Pinkieviduality

Chapters

1.1 – Through the eyes of another Pinkie
1.2 – Pinkie Pie makes a mess
1.3 – Table manners
2 – The First Night Ever!
3 – All play and no work

1.1 – Through the eyes of another Pinkie

~Pinkieviduality~

Chapter 1.1 – Through the eyes of another Pinkie

This story is also available as a "synthesized" audio book. MP3-downloads are available on chapter-release.

[click here] - Chapter 1, no background music
[click here] - Chapter 1, with ambient music loop

[overview of all chapters]

To say it was a peaceful day in Ponyville would be akin to saying that Tartarus was a great spot for summer vacation, if one just were to choose the proper travel-agency.

The town was in peril, overrun, some would even dare to say plagued! The cause for chaos and widespread concern was a multitude of identical, happily bouncing pink ponies.

A group of decidedly less happy, less bouncy, and, for the most part, not particularly pink ponies had taken on the task of herding the pink variant of the pony-populace into a single building. They were thorough in their search, making sure to gather them all in a single spot so as to determine a solution to the pink-pony-problem.

They missed one.

~ ~ ~

The lone pink pony excitedly followed the tiny blue butterfly, all the while loudly proclaiming her merriment for all the world to hear.

Upon entering a field of wild flowers she abandoned her pursuit, instead examining the various plants with wide, curious eyes. Diving head-first into a bed of flowers, the happy pony enjoyed the scent of the plants as she swam through the colorful sea. A particularly funny-looking flower got her attention as the top of its stem carried a white spherical shape. Closer examination revealed the sphere to consist of lots and lots of small fluffy bits, each with a stem of its own connected to the center of the sphere.

The pink pony scrutinized the plant for several seconds, her eyes darting between the miniscule white hairs of the plant and the pink ones she saw on her own coat.

She had never seen anything like it. This wasn't very surprising – the plant was older than her.

A flower with fur? Or was she a pony-shaped flower? Were ponies actually plants? Should she go get a watering-can so she could grow into a strong and healthy plant?

...Oh, that cloud looked like a balloon! One could fill balloons with water, which was just as good as using a watering-can, if not better!

And that was enough of a reason for the pink pony to follow the cloud in a mix of gallop, dance, and jumping.

After a while the pony noticed the ground beneath her hooves had changed. She was standing on a dirt-path, stretching on into the distance, until it curved and disappeared behind the tall grass.

The pony paused. Did it lead back to Ponyville? Well, either that or it led back to the water-mirror. Not that she knew of any other places where it could possibly lead to.

Ponyville was fun, so it was worth a shot following the path.

However, not too much time had passed on her trek until she saw something of interest – a procession of wagons, resting next to the road.

The pink pony was eager to investigate what undoubtedly would be a new source of fun.

~ ~ ~

“Wheeeeee!”

She certainly wasn't disappointed! The wagons were brightly colored, and showcased various images.

What had instantly captured her eye had been the depiction of a smiling pony's head with a white face, red cheeks, and a funny ball on its muzzle.

“Woohoo!”

Words had been written above the smiling face, but they had had too many letters and were too long to hold the pony's attention. All but one: “Circus”.

She didn't know what a “circus” was, but it sure sounded fun!

Of course, the pink bundle of energy couldn't stay put for long, and she quickly moved on to the other wagons.

“Yipeee!”

Following an entirely logical sequence of events she was holding on to the wildly swinging tail of the silly-looking scorpion-kitty she had booped on the nose after squeezing through the metal sticks at the side of one of the wagons.

“Wahoo!”

She was having the time of her life, whooping and hollering in joy for every second of the ride.

Shouts off from the side caught her attention. There, outside the cage, stood three distinct figures with varying facial expressions.

“That one on the left is called an earth-pony,” her brain told her. “You're an earth-pony too.” But that sounded boring and she resolved to come up with a better name. Earth-ponies were often good buddies with plants, right? Perhaps her assumptions that she was a plant-pony had not been too far off.

The next one was a big bird with the paws and tail of a large cat – a cat-bird? No, its head was that of a bird, so it undoubtedly must've been a bird-cat!

Pinkie smiled at her accomplishment in deductive reasoning. Her brain was so useful! It was full of words, and it kept telling her the names of all the new things she saw, and that was so much fun! Like – that thing up there was the “sky”, and the stuff she'd been bouncing on was the “ground!” The ground had “grass” and other stuff on it, and grass was “green.” She was “pink!” And “green” and “pink” were called “colors!” It was all so very exciting!

The pony on the right, however, presented an entirely new challenge. Was she another plant-pony? If so, she had the most peculiar coat, covered in black and white stripes all over. Or was it white with black stripes? Or the other way around? Or a third color underneath?

They were making gestures, all waving and shouting at once, making it impossible for her to understand anything being said.

Her attention-span of about five seconds long since passed, she jumped off the scorpion-kitty's back and cartwheeled right through the metal bars of the cage.

The fact that the metal bars were barely a hoof apart did not bother her in the slightest. She continued to cartwheel around and throughout the group in several rounds, which in turn blurred everything in her vision into colorful concentric circles. When she got dizzy, she let herself roll out and flopped onto her belly, shaking with giggles. This was fun!

-/-

The circus cast watched the crazed mare's antics with stunned reactions. Startled, Tight Rope jumped to the side, just barely avoiding getting hit by the blur of pink in their midst.

Her initial shock at seeing the pony messing around with the manticore had soon been substituted with an entirely different set of thoughts.

About three to five rotations per second, able to keep it going for at least half a minute. Run-time could use some work, but she doesn't look exhausted. Extraordinary aim hitting that gap between the bars, avoiding collisions at moderate speeds with high precision even with moving obstacles. Excellent hoof-eye coordination.

...And she seems to have springs in her legs.

Out loud she said “Land sakes, that's some talent!”

Briefly, Tight shot a worried glance at the manticore cage – but Geoffrey had flown over to her and was already calming her down.

The pony in question was all over Zenya, leaving the poor zebra barely an inch of personal space – literally. As Tight approached, the pink bundle of energy closed the last inch of distance and shoved her face straight into the zebra's side, who jumped in surprise.

“Hey.” Tight paused, briefly stumped by what the appropriate response should be. The situation resolved itself – to the flummoxed zebra's relief – when the mare looked up, made eye-contact with Tight and jumped right over Zenya's back to give her a massive, infectious grin.

There was an overwhelming list of inquiries, observations, or simple statements Tight Rope could've made at that point, such as “Who are you?” or “What were you doing in the manticore cage?” or “Why would you do that?”

Out of all of those, she chose the most practical one: “Do you have any more acrobatic skills you could show me?”

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Author's Note

Special thanks to Never2muchpinkie (aka kyuubinaruto18 on deviantArt) and haretrinity for proofreading, editing, and brainstorming.

As always, speling and grammar mistakes is welcome to pointed out, as me not am native English speaker. ;-)

1.2 – Pinkie Pie makes a mess

~Pinkieviduality~

Chapter 1.2 – Pinkie Pie makes a mess

This chapter is available as a "synthesized" audio book:

[link] - no background music
[link] - with ambient music loop

[overview of all chapters]

“...And this would be your wagon.”

Tight Rope turned to face the newcomer, only to find her inattentive.

The mare – Pinkie Pie, she'd said her name was, for some reason insisting that she was “the real Pinkie Pie” – had her nose stuck to the ground, sniffing out the area around a mole-hill.

“Were you even listening?”

Pinkie Pie looked up at her, and Tight did a double-take. The mare's face was dominated by a thick, bushy mustache – made of grass stalks sticking out of her nostrils.

“Fnun, fnun, fnun!” Pinkie cheered nasally.

