Yeltsin, Pinkie, and the Long Road to Petersburg

Location: M10 Highway, Outskirts of Novgorod, Novgorodskaya Oblast, Russian Federation

Date: July 13th, 1996

Time: 2:37 AM

Boris Yeltsin had packed a small, battery-powered radio into the sack of supplies that rested in the back seats with Fluttershy and Twilight, and it had remained there for more than half the trip. Now, it was sitting on the dashboard, blasting Russian discoteka as Yeltsin and Pinkie bounced around to the music in the front seats. The entire floor of the Lada was covered in empty cans of Bogatyr, and not a drop was left to drink. But Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle hadn’t touched the stuff. President Yeltsin and Pinkie Pie had downed five cans each in a very short timeframe, and the hyped-up president’s Lada was now flying down the road at nearly 140 kilometers per hour. In the wrong lane. Again.

“And that’s how Equestria was made!” Pinkie Pie shouted over the music, concluding a very long-winded and disjointed story that she had been telling Yeltsin.

“That’s how Equestria was made?” Yeltsin asked, glancing at Pinkie with his wide, bloodshot eyes. “I thought this was the story about how you stopped the Discord guy!”

“Wait, huh?” the pink pony said. “I guess I mixed the stories up again.”

“BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHOCOLATE RAIN?” Yeltsin shouted wildly as he beat the steering wheel. “What happened to the chocolate rain!?”

“I dunno, it disappeared when Discord got turned back into stone.”

“WHY?” Boris Yeltsin roared. “Why would you make the chocolate rain disappear? Who cares if he was turning your houses upside-down and making the world his own funhouse? THAT WAS A SMALL PRICE TO PAY FOR CHOCOLATE RAIN! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I’D DO JUST TO SEE IT RAIN CHOCOLATE IN MOSCOW?”

“Hey, Twilight!” Pinkie exclaimed, turning to her two friends in the back seats. “Do you know any spells that make it rain chocolate?”

Fluttershy and Twilight, hooves tightly wrapped around one another, were having a conniption as they convulsed and whimpered beside the half-empty sack of provisions.

“Answer your friend’s question!” Yeltsin demanded. “Can you make the chocolate rain or not!?”

Twilight’s response was pointing a trembling hoof toward the windshield. Fluttershy screamed and closed her eyes.

When Pinkie spun back around, she could see headlights in the distance that were moving right for the Lada.

“There’s somebody else in front of us, Mr. Boris!”

“I’M NOT BLIND!” Yeltsin growled. Rather than sliding over into the right lane, he simply leaned on the horn as the oncoming car came closer. Yeltsin’s pedal was still floored. The unicorn and pegasus in the back seats were both screaming now as the Lada zoomed toward the other car.

“Move over, Boris, or we’re done for!” Twilight yelled over the diskoteka.

“I’M NO CHICKEN-SHIT!” the president retorted. “HE’LL BAIL, JUST WATCH HIM!” Yeltsin leaned on the horn again, racing right into the oncoming headlights. At this point, the driver of the other car must have figured that the nutjob in the wrong lane was going to stay there. Tires squealing, the oncoming car cut to the left, tried to dive back around, fishtailed, and drove right off the road, tumbling into the ditch that ran alongside it.

“HAH, YEAH! HAIL TO THE CHIEF, BABY!” Yeltsin laughed as he watched the scene unfold in his rear-view mirror.

“What a wimp!” Pinkie snorted as she bounced around in her seat. Twilight and Fluttershy were far less amused.

“When did we ever decide that this was a good idea?” Fluttershy asked aloud.

“When did we ever decide that Boris should be the one to drive?” Twilight remarked angrily.

“No backseat drivers!” the sugar-hyped president seethed. “I’d like to see you try to drive with a pair of hooves!”

At that point, the disco hit on the radio quickly faded away as the host of the station began speaking. She announced that she was going to start playing some classic American rock, and Boris Yeltsin wasn’t too happy about it.

“Augh, why is it always American music?” the president growled. “That’s all we ever hear on the radio anymore!” He quickly switched the thing off. “Almost makes you miss the Soviet Union.”

The Lada’s headlamps faintly illuminated a sign on the roadside that signaled the group’s approach to the city of Velikiy Novgorod.

