She slept through that which set the approaching events churning through the gears of inevitability, because the theme of the night would be horror and any chance for the heroine to simply prevent things from happening was going to be automatically derailed. It was the peaceful sleep of a mare who knew she'd taken care of everything, and so had nothing to worry about: a further touch of genre convention quite naturally meant she was wrong.
And at the moment when the first rays of Sun's light gently kissed her attic windows (which coincided with the exact moment when the tribulation emerged from the ovens), the twitching began.
There was a special twitch just for this: one she dearly hoped to never experience again. It usually struck her as being unnecessarily complicated. All four legs spontaneously kicked out, sending multiple layers of blankets and a very surprised alligator onto the floor. Her ears essentially tried to burrow into her head and found the escape blocked by fast-rising dread as the brain began to recognize what it all meant. Things happened to her eyelids which, if they had been seen from Rarity, would have indicated a nervous breakdown in progress and as far as the quickly-awakening mare was concerned, that would have been the easy way out.
The twitch which alerted her to a singular-yet-annual event usually struck Pinkie as being unnecessarily complicated, and always finished when her tail struck her in the face.
She winced. Part of that rose from resignation: a reluctant acknowledgement that in spite of what she'd believed to be her best efforts, this year was going to be exactly the same. (In fact, it had to be exactly the same, or the question of next year would turn rather moot.) But the majority of her pained expression came because her tail was trying to jam itself inside her snout.
There was a surprising amount of weight to Pinkie's tail. The volume of the curls meant the full display contained quite a bit of air -- but there was also a significant amount of hair present. And nothing else. A number of Ponyville residents seemed to feel she stored things in her mane and tail, and she didn't. Or rather, she didn't any more because she'd once tried to carry a Super Extra Emergency Crisis Level Three eyepatch near her dock, gotten distracted, wound up taking a hot shower while it was still in place, and the elastic had shrunk. She'd wound up having to cut it free, and that had been the end of all hair-based shelving experiments.
Other ponies believed her mane and tail contained intermittent portals to other dimensions, which she apparently used for nothing more than basic storage. She didn't do that either. Intermittent portals were a really bad idea. Pinkie knew that for a fact or rather, on this most horrible of supposed holidays, she KNEW.
Blue eyes crossed in an attempt to focus on the snout, and found that the tail had become rather compressed. Twisted up on itself, which got all of the mass into a more compact package and made it somewhat more ideal for striking. It looked rather like a pink snake, albeit one with multiple spine problems. Or... a tentacle.
Pinkie sighed. Forced herself out of bed, immediately checked on Gummy, and then gave her pet treats until the alligator began to dismiss the recent short-range flight. (Truly calming him down meant prechewing most of the lot.)
She went to the calendar on her wall. Looked at the date, and softly groaned. Then she snout-flipped four pages, looked at another date entirely, and groaned again.
Pinkie unstraightened her tail, because she had to make sure she looked more or less normal. Used the bathroom, because it was potentially the last day of existence and while that probably justified not brushing her teeth, there were still customers to deal with. And then she reluctantly ventured down the ramps which led to the bakery level. Because her Pinkie Sense had already told her what was going to happen, happen again and there was no way to stop it --
-- but horror was also very much about confirming what you already knew. Or in this case, what Pinkie really wished she didn't know at all.
Possession of such dark lore had been known to drive ponies mad. Pinkie, who was already trying to figure out the best way of both staying awake all night and saving the world, frequently found it annoying.
"Good morning, Pinkie," Mrs. Cake beamed as she looked over the trays, which bore contents which were warm and steaming and only incidentally about to risk the death of everyone in the world. The older mare could say things like that because her adoptive mother didn't know she was lying.
Mrs. Cake was beaming. There was also a certain outer radiance covering her face. It came from the trays, and it helped nothing at all.
"We shut off your alarm clock," Mr. Cake added. He was backing away from the display cases, because Things Which Should Not Exist needed to be labeled. And priced, at a bargain rate of Buy Six Collapses Of Civilization And Get One Apocalypse Free.
She'd slept through it. Her best hope to save the world before the night began, and she'd slept through it because there shouldn't have been any need for a final chance at all.
"You let me sleep in," Pinkie said, and did her best to sound at least a little grateful because she loved the Cakes dearly and they didn't mean to nearly destroy the world every year. Which didn't mean she wasn't allowed to experience a little internal irritation about the fact that they just kept doing it, but that was the sort of thing you didn't openly express if you wanted to keep a relationship healthy. Also, it was fairly important that her second family believe she was at least a little bit sane.
(She hated it when ponies decided she was crazy.)
And frankly, if all of existence did wind up collapsing into a throbbing sphere of eternal agony, it was best not to go out on a fight.
"Well, yes," Mr. Cake gently told her. "Because of the holiday. We've never gotten a normal volume of business today, Pinkie: you know that. Not after we sell out of -- The Special."
Pinkie automatically glanced at the nearest window. Noted Sun, clear blue late winter sky (with spring just a few days away, assuming the world lasted that long), and a complete lack of thunder. Broad daylight horror was just annoying.
She'd have to talk to Rainbow about tweaking the weather schedule for next year. If there was one.
