Forgotten

Twilight, Starlight, and Flame all broke apart, happy in the knowledge that their friendship was solid. Twilight and Flame Mane were especially excited, now that the two of them knew of the very special bond that they shared. They had grown closer in the past thirty seconds than a lot of ponies did in their entire lives. They would need to feed off each other's love and devotion, because they also knew that the road ahead of them was filled with the sharpest of spikes and the deepest of pits.

"Okay," Starlight said, breaking the silence, "where do we go from here?"

"The S.P.F. won't help us," Flame said, "and they were the friendliest ponies in the land."

"But it was a fake friendship," Twilight pointed out, "who knows what kind of disgusting things Greyhoof did before we came along? It was all a big façade, and we have to make sure our friendships are real. It's the only way we're gonna beat Sombra and reverse the spell!"

Suddenly, they heard a rustling in the leaves behind them. They all turned cautiously and took up defensive positions in case they had to fight their way out of the forest. Don't fight your instincts, Twilight, she told herself, if they're here to kill, be ready to do the same. Oh, I hope they're here to make friends, though!

The brush parted, allowing a new figure to step, or rather, bounce forward into the small clearing. The mare looked so familiar to all three of them, but something was different about her from the last time they'd seen her. The pink that colored her coat and mane was radiant, and she had a smile to match it. Her blue eyes bounced from pony to pony, trying to analyze them as quickly as possible.

"Pinkie Pie?!" Twilight asked.

"Well, duh!" Pinkie said in excitement, "your favorite party planning pony is back, and I want us all to have a huge PARTY! WHOO!"

"That sounds like the old Pinkie!" Starlight said happily.

"It is!" Pinkie said without skipping a beat. She then proceeded to ask them more than a few rapid fire questions about why they were there, why Flame Mane was standing so close to Twilight, why Starlight looked like she had just been through the Wonderbolts training camp thirty times, and, most importantly, why everypony in Ponyville…had forgotten about her.

Twilight gasped. Pinkie's memory had returned somehow, but the other ponies had yet to recover their lost faculties. All the same, though, she was thrilled to have a close friend back by her side. Up to this point, having to deal with hiding her wings and her true identity as a princess had been extremely difficult. Now, with Pinkie no longer a bully, she felt more comfortable releasing them.

"So?" Pinkie asked, "what happened?"

"I'll tell you everything in detail later," Twilight said, "for now, I'm just happy to have you back!"

"I know!" Pinkie said as she tackled Twilight again, "I'm thrilled to be back, too! I just don't know where the hay I was all that time! I mean, I was somewhere, but it was all grey and sad and really lacked in the whole fun department! I thought to myself, 'Pinkie, this place could use a huge PARTY!'" Suddenly, Pinkie's mood changed completely and she went from being the happiest pony in Equestria to sadder than Twilight had been when she was a foal and they cancelled her favorite spy pony book series.

Pinkie frowned before continuing. "I was shown this gigantic screen of some kind and I could look out and see what was going on in Equestria. It zoomed in on me…and I saw myself bullying foals." Her eyes welled up and dripped tears as she fought to keep talking. "They…were the same foals…I was planning a birthday party for! I couldn't do anything about it, because something was holding me back. I wanted to leap from that sad, grey, terrible place and wrap them up in a hug and tell them how sorry I was! I…just…"

She couldn't continue and began sobbing. It broke Twilight's heart to see Pinkie in such a state and she stepped forward and placed her friend in a comforting embrace. Pinkie's tears splashed onto Twilight's shoulder and matted her coat. She tried to silently convey to Pinkie that everything was going to be alright, but the truth was, she didn't even know. She just wanted to put Equestria back to the way it was.

"Oh, Pinkie…" she said before pulling her head back a bit, "it's…"

"No, Twilight," the pink one said, "you don't have to make me feel better. I know it's not okay. I get it, really, I do. I just wish I'd acted differently."

"The Pinkie that's here isn't the Pinkie I know," Twilight said, "you can make this right by helping us turn Equestria around. We really need you."

Pinkie wiped her tears away and smiled, "you know I'm always ready for an adventure with you, Twilight!"

"That's the spirit! Um, by the way, how did you manage to escape from that sad place?"

"That's just it! I don't know! I fell asleep there, and then I woke up back in Ponyville. I wanted to find you, so I asked for you by name. When I found that nopony remembered you, or me, I got scared, so I just ran and ran and ran until I bumped into somepony who mentioned they'd seen a purple pony going into the forest. So I came in here, and that's really all there is to it."

"You mean you found our exact location without asking anypony?" Starlight asked.

"Well, it took a while," Pinkie said, "I followed some hoof tracks I found and it led to this old burned up camp. I kept following the tracks until I found you!"

Starlight and Flame Mane were both shocked that Pinkie Pie had found them by being so precise. Even though he had known her for only a short time, Flame could tell that this wasn't the most well balanced pony in the world. In fact, he'd go so far as to say that her hyper nature would play to their disadvantage. He didn't tell her this, for fear of insulting a potential new friend, but he harbored deep concerns.

Twilight, meanwhile, was deep in thought. She was trying to figure out what the grey area was that Pinkie had escaped from and how on Earth she had escaped in the first place. She went through all the tenets of the Remembrance spell in her head, and its antonymous spell, Wave of Forgetfulness. Remembrance is meant to help somepony remember something they've forgotten, and the Wave is meant to cause memory outage in mass doses, hence the danger of using it. But…if Sombra forced Flame to cast it…that's it!

She turned to her three friends and announced, "The Radiation of Friendship!"

"The what, now?" Starlight asked.

"The Radiation of Friendship! See, Flame was forced to cast the Remembrance spell by Sombra. When he did so, Sombra mixed some of his own dark magic with the spell, causing Wave of Forgetfulness when, in reality, Flame cast a perfect rendition of Remembrance! I'm very impressed!" Here she winked at her new special somepony, who blushed in response.

"Did I miss something?" Pinkie asked.

"Something huge," Starlight said, "but we'll explain later. Go on, Twi."

"Anyway, the spell has backfired on Sombra without him even knowing it! Because the friendships we share with each other are so strong and determined, their combined magic is defeating the memory loss Sombra cast on us! In short, their radiation is breaking through the chains that Equestria has been forced into. That's where you were, Pinkie! You were in the limbo Sombra created when he originally cast the mixed spell on Equestria! You were inside the very chain itself! But he didn't count on the complete magic that our very bonds have created! We can beat Sombra, but we have to make everypony remember how important their friendships are! Once we have enough of that, we can unleash it on Equestria and reverse the spell!"