When Yeltsin Met Pinkie

Location: Горки-9 Presidential Dacha, Barvikha, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation

Date: July 10th, 1996

Time: 1:15 AM

Pinkie Pie thought that she was going to cover the room with the usual shower of confetti, balloons, and streamers. But when the party cannon blasted, a single custard pie shot out of its bore and hit Boris Yeltsin squarely in the face.

“Augh, blyad’!” Yeltsin spat through the custard, staggering back and falling on the floor. That was not the kind of shock that a man with a heart condition needed. “What the hell is this shit?”

“Oopsie…” Pinkie said, looking down at the party cannon. “I guess I forgot that I still had a pie in there from when Mr. and Mrs. Cake sponsored the Ponyville Pie-Throwing Contest.”

“Pinkie!” Twilight yelled. “What did you do that for!?”

“Hey, how was I supposed to remember that the next shot was a pie? I put it in there a week and a half ago!” Pinkie said in her own defense.

“Twilight, quick! Take us back to Ponyville!” Fluttershy said frantically, hovering beside the unicorn. “Before Boris what’s-his-name goes nuts again!”

Twilight stood up and concentrated. Her horn again glowed a brilliant magenta, and an aura formed around her entire body. But, like before, it only lasted for a few seconds, and the magic fizzled out.

“Drat,” Twilight sighed, dropping to the ground. “I still need some more time.”

“Let’s take our chances with the guards!” Fluttershy cried. “We need to get out of here!”

“Aw, no we don’t,” Pinkie Pie said calmly. “Mr. Boris isn’t mad. Look!”

Fluttershy and Twilight weakly turned toward Yeltsin, afraid of what they were about to see. But to their shock, the Russian president wasn’t fired up in another fit of insane rage. Instead, he was sitting upright, strangely content, scraping globs of custard off his cheeks and eating it right out of his hand.

“My God,” Yeltsin gurgled, his mouth filled with pie. “This is the most delicious custard I’ve tasted in my entire life.” In the blink of an eye, crackpot Yeltsin was calm.

“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Pinkie said “It’s Mrs. Cake’s super-secret recipe! I don’t know anyplace else that makes better custard pie than Sugarcube Corner!”

“This is fantastic… That Mrs. Cake you keep talking about deserves a goddamned gramota for this stuff. Where in Moscow is this… Sugarcube Corner?” asked Yeltsin, scraping more custard off of his chin.

“Mosca-what?” asked Pinkie. “I already told you, silly! Sugarcube Corner is back home in Ponyville!”

The little pink pony had brought up that Ponyville place again, and as Yeltsin sat, thought, and ate the sweet custard that was caked on his face, he began to doubt his former theory. If these little ponies were good-for-nothing pensioners loyal to Gennady Zyuganov that were trying to drive him wild, then why would they still be playing up the part if he had already figured out the whole scheme?

Yeltsin had removed most of the custard from his eyes now, and he turned to look at Twilight and Fluttershy. The pegasus hovered in the air as she looked back at him with a worried expression. She was flying. Those wings were actually keeping her airborne. And the unicorn… her horn kept glowing. She strained and strained to do… something… but her horn never glowed for more than a few seconds.

How could they be costumes? How could someone have devised a pony costume with wings that can sufficiently keep someone airborne? And that glowing horn… it wasn’t some cheap piece of light-up plastic. It had some sort of aura. Yeltsin could feel some kind of strange disturbance in the air about him every time it shined. The president, seated on the floor of his office in custard-covered pajamas, could only shake his head and lick more of the pie filling off his fingers. And the custard… it was like nothing he had ever tasted before. It was as if the very pastry had been crafted with ingredients from an entirely different world.

“So,” Yeltsin said to the ponies. “You’re not pensioners?”

Oh, is this guy is absolutely clueless, Twilight thought to herself.

“Of course not! We’re ponies!” Pinkie laughed.

“And you’re not working for Zyuganov?” he asked.

“Nope!” Pinkie answered. “I’ve never even heard of this Zooganzo guy.”

So it finally seemed to Yeltsin that these little ponies truly had nothing to do with Zyuganov or the communist party. But at the same time, he still couldn’t quite wrap his head around the idea of little talking ponies. He sat there for a few more seconds, watching them.

