It was a bright, sunny day in Ponyville, not much unlike any other. The birds were singing, ponies were eating their morning meals and chatting, and a bubbling pink mare was quickly hopping her way through the streets.
"Oh boy", Pinkie Pie thought out loud, "I just can't wait to see what Twilight has planned for today!"
Twilight had called a meeting with Pinkie and the other Elements of Harmony for something supposedly very important. Pinkie hadn't the slightest clue what it could be, but she definitely felt it was urgent; time was of the essence.
Closing in on her destination, Pinkie made her way through the massive doors of Twilight's castle, soon magically closing behind her.
Twilight smiled as she saw her pink friend bouncing down the hallway.
"Hey there, Pinkie!"
"Hiya, Twilight! You wanted to see me?"
"Yes, although you're a little late. The others are already at the table. Come on." Twilight led Pinkie into the adjacent room.
The throne room was decorated with seven thrones gathered around a large table. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Spike were all sitting in their respective places waiting impatiently as Twilight and Pinkie walked in.
"Hello, everypony! Are we all ready to begin?", Twilight asked enthusiastically.
"Yeah, we have been for the past 30 minutes", Rainbow replied with a sigh, rather non-enthusiastically.
"What kept y'all two so long anyways?", Applejack rang in.
Pinkie's eyes lit up. "Ooh, ooh!", she exclaimed, "Well, I didn't want this meeting of the friendship council to go without food, so... I baked you all a cake!"
They all looked around the room in confusion, for there was no cake to be seen.
"Well, that is rather nice of you darling, but, um... where is this cake?" asked Rarity.
"Right here, silly!", Pinkie exclaimed as she pulled a massive, three-layer chocolate cake from behind her back where it clearly wasn't before.
Pinkie did this kind of thing all the time; she had a weird tendency to pull objects out of nowhere and seemingly teleport, although she wasn't a unicorn, so this kind of power shouldn't have been possible. Yet the rest of the group had pretty much accepted this: "It's Pinkie Pie, don't question it" they would say. That is, with the exception of Twilight. In the past few weeks, she had been growing ever more curious of Pinkie's powers; how they were possible on an earth pony like her, how she could just casually do them like it was nothing, and most importantly, what these powers were capable of.
With this seemingly impossible cake standing in front of them, Twilight finally asked the question.
"Pinkie... how did you do that?"
"What do you mean?" Pinkie replied with a confused look on her face.
"It's just that... well, clearly that cake wasn't there before and it's there now, and as an earth pony you have no way of teleporting things, so... how did you make that cake appear?"
The rest of them tried to signal to Twilight that asking these questions was a bad idea, but Twilight's inner scientist was getting the best of her.
Pinkie stared on in confusion. "Geez, Twi, I don't know. It always just kind of happened naturally."
She paused and pondered for a bit. Now that she thought about it, she realized she had never seen anyone do these kinds of things. No wonder her friends stared in bafflement whenever she pulled out an object or moved around.
This realization sent her into deeper thought: was this a power all her own? How did she gain it? Could she harness it?
Pinkie suddenly felt a rush of pain course through her head, a million thoughts, colors and images flashing in front of her eyes all at once, then, just like that, it was gone.
Pinkie just stood there, expressionless. The others just stared at her.
"Pinkie? A... are you alright?" Rainbow finally rang in.
Pinkie finally recovered from her sudden state of shock with a quick shake of her head. "What? Me? Uhh... yeah, I... I'm fine, I... I think..." Pinkie finally answered, stuttering and notably much less cheery and happy than usual. She was suddenly very tired, damn near exhausted.
"Well, um... thanks for the cake Pinkie. Shall we begin our meeting?" Twilight asked, trying to change the subject.
"No, I... I don't feel very well" Pinkie mumbled. "I think I should go home." She turned and exited the large doorway, leaving the other 6 to hold the meeting without her.
Pinkie stumbled through the doors of Sugarcube Corner, slogging her way past the counter, up the stairs, and eventually to her room where she plopped down onto her bed almost instantaneously. She was still partially in stunned silence and pure exhaustion from the headrush she'd experienced back at the castle, as she was promptly greeted by a small green alligator.
"Oh, hey Gummy, how are you today?"
He stood there expressionless, as he always did. It was nice for Pinkie to be met with a familiar sight with the many things that were going on, but it didn't improve her state of health any.
"Me? Oh, I feel terrible. I don't know why, but I just suddenly feel sick and tired and.. oh, I need to sleep." She slowly dragged herself up and stuggled her way over to the lightswitch, feeling the occasional sharp pain in the head. She flipped it off, walked back, and slumped onto the bed, desperate to be able to fall asleep through these flashes of head pain.
Pinkie dreamt of some interesting things last night. They seemed almost prophetic. She saw visions of herself, laughing, doing things, there were more ponies, ponies in.. armor, fighting, fires, bodies, cannons being shot, utter chaos. Normally visions like these would frighten the impressionable mare, but they were somehow... satisfying. She loved the fighting, she loved the chaos, she wanted to see these ponies go to battle under her will. It was... cathartic. The idea of enjoying this should have sickened her, but there she was, sitting there gleefully taking it all in.
Her dreams showed her something else that night.
They showed her the true extent of her powers, and how to control them. She saw dimensions, wormholes, rips in time, and had been instinctually using them since birth. She was never fully aware that she was doing this before, but seeing the vastness and beauty of her unique powers and how she and only she saw the world around her opened her eyes. She was finally in control, finally open to a seemingly infinite world of possibilities.
The two dreams seemed unrelated, but after her awakening Pinkie remembered them both equally vividly, and couldn't shake the feeling that they were somehow related, as if one had bled into the other...
Pinkie felt better than ever that morning. She hopped out of her bed and, for the first time, truly took in her vision of the world. She transported herself into the living room, intricately weaving her ways through the dimensions and rips in the fabric of space-time, making breakfast with utter speed, flying around the room and through the many wormholes before her, holding conversation with the large audience of humans she now knew for sure was there, and generally taking in the world of possibilities that her powers gave her. She was ecstatic.
She simply had to tell her friends about it.
As she made her way to Twilight's castle, Pinkie began to recall her other dream from the previous night. The horrible images flooded back into her memory, and as Pinkie tried to shrug them off, she couldn't. She knew something was going on, like something was going to happen, but she did her best to ignore these visions.
Something was lurking. Something deep within Pinkie's psyche fighting to escape.
