Pinkie Pie awoke that morning feeling somewhat hairy. Hairier than usual, even.
In fact, she swore she could see a very large, very blue hoof coming down towards her.
She didn't panic, wasn't particularly shocked by this turn of events; she just took it in stride. Or in follicle, as it were; bereft of a tail, her entire being shook around as the object descended and began coursing around her and in her, scritching about at the roots.
If she had a mouth, she would have giggled in pleasure. As it was, she simply puffed up a bit and went still, in anticipation of further stimulation.
She heard a tomboyish voice booming above her. “Ugh. Itchy.” A feeling of vertigo, a sudden change of orientation, and she found herself facing the ground. The voice spoke again. “What the buck was in that filly's mouth?”
Pinkie Pie questioned Rainbow Dash at that point, but she realised that, as a clump of hair, she hadn't an organ from which to issue her perky, high-pitched voice. So, being quick as she was, she arranged herself into a pattern, contorting the follicles into very efficient Equestrian.
“Question particle,” it read, “interrogative impersonal pronoun, feminine locative pronoun, mouth-in, preterite coupla verb?”
The only response she got was the hand again, reaching down to scratch her once more.
As nice as the feeling was, she couldn't help but begin to lose her patience. She felt the feeling of movement, saw the cloud moving a bit below her. It only took the pink former-mare, being the genius she was, a few seconds to compute a solution.
She promptly jammed herself back into the follicles.
“Yowch!” That oughta get Dashie’s attention, she thought. Very pleased with herself, she began arranging herself once more into even more shapes.
“Question particle,” Pinkie Pie signed, “interrogative reason pro-adverb, here-in, present continuous coupla verb?”
“Okay,” she heard, “Okay. Probably just rock candy. No, nope. Nothing to worry a—
“Negated preterite coupla verb,” Pinkie Pie signed, shaking her metaphorical head. “something-for, to worry, present continuous coupla verb.”
“Dear sweet Celestia,” the voice said, and she saw Dashie’s enormous face looking down at her. “Why’s my—my muff—pink and puffy?”
“First-person nominative pronoun, know, negated present continuous coupla verb.”
“It’s alive? Oh buck, oh buck.” She could see a variety of emotions rushing through her face; she couldn’t identify any of them, of course, because none of them were any measure of happiness. “Gotta tell Twi—no, wait, I can’t tell Twi. What to do, what to do—”
“Fluttershy,” she signalled, expertly twining the semantically-connected concepts of ‘to flutter’ and ‘to be shy’ together; the ‘slightness’ ideographs overlapped beautifully as ‘flight’ and ‘emotion’ clashed against each other and intertwined over and below the overlapping slightness, signifying their basically similar yet different natures and underscoring the middle glyph’s non-interventionist depictee.
Her calligraphic mastery only elicited a series of quick, distressed breaths from the cyan mare whose rainbow mane hung down behind her down-facing head, draping them in semi-shadow. “Yeah! Yeah, Fluttershy lives next to the Everfree Forest, probably knows about the poisons. She’ll know what to do. I can’t believe I’m gonna take advice from my crotch,” she groaned, shaking her head a bit and closing her eyes.
Maybe, thought Pinkie, she’s so happy that the hair’s finally talking back! She’d once seen Rainbow Dash talking to the very same patch of hair on somepony else, saying something about ‘sugar-cake’, but she was shooed out before she heard the answer. She presumed there was none; Rainbow’s shock was clearly excitement.
She couldn’t wait to be the ‘muff’—that was what she called her—to finally answer her questions about sugar and cake. What fun it would be!
As it was, she soon saw the clouds moving below her, quickly replaced by Ponyville from the sky. The wind blew through her, and she extended herself like the pigmented mass of keratin she was to catch as much air as she possibly could.
Pinkie would, at that point, have begun contemplating the meaning of life, but she saw the grass around Fluttershy’s cottage zooming up towards her before she could come up with a stereotypical response to forget.
“Fluttershy! Fluttershy!” Dashie’s shouting came from above her,
A quiet voice, almost indistinct. “Rainbow Dash?”
“Fluttershy!” A rush, and she could see Fluttershy’s yellow underbelly. Yellow underbelly. Yellow belly. That’s funny, she thought. Yellow-be—
Her train of thought was interrupted as the yellow-bellied giant spoke again. “Yes, Rainbow Dash?”
“So, uh, I woke up this morning, and—”
Pinkie saw the giant head looking at her. “Uh, I’m sorry for interrupting, but the... hair... above your... thing.” The yellow pegasus took a deep breath, and the little muff could see the nostrils widen.
“It’s pink. And... fluffy.”
“Affirmative particle.”
“And it talks!”
“That’s what I came to tell you about.”
“First person nominative pronoun, pink, euphonic particle, pie, present continuous coupla verb.”
“Dash—what did you do last night?”