“Huh, we’re already passing by Novgorod?” Yeltsin remarked. “Man, we’re flying! We’ll be in Petersburg in no time!”

“What’s in Novgorod, Mr. Boris?” Pinkie Pie asked as she pressed her face up against the glass of her window.

“Absolutely nothing,” the president groaned. “It’s the most boring city in Russia. There’s another Novgorod - Nizhniy Novgorod. That’s the fun one. This is the boring one.”

“You think they have a store where we can buy more of those drinks?” Pinkie asked as her ears perked up.

“Hey, yeah! That’s a great idea!” Boris Yeltsin responded.

“NO!” came the simultaneous responses of Fluttershy and Twilight from the back seats.

“QUIET, YOU DIDN’T EVEN TRY ONE!” Yeltsin countered as he turned toward the back seats. “DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BEFORE YOU DRINK IT! I mean… don’t judge a drink before you look at its cover. Wait… LOOK, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.”

The Lada passed by another sign showing that a petrol station was two kilometers up the road.

“Wait… petrol…” Yeltsin whispered as he blinked several times. “Hey… hey, you, Twilight, make the glowy thing again.”

“The what?” Twilight asked in confusion.

“The thing you did when I was about to get mauled by the bear. The glowy thing! Do it, quick!”

Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated as her horn was shrouded in its aura. Slowly but steadily, another golden orb got conjured up, lighting the interior of the shadowy car. With this newfound light aiding Yeltsin’s vision, he glanced down at the gas gauge. The needle hovered just above the “empty” mark.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Boris?” Fluttershy asked from the back seat.

“Oh boy… we need gas,” Yeltsin sighed. “Pretty soon we’ll be running on fumes. Or maybe we already are. Thank God I saw that sign.”

“What do we need gas for, Mr. Boris?” Pinkie asked, leaning over to see the part of the dashboard at which Yeltsin was staring.

“You think this thing runs on magic and rainbows?” Yeltsin remarked. “No. It runs on gasoline. And we’re almost out. Damn it. I don’t want to risk someone finding you three in here again. But we have to go.”

Fortunately for Yeltsin, there was enough gas in the Lada to take it two more kilometers north to the petrol station. The president once again ran through the protocol with the three ponies in his car, explaining that they had to cover up with the blankets and stay out of sight. When the petrol station came into sight, Boris Yeltsin pulled off the road onto the uneven gravel-covered lot, upon which sat two pumps and a weather-beaten one-story building with a dim light shining through one of the windows. Fluttershy and Twilight managed to conceal themselves adequately, using both the blankets and the sack of supplies while partly crouching down on the floor. Pinkie tried her best to do the same, but there was substantially less room to spread out. She was still half-perched on the front seat, likely visible from the outside as an amorphous, blanket-covered lump.

Yeltsin climbed out of the car and stretched his legs before proceeding to the fuel pump. As he placed the nozzle into the Lada’s tank and started pumping, the door to the tiny building creaked open and someone emerged from within. The man that approached the car moved at a snail’s pace, walking unsteadily but deliberately across the gravel lot in a large pair of felt valenki. Despite the summer weather, this man wore a hunting hat on his head, with the flaps hanging down over his ears, and a thick woolen coat. As the president got a better look at him, he figured that the guy must have been in his eighties. He wore a thick pair of glasses that made his eyes appear twice as large as they actually were.

“Zdravstvui,” the man said to the president in a wheezy voice. Yeltsin returned the greeting. “You’re out late.”

“Not by choice,” was Yeltsin’s remark.

“Where are you headed?”

“Petersburg.”

The old man was beside Boris Yeltsin now, staring him right in the eyes. But it was very apparent that the man didn’t identify his customer as the president of the Russian Federation.

I guess that’s a plus, Yeltsin said to himself, hands still trembling from the sugar that coursed through his veins. The old codger doesn’t recognize me. Poor guy probably doesn’t even know what year it is.

“You’ve got a real classic,” the old man said as he examined the Lada. “Reminds me of the Pobeda I had back in the day.” He was looking in through the windows now, and Yeltsin was starting to get nervous. “Most reliable car I ever owned,” the elderly man continued as he jerkily walked about the Lada. “Took me all the way from Tula to Odessa and home again. Back when Brezhnev was premier.”