Suddenly, a creak was heard through the open door of the stairwell, followed by two sets of heavy, rushing footsteps.

“Boris Nikolayevich! Are you okay?” came a voice from the stairwell.

“Oh, blyad’! The guards!” Yeltsin gasped. He jerkily climbed back to his feet, looking this way and that, stopping to face the door to his bedroom. “Quick, you three hide in here. If anyone sees you, we’ll all be in deep shit!”

Pinkie Pie wheeled the party cannon through the doorway as Fluttershy grabbed Twilight Sparkle and flew in behind her. Yeltsin shut the door and turned around. A few seconds later, two senior sergeant militsiya officers with their lustrous badges stormed through the door to the office bearing flashlights and pistols at the ready. But they stopped after the passed beneath the doorframe, eyes wide with suspicion as they gawked at the portly man in the themed pajamas, smeared with custard pie.

“Boris Nikolayevich…” one of them began. “What the hell happened in here? We… we heard all this banging and crashing, and… Sir, what’s that stuff all over your face?”

“Pie,” Yeltsin said nonchalantly. The officers exchanged very confused glances. “Custard pie.”

“But what was all that noise? It sounded like the whole house was coming down! And then we thought we heard a gunshot!” said the second officer.

“That’s outrageous!” Yeltsin continued nervously. “No, I just… decided I wanted a midnight snack. So I um. I went downstairs to get some pie. And then I came back up here.”

Yeltsin fished around into the depths of his mind for something to explain the sounds of the furniture being tossed around and the firing of the party cannon.

“And when I came back up here,” Yeltsin added, “I had a toe spasm. Yes. A very, very, very, very severe toe spasm. And I fell down. And that’s what all the commotion was.”

One officer leaned toward the other and whispered,

“I think he’s been drinking again.”

“Well I think he’s finally gone off the deep end,” the other one whispered back.

“Listen, everything is fine,” Yeltsin said, moving to the officers and shooing them back out to the stairwell. “I dropped the pie and made a little mess, but that’s all. If there was a real problem, I’d have called over the intercom. You two should get back to patrol duty.”

“But what about the toe spasm? Should we call a nurse from the sanatorium?”

“No! I walked it off! I mean, I crawled it off. And I was beating at the ground, too, because it was a real doozy. Whatever I did, I got rid of it, and I made a lot of noise in the process. Alright men, I appreciate your coming in here to check on things. Your country thanks you. I need to clean the place up. Goodnight!”

Yeltsin slammed the door to the office, leaving the two officers on the stairs.

“He’s lost it, Yuriy,” one of the guards mumbled. “He’s finally lost it. The election must have been too much for him.”

“Hey, can you blame him?” the other responded as they made for the front door of the dacha, holstering their weapons. “You try dealing with the situation in this country, plus almost losing to that asshole Zyuganov, and see if you don’t crack up in the process.”

Boris Yeltsin hurried back to the bedroom door and slowly opened it.

“Alright, they left,” he called inside. Pinkie Pie came hopping out with a carefree grin on her face. Twilight and Fluttershy left the bedroom much more gingerly, watching Yeltsin cautiously.

The Russian president strode over to the windows and peeked out through the curtains, watching for the guards to walk down the footpath.

“I don’t understand how he calmed down so much,” Twilight whispered to Fluttershy.

“Yeah. He must have really liked that pie.”

Yeltsin, still peering out the window, waited another few moments.

“Good. They’re gone,” the president finally sighed as he turned and walked over to the pie tin on the floor by the bedroom door. He picked it up and brought it to his desk and then turned to the server, where he grabbed a few cocktail napkins and started to wipe the rest of the custard off his face and pajamas.

“Damn it. I need something to straighten me out,” Yeltsin muttered as he tossed the cocktail napkins in the trash can by his desk. He reached for a bottle of Putinka on the server, but retracted his hand as soon as he touched it. “Better get the good stuff.” He got down on his knees and opened the small door of the server. Pinkie Pie hopped over to watch him as he drew from his stash a bottle of Georgian Eristoff vodka, with the refulgent symbol of the wolf on the label. He took a glass and uncapped the bottle, but before he poured any, he looked at the tiny cup, shrugged, and simply put the whole bottle on his desk.

