasn’t hard.

“We’ve been ordered to find Pinkamena Pie and return her to Ponyville as soon as possible,” he answered nervously. Weird. I knew that Sparkle had some sort of connections to the Princess, but I didn’t think that they extended to sending goon squads across the country to find me.

“Why do I need to be in Ponyville?”

“You’re the Element of Laughter!” he said. What?

“Does it look like I’m laughing?” I asked, feigning rage.

“N-n-no...” he said, trying to get up.

“Good.” I can’t really explain how it happened, but I appeared behind him, and whispered right into his ear. “If you tell anyone you saw me, I’ll know where to find you.” It was an implicit threat, and an idle one. I had no ability or inclination to track him down afterwards and deliver some sort of awful vengeance. Still, he didn’t have to know that. He got to his hooves and flew away.

So I crossed the street and curled up on an alley doorstep to write this, probably because I am legitimately unbalanced in some way. This letter is the only thing I thought to grab on my way out of the motel room. Try as I might, I can’t think of that as a mistake. This is the most important thing in my life, I suppose. For that matter, you’re

Chapter 5

Dear Derpy,

I guess I could frame this as a “good news, bad news” sort of thing. So here goes.

Good news! I’m going back to Ponyville. The bad news is that it’s in a Royal Guard chariot. I’m currently in the process of “inadvertently” digging my elbow into the bruiser sitting next to me, reading this.

Yeah, you. Buck off.

Anyways, Derpy, they caught me. It was embarrassingly easy in the end. I was thrown off writing that last section in a very strange way. An ear twitched, my eyes closed convulsively, and my knee spasmed. Moments later, the door behind me opened into the alley, leaving me sprawling. That was game over, I guess. So here I am, flying back to Ponyville.

It’s unexpected, but somehow it makes sense. It’s consistent with the logic of my existence, I suppose. Diane was never anything more than a fragile hope, an impossible dream. I could never be her. No, I am what I’ve always been: nothing but a pale imitation of the genuine article, with the temerity to take its place and the foolishness to think it would never catch up with me. So back I go. Assuming Sparkle doesn’t zap me on sight, I’ll let you know what happens.

“Twilight Sparkle, I do hope there was a point to enlisting me into dragging equipment into this...” Rarity looked around distastefully and continued. “...dank and, might I add, exceedingly muddy cave. I’m not cut out for this sort of work!”

“Mmm.” Twilight fiddled distractedly with a bundle of wires.

Rarity set down a tripod with a theatrical sigh. “Twilight, darling, what are we down here for?”

“Oh, sorry, Rarity,” Twilight said, and gestured around vaguely. “This is all basically a scaled-up version of the apparatus I used to test Pinkie’s magical ability when I was trying to figure out Pinkie Sense.” At this, she managed a weak smile. “Pinkie Sense. Anyways, the data’s going to be printed out there. I’ll compare it to the readout I got from Pinkie back then, and... then I guess I’ll just write Celestia and let her do her thing.”

“Why can’t she just do it?”

Twilight shrugged. “I’m not completely sure. Still, it can’t be easy or safe to poke around this kind of magical artifact. It’s not surprising that the Princess wants to be sure before she takes that kind of risk.”

“But Twilight- where else could Pinkie be?”

I had the opportunity to ask about you. That may have been the highlight of the day, maybe even the week. Have I been here a week yet? The days blur together.

Yes, yes I have. Nine days, actually. Anyways, today Sparkle came into my cell with breakfast. Usually it’s the dragon. I try to be nice to him. I feel sorry for anyone who has to live with Twilight, including myself.

“Is Derpy awake?” I asked.

She reacted to the sound of my voice like she had been slapped. Too much like Pinkie, probably.

“Why would you care?” she asked, roughly dropping the plate and cup.

I shrugged. “Not all of us can be sociopathic robots in pony suits like you,” I said sweetly. “I care about her—um, what happened to her. I’m sorry about it.”

She was, unsurprisingly, not convinced. Eh, screw her. I poked the food experimentally. “Also, as long as she’s not up yet, I’ll take that order of muffins. Really, Sparkle? Bread and water?”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“Oh well. At least I haven’t been zapped yet. Why is that, anyways?”

Twilight menaced. “I need you for testing. Once that’s done...”

I did my best to look unimpressed and pretended to stifle a yawn. “So does that mean no muffins?”

All I got from Twilight was a glare. “Follow me. And don’t try anything.” I obeyed, because as much as I’d hate to admit it, that unicorn scares the hell out of me. We came down into the library. I caught a glimpse of sunlight through a window, but she shoved me down another staircase and into an enormous underground room.

“Ever thought about getting this finished?” I joked, then noticed what Twilight was pushing me towards. “Okay, what the hell is that?” I asked, pointing at a bare wooden chair with straps to the armrests and what could only be described as an electronic salad bowl in position to be lowered over the head of its occupant.

