Yeltsin, Pinkie, and the Long Road to Petersburg

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

Date: July 12th, 1996

Time: 8:35 PM

“Hiya, Mr. Boris!” Pinkie Pie called, waving pleasantly to the convulsing man at the desk in the corner of the room. But her hoof stopped in midair as she looked about the trashed office in confusion. “Wow, this place turned into a real dump. What the heck happened in here while we were gone?”

“H.. hel… hello, pink pony,” Boris Yeltsin stuttered as he weakly returned the wave. “Wait… no. No!” Yeltsin gasped as he jammed his eyes shut and caressed his temples. “Get ahold of yourself, Yeltsin. Remember what they told you at the hospital. Remember what Berezovskiy said… The ponies aren’t real. They’re all in your mind. Tell yourself that they don’t exist, open your eyes, and they’ll all disappear.”

The president slowly opened his eyes to find Pinkie sitting on his desk.

“Blyad’!” Yeltsin screamed as he tried to push his seat away from the desk. The chair fell backwards, taking with it a flailing Russian president who toppled to the floor.

“Oh great, he’s afraid of us again,” Twilight moaned as she proceeded toward the president’s desk with Fluttershy.

“Come on, Mr. Boris, did you really forget everything we talked about last time?” Pinkie asked with a giggle. Yeltsin, still wide-eyed and timorous, was struggling to climb to his feet.

“Reality itself is breaking down,” Yeltsin stammered. “I’m losing my mind. I need a stiff drink.” He staggered toward the server covered with liquor bottles that stood by the wall, grabbed a half-filled bottle of vodka, but stopped before he opened it. “Wait. Don’t do it, Yeltsin,” he said aloud as he left the bottle on the server and backed away. “Remember what happened last time. Shirtless in the street at 2 AM in the morning.” He turned around, leaned on his desk, and let his head hang down. “I… I need to…”

“Aw, what’s the matter, Mr. Boris? Do you need another hug?” With that, she hopped to the other end of the desk and threw her hooves around the distraught politician, just as she had done during the final moments of their previous visit.

Suddenly, Yeltsin felt that distinct sensation again. It was the warmth and happiness that he had been without, but desperately needed, during the four long, trying years of his first term. There was that strong, vibrant heartbeat of a happy little pink pony that could put perhaps even the largest, most loving human heart to shame. And unlike the last time, where half a bottle of vodka was coursing through his veins and distorting reality, he knew that there was nothing imaginary about Pinkie Pie. Everything he was experiencing was unquestionable reality.

“They… they were wrong. All of them. They’re... so horribly wrong…” Yeltsin whispered. The Russian president suddenly wrapped his arms around Pinkie Pie, lifted her right off the desk, and gave her a tight squeeze. “Ahah! I knew it! I knew I didn’t imagine it!” Yeltsin shouted happily, almost on the verge of tears. “I knew I wasn’t crazy! You’re as real as anything else in this room!” Yeltsin danced out from behind the desk, spinning Pinkie Pie around in the air as Twilight and Fluttershy stepped out of the ecstatic president’s path.

“Well, that’s one way to get him to come around,” Twilight said to Fluttershy as they watched Yeltsin cavort with joy.

“You’re all real!” Yeltsin said. “I just knew it! You, the pink pony with the cannon!” He let Pinkie hop down to the floor as he turned and pointed to Fluttershy. “And you! The golden one with the pegasus wings!” Then, Yeltsin pointed to Twilight Sparkle. “And you, the unicorn with the attitude!” Twilight rolled her eyes. “I was right! I’m not crazy!”

“I don’t know about that last part,” Twilight grumbled under her breath.

“But wait,” Boris Yeltsin said as he put a hand to his head. “You said you all were going back home. You said you were heading back to… what was it? Ponyville? And then you disappeared from the office. And now you wanted to come back?”

“Not exactly,” Twilight sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“Well I’m all ears, my little friends,” Boris Yeltsin said as he motioned for the three ponies to follow him over to the other side of the room to the sofa and chairs around the small glass table in the corner. “Tell me, please. What happened?”

