Chapter 16

Hello loyal readers! I promised I would return with a very entertaining new chapter, and I have. I'm sure you will all like this one...and may be a little grossed out...and perhaps even be left with questions...so here it is. Enjoy, and please review.

"Alright..." I muttered. I moved. to the edge of the large hole, and looked down. Four stallions wearing coveralls were hooking straps to the wooden box at the bottom of the pit. One of the stallions looked up and nodded. I returned the gesture and stepped back.

"You alright, Drake?" Rainbow Dash asked from beside me.

"Yep." I lied. I looked sidelong at my marefriend. "Will you do me a favor, sweetheart?"

"Whats up?" She asked, staring at the hole.

"Please Dashie..." I whispered. "Go to Twilight's and chill, okay?"

"I want to be here..."

"I know." I said stolidly. "But you don't need to be. This is gonna be bad on you. And I don't want you to see what's in that box." She was starting to shake a little. I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "Remember when Budder and me exhumed that corpse? What she said about it?"

"Yeah..." Dashie whispered.

"Go. I want you to be okay. And right now, that means you not being here." I said. I saw tears forming in her eyes. "I love you, Dashie." I whispered. She hugged me.

"I love you too, Drake." She said back in a low voice. "I'll...I'll go, alright?" I nodded.

"Thanks, love." I said. Dash stepped back, took a final look at the open grave, gave me a knowing nod, and walked away from the scene. I turned to my right to see Captain Steele staring at me. "What?" I demanded. He shrugged.

"Nothin', LT." He replied. "Just observing." He grinned. "I'm married to the job."

"Sucks, don't it?" I asked cynically. The commando shrugged.

"She can be a cold-hearted bitch sometimes, but I love her." He answered. I couldn't help but chuckle and shake my head. These BlackOps ponies...

"Lieutenant?" Sergeant Masada called, trotting up. "I brought you what you asked for." The BDF soldier handed me a roll of waxed paper. I opened the packet, and pulled out a cheap, strong-smelling cigar. I stuck the stogie in my mouth, and handed one to Steele. The captain looked at the cigar, then toward the grave, then took the cigar and chomped down on it.

"Sis?" I called. Budder came over from the edge of the grave, and I handed her one of the foul-smelling rolls of tobacco. She scoffed, remembering the last time we did this, and mouthed the cigar.

"You are giving your kid sister a cigar?" Masada asked in disbelief.

"Trust me sergeant..." I replied. "You're gonna want one of these." The workers pulled the casket from the hole and it landed beside the pit with a heavy thud. At least there was something in it. I could mark one fear off my list. I pulled a long match, and struck it on my left forehoof. I first lit my cigar, then Steele's, then my sister's. The four of us approached the box, and I felt myself growing uneasy.

"Alright..." I said, then swallowed hard. "This is the really...squicky part. Crowbar?" One of the workers placed a prybar in my hoof, and I jammed it into the narrow gap between the lid and the wall of the casket. I pried up, and there was a faint hiss of escaping gasses. I puffed my cigar, and worked the jimmy in further. Prying again, I lifted the lid enough to break the latch. The coffin popped open, and I quickly stepped back. The sickeningly sweet smell of a disinterred corpse spread over the area. Budder shook her head.

"Geez, bub..." She commented, and puffed a huge cloud of thick smoke around her head to fight the odor. "I hate that smell..."

"Yup..." I muttered. Steele stood nearby, puffing on his cheap cigar and staring at the decaying body in the coffin. I looked back at Masada. The young soldier wrinkled her nose a couple of times, tried to cover her muzzle with her green shemagh, the finally shook her head in disgust.

"Ugh..." She complained. "I think I will have one of those cigars, lieutenant..." I gave her the final cigar, and as Steele lit it for her, I walked upon the open coffin and looked inside.