"Nearly all of the business goes to the bars," Mrs. Cake noted from her position near the main oven, where she was now making sure that the abominations had the proper count. "We'll probably be able to close early. And go out ourselves, if you're willing to look after the twins." Which was followed by the briefest of frowns. "Because you never go out on this night. And you always sleep late tomorrow. Every year. So we thought that if you just rested up a little more today..."
The mare who had just been (once again) tasked with saving all there was managed a nod.
"A night when everypony else is having fun..." her adoptive mother considered. "And you stay home." Open confusion saturated the air, sank onto the trays and arguably made everything that much worse.
"It's not my kind of party," Pinkie said. "Not tonight, not when most ponies aren't really partying at all. They're not having fun together. It's just couples. One pony, one bottle. And then they dump the bottle for a better bottle, or at least a cheaper one. Then they do it a few more times until they fall over on a pile of their exes. And that's sort of the best case."
This stupid holiday. The most minor of holidays. An excuse to get drunk, and very little more. Oh, and it also nearly ended the world every year, so it had that going against it, which wasn't nice.
The origins of the celebration weren't so much lost to time as they weren't worthy of being remembered -- and for Pinkie to not remember something usually took a deliberate, rather hateful effort. So she knew that the travesty known as The Greening had supposedly started with something called an algae snake.
(She'd never seen one. Nopony living had seen one, and Pinkie suspected that total included the Princesses.)
And centuries ago in a place which nopony could completely pin down except to say that it had rolling hills and hadn't just rolled away, the algae snakes had taken to biting ponies. And a pony who was bitten turned green. The legends didn't say anything about what happened to a pony who was already green. However, given how the holiday had turned out, Pinkie assumed it was both stupid and had something to do with alcohol --
-- anyway, they turned green. And then some unicorns had worked a mighty spell, or the pegasi had used a really focused downpour, or possibly the earth ponies had just collapsed a lot of fossorial tunnels. The legends were really unclear on just what had happened, except that it had driven the algae snakes away. And then everypony who hadn't been bitten dyed their fur green to show solidarity with the victims, choosing only to restore their natural hues after the cure had come. And to commemorate all of this in the modern day, you wore green clothing. Or dyed your fur. And ate green food, which wasn't necessarily grass because it was a little too early yet. And drank. A lot.
Pinkie personally believed in a different version. Namely, that once upon a rather more recent time, there had a pony who'd been stuck with a lot of green food coloring. That pony had met up with a merchant who had overstock on green cloth, they'd both found the one who had too much fur dye, and possibly there had been somepony with green furniture sitting in a warehouse because Davenport had a holiday sale every year. And then they'd come up with an excuse to make ponies buy all of it. The alcohol had probably been kicked in at the very end, just to make sure there wouldn't be too many questions. And you also ate dried corn. It was months past being even a little fresh and you ate it anyway. Pinkie had a bit of a beef with that, and usually had to choke it down with cabbage.
That was the Greening. The lack of any comprehensive version for foundational events was blamed on the creators not having fully coordinated their marketing departments.
"We just wanted to let you rest," Mr. Cake gently offered. "Besides, you don't even like making -- The Special." (She wondered if he even knew about the dramatic pause.) "So we did it ourselves."
"So you made it again," Pinkie softly said.
The confusion was spreading.
"We make it every year," Mrs. Cake said.
"Ever since we read... The Book," Mr. Cake added. Paused. "I miss The Book. I wish I knew what happened to it."
Pinkie knew. She had destroyed The Book or rather, she'd arranged for its destruction. Spike had to take a yearly trip to a volcano anyway, just to breathe in the trace elements which were so vital for his health: it was easy for him to just kick something into the lava along the way and because it was a book, she'd had to make sure to have him do it when Twilight wasn't looking.
It hadn't helped. The Cakes were marked bakers. They'd read the recipe once, and that was all it took to memorize it forever.
"Making The Special is traditional," her second parents chorused.
The recipe had probably said something about Tradition. And icing. In the time after The Book had been recovered from the estate sale of that one house which had burned down sort of suddenly, it had said a lot of things. Especially when there was no moonlight touching it and you got close enough to make out exactly what the foul whispers meant.
"How did you make it?" Pinkie rather reasonably asked. "I thought we were out of the essential ingredients."
She'd hidden the ingredients or rather, she'd disguised them. Deliberately burning every last dram of the Tartarus-freed atrocities meant she'd disguised them as ash, and that was the sort of disguise which the ingredients could use for the lifetime they didn't have. Anypony who came across such a disguise would at most say 'That's ash, all right' and then very carefully not step in the mound. They certainly wouldn't bake with it.
Oh, and she'd had to create that disguise over and over, because certain key portions of the ingredients existed in other parts of Ponyville and the Cakes might have asked to borrow a cup of catastrophe. But just about nopony had caught her breaking into their kitchens, she'd been able to explain away the three exceptions (and still had to host the surprise parties which she'd lied about scouting for), and spending her salary on buying out multiple stores was going broke for a noble cause because she was just trying to save the world.
Pinkie had briefly entertained some hope of getting her money back from the palace as a sort of mission expense, and rather more quickly given up on it. She couldn't tell the Princesses. She didn't want them to think she was insane.
"It wasn't easy," Mr. Cake proudly told her. "We had so much trouble getting ahold of the essentials last year, especially after half the kitchen just -- went missing like that. So we decided to try timed mail order. The delivery arrived from Canterlot twenty minutes before we started to bake."