Please. Spare me the life story, Yeltsin groaned in his mind.

“But I don’t live in Tula anymore. Moved to Moscow in ‘79. But it was too busy for me. You know what I mean. So after eight years at Fryazino, I went to Yaroslavl, where my wife was born. But after she passed on I decided I’d live out here. I like it better in Novgorod, anyway.”

“Yeah, if you enjoy being bored out of your mind, I guess,” Yeltsin sighed as he leaned against the Lada.

“Oh no, I could never go back to Odessa,” the man remarked. He had misheard Yeltsin’s statement. “Too old for that now.”

“And you can’t hear, either,” Yeltsin scoffed.

“Oh of course, Odessa is still very dear to me,” the elderly man answered. The president shook his head.

Another action-packed minute of waiting by the pump passed as the petrol station owner blathered on about his past to Yeltsin, the lone member of his captive audience. When the tank was filled, Yeltsin could only pay with big bills, and the old man had to walk back into the little building on the property to make change.

That was when Pinkie Pie started knocking on the window.

“Mr. Boris! I gotta go again!” Pinkie said from within the car, teeth clenched in consternation. Twilight and Fluttershy slouched back in their seats with their hooves crossed. Mother Nature was calling again - this time about the payload of six Bogatyr energy drinks.

“What did I do in the past life?” Yeltsin sighed in defeat. Watching the house to make sure that the old man hadn’t yet come out, the president opened the car door. “Can you just hold it for a little while longer?”

“No!”

Yeltsin sighed again in defeat and looked toward the road to make sure that no cars were coming. Then he yanked open the door and ushered Pinkie Pie out.

“Alright. Keep that blanket over you, run out there somewhere, do what has to be done, and get back here!” Yeltsin demanded. But as the little pink pony pranced off toward the trees, Yeltsin knew that in a minute or so, he was going to need his own potty-break for the six Bogatyrs he pounded down.

“Hey!” Yeltsin called to Fluttershy and Twilight as he tapped on one of the car’s rear windows. “Stay put. I’m going to run inside for a minute.” With that, the president jogged off toward the little building. “Damn it…” Yeltsin huffed. “Of course now I have to go, too…”

The Russian president pushed open the partly-ajar door and stepped into a small, dimly lit room where one dreary light at the center of the ceiling cast a soft glow down upon the two desks, sofa, and ancient television below. There was the petrol station owner, hunched over one of the desks, counting out small banknotes at a caustically slow pace.

“Listen, friend… you have a bathroom in here?” Yeltsin asked, being sure to speak particularly loudly to ensure that the old man heard him properly. The answer to Yeltsin’s question was a quick nod. “Do you mind if I-”

“Of course, of course,” was the man’s response. He pointed to the two doors on the far wall. “The room on the left.”

Boris Yeltsin dashed through the door of the bathroom and locked it behind him. Fortunately for the president, the tiny room was particularly clean. Making haste, Yeltsin did his business and washed his hands, grumbling all the while that the Bogatyrs probably had some horrible implication for his health that would manifest itself later on down the road. After drying his hands with a towel that rested on the counter, Yeltsin threw the door back open to find that the other man was no longer in the building.

“Couldn’t wait for me, could you, old man?” Yeltsin said aloud to himself as he pushed open the door to the outside. But when he saw the scene that was unfolding in front of the Lada by the gas pump, the president’s blood ran cold.

“Oh no. Oh, Christ...” he muttered.

The old man must have made it out there just as Pinkie Pie returned from the fringe of the property, as the little pink pony, still covered in her blanket, stood frozen in fear by the side of the car. Worse, the guy was walking right toward Pinkie and undoubtedly was looking straight at at her.

“Hey! HEY!” Yeltsin screamed as loud as he possibly could into the still air of the summer night, scrambling toward the car. in a mental scramble for anything he might say to save the abysmal situation, he added “Stay away from my dog, she frightens easily! And she bites!”

“You had a dog in the car the whole time?” the man asked, turning around as Yeltsin approached. “She was awfully quiet.”

“Dog?” Pinkie asked, looking around. “Where?”

