Pinkie Pie was in a quandary. Or maybe it was a conundrum. “Conundrum” sounded almost as silly as quandary. “Quandary” was still funnier, though. At least she thought so. It definitely wasn't a dilemma; she knew that much. Aside from the fact that Twilight insisted that the word didn't adequately describe the situation, it also wasn't nearly as cool-sounding as either “quandary” or “conundrum”. Although now that she really thought about it, “dilemma” did sound cool if you said it a lot of times in a row really fast. “Dilemmadilemmadilemmadilemmadilemmadilemma.” Even if it didn't really fit the situation maybe it could be a dilemma anyway. Finding the right word to describe the situation was a quandary in itself. Or maybe that was the conundrum and the other situation was the quandary. Maybe she could make a dilemma somehow and then she'd have the trifecta! She could call it the qualemmadrum! Or maybe the dinundary. Conquanlemma? She'd have to ask her friends about it. They were the ones who had gotten her into this whole quanunlemmadrumdilecondary.
The concert had settled one of the group's long-standing arguments about Pinkie Pie: her type. Applejack was a strong proponent of the “she's a regular pony who just hasn't found their special somepony yet”. Twilight held rather staunchly to the belief that as most aspects of Pinkie's personality were more or less random, her taste in ponies would likely be entirely random as well. Her “type” consisted of a set of randomly determined characteristics that she hadn't encountered yet; paradoxically the set of ponies that she would be interested in was defined purely by a lack of consistency. Rarity's (admittedly similar) theory was that Pinkie's tastes were fully malleable and that while on any given day she might have a particular type, that set of tastes shifted from day to day. Fluttershy simply thought that maybe Pinkie just wasn't really interested in that sort of thing.
As it turned out, Rainbow Dash, of all ponies, had the right idea. Her idea, obvious in retrospect, was that Pinkie was simply partysexual: the harder you party, the more interested she is. Just about everypony else (except for Scootaloo, whose opinion was ignored due to the obvious bias) rejected the notion based on the fact that it sold Pinkie short and that it couldn't possibly be that simple. It was.
Pinkie had gotten into one of her straight haired moods; she had been offered the opportunity to organize a birthday party for a certain member of the Canterlot elite, only to have it pulled out from under her when the birthday mare realized that Pinkie was the pony who had all but sexually harassed her at the Grand Galloping Gala with an unfortunate application of face to flank during an impromptu musical number. Pinkie had been pulled from the job and the Mr. Cake was brought in to take care of things. (The fact that in her plan the cost of the cakes alone exceeded her entire allotted budget by 20% didn't help her case either. Neither did the fact that the cost was so high because she ate a good deal of the cake). Needless to say, the party would have been the high point of her...not quite the year. The month, certainly. Quite possibly the height of the financial quarter. Maybe even of the half-year. Not the whole thing, though. That would be her return to the Grand Galloping Gala (or the Triple G, as Pinkie referred to it). But needless to say, the experience had greatly saddened her.
Her friends, being her friends, had of course arranged to cheer her up. A certain rock star, Mosh Whiplash, happened to be on tour, and as luck would have it, his tour took him through Ponyville on the same night that Pinkie should have been arranging her party. Sure, buying tickets from scalpers was morally questionable, but it it couldn't possibly be worse than letting her start talking to rocks and buckets of turnips again. Even if it didn't click with her, at least she wouldn't spend the night sequestered in her room holding a tea party with vegetables and a bag of flour. It clicked.
The moment Mosh Whiplash appeared on the stage, Pinkie very nearly broke her mandible; mouths aren't made to perform a jaw drop and a wide smile simultaneously. The sight floored her. She had a party cannon. Mosh Whiplash had a full battery of party artillery. Half a dozen enormous barrels blasted a literal ton of confetti and streamers into the audience as the band began to play a quick, tight riff so epic and memorable that all who heard it had it etched into their brains. Then in an explosion of multicolored smoke, pyrotechnic sparkles, and enough lasers that Twilight suspected that the Great and Powerful Trixie was on the payroll, Mosh Whiplash himself appeared in all his glory.
Sure, he was conventionally handsome. Even under all the flared mane, flashing lights, and spandex, anypony could tell. Besides, no way he'd ever have ended up on stage if he didn't have the look going for him. But there was so much more than that. The confetti, the lights, the dozen disco balls descending from the ceiling to bounce the lasers into every corner of the venue, and more than anything else, his half-sung half-shouted roar.