“An electric chair? It’s a little messy compared to your usual MO, but if that’s what you’re into-”

“It’s not an electric chair!” Twilight said tersely. “It won’t hurt a bit,” she said. She seemed disappointed.

“If you say so, Doctor Flankenstein. I’m guessing you want me in that thing?”

She nodded, so I sat down. I may be a smartflank on occasion, but I’m not suicidal.

Day 16 of my absurd imprisonment. Not much to report other than I’m bored stiff.

Twilight Sparkle was done. To limit the scope of that statement, it might be noted that she was done checking for the duplicates in the Mirror Pool. She was practiced at the process after spending so many days doing it, although without much in the way of results. She would scan a section, looking for the tell-tale ups and downs of the pattern, then sigh dispiritedly and move on to the next one. She’d checked every inch of the print-outs no fewer than three times without finding anything. There was a pile of paper as tall as she was on one side of the desk, and only a single piece left on the other.

Oh. It’s Pinkie’s paper. The only thing she’d seen of Pinkie for months, excepting the duplicate. And the duplicate didn’t count, obviously. It was nothing like the real Pinkie. It (she?) was bitterly sarcastic where Pinkie was sincerely happy, and dull where Pinkie was vivacious. To Twilight’s knowledge, the duplicate just... sat there most of the time. Granted, there wasn’t a lot of entertainment in the spare bedroom the Royal Guards had converted into a cell. But still, it creeped Twilight out to see the duplicate just sitting there, staring at the wall. Or even more unnerving, writing in that little notebook she kept on herself at all times. Whatever the duplicate was writing in there would probably be a fascinating psychological study, but the duplicate would be even more refractory if Twilight took it.

Twilight wasn’t really sure why she hadn’t sent the duplicate back to the Mirror Pool yet. She was done with testing, after all. Maybe she was more bothered by the duplicate’s constant snarky reminders of when she had sent back the rest of the Pinkies than Twilight was willing to admit to herself. The fake wasn’t exactly subtle about implying that Twilight was a murderer. And after spending as much time with the duplicate as Twilight had, it was getting harder to deny it. Of course the duplicates were a menace, and the survivor was at the very least a bitchy misanthrope, but...

No. She pushed the thought out of her mind. They weren’t dead. They were just gone. Like Pinkie. She’d put them all in there together, hadn’t she? All except one.

Pinkie, you have to be in there. You have to be. She just hoped that Pinkie wouldn’t know what had happened to her, how long she’d been imprisoned. Twilight would have a lot to apologize for. Not that she didn’t already. She absentmindedly laid the duplicate’s imprint on the table, smoothing it out.

There was something strange there, but she couldn’t place it. The patterns on the two papers seemed almost—no, that wasn’t possible. They couldn’t be. Twilight overlaid them and held them up to a light.

It was inconceivable, insane. “Oh, Celestia,” Twilight breathed. This changed everything. And not in a good way, either, but in the worst way possible.

Chapter 6

As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, Twilight Sparkle had fallen rather painfully on the floor. Exhaustion had gotten the best of her, it seemed. The pain didn’t do much more than snap her out of her sleepy reverie. As she laboriously pulled herself off the floor, she stared mistrustfully at the papers on the desk.

Pinkie...

Twilight broke down, the tension of the past weeks coming out in shudders that wracked her whole body. She breathed in uneven gasps, and grabbed the desk in an attempt to steady herself. Twilight somehow found herself curled up into a little ball on a chair. She began sobbing uncontrollably, albeit softly. Her mind was quiet for once: no longer analyzing, pondering, thinking. Twilight wasn’t sure how long she stayed there, crying until the tears no longer came.

Twilight had at least been able to live with herself when she had believed that she was responsible for Pinkie’s disappearance. It had been an emergency, and she made a mistake in the process of saving the town. It was an enormous mistake, but there was no real malice behind it. The last thing she wanted to do was cause anypony pain.

This was different. Twilight hadn’t made a single attempt to treat her as a real pony, never mind a friend. She had failed. I’ll make this up to you, I swear, Twilight thought. And so she crept quietly into the spare bedroom and gently laid down a stack of books. To this she added a note:

I’m sorry.

“I’ll explain everything tomorrow,” she promised, looking guiltily at that face she knew so well, now relaxed in sleep.

I’m thoroughly confused. Somepony left some books, pens, and a maddeningly inconclusive message in here last night. I asked Spike about it.

"Some stuff got put in here last night. You have any idea who did that?"

“Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said. “I was sleeping like a rock. Twilight had me moving papers all day.”

“Figures,” I said. It stands to reason it was Twilight. Doesn't explain why, though.

“You’re chatty today," he noted.

“By my own rather limited standards, I’m nothing if not a social butterfly,” I deadpanned. “Talk to me, Spikey. What’s Twilight been up to? Something weird’s going on.”