Or maybe she did have to tell the palace. Pinkie had just barely been able to buy out Ponyville. Emptying Canterlot...
(But they would think she was crazy.)
Worry about it for next year.
If there is one.
She trotted over to the steaming trays, and looked down at the horrors.
The hue was rather curious. It was a color which took every last wonderful quality which existed within the verdant mini-spectrum of green and carefully ignored half of them before inverting the rest. If she'd had to assign it a precise hue, she would have said it was an exact match for that little spot of color you got when you were sick, had been hacking up creamy whitish-yellow phlegm for most of the night, and then got a too-close look at the tiny bit in the center which wasn't creamy.
It was a color which shouldn't have existed in nature, and arguably didn't. It wasn't meant to be in this world, and it didn't fit in any better with the fragility of existence when it had been rendered into icing.
On the most technical level possible, The Special consisted of donuts. 'Donuts' which had been treated with food coloring in order to make them green, and then given a glaze to make them something for which green would have been a relief. It was a color which made it look as if Chrysalis had recently vomited into a sack of flour. It implied that the Nightmare liked to play around with an oven every so often, and some of the results would only be screaming when they came out.
It also had far too much sugar and was very high in calories, but Pinkie didn't worry too much about those aspects because if anypony lived long enough to deal with them, the problem was essentially solved and if not, it would also pretty much solve itself. She was rather more concerned about the way the mix reacted with alcohol.
"They look like they usually do," was the best she could manage in front of her proud secondary parents, and the forced smile threatened to tear her lips at the corners. "I'll just... put them in the display case."
"In the spot I cleared," Mr. Cake told her, as his eyes turned slightly glassy. "Front and center. Next to the sign. As -- The Special."
She put them out. Mrs. Cake unlocked the front door.
Pinkie couldn't destroy the abominations, because the Cakes became oddly defensive when she did anything which threatened The Special and her first attempt had nearly led into a physical fight -- something neither of them seemed to remember. She'd also tried to talk them out of the creation entirely, but... they said it was Tradition. And then whatever remnant of The Book existed in their memories would take notice, and they said it louder.
However, if she felt that neither of the bakers was paying attention, she would carefully try to steer customers towards absolutely anything else, usually with a few whispered words about how she didn't personally like them: with the adults, she added soft details about the alcohol problem.
There were times when that worked. But it was horror, and so there weren't enough of them. Ponies purchased the 'donuts', because it was the Greening and this sort of thing was Tradition. They paid for one, or two, or got six and planned to give the seventh to a friend. And more than a few insisted on eating their first in the bakery.
All Pinkie could do was refuse to eat one. Ever. She kept the twins away from them at all costs, because there was really too much sugar in the icing. And sometimes, if she saw a customer moving away from the counter, got a look at them from just the right angle as they chewed, with their lips a little too far apart -- she could see the inside of their throats softly glowing green.
Sun had been lowered, Moon was being raised, and Pinkie was prepared to treat the latter as a particularly bad idea. She needed Sun, because The Special had sold out. Again and, if she didn't win, possibly for the last time.
It was going to be a long night. She'd caffeinated accordingly.
Eventually, the Cakes returned home. She let them in, because they'd both been celebrating for hours and neither could remember how a key worked. It took some time for Pinkie to get them into bed, and then she posted Gummy in the twins' bedroom. If anything started to go wrong, she wanted to have a second line of defense.
Even when she knew it wouldn't help. Wouldn't work. Wouldn't make a difference.
When it was horror... that was when it was on her. Always just her. Alone, without friends.
After the first time, she'd done some research, trying to prepare. It had taken her to unusual places, but a few of those had been just off the sides of where the missions had sent them, so that had helped a little. And she'd looked at books which Twilight should never see. Because the core of the alicorn's personal insanity was in usually pretending not to be, and... that game had to go on.
Just about everypony was crazy, really. It was a special kind of lunacy: the sort which said you were normal. And the books would have taken that away.
(She didn't want anypony to believe she was crazy. Not in the usual way.)
(If she'd ever truly tried to tell them...)
Pinkie generally recognized that she'd found the right tomes via their Table Of Contents. You had to pay close attention to the Table Of Contents, because most of the slime-dripping volumes burbled a little when they wailed their own words and it was too easy to get stuck in the labyrinths around the index.
And the tomes had taught her that it was always one. Even if she told somepony, found anypony who was willing to believe her -- if she told herself that loving her friends somehow required teaching them just how fragile everything truly was -- then it would still be just Pinkie waiting in the dark, silent attic. Alone. Those were the rules. It had to be one and because she remembered everything the pages had screeched, it was probably best if it was her.
Another year.
Maybe I can stop it from happening next year.
All she had to do was make sure there would be a next year.
Save the world.
Again.
She waited, with her body low atop the remade bed. Belly and barrel pressed against softness, so that she might experience what that was like for the last last time.
Outside, she heard ponies staggering down the streets, or just barely staying aloft within the air paths. Some of them sang, because it was a holiday and they were frankly that drunk.
The scent of bile wafted up to her. The 'donuts' had done their work.
And she waited, while alone in the dark.
Waited for the end of the world.
It happened at midnight. No self-respecting apocalypse would have been caught dead turning up at three minutes before.