I stood there a moment, confused and slightly disturbed. It wasn't because of the body. I'd seen my fair share of corpses, some of them in various stages of decay. It helps to rationalize that what you are seeing in not a pony. Not anymore. Who and what they were is long gone, and what you're looking at is only a bag, an object, a thing. The body that I was looking at was more than an inanimate object. It was the sum of all of my nightmares for years. It was the one thing that had affected me almost as bad as the incident at the fort. And here it lay, haunting me again. I was shocked by what I saw...because what was in the coffin was most certainly the decaying remains of Pinkie Pie.

"It's her." I stated.

"You sure?" Steele asked.

"Yeah...I'm sure." I replied. Even though her body was badly decomposed, her mane and tail were still intact. Her waxy, leathery skin was browned, but the cut across her throat from my saber was still more than evident. "Those are the wounds...from where I killed her. Shit...it's her..." I walked a short distance away and turned from the scene.

"You okay, bub?" Budder asked, moving up close to me.

"Yeah...no..." I answered. "How could she be dead?" I didn't understand what was happening. I had assumed that the coffin would be empty, or that there would be some other random pony's body interred in the place of the killer. That would make sense, dammit. I turned back to the exhumed body. My shock had worn off, and now I was feeling angry...very angry.

"How the hell is there two of her?!" I demanded to nopony in particular. "Huh?! How can Pinkie be laying dead here, and be laying in the morgue?!"

"Twins?" Steele offered.

"Bullshit!" I exclaimed, not directed toward the captain, but rather the idea. "I did my homework on her. She has sisters alright, but no twins...not even a sister that looks remotely LIKE her! Somehow captain...there's TWO OF HER!"

"How can that be?!" Masada asked, distancing herself from the stench of the dead body and joining me and my sister. "There cannot be two of somepony." I motioned with my head toward the body.

"Well she managed it." I commented dryly. "Fuck!" I walked further away, where I began to pace back and forth, trying desperately to form a logical conclusion in my mind. Okay, there was two of her. That much was clear. I had killed her back then, but the killings had started again. This other her was involved. The second Pinkie had just been killed, but she had been part of a larger force of killers, all with a similar ideology. There was something behind all of this, some pattern I just wasn't seeing. It was right there, right in front of my face, but I couldn't see it, and it was driving me crazy.

"The killings..." I mused out loud as Steele joined the small group. "The original killings...they're linked to this. Somehow, it's all connected."

"If that's true, then this is bigger than we thought?" Masada asked. Steele stared out over the town below us coldly.

"Alot bigger." I nodded. "I think Pinkie Pie...or both of them...were the ringleaders of the operation. They treat these murders like a party...that's what it is to them. And Pinkie is...was the one planning the party..." I paused, thinking about how to word what I would say next. "We have to be prepared for the possibility that this is a cult. And because of the attack on your squad, Steele...we can assume they have large numbers, are violent, and are extremely well organized. Because of this lull in activity over the last few years, we can assume that they've been building up for this...and it could be bad." I walked toward the coffin. The initial cloud of stench was fading, making it a little bit easier to approach the remains. Budder, Steele and Masada followed me closely. I didn't know how to say it. I didn't even know if my own mind could process my next thought.

"Fact is...there were two Pinkie Pies. How, I don't know..." I looked down into the coffin at the very dead corpse of my old enemy. "You guys...you have no idea how evil this pony was..." I said lowly. "She was...it took everything I had to kill her. She fought like you wouldn't believe..." I looked to my right, to Steele, then left to Budder and Sergeant Masada. "Let's hope the one we found was the last one." I took a deep breath and heaved a sigh. "Cause if she found a way to make more of herself...we're fucked."

Well that was certainly interesting, wasn't it? Pinkie Pie was in the coffin...so Drake killed her. But she was back again. What's going on? Until the next chapter gets posted tomorrow night, I challenge you the reader to try and guess what's going on. Some of you will probably guess accurately. The tension and drama is building now, and so is Drake's stress level. What will happen next? I will try to get the next chapter up by tomorrow evening. Until then, thanks for reading, everypony! -Drake