““So let's get a party going!
Now it's time to party and we'll party hard!
Let's get a party going!
When it's time to party we will always party hard!
PARTY HARD!”
This pony was singing her soul.
She had somehow, against all odds, never heard the song before yet she knew every word. Her eyes were transfixed by the performer as he bounced across the stage, stopping only to trigger a catapult that launched whole boxes of cupcakes into the audience. Pinkie leaped into the air to catch one. Delicious. Unbelievable. How had she gone her whole life without ever hearing of this stallion among stallions? As she landed, all four of her knees were so weak that she feared her legs would fall off. In fact, she was almost sure that one of them might have until she looked back and confirmed that it was still attached. For the first time in her life, she approached sensory overload. The confetti, glitter, streamers, music, lasers, explosions, cupcakes, balloons (some filled with helium, some filled with air, some filled with chocolate pudding), more confetti, the crowdsurfing, more streamers, disco balls, strobe lights, dancing- it was unthinkable. She had found a pony who partied harder than she did.
She had to meet him.
Pinkie didn't even realize the show had ended until about twenty minutes after the fact. She had kicked up so much confetti all by herself that even after Mosh had given the crowd a heartfelt (and epic, courtesy of a small nation's worth of explosives) goodbye and descended into the stage she had kept bouncing around in a sugar-fueled trance. The music inside her head played so loudly that some of the other ponies could hear it.
She found Applejack cowering near the back of the stage, an apple stuffed in each ear to avoid any more hearing loss than she had already suffered. As soon as the show ended, she mumbled something about a headache and went home to bed. Rainbow Dash had sat in the rafters for the better part of the show, headbanging and giving unwanted advice to the gaffers, though despite the annoyance they eventually recruited her to assist with the more psychedelic effects. Twilight had left the venue in search of a restroom and due to a lost ticket stub remained outside (not that she minded a great deal; she recognized the value of variation in artistic taste, but this was hardly her type of music). She spent the remainder of the evening at home reading a book on the history of the guitar. Rarity had (quite reasonably) convinced Fluttershy that the two of them would much prefer attending the string quartet across town. Her assessment was quite correct.
So ultimately, when Pinkie decided to approach the rock star's trailer, she went alone. Said trailer began its career as high end and top-of-the-line, easily the most expensive on the lot. Upon purchase it happily maintained the majority of that value for several months. This was because it spent that time sitting in a lot while Mosh Whiplash squeezed the last few months of use out of his old trailer by means of literally rocking it to pieces. Mere hours after he actually started to use the new trailer, the book value dropped through the floor while the collector's value shot through the roof.
Currently, the trailer found itself parked at the center of a maze of carriages that carried the party rock paraphernalia. Pinkie found it oddly austere; it contained pretty much every optional feature but aside from the custom paint job (which involved a lot of glitter and colors that had once been bright but were now dimmed by layers of grime that Mosh was too cheap to pay to have cleaned) the only real modification was the inexplicably double-sized door. The entire thing rocked back and forth in time with the heavy bass beat that pounded from within. Strobe lights of various colors flickered from the windows and cracks in the walls, which also oozed artificial smoke and the scent of fried food.
Several bulky earth ponies formed a perimeter around the overly large door. If Twilight were there she would have correctly assumed that they were security guards who doubled as means of locomotion when it was time to leave, but she had gone to bed after finishing the chapter about the jazz ponies in Las Pegasus who had popularized alternate tunings. As a result, Pinkie didn't really even notice them until they stopped her mid-bounce. Only then did she notice that two-dozen odd mares (and one or two stallions) clustered around the creaking conveyance, held back by the cold glares (and in the cases of a few particularly persistent ponies, the shoulders) of the guards.
“Alright, alright, everypony step back!” A particularly short and stout earth pony shouted in a voice like a garbage disposal. Had England existed in Equestria he likely would have a had a heavy accent. His coat was dark gray and half of a vaguely shield-shaped cutie mark stuck out under from under the dark blue vest that marked him as a member of the security team. “Back, back, further, further! Let's get this all sorted out in a reasonable fashion.”
Everypony, Pinkie included, moved back. She bounced up and down at the back trying to see what was going on up front. Another comparatively lanky guard with a khaki coat and brown mustache cleared his throat. He should have sounded gruff and no-nonsense, but his voice would have fit a math teacher much better. Far too nasally.