Tight Rope burst out laughing. She had to bite down on a foreleg to stop a fit of the giggles.

This pony was perfect for the job! She hadn't made it official yet, but she couldn't afford not to hire her!

Not unless she wanted to cut down on expenses again. That thought killed the giggles instantly.

With a sigh, Tight opened the wagon-door and led Pinkie inside.

“Right now we use this one for storage, so it's all a bit of a mess.” She gestured at a variety of boxes of all sizes and shapes, then stepped aside as Pinkie leaned in to stick her head through the door-frame.

“I've got to take care of some things. You can get a start on cleaning things up a bit if you like.”

Pinkie Pie was already examining the cardboard boxes, presumably to get a sense for what needed to be organized.

Tight rubbed her neck with a hoof. “I'll be back in, ah, fifteen minutes.”

~ ~ ~

“Fun, fun, fun!” the blue pony cheered, rolling through a puddle of red. The violet pony splashed her hooves into a pool of yellow, spraying color everywhere.

Pinkie Pie was having quite a fun time, in no small part due to the contents of the wagon the green pony had showed her.

Rummaging through the boxes she'd found many shiny and silly-looking things.

But it wasn't before she'd thrown out all the uninteresting stuff that she'd made the discovery – a number of sealed buckets, each containing a gooey, colorful liquid that stuck to her hooves when she touched it.

Consequently, a previously pink, but still enthusiastic and very cheerful pony, was prancing, bouncing, and spinning pirouettes on top of one of the wagons, leaving splotches of paint with every hoof-step, every tail-wag, every bounce of her mane, and every time the bucket of paint balanced on her head spilled.

Much of the roof had remained untouched – until Pinkie noticed, that is, and she made it a game to cover each bland spot with a different color.

Deep reds and mellow greens, vibrant yellows and cool blues, mixed and swirled, patterns formed and disappeared, reshaped into new patterns, smudged and then reformed.

Pinkie laughed. It was beautiful!

With a huge grin on her lips, and buckets spilling paint in each foreleg, she danced.

Pinkie was in the middle of drawing happy smiley-faces, when she heard a sound likened to that of a strangled goose.

With a giggle and a bounce she was standing on the ground once more, face-to-face with the nice pony who had showed her around the circus wagons before. The other mare recoiled, taking a few steps back from Pinkie's face that had just filled her vision entirely.

Funny. Everypony she met seemed to always stumble away from her when she approached them. Maybe it was a form of greeting?

It was then Pinkie noticed that there was a small orange dot right on the green pony's muzzle. Apparently she truly had come face-to-face with her in the most literal meaning of the phrase.

The other mare, in the meantime, seemed to have frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at something behind Pinkie Pie. Giggling, Pinkie booped the silly pony on the nose with a blue-tinted hoof. That seemed to snap her out of it.

“Hehehe, this is so much fun!”

However, the mare's reaction was anything other than happy.

“F-fun?!” she stuttered. “W-what the bloody hayseeds are you doing?! You're – you're getting paint everywhere! You threw all our stuff out of the...! Why would you do such a...? WHAT in TARTARUS is WRONG with you!?”

Pinkie Pie took several steps back in shock, mirroring the other pony's movements from a few seconds prior.

Why was she yelling? Why was she yelling – at her?

The mare was shouting something about “respecting other ponies' property” and “recklessness”, pointing an accusing hoof straight at her.

This had never happened before. Sure, she had been around ponies shouting and yelling things – in fact, in Ponyville, a lot of ponies seemed to be shouting and yelling wherever she and the other Pinkies had went.

But never, ever ever ever and forever, had anypony shouted at her. Never before had anypony shouted at her specifically. And the angry pony was pointing at her, erasing all doubt from her mind that the target of the mare's anger could be anything other than herself.

Why was she angry with her? All she ever wanted was to have fun! Why would anypony want her not to have fun?! She just didn't understand!

-/-

Tight Rope was absolutely dumbstruck. All the supplies had been carelessly thrown out into the grass. Paint was dripping down the sides of the wagon, ruining the expensive artwork that had been crafted upon it. She'd almost stepped on a broken plate lying on the ground – and she hadn't even assessed all of the damage yet.

The utterly out-of-place declaration of “fun” was what tipped her over the edge.

How could somepony do such a thing and smile while doing it?

Tight Rope would've gone on with her thoroughly justified rant – if it wasn't for one crucial detail.

Pinkie Pie's reaction.

The mare seemed to have visibly shrunk under her stern words, staring up at her with wide, watery eyes and a quivering lip. Her entire body-language had changed. Even her mane was drooping, somehow.

The poor thing was practically on the verge of crying!

Tight was honestly at a loss for what to say. This complete emotional turn-around had probably taken less than 30 seconds. Just those 30 seconds ago she'd been filled with what she had believed was righteous fury at the pink pony's obvious act of vandalism. Surely, she couldn't honestly be – Oh sweet Celestia, now she was crying.

Without hesitation, she rushed forward to wrap Pinkie Pie in a hug, rubbing a hoof along her back and making calming shushing noises. “Hey... Hey... I'm sorry... Shhh, shhh... There, there... It's okay... It's all okay...” It wasn't so much a conscious act. It was more the instincts of both a big sister and a foal-sitter.

“B-but... You said you didn't like my fun...” Tight Rope stared blankly at the pink pony. It took her a few seconds to process the remark accordingly.

“What... exactly were you doing?”

“F-fun”, Pinkie sniffled, “with colors.”

Tight looked back at the wagon's facade. The image of a clown, a manticore and a pony in a top-hat rearing up was obfuscated by streaks of dried color running down the wagon's sides. Tight Rope grimaced.

Movement out of the corner of her eye made her return focus to the pony held tight in her fore-legs.

Pinkie Pie had tensed up, her expression apprehensive.

“You... you don't like my f-fun...” she quavered, voice hitching on the word “fun”. “B-but... but why?”

This prompted Tight's brain to instantly shift back to “big sister”-mode, and she doubled down on her embrace.

“Hey now... It's okay. I'm... sorry I exploded at you like this. I'm sure you didn't mean to... uhm.” She gestured about vaguely with a foreleg at the general carnage, momentarily struggling for words.

Pinkie took her gesture as a prompt to turn around. By all rights, the gasp that followed should have dislocated her lower jaw. Pinkie had her eyes fixed straight ahead on the smeared up image.

-/-

What Pinkie Pie saw almost broke her little pink pony heart.

The wagon she had been dancing on, spilling colors everywhere for fun, had been the wagon with the huge smiling pony-face on it. Had been. One could still see the original painting – buried under thick streaks of grim browns, cheerless grays and sickly greens.

Dirty yellows, bleak reds, and glum blues covered the pony's face. Its cheerful smile had been muted. The colors themselves had dimmed.

It finally clicked in her mind, why the green pony had been angry. This was her fault. She had broken the funny face.

Pinkie's ears flattened down at the sides of her head. “I... I didn't mean to... I...” Pinkie whimpered miserably. “I just wa-wa-wanted to have f-f-fun...”

She slumped to the ground, covering her eyes. If she didn't look, maybe this would all go away?

A warm hoof on her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts. Pinkie Pie looked up. The green pony smiled.

“I can see that now. I'm sorry I yelled at you. It was... a misunderstanding.”

“B-but the funny face...”

“The 'funny face'?” The mare tilted her head, confused. “Oh, that's what you mean. It's okay.” She looked up at the painting, then winced. “It's not... that bad. He hehe,” she laughed awkwardly. “I'll... think of something.”

Then she looked down, at a cracked plate lying in the grass, scattered nails shining in the dirt, ropes, kitchen implements, and pieces of cloth strewn all about.