He looked suspicious. “Why do you want to know?”

"Curiosity. Really, Spike, what could I possibly do?"

He shrugged. “You never seemed like much of a threat to me.”

I beamed at him. “So?”

"She’s working on some psychology project today. I don’t know what, exactly. She doesn’t tell me everything- not recently, anyways.”

“Huh.” My working theory for right now is that she’s undergone a sudden and disturbing attack of conscience, and is now consulting with Equestria’s leading minds to hurriedly develop a cure.

“That’s your question. Now I get one,” he said.

"Eh, why not?" I said magnanimously.

"Are you happy?" he asked.

I guffawed. “You’re gonna waste your question like that? Why would I be happy?”

He shrugged. “Why was Pinkie always happy?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not her. My guess is that it was a front. Nopony can be that happy. It’s not possible.”

“Besides,” I continued, “what would be the point? There’s got to be more to life than personal happiness.”

“Oh. In that case, what else is there?”

“Heck if I know. I’ve been alive for what, four months? How many opportunities do you think I’ve had to discover the meaning of life?”

“Point taken. See you later, Diane,” he said. I tipped an imaginary hat at him. I like that dragon.

So, Rainbow Dash came to, ah, ‘visit’ me today. I’ve been dreading it. She’s one of Pinkie’s best friends, fond of Derpy, and just had what I can only assume were a couple of weeks wasted either looking for me or being debriefed by the Royal Guards. So yeah, I knew she wouldn’t be in a good mood whenever she decided to come see me. So naturally, when she came in, I decided to make the situation even worse.

“Dashie! Why don’t you pull up some floor and take a seat?” I said, patting next to me.

“I’ll take something,” she threatened vaguely.

My eyes widened in mock surprise. “Really, Rainbow Dash! Your offer is flattering, but I'm afraid I’m not that kind of girl.”

I paused theatrically. “Oh, wait, you didn’t mean taking that."

Rainbow Dash nodded, almost involuntarily.

"Come on, Rainbow Crash, you can be honest with me. You had some pathetic conceit of coming here to kill me, didn’t you?”

I would have facehoofed if the situation were less tense. Shit. I would have preferred not to give her ideas. But it looked like I had judged her correctly. She kicked a hoof agitatedly.

“It’s not your life,” she muttered. “You took it from Pinkie.”

I turned on her, my calm facade abandoned. “Do you think I wanted this?” I hissed. “You think I wanted to lie to you? To live somepony else’s life? I did what I had to do to survive. None of you even gave me a chance!”

“You hurt Derpy, too.”

“And what, do you think I’m some sort of sociopath? I’m buying her muffins. I want to make it up to her. But no, of course you wouldn’t think about that, wouldn’t think about any of this. You don’t need to, because you’re not just a hot-headed idiot who can fly really fast. No, you’re Rainbow Dash, ultimate arbiter of right and wrong!”

I leaned in conspiratorially. “Because we all know how good your judgment has been through this insanity.”

“Shut up,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Like when you dragged me into town hall,” I continued, “even though it should have been painfully obvious that I wasn’t Pinkie. Brilliant move, Dashie. Your friend might have made it if—”

She flew across the room and knocked me to the floor. I tried to get up, but she began to pummel me with her hooves. I had screwed up badly. She straddled my prone body, breathing hard, a hoof pressing against my throat.

I chuckled humorlessly. “Do it, filly. You won’t.”

We stayed like that for a while, her hot breath against my face. Slowly, the hate in her eyes faded. She lifted off me, and sat on her haunches.

“I’m not a murderer,” she said hoarsely. “Your crazy deathwish is none of my business. “

I sat up, coughing.

“If that’s what it’s like inside your head,” she continued, “I can’t think of a better place for you.”

There was a familiar voice at the door. “Ahem.”

Rainbow and I froze where we were. She sat listlessly on the floor, caught somewhere between rage and despair. I left off massaging my throat, clutched the bed frame for support, and desperately wished I had never existed.

“Sorry to break up whatever the hell’s going on here, but I need her for a while,” Twilight said tersely to Rainbow. “And you better have a damn good explanation for this when I get back.”

“Come on,” she said to me.

“I’m so sorry about all this, Pinkie. I didn’t-”

“My name is Diane," I said, fuming.

Twilight suddenly looked very tired. Ain’t no rest for the wicked.

“Diane. Diane, this will be difficult for you to hear, but try to bear with me. I’m guessing you know where you are?”

I glared at her. “The Mirror Pool.”

“Right. I’ve been using this apparatus to scan for-”

She paused; I had rolled my eyes. Twilight continued, albeit a bit annoyed. “The point is, I’ve been looking for the real Pinkie Pie for a very long time. It’s literally impossible for me to have missed anything. She’s not in there.”