“Now then, we obviously can't let all y'all in there,” he said, waving a hoof at the trailer. His accent sounded like Applejack's would have if she had spent a decade or so in Manehattan. “Maximum occupancy for that is only twelve, so we can only have like maybe twenty of y'all go in. We got...what? Thirteen in there already?”
“Fifteen,” said the gray guard.
“Yeah, fifteen in there already so we can only let a couple more in.”
“I was here first!” A not-quite-old, not-quite-young and somewhat heavy-set pegasus mare divebombed the trailer. One of the other security ponies leaped into the air, nabbed the edge of her scarf in his teeth and towed her down to earth. Half a dozen other mares made a charge, but were stonewalled in similar fashion.
“Hey hey, knock it off!” The short guard shoved two valley-ponies away from the trailer and stomped angrily. “We have a system for this kind of thing, alright?”
“Indeed,” said the khaki guard. “We can only pick a few of y'all to get in and meet him, and we kinda sorta have a system in place to filter out the ones he'd want to meet. Y'see, Mr. Mosh has certain peculiarities in his tastes that we try to accommodate. He has something of an affinity for mares that are a bit...let's say they have a certain tendency to not adhere to the typical standards of-”
“Oh, for the love of Discord!” The short guard (who Pinkie decided to call “Mr. Stout”, since she didn't know his real name) silenced the lanky one with a gutteral bark. “No need to sugarcoat it.” He cleared his throat and addressed the congregation of mares. “He likes fat mares, okay? He's a chubby chaser, so we're only going to let in the more plump ones!”
Immediately, roughly two thirds of the crowds dispersed, consisting mostly of ponies too skinny to get in, and some others who probably could have made it through but couldn't take he blow to their self esteem. Of those that remained, roughly a third did so only to complain about the unfairness of the criteria (even though it totally subverted traditional Equestrian standards of beauty; most of those who complained were those who put a lot of work into staying skinny and weren't pleased that at the irony). The other two thirds of the third that remained, including Pinkie, did so on the hope that they had eaten enough in the past day to pass muster. With a minimal amount of prodding from the guards the remaining ponies queued up. Pinkie trotted nervously in place, second from the end of the line.
“Lessee here...” The Mr. Stout inspected the first pony in the line, the pegasus mare who had tried to dash past the security team. “Yeah, you're good. No offense, of course.”
“I'm just glad that my eating habits finally worked in my favor!” She giggled, and fluttered slowly towards the trailers, jiggling a bit as she did so. The trailer door popped open and a blast of music and sugary air shot out.
“Nope, nope...” The khaki pony (Mr. Tall. Pinkie was too tired to be very imaginative.) continued. “Sorry ma'am, you'd need at least fifteen more pounds. My apologies. Or congrats, I suppose. And you, you can go in.”
Five minutes later, Pinkie trotted faster. They were almost to the end of the line, and only a single pass remained.
“Hmmmm...” Mr. Tall looked at Pinkie, then at the last pony in the line (a unicorn with an impressive beehive hairdo), then back at Pinkie. “This is a tough one. Hey, come over here.”
Pinkie wiggled with excitement and nervousness. The unicorn next to her fell comfortably into the “plump” category. Pinkie knew for a fact that she wasn't skinny, and she definitely wasn't svelte or slender either. She might have fallen into the “toned” category after certain periods of extreme activity, but for the most part she guessed that on the scale of body types her place leaned towards the plus side the majority of the time. If she had to guess her current state, she'd go with “chubby”. Maaaaybe “plump”, but she wasn't entirely sure. The pony beside her definitely was. Her chance to meet the pony of her dreams slipped further away with each passing moment. Maybe her hair could create an illusion of fatness or something.
“Yeah, that's a tough call.” Mr. Stout looked back and forth between the two ponies just like Mr. Tall had. “If you don't mind...” He reached out a hoof gave the unicorn a soft poke in the stomach. She squished a bit. “Hmmmm...” He turned to Pinkie and poked her in the same manner. She giggled. She also squished, but not quite as much as the unicorn. “Yup, definitely her.” He pointed at the unicorn, who smiled broadly and made a dash for the trailer.
“NOOOOOO!!!!!” Pinkie screamed upward at nopony in particular, then turned her attention to the guards, simultaneously switching into “shameless grovelling” mode. “Pleasepleaseplease let me in! I have to meet him! He's the perfect party pony and I- hey, that rhymed! Well, it wasn't really a rhyme, it was kind of like a backwards rhyme because the bits that sound the same are at the beginning of the word instead of the end but it's still kinda like a rhyme. I think Twilight said there's a word for that somewhere, but that's not important because I need to see him and party with him and I'll totally give you a free cake if you let me in!”
