Murder Time, Fun Time

Pinkamena awoke in a familiar place. Around her was darkness; the same darkness that she witnessed for ten years. She tried moving her limbs and just like she figured, she couldn’t. The same familiar chains bound her to the ten year hell she had endured.

The madmare had called out to Pinkie but she received no response.

The only thing that pierced the darkness was the same view of the world of Equus from her sister’s eyes.

Her mind tried to process what had happened. The last thing she remembered was being grabbed by the alien leader, Zinyak. After some monologuing from him, she saw a red light and the next thing she knew, she was here.

Either Zinyak had somehow found a way to reseal her in Pinkie’s mind, or she was living a continuous nightmare that she may never be able to wake from. Either case was bad news for her as she was forced to watch Pinkie and her friends go on Y rated adventures with Pinkie showing no signs of the stress that weakened her prison before.

For the first time in her life, Pinkamena feared that she would be stuck this way forever.

“Hey Mena!” said Pinkie’s cheerful voice.

At first the madmare thought it came from what she was watching but the voice called out again, this time with a hoof waving in her face, “Yoo-hoo, Mena...Equus to Mena…”

That pulled Pinkamena out of her inner thoughts as her attention was drawn to her sister who was trying to get her attention. “Pinkie? What are you doing here? I thought you were out there.”

Pinkie giggled, “Silly, that’s not me. We’re kinda trapped in a virtual simulation that Zinyak made for us to prey on our worst fears.” She looked through the window for a minute before commenting, “Huh, doesn’t seem too bad. Though given what I know about you, it’s gotta be really boring, huh?”

Pinkamena chucked. “You can say that again. So how come you didn’t end up in a nightmare?”

“Dunno, maybe Zin technology wasn’t designed to deal with a two-minded individual.”

“I guess. So, know how we can get out of this?”

Pinkie’s ears drooped. “No, I tried talking to the simulated Pinkie but she treats it like I’m talking nonsense.”

“Wait, you can talk to the simulation?”

“Yuppers, but I can’t seem to get her to help us.”

Pinkamena now knew what her sister needed to do to free them. The problem was that it went against everything about how she was. Unfortunately, as far as the madmare could tell, their only key to freedom was in Pinkie’s hooves.

With a resigned sigh, Pinkamena told her sister what she needed to do. “Pinkie, if we’re going to get out of here, I need you to be mean. I need you to be brutal to the other Pinkie and do as much damage to her self esteem as you can.”

“What? But Mena…”

“No buts, we can’t stay in this prison forever. Our friends are waiting for us. If we are to be free, you have to go against everything you stand for to free us. I know this is a lot to ask of you, but you’re our only hope of getting us out of this. I’ll tell you things to tell the Pinkie out there to help you out.”

Pinkie was filled with grim determination as she began talking to the virtual Pinkie. Using insults supplied by Pinkamena, Pinkie relayed them to her virtual counterpart. The simulation had no idea why she was thinking such bad thoughts. At first, she shrugged them off but the real Pinkie’s mean words started to wear on her psyche. Pinkie’s virtual friends tried to cheer her up but they couldn’t be there for her every hour as her lonely moments and growing dark thoughts had an effect on her sanity.

As virtual Pinkie started losing her grasp on her sanity, Pinkamena’s prison weakened. As Simulation Pinkie’s mind teetered on the edge of insanity, the madmare broke free and reasserted control of her body.

“Okay, I’m out. Now--”

“And your cooking skills are terrible and your jokes are so lame that ponies only laugh out of sympathy. What made you think leaving the rock farm was a good--”

“PINKIE!”

“Huh?”

“It’s okay, you accomplished your task, now it’s my turn.”

“Oh good, I was starting to worry that the mean things I said were actually true.”

Pinkamena sighed, “No, they’re not true. You are the best joke teller in all of Ponyville and a valuable asset to the morale of the town. Your baking skills could still use some work though.”

“Hey!”

There was a slight pause before the two broke into a short fit of laughter before Pinkamena spoke, “Thanks for breaking us out.”

“No problemo, glad I can help.”

Pinkamena needed to find a way out of the simulation and the only way she could think of would be to cause chaos. If her very brief lessons on computers with Kinzie had taught her anything, too much chaos in a computerized system would make it crash.

And she had just the idea on how to do so.

In the Everfree Forest, Pinkamena headed for her objective.

“Where the brambles were thickest, there you will find
A pond beyond the most twisted of vines.”

Following the story from her Nana, she found the pool she was looking for. She stared at her own reflection.

“And into her own reflection she stared,
Yearning for one whose reflection she shared,
And solemnly sweared not to be scared,
At the prospect of being doubly mared.”

Pinkamena pulled a reflection of herself out of the water. The reflection stared blankly at her. Pinkamena had the reflection help her make more of her and soon had a large number of Pinkamena reflections repeating the same motions.

After the first dozen batches, the next batches after were given a different order, “Time for the reason you were all made. Go out and slaughter every pony who is not Pinkamena Diane Pie!”

The army of Pinkamenas pulled out kitchen knives and exited the cave to turn all of Equestria into a bloodbath all while repeating the word “kill”. Meanwhile, more Pinkamenas were being made and sent out on quests for blood.

Ponyville was first, the citizens were quickly overrun by equicidal pink ponies, including the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. None were spared as virtual Equestria was flooded by an endless tide of pink death.

The endless generation of data caused by the limitless Pinkamenas began to strain the system as the world started to drop in framerate.

The real Pinkamena watched the world slow to a crawl and eventually, her world blacked out.

Pinkamena awoke in a vat of red fluid. She saw Zin trying desperately to fix a problem that had spiraled into the simulated system crashing.

