Private Pinkie

14:09 - 16/01/1008 - Pie Family Rock Farm, Rockshire

Melancholy. Dejected. Depressed. Gloomy, sorrowful, woeful, dolour, or just 'sad'. Sad worked. Sad was simple and to the point. It didn't require a whole lot of thinking to say you felt sad, and Pinkamena certainly wasn't in a thinking mood.

It had been, what, four months? She hadn’t performed since seeing the video, she hadn’t even touched a musical instrument since. A few ponies came after her, tried banging down the farmhouse door to drag her back onto a stage and back on the murder party circuit. Limestone did a good job of shooing them away, and Pinkamena was under no obligation to go anywhere. She quit. She was done. She wasn’t going to play a single note in the name of Lunar slaughter again.

Once every couple weeks, if that, Pinkamena may have worked up the courage to step out of the farmhouse and onto the quarry. She’d tell herself it was something to keep her mind and body occupied, yet every time without fail she’d retreat back inside after an hour or two. Being this inactive would’ve caused her to gain weight, had she not lost her taste for cupcakes, or anything other than rock soup.

Whole nights would go by without her seeing a single pony. On the rare occasion she did, it came in the form of Limestone kicking down her door and telling her off for being so hard on herself. “You’ve never hurt anypony! You’ve never even wanted to hurt anypony! You didn’t even have a choice of whether to join the Army or not! So come on! Stop being so sad!” it usually went. It didn’t work.

On the occasion that Maud had some time away from her studies to come back home, she’d always make an effort to comfort Pinkamena. Usually, Maud talked, more than she usually ever did, about whatever she thought Pinkamena would find engaging or interesting. Rock studies, news from around the area, or things they did together as fillies. Pinkamena was at least grateful for the company and could tell Maud was looking for a way to get her mind off of what was troubling her, but it too didn’t work.

That left Marble. Every so often, maybe once a week, she’d try to talk to Pinkamena about how she felt and try to say something to lift her spirits, but all too often she’d be paralysed by the fear of saying something wrong and she’d end up saying nothing at all. At the end of all that, Marble would resort to embracing Pinkamena in a hug. It was appreciated, but again, it didn’t work.

It wasn’t that Pinkamena didn’t appreciate her sisters’ efforts, she really did, it was that she knew it’d be better for everyone for her to just stay here. The only person she felt comfortable opening up to was Boulder, at least until he started talking back.

Most nights she never left her bedroom and spent her time lying motionless on the filthy floorboards, which caked her straightened washed-out mane and dull coat in the pervasive dust. She was staring up at the window, watching the stars as they drifted across the eternally dark sky amidst the noise of machines working the quarry outside.

At some point, her eyes drifted to the grimy old mirror leaning up against the wall. Staring back at her through the cracked glass, a pony lay on the floor much as Pinkamena was. A pony with a light and curly hot-pink mane and soft pink coat that stood out like a sore wing against the dusty grey room. The pony grinned widely once Pinkamena made eye contact.

“Hello!” Pinkie chirped.

Pinkamena flinched but quickly calmed down. It was only her. “Where have you been?” Pinkamena asked.

Pinkie giggled. “Where have I been? I’ve been with you the whole time, silly! The real question is where have we been?” she said whilst pointing at herself and Pinkamena. “There’s a whole world full of creatures who need a good cheer-up, and you’ve holed us up on the farm?”

Averting her eyes from the mirror, Pinkamena sighed. “What good have I brought? Everypony is better off with me here.”

“Pssh, no way!” Pinkie rolled onto her front. “You don't really think that, do you? A bright and bubbly Pinkie Pie can make everypony happy! But a Pinkie Pie who’s shut herself away?” Pinkie shook her head. “Nuh-uh! No bueno!”

Pinkamena sulked, burying her face in her hooves. “No,” she moaned. “I know it’s better off if I’m alone.”

“Oh come on, Pinkie!” Pinkie hopped to her hooves. “Look around you! Limey hates seeing you like this, Marble’s torn to shreds, and Maud- Nrrgh! I’ve never seen Maud so upset before!”

“Maud looks exactly the same as she always does,” Pinkamena said.

“What!?” the mirror Pinkie gasped. “That’s crazy talk! Why you talking crazy, Pinkie Pie?”

Gazing around the room, Pinkamena lay silently on the floor trying to ignore her reflection.

“Alright, that’s enough! On your hooves, Pinkie!” Pinkie demanded, clapping her hooves together for emphasis. “Come on, up and at ‘em!”

Begrudgingly and ploddingly, Pinkamena rose to her hooves and blankly stared back at the mirror.

“Who are you?” Pinkie barked. “Who am I talking to?”

“Um…” Pinkamena rubbed her leg. “Pinkamena Diane Pie.”

“And who iiiiiis Pinkamena Diane Pie?” Pinkie pressed an eyeball to the glass.