I chortled inappropriately. "You could have asked me about that. There’s nothing in the Pool! You killed her!”

“I didn’t- it couldn’t- Princess Celestia told me that there would be an imprint if she had been sent here.”

"And you trust her?"

“With my life.”

“Well, who am I to argue?” I asked mockingly. “You trust the Princess with your life! That doesn’t exactly explain why I’m being expected to trust you with mine.”

“Diane,” Twilight said with some difficulty, “is there any way you could have gotten brain damage that first day? Head injury, exposure to certain chemicals?”

“I hit my head on the ceiling of Carousel Boutique pretty hard...” I said, frightened. “Why? What the hell are you trying to get at, Sparkle?” I yelled, undoubtedly in a very calm and balanced way.

“I think you might have retrograde amnesia,” Twilight explained. “You can’t remember anything before that, can you?”

“Not really,” I said, now thoroughly unnerved. “So I’m...”

No. It was impossible. Not a chance.

“You are Pinkamena Diane Pie. Or at least you were. I don’t really know what to make of it.”

I paused, sure that I was missing something. "What about my cutie mark? If I were Pinkie Pie, wouldn't that still be there?"

"Probably not; you've forgotten your special talent. It's not surprising that your cutie mark faded away."

“I’m not Pinkie!” I bellowed, but the volume came more from doubt than certainty. “Do I sound like Pinkie Pie? Think about it, Sparkle!"

"I'm so sorry," Twilight said quietly.

“So am I,” I said distractedly. “You said there was something I needed to do?”

I looked at Twilight expectantly. She was blinking back tears. Despite myself, I felt a pang of pity for her. “Uh, Twilight...”

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Sorry about what?” I said, trying my hardest to sound cold.

“Listen, Diane... I can heal the brain damage. You’d remember who you are.”

Responses ran through my head. Who the hell was she to do this? I know who I am! She had no right to—

“I’m not going to force you to do it. If you’re not willing to go through with this, you’re free to go as far as I’m concerned.”

Damn it, Twilight. Why won’t you let me hate you?

“I think I need some time alone,” I said.

Chapter 7

Ordinarily, I’d welcome the chance to get away from Sparkle. Unfortunately, my own thoughts aren’t much better company right now.

I’m not sure why that is. This is probably the best news of my life, after all. I may have slightly more existential angst to contend with, but it’s an improvement on worrying about getting zapped by Twilight. I’m free, as far as she's concerned. I can go where I want, do what I want. Maybe I’ll even get a cutie mark of my own. Who knows?

On the other hoof...

I honestly don’t know what to make of all this. Before I knew what I do now, I could justify holding onto this life. Even if I don’t deserve it, there’s nopony with the right to take it away from me. It’s not my fault things turned out this way.

But now things are different. I’m not just disconnected from these ponies. In some sense, I’m broken. This isn’t how I’m meant to be, and I’m the only one standing between Pinkie and her friends.

And now look at me, exorcising my demons into this little notebook. I don’t think there’s even a point to giving you this anymore. Pinkie would never have hurt you, and I don’t remember doing it.

Not even my guilt is real, it seems.

Twilight walked into the library, slamming the door behind her. Rainbow Dash, sprawled across a chair, reading a Daring Do novel, barely looked up. “Oh, you’re back,” she said indifferently. “Did you do it?”

“Dash, you’d better—wait, do what?”

“Send her back. The dupe.”

“No, I didn’t. Now, what the hell were you doing with her before I came in?”

Rainbow tried unsuccessfully to look nonchalant. “I was planning on beating the crap out of her. Maybe more, if I felt like it.”

“Rainbow—”

“I should have done it, too. That little bitch killed Pinkie, and she put Derpy in the hospital! If she hadn’t-”

“You need to listen to me now.”

“What?” Rainbow growled.

“She is Pinkie Pie,” Twilight said, her patience stretched thin.

“Twilight, it’s a duplicate of Pinkie Pie! It’s not the same thing and you know that.”

“No, Rainbow. That’s what I’m talking about. She’s not a duplicate.”

Rainbow blanched. “She’s what?”

“She’s the real Pinkie Pie. She just... can’t remember who she is. She got that knocked out of her that day when all the duplicates were running around, and never managed to figure out that she’s the real one until I told her.”

“She’s...” Rainbow was momentarily taken aback, her mind thrashing about for an explanation. “Twilight, don’t you see what she’s doing? She’s playing you! This is how she operates, remember?”

“I didn’t want to believe it at first, either. But the evidence is inarguable. Here, come look at this.”

Rainbow reluctantly extricated herself from the chair and walked over to Twilight’s desk.

“Okay, look. Here’s Pinkie.” Twilight gestured towards the older readout. “And here’s your ‘duplicate’. They’re almost exactly the same.”

“Hence, duplicate, egghead.”