She continued on for several minutes before requiring a breath, at which point the guards, who hadn't been able to get a word in edgewise, promptly informed her that they were sorry but if they made an exception for her they'd have to make exceptions for everypony and that they already got paid partially in cake anyway. It was unfortunate, of course, but unless she gained quite a bit of padding before Mosh Whiplash left town the in two days, she wouldn't get in. After several more failed attempts at gaining entrance, she gave up and meandered back to Sugarcube Corner.
By the time she reached her room her hair, which had grown steadily more limp as her chances dwindled, was completely flat.
Then she remembered the “in two days” part of “Mosh will be leaving in two days”, and her hair immediately puffed up again. This was where the qualemmadrum came in. Gaining enough weight to merit access to the Party Wagon in the given time frame would be quite a task. For the first time in her life, she went to bed as soon as she returned to her room. She'd need the energy for tomorrow, and her sugar high was wearing off. She fell asleep while thoughts of complicated compound words rattled around in her head.
Applejack awoke to a rather odd sound. The sound properly belonged to a gas-powered lawnmower, only Equestria didn't have those, so it utterly mystified the orange earth pony. She looked out the window, saw the source of the sound, blinked several times, and rubbed her eyes, convinced that her eyes were messing with her.
Pinkie scooted back and forth across the lawn on her face, propelling herself solely with her hind legs. Her teeth chattered madly as she chomped at the grass. Her stomach swelled like the mulch bag of a lawnmower. Well over half the lawn of Sweet Apple Acres had already been shorn down to a buzz cut. Applejack shook her head. Even taking Pinkie's usual tendencies into account, this made no sense.
“Pinkie, what the hey are you doin'?!” Applejack shouted. “Knock it off before you kill all the grass!”
At first it looked like Pinkie hadn't heard, but after a moment she began to slow down, finally coming to a stop at the edge of the yard. She rolled over, leaning against the fence and patting her tummy, which had grown by about twenty percent since the previous night.
“Consarn it, it's gonna take weeks for all to grow back!” Applejack adjusted her hat as she surveyed the damage. “What were you thinkin' eatin' all that?”
“It's because I have to get fat, silly!” Pinkie answered.
“That's...wait, what? Why d'you have to get fat?”
Pinkie explained, albeit in a rather roundabout fashion with lots of unnecessary details.
“I see...” Applejack didn't really see, but when it came to Pinkie she rarely did. At the very least she got the gist of it; Pinkie really really really wanted to meet this pony had to be fat to do so. “So your plan was...”
“...to eat a lot! And I needed something cheap, and I figured that you had a ton of grass all in one place over here. I mean, Rarity is always saying that she can't eat a lot because she'd get fat, so I figured that if I eat a lot on purpose.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Applejack grumbled. “Couldn't you have at least eaten the grass like, over there?” She waved a hoof at the many grass covered hills on the other side of the barn, outside of town. “You know, instead of the yard? Granny is gonna have a coronary when she sees this.”
“Oops, sorry about that. But seriously, check this out.” She grabbed her belly and gave it a shake. “Boing boing! It totally bounces! Look at that! Do you think it's bouncy enough? It needs to be really bouncy. Does it squish at all? I think it should squish. Can you check that for me? Poke me?”
“What?”
“Poke me! Like right there!” She tried to poke the spot in the middle of her tummy herself, but couldn't quite reach it. She settled for pointing. “I need to know if I squish!” She rolled onto her back, giving Applejack a clear shot at her belly.
“But I-”
“Poke me!”
Applejack gave up. The sooner she poked Pinkie the sooner she could...she didn't know what she would do after, hopefully something other than jabbing Pinkie in the stomach for no good reason. She rolled her eyes and pressed her hoof into her friend's midsection. It felt surprisingly pillowlike, so much so that she had a real urge to put her head down. Sure, Pinkie looked like her body consisted of cotton candy and bubblegum, but Applejack never would have guessed that she actually was.
“That tickles, do it again!” Pinkie giggled, her entire body wobbling along with it. Applejack couldn't help but smirk at it. She poked again. Pinkie giggled and wobbled even more. Now Applejack was giggling. In the space of a second or two, she inexplicably reverted to a younger version of herself. Shortly after Apple Bloom's birth, she had a certain method for entertaining the both of them. She couldn't help but succumb to the temptation to do again for the first time in years. She shoved her face into Pinkie Pie's tummy and blew the loudest raspberry she could manage.