She could feel Dashie’s body heat increasing. “N—nothing. Got a little heavy, that’s all.”
“That hair—it’s Pinkie Pie.”
“What? What the buck are we supposed to do now?”
“We’ve gotta ask Twilight!” The demure voice was tinged with urgency. “She’ll know what to do!”
An enormous groan. “Is there any other way?”
“Well,” the voice came again, “There’s an, uh, an herb in the Everfree Forest that might help. It’s called the Heartsplitter. I’ve used it to treat multiple personality disorder, so it might—”
“A herb? Awesome!” She felt the cyan pegasus’ body move, and the yellow mass jerking forwards towards her to give her a close-up on the other pegasus’ belly.
Yep. It was yellow, all right.
“A—alright, but I’ve gotta warn you. It’s really, really dangerous. There’s this monster—a bull ape—that comes out this time of the month. It’s really cranky.”
Pinkie Pie had monsters come out once a month, too, so she could empathise.
“I’ll beat ‘em up if I have to.” A hint of hesitation. “Just—for the love of Celestia, get Pinkie off of my muff!”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary. I’ll just tell it to back down. I just wanna warn you, though.”
Hoofs falling on dirt, clip-clop sounds. It wasn’t long before they began going again, and the ground below her got darker and darker as they descended into the Everfree Forest. She would have hummed to herself, but decided to simply spread herself and let the wind go through her once more. That sensation never really got old, and now she had the time to revel in it.
She revelled in it, in fact, until she heard a high-pitched yelp and a loud crash; felt her centre of gravity shifting, saw an enormous bear-like creature whose eyes seemed to scream ‘you’re not gonna get me with those crazy eyes this time!’ Another shift, and she came face-to-face with Fluttershy’s semi-conscious form, splayed about on the roots.
“How could you do that to Fluttershy, you—you monster?” Down to the ground again, and a sudden rush of speed.
A sudden change of momentum, and a hard crash; much closer. She probably would’ve gotten nauseous if she’d been a pony; as it was, all she felt was ticklish. She couldn’t say the same for Rainbow Dash, as she saw the comparatively gigantic monster march down on her and reach his arms out; elevation, and
The monster’s look seemed to say ‘what in the name of the Lord is that?’.
“Get away from me, you creep!” An ineffectual hoof, and a deep, bellowing laugh as the head drew closer.
Pinkie Pie, at this point, knew what had to be done; knew that this monster had hurt her friends. Mustering her strength, every last follicle drawing back, she felt the pressure building up in her base as the monster drew closer and closer, as the cyan pegasus wiggled uselessly in his enormous grasp.
She aimed, calculating the trajectory of the projectiles.
A loud scream came from above. “Stay away from Pinkie!”
Then, her gestalt consciousness shattered.
*
Rainbow Dash struggled futilely in the monster’s grasp, the wet breath splattering across her fur. The flower lay tantalisingly out of reach, two enormous petals jutting from the ground; Fluttershy lay disorientated—she could rely only on herself.
The hard, calloused hands lay around her precious wings, making her twitch involuntarily. She tried to get away, but even she knew that it was impossible; not even a bullet could get through a bull ape’s head. No ordinary bullet. Still, she fought; the thing’s arms were too long to let her do more than wiggle, but she fought.
As the monster drew nearer, she screamed. “Stay away from Pinkie!”
And then her world exploded in pain.
She looked up through tear-stained eyes just in time to see the little relativistic projectiles burst through the monster’s skull and put him almost instantly into a sugar coma.
Then she looked down to see her cauterised pubic region.
That was when she fainted.
*
“Dash! Dash!” A gentle voice brought her back into the realm of the conscious. “Dash, are you alright?”
She opened her eyes to see Fluttershy’s own staring into hers. “Wh—what happened to Pinkie?”
She backed off and shook her head sadly, gesturing at a clump of grey hair lying on the ground next to the comatose bull ape.
“Pinkie!” she shouted, croupading to the pile of drained keratin, looking down at it for a moment before collapsing onto her front and sobbing, hooves over head. Pinkie, her friend, her best, innocent, idiotic friend—she’d given her life up for her.
A pat on her shoulder. A warm hoof. “Dash?”
“I can’t believe it. Pinkie’s gone, Fluttershy. Do you know what this means?”
“I can’t believe it either, Dash,” she says, “but I’m going to have to treat that burn, or the fur might never grow back.”
“I’m the Element of Loyalty!” she cried, shaking her head in her hooves. “The least I can do is have a little mark for her. To remember her by. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been so bull-headed, she’d still be alive!”
“I’m so sorry, Dash.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
The hoof lifted from the cyan pegasus’ shoulder, and the yellow pegasus sat down behind her. The pain was inconsequential by now, almost nonexistent.
And Rainbow Dash cried for a while.
And after a minute or two, Fluttershy began to cry as well.
And they cried together, for a long while.