Twilight shot a glare at Rainbow. “Shut up, please. Do you think I didn’t consider that? If all the duplicates had the same magical imprint, I should have been able to find that in the Pool over and over again. I didn’t find it once.”

“So—but—” Rainbow sputtered, and froze.

Twilight waved a hoof across her friend’s face. Hello? Equestria to Dash? Rainbow snapped out of it.

“You mean... that’s the real Pinkie?”

Twilight nodded numbly.

“Oh, Celestia. Twilight, I could have killed her. I wanted to kill her...” Rainbow shook her head disbelievingly. “Bucking hell. Twilight, what the buck was I doing? Where is she? I need to apologize. I need to—” She stopped, as if her mental gears had suddenly seized up.

“Rainbow, calm down. This isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I should have told you earlier. I just wanted to be sure before I let you know. It’s my fault.”

“You shouldn’t have had to let me know, though! I nearly killed her! She’s my friend and I could have killed her. Some bucking Element of Loyalty I am. Wait. Twilight?”

“Yes?” the unicorn responded abstractedly.

Rainbow began talking very quickly. “So if she’s Pinkie but she just can’t remember that she is, that must mean...” she trailed off. “You can fix it, can’t you? Make her Pinkie again?”

“I can, but I’m not going to unless she lets me.”

“Twilight, you gotta do it. We need our Pinkie back. I need my Pinkie back.”

“I told her that I wouldn’t force her to let me do it, and I meant that.”

Rainbow sighed in defeat. “You’re right. I just wish—”

“We all wish, Dashie.”

I wandered around the town for a while, going nowhere in particular. Sugarcube Corner beckoned, but I don’t think I could deal with seeing the Cakes right now. Too many questions would be asked, and besides... I don’t think I could bear to see one more pony that misses Pinkie that badly.

So I walked towards the library, Spike was, interestingly, there waiting for me. I was not expecting that. Hell, I’m surprised I even came back there.

“I figured you’d be coming here,” Spike said smugly.

“Spikey. How’d you manage that?”

“I know you pretty well, don’t I?” he responded with a smile.

“You’ve known me for what, two weeks?”

“A bit longer than that.” He rubbed the back of his head nervously. “I may have, uh, overheard a conversation between Twilight and Rainbow.”

“Oh. So I guess you know by now that I’m—”

“The original Pinkie?”

“I was going to say the real Pinkie, but that works too,” I said dispiritedly.

“Ah, heck, Diane. You were always real to me.”

I actually teared up. That absurd little dragon. “That means a lot to me, Spike. Thanks.”

He paused uncomfortably for a moment. “So do you know what you’re going to do?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, no. Either prospect scares the hell out of me. I doubt I’d be able to live with myself if I didn’t go through with it. But I don’t know that I’ll survive the process. It’s a mess.”

“Do you need a hug?” he asked awkwardly.

I decided to let him play it off as a joke. “Save it for Rarity. What do you think I should do, Spike?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Why not?”

“Well, in that case...” Spike said, producing a glass lens and placing it over his eye.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, bemused.

“This is my monocle. You need a monocle if you want to properly philosophize,” he said matter-of-factly. “That, or a mustache, but that’s more of a long shot.”

“You’re so full of crap!” I said, smiling widely.

“Absolutely. But anyways, I don’t know how much it matters whether you’re Pinkie or Diane. Memories can’t be everything. There’s also, I don’t know, your soul. Who you are. I mean, look at that smile. There’s probably more of Pinkie in you than you realize. And the same will probably be true the other way around, if you’re going to go through with this. Does that make any sense?”

I laughed. “Possibly.”

Spike took out his monocle and regarded me worriedly. “Whatever happens, though... I hope you’re okay.”

"Me too. Thanks. Listen, Spike, there’s somepony else I need to see before I... make my decision. Is it okay if I leave?”

“I guess. See you later?”

I couldn’t lie to Spike. “Probably not. Goodbye.”

“Right. Goodbye, Diane.”

I hesitated. "Spike?"

"Yup?"

“I’ll take that hug now.”

It was just as awkward as I think we both expected, but I left the library feeling obscurely contented.

I walked towards the hospital. It must sound pathetic, but I wanted to see you. Don’t ask me why. I can’t even figure it out. Why do I come back to you, or to this notebook? If I knew what I do now when I had first heard about you, I would never have written this. I probably would never have given you a second thought.

“I’m here to see Derpy,” I told the receptionist. She looked reproachfully at me.

“Er, Ditzy Doo. I’m a...” I paused, unable to come up with the right word. I settled on “friend.”

She duly read off a room number and pointed your way. I’ve been here a few times to see you. This time feels different, as I look at you. Okay, maybe a bit creepy. Don’t worry though, my intentions are good.

They talked about how clumsy you are—never in a mean way, of course. Personally, though, I haven’t been able to conceive it since seeing you. You look so calm, so... centered, I guess. Surely it can’t be you that moves so gracelessly. It has to be the world, spinning crazily around you, that screws up so badly. I wouldn’t know, I guess. I wish I did.