There was a sound. Almost a musical note, or the corpse of one. It was as if something had taken a middle C, broken its spine in three places, and then pushed the exposed organs over a theremin.
And then the air shattered.
Fragments of atmosphere plummeted to the attic floor. Shards of reality quickly followed, with edges of corroded physics sending up death smoke as they collided with her carpet scrap.
There was something on the other side of the new gap. It would have been the vacuum which nature abhorred, except that it was full.
And then IT came through.
If she had to describe IT, she would have chosen not to. IT represented until the tiniest intrusion of the unknowable into her world. IT was madness and insanity and hatred of all which dared to live. IT was something beyond mere chaos, and would have struck Discord down in an instant for being too rational. IT was every color and no color. The words which might have described IT could only arise from the hollowed shell of a dictionary which had spent centuries soaking in the last drops of blood shed by the lost as they took their own lives in a desperate, futile attempt to escape. IT obliterated both reason and vocabulary. IT was large enough to take up most of a universe, and could only poke the most insignificant fraction of ITself into her fragile reality -- for now. And even that tiniest of amounts nearly filled her entire bedroom -- while still giving her space to move. But not to run. Never to run, for there was nowhere to go.
IT was beyond comprehension.
IT also mostly looked like a bunch of writhing tentacles, because ancient horrors which had existed before the dawn of her universe had very little in the way of imagination and still felt mouths overloaded with jagged teeth were a good way to fill in the gaps.
IT didn't possess a name -- or rather, IT didn't have one she could actually pronounce. IT had tried to announce ITself during their first meeting, and what that had told Pinkie was that IT hadn't been in line when the vowels were being passed out and had gone back six times to get some extra apostrophes. She usually just thought of IT as Entity, because that saved time.
IT also had something of a routine.
I HAVE COME, announced several dozen mouths and thousands of fangs. TO POP THE BUBBLE OF THIS REALITY. TO SEND ALL TO THE FINAL FATE, THE ULTIMATE DESTINY. TO DEATH AND MADNESS.
All of the mouths widened, and the next words emerged in a roar which shook the world. Something only she could hear.
DO ANY STAND AGAINST ME?
"I do!" Pinkie declared in the face of impending annihilation. And waited.
A very large, rather bloodshot eye materialized at the center of the largest mouth. Twisting lips suggested a squint.
YOU AGAIN?
One rather small, blue-tinged tentacle twitched. The tip waved at her.
"Look," Pinkie immediately argued (and did so as her left ear politely tilted towards Bluey), "I'd rather be asleep right now! You didn't have to show up!"
I DID, countered the Entity. I FELT THE SUMMONING. THE DARKNESS. THE EXTENDED BOUTS OF NAUSEA. AND SO I CAME.
It paused.
IT'S NOT AS IF I HAVE A CHOICE.
She stood up on the mattress, doing so just long enough to sit back on her haunches. Reared up her forelegs, crossed them over her sternum, and allowed her entire body to radiate anti-sympathy.
Several mouths awkwardly coughed. A number of tentacles stopped moving. The rest, which were rather more experienced in such matters, used the moment to wring against each other. It was clearly going to be a long night.
SO HOW ARE THE TWINS?
"None of your business," Pinkie starkly declared.
ARE THEY STILL INNOCENT? INNOCENCE TASTES BEST.
The mare said nothing.
I HAVE TO BE HERE, the Entity argued. THE RECIPE WAS MIXED. THAT WHICH LEAKED INTO YOUR BUBBLE AEONS AGO, IN THE NAME OF EXTINCTION. THE PROCESS WAS FOLLOWED. THE TORMENT OF LIVING THINGS --
"Taste buds."
-- THE RETURN OF THE SAVAGED OFFERING --
"They drank and threw up." Pinkie's head tilted thoughtfully to the right: several mouths and Bluey tracked the movement. "That's a strange description, isn't it? 'Threw' up? Ponies don't throw things! Unless you sort of head-toss them. Or you're a unicorn with a corona going, and then it's more like just slinging something in the right direction! Saying that vomiting is throwing up -- that's just really really weird! Why would ponies talk about it that way? Maybe it's cross-contamination of languages! There might have been a minotaur --"
YOU ARE STALLING, insisted far too many teeth.
"This is just the way I talk!"
And she was also stalling. Because there were Rules, and one of them said that she had to win or lose by dawn. If there was no resolution, and Sun was raised -- then the power of the summoning expired. The portal would close, with the Entity locked on the other side of it forever. Or, given the way the 'donuts' kept coming around at the Greening, for another year. The two durations currently felt as if they were just about the same thing.
Pinkie had thought about asking the Princess to raise Sun very, very early. She still wanted to believe that was an option for next year, while hoping there wouldn't be one -- or rather, there would, but without 'donuts'. But she knew the request would lead to a lot of questions, and a considerable number of problems. If nothing else, the other side of the planet might bring up a few rather desperate issues.
(And the Princess would think she was crazy.)
THE SUMMONING WAS TRUE, insisted the Entity.
She sighed. "I know." The dripping, screaming, and occasionally sobbing books had been very clear on that. A really surprising number of things could summon eldritch horrors from beyond the bounds of reality. Like scribbling down the notice for a stable sale, only you had to do it on yellow paper and there were usually some weird doodles around the margins. Or reading one of the wrong books out loud, and the only thing worse than pronouncing the words correctly was getting them wrong: some eldritch horrors got really picky about anypony who put an accent on an improper syllable. Under exactly the wrong circumstances, it was possible to create a portal by accident.