“What’s that?” asked Pinkie.

“Nothing for you, little pony. This is all for me. It’s expensive stuff,” Yeltsin grumbled as he plopped into his desk chair before the vodka, pie, and kasha. He thought for a second about what he just said. “I still don’t believe it. I’m talking to a little pink pony,” Yeltsin said in disbelief, taking a swig from the bottle of Eristoff. Pinkie hopped onto Yeltsin’s desk and sat down, watching the president with a big smile on her face.

“What does Pinkie find so interesting about this guy?” Fluttershy asked Twilight as they watched from across the room. “He’s a lunatic.”

“I don’t think anypony will ever really know what makes Pinkie Pie tick,” Twilight said. “But as long as he’s calmed down, we should just take things one step at a time. I’m feeling better now, and I’ll be ready to take us back soon.”

Yeltsin took the spoon out of the bowl of kasha, licked it clean, and proceeded to take a glob of custard from the pie tin.

“But if a little pony wants to talk to me, I shouldn’t be rude. So tell me. What’s this place you keep talking about, pink pony?” Yeltsin asked out of sincere interest. “What is this Ponyville?”

“Ponyville is the town where I live! And Fluttershy and Twilight live there, too! It’s super-neat!” Pinkie Pie began. “There are all kinds of different places to live in Equestria, but Ponyville will always be number one for me!”

“So then this… Equestria… It is your country?” Boris Yeltsin asked, following his question with another small gulp of vodka.

“Equestria is a huge kingdom that stretches from the Frozen North all the way to the Badlands down south! All the big cities are over in the east except for Canterlot, where the princesses live!” Yeltsin looked like he was about to break out laughing. Surely this was the stuff of fairytales. Kingdoms, princesses, and talking animals. He didn’t want to believe it all, but at the same time he found himself buying into everything with fascination.

“Well how about that. It sounds a lot like our Russia,” Yeltsin said, pointing to the map that hung on the wall behind his desk. It was dated, and Russia was still labeled as the RSFSR of the Soviet Union. “Our motherland is the largest country on earth, little pony. It spans from the arctic plains up north to the warm regions by the Caucasus and the Black Sea. Much of the population is over here in the western oblasts. But there are bigger cities in the east as well.” Yeltsin continued to eat the delicious custard as Pinkie hopped off the desk to look at the map.

“We had princes and princesses, too. And kings and queens. A long time ago,” Yeltsin added.

“Really?” Pinkie asked, turning back around to face Yeltsin.

“Sure we did. But not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“They were ousted in a revolution and slaughtered by the revolutionaries,” Yeltsin said nonchalantly without so much as a flinch, dipping back into the custard pie with his spoon. Pinkie’s mouth hit the floor. Twilight and Fluttershy were equally as disturbed on the other side of the room.

“That’s horrible!” Pinkie moaned.

“Eh, that’s just how life works sometimes,” Yeltsin sputtered through a mouthful of custard. “One minute you’re the tsar and you’re on top of the world. The next minute, you’re kidnapped by revolutionaries and put to death.” He started laughing, but then he frowned, staring bitterly ahead at nothing in particular. “It’s almost like what happened to me. One day, I’m the hero that’s going to bring democracy to the new Russia. The next day, everyone writes me off and gets ready to vote for that scumbag, Zyuganov. Especially the pensioners.”

“But… but…” Pinkie stuttered with wide eyes. “If there are no kings or queens or princes or princesses… what do you have instead?”

“A president,” Yeltsin said with a smirk.

“Who’s that?” Pinkie asked. Yeltsin raised an eyebrow.

“Me.” Pinkie was beside herself.

“Wow! So you’re like a kooky version of Princess Celestia that wears funny clothes and likes pie!” This outburst then prompted Yeltsin to ask about the monarchy.

So Pinkie told the president about the princess and Canterlot. Yeltsin then told Pinkie about himself and Moscow. Pinkie went on about Sweet Apple Acres, and Boris Yeltsin informed the little pony about the Soviet kolhoz system. Pinkie spoke of Fillydelphia and Manehattan. Yeltsin talked about Saint Petersburg and Vladivostok. Pinkie explained the situation with Discord and King Sombra. Boris Yeltsin went on a tirade about the August Coup, the communists, Gennady Zyuganov, and even the Right Cause. The two of them were talking for over an hour as Twilight and Fluttershy listened in silence.