“And I'll figure out how to replace the dishes... and the paint... and whatever else is broken.”

The mare heaved a heavy sigh. Body-builders would've struggled to lift it.

But then she glanced up at Pinkie Pie, and smiled.

“Heh, I guess I'll just have to subtract the cost from your first paycheck.” She winked at Pinkie.

“It... really is okay?” Pinkie Pie wiped off some of the blurriness from her eyes with a foreleg. “You don't want me to not have fun?”

“Aww, dear, why would you think that? Of course I hope you'll have fun working at the circus!”

“Really? Yay!” Pinkie Pie exploded. Metaphorically. “Fun! Funfunfunfunfun!”

All troubles forgotten, she bounced high into the air, did a victory pose, then shot down straight for the pony.

Startled, the mare took a few steps back – but alas, it was too late for her. Two colorful forelegs rushed in with deadly precision as retribution for prior acts of affection, and crushed the air from her lungs.

When Pinkie let go of her, the mare was left gasping. Giggling, Pinkie took note that the little blue boop of paint on the pony's muzzle had spread all over her face.

“Woah – gasp – you've got – huff – quite a – wheeze – grip!” she rasped breathlessly.

“Please don't hug me again...” A moment of silence on both sides. “Okay, you can hug me, but please not so tight.”

“Okay-dokey, nice pony!”

“Nice po– Oh, err, thanks? Huh. I... thought I'd already introduced myself?” She scratched her head, then shrugged. “I'm Tight Rope... I'm the director of this circus. Tell you what, I'll even help you a bit with clean up.”

The now thoroughly introduced Tight Rope began collecting the uninteresting stuff Pinkie had sorted out earlier, then paused. She gave the colorful bundle of energy a once-over.

“But before we do that, we need to get you washed up. I'm gonna get a hose.”
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Author's Note

Special thanks to Never2muchpinkie (aka kyuubinaruto18 on deviantArt) for proofreading, editing, and brainstorming. :-)

1.3 – Table manners

~Pinkieviduality~

Chapter 1.3 – Table manners.

This chapter is available as a "synthesized" audio book:

[link] - no background music
[link] - with ambient music loop

[overview of all chapters]

Pinkie vibrated in place, both out of anticipation and impatience.

The nice pony had told her to sit at the table and wait for the fun to come.

Well, she hadn't phrased it exactly like that. Nevertheless, fun was fun – in this case, edible fun!

“Eh, sorry, everypony. Dinner will be ready in just a moment.” Tight Rope briefly stuck her head out the wagon's window to address the group.

“In the meantime, why don't you get to know each other a little better?” With a wink at Pinkie, she disappeared back into the kitchen.

Pinkie Pie looked at the table's other occupants.

Despite sitting opposite to her, the griffin seemed quite set on paying more attention to his claws rather than Pinkie. The zebra off to the other side of the table was leaning back on her chair, staring off into space. She didn't even react (much) when Pinkie waved a hoof through her field of vision.

Pinkie looked from one to the other and back again, none of them saying anything.

All in all, it was quite dull. It did not stay that way for more than twenty seconds.

Deciding to follow Tight Rope's suggestion of making introductions, Pinkie settled for starting up a conversation herself, and walked over to the griffin. Naturally, she took the shortest route. Straight across the table.

The griffin's eyes were ripped away from his claws when two pink forelegs stepped into his field of vision. With a shrill squawk of surprise he scooted backwards in his chair, which subsequently fell over, resulting in the griffin flailing both his forearms and wings in a failed attempt to prevent getting deposited on the ground.

-/-

Geoffrey looked up, still dazed from the impact – only to see the crazy pony's face inches away from his own.

“Oh dear merciful heavens above–“

Geoffrey instinctively pressed himself further to the ground in an attempt to distance himself as much as possible. Five more inches was better than nothing, right?

On his elbows he slowly edged himself away from the mare. His left claw slipped on a muddy spot, and with a wince he again landed on his back.

Alas, his efforts had remained fruitless – if anything, the mare's face had grown even closer. Her expression stretched into an unsettlingly wide smile. He gulped. After what that mad-pony had done to poor Marianne, there truly was no telling what she would do next!

“Hi, I'm Pinkie Pie! I'm the... uh... the Pinkie Pie of this circus!”

“Uh– Oh– Err– ...Hi?”

The pony stretched out a hoof and grabbed his forelimb, shaking it fiercely. After a few seconds she let go, and the rattled griffon fell on his back for a third time. The next thing he knew Geoffrey found himself in the middle of an interrogation.

“Who are you?”

“I-I'm Geoffrey–”

“What do you do?”

“I perform with Marianne–”

“Who's that? Is it her?” The pink pony pointed at the zebra.

“N-No, Marianne is the manticore–”

“Why do you wear glasses?”

“I'm farsighted, I can't read without–”

“Why are your feathers so shiny?”

“I-I use a special lotion for extra gloss – W-why am I telling you this?!”

“Because I asked, duh!” The mare giggled to herself.

A stifled snort came from the other end of the table. Geoffrey's yellow beak turned bright red in embarrassment.

“F-feather care is important”, he protested feebly.

Only once the pink face had removed itself from his neck-feathers did he manage to stand up, dusting himself off.

His chair still lay tipped over on the floor, and for a moment he stood at the table dumbly staring at the pink pony sitting on it smiling at him.

Now he felt a little silly – the pony had just wanted to introduce herself and get to know him. Had he not been so overwhelmed he would probably have given more sensible answers as well.

It wasn't like she'd straight-out jumped on his back and tried to get a piggy-back ride – unlike with Marianne.

That flustered him. Why would she do that anyway? He should definitely ask her.

Then again, it wouldn't be very polite to go about accusing her up front. He'd certainly need to preface his question with something a little less hostile.

“Okay, now I'd like to ask a few questions myself”, Geoffrey ventured. “So, Miss... uh–“

Drat, he'd been so befuddled when the mare introduced herself that his brain had failed to process the name accordingly.

“Uhm, I'm sorry, what was your name again?” He grinned sheepishly.

At this, the pink mare's muzzle scrunched up in concentration, and she assumed a thinking pose.

“Oh! Is this a quiz? Wait, wait, I know this one! Is it Flappleshack? Flutterbow? Rainlight Sharkle? No wait wait I got this! Applepink? Shybow-jack? No, wait, it was something with a pie... Come on, Pinkie Pie, you've studied this! Oh wait, silly me – the answer is 'Pinkie Pie'! I'm Pinkie Pie – uh, I mean, I'm The Real Pinkie Pie!”

“O... kay.” Geoffrey's wasn't really certain where this was going – but sure enough, he had gotten an answer. So it was only sensible to keep going.

“So, Miss... Pinkie Pie, where are you from?”

The answer to this question was a hoof stretched out into the general direction of the setting sun and a cheerful exclamation of “Over there!”

“Erm, would you mind being a bit more specific?”

Pinkie gave an affirmative hum. Then she moved her hoof two and a half inches to the left.

“Uh, never mind.”

Geoffrey never got a chance to ask his actual question. One second, the pink pony was right in front of him – the next, she had disappeared. Confused, he blinked away the pink afterimage and looked about only to find her now face to face with a disgruntled Zenya.

The zebra straightened her posture and cleared her throat, presumably in response to something Pinkie Pie had asked.

“It is illusions and wonder, under which my job description falls under. The heart of my art lies in the mystic. ...And special effects.”

She slouched back in her seat, and finished with a dismissive wave of her hoof.

“Hihi, that rhymed”, Pinkie Pie giggled. “Except for that last bit.”

“Meh.” Zenya shrugged.