Oh, and there was also opening a hotel, ritually murdering anypony who stayed in the room with the number which equaled no, and accumulating entrails over ten years until you had enough to mold into a replica of your mother. However, Pinkie naturally assumed having it happen that way pretty much guaranteed it had been done on purpose. Performing that summoning by pure accident would have been oddly impressive, and more than a little worrisome.
Bluey sympathetically crinkled around one of the suckers. She made sure not to let the eye see that she'd noticed.
I WOULD LIKE TO SETTLE THIS QUICKLY, the Entity declared. I WANTED TO DROP BY DONUT JOE'S BEFORE FINAL DESTRUCTION.
Pinkie crashed down to the mattress, with ears aloft and eyes wide. "Another breach?"
I JUST LIKE DONUTS.
The eye looked her over again. An Entity which had been destroying reason in the time before entropy had started the clock on her reality took a moment.
YOU DISTURB ME, announced the eldritch horror.
"...really?"
MINDS SHATTER IN MY PRESENCE. TO HEAR MY TRUE NAME IS TO LOSE ALL SELF WITHIN THE GAPS WHERE VOWELS WERE EXCISED. AND YET YOU PERSIST.
Pinkie shrugged. "We all saw a psychiatrist once. All of the Bearers, after a really bad mission where the Princesses just wanted to make sure we would be okay. She talked to me for three hours. And took lots of notes. Three pads' worth. Then she checked some books, just before she kicked them into the fireplace. And she said I was 'differentially sane'."
The Entity paused. Pinkie liked that. Every second it spent in thought brought her one heartbeat closer to Sun.
WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?
"I don't know," the mare admitted. "I asked her. She couldn't tell me. And the third time I tried, she just started screaming. It was this really really weird-sounding --"
-- DOES SHE STICK OUT HER LOWER LIP AND STROKE HER LEFT FOREHOOF OVER IT WHEN SHE REALLY GETS GOING?
"...yes..."
JUNGIE! SHE'S ONE OF MY FAVORITES! JUST STARTED WORSHIPING ME THREE MOONS AGO! Another pause. I'LL BE DROPPING BY HER HOUSE TONIGHT, IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOU LOSE. Respectfully, I PROMISED TO EAT HER FIRST.
Pinkie simply sighed. It wasn't her fault. More towards an inherent risk of the profession. In her experience, anypony who insisted that sapients were supposed to be fully rational eventually wound up personally proving the opposite.
Still, if the world was still there after Sun-raising, she would need to find some way of bringing up Jungie with the palace. It was best to make sure the pegasus wasn't doing anything funny with entrails.
THERE ARE RULES, the Entity insisted. RULES BUILT INTO THE FOUNDATIONS WHICH LIE BENEATH EVEN MY REALITY, THE RULES WHICH DICTATE WHEN I BRING THE INEVITABLE TO ALL. AND HIGH AMONG THOSE RULES IS THIS, LITTLE PONY.
The dramatic pause consumed six crucial seconds.
IT IS MY TURN TO PICK.
She remembered. She'd been hoping IT would have forgotten.
AND, the madness immediately insisted with the ease which came from extensive rehearsal, WE ARE NOT DOING THAT GAME AGAIN.
"Which one?" Pinkie reasonably inquired because at this point in their relationship, it was a category which needed to be narrowed down.
THE ONE WHERE YOU HAVE TO CALL OUT ONCE YOU GET DOWN TO A SINGLE CARD.
(Several tentacles, which had filled in the empty seats at the previous table, sagged with open disappointment.)
"Why not?"
IT'S TOO EVIL. And then most of the mouths warped into grins. BUT I HAVE CONSIDERED WHAT I WOULD DO, SHOULD I FIND YOU HERE AGAIN. AN INTELLECT BEYOND ANY IN YOUR COSMOS HAS BEEN PLANNING, SMALL EQUINE. SORTING THROUGH EVERY GAME WHICH COULD EVER EXIST WITHIN ALL THE REALITIES I SHALL ONE DAY CONSUME. A CHOICE HAS BEEN MADE.
"And you went through all of those games in only a year?" Pinkie immediately asked. "That sounds amazing! Could you tell me about some of the ones you didn't pick --"
Three of the tentacles arced forward. Waved left to right and back again, directly in front of her snout.
NICE TRY.
She shut up. It was the best way to make sure she kept breathing, because every further encroachment of Entity into the attic broke that much more of the air.
I SHALL FOLLOW THE RULES, AS WE BOTH MUST. IT IS A GAME YOU CAN BOTH COMPREHEND AND PLAY -- AND YET, IT SHALL ALSO DRIVE YOU MAD. A quartet of mouths smirked, and the fangs curled in on themselves. AND YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO TAKE SO MUCH TIME ABOUT THE EQUIPMENT THIS TIME AROUND, AS YOU DID WITH THE... 'HOPSCOTCH'.
"Because?" the last hope for reality asked.
Every mouth smirked and because the Entity effectively had an infinity of them, that took a while.
I BROUGHT MY OWN CARDS.