The madmare wasted no time as she pulled her Knightmare out of her mane and smashed the tank open, spilling out her and the red fluid.

Pinkamena noticed the Zin reaching for their weapons, but the madmare was faster as she smashed through the security personnel and turned them into bloody paste.

Once the remainder started firing on her, she put the Knightmare away for her Vorpal Blade. Using her speed and agility, she quickly dismembered the remaining Zin in the room.

A minute after her brief rampage, the tiny communicator, that she and her friends agreed to keep in their ears at all times to keep in contact with Kinzie, activated and was greeted to the familiar mousey voice of the Saints tech specialist.

“Pinkamena come in, do you read me?”

“Yeah, I can hear you.”

“Finally, now listen. All of our friends are trapped in their own simulations in locations all over the Zin mothership. I can’t locate them right now, but with enough time I can. Me, Keith and Johnny were the only ones who escaped capture and managed to hijack one of their ships. I have a lock on your communicator and am coming to get you. I can track your location via the communicator. Follow my directions and meet us at the rendezvous point.”

Pinkamena left the room the Zin were holding her captive and entered a corridor filled with Zin security. Following Kinzie’s instructions, she made turns as instructed while slashing apart every Zin and metallic bipedal machine she came across. Her HUD called the machines Murderbots.

Pinkamena made it to the rendezvous point but Kinzie had not arrived yet. Since she had time to kill, she spent it by butchering every Zin that thought their strength in numbers would help them.

By the time Kinzie’s ship arrived, she had already painted the area in blood. Zin maintenance crews and machines would be looking to get repurposed this day.

With the area cleared for the time being, the ship opened its cargo bay door which was quickly followed by the entry of the pink madmare. With the passenger secured, the ship closed its door and flew off before Zin reinforcements came.

The ship eventually reached safety after fighting off a number of pursuing Zin ships. Once in a relatively safe area, Pinkamena requested an update to their situation.

Johnny began, “Before these alien mothafuckas had the chance to throw me into one of their simulators, I woke up and started crackin’ skulls. Got my hands on a murderbot arm that one was nice enough to let me have.” Johnny brandished a severed murderbot arm. “Found Kinzie bein’ dragged away and rescued her while Keith showed up with this ship. Been lookin’ for a way to rescue the others since.”

Kinzie continued, “We found the boss and you at the same time and after I gave him a little nudge in the right direction, you two started rebelling against your respective simulations simultaneously. Zinyak could only handle one situation at a time and he chose to deal with the President, which is why your escape wasn’t met with interference.”

“So where is he now?” Pinkamena asked.

“After the boss caused his disruption, Zinyak showed up in his simulation and threw him into what he referred to as Simulation 31. It’s a version of Steelport that’s completely under his control.”

“So Playa got thrown into Zinyak’s sandbox?”

“Putting it simply…”

“Do you still have contact with him?”

“I can patch into the simulation and project my voice through the audio system. Right now, I’m helping the boss by making sure he has a fighting chance in the simulation. We can listen to him from here.”

Pinkamena walked up next to Kinzie and watched the screen that showed Playa wearing a sweater vest with a buttoned long sleeve shirt underneath as well as a pair of slacks. Overall, the Saints leader looked like he was dressed for church.

“Kinzie, I hope you have a plan for getting me out of here,” Playa inquired.

“Eventually I will, I’m still trying to figure out the Zin systems. Basic hacks like hooking into the audio system isn’t hard. Trying to disconnect you and find your body, that’s a bit more involved.”

“Couldn’t you at least hack me some better clothes than this?”

“On my list of priorities, that doesn’t even make my top five hundred.”

“I bet you’d say otherwise if you were wearing this.”

“If I was wearing that, I’d be asking you to shoot me in the head.”

Playa spotted a glowing red dome in the distance. Everyone placed the investigation of it on their list of things to do later.

Playa arrived at the designated Friendly Fire in Stanfield which was some distance from the ruins of the old Saints HQ which was where he was at initially. After buying some guns and some gun upgrades with some Cache that Kinzie gave him through her hacking skills, the Zin Police Department showed up to harass the Saints leader. Playa complained that he had Second Amendment rights until Kinzie countered that Zinyak had full control of the simulation and that his rules were the only rules in the simulation.

After Playa had his fun killing simulated cops, Kinzie directed him to a gathering of Zin troops near a strange looking circular device with the same red glow as the rest of the Zin technology. Pinkamena noticed that the gathering appeared similar to the Syndicate gang operations back in the real Steelport and Playa dealt with them just like he would a gang operation.

Once the last Zin near the device was dead, the now unguarded device had changed color from the previous red glow to a blue one. Kinzie noticed the curious look on Pinkamena’s face before she explained, “I wanted to see if I could get into the Zin systems through one of their flashpoint devices. Once the boss took out the security, I was able to hack into it and now I have a little more control of the simulation than before. If we can cause more disruptions in the simulation like this, I can slowly worm my way into their systems.”

“I see, any chance I can help with that?”

“Sure, I can plug you into the simulation with the devices in this room. We only have a few though.”

“Maybe when we rescue Moondancer she might have a way to bring more of us into the simulation.”

“Perhaps, for now we need to find a way to get the boss out of the simulation.”

“Hopefully soon, it doesn't look like he’s going to get any relief from Zin aggression.”

Kinzie’s head snapped back to the screen to find that her “inner sanctum” was merely an ordinary warehouse. She slammed a fist on her knee in frustration. “Dammit! Zinyak removed all signs of the Saints from the Simulation.”

“Here we go again.” Pinkamena rolled her eyes. “Time for another city takeover.”