fandomtownies | The Causeway, Monday afternoon

Pinkie couldn't call her friends back home -- ponies in Equestria didn't have phones -- and being an Earth pony, she didn't have magic or wings to use to try to get back and see what was what. All she had were her own four hooves.

Which is why, despite overwhelming evidence that it just wouldn't work, she was standing at the end of the Causeway, staring determinedly at the mainland.

"Don't worry, girls," she announced. "I'm coming for you!" And she set off across the causeway at a gallop.

And when that didn't work, she tried it again. And again. And again.

An hour later, her hooves were visibly throbbing and she was once again standing at the end of the Causeway, now panting for breath. She finally had to admit it: she was stuck here, with no way of finding out what was going on back home.

As the realization struck, Pinkie's big, curly hair deflated like a popped balloon, falling dead straight down over her withers. "Oh no," she said, flopping down with her hind legs spread, silhouetted suddenly in a perfect emo spotlight. "My friends have all been eaten up by the big nasty whatever-it-is and there's nothing I can do!"

Anyone passing by might hear a very soft, sad violin playing as they approached the emo little pony pouting by the Causeway.

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Kitty was passing by, and so she did in fact hear the violin. And saw the... Was that a pony?

Hey, who was she to judge?

"You okay?" she asked, concerned.

Pinkie Pie looked up, the very image of miserable poniness. "My friends are -- are gone!" she whimpered, as the violin swelled.

She always was a bit melodramatic.

"Were they here?" Kitty asked hopefully above the violins. Given what she'd been hearing and seeing on that board outside the school, she was so hoping the... pony's friends had just left for a visit and she was taking it really hard.

Pinkie shook her head miserably. "I was going to go get them but I -- I can't!"

Cue waterfalls of tears. There was little sadder than a sad, sad pink pony.

Oh, no, there were tears. Kitty hadn't even known ponies could cry. Of course, she hadn't known they could talk either, so.

"Oh, god. Don't cry. It's okay!" she tried. "Can you tell me what exactly happened?"

The tears shut off like a valve. "I haven't heard from any of my friends back home in Equestria in weeks which maybe wouldn't be weird if it was just Rainbow Dash or Rarity but Fluttershy and Applejack remember to write all the time and I haven't even heard from Twilight and if she doesn't write at least precisely every week she goes crazy! And lots of you human things are going missing and I got worried and I wrote a song but that didn't help much and finally I decided I would go back to Equestria and save them all but the road won't let me go because they're all gone!" Pinkie gasped for breath, then flopped back onto the ground, looking despondent. "They're my best friends!"

"Maybe it's not because they're all gone," Kitty reasoned, ignoring the fact that she'd just heard a lot of words that were probably supposed to be named in there. "Maybe communications are just shot. I haven't been able to get in touch with some people back home, but they seem to still be there."

"But how do you know? There's a thingy out there and it's eating people!" To demonstrate the horror of the thingy, Pinkie popped up onto her hind legs and waved her front hooves threateningly in the air. "Do you need to hear my song?"

No, you don't, Kitty. You don't need to hear it.

"Maybe I do," she said slowly, because sometimes there were 'you know what curiosity did to the cat' associations that needed to be made.

Never let it be said that Pinkie would pass up a moment to burst into song. She'd even worked out some choreography. It mostly involved stalking around threateningly and jumping at rocks.

"Ohhhhhhh
First it eats your mailman, and some people you don’t know,
But then it might swallow Grandma, so our worries only grooooooooow. . . .

It’s a big evil monster and it’s coming after you,
Or maybe an impostor, or a witch with an evil brew,
It’s a spell or a curse or maybe something even worse,
It makes some people vanish and other people panic!

What is it? No idea! What’s next, the Isle of Ikea?
The only thing we know is that we’re DOOMED!
DOOMED DOOMED DOOMED DOOMED
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!"

"That's a... really scary song," Kitty decided, blinking.

"It's a work in progress," Pinkie said, flopping back down into her pose of abject depression. She sniffled. "I don't know what I'll do without my friends."

"We'll figure this out," Kitty assured her, completely seriously. "There are people here who are good at that sort of thing. And then we'll fix it."

She just assumed at this point that every mutant or superhero she'd ever heard of was here somewhere and she hadn't met them yet. It was easier that way.

"Do you think so?" Pinkie asked hopefully. "If you do, I'll throw everyone a huge party."

It's what Pinkie Pie does, after all.

Kitty was pretty cynical about this sort of thing these days. People died, people went away, and they didn't always come back, and that was the way it was. But she was talking to a talking pink pony who'd cried and had a doomy song, and there was no part of her that wanted to say no.

"Yes, I do," she said. "This'll get fixed, and when it does, I want an invitation."

"Okay." Pinkie's hair didn't reinflate, but it did get just an eensy bit of bounce back. She held out her hoof for a shake. "I'm Pinkie Pie."

"Kitty Pryde," she said, offering her own hand and kind of awkwardly shaking her hoof. Because it was a hoof.

Pinkie didn't mind. She was getting used to the odd looks and awkwardness. She sniffled again. "It's very nice to meet you," she said. "Do you work at the school?"

"No, I manage Caritas," she replied. "What do you do?"

The answer might be interesting, so of course she had to ask.

"I'm a teacher." What, couldn't Kitty guess just by looking at her? "I teach the Elements of Friendship."

"Do you sing in it?" What, it seemed like the logical next question given the song she'd heard earlier.

"Sometimes," Pinkie said. "Mostly, I make the big crazy room pretend to be Ponyville or the Everfree Forest, back home."

Because everyone totally already knew that "the big crazy room" meant the Danger Shop.

If Kitty wasn't new, she probably would know what that meant!

"The big crazy room?"

"The giant classroom that can pretend to be anything you want it to be if you can describe it just right!"

This would probably be easier to explain if Pinkie weren't from a world that had hydroelectric dams but no phones.

Yeah, that sounded familiar. "Huh. Sounds interesting," she said vaguely.

"You should come by!" Pinkie said, getting closer to her usual hyper self the more she talked about things that weren't disappearing friends. "Oh, except maybe you can't 'cause you're not a student but if you were a student you should totally come sometime!"

The Causeway, Monday afternoon

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