But as Yeltsin carried on, he continued to eat the week-and-a-half-old pie and drink the Eristoff. He had polished off almost half the bottle, and now he was unsteadily walking about the room, waving his hands as he talked, with Pinkie prancing along behind him.

“The last five years were a nightmare,” Yeltsin gargled, double-stepping and regaining his balance. “It’s all because of those pensioners, and Zyuganov.” The president paused, and then added, “And Tajikistan.” He turned around to face Pinkie Pie. “And I thought that you and your little friends were pensioners, trying to drive me crazy...”

“Why would we want to drive you crazy?” Pinkie Pie giggled.

“Yeah, he’s crazy enough by himself,” an irritated Twilight grumbled from beside the president’s bookshelves, where she was now resting with Fluttershy.

“I really thought you were here on behalf of Zyuganov…” Yeltsin blathered on. “But how could that be? You’re happy little ponies. You gave me pie. Zyuganov wouldn’t have given me pie. He doesn’t have a heart.”

Yetsin staggered over to an armchair and fell back onto the cushion as Pinkie Pie hopped over and joined him.

“This Mr. Zooganzo guy doesn’t seem very nice,” Pinkie said to the plastered president.

“He’s not,” Yeltsin mumbled. “And to think… I accused you of working for him… How could I have been so insulting?” He sat up in the chair, and looked right into Pinkie’s eyes. “I’m sorry, little pink pony. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings… But you have to understand, I don’t know what to think about anything anymore. So much has been falling apart over the last few years… Everyone is blaming me for everything… And sometimes I just want to hide in a little room, away from the rest of the world, and…”

“And?” Pinkie asked.

“And… and…”

Boris Yeltsin buried his face in his hands and started bawling, surprising Twilight and Fluttershy, who until that point were barely paying any attention to Pinkie’s conversation with the president. His sobs and heaves coated with the strong smell of vodka, Yeltsin cried and wept as the stress of the first term took hold.

“Aw, don’t cry, Mr. Boris,” Pinkie told the distressed politician.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Yeltsin sobbed. “The next term will be as bad as the first one! It’ll be another mad scramble to fix the economy and keep the country afloat, all the while losing support to people like Zyuganov. They're all laughing at me. For the public episodes, for the drinking... Let them stand in my shoes for a week and see how well they do. They’ll see that at the end of the day, they’re alone, and that there’s no one they can really trust to help them. A man has no friends in the world of politics. He has his opponents, and he has his allies, but at the end of the day, allies and friends are two different things. And my only friends are the bottles on that goddamned server.”

“Hey, that’s not true,” Pinkie said. “I’m your friend!”

Boris Yeltsin wiped his eyes and stared at Pinkie Pie, still gasping and sniffling through the tears. Even now, the little pink pony was a ball of sunshine as she sat beside Yeltsin’s chair and watched him with her innocent eyes. She wasn’t oblivious to how he felt. She was just… happy. Because that was just Pinkie Pie’s way.

“You… you are?” Yeltsin sniffled.

“I sure am!” Pinkie answered. “We were friends from the moment we met, Mr. Boris. Because when I saw you, I just had this feeling, deep down inside, that you were in need of a friend. And here I am!”

“How, little pony?” Yeltsin asked, slurring the question as the vodka continued to blur his vision and maim his speech. “How are you so happy? Where do you find such joy?”

“I wasn’t always this happy, Mr. Boris,” Pinkie said. “I remember days when I was sad, just like you are right now. When I was a filly, I used to work all day on my parents’ rock farm. And it was really depressing. We’d just work, moving the rocks, and there was no talking and no smiling. Just rocks.” But then Pinkie Pie hopped to her feet, looking up at the light on the ceiling with wide, shiny eyes.

“But then, one day, when I was working in the south field, trying to rotate the rocks over to the east field, I saw a huge blast of color in the sky! It was a gigantic rainbow from a Sonic Rainboom. And it actually got made by a pegasus that would later become one of my best friends!” Pinkie hopped and spun around to face the president again.