She'd had to turn on a light. Both the concept and reality of basic illumination shattered when they got too close to the Entity, but she needed a little help to read the small print. And she couldn't really use the stars in the endless void behind it, because they were going out.
"So when I tap a card, I turn it this way?"
The Entity made the sigh into a full production. It was easy to do that, when you had an infinity of mouths.
LOOK. JUST LET ME...
Bluey gestured at her, and icy knowledge dropped into her brain.
She understood the game. She understood it in all of its complexities, iterations, and occasional all-out dips into farce. And Pinkie realized that she couldn't afford to examine that knowledge too closely, because doing so constituted a trap. A full inspection of fractal strategies risked dropping her into obsession and, in all likelihood, would have been followed by trying to find a cross-dimensional card shop and dropping nearly all of her salary.
"O-kay," Pinkie very slowly said. "So one more thing."
YOU ARE STALLING --
"No! We're summoning creatures to fight for us, right?"
YES. THROUGH THE CARDS. AGAIN, STALLING --
"So when we both have them summoned, they appear here and fight each other to the death? In my bedroom? Because I was looking at the size of this one crab in the artwork, and I'm pretty sure we need to go outside. Far away, where nopony will get stepped on. And will they need a place to throw up -- there it is again! -- first? Because there's something about summoning sickness -- "
Several tentacles curled in on themselves.
NO. WE JUST COMPARE NUMBERS. AND ACCOUNT FOR ANY STATUS EFFECTS.
"Why?" felt like a fully reasonable question.
CONSERVATION OF RESOURCES.
"..what?"
LOOK, SMALL EQUINE. I AM TRYING TO OBLITERATE YOUR PITIFUL REALITY BASED ON A STARTING INVESTMENT OF SEVERAL MEANINGLESS PONIES HAVING RECENTLY CONSUMED A HALFWAY-CREDIBLE RECREATION OF FL'NR'GN. WITHOUT ICHOR. THERE'S A BUDGET. NOW. THE RULES DICTATE THAT WE MUST EACH START FROM AN EQUAL POSITION, WHICH CLEARLY MEANS I CANNOT USE ANY OF MY PERFECTLY-CRAFTED DECKS. THEREFORE, WE ARE GOING TO OPEN SEALED PACKS. I HAVE CHOSEN FROM A VARIETY OF COMPATIBLE SETS. AND SOME OF THEM ARE HIGHLY COLLECTIBLE. With a sniff which shouldn't have existed because an infinity of mouths hadn't left any room for noses, PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH THEM. I WILL WANT THEM BACK BEFORE ANNIHILATION DESTROYS ALL. IN MINT CONDITION.
Several brightly-colored wrappers opened themselves. The results were spread out across air and mattress --
-- OOPS.
"'Oops'?" Pinkie immediately asked. "What's 'oops'?"
I DIDN'T MEAN TO GET A BANDING CARD IN THERE. One rectangle of cardboard was almost instantly pulled back. WE CAN REDEAL.
Pinkie risked inspection of her looming knowledge glacier and found a rather odd gap in the ice.
"What's 'banding'? And why can't we have it in the game?"
This time, the teeth twitched.
YOU WANT ME TO BOTH EXPLAIN AND USE BANDING came across as oddly -- offended.
"...maybe?"
I AM THE OMEGA OF THE MULTIVERSE. I BIRTH INFINITE ABOMINATIONS. SPEND ALL OF ETERNITY COUNTING AT THE RATE OF ONE PER SECOND, EVERY SECOND, AND YOU SHALL NOT REACH THE TOTAL OF THE DEATHS I HAVE BROUGHT. BUT THIS IS BANDING. With a disgruntled huff of non-breath, THAT IS WHERE I DRAW THE LINE. BEST OF THREE. ANYTHING ALLOWED IN MODERN, WHICH MEANS WE STICK TO THE LAST TRILLION YEARS. WE MAY BOTH TURN TO THE SIDE RACK BETWEEN GAMES. NOT THE RACK I PUT INTO MY FAVORITE DECK. THE SIDE RACK. DON'T CONFUSE THEM.
Pinkie looked over mouths, fangs, eyes, tentacles. Considered the exact hue of Bluey's increasing blush, and then indulged in a necessary thought.
Nerd.
Although to be fair, the game did seem kind of fun. Pinkie decided that she might consider playing it at some other time. Preferably when all of existence wasn't at stake, and ideally when she had found some way to earn six hundred times her normal pay.
"There's a lot of luck involved in this," she noted. "You're sure this is what you want to play?"
NO MORE SO THAN THE CARD-BASED EVIL WHICH SHALL NOT BE NAMED. THAT WHICH YOU INFLICTED UPON ME IN OUR PREVIOUS MATCH. BUT THE INFINITELY-INTELLIGENT MIND CAN ELIMINATE THE FACTOR OF CHANCE. Its laughter shook the dying stars. NOT SO MUCH WITH YOURS. SHALL WE BUILD OUR FORCES? WHAT DO YOU WISH TO DIE IN YOUR STEAD FIRST, SMALL EQUINE? AS YOUR LAST ACT BEFORE ALL PERISH?
She concentrated on white and green. The Entity immediately focused into blue and black, which made perfect sense to Pinkie. It was clearly the single most evil combination available.