“Hey, sis! What're ya doing?”
Applejack looked up, half her face still buried in Pinkie's newly enlarged gut. Apple Bloom stared at both of them, but mostly at Applejack. Pinkie randomly being a bit more rotund than usual was par for the course; but Applejack hadn't done the “blowing a raspberry on somepony's stomach” thing in months, and never on a pony who wasn't a foal. Like the cake twins; that would have been understandable. Apple Bloom started to question some of what she thought she knew about her big sister.
“Oh, uh...I was just-”
“I'm trying to get fat,” Pinkie Pie announced. “She's testing to see if I am! Did I squish when you poked me?”
“Uh, you might have, a little, I guess.”
“Yay!!!” Despite the added girth, Pinkie had no trouble bouncing around the half-eaten yard.
“What happened to the grass?” Apple Bloom asked, trying not to think about the nuzzling.
“Somepony was grazing. Don't worry about it.” Applejack wasn't about to try to explain Pinkie's motivation. She didn't think that she was ready for that, and she knew for a fact that Apple Bloom wasn't.
“Do you think I'm fat enough?” Pinkie asked. Applejack groaned. The question had been directed at Apple Bloom.
“Uh...you aren't really fat. Like, at all.” Apple Bloom answered, confused about why Pinkie asked her about such a thing. After all, the pink pony looked exactly the same as she always did.
“Are you sure?” Pinkie cocked her head to the side. “Not even a little? Am I plump, at least?”
“You might be a little plump, maybe. You're still kinda chubby, though.”
“Chubby? That's it? I was definitely at least in plump territory a couple minutes ago!” The pink pony turned her neck almost completely around and somehow managed to leer at both her flanks at the same time. “What the-!?” She unscrewed her neck. The pleasant pudginess that she had devoured so much of AJ's grass to achieve had vanished completely. If anything, she was slightly skinnier than she had been earlier that day. “Awwww... it went away.”
“You worked it off that fast?” Applejack asked, confused and a little envious.
“Yeah, that happens sometimes when I eat a lot,” Pinkie said with a sigh. “I guess that eating a lot isn't going to work.”
“Why doncha just make yourself look fat?” Apple Bloom asked, still thankfully oblivious to the reason behind Pinkie's desire. “Like sometimes you just like puff yourself up. Why don't you just do that?”
“Ooh ooh I could do that!” Pinkie clapped her hooves in anticipation. “Wait, no, the whole puffing up thing is part of the Pinkie Sense, though. It needs something to trigger it.”
“Really?” Applejack asked. “I don't think I've ever seen you puff up because of the Pinkie sense before.”
“Yeah, it just means that somepony is about to trip on something. Here, watch.” She scurried over to a nearby tree and withdrew two eyepatches from a knothole and put them on. “Can one of you trip me?”
“I don't think that's really a good-” Applejack started to say, but her sister cut her off.
“Sure!” Apple Bloom rushed forward and stuck out a hoof as Pinkie bumbled forward. A mere millisecond before Pinkie's hoof brushed Apple Bloom's fetlocks she appeared to be momentarily possessed by the spirit of a puffer fish, only without the spikes. She reverted just in time to get her legs tangled around Apple Bloom's and tumble forward like a rag doll, somersaulting an unnecessary number of times before skidding to a halt.
“See!” Pinke said from her upside-down position. “I can totally get all puffy.”
“Uh, sugarcube, I think there might be a bit of a problem with that idea.” Applejack twisted her head around, trying to look Pinkie eye to eye. “Can you do that whenever you want, or is it just when somepony is about to trip you?”
“Just when I trip. What's the problem?”
“So do you, uh, plan on tripping over and over when you go to meet him? Because otherwise you'll go back to being regular sized real fast.”
“Oh, right.” There wasn't any genuine realization in her voice; Applejack suspected that Pinkie knew that harnessing the Pinkie Sense would fail, but she just wanted to try it anyway. “Oooh! I know!” She sprang up and zoomed back towards the town, disappearing in the distance. Applejack stared, glad to be at least temporarily free of whatever shenanigans Pinkie was about to get into.
“Well, are you coming?”
Applejack turned around to see Pinkie's face staring at her out of a bush that she was sure hadn't been there five minutes earlier.
“Uh, coming where?”
“Sugarcube Corner, silly!”