“When I saw that rainbow, it was like I was a whole different pony! I never felt joy like that before! And it felt so good, I just wanted to keep smiling forever! And I wanted everyone I knew to smile, too!” Yeltsin wiped his eyes again as he listened to the end of the smiling pony’s story.

“My God… That’s beautiful…” the president gasped. “To know such happiness…”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Boris. Someday, you’ll see your rainbow too! I just know you will! I’d make one for you right now if I could, but only my friend Rainbow Dash can do that, and she’s back home in Ponyville. But I know something that I can give you!” Yeltsin was on the edge of his seat.

“What’s that?” he inquired.

“A big hug!”

In an instant, Pinkie Pie jumped up and gave Boris Yeltsin a long, tight squeeze. At first, Yeltsin’s arms rested limply on the sides of the chair. But as Pinkie continued her embrace, the president brought his hands together around her back and hugged just as hard. Even through the fuzzy, numbing distortion of the vodka, Yeltsin could feel Pinkie’s heart beating for two, or perhaps three, or even four. And Boris Yeltsin felt a happy warmth overcome his entire body that was unlike anything he had ever felt before. All from a single hug from a cuddly little pink pony.

Pinkie Pie dropped back to all fours on the floor before the president and watched him with that big, unfaltering smile. And Yeltsin, marveling over the sensation about him, could do nothing but say,

“Thank you, little pony.”

But Yeltsin soon felt another sensation come over him. It was the disturbance in the air that he had detected before, every time the unicorn’s horn had glowed. He looked over at the bookshelf to find the purple pony surrounded by an aura again, but this time it was pulsating steadily and did not fade away.

“Okay, there’s enough magic flowing again to take us back to Equestria,” Twilight announced. “And It’s about time. I’ve had enough sob-stories for one day.”

“Aww, do we have to leave already?” Pinkie asked Twilight.

“Yes, Pinkie. We’ve stayed around here longer than we should have. I need to get back home and write another letter to the princess explaining all of the stuff that went on and why we didn’t make it to Manehattan.”

Pinkie Pie’s ears drooped as she stared at the floor.

“Well, I guess it’s time to head back to Ponyville,” Pinkie Pie sighed. But just as quickly as she lost the little smile on her face, it came right back. “Bye, Mr. Boris! It’s been fun! I hope you see your rainbow really soon!”

“No, wait!” Yeltsin cried as Pinkie Pie hopped over to Twilight and Fluttershy. He slid off his chair, landing on his knees. He reached out toward the three ponies with his good hand. “Don’t leave!”

But Pinkie Pie kept bouncing along, right over to Twilight sparkle, whose aura continued to shine and expand.

“Please, pink pony!” Yeltsin begged, crawling unsteadily toward Pinkie and her friends. “Stay here for just a little while longer!”

“Hurry, Twilight!” Fluttershy shrieked. “Boris what’s-his-name is going right for us!”

“I’m trying,” Twilight groaned through clinched teeth. Her eyes were closed tight as she concentrated, envisioning her destination. The aura was getting brighter and more powerful as the gap between two entirely different worlds was almost breached.

Yeltsin had climbed to his feet now, and was wobbling across the floor in his drunken stupor, closing in on the three ponies. Fluttershy screamed and grabbed onto Twilight, who strained and strained to build up enough power to meet the demands of the teleportation spell. Yeltsin lumbered closer, respiring heavily as the stench of vodka coated every breath.

“The magic! The happiness!” Yeltsin gasped, as he took a flying leap.

“Got it!” Twilight yelled as a bright light flashed from her horn and eyes. The emission filled the room for a mere instant, and when it subsided, the president saw nothing but purple twinkles and a blank floor before him as his jump ended in a tragic crash with the floorboards. Fortunately, Yeltsin’s girth absorbed most of the shock of the fall, so it took him only seconds to recover as he propped himself up with both of his arms and frantically looked around the room.

“No! They’re gone!” Yeltsin wailed. “The pink pony…The happiness! The friendship!”

The emptiness and rage were building up inside of Boris Yeltsin once again. He climbed to his feet as the room around him seemed to spin. He looked up at the ceiling, and threw his hands up in the air.

“Come back! Please, come back! Or take me with you! Don’t leave me here with the pensioners!”