-/-

Further questions were stalled by Tight Rope's arrival with a large tray balanced on her back.

She took one look at the scene, and laughed out loud.

“Pinkie Pie, could you please move aside? I'd like to put the food on the table.”

With a clatter, a large plate of various salads and a bowl with a steaming soup landed in front of her. Pinkie examined the food.

The major part of the plate consisted of green and purple-white leaves of varying sizes and textures, some thin-cut, light-green circle-shapes, several black and red berries as well as a cluster of thin orange stripes mixed up with the other food. It all was tied together by a thick, white sauce. Pinkie regarded the food with interest and sniffed at the plate. It didn't smell too bad.

Shrugging, Pinkie Pie ate the food and slurped down the soup before moving on to the next plate.

“What the – HEY!”

She had barely just wrapped her tongue around the outer rim of the plate, when the outcry rattled her ears.

Pinkie's entire body seized up completely.

Too recent was the experience, too vivid her imagination.

She didn't dare to look up, didn't want to see the oncoming train that surely was about to turn her into a pitiful pile of pink pony-puree.

Didn't want to hear the accusations she couldn't understand, that wormed their way into her very being, and somehow took away the fun from within.

She didn't want to look. But she did. She couldn't help it.

Slowly, very slowly, her eyes crept down the length of her tongue. Further down the length of her tongue. More tongue. Even more tongue. Tongue wrapped around the plate. The actual plate itself. A striped zebra-torso. A striped zebra-neck. A mouth edged in a not-smile. Nostrils. Two eyes looking back at her. A single eyebrow raised. Two pointy ears – no wait, too far, back down a bit.

Two narrowing eyes looking back at her.

“Hooves off my food!” grouched Zenya, and yanked the bowl out of her grasp.

Her tongue rolled back into her mouth, flapping a few times before settling.

Silence reigned.

Pinkie Pie did not dare move so much as a single muscle. She did not even breathe.

Fear lingered. Was it over? Any second now, the shouting was gonna start, wasn't it?

And then – it didn't.

Noticing Pinkie looking her way, Zenya narrowed her eyes and slid both plate and bowl closer to herself, out of Pinkie's reach.

And that was it.

She didn't shout, she didn't say anything. She just ate the food, and kept it close to herself.

Pinkie Pie held her breath.

Though since doing so prior, she had precious little air left in her lungs, and thus the silence's tyrannical reign of terror came to a premature end with a loud gasp for air.

Phew!

That wasn't so bad. Scary, yes – but it was over now.

Flooded with relief, Pinkie sank back into her chair.

Then she went on to the next plate.

Only that by the time her tongue had gotten to where it should've been, it wasn't there anymore. Geoffrey had yanked it up, away from her.

Hey, no fair!

Pinkie flexed the appendage, snapping, twisting and stretching to get the food – but Geoffrey dodged, over and over again, always keeping the treat just out of tongue's reach.

“I-I-I didn't know p-p-ponies could do that! Why didn't I know p-ponies could do that?!” Geoffrey shrieked.

“That's amazin'! There's gotta be a way to put that in an act!” Tight Rope gushed.

Zenya stared. Massaged her temples. Stared again. Blinked. She eventually gave her verdict by applying hoof to face.

Desperate to avoid the snaky tongue, Geoffrey's non-verbal pleads for help finally shook Tight Rope from her stupor.

However, the others' reactions were lost to Pinkie Pie, intently focused on achieving her prize.

Tight Rope's call went unnoticed – only, once Pinkie felt a hoof tapping her on the shoulder did she turn around.

“Pinkie Pie, what...” Tight Rope paused, momentarily distracted when Pinkie's tongue slurped back into her mouth in one fell swoop. The self-made circus director blinked away the faint afterimages of gold coins from her eyes, then continued. “Pinkie, what are you doing?”

“Eating yummy stuff!” Pinkie happily responded. “But he keeps it away from me!” She pointed at Geoffrey, pouting. “And she won't let me have any!” She pointed at Zenya, huffing.

“Oh, hey, there's another one!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, seeing a fourth plate previously gone unnoticed.

She jumped right up on the table to get to it quickly, before anypony else could snatch it away. About to dive into the bowl head-first, she was blocked off by a green foreleg.

“Pinkie!” Tight Rope exclaimed. “That's – that's my food!”

“Huh?” Pinkie Pie was confused. Tight had stopped her from eating the yummy food! But that didn't make sense. Tight Rope was a nice pony!

Tight must've sensed her confusion, because she tried to explain herself.

“Pinkie, you can't... you can't just...” Tight halted, visibly struggling to form a sentence. “You can't just eat other ponies' food!”

“Huh? I... can't?” Pinkie Pie tilted her head.

She couldn't eat other ponies' food? Why not? What did that even mean?

Well, Zenya had certainly gotten scary when she'd tried to, so that would explain it. Ponies got scary when you tried to eat the food that was standing in front of them. Okay, got it.

With Zenya she wasn't so sure, but Geoffrey was definitely not a pony. Maybe if she snuck up on him...

“Pinkie!” Tight had noticed her eying the griffin's plate. Her voice had taken on a sharper tone, if only for the briefest of moments.

Pinkie Pie immediately dove for cover.

After a few seconds of no shouting, she deemed it safe to peak out from under the table.

A somewhat befuddled Tight Rope was staring back down at her, blinking a couple of times.

Some more moments passed, then Pinkie jumped back up, with a relieved smile on her face.

Apparently, a pony shouting didn't always mean they also got scary.

Tight continued blinking, her thought-process thoroughly derailed. After a series of “uhs” and “errs”, she repeated her previous statement.

“You can't... eat other ponies food.” She scratched her neck, idly playing with the curls of her mane. “I don't get why you'd even...” She shook her head. “Are... are you still hungry...?”

Pinkie nodded rapidly. Well, duh!

“Oh. Uhm.” Tight Rope exchanged a glance with the rest of the group.

“There's going to be dessert later, anyway –“

“Dessert? That sounds fun!”

~ ~ ~

Time had passed.

After everything she'd gone through, she'd finally, finally gotten her food!

First, Tight Rope had insisted that she had to “eat her own food first”, before making dessert.

After that, Tight had insisted that Pinkie should apologize to Geoffrey and Zenya. To Geoffrey, especially, for scaring him.

Pinkie didn't understand how she could've scared the griffin, but said “sorry” anyway, then rushed after Tight to get more yummy food.

And, worst of all, then Tight had said that she needed to make the dessert. That had taken, like, forever!

So here she sat, after what surely must've been entire minutes of not having yummy food, staring down at a fresh plate of rolled up, brown-yellowy things called “pancakes”.

Pinkie Pie eyed the “pancakes” curiously, carefully measuring one of them up and down in her hooves. Then she stuffed all the pancakes into her mouth at once and chomped down.

However, what came next, Pinkie Pie had not anticipated.

“T-This... This...! This is... This...!” she stuttered, her thoughts battling for dominance to formulate the appropriate response to the sensory input.

Every single one of her taste buds blossomed into a beautiful flower.

Fireworks went off in her mouth, and Pinkie Pie wisely clamped her muzzle shut tight, lest to give the taste even the remote chance to escape.

Every taste she had ever experienced flashed behind closed eyelids.

A combo of soup and salad at the table. Some wild flowers. An apple or twenty back in Ponyville. A bunch of flowers she had found growing in different places. (The tastiest ones always grew right next to the buildings.) Something green and mushy from an overrun picnic-basket. Some more apples. A sandwich with hay-fries and salad she had found lying around on a plate sitting in front of a stallion making a frowny-face. (She had no idea what could possibly have had upset the stallion, but the food certainly could not have been the cause, as it had tasted quite delicious.)

