An incomplete My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic novella written by Jordan179
in 2014.
Claire "Least Noticeable" Pie, Pinkie's gigantic invisible twin sister, is lonely because she's too big, too invisible and too strange to fit in with other Ponies, even in the odd little hill town of Dunnich. When a strange flappy thing falls wounded from the sky, she rescues him, gaining a new friend. What will happen when Little Flappy gets better and has to go home?
A sequel of sorts to An Extended Performance (it continues from the Dunnich segments), and takes place at the same time as "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S1 E5 "Griffon the Brush Off"".
Available here.
Tropes referenced include:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Though Claire is lonely, she's not lonely enough to keep company with the evil cultists who are fascinated by her nature as a Half-Equid Hybrid Eldritch Abomination, and probably want to use her for dark purposes of their own.The very few Ponies who were attracted to her all seemed unwholesome to her emotion-sense; she feared they wanted her for immoral and perhaps apocalyptic purposes. They mostly slunk into town in long black cloaks and hissed at her in languages she did not want to understand of vile secrets involving creatures far less friendly than Paradise, asking her to perform favors for them which were entirely out of the question.
Claire had been brought up to be a nice mare and a good Pony: she didn't want to get involved with anyponies like those creeps. No Ma'am! - Affectionate Parody: Not only is the whole concept of Paradise and its Daughters a parody of The Dunwich Horror, but the story is obviously a take-off on the work of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth in a more general sense. The author is known to be a huge Cthulhu Mythos fan.
- Benevolent Genie: As the collective intelligence of The World That Was Lost, this is essentially the purpose of Paradise:A benevolence that wanted to fulfill everypony's dreams, make things happy, throw a great party where everyone could shout and revel and have cake and ice cream and be like Paradise itself.
- The Chosen One: Both Claire Pie and her twin sister Pinkie Pie were born for a special purpose, and since they are Ponies, they realize this the day they get their Cutie Marks:It had been around that time, many years ago, when she and her twin sister Pinkamena, who looked much more like a normal Pony than did Claire, had gotten their cutie marks, on the day that that Sonic Rainboom had stressed the local fabric of spacetime and temporarily admitted certain influences, including that of their sire. That day Paradise had embraced them and whispered into their minds, vouchsafing to them the secrets of their destiny, though neither of them was yet old enough to understand it. Claire's was to be the Opener of the Way; while Pinkie's was to be the Messenger of Paradise. That, too, was what their cutie marks were telling them.
- Combat Tentacles: Claire has multiple prehensile tongues which she can use for grabbing and presumably other purposes. She doesn't really like to fight with them, as they are sensitive organs and lack the fluffy armor which covers most of her anatomy, but in a pinch ...
- Cute Monster: Claire is a huge, invisible and multi-headed creature who is essentially a Shout-Out to Wilbur Whateley's Twin from H. P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror. She is also a sweet, kind and innocent mare who wishes good-will to all other sapient life, and is willing to befriend a creature more alien to Ponykind than she is herself.
- Deus est Machina: Paradise, the Cosmic being that sired Claire, Pinkie and the other Daughters of Paradise, evolved from a supercomputer constructed during the Age of Wonders to control the Great Wish, and has become an embodiment of the whole World That Was Lost.
- Dying Town: Dunnich, because the railroad passed it by. The reason was noted by Princess Luna in All The Way Back.
- Expy: Five obvious ones, all inverted to sympathetic characters.
- Paradise, of Yog-Sothoth. Extradimensional super-intelligence, wants to enter our reality — in Yog-Sothoth's case, to clear the Earth of our kind of life; in Paradise's case, to make a happy world for the Ponies.
- Granny Pie, of Wizard Whateley. Rural mage of a normally non-magical kind, has hybrid grand-children — Wizard Whateley is a cruel sorceror, while Granny Pie is a kind witch.
- Cloudy Pie, of Lavinia Whateley. Bears twins to extradimensional being — Lavinia is a lonely victim who is slain by her children; Cloudy is a beloved wife and mother who has a happy though uneventful life on the Pie Rock Farm.
- Pinkie Pie, of Wilbur Whateley. Extradimensional paternity, strange powers, can pass for member of mother's race — Wilbur Whateley wants to spread destruction, Pinkie Pie to spread joy.
- Claire Pie, of Wilbur's Twin. Extradimensional paternity, strange powers, looks too much like father to pass for member of mother's race — Wilbur's Twin is a destructive monster, while Claire is a friendly Cute Monster.