Pinkie Pie’s lively spirit and warm embrace had given Yeltsin a small taste of the joy that he yearned to find each day, but never could. But one mere hug from the cuddly pink pony was simply not enough. For the pure, unadulterated bliss that stemmed from the magic that was friendship ended up being something like a narcotic for weary, distraught Boris Yeltsin. He immediately found himself craving more. He wanted to eternally lock himself away in a small corner of the world that was filled with ponies and rainbows. He wanted to drift carelessly in the magnificent high of friendship and magic. He needed it, and he needed it now. As the seconds ticked on, the craving grew stronger. Yeltsin became hysterical, yelling and screaming up to the ceiling, calling for the little ponies to return. And as his desperate thirst for the warm embrace of happiness grew and mixed with the inebriation from the Eristoff, the president started to lose control.

Yeltsin ran erratically around the room, pulling books off shelves, kicking over furniture, punching holes in the walls, and tearing down the curtains. He grabbed the pastry tin from his desk, still partly filled with custard, and pied the painting of Alexander Pushkin right in the face. Then he grabbed the bowl of kasha and tartar sauce and chucked it right through the glass of the window, beating his chest and howling like a madman. As Yeltsin looked around the destroyed room, he grew progressively more unstable. He charged forward, plowing right through the door to the stairwell, breaking the lock and doorknob right off. And he thundered down the stairs, heading for the front doors of the dacha.

Boris Yeltsin threw open the doors in the vestibule and stumbled out into the darkness of early morning. Blind with rage and the blur of the vodka, he ran right off the footpath and into the small trees and shrubbery before the house. In the midst of the foliage, Yeltsin’s thin pajama shirt became ensnared on a tree branch. But this didn’t stop the wild man. He pressed onward as the shirt tore right off his body, exposing his massive gut.

“Come back, little ponies! Come back!” Yeltsin shouted into the night as he thundered down the street.

*   *   *

Location: Barvikha Village, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation

Date: July 10th, 1996

Time: 2:40 AM

Outside, in the peaceful morning air of Barvikha, the two senior sergeants of militsiya that had just a short while ago checked on President Yeltsin were continuing their morning rounds, talking as they walked along with their flashlight beams dancing on the sidewalk.

“I don’t know, Yuriy,” one of them said. “I’m off-duty tomorrow, but I have no plans for the afternoon. I don’t want to waste the free day.”

“Well, you could join Svetlana and I for dinner,” Yuriy offered. “You know how she loves to entertain. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind making some extra borscht and dumplings.”

The first officer came to a dead stop.

“No. No way, Yuriy,” he said, making a sweeping motion with his hands.

“Why not?”

“Because the last time I tried your wife’s borscht, I was on the shitter for a week!”

Yuriy was ready to rebut and defend his wife’s cooking, but he stopped and raised an eyebrow, looking past his counterpart.

“Hey… Pyotor… Do you hear that?”

“What?” Pyotor asked, turning around.

A voice was audible. It was a short distance away, getting louder and louder. From behind the bushes by the corner of the sidewalk, a shirtless Boris Yeltsin ran out into the street, arms flailing wildly.

“Come back, little pink pony!” Boris Yeltsin shouted to the heavens. “Show me the rainbows and the happiness! Let me hand-feed you sugar lumps and hold your cuddly fetlocks!”

The two senior sergeants gawked in disbelief at the half-naked president as he hustled along. Their jaws dropped as they tried to comprehend the bizarre scene.

“Oh… blyad’…” they wheezed in unison.

“A toe spasm, huh? Yeah. Toe spasm – my ass,” Pyotor said to Yuriy. “I was right. He’s gone batshit crazy.”  The officers took off after Boris Yeltsin. Pyotor grabbed the radio on his belt.

“Barvikha-12, this is Sergeant Ivanov. We need two squad cars and an ambulance at Gorki-9, and fast. Over.”

“They’ll dispatch shortly. Over,” informed the voice over the radio.

“Good. And phone ahead to the sanatorium. Make sure the president’s doctor and nurses are ready and waiting when we show up. Over.”

“Copy, Ivanov. What the hell is going on out there?” questioned the voice on the radio.

“Yeltsin’s lost his goddamned mind.”