“Hey, Dinky,” I said with a genuine smile. She’d come into your room.

I saw her pretty often before I left for Manehatten, as she’d been getting free meals from Sugarcube Corner whenever she wanted. Knowing the Cakes, they’re still at it. Anyways, Dinky’s a good kid. She’s doing about as well as can be expected under the circumstances, but she took what happened to you pretty hard.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, hi Miss Pie! What are you doing here?”

“Visiting,” I said vaguely. “You probably want me to leave.”

She nodded, smiling apologetically.

“Right,” I said, getting up. “You don’t mind if I ask you a question about your mom, do you?”

“I guess not. What is it?”

“If she woke up and I...” There didn’t seem to be a good way to explain this to Dinky, to let her know just how high the stakes were for me. “If she woke up and I wasn’t there anymore, how would your mom feel about that?”

Dinky looked thoughtfully. “Probably not so good. I mean, the two of you aren’t that close, but...”

I looked at her expectantly.

“I dunno. Sometimes ponies get impatient with Mom, ‘cause she’s, you know, different. You never did that. You treated her like everypony else, always trying to make her smile. I think you really helped her after my dad left. If you hadn’t been there... I don’t know how well she would have done. You’re a good friend.”

I tried to say thank you, but no sound seemed to come out. I walked uneasily out of the room as Dinky started to talk to you.

“Hi, Mom. Everything’s okay I guess. I miss you though. I wish—”

Her voice faded out as I left.

I’m at the edge of the Everfree now. It’s beautiful out here. The early evening sun is shining through the leaves, making them golden. I always loved that. Part of me wants to stay here forever, sitting in the sunlight and watching as the faint breeze gently tousles the grass in front of me. I can see Canterlot gleam in the distance, and hear bird song.

I know it sounds uncharacteristically saccharine for me, but I’m glad I got to be here and see this before I.... you know. That, and seeing you one last time.

It was about you, in the end. I know that it sounds insane. There’s no bonds of kinship or romance connecting us. Why should your happiness be worth my life? Like I said before, starting to write this was, if not a mistake, certainly an accident. But as it turns out, you’ll know me better than anypony. I only wish I could have known you before I...

In some sad, strange way, I think I love you, Derpy. I may not have to apologize to you, but I dearly want you to understand me.

I’ll get your friend back. Goodbye.

Diane knocked at the entrance to Twilight’s study.

She looked up from her desk, surprised. “You came back.”

“I guess,” Diane said.

“Thank you.” It was impossibly inadequate, but what else was there to be said?

“So what do I have to do?” Diane asked. She tried to keep her voice steady, but not very successfully.

Twilight couldn’t meet her eyes. “Just stay in one spot long enough for me to work.”

The pink pony nodded once, then started uncertainly to speak. “Twilight?”

It seemed like an eternity before she could respond. “Yes?”

“What happens to me if this works?”

Twilight sighed. “It won’t hurt, if that’s what you’re wondering. Other than that, I don’t really know. You won’t be you anymore. Pinkie might have some of your memories, but she still won’t be you. I’m sorry.”

“Maybe memories aren’t what’s important,” Diane said. “And I forgive you. You have to do this. If Pinkie doesn’t remember everything... will you give this to Derpy?”

She offered Twilight a small notebook, with two words carefully written on the front. To Derpy.

“It’s for when she wakes up. Spike might want to read it too. You’ll give it to her?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, okay,” Diane said, blinking back tears as Twilight’s horn began to glow.

Wet. It would be the last thing she remembered.

Chapter 3

Sorry about the condition of that last page—well, or lack thereof. I wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to produce anything worth reading at the time.

Let’s try this again.

Derpy, I hope you read this, but I can’t convince myself that you ever will. I left Ponyville... I guess it would be two days ago by now. I’m writing this from a cheap motel room in Manehatten.

I should start from the beginning of this mess. I had kept to myself as much as possible after having helped Twilight block off the Pool. I’d wake up early in the morning, clean the kitchen, bake the orders for the day, and then retreat up to my room. Well, “my” room. It never failed to seem like an unforgivable incursion whenever I stepped inside. In any case, I spent a day tearing the room apart looking for anything Pinkie had left behind that might give me some insight into her friends or anything about Ponyville and its inhabitants.

Nothing. I found a notebook- this notebook, in fact—but it contained nothing but a crude sketch of a smiley face surrounded by balloons. Judging from the fact that it was buried in a closet, Pinkie didn’t seem like the writing sort. I gave up at that point.