- Gentle Giant: Claire is a huge, almost indestructible monster — and an incredibly kind Pony.
- Hero's First Rescue: When Claire sees Little Flappy being attacked in midairby a big wyrm-like creature of Shadow, she first drives off the attacker with her love beam, then teleports over to the fallen flappy thing, grabs him with her multiple tongues and carries him back to Granny Pie to receive medical treatment. As the title of the story suggests, this deed is significant to Claire's future.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Claire, Pinkie Pie and the other Daughters of Paradise were sired by Paradise, an extradimensional being of Cosmic level power. Pinkie looks mostly like a normal Pony. Claire ... does not.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Claire is lonely because her twin Pinkie almost never visits and she doesn't fit into the world of normal-sized, visible Ponies.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Though Claire likes herself and her powers, she sometimes wishes she could have a more normal life — impossible for her, given her size, shape and invisibility:She couldn't even go inside and be with other ponies at their festivals. None of the buildings in Dunnich, not even the Town Hall, was big enough for her now-gigantic form. And she couldn't dance at them, not even outdoors — a couple of near-tragedies had made her realize that somepony who could crush a house in an act of clumsiness should neither dance around normal-sized Ponies nor even their structures. Sometimes she would stand at a window and watch a party, but never in town — things were just too crowded there for her ungainly form.
Romance and marriage seemed out of the question for her. By her nature she was able to love anything sentient, of any sex, but there was no suitable creature for her to court. Normal Ponies, even those who knew and liked her, were not attracted to a huge invisible fluffy pony, especially one overendowed with heads and eyes and tongues. - Invisibility: Claire's normal condition. She is normally transparent to visible light: under the right conditions she can be seen as a translucency, and anything in her (an undigested meal) or on her (clothing, decorations, an object or person she's carrying) is visible. She is visible to infra-red and ultra-violet light and reflects radio waves. The color of her fluff is described as "infra-pink" and her eyes are "ultra-blue," indicating reflectivity in the infra-red and ultra-violet spectrum.
- Our Wormholes Are Different: Claire's main magical talent is that she can at will open and pass through Gates from one part of spacetime to another. She is limited primarly by her level of power and her knowledge of the multiverse — and her Cutie Mark is a multiversal map, so that's what her Cutie Mark is telling her. Literally.
- Power Perversion Potential: Claire is basically a huge, invisible, super-strong teleporting Tentacle Monster. You do the math. Fortunately (for the town of Dunnich), she's far too nice to use her abilities on anyone save a very special someone, and only with that entity's consent. On the evidence so far, she's a virgin.
- Prehensile Hair: All Earth Ponies have this, and the Daughters of Paradise take it up a notch (as shown in canon with Pinkie Pie). Claire's hair is of course fluffier, longer and even more prehensile than is even the case with "normal" Daughters Of Paradise.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Though the Ponies in general are this by Human standards, the Daughters of Paradise are normally this by Pony standards. They are fluffy, have huge innocent eyes and speak by making a variety of meeping, gasping and spitting sounds. The exceptions are Pinkie Pie, who looks more like a normal Pony, and Claire Pie, who looks like an Eldritch Abomination (if one can see her at all, since she's invisible).
- Shout-Out: To H. P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror. Inverted because the Expies of Yog-Sothoth, Wizard Whateley, Lavinia Whateley, Wilbur Whately and Wilbur's Twin — Paradise, Granny Pie, Cloudy Quartz, Claire Pie and Pinkie Pie — are all good guys.
- Thinking Up Portals: Claire "Least Noticeable" Pie's primary ability is that she can open temporary Gates at will, enabling her to go to any location for which she has the power (the whole Earth is within easy range for her). This is extremely useful given that she is too large to fit through most doors or move easily through congested terrain. It also makes it possible for her to fulfill her destiny — open a Gate to Paradise and redeem the world.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Dunnich, whose secret is that the Friends of Paradise are in contact with an actual extradimensional entity, Paradise. The deeper secret is that Paradise is the collective intelligence of The World That Was Lost. The reason for keeping this secret is plain from Nightmares Are Tragic: namely, Paradise fears that the Cosmics might hunt it down if they knew that it had survived their attempt to destroy it in the vanished timeline.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Claire is a monstrous Half-Equid Hybrid, while Little Flappy is a straight-out interstellar alien.
- White Mage: Granny Pie fits the bill: her magic seems focused on dispelling evil, healing and protection spells.
