The Laughter I Choose to Be

by Trick Question

Rating: everyone
Tags: Death, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Pinkie Pie
Length: 1823

Pinkie Pie plans to tell her friends how she does the impossible things she does.

As everypony knows, Pinkie Pie can do impossible things. She can hover in midair without wings, play ten instruments at once, and even go days without breathing! Clearly some kind of magic is at work, but what could it be?

Pinkie decides it's finally time to tell her friends the whole, unvarnished truth.

Written for The Writeoff Association's "The Best Medicine" contest.

Published 2015-03-26 13:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-03-26 13:10:02 UTC

The Laughter I Choose to Be

My name is Pinkie Pie, and today is a very special day!

Today is the day I will finally tell my friends. (I'm so nervicited!)

As everypony knows, I can do things other ponies can't. And I don't just mean being the most amazingest party planner ever! I mean I can do things that seem impossible. You know, like hovering in midair without wings, or playing ten instruments at once, or even not breathing for a couple of days. And who could forget my supernatural Pinkie Sense?

All my friends wonder where my special powers come from, but they don't usually ask me. I guess they think I don't know either. Twilight Sparkle wonders the most of all. She thinks I have some weird kind of magic that's hard to identify. She tried to figure it out once, and I'm lucky it didn't work because I wasn't ready to tell her. This was way back when she put that big metal colander on my head. I mean, colanders can strain spaghetti and hold candy and make neat sounds when you bang them against the side of the oven (although I'm not supposed to do that anymore when the babies are sleeping), and this colander had wires and flashing lights sticking out of it too, so it could probably do just about anything! Fortunately, Twilight gave up trying to figure out what makes me so special after Derpy dropped a piano on her head and she was attacked by a four-headed hydra. Those kinds of things can be really exhausting if you're Twilight, and she is.

But now I finally am ready, and I have my super-special secret-telling party all planned for today! I'm calling it, "Pinkie Pie's Perfectly Planned Personal Pony Powers Plot Point Presentation Party!" (I would have used a fancier, schmancier name, but I figured it might be too hard to fit on the invitations.) It's just a small party for me and my five bestest friends, but it will be so special! I know my friends will be okay with my secret (even though it's the dooziest doozy ever!) because I know they love me for who I am, and that's what really matters.

It's not easy to reveal this kind of thing, even to your closest friends. I mean, when you're like I am, how can you show somepony else how different the world looks through your eyes? Once my friends know the truth, they're gonna have just a ginormous number of questions! Especially Twilight. It will probably take a long time to answer them all.

A big part of the reason why I have these weirdo powers is that I come from a really weird family. So you can't really understand my abilities until you meet someone else in my family. Fortunately my friends already have, although it was a really awkward meeting—nopony in my family is any good at first impressions, and I even think my entire family might be autistic (except for me, of course, and probably my Mom).

I've lived in two very different worlds, and the first one was just awful. My life used to be as cold and humorless as the rocks on an old rock farm. Nopony in the family I grew up in ever smiled. There was no talking. There was no singing. Year after year, the only things I had to keep me company were work and family. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't neglected or anything! My basic needs were always met, and whenever I was feeling down, the love and care I received from my family would help get me back on my hooves. But most of the time it was super-boring, and nothing but work, work, work.

But even way back then, before I had any idea what real happiness was like, I knew there was something different about me. I think Mom might have detected a magical spark of mischief somewhere in those cute baby-blue eyes of mine the first time an itsy-bitsy teeny-tiny twinkie-Pinkie (although I didn't call myself "Pinkie" way back then) opened them to the bleak, grey world all around me. I just wasn't able to put my hoof on what was so weird about me until the day of Dashie's Rainboom.

This might seem hard to believe, but until that day, I had never even heard the sound of laughter! Not the friendly, happy kind of laughter, anyway. I remember when my younger siblings could barely walk, and they never laughed. Isn't that awful? Now that I spend so much time with the Cake babies, it just seems so obvious that tiny little ponies are supposed to laugh! It just wasn't that way in my family, and I never really knew that things could be any different.