“We never made it back home,” Twilight said as she flopped down on one of the sofa cushions. Much like the first time she appeared in the office, the unicorn was completely worn out. Fluttershy hovered over and sat beside her as Yeltsin made his way to one of the chairs with Pinkie hopping behind him. “I’m starting to worry that we’re all stuck here.”

“But… where did you go?” the Russian president asked as he took a seat in one of the single chairs. Pinkie took the seat next to Yeltsin. “You were gone for a whole day. No, even more!”

“We ended up in a really creepy place,” Fluttershy explained. “Twilight’s spell didn’t work, and we just poofed into a dark alley in between a bunch of tall buildings.”

“Huh. I guess you ended up somewhere in Moscow proper,” Yeltsin surmised. “I hope you didn’t try to cross any streets. The traffic in Moscow is legendary, and nobody knows how to drive. They’ll run you right down.”

“We stayed in the alley for a while,” Twilight continued, “but we had to find somewhere else to go when a bunch of guys came out of one of the buildings.”

“They were scary, Mr. Boris,” Fluttershy said, shuddering as she talked. “They were loud and crazy, and we didn’t know what they’d do if they saw us. So we ran around, trying to find somewhere to hide for the night, and eventually we found a spot under some giant pipes on the side of one of the streets.”

“Giant pipes by the roadside?” Yeltsin asked as he loosened his tie. “Tell me, was there some big factory out there somewhere? Lots of stacks pumping out smoke?” Fluttershy nodded in response.

“Yeah, that place reeked,” Pinkie added.

“And these people in the alleyway… What were they wearing?” the president inquired.

“They all had tracksuits and really shiny shoes,” Fluttershy said.

“And beanie hats!” Pinkie added.

“And they weren’t just in the alley,” Twilight said. “There were a bunch of them hanging around those pipes, too. We had to walk around for a while before we found a clear spot.”

“Christ, you ended up in Kapotnya,” Yeltsin groaned as he reclined in the chair and looked up toward the ceiling. “The pipes by the roadside, the smoke… it must have been the refinery at Kapotnya. Of all the places in the city, it had to be the armpit of Moscow. It’s a disgrace. A dump. Nothing there but a bunch of frigging gopniks.”

“What?” the three ponies asked in unison.

“The guys in the tracksuits,” Yeltsin elaborated. “They were gopniks. A bunch of lowlife morons that loaf around all day smoking cigarettes and guzzling energy drinks. They reek of shaurma and blast their crap techno music everywhere they go. Damn, you three were lucky you didn’t get knifed.”

Twilight, Fluttershy, and Pinkie exchanged confused glances.

“Look, anyway, what happened after you hid behind all the pipes?” Yeltsin asked them.

“Well, we had to wait around until Twilight was able to cast the teleportation spell again,” Fluttershy said. “She was really drained. It took almost a full day.”

“Trying to teleport around here is one of the most exhausting things I’ve ever tried to do,” Twilight sighed. “It drains magic like nothing I’ve ever felt before, and it takes me way longer to get it flowing again.”

“So Twilight tried another spell to get us back home, but we just ended up in the woods somewhere,” Fluttershy informed the president. “And the weird thing about it was… It was late afternoon when she tried to teleport again, but when we appeared in the woods, it was nighttime.”

“Yeah, that was crazy,” Pinkie added. “It was like five hours passed in five seconds.”

Yeltsin found himself amazed once again, just has he had been when Pinkie Pie had told him about Equestria during their first meeting. As if the unicorn’s ability to transport from place to place wasn’t already fascinating enough, it seemed that time was being traversed in addition to distance, and inadvertently, at that.

“So then what happened?”

“Well, we had to wait for Twilight to get charged up again. But instead of trying to go back home, she tried to come back here.” Fluttershy said as she shifted in her seat on the cushion and stretched a wing.