Applejack had never understood how Pinkie managed to get across town so quickly. By the time she reached Sugarcube Corner, Pinkie had already arrived and apparently spent some time rifling through every nook and cranny in the store while Mrs. Cake looked on in concern.
“Uh, what's she doin'?” Applejack asked. “Besides makin' a right mess of your shop.”
“Oh, we're used to the mess; we can get that cleaned up quite quickly,” Mrs. Cake answered. “It's just that she came in and started looking for the helium tanks. We try to keep them away from her. After last time...” She finished with a shutter.
Applejack put a hoof to her face. She knew Pinkie well enough to hazard a very good guess at what Pinkie's plan was. She was a bit mad at that. She had always considered herself rather down to earth and simple (She was a member of the Apple Family, after all), and the fact that she knew exactly where Pinkie was going with this scared her a little.
“Pinkie, you ain't a balloon. You do know that, right?”
“Well, duh. Balloons don't have heads or manes or legs or- well, I guess they could have legs if it's like one of those long balloons that you like twist into shapes. Those could have legs. And heads, now that I think about it. But not real heads, like I have. You know, with brains and everything like I have.”
“You know what I mean, Pinkie.”
“Well, I figured, if I can stretch like a balloon on my own, I can blow myself up like a balloon. Found it!” She dragged the enormous canister out of a closet. “Don't worry Mrs. Cake, I'll take it outside this time.”
Mrs. Cake opened her mouth to protest, but realized that the cause was so lost that it would take a Daring-Do caliber archeologist to unearth it. She closed her mouth and gave a “be careful” nod, which Pinkie ignored. Moments later Applejack reluctantly followed the pink pony out into the town square. Pinkie had already pulled out a long hose, one end attached to the canister, one end in her mouth.
“Mrn mra Hndll,” She squeaked. Applejack interpreted it more or less correctly as “turn the handle”, referring to the handle on the helium tank. She took a step forward and immediately thought better of it.
“No way, sugarcube. It just ain't gonna work.”
“MRN MRA HNDLL!”
Applejack sighed. Pinkie's tenacity was every bit as variable as everything else, and she always applied it to the wrong endeavors. At the moment there was no force in Equestria (barring Royal Interference of course, but unless Pinkie inadvertently brainwashed the entire town that was quite unlikely) would be able to stop her from proceeding with her scheme. Might as well just help out and get the inevitable shenanigans out of the way. She turned the handle.
For a moment, nothing happened. Applejack released a sigh of relief. Unfortunately for her, absence of any visible effect was due to the universe's sense of comedic timing. No sooner had the last air molecules left her mouth than she heard the sound of an expanding balloon. It sounded a bit odd as if the sound had been pitched down to fit the the fact that the balloon was the size of a pony. Which of course, it was, because the balloon was a pony. If it had been anypony else, Applejack would have expected a hacking cough (amusingly high-pitched, of course), followed by the squeal of helium escaping the hose after the subject dropped it. Not Pinkie. She was already half inflated, her legs slowly lifting off the ground as her body grew larger. Her body rocked back and forth balanced lightly on her belly.
“Mss mt wrmkg?”
“Yup, it's working, I guess.” Applejack gently prodded Pinkie, who bounced upward a few inches. It felt not unlike poking a regular old balloon, albeit one with a coat of pink fur. “You don't really squish though. Maybe you should try...something...else...”
Pinkie was still in motion from Applejack's prod, bouncing slowly along, slightly higher each time. The final bounce didn't come back down all the way. After that she went back up, and didn't come back down.
“Pinkie, get back down here!” Applejack ordered, despite the fact that Pinkie obviously wasn't going to acquiesce, at least not voluntarily. She was almost out of earshot anyway; floating near the top of Sugarcube Corner, her ascension only arrested by the fact that she still held the tube tightly in her mouth. Applejack shook her head. She needed to drag Pinkie back down to earth in more ways than one before she drifted into one of the points of the roof and popped in an explosion of confetti and a zany sound effect.
She yanked the hose. The hose fell back to earth. The pony didn't. Applejack watched in horror as Pinkie drifted further upward.
“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Pinkie's voice was distressingly high, both in location and in pitch. “This is really fun! I've never flown before?”
Applejack wanted to laugh at the the fact that Pinkie sounded like a squeaky toy, but the situation was too dangerous. Or at least it ought to have been dangerous; if there was any pony in Equestria who would survive a fall from that height, it would be a pegasus, because they could fly. Or a unicorn who thought quickly enough to pull out a levitation spell. But of the ponies who couldn't fly or levitate, Pinkie was probably a contender for the the one to be least damaged by the fall.
