"Twilight!" Rainbow Dash screamed while tackling the library's door open.
Twilight Sparkle didn't even raise her eyes from the large ancient tome she was reading. It wasn't the first time that the chromatic pegasus showed problem with knocking at doors and she doubt it would be the last. "Yes Rainbow?"
"We did a terrible mistake!" she shouted while hovering just in front of Twilight's book. She sighed while grabbing a nearby bookmark and sticking it in between the two pages she was reading. The last thing she wanted was Rainbow damaging or spitting on that rare copy of ancient magic spells. Getting her hooves on it took almost a week of asking favors all around Equestria.
"It's not our... It's not the... the real Pinkie Pie!" Rainbow let out in almost a whisper which was surprisingly atypical for the hot-blooded pony. Looking at her friend, Twilight noticed that her mane and coat was a mess, far more than usual and her eyes were bloodshot, which considering her red pupils wasn't that easy to spot.
Did she cry?
"How did you find out?" Twilight asked.
"She didn't remember the Cake's babies' names and..." Rainbow replied but froze when she realized what Twilight said. "You knew?"
"I knew," Twilight let out.
Rainbow Dash's eyes went ballistic. "You... you knew?" She said in horror. She frowned for a short moment before her face displayed anger and rage. "Did you know when... the paint?"
Twilight couldn't keep her sight on her mad friend. She looked down at her front hooves. "Yes." She closed her eyes as she felt Rainbow come close to her. Rainbow Dash raised her right hoof high, ready to strike. Twilight kept her friends in the dark about Pinkie Pie. Rainbow wanted, needed something to target her pain and furry at.
Something kept her from hitting Twilight and she didn't know what. Twilight obviously had a reason, she always has. But was that enough to keep all her friends in the dark? Her darken eyes looked like the purple mare hadn't sleep in days. So much anger and furry, Rainbow never understood how much Pinkie Pie meant to her before finding out she wasn't there anymore. The sound of crushed wood made Twilight open her eyes. Rainbow had dropped on top of a small table and crushed it into submission and was now proceeding with turning every remaining pieces into the smallest chunks of wood possible.
After a minute of unrestrained rage against the furniture, Rainbow turned around to face Twilight without consideration for the tears in her eyes. "Why?" she screamed.
Twilight's shoulders dropped even lower. Wasn't that the same question she kept asking herself that last week? "Can you... Would you mind gathering the others?" She asked still unable to look at her friend. "I... I wanted to be sure, to have more information, to have a plan. But... But I don't."
Without a word or looking back, Rainbow dashed out of the library.
It didn't even take twenty minutes for Rainbow Dash to get everypony back in the library. The only pony missing was Pinkie Pie and Rainbow didn't want to face or talk to a fake copy. Twilight understood that she Rainbow gave her friends enough information about the situation, as all of them were eying her with some kind of anger or reserve.
"Is it true Twi?" Applejack asked, still unsure how to handle the news.
The purple unicorn nodded. "Yes, the Pinkie Pie that remained wasn't the real Pinkie."
"You blasted... sent the real Pinkie into that magical pond?" Rarity asked, shocked, while trying to keep her calm.
Twilight resigned herself at explaining what she managed to find, but still hated going ahead with only the fragmented information she gathered. "No, I did not blast the real Pinkie." The four ponies looked at each other, somehow expecting one of them to understand some kind of hidden meaning in Twilight's words. "I didn't send Pinkie in the magical pond, because none of the Pinkies watching the paint dry was the real one."
"Then why that paint challenge in the first place?" Applejack instantly asked back.
"I needed to find the Pinkie that cared the most for her friends in the group to bring the situation as back to as normal as possible. Or at least to give me enough time to find some information," she explained.
"So where's Pinkie Pie?" Fluttershy asked calmly, being the only pony present unable to display any anger toward Twilight.
"In the pond," Twilight replied.
Applejack removed her Stetson and rubbed her forehead. "What?"
"The pond, as far as I managed to find, is a trap. A very complex trap made from ancient and forgotten magic," Twilight explained while sitting down. "When somepony enter it, it gets trapped inside and the pond creates a copy to prevent other pony from noticing the real one missing."
"But..." Rarity started.
"Something went wrong with Pinkie Pie," Twilight finished with a weak smile. "Pinkie Pie and magic always tend to create some unexpected results. The pond, from what I gathered, wasn't made to create multiple copies of the trapped pony. Its goal was to create a single copy to take place of the victim."
"Who would create that?" Rainbow Dash asked while hovering over the others.
"When Pinkie talked to me about that old legend, I didn't recognize it," Twilight said. "When the herd of Pinkies showed up, I went directly to the library to search about that legend; I found nothing. A few quick letters to the princesses and to the royal archives also resulted with the same lack of information. For all I know, that legend never existed and somepony... or something implemented that idea in Pinkie's mind. Who did all this? I don't know."
"But that pond does exist," Rarity added. Twilight nodded; happy the white unicorn was coming to the same conclusion as her. "So... why?"
"Somepony or something is feeling threaten by us," Twilight let out calmly.
"What?" Rainbow Dash and Applejack shouted at once.
"When the Pinkies showed up, I found out that none of them were the real one. Magical constructs are normally easy to spot when you know where to look at, but those were almost perfect," Twilight explained. "So many Pinkies make it quite obvious that they aren't real. While those were not as easy to tell apart from normal ponies, they did have a different magical footprint compared to a real pony. If the pond had worked as intended, we would never have found out about Pinkie being missing."
Twilight walked up to a table and pointed at a piece of paper with the royal seal hanging on its side. "When I asked to research information from Canterlot, Princess Celestia acted right away and went to check the elements of harmony. The element of laughter turned dark. In other words, the elements have been... neutralized. Pinkie Pie is trapped somewhere her connection to the element cannot reach."
“We would have found about the fake Pinkie the moment the elements would have failed.”