“I figured that this would be the safest place to go,” Twilight said to the president, adding quietly, “even if it meant putting up with you again.” Twilight Sparkle closed her eyes and rolled onto her back. “Surprisingly enough, it was easier to get back here. When you teleport, you have to envision the destination and see yourself on the other side. Whenever I tried to get back to Ponyville, the visions were cloudy. I tried as hard as I could to put myself there in my mind, but I just couldn’t do it. Then, when I thought about coming back here, it was crystal-clear.”

“And here we are!” Pinkie said to the president as she threw her hooves up. Yeltsin leaned forward and shook his head. An incredulous smile was plastered on his face.

“Incredible,” he said. “Absolutely incredible. Hell, I still can’t believe you appeared at Kapotnya.”

“Can we stay here with you for a little while? Twilight's still trying to figure out how to get us back home,” Fluttershy asked.

"Of course, my little friends, of course!” the president said with sincere concern in his voice. “You know, I’m glad you’re back. Things haven’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows over the last two days for me, either.”

“Aw, what’s wrong, Mr. Boris? Did that Zooganzo guy make you cry again?” Pinkie asked Yeltsin.

“Hah, no, Zyuganov hasn’t done anything… yet,” Yeltsin groaned as he rested his head on his hands. “After you left two days ago, nobody believed me when I told them what happened. They took me to a hospital. Claimed I was crazy when I tried to tell them about you three. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, some of the employees - a bunch of lousy pensioners, no doubt - informed Zyuganov and the communists about the whole thing. Now he wants to tell the whole country about it, convince them that I’m insane, and get me impeached.”

“A peach?”

“No, pink pony. Impeached. Kick me out of office so he can be the new president.”

“That’s terrible!” Pinkie cried with her hooves over her mouth.

“But it could happen very soon,” Yeltsin murmured as he reclined in his chair once again. “And at this point, I have no idea what I could possibly do to…” The president’s voice trailed off as a stupefied look appeared on his face. Slowly, he sat up in his chair and looked each pony in the eye one by one.

“My God. I’m an idiot… You’re all back! You’re here with me, in my office!” Yeltsin shot out of his seat and began pacing around the room, stepping around the books and office supplies that littered the floor. “Yes! I can fix everything now!” the president exclaimed as he pumped his fist into the air. “I can take you to the Barvikha Sanatorium! I can show them all that the ponies exist! Then they’ll realize that I’m telling the truth! And then we can bring the communists to Barvihka to see for themselves… And if they’ve already started distributing their story… we can counter it with our own story!”

Yeltsin was getting more excited by the second as he paced about the room while Pinkie and friends tried to comprehend exactly what was going on.

“And if we have to tell the public, so be it. I’ll go down in history as the first Russian head-of-state to make contact with talking ponies! It’ll be like something out of a Strugatskiy Brothers novel. Except, you know, you replace all the extra-terrestrials and spaceships with ponies. And once my name is cleared, I’ll do everything I can to try and get you three back home before the world tries to swamp you and do anything crazy.”

Yeltsin turned back to the seating area in the corner of the office to find Pinkie, Twilight, and Fluttershy staring at him with incredulous expressions.

“What do you say, ponies? Will you come with me to the Sanatorium?” Yeltsin begged.

“But what are all the other people going to do when they see us?” Pinkie asked Boris Yeltsin.

“You help me out, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that nobody lays a finger on you. Not Zyuganov, not the doctors, not the scientists that will undoubtedly try to break my doors down... not a single person from anywhere in the world, no matter what they say or do.”

The three ponies exchanged concerned glances.

“Girls… I don’t know about this…” Fluttershy said as she sunk down to the cushion on which she was sitting.

“Oh, come on!” Yeltsin wailed. “If Zyuganov has me thrown out and becomes the new president, he’ll reform the whole goddamned Soviet Union!”

Yeltsin dug into the back of his mind for something to say. He had to persuade the ponies to go to the Sanatorium. It was the one chance he had to salvage his hopeless situation. Suddenly, a smile came to his face as he snapped his fingers.