She took as long as she could to build her deck, and part of that came from legitimate consideration of what she needed to do. (The rest was stalling, and she managed to get through nearly two hours that way. Wishing for Sun, wishing for the stupid holiday to have overlapped with the Summer Sun Celebration and the shortest night of all.) She had to try and maximize her chances, and... she only had knowledge. It wasn't the same thing as experience, and the Entity had been practicing.
Sending creatures out to die for her, their bodies providing fast-shattering shields between her and the final ending...
...getting personally invested in the cards was probably a bad idea. Treating them as friends definitely felt as if it would come with a certain emotional toll.
She took her time about construction, and wound up with a combination strategy: generate a lot of small bodies -- cards early on, then hope they would buy time while she tried to find the powerhouses. It was surprisingly easy to bring out the weakest cards. Some of them even generated other, still weaker cards. And with the right combination of effects, you could just keep generating them, over and over. Enough weak forces had to add up to an army. She imagined herself to be effectively sending the whole of the planet at that which only wished to destroy --
-- except that they were still weak forces, and the Entity had drafted a carefully-chosen pair of colors. The first was about saying NO to anything she tried to do, and the second destroyed whatever actually managed to come out.
She had built a deck around token generation. Buying time. But tokens were weak. And you could theoretically have hundreds of them if the cards fell properly, hundreds of weaklings. Eventually, once most of the negation had been burnt off, she wound up with about three dozen.
Three dozen weaklings, none of whom had a power or toughness higher than two.
A tentacle slammed down a card which automatically destroyed everything with a three or below, without limit.
It was the best of three. But all of her defenders had been annihilated in a single impact. And in the first game, Pinkie lost.
Pretending to cry would have taken up a minute or so. Fighting the urge to weep into her blankets consumed two.
The second game...
You could play any card which you were able to power, unless someone said NO or destroyed it outright. Energizing those cards took another kind of card. The resources. Something which was essential to have out early, and then you had to keep getting them because there might not always be enough. Pinkie wished she'd taken more cards which targeted opponent resources directly.
Except...
The tentacle's smallest sucker took another card off the top of the deck. Slammed it down without looking at it.
There was a pause.
Multiple bloodshot eyes, several of which now had pupils cut in the pattern of howling psychosis, risked a peek.
ANOTHER CREATURE! the Entity shouted, and twenty stars rather casually exploded. ENDLESS CREATURES, AND WHERE IS WHAT I NEED TO BRING THEM OUT, I ASK YOU? I KNOW HOW I PUT THIS DECK TOGETHER! THERE WAS AN EIGHTY PERCENT CHANCE TO DRAW WHAT I NEEDED, AND YET HERE A CREATURE IS!
In response, Pinkie simply grinned, and made sure the Entity saw it. A rattled opponent was a player who might make mistakes.
IS THIS YOU, SMALL EQUINE? the angry entity accused. ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?
Confusion instantly closed in.
"Me?" Pinkie asked in genuine innocence. "It's your deck! I haven't touched it! How could I --"
ARE YOU NOT WHAT HAS BEEN TERMED AS AN 'EARTH PONY'? ARE YOU USING YOUR MAGIC TO CREATE THIS... THIS -- LAND DROUGHT?
"No!" (And immediately began to concentrate on exactly that, just in case.) She took her turn. The first powerhouse landed, because there was nothing to power the card which would have stopped it.
THIS IS RIDICULOUS! I'VE NEVER HAD THIS KIND OF LUCK! DECK! DO YOU HEAR ME, DECK? Several card sleeves began to smolder. DECK, I ORDER YOU TO COOPERATE -- OH, COME ON!
"I thought the infinitely-intelligent mind could eliminate the factor of chance --"
-- SHUT UP!
It was the Entity who brought them that much closer to Sun-raising, in grumbling and twitching tentacles and swapping cards in and out of the Side Rack as the rejected ones screamed in agony.
Almost close enough to reach, Pinkie thought. Almost close enough to save...
But there was a third game to play. She did everything she could, went into the bathroom and stalled until a tentacle nearly yanked her out, and the third game happened anyway. It began when there were twenty-five minutes left until Sun-raising. The game wasn't going to necessarily take that long.
And she had lost the first time on merit, been saved during the second by sheer luck, she knew everything about the rules and the cards and within fifteen minutes, she knew how it was going to end.
Her strongest forces had been denied by the barely-concealed darkness of blue, or blasted into dust from the force which lurked within black. The Entity's defenses were completely intact, and the resources had flowed.
She still had some potential ability to generate tokens. Weaklings. There were circumstances which would allow one card for everyone in the world, if she so wished it. All of which could be destroyed at a single stroke, with just about no effort required. And when that happened...
I'm going to lose.
The thought was colder than the knowledge which had told her so. And deep within, the core of Pinkie's soul began to weep.
We do this every year.
I only have to lose once.
...or twice, it's two losses for this game and then...
...the twins would probably die first, because they're closest. Or after Jungie, anyway. They've barely had any time to be alive and they're going to die. Then it's the Cakes. All of my friends. All of Ponyville. All of...
...everything.
The genre of the night, of every night spent with the Entity pushing oblivion into her bedroom, was horror. And horror was about being helpless.
The first tear fell, and Bluey had the courtesy not to twitch.
YOUR TURN, PONY, the Entity smugly noted. DRAW PHASE.