Yeltsin slapped his forehead as the incredulous petrol station owner turned back toward the pony. Fortunately, Pinkie Pie was still largely obscured by the blanket, with the exception of her muzzle that poked out the front.

“She’s got a very odd bark,” the old man said as he adjusted his out-of-season hunting hat.

“Well, you know how Samoyeds are. Strange bark and all that,” Yeltsin said as he stepped between Pinkie and the old man. “For the next few minutes, you act like a dog. You understand?” Yeltsin whispered sternly to Pinkie, who barked in reply.

“She’s a bit big for a Samoyed, isn’t she? Why is she running around in that sheet?”

“It’s her favorite blanket.”

“What’s her name?”

     “Pinkie,” Yeltsin grumbled after a pause.

   “Pinkie?”

     “Yes. Pinkie.”

     “What kind of name is that?”

   “It’s um... Bulgarian.”

   “Mongolian?” The old man cupped his ear toward Yeltsin.

   “Yeah. Mongolian,” Yeltsin sighed in defeat as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I let her run around for a minute because we’ve had such a long drive.” Yeltsin glanced into the window of the rear door and was relieved to see that Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle were still adequately hidden. “Alright, Pinkie, let’s get back in the car.”

Boris Yeltsin opened the front passenger door of the Lada, and Pinkie hopped on over and climbed inside, all the while barking like a dog in a rather unconvincing manner.

“She sounds awfully sweet,” the old man said, walking around Yeltsin and toward the car door. The president quickly slammed it shut.

“She’s not. She bites. Don’t need her to chew your arm off now, do we?” Yeltsin said. “You have my change?”

“She’s got mange?”

“Do YOU have MY CHANGE?” Yeltsin repeated, practically screaming into the old man’s ear.

“Oh yes, right here.”

The nearly-deaf man gave Yeltsin what remained of his larger bills. Then, the president hurriedly bid him goodnight and climbed back into the car. Boris Yeltsin put the key in the ignition and gave it a turn before looking over at Pinkie.

“That was way too close,” the Russian president groaned.

Pinkie barked a couple of times in response, and then started panting like a dog. Yeltsin shook his head and slowly turned back to the windshield.

“Give me a break,” Yeltsin grumbled, rolling his eyes. But as he turned the wheel and brought the old car back out onto the road, he couldn’t help but crack a smile.

*   *   *

Location: M10 Highway, North of Novgorod, Novgorodskaya Oblast, Russian Federation

Date: July 13th, 1996

Time: 3:36 AM

Well-outside of Novgorod, the interior of the Lada had become much quieter. Yeltsin and Pinkie were more settled now, as the effects of the sugar rush had largely subsided. The cheaply-manufactured Bogatyr energy drinks only provided a short burst of intense energy, rather than a longer, more useful stretch of moderate energy. Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle were curled up in the back seats, snoring softly, fast asleep. In the front, the president of the Russian Federation reclined in his seat as he watched the road before him, and his poofy pink companion did her best to see what she could through her window.

The roads were mostly empty now, and the darkness of the countryside in the north of the Novgorodskaya Oblast left Yeltsin with a particularly eerie feeling of isolation. And it was by no means unfounded. Since the arrival of three little ponies in his office just days prior, Yeltsin seemed to be living in an entirely different world, one almost completely isolated from the one that he knew before; a world where colorful ponies could talk, a world where unicorn-horn magic was no longer the stuff of fairytales. And the icing on the cake was that the last six years of political turmoil were being temporarily swept under the rug as Yeltsin drove onward through the night to the doorstep of Gennady Zyuganov.

But to the north, the sky appeared to be unnaturally bright for such a late hour. It was the White Nights, the characteristic phenomenon of the summer months in the north. And if Yeltsin could see them, it meant that their journey to Saint Petersburg was coming to an end.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Boris,” Pinkie Pie said, suddenly breaking the silence.

Yeltsin glanced over to find that Pinkie, who only moments ago had her face and hooves pressed up against the window, was now slumping in her seat with a dejected look on her face.

“Huh? Sorry for what?” Yeltsin asked. “It’s not your fault, pink pony. How were you supposed to know that grandpa whats-his-name was going to walk out to the car without me?”

“No, not that,” Pinkie said as she turned to Boris Yeltsin. “I mean… I’m sorry for all the stuff that happened since we showed up.”