“Do you remember what I told you a couple of days ago, pink pony?” Yeltsin inquired, kneeling down by the chair in which Pinkie Pie was resting. “Do you remember what I said about the communists? They’re the ones that killed the Russian royal family all those years ago! Didn’t you say that you have a princess back home? Princess What’s-Her-Name would want you to help me, wouldn’t she? Imagine if there were a bunch of princess-killers trying to take her down. Would you just stand there and watch and let them take her place?”

“Of course not!” Pinkie exclaimed.

“Then please, please, PLEASE, come to the hospital and help me fix this whole mess,” the Russian president pleaded. He knew he couldn’t force them, or they’d just teleport back to Kapotnya, or to the woods, or somewhere else, and all hope would be lost.

Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Twilight Sparkle didn’t know what to think. They had no idea what would happen if they just made themselves known to a whole bunch of humans at this hospital that the president kept talking about. But at the same time, Yeltsin seemed so incredibly desperate that they couldn’t bring themselves to refuse. He seemed so helpless as he kneeled there by the side of Pinkie’s chair, watching each and every one of them with a forlorn face - the product of a calamitous first term and his post-election pony-fiasco.

Twilight motioned for Pinkie to join her and Fluttershy on the sofa, where the three ponies huddled and whispered among themselves, occasionally stopping to look back at the distressed politician by the armchair.

“Remember what this guy was like the first time he saw us?” Fluttershy asked her two friends. “Imagine what these other people might do! I’ve got a really bad feeling about this…”

“But Fluttershy!” Pinkie whispered shrilly, “Mr. Boris needs our help! He wouldn’t be in all this trouble if we didn’t show up in his office!”

“So you’re trying to say that this is all my fault?” Twilight hissed angrily. “I didn’t bring us here intentionally! Well, not the first time, anyway.”

The ringing of the telephone on Boris Yeltsin’s desk interrupted the group huddle. Yeltsin groaned and rose to his feet.

“Of course, only at the most inopportune times,” the president sighed. “Give me a few minutes, okay? This could be something very urgent. I can’t just let it ring.”

Uneasily, Yeltsin approached the desk and with unsteady hands, reached for the phone.

“Please don’t be bad news. I don’t need more bad news…” He picked up the phone and put the receiver to his ear. “Allo.”

“Allo, Boris Nikolayevich?” was the question that came through the receiver. Yeltsin raised a brow. Although it was slightly distorted over the line, Yeltsin thought knew who the voice belonged to, but almost didn’t believe it.

“Who’s calling?” was Yeltsin’s response.

“Gennady Zyuganov.”

“WHAT?” the Russian president roared into the transmitter as the three ponies on the sofa nearly jumped out of their skin.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Boris?” Pinkie asked. Yeltsin covered the transmitter with his hand and lowered the phone.

“It’s Zyuganov!” Yeltsin fumed. He put the phone back up to his ear. “Excuse me, ‘comrade’ Zyuganov,” Yeltsin said mockingly, “I didn’t realize this was a Party line.”

“Boris Nikolayevich, please, hear me out,” came the desperate voice from the other end of the line.

“You’ve got some balls, Zyuganov,” the president seethed. “Calling me in my own office, after everything you and your lapdog pensioners have done.”

“But that’s what I wanted to-”

“We know about everything!” Yeltsin interrupted. “Your moron supporters didn’t cover their tracks well enough. We know what you’re going to do, Zyuganov, and I’m going to put a stop to it. And when I shoot down your little plan, your head will spin when you meet a few friends of mine that helped me do it.”

“Damn it, Yeltsin! Listen to me!” Zyuganov shouted over the line. “I know that the ponies exist!”

“Alright, asshole, let’s get one thing straight-” Yeltsin began, but stopped when he realized what had just been said. He simply stood there, his mouth stupidly hanging open, as he tried to make sense of what Zyuganov told him. “Wait… what?”

“I know that the ponies exist,” Zyuganov repeated. “I… I realize now that it ‘s not just some crazy story. We’re not going to publish the Pravda article.”