Pinkamena hesitated. She didn’t want to say it aloud, even to herself. It took her a moment to speak up. “I’m a walking propaganda piece, okay?” she shouted bluntly. “I’m a tool of a murderous tyrant used to glorify massacres. An accompanying piece to atrocities on a horrifying scale, a mercenary for the world's biggest baddest empire, whose whole livelihood is the result of joyous participation in the whitewashing of bloody murder!”

Pinkie smiled and nodded. “Yep.”

“What do you mean ‘Yep’? Don’t you get it?” Pinkamena wailed. “Out there I’m helping hurt ponies, here I’m not helping hurt anypony! The world is a better place without me!” she screamed, tears starting to fall from her eyes, her legs quaking as she struggled to stand.

Pinkie just giggled. “Sure I get it. Good thing you pulled us out of there!” she said with a wink.

Pinkamena flinched, whatever crying may have come stopped. “Huh?”

“Honestly, you did great back in Camp Thunder Struck. If that were me watching that video I’d have stuck my hooves over my ears, shut my eyes, sang ‘la la la I can’t see you!’, then waltzed out of there and hopped back onto the stage!” Pinkie said, with appropriate motions and gestures to accentuate her words. “But you knew what was going on! You saw how we were being used and you pulled the plug!”

“Right,” Pinkamena said, nodding as if the motion would reassure her. “That’s good, right?”

“But then you turned us into Miss Mopey and Dopey,” Pinkie pouted her lips and put on a grumpy frown. “Imagine that, the Pinkie Pie! The most positively peppy pizzazzy pink party pony in all of Equestria reduced to this! Are you really gonna just sit there and let that happen?”

“What are you even saying?” Pinkie said with a befuddled wince.

“What I’m saying is that you pulled me out of there,” Pinkie’s smirk turned sly, her eyebrows moving up and down. “So now it’s my turn to pull you out of here! Now’s the time we have to do something to turn this around and make up for all that! Sulking won’t help, you need to act! Think, what are we best at?”

“...parties, I guess?” Pinkamena gave a half-hearted shrug.

“You got it!” Pinkie winked. “That’s how we’re gonna dig ourselves out of the mopey hole! By throwing a party! But not just any party, the biggest party of our life!”

“A… party?” Pinkamena cocked an eyebrow, her mouth agape with worry.

“Ohh yeah!” Pinkie smirked. “A party.”

Pinkamena shuddered. “You- you mean a… a ‘party’, don’t you?”

“Yes, a huge party,” Pinkie nodded rapidly, a devious grin on her lips. “A surprise party for all those Imperial meanies! With fireworks, big fireworks! Fireworks that ponies could see for miles! A firework display so bright and dazzling that nopony could look away! One that everypony’s gonna hear about and remember, even if they weren't there! You helped them? Then yoink the rug out from under them and have them land on a whoopie cushion!”

Pinkamena suddenly broke eye contact, her eyes racing around the room. She eventually looked back at Pinkie. “W-who are we gonna invite to this ‘party’?”

“Oh no no!” Pinkie stepped back and shook her head, her smile unbroken. “You don’t want anypony to be at the party! It’s got to be a very special kind of party, where nopony attends but everypony sees and everypony remembers! You do this right, nopony is ever going to forget this party! Nopony's even gonna know it was your party!”

Unconsciously, Pinkamena swallowed, rubbing small beads of sweat from her forehead. “Where should we have this party?”

Pinkie shrugged and leaned against the mirror. “Iunno! Your old camp, the one in Mixie? Maybe Camp Thunder Struck? Some ammo depot? The Imperial Castle way deep in the Everfree? Wherever those two meanies with the video are stationed? There are tons of places to choose from!”

“But,” Pinkamena ran a hoof through her hair, feeling that it had gotten lighter and curlier. “A party like that could take weeks to plan, months maybe.”

“Eeexactly!” Pinkie puffed out her chest. “So what are you waiting for? Come on Pinkie! There’s a time and a place to doubt and pout, but now is a time to bring out the confetti!”

“Do you really need me for any of this?” Pinkamena asked, pawing at the floor. “You sound like you have it all figured out.”

Pinkie scoffed. “Of course not, we need each other! You’re the only thing stopping me from throwing us over the edge! Without you, I’d burst like a balloon! Without me, you’d deflate and flop to the ground,” Pinkie said, then moving to tap her chin. “…also like a balloon. Anyway, only together can we become the pony we were always meant to be. Bright, bouncy, bringing joy wherever we go! A beacon of beatitude! A paragon of positivity!”

“What, like a balloon?” Pinkamena snickered, the corners of her mouth slowly curling upwards.

“Yeah!” laughed Pinkie. “Haha! I was never that great at poetic metaphors, was I? Just balloons! Balloons, balloons, balloons! It's not my fault they’re so great!”

Pinkie laughed as she bounced on the spot, her cushiony mane bouncing with her. When she stopped she looked back at the pony in the mirror and the gleeful grin that matched her own. With an almost literal spring in her step, Pinkie set off to plan the most incredible party Equestria had ever seen.