And only then did she start chewing on the pancake. Utter bliss exploded onto her tongue.

It was literally the best food she had ever eaten in her entire life.

A thousand outcries of joy, a thousand hoops of happiness, a thousand songs on her lips – all of it was stuck in traffic, her brain barely in any state to even produce words by this point.

So, instead, she settled for a smile. A peaceful smile, one of absolute serenity, otherwise reserved for those in the process of experiencing an epiphany about the universe's inner workings and the meaning of life itself.

Tight Rope, the incredible, fun, most nice pony ever that had created The Best Food, turned around, and chuckled.

“So, guess you like 'em?”

“Glflglgabllgah,” Pinkie Pie sighed contently.

“Wow, you really like 'em!” Tight laughed. “Gotta remember to make those more often.”

“Glabbub...? M-m-more?” Pinkie Pie squeaked. The mere concept that the universe may contain more pancakes momentarily had slipped her mind.

A simple nod was all Pinkie needed.

And so, with the taste of pancake in her mouth, and the promise of a fun-filled future ahead, Pinkie Pie bounced with joy, all the while loudly proclaiming her merriment into the world.

The nice pony laughed, further fueling Pinkie's enthusiasm.

Life was fun!

She did not once spare a thought for the place called “Ponyville”, nor did she consider the other Pinkies.

After all, she was having fun! And that was all that mattered, right?
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Author's Note

Special thanks to Never2muchpinkie (aka kyuubinaruto18 on deviantArt) for proofreading, editing, and brainstorming. :-)

2 – The First Night Ever!

~Pinkieviduality~

Chapter 2 – The First Night Ever!

This chapter is available as a "synthesized" audio book:

[link] - no background music
[link] - with ambient music loop

[overview of all chapters]

It had been some very eventful hours of play, food, and running around the circus, when Pinkie Pie noticed that the blue of the sky had turned into orange.

“Hold on a second, I didn't hit the sky when I was playing with those color-buckets...” Pinkie scratched her head in confusion. Then she gasped, noticing the pink of her hoof had taken on an orange tint as well.

And so had the grass, and the flowers, and the trees, and the circus-wagons, and even the griffon who had just walked out of one of the wagons.

His shiny white-gray-ish feathers were now aglow in a yellowy-red hue, that changed depending on what way she tilted her head.

It looked fun! She had to investigate!

“Oooh”-ing and “aaah”-ing, Pinkie squinted her eyes at the feathers, stretching her neck, turning her head this way and that, pushing her face closer, backing up again, then burying her face in the feathers once more. And they were so soft, too!

Mister Big Bird-Cat – Geoffy? Yeah, Geoffy – had went all stiff and stock-still when she'd run over, and now he was making all sorts of quiet funny squeaky noises. He was such a silly bird-kitty!

One of the feathers got up her nose.

It tickled.

Pinkie Pie instantly fell, rolling around in the grass, laughing uncontrollably. With every small movement, the soft feather kept tickling the inside of her nose, robbing her of any ability or thought to remove it.

And why should she? It was fun!

And so Pinkie simply kept on rolling, letting the world pass by in streaks of sky-orange and grass-green.

“Wheeeeeeeeeeee!”

Right up until she rolled into the lake.

There was a splash, and then Pinkie Pie found herself in a place where tiny fish swam all around her, where algae tickled her belly, where she felt almost weightless, where her mane and tail ebbed and flowed like they were made of cloud-stuff, and where giggling made pretty bubbles come out of her mouth that flew up into the sky.

Pinkie played. She swam, she dived, she sat down on the lake-bed to look at the sky, she shot out of the water only to dive-bomb back in, she followed the fishies and tried to catch them with her hooves, she splashed and watched the light of the sun ripple around her.

Pinkie Pie had fun.

Eventually, the watery-fun ended, and Pinkie shook out her coat and mane.

The sky was now a kind-of blueish dark, and so was the ground. Her hooves were dark, too. Pretty much everything was colored in different shades of “dark”.

Pinkie Pie trotted out of the water, towards the circus-wagons, somehow not feeling like bouncing at the moment.

She looked up at the new glowy ball in the sky and waved at it. She almost fell over doing so, but caught herself just in time.

“That's the moon,” her brain provided after some time. Pinkie snickered to herself.

“Hehe... Moo... Moon. Moo-moon. Moooon. Hihihi...”

For some reason, lifting her hooves and placing one in front of the other in the right order was difficult. Each of them seemed to weigh a ton, and the ground and the bushes and the wagons and the sky and the everything seemed to be wobbling and tilting ever so slightly.

Pinkie looked up again at the moon.

“Hihi, that must've been a really big cow who did that.”

The upper half of the moon was gone. So was the upper half of the sky. And when she looked down, so was the upper half of the everything.

Pinkie tried to open her eyes properly, but her eyelids had suddenly become too heavy to lift.

“Wanna find the cow,” she mumbled out loud as she clumsily stumbled forward. Her voice sounded slurred and silly to herself. It sounded funny – but instead of a giggle, all that came out next was an odd sound that forced her mouth to open wide, unable to close it for several seconds. Out of a reflex, she raised a hoof to cover her mouth – then the everything fell over, and she suddenly lay on the grass.

Pinkie didn't try to stand up again. Right now, just laying down on the warm, slightly prickly grass was... fun.