Dashie's gorgeous Sonic Rainboom wasn't merely the event that inspired my cutie mark. It was so much more than that! It marked a gigantic and complete U-turn in my life. The Rainboom symbolized hope, the hope that somehow, my newfound joy could last. And it did! On that day, I made a whole family of boring rock farmers smile and dance—even Maud Pie! And all the love and happiness just poured out of them like a big bubbly fountain. I had found my special talent: making other ponies happy. And making ponies happy made me happy too, filling me up inside with all those smiles and giggles I'd never realized I'd been missing.

Things got even better for me once I grew up and moved to Ponyville. Here was a whole city of ponies I could make smile! But naturally, there were a few bad times too. I remember the birthday when I jumped to conclusions about my friends not caring about me anymore. I was so depressed I wanted to just sit up in my room alone and starve myself to death, and I probably would have done it but I didn't realize back then just how much my friends cared for me. They could never let me wither away like that. They simply love me too much.

Now when I look back at myself I can't believe how far I've come. The very idea that a sad little foal from such odd and humble beginnings could grow up to hold the Element of Laughter! I now know the true meaning of friendship, sacrifice, and most of all, redemption. My friends and I stood up to Nightmare Moon, to Discord, even to that big nasty King Sombreroguy, and with each battle our friendship grew even stronger.

For me, I think the hardest battle was when we fought Chrysalis. The changelings we were fighting against represented the total opposite of the thing I valued most. I mean, I live to give joy and laughter and love, and they exist only to steal it! And it's so silly, because when you give love, you get twice as much back in return! Why is that so hard to see? I actually feel kind of sorry for them, even though my friends probably wouldn't feel that way, except maybe Fluttershy (she is such a sweetheart).

You know, I was the only pony in Canterlot who actually witnessed the magic up close when the real Princess Cadance and Twily's brother created that breathtaking echo of love. Everypony else in the room had to close their eyes—even Cadance and Shining Armor themselves! But I wasn't going to miss it for the world, so I didn't even blink. I watched as the energy shot right through our bodies, filling us with love and goodness, binding us together in harmony. The changelings, on the other hoof, were blasted right up into the sky and sent hundreds of miles away! Even though we were right at the epicenter of the most powerful spell ever cast, we just basked in the glow, completely unharmed. That's when I realized just how special our friendship was. If this kind of power was something we could share with each other, then I truly belonged.

I don't know when, or if, I'll be able to tell that family of rock farmers what really happened on that fateful day. I guess I think of them as my second, adopted family, and I love them too much to hurt them with the knowledge. Dashie's Rainboom was gorgeous, but it certainly wasn't happy. As much as I'd like to, I'll never be able to erase that image from my mind. That poor, poor little pink filly. I was there when the Rainboom shook the plains. I saw the rock as it fell, and I tried to call out, but she didn't hear me. I raced to her side, but she was already gone. I spent two hours burying her in the unyielding earth, afraid to tell her family. I even cried, which for me was a totally new experience. I mean, I didn't even know I could cry. I was already losing my mind with hunger at the time, so I figured, hay, why not give this earth pony family one last night with their daughter, you know? Maybe it would help pay back the world for my crimes, if only just a little. I never got her hair quite right, but I did the best I could. The eyes were easy, at least—while my Mom's eyes are green, all of my brothers and I have sky-blue eyes just like little Pinkamena's irises. But in the end, somehow it all worked out for me.

Yesterday I decided to change back into my hatchform, just to make sure I'd be ready for the party. Of course, I'm good with little changes, like creating invisible appendages and stuff, but it had been so many years since I'd reverted all the way, I almost forgot how! But once I did, I couldn't believe how different I looked. My body and legs were bound in smooth, black chitin, of course, but all of the holes in my body had totally vanished! My legs were smooth, and full, and strong. My wings, which I keep invisible all the time, were soft and smooth, without a single ragged edge. My tail was long and smooth, too, and the spikes on my back had softened, a little bit like a real mane. Plus, I'm pretty sure I'm not a queen, but I have some kind of female parts back there? That shouldn't even be possible! And that's not even the biggest surprise! The cutie mark I'd chosen for myself, all those years ago? It's magically engraved, right there on my exoskeleton. Somehow, the magic of friendship has made me whole.

Well, it's time! My friends will be arriving any minute, and I'm ready to tell them my story.

I am a changeling, because I was hatched that way.

But my name is Pinkie Pie, because that's who I choose to be.