The Cakes were probably pretty confused by my behavior, but they couldn’t really complain—I was working and wasn’t doing anything obviously deviant up in my room. Pinkie’s friends stopped by on occasion, but I was always able to defuse the possibility of anypony getting too close by carefully avoiding talking about anything interesting. And of course, there was always the unspoken attitude of ‘Of course there’s nothing wrong! Why would there be?’ delivered by a wide Pinkie smile.

“I shoulda guessed somethin’ earlier,” Applejack said morosely. “Whenever I’d go talk to her, she’d start talkin’ about the weather and then smile real widely. It was just weird.”

After a cursory examination of the contents of Pinkie’s party closet, I realized that I had absolutely no idea how to throw a party. If I wanted to pass off as Pinkie, I needed to do that. So I reluctantly decided to venture out to the library to retrieve some books about hosting. That particular decision was a tough one. Twilight Sparkle might be there, and that unicorn scares the hell out of me for obvious reasons. I remembered the look that had flickered over her face after I passed the test. She might suspect something.

Then again, it would be a dead giveaway if I couldn’t manage to throw a decent party.

So I walked uncertainly to the library. Twilight, per my fears, was there, poring over an old dusty book. I hesitated to get her attention, but it would be uncharacteristic not to. So I steeled myself and said—a bit too loudly—“Hi, Twilight!” She didn’t look up or respond, other than to mumble a “Hi, Pinkie.”

So far, so good. I started scanning the shelves for anything that had to do with partying. I didn’t get far before Twilight suddenly snapped away from her book.

"Pinkie, what are you doing here?" she asked, surprised. I was too startled to respond with anything but the truth. "I'm looking for books."

Slipping hurriedly into character, I said “What else would I do in a library, silly?”

Twilight looked confused, but I could already sense the explanation forming in her mind: ‘It’s Pinkie.’

"Alright, Pinkie. What kind of books are you looking for?"

"Party books!" I said with doltish enthusiasm.

Bah. I had spent enough time impersonating Pinkie that I had a pretty good read on what sounded like her and what didn’t. That didn’t sound much like Pinkie Pie. Maybe more like a small foal, or perhaps Pinkie with some sort of head injury. Derpy, I thought uncomfortably. The smile slid off my face. Still, Twilight had apparently shifted far enough into librarian mode that it didn’t register.

“Okay, Pinkie. Are you looking for novels, or nonfiction? Because-”

I cut her off: "Nonfiction." It was instinctively appealing to me, with so much of my life being fiction. Then again...

I thought better of it, and told Twilight I’d take the fiction as well. A little more of it won’t kill me.

I slammed my face a bit melodramatically into the book. Boredom didn’t really cover the scope of how entirely unenthused I was about this subject. Ennui would work, maybe. After two hours I was feeling ready to eat the book instead of reading it, library fines be damned. It was made worse by the utter necessity of learning this crap. Social miscues could be explained away with “It’s Pinkie” for a while, but if I didn’t manage to throw adequate parties, things could get bad quickly.

Sighing, I turned the page to another of the seemingly endless “fun party ideas,” then thought better of it and closed it with an unnecessary level of force. 1001 Fun Party Ideas was absolutely not fun, and to give the vast majority of the 1001 items the name of “ideas” was to badly abuse the meaning of the word. It looked like the author had abandoned the notion of original items somewhere in the mid-hundreds in favor of smashing their head into the typewriter until it made something vaguely resembling a sentence. I put it aside. Next up: Hosting for Dummies. I reluctantly opened it and started reading.

It didn’t get better. If my predilections mirrored that of the real Pinkie’s, I think it would have been the fact that I was reading about throwing parties that made it so painfully dull. I’m not sure if it wasn’t the other way around.

Still, I managed to figure out a way to limit the damage I could do with a party. Well, to my reputation. Not necessarily physical damage. I wondered if Applejack could help me out with it. I’d heard things.

“It’s not an issue at all. Any time for you, Twilight.” A bit cautiously, Rarity continued. “So I assume this has to do with...”

“Pinkie Pie, yes,” Twilight Sparkle said dispiritedly. “I’ve hit a wall in terms of my research into the whole...” She gestured around vaguely. “...situation. I revisited that book Spike found that had the spell to send duplicates back into the Mirror Pool.”

“Oh?”

“It’s basically worthless. The vast majority of it is nothing but ancient doggerel, and there’s certainly nothing in there about the mechanics of the Mirror Pool itself. I sent in inquiries to all of the major Equestrian libraries about the author. Apparently, he doesn’t exist. So then I thought, 'Why not start focusing on the duplicate?'"

Rarity could see where this was going, and she didn’t like it. “Twilight Sparkle! You can’t honestly expect me to—”

“I need to know what the duplicate was like, Rarity. Because of your ‘fashion soiree,’ you’ve seen more of the duplicate than the rest of us have. What happened?”

“It was a traumatic event for me! It’s hardly reasonable for you to expect me to revisit such an embarrassing—”

“Cut the drama,” Twilight said. “I need you to do this. Pinkie needs you to do this.”