Then she began snoring.

~~~

“Good morning, class!” A determined, stern Pinkie stood in front, gesturing at a gigantic notepad with a stick. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to retrieve the fun from the Fun-place.”

Several Pinkies walked through the crowd, handing out sheets of paper.

“These five ponies are your targets. Study the information, memorize it, then dispose of the pamphlet through the usual means.”

“Hmmmpff?” Pinkie Pie looked up, then around at the other students. Sheepishly, she leaned over to the Pinkie to her left, and whispered into her ear:

“Uh, I already ate mine. Can I have yours?”

“Sorry,” the other Pinkie whispered back. “I ate mine too.”

“Aww, shoot.” Pinkie Pie pouted. “What were those five ponies' names again?”

“Uhhhhh...” The Pinkie scratched her head. “I think their names were Flutter-bee, Rary-Flee, Raincoat Flash, Twibow Jack, and Apple-Light Twarkle.”

“Okay thanks!”

“Alright, Pinkies!” The instructor spoke up, pointing her hooves at the various groups of Pinkies around her. “You go to the Apple-place. Pinkies, you go to the Water-place. No, not that one, the other Water-place. Pinkies, you go to the Flutter-place. And Pinkies, you just run around aimlessly all over the place because I forgot where I was supposed to send you.”

And Pinkie Pie was off at a gallop!

It didn't take long at all to reach her destination.

Pinkie crested the top of the hill, and beheld infinity.

“Oh my gosh, it is full of apples!”

Apple-trees, apple-trees, and apple-trees, as far and wide as the eye could see. (Also: apple-trees)

Except for right in front of her, because there was a house, or perhaps a barn.

Many Pinkies were bouncing on the roof, others banging their hooves against the walls of the barn, making it shake.

They weren't the only ones:

A bunch of non-pink ponies were pulling on ropes attached to the barn, pitching their full weight against the stubborn wooden walls, obviously trying to tear them apart that way. Others followed the Pinkies' example, using hammers to slowly weaken the walls.

Pinkie Pie had a better idea.

Grabbing a rope that was just lying around in front of an orange pony – having to tug to get it unstuck from the pony's hooves – Pinkie used it to lasso the upper half of a tree, bringing it low to the ground.

Now easily able to get on the tree's branches, Pinkie tied the rope to hold down the tree, bouncing on it a few times experimentally to check its tension.

Then she cut the rope.

With a loud “twwaaaaang”, Pinkie Pie was flung through the air. Right at the house-barn.

“Wheeeeeeeeee!”

And with a satisfying “crunch!” and a resounding “crack!”, Pinkie slammed first through the wall, then through the support beams, flew past some pigs, and then came crashing through a window on the other side of the building, just as the entire structure came falling down.

“Woohoo!” Pinkie Pie cheered. “How many points do I get?”

She looked up into the sky, where flying ponies were keeping score. The clouds spelled out: “ALL OF THE POINTS”.

“Yay!!”

Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, Pinkie immediately gave chase.

The pigs led Pinkie to a clearing full of animals, several pink ponies and a yellow one. Pinkie Pie arrived just in time for the yellow pony to wave a large, white-and-red checkered piece of cloth around. “Three... two... one...” She whispered to the crowd. “Go! Uhm, that is, if you don't mind... I mean if you don't want to go that's okay...”

The race was on, and Pinkie quickly found herself running alongside cats, dogs, pigs, Pinkies, and a bunny riding on the back of a flamingo.

Pinkie nimbly dodged between a tiger and a hawk, overtaking a bandicoot riding a polar bear, but was herself overtaken by a sword-wielding Pinkie riding a yellow ostrich.

Then Pinkie saw her: A fat cow balancing on a suspiciously familiar cheese-wheel was barreling her way to the lead.

“The moon-cow!” Pinkie gasped. “And she's got the moon-cheese!”

Newly motivated, Pinkie realized that she needed to up her game.

Quickly, she jumped on the back of the nearest Pinkie and instructed her ride: “Follow that cow!”

This doubled their speed, because of math.

Pinkie was going head-to-head with an ape and a green dinosaur, but then someone threw a squid in her face and she lost precious seconds navigating blind. She retaliated by crashing into the fruit-stand, and throwing banana peels at the other racers in front of her.

This cleared out the nearby competition, and Pinkie was quickly gaining on the moon-cow after a bowl of mushroom-soup that had just been lying around abandoned on a table in front of a stallion sitting at a restaurant had given her the boost she needed.

And... was that the finish line? Yes! She was so close to winning!

Faintly, Pinkie heard a strange whirring and buzzing sound. Confused, she looked up.

And then she was hit by a flying blue tortoise.

Pinkie was flung off her ride, who was sent skidding in an uncontrollable spin, until she hit a wall.

Then the other Pinkie burst into flames because that's what happens when you crash into a wall.

Thinking quickly, Pinkie Pie threw a bucket of blue paint at the flames, which solved the problem.

(It was blue paint, duh.)

After that, Pinkie lost track of the moon-cow, so she followed the closest Pinkie to where-ever she was going, presumably someplace fun.

And indeed, a very large group of Pinkies – perhaps all of them, even – had gathered around an enormous tree.

Coming closer, Pinkie saw a very very purple pony sitting on one of the branches of the tree, shouting to the crowd with a megaphone.

“Do you have what it takes to be the Real Pinkie Pie? You could win a price!”

All the Pinkies began shouting. “Me! Me! I'm the Real Pinkie Pie!” “Oooh! Oooh! Pick me! Pick me! I'm the Real Pinkie Pie!” “But – I'm the real Pinkie Pie!” “I'm the Reeeeeal Pinkie!” “Noooo, it's me!” “No, me!”

Pinkie Pie joined in on the fun, and shouting louder than all the others, she proclaimed herself the Real Pinkie Pie.

“Congratulations, Real Pinkie Pie! You win!”

“Yay!” Pinkie jumped into the air. “What did I win?”

“Pancakes!”

“Woooohoooo!”

The purple pony pointed at a plate laden with beautiful, mouthwatering, glorious heavenly pancakes!

Pinkie Pie bit down, but the plate had suddenly grown wings and was flying away at a rapid pace.

“Hey! Gimme back those pancakes!”

Quick to run after the delicious food, Pinkie dodged over, through and around bushes and brambles, thorny vines and foreboding tree-branches.

Finally, she caught up with the plate, just as she'd reached the entrance to the Water-Mirror-Cave-place.

With one slurp of her tongue, she ate all of the pancakes, licking the empty plate clean afterwards.

The black-and-white striped plate opened its eyes, giving her a fierce scowl. Pinkie shrank back at the stern face.

A striped hoof pointed at something behind her, and Pinkie Pie turned around, seeing Ponyville in the distance – and Ponyville was melting.

Pinkie gasped in shock.

Slowly, all the colorful buildings and trees and ponies and food-items were dissolving into a mess of ugly browns and dull grays. The only thing that stood out clearly from the mess were her own hoof-prints.

She looked down at her hooves, still dripping pink color.

“This is your fault.” The zebra-plate accused. “You broke the fun...”

“No!” Pinkie cried. “No no no no!! I didn't want that!”

“Don't worry,” said Tight Rope. “We can still fix this.” The green mare walked up from behind Pinkie, and gave her a smile.

She stepped closer to Ponyville, which was now somehow a painting on one of the circus-wagons, and rubbed the back of her foreleg across it several times, until all of the icky bad color was gone.

“There, all better.”

“Yay!” Pinkie Pie cheered, and Tight Rope gave her a hug.

~~~

Happily snuggling into her fluffy tail, Pinkie rolled over in her sleep with a content sigh.