“Pinkie, get down here before you hurt yourself!” Applejack had no idea how Pinkie would follow the order, but outside of that, she had no idea what else to... the lasso. Duh. I'm an idiot, Applejack thought. She, of course, wasn't an idiot, but dealing with Pinkie had thrown her brain chemistry off a little. She whipped out her lasso and caught Pinkie around the tail. Applejack tried to yank the rope, but found herself unable to do so. There was nothing to push back on because she was now several feet in the air. The ground moved further away with each passing moment. Applejack's eyes darted to the ground, then back to Pinkie. She had never liked heights.
“This is so cool!” Pinkie squeaked.
“This is dangerous!” Applejack somehow managed to say. She had learned to talk while gripping objects in her teeth. It allowed her to have conversations with her siblings while they hauled around bits of farm equipment. Never would have expected she'd use it in this particular situation, though. “You gotta get us back down! Spit all that stuff back out or something?”
“Why? The view is amazing! I can even see my house from here!”
“Of course you can see your house! We started off right next to it!” Applejack growled. “This obviously isn't going to help you meet whoever it was you wanted to meet, so deflate or something.”
“How do I do that?” The helium made Pinkie's voice even more grating than usual.
“You mean you don't know!? Exhale it or something!”
“Well, I sucked it up so fast I'm not sure what tube it went down.”
“Well figure something else out before I lose my grip!” Applejack glanced down and immediately regretted it. The top of Sugarcube corner was just a bit too low to risk jumping down, and it looked a lot pointier than it usually did. She grunted and vaguely wished that she had Pinkie's garrulousness; at least her jaws would have gotten more exercise. At the moment, her mandibles were starting to ache.
“Maybe you could climb up and sit on me!” Pinkie continued, oblivious to the fact that Applejack was actually being serious. Figures, thought Applejack, she thinks if I fall off I'll just bounce or something. That's what always happens when she falls. “Or maybe I'll float over a lake. It's pretty warm out. Maybe you could go swimming.” Applejack rolled her eyes. They were floating in the opposite direction from the nearest lake. “Or over a haystack. Then you could fall onto- uh oh.”
“What uh-oh!? Don't do that! No uh oh's!”
“I think I'm- uh-” Applejack looked up just in time to see Pinkie's face inflate for a moment. Then- “BRAAAAAAAPPPPPP!!!!!”
The belch certainly merited recognition. Sure, the ponies who took that sort of thing seriously would complain that it shouldn't count because it was assisted, and the fact that the helium bumped the pitch up a few octaves definitely made judging the quality of the sound a bit difficult, but the sheer longevity was impressive. But the most impressive aspect of the burp was the force. Pinkie expelled so much air (or helium, rather) in such a short time that she found herself being propelled through the sky at an impressive rate. In fact, had she passed an anemometer, it would have registered at 11.2 WP (wingpower). In any case, she didn't pass an anemometer. She passed the town hall (knocking a couple of shingles off in the process), Applejack's barn, Carousel Boutique, town hall again (knocking off more shingles), and then past several rather nondescript houses belonging to various ponies. They did not, however, pass the library. This was because they were heading directly towards it, more specifically, right towards a window.
“You okay, Applejack?”
Applejack opened her eyes to find Twilight looking down at her. The combination of weight and coldness on her brow informed her of the presence of an ice pack on her head.
“I'm fine, just a little banged up is all. I've been through worse.”
“That's good,” Twilight said. “I was just about ready to call a doctor after that crash landing.”
“Crash landing?”
“You and Pinkie came in through my window.” She gestured at the twisted frame, now devoid of glass aside from a few shards. “At first I though it was Rainbow Dash. She has a tendency to do that every time I finish reorganizing. How did you guys end up crashing through a second story window anyway? I tried asking Pinkie, but I'm not quite sure just how much she's embellishing the story.”
Applejack sighed, rolled her eyes, and attempted to explain the story.
“Huh, that's actually kinda what Pinkie said.”
“So do you have a spell that can make me fat?” Pinkie bounced over, once again at normal size.
“Unfortunately, no,” Twilight answered. She did in fact know several spells that could make Pinkie larger that could theoretically be modified to apply to only select portions of her anatomy, but it wasn't worth the risk. The mental image of a six-times-larger-than-normal Pinkie Pie rampaging through Ponyville was quite the deterrent. “However, I do believe that I might be able to help you out a bit.”