This has to be a joke, Yeltsin thought as he stood with the phone to his ear, glancing back at the ponies on the sofa that were watching him with concerned stares. As if Zyuganov is suddenly going to stop the publication. This has to be some kind of trick. It must be. Maybe he’s recording the call… he wants to record me talking about the ponies to use as audio evidence that I’m crazy. Not like it matters anymore, now that the ponies came back. Guess I might as well play along with his stupid game.

“Allo? Yeltsin?”

“So you know the ponies exist, huh?” Yeltsin laughed into the transmitter cup. “That’s funny, Zyuganov, because just yesterday the very notion of talking ponies was your way of making me the laughing stock of Moscow.”

“The game has changed, Yeltsin,” Zyuganov said.

“And how is that?”

“Well… an hour and a half ago, I opened my office door, and-” Zyuganov began, but was cut off by a voice on his end of the line. Yeltsin couldn’t make out what it was saying. “Well what am I permitted to tell him?” Zyuganov asked. Yeltsin strained to listen to the second voice, but it was still inaudible. “Um. Okay. Listen, Yeltsin. I’m only allowed to tell you so much… I have a… source… that has filled me in on everything... a source that knows who these ponies are. There’s no doubt now that your stories are true. Listen - they’re still here in Russia. They haven’t gone home.”

Yeltsin looked over at the ponies again. They had stepped off the couch and were slowly approaching.

Here’s my question… does Zyuganov really know that to be true? Yeltsin thought. Or is he making up a story and getting very lucky?

“Still here in Russia, huh?” Yeltsin asked. “So where in Russia are they?”

“I… I don’t know,” came Zyuganov’s hesitant response from the other end of the line.

“Do me a favor, Zyuganov, and stop wasting my time,” Yeltsin said dismissively. “If you’re still trying to make an idiot out of me, it’s not working, and I sure as hell am not laughing yet.”

“Look, Yeltsin, what do I have to do to make you believe me?” Gennady Zyuganov asked. Yeltsin looked at the ponies by his side and cracked a smile. “Give me a minute, ‘comrade.’”

Yeltsin again covered the transmitter cup and gestured at Pinkie.

“Tell me something about yourself that I don’t already know,” the president whispered.

“Hmm. We talked about a lot of stuff the last time we were here,” Pinkie said as she sat on the floor and scratched her head. “Well, I have a pet alligator.”

“You have an alligator?”

“Yeah, a really tiny one.”

“Uh… okay... That works. I guess,” Yeltsin said as he shook his head in disbelief. “Alright, Zyuganov,” the president said into the phone. “If you’ve got this all-knowing source of yours that’s filled you in on everything… Then answer me this: the pink pony that came to my office has a pet. But what kind?”

Zyuganov’s voice became a murmur as he conversed with what Yeltsin assumed was the “source” of his.

That’s something that I couldn’t have possibly talked about in the hospital, Yeltsin thought. There's no way Zyuganov could know the answer, unless of course this new friend of his really knows about these ponies.

Then he heard a thump and a couple of clicks as Zyuganov adjusted the phone.

“She’s got an alligator named Gummy,” Zyuganov answered confidently.

Yeltsin’s heart skipped a beat. His breaths became short as he covered the phone with shaking hands and turned to Pinkie.

“Your pet alligator… what’s its name?”

“Gummy!” Pinkie answered with a grin.

Yeltsin felt his knees buckle as his stomach tied itself into an inordinate number of knots. He steadied himself with a hand on his desk as he made way to his office chair, picked it up off the floor, and slowly took a seat.

“My God…” Yeltsin said into the phone. “How did you possibly-”

He was cut off by Zyuganov, who began to provide even more information. Yeltsin waved his arm, motioning for the ponies to join him behind his desk. Once again, he covered the phone, and leaned toward Twilight.

“Do you… have an owl?” he weakly asked the unicorn, who nodded in response. He then said to Fluttershy, “And you… you have a rabbit named Angel that throws temper tantrums and takes advantage of you all the time?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Fluttershy said, looking at the carpet. “Angel’s just a little misunderstood...”