The 'woe is me' expression disappeared from Rarity’s face in a heartbeat. “Of course,” she said quietly.

“I noticed that there was something off about her from the beginning, although I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Still, it was strange. Instead of greeting me with that usual Pinkie exuberance when I walked into the Corner, she just... stared at me for a bit, like she was trying to figure out what I was there for. I mean, of course she responded like she usually does, eventually, but it was forced, and it didn’t seem like her. In any case, I asked her if she would be interested in assisting me in entertaining a group of buyers from a number of very high-class boutiques in Canterlot. She just sort of looked at me before reluctantly agreeing. I got the impression that her heart wasn’t in it, but- you know how good Pinkie’s parties are.”

Twilight nodded. Rarity looked expectantly at her friend, who returned the expression. “And?”

“Oh, it was dreadful!”

Twilight gave Rarity a glare.

“Alright, alright. I had been in the back getting the clothes prepared for the buyers while Pinkie—well, ‘Pinkie’—was setting up. I, ahem, lost track of time while I was making sure that one of the dresses was hanging just right, so a few of the buyers had already arrived when I got out into the workroom. It was awful, just awful. Twilight, you would not believe it. There were balloons and bunting and, and, ‘Pin the tail on the pony’ posters and—oh, Celestia, what are those called? Apple bobbing buckets! Just everywhere! No seeming rhyme or reason—”

“I get the idea,” Twilight said. Rarity looked a bit offended, but continued.

“And of course I couldn’t change anything with the buyers there. Just grin and pretend that it made sense.”

Twilight nodded.

“I forgot to mention that the punch seemed to be just Applejack’s cider with food coloring and sugar.”

"Oh," Twilight said uninterestedly, then realized what had just been said. "Oh! Well, uh... how'd it go?"

“I suppose it could have been worse,” Rarity grudgingly admitted. “After a few cups of the punch they started burbling about how adorably rustic it all was. And ‘authentic’. Still, I was furious with Pinkie. I may, ah, have told her that she had ruined me and that I never wanted to see anything of her again.”

“How’d she take that?”

“Standard operating procedure for that Pinkie. She looked at me uncomprehendingly and then left.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. She might have toyed with the idea of apologizing, but she didn’t. Just left.”

Twilight mentally took note of that, but was evidently distracted by something else. “So did they buy anything?

“Does it really matter, Twilight?"

"I'm curious."

“They were all too sloshed to even take a look at the clothes. Well, that’s not entirely true. Celestia knows how I’m going to get those stains out.”

I’ll be honest with you, Derpy. I’m not entirely sure what I’m writing here.

To be clear, I know why I’m writing it. You deserve the truth, and an apology. But at the same time, I’m increasingly aware that I have my own reasons for this letter. It's my only real connection to anypony or anything.

Oh Celestia, that sounded less pathetic in my head than it looks on paper. Point is, this is becoming less of a letter to you and more my way of making sense of my existence.

So I’m hoping, without much in the way of a reason to believe it, that you’d want to know who I am.

That you’d want to know who did this to you.

Epilogue

Derpy Hooves blearily opened her eyes. There was something different about this morning. She couldn’t quite place it. Maybe it was the smell of muffins, despite the fact that she hadn’t baked her breakfast batch yet. Yes, that was definitely unusual. It was also a bit odd that she was laying in a hospital bed in what appeared to be, logically enough, a hospital room, but Derpy liked to take these little things in stride.

A nurse walking by did a double take. “Ditzy?”

“Muffins?” the subject of her inquiry responded.

“Ditzy, don’t try to get up,” the nurse said. “I need to—” She galloped off, not bothering to complete her sentence.

A voice pierced the quiet of the hospital and brought a wide smile to Derpy’s face.

“Mommy?”

Dinky Doo rushed into the room and leaped onto her mother’s bed. “Mom! I’m so glad that you’re-”

“Muffin, what’s wrong?” Derpy asked, confused.

“Nothing anymore,” her daughter responded, contentedly resting her head on Derpy’s shoulder.

A long moment passed before either of them said anything. “Oh, before I forget,” Dinky said. “Miss Pie came by earlier and left this. She said she really wanted you to read it.”

Derpy turned her head to see a little notebook placed neatly on her bedstand. “Anything for a friend. But... breakfast first?”

Author's Note

Thanks to you readers for sticking around to the end. I'll be writing more eventually, so follow me if you want more.

Special thanks have to go to my prereaders and editors:

The indefatigable, invaluable mlpreader946 has been working with me since I published the first two chapters, and his alacrity and perceptiveness has helped to make this story at least 20% better.

I only managed to get Einhander on board for the last chapter, but he's been spectacularly useful in that regard. Please give that guy your views, because he's an incredibly talented writer.

Credit also goes to FaleYur and Tempered Metal for their help.