Boris Yeltsin was in shock. It was the first time he had ever seen Pinkie Pie show such a dismal expression. Since the first moment that they had met, Pinkie Pie had been a little ball of sunshine with a permanent, cheery smile. The somber pony in the passenger’s seat seemed to be an entirely different animal.

“Ever since we poofed into your office, a whole bunch of stuff has gone wrong,” Pinkie continued. “We scared you a couple of times and got you in trouble with a bunch of people. Then they made you go to the hospital. We almost got caught by your guards, then you had to do all this driving. And then we met the bear, and then we almost got caught by the old guy in the weird hat-”

“Are you kidding?” Yeltsin interrupted. Pinkie, taken aback by the president’s response, turned to find Boris Yeltsin grinning as he stared through the windshield, nearly on the verge of a laugh. “Are you kidding?” Boris Yeltsin repeated as he quickly looked over at Pinkie and then returned his eyes to the road. “Don’t be sorry for anything. I haven’t had this much fun since the August Coup!”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, sure, half of Barvikha Village thinks I’ve gone off the deep end. Sure, Boris Berezovskiy isn’t too happy with me. And yeah, I had to escape from my own compound, drive halfway across the country, almost get mauled by a bear, and cooperate with that idiot, Zyuganov. But all the same, since you three showed up, it’s been a blast.”

“Really?”

“Really!” Yeltsin insisted with a nod. “Listen, pink pony. Being president of anything will take its toll on you after a while. With all the stress I’ve had to deal with over the last six years, this whole thing is like a vacation!”

“Really really?”

“Yes. Really really.”

A brief pause followed, before Pinkie asked,

“Do you think we’ll be able to go back home?”

Yeltsin wasn’t prepared for that one. He didn’t know how to answer this question. And if he placed all his faith in Gennady Zyuganov’s plan and said yes, he didn’t know if he’d be telling the truth. Yeltsin didn’t want to look back at Pinkie Pie now, for he knew that he’d only be met with a pair of wide, uncertain eyes from an entirely different world that would make his heart melt.

“We’re going to find out, won’t we?” Yeltsin asked after a few moments of silence. “I’m going to hope that Zyuganov wouldn’t have set this whole thing up if it didn’t hold any water. It’s the one chance we’ve got. That’s why we’re on the road to Petersburg. And we’re very close now, Pinkie. Do you see that light in the sky?” Yeltsin pointed ahead to the glowing fringe of cloudy sky to the north. “That’s how we know. We’re driving right into a White Night.”

“A White Night?”

“In Saint Petersburg, you’re so far north that even when the sun sets, the sky is still light. Every summer is just like that. It never gets dark, and the nights are white. It’s beautiful.”

“So who raises and sets the sun?” Pinkie asked inquisitively. Yeltsin raised a brow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the president asked. “Nobody raises the sun. The world turns, and in the daytime you see the sun, and at nighttime, you don’t.”

“Well that’s weird,” Pinkie said, squinting ahead towards the light sky. “In Equestria, Princess Celestia makes the sun rise and set. And her sister, Princess Luna, does the same thing with the moon.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Boris Yeltsin pondered aloud. “Not only do you have your two princesses, but one princess brings the day, and the other brings the night. That’s amazing.”

From the backseat, Twilight mumbled in her sleep and rolled around until she felt comfortable. Fluttershy was quietly snoring all the while.

“You know, Pinkie, you should probably try to get some sleep, too,” Yeltsin added. “This’ll be the last chance you get. Only a couple hours left until we’re in the city.”

“But then you won’t have anypony to talk to, Mr. Boris.”

“I think I’ll be able to manage,” Yeltsin said. “It’ll give me some time to think about what we should do when we get to the KPRF offices and find Zyuganov.”

“Oh. Okie dokie, then,” Pinkie said as she pulled the blanket around her and curled up on the seat.

“Don’t worry, I’ll wake you up when we get there,” Yeltsin said with a grin.

“Nighty-night, Mr. Boris.”

“Goodnight, Pinkie.”

And so, the little Lada chugged along through the night toward the softly-lit sky summer sky as Yeltsin and the three ponies drew ever nearer to Saint Petersburg - the Venice of the North.