Life was fun.

~~~

Geoffrey had almost finished his preparations for bed when he realized his mistake.

Earlier in the evening, Pinkie Pie's antics had completely thrown him off track, and he'd slipped a step in his daily routine.

The door of his wagon creaked slightly upon opening, as Geoffrey went out into the night. The moon was hiding behind cloud-cover, and his eyes had yet to adjust to the darkness.

Had it not been for the snoring, he'd have almost definitely stumbled over the prone form of a pony sleeping on the ground.

Geoffrey tensed when he recognized the curly mane and tail. Her hair glittered in a ray of moonlight that shined through the clouds, and Geoffrey noticed that her entire coat was soaked.

The night-air may have been pretty warm for this time of year, but regardless, she was going to catch a cold if she stayed outside all night.

What was she doing here? Why was she sleeping outside? Why did he have to be the one to find her? What should he do now?

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and Geoffrey caught himself glancing over his surroundings, as if the answers could be found lying in the grass, only waiting to be illuminated by the light of the moon.

As it so happened, his eyes fell on the other wagons, and he had an idea. Ask Tight Rope. She'd know what to do, as always.

Yes, that was a splendid idea. Ask her, and then he wouldn't have to deal with the odd circumstances of what the newest circus member was doing lying in the grass at night, getting a cold.

His relief, however, was only temporary. As soon as Tight Rope's wagon came into sight, he saw the flaw in his plan – no lights were to be seen through the wagon's windows, and the curtains were drawn. She was already in bed.

Geoffrey's steps grew hesitant. He didn't want to disturb her – of course not!

Tipping on the edges of his paws, he went up to the window and peaked through, only for the curtains to obstruct his sight.

He pressed an ear to the door and listened for any sign of activity – nothing.

He didn't even need to walk over to Zenya's wagon to see that she wasn't awake either. She'd already shut the blinds to keep the morning sun from waking her.

Geoffrey nervously began scratching his neck-feathers with a claw. It utterly messed up his coiffure, but it was a bad habit he just couldn't quit.

All lingering hope that the problem might've resolved itself died when he returned to the pony's impromptu sleeping accommodation.

What should he do now? Wake her up? No – no, he really didn't want to. Take her to his wagon? Heavens forbid, that would be terribly improper!

Hold on! Her wagon! But of course, why had he not thought of it earlier? Tight Rope must've already assigned a wagon to Pinkie Pie. There was really only one wagon where she could've stayed. He just needed to take her there, then he could go to bed.

For a moment, Geoffrey was unsure how to best transport the sleeping pony.

An attempt to lift her onto his back by sliding a wing under her belly elicited a sleepy mumble, and Geoffrey was afraid he was going to wake her up if he continued. She appeared to be ticklish, and applying his feathery appendage seemed detrimental.

He couldn't lift her from the side with just one claw. Maybe if he lifted her over his head with both claws at the same time... No, no that didn't work either.

Eventually, he settled for wrapping his forearms around her midsection and staying in a hover near ground-level, before making his way to the wagon.

He really hoped Pinkie Pie wouldn't wake up now.

With a relieved sigh, Geoffrey reached the wagon in question. Already carrying the pony and still balancing on his hind legs, he had to open the door with his tail.

Then he realized that the room was pitch-dark, he had all claws full and couldn't see where the bed was. On top of that, from what he couldsee, the room seemed positively cluttered with objects, including things lying on the ground obstructing his way in.

Granted, this wagon had served as a repository, but he'd have figured Pinkie Pie would've cleaned her room.

Geoffrey looked down at the sleeping pony held in his forearms. He couldn't effectively do anything while he was holding her, and he needed to get her to bed, but he couldn't do that because he couldn't see anything, and he couldn't get a lamp without laying her down first, which he couldn't do because he couldn't get to her bed, because he couldn't get a lamp because he was holding her.

After some more circular reasoning, Geoffrey eventually came to lay Pinkie down in front of the wagon. It was only temporarily, of course! And it was perfectly acceptable to do so, since he'd found her lying in the grass to begin with. That made it okay, right? Right? Right. Yes.

With haste, the anxious griffon rushed to his wagon, returning with an oil-lamp less than a minute thereafter.

The inside of the wagon was a mess – or rather, half of it was. It looked like somepony had started cleaning up, then given up halfway through.

As expected, the room was filled with cardboard-boxes, indexed with various descriptors ranging from “tools” to “dishes” to “photo-albums”. Less expected was that most of them lay all over the floor, some of them open. That was nothing to say of the various random items that lay in small heaps all over the place, including on the bed on the room's other end.

Geoffrey sighed.

He'd needed to clean out a passage to the bed. To do so he had needed to rearrange some of the boxes, and do something about all the random odds and ends lying about. He hadn't intended to, but it wasn't before he had actually reached the bed that he realized that he was almost done stacking the boxes thematically, re-categorizing the loose items and rectifying inefficiencies in storage management.

Another sigh, this time ending in a yawn. Pinkie Pie's bed reminded him of his own waiting for him. But he was nearly done.

A set of candles, an electrical lamp, an empty firefly-lantern and a set of matches now all went together into the appropriately re-labeled “luminescent utilities”-box, along with two used glow-stones – one never knew if you couldn't get those working again, better not throw them out.

The pop of his wing-joints when trying to stretch made Geoffrey wince. His wings had already fallen asleep, he should do so as well.

A little voice in his head began yelling at him. What was he doing here? Why was he cleaning up Pinkie Pie's room? He wanted to go to bed. He should go to bed. He hadto go to bed.

“Ah, flock it.”

The rest of the various detritus swiftly went into an emptied box, clumsily labeled “unsorted objects”.

Yawning, the tired griffon dragged himself down the wagon's three steps, and then further into the night.

Now, all he had to do was to carry the sleeping pony into her bed.

Geoffrey stared blankly at the damp spot of grass. She was gone.

For a moment, he was frozen by panic. Where had she gone? What should he do?

But then, the logical part of his brain provided a simple answer, and Geoffrey relaxed. Pinkie Pie had woken up on her own, and walked off – for reasons that were none of his concerns.

Which meant she would come back and could go to bed by herself, no assistance required.

Which also meant that he could go to bed. Right now.

Geoffrey didn't take the chance for hijinks to ensue and took off immediately.

~~~

Exhausted from a long day of fun, and the general novelty of life, Pinkie Pie slept long and peaceful, unperturbed by the rays of the morning sun.

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzz... Fun... Zzzzzzz fun-fun...”

All was well with the world. Until something started tugging on her blanket.

A shiver of cold ran down her body, and Pinkie tucked her blanket close to her chest.

There was another pull, the blanket nearly slipping from her grasp.

“No... no... s'my blanky” she mumbled in her sleep. One of her hind legs twitched, as she fought off imaginary evils, firmly holding on to the warm, fuzzy blanket.

The pull stopped. Pinkie smiled, and celebrated her triumph over waking up with a long yawn.

Just to be sure, she pulled the second, leathery blanket close, tucking it tight to her chest.

With a content sigh, Pinkie snuggled deep into her fluffy pillow.

The pillow nuzzled her back, and she giggled.

The thick, slobbery tongue licking her face was what finally woke her up for good.

Reciprocating the misguided show of affection meant for a once-fledgling griffon, Pinkie licked Marianne the manticore's face right back.

“Hi!” Pinkie grinned up at the stunned, now fully-awake manticore, then turned. “Oh, hi Geoffy!”

With a grin, she expertly rolled out from under the manticore's warm paw, then bounced out of the cage to take on the world with an exclamation of “Fun!”

There were a few seconds of silence.

Then, Marianne gave a belated, very confused roar at a retreating pink pony, just as the mare energetically bounced out of sight around a corner.

Both she and Geoffrey looked at each other.

Geoffrey shrugged helplessly.
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Author's Note

Yay, a new chapter! And it only took 1.5 years... Ahaha ahahah... errr. Oops? :twilightoops:

Well, chapter 3 won't take quite that long, I hope. :twilightblush:

Also, I am still looking for a test-audience for "Daring Do and the Secret of the Fourth Wall", chapter 10. :rainbowdetermined2:

No editing or spellchecking required. :pinkiegasp:

Just read the chapter, then answer some questions so I know if everything in the chapter works as intended. :raritywink:

More info here.

3 – All play and no work

~Pinkieviduality~

Chapter 3 – All play and no work

This chapter is available as a "synthesized" audio book:

[link] - no background music
[link] - with ambient music loop

[overview of all chapters]

Pinkie Pie was happy.

Every day was a fun adventure!

Everypony was always doing strange and exciting new things Pinkie didn't fully understand, and sometimes, they'd ask her to do silly things or avoid doing other things for equally silly reasons.

This day was no exception.

“Hi, Zeny!” Pinkie Pie energetically extended a greeting towards her fellow equine of the striped variety.

“Gaaaaah!” The other mare briefly displayed an equal show of energy, if only to spent it in jumping two hoof-lengths high and hastily distancing herself in reaction to the pink pony's spontaneous entrance.

Pinkie Pie giggled at this, which earned her a glare from the zebra in turn.

“What the...!? How did you get in here?”

“Through the door!” Pinkie beamed brightly.

The zebra face-hoofed. She then said something in response, but Pinkie's attention was already on the room's interior rather than its occupant.

One wall of the wagon was covered in strange wooden masks, their varying expressions prompting Pinkie to giggle and make silly faces to imitate them as she bounced from one mask to the next.

Stacks of paper covered the desk. The pages showed sketches of clouds shaped like strange animals or ponies – or perhaps animals and ponies made out of clouds.

Vials of various sizes and shapes lined the shelves, containing colorful liquids ranging from glowing greens and bubbling blues to gooey yellows and sticky orange substances.

As the pink pony eyed each of the oddly-shaped glasses, bizarre, twisted, stretched and squeezed ponies sharing the color of each liquid stared back at her. “Ooooh”-ing and “Aaah”-ing, Pinkie Pie poked one of the vials, eliciting a sharp hissing noise as the bubbling concoction stirred.