She did so, nipping at her deck with care which wasn't deserved, and the sleeve protected the cardboard from her teeth. (Shuffling with hooves had been exceptionally difficult.) Looked at the result, and did so while knowing that no card left in the deck would be able to save her. To save a world entire.
I should have told somepony. Anypony. Even if thousands of them thought I was crazy, even if I lost all my friends... if one pony had believed me, the right pony, then... maybe they could have told me something which helped. Or found a way to stop the 'donuts', when I couldn't.
I did this.
Me. Just me. Alone.
She looked at the card.
...great. Now I can make a lot of tokens. More things to get destroyed.
A portion of the iceberg drifted forward to correct her.
She reexamined the card. Then she looked at what little remained of her forces.
A lot a lot. East Tree and Swarm on the field. Some equally weak token copies on Swarm. Growth Chamber in face-down grouping. (She liked the Swarm card. It made her think of breezies, and they would all die too.) Over and over.
But they'll all be weak. And IT hasn't played that one card yet. It won't matter. Because the Entity is hanging on to it. I bet IT's got it next to a tentacle right now, drawn and waiting. IT wants to wipe out everything at once, and IT just waits on the right moment...
The mare had a thought.
Pinkie took a breath.
"Playing Growth Chamber," she said.
Thousands of teeth simulated a nod. She held the rest of the breath, nudged the card into place --
-- no counterplay hit. The card landed.
"Resolving Growth Chamber, returning to unplayed cards," Pinkie immediately said, and a forehoof slammed into the mattress: the card bounced back. "Resolving resulting Swarm copies from Chamber." Those cards obligingly budded, growing their own sleeves along the way. "Swarm copies go into battlefield. East Tree triggers. Return Growth Chamber to playing area..."
The eyes watched her. Tentacles curled, began to reach out as the teeth gnashed in hunger.
"East Tree triggers..."
She kept talking. Looked at the cards as if there was nothing else in the world. Resolved one, bounced it back. Trigger, copy, replay.
YOU DO REALIZE THIS IS POINTLESS, a nearly-bemused Entity told her.
She didn't glance up. There was no point.
"Swarm copies go into battlefield..."
I HAVEN'T PLAYED MY BOARD WIPE. YOU KNOW THAT. ARE YOU ALSO AWARE THAT I PULLED IT OUT OF MY DECK THREE TURNS AGO?
Pinkie shrugged. "Playing Growth Chamber," she said, and briefly left it at that before continuing the mantra of creation.
A REPEATING, SELF-FEEDING COMBO, the Entity observed. HOW VERY BORING. YOU CAN MAKE ALL THE TOKENS YOU WISH, INSIGNIFICANT EQUINE. I CAN ELIMINATE THEM ALL WITH A SINGLE STROKE. AS SOON AS YOUR TURN ENDS --
Every eye blinked. The mouths compulsively swallowed, and three orbs vanished.
END YOUR TURN.
It had been a demand.
"When I'm finished resolving my triggers," Pinkie said.
Or when I finish triggering you.
A current of warmth was beginning to rise within her soul. She barely noticed the moment when the room shook.
END YOUR TURN.
"I can end my turn when I have no actions left to take," the mare calmly stated. "That's one of the rules. And one of the Rules says that we play the game as it exists, under the rules which we both understand. You let me understand that the game will just let me keep making tokens. As many as I want. And when I'm finished, you can destroy them. Every last one."
Her head snapped up. Blue eyes looked past the endless, infinite mass of the Entity. Focused on the window, and a slowly-brightening darkness.
"If I finish in time," she added.
A universe's worth of rage shook. Card sleeves came apart. Mint condition went to With A Touch Of Sludge, and then got downgraded to Subatomic Particles: Some Repairs Required.
END YOUR TURN --
"East Tree," Pinkie peacefully said, "triggers."
Cards budded, as the words of life were spoken again and again. The blankets were covered. The carpet scrap. The floor. And the tentacles writhed, the teeth broke each other, bloodshot eyes burst and Bluey gave her one last twitch of acknowledgement.
Sun was raised.
The portal slammed shut. Air reconstructed. Physics took a breath of relief and then got down to a day's work. Every card vanished.
Pinkie casually shrugged, decided that charity probably meant calling it a draw, used one second to feel happy for having saved the world, and then passed out across empty blankets.
There was a new day to greet, once she finally woke up. In many ways, it was the start of a new year. Perhaps it would even be the one where she figured out how to tell somepony what was going on, and do so without driving them mad. Or having them think she was crazy.
She took up a quill in her teeth, loaded it with ink, then moved to the calendar and triumphantly crossed off the Greening as a stupid, pointless, and survived holiday.
Then she thought for a second. Snout-flipped four calendar pages, and looked at what had been revealed.
Pinkie winced.
Oh.
Right.
The Rhubarb Festival.
The bakery always participated, bringing out a Special of rhubarb pie for a day. Pinkie didn't understand why. Rhubarb wasn't very good. If you ate too much, it had a way of producing gas, diarrhea, and constipation: in clear defiance of common sense, it sometimes managed all three at the same time. Having a Rhubarb Festival in Ponyville was mostly good for nearly ending everypony's large intestines.
And, once the Tannin Devil turned up at the following midnight, the world.
The Festival was four moons away. Pinkie was reasonably sure that this would be the year when she finally got the entire town onto blackberry.