“Zyuganov, how did you know!?” Yeltsin whimpered into the phone. “How the hell could you have known all this?”

“It’s a long story, Boris Nikolayevich,” the communist on the other end of the line sighed. “But that’s not important right now. We need to find these three ponies that you saw so we can get them back home before anybody else sees them.”

“I’ve already found them!” Yeltsin cried as he gestured to the ponies with his free hand. “They’re here with me again! They returned to my office because the unicorn said she couldn’t take them back home and then didn’t know where else to go! I have reason to believe they spent a day wandering around Kapotnya…”

“Kapotnya?” Zyuganov said in disbelief. “And they came back alive? They didn't get shanked by some gopnik?”

“I know, can you believe it?”

Gennady Zyuganov began conversing with the other person on his end of the line as Yeltsin strained once more to hear what was being said.

“Hey, can I talk to Mr. Zooganzo?” Pinkie asked she propped herself up on the arm of Yeltsin’s desk chair.

“Ssh. Quiet,” Yeltsin grunted with a wave of his hand.

“How did Mr. Boris know about Angel and Owlowiscious?” Fluttershy asked her two friends.

“That Zooganzo guy must have told him. But... how did he know?” Twilight wondered as she kept an eye on Yeltsin.

“What, you do?” Yeltsin said in shock as he sat straight up. “How?” He paused. “No, to my knowledge, nobody else has seen them but me.” He paused again as he listened to the politician on the line. “We have to WHAT? Zyuganov, be serious! How the hell am I supposed to do that? Can’t you just come to us?” Yeltsin leaned on his desk as he stared off toward the other end of the room in disbelief. “And how sure are you? How do we know that it’s up there, and not here, or in Vladivostok, for the love of God? And more importantly, how do we know it’s going to work?” The Russian president covered his eyes with his hand as he sighed wearily. “Yes. Yes, I do know what the world would do. It’s not the same place into which we were born.” Again Yeltsin became quiet as he listened to Zyuganov’s response. “Alright, Zyuganov. I’m willing to shove aside everything we’ve done and said to one another over the last six years, just for a little while, and I’ll trust you on this one. I’ll do it for the sake of my three little friends, here. They need to get back home. But let’s make one thing very clear, Gennady Andreyevich. You better not be bullshitting me.”

Pinkie, Twilight,and Fluttershy listened as Yeltsin’s call came to an end. The president nodded, and leaned forward in his seat.

“Alright then, Zyuganov,” the Russian president concluded. “Let’s hope I can pull this off. So-long.” Boris Yeltsin placed the phone back in its cradle. He kept his hand there for a few seconds, warily eying the thing, as if he wanted to call Zyuganov back and tell him that he couldn’t do what had been asked of him. Once again, the president surveyed his office - the broken window, the holes in the wall, the knobless door that led to the foyer, the pie-covered painting of Nevskiy - and knew that this crazy episode had to be put to bed before it exploded into something even more severe and wreaked more havoc on his already-fragile state of health.

“Are you okay, Mr. Boris?” Pinkie asked the president.

“Mmm-hmm,” was the president’s defeated response as he spun his chair around and stared up at the outdated map of Russia, still labeled as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, that hung on the wall. He leaned to one side, resting his head on his hand, and closed his eyes.

“Believe it or not, we’ve got a shot at getting you three back home,” Yeltsin mumbled as he turned to the ponies by the side of the desk.

“We do?” Twilight Sparkle asked as she rose from her seat on the floor.

“I think so,” said the Russian president, turning his attention back to the map. “And at the same time, we might just put this scrape with the communists to bed.”

“So what’s the plan?” Twilight wondered, stepping closer to the president’s chair.

“You three have already come a very long way, but you're going to have to get ready for another trip,” Boris Yeltsin told the ponies as he tapped the arm of his desk chair with his fingers. “Because we’re leaving for Saint Petersburg. Tonight.”