“Hey! Do not touch that! HEY! PIE!”

“Huh? What? Pie! Where?” Pinkie's head whirled around, mouth watering at the prospect of food.

“'Pie' is your name, is it not?”

“Is it?” The pink pony blinked. “I mean – yes, it is, it's Pinkie Pie. I'm 'The Real Pinkie Pie', yes. Now where's the pie?” Pinkie's face was full of eagerness.

“There isn't any pie!” Zenya groaned, applying hoof to face.

“What? Aww...” The exuberant mare's smile briefly dropped into a frown before returning full-force in a matter of seconds, as she once again turned back to investigate the vials, prodding another one of the thin glass-tubes.

“HEY! What did I *just* say?!” Zenya scowled at her.

“...That there isn't any pie?” Pinkie Pie tilted her head back at the other mare.

“I told you not to touch the glasses – that is, unless you want to have blown up in your face the resulting gasses.”

“Hihihi, that rhymed!” Pinkie giggled.

“Yes.” Zenya rolled her eyes. “I'll try my best not to do it again.”

After a second of silence, Zenya exhaled a sigh of exasperation.

“Why are you here, anyway?”

At this, Pinkie suddenly had the strangest urge to give a witty comeback regarding the outcome of “two ponies liking each other very much”. But for the life of her, she just couldn't remember the punchline.

Pinkie Pie shrugged off the urge and, with her ever-present smile, relayed what she had been told earlier.

“Tight Rope said I should come see you for sowing the tent.” She grinned. “Which I guess makes sense, since I'm a plant-pony and you're a stripe-y plant-pony, although I don't know how we're going to sow a tent, maybe we need to cut it into itty-bitty-tiny-little pieces and bury the pieces and then get a watering can and lots and lots of water so that we can grow lots and lots of many new tents, and–“

“Aha. That's great.” Zenya deadpanned. “I'll get the tent. You wait here.”

And so Pinkie did. For about two seconds, before continuing her investigation.

Once Zenya returned, she led Pinkie outside where a positively huge piece of cloth had been laid out in the grass.

Pinkie marveled at the sight, not paying much attention to Zenya until something she said caught her ear.

“...Guess I should be thankful for another pair of hooves.”

“Uh! Uhh! With six hooves you'd be like a spider-pony! I saw that in a paper-thingy! You could climb walls and–”

Zenya simply walked off, ignoring Pinkie's chatter altogether.

“– bitten by a magical spider, and you could be like a super-hero, fighting evil! Although you're always grouchy – I guess that would make you a 'gritty' hero, then? Hmm...”

“Are you coming?” Zenya cut her off.

Bouncing along, Pinkie came across yet another new sight. From a compartment on the underside of the wagon, Zenya was dragging out a seemingly endless piece of cloth with red and yellow stripes.

“Is it your super-hero cape?” Pinkie tilted her head, a slight frown on her muzzle. “Isn't it a bit too big? Uh! Unless the spider-bite made you grow big, then it'd totally fit!”

Ignoring Pinkie Pie's ramblings, Zenya continued to lay out the cloth, spreading it out over a large area.

“We need to check the fabric for rips and holes”, she addressed Pinkie, trying and failing to level her gaze at the constantly bouncing mare. “I will take this side, you start... over there.”
.

-/-

.
“Have you found anything yet?” Zenya asked, engrossed in her work. When Pinkie did not respond, she looked up. Pinkie Pie was gone.

Then something in her wagon exploded.

Zenya rushed back inside – only to stumble blindly through a dense cloud of brightly glowing green smoke.

It took a few seconds of coughing and waving her forelegs about, before the colorful smoke cleared, and revealed a smiling pink pony holding an empty vial sitting, once again, right at the table with her chemicals.

“What did I tell you about touching those?!” she growled.

The pink pony gave a wide, toothy smile before reciting. “You told me not to touch the glasses, unless I wanted to have blown up in my face the resulting gasses! And I did want that! It was fun! And I love fun! Wheee!”

Zenya's face went utterly blank. One of the metaphorical cogs in her brain had gotten stuck trying to process what Pinkie Pie had said.

It took a few seconds for Zenya's brain to get unstuck. Its first action was to place Zenya's hoof in its usual place on her face.

“Just... go back to work,” Zenya groaned exasperatedly.

“But that work is boooo-ring!” Pinkie whined.

And now the cog had strawberry-marmalade spilled all over it.

Zenya just blinked.

“You are kidding. You are kidding, right? Please tell me you are joking.”

“I am?” Confused, Pinkie Pie looked around, as if searching for the punchline.

What followed were the longest ten minutes of Zenya's life, as the concept of “work” and why it was important was relayed to the mare peeking under each cupboard, desk and bed, physically looking for the punchline of a joke.

Some more minutes passed, until Zenya and said mare were back outside, where they were supposed to fix up the tent.

Pinkie Pie, however, appeared not to be listening to Zenya's instructions, instead occupied in once again staring at the zebra's stripes.

“Why does your coat look like that anyway? Did you paint it?” Pinkie raised a hoof to her chin in contemplation. “I think maybe you should try something with more colors in it, like your super-hero cape.”

Pinkie looked down at the red and yellow fabric. “Black and white is soooo boooooring!”

“...Hmm, what's that noise?” Pinkie asked, before noticing Zenya grinding her teeth furiously.

“Oh wow, I didn't know teeth could make sounds like that.” Pinkie Pie's face scrunched awkwardly as she bit her teeth together, trying to recreate the effect. “Hmm... this is harder than it looks... Can you show me how you do that? Oooh, and that with your eyes, too, that looks funny!”

The cogs in Zenya's brain caught fire and then melted into cheese.

"Excuse me for a moment," she spoke in a flat monotone, then turned and went back to her wagon.

She closed the door with deliberate slowness, grasping onto the door-handle with a hoof until it was fully closed.

There was silence, and Pinkie sat in front of the closed door, head tilted in confusion.

“Huh. I guess she went inside to change the paint.”

The silence was broken by a series of muffled thuds, of something hard repeatedly striking against wood.

“Aren't we going to fix your super-hero cape?”

More thuds could be heard. One of the wagon's walls shook. Several inaudible mutterings could be heard through the closed door.

“Just go... play somewhere else.” Zenya's muffled voice groaned from the other side.

“Oh, okay!” And with a merry tune on her lips, Pinkie Pie bounced off.

Fifteen minutes later, Zenya had calmed down.

“The mare obviously has... issues.” Zenya muttered through grit teeth.

She sighed, looking around at the mess Pinkie Pie had left behind.

Now calm, the metaphorical cogs in Zenya's brain ran smooth once again.

Something in her mind clicked.

“Wait, why was Pie rambling on about –“

Her eyes widened, darting across the room, taking in the details.

Beakers with potentially dangerous chemicals had been placed out of order, labels gone. Several of her notes and sketches lay haphazardly strewn on the ground. An old book had fallen under the table somehow, with all its bookmarks scattered. Faintly glowing stains had been left on the carpet, and one of the old masks lay on the floor, right in a puddle of red ooze.

But Zenya didn't care about that.

She rushed to the cupboard Pinkie had left ajar, and opened one particular drawer, whose contents had been arranged neatly, in a well-organized manner, and kept clean of dust.

Had been. Not anymore.

“PINKIIIIE PIIIE!” Zenya yelled, running outside. “KEEP YOUR DIRTY HOOVES OF MY COMICS! Those are mint-condition collectors pieces! If you so much as bent a page, so Unkulunkulu help me, I'll akunikele ibe umnyama, and not even Ihashe'best can save your spirit from Ngcina'mveliso!”