“Really!?” Pinkie's eyes widened and started to sparkle a bit.
“Um, yes...” Twilight was taken aback by Pinkie's sudden enthusiasm. “You said you tried to, uh... bulk up by eating a lot, correct?”
“Yeah, she ate like half my yard,” Applejack grumbled.
“It wasn't very good either,” Pinkie said. “Not nearly sweet enough. Shoulda brought some sugar along. Maybe some cinnamon.”
“Well, the thing is that grass doesn't really have enough fat content to stick. Your metabolism is probably so fast that it burns off quite quickly. If you want retain some of the weight you have to eat more fatty food and not be so active so the weight actually sticks.”
“So basically, she needs to try to be as unhealthy as possible?” Applejack raised an eyebrow. She was no doctor, but she knew that eating junk food and then not moving was probably not a good combination. Then again, according to of her medical knowledge (which admittedly wasn't much), Pinkie should have died of something a long time ago.
“Pretty much. The more-”
“Oooh ooh! I know what I can eat!” Applejack and Twilight turned to look at Pinkie, but all they caught was the pink blur shooting out the door.
Applejack took some solace in the fact that she actually had to look for Pinkie. Not being able to follow the party pony's line of thought meant that she maintained some grasp of her sanity. Pinkie had not returned to Sugarcube Corner. Rather, Applejack and Twilight found her emerging from Bon Bon's Confectionery towing a cart (neither had any idea where she had gotten it from) bearing several large boxes.
“Do we even want to know what's in there?” Applejack whispered to Twilight.
“Well, if we knew what it was, we could-” Twilight started to answer.
“It's fudge!”
“Fudge?”
“Fudge! You should know by now that when I eat too much fudge I get a pudge and can't budge!”
“Right.” Twilight vaguely remembered hearing it somewhere due to the rhyme, but had simply chalked it up to Pinkie being Pinkie. It have never really occurred to her that Pinkie was being literal. “Actually, this might work quite well. It's dense enough that your metabolism won't be able to burn it off too quickly.”
“I also have some cakes and a barrel of chocolate syrup!” She kicked the door open and towed the cart into Sugarcube Corner.
“Yeah, I think that should be more than enough.” Applejack eyed the massive pile of junk food. Pinkie had failed to mention the hay bale sized cloud of cotton candy, and the barrel of chocolate covered...she wasn't sure exactly what. Probably something that was already 90% sugar, given that it was Pinkie who brought it in. She didn't know whether to be more confused at how Pinkie had somehow obtained it all in a ten-minute time window or at the fact she knew that Pinkie was entirely able to eat it all.
“What should I eat first?” Pinkie buzzed back and forth between the piles of sweets. “Maybe the cotton candy? Or should I eat one of the cakes?”
Applejack shook her head. This whole thing was ridiculous. She could understand Pinkie's desire to meet this pony, but there had to be better ways of going about it. Surely Twilight would see how absurd this whole thing was.
“I think you should lead with the fudge,” Twilight said. “It'll serve as a good foundation, and it'll probably last longer than anything else. Not to mention that it's a very dense food, and it would be hard on your stomach to eat that when you're already full. Follow that up with some cake; it's not quite as heavy, but it's still substantial. Then you can fill in the gaps with the chocolate and cotton candy. Then you can eat whatever it is in that barrel to keep yourself topped off.”
Applejack shook her head again. Pinkie nodded sagely, as if she had just received valuable stock advice.
“I see, I see,” the pink pony said. She held out a hoof. “Applejack, you're on fudge duty. Give me a box of Peanut Butter Chunk.”
Applejack shook her head for a third time and slid the top box off of the stack. Better to just go with the insanity.
“Well, you want to get fat, and you totally got that much.” Applejack strained against the harness. She had felt silly helping Pinkie out earlier, but now the silliness had escalated into full blown absurdity. It didn't help that the massive wagon that Pinkie had thrown together to haul her newfound bulk around probably weighed just as much as she did. She looked back over her shoulder. Pinkie had taken one of her old hay wagons and managed to overhaul it. It now sported a hastily painted coat of pink with garish balloons emblazoned on the sides. A thick, purple curtain hung across the opening at the back of the cart.
“Cake!” Pinkie cried.
“Roger!” Twilight levitated a medium-sized round cake off of her cart, which was stacked high with various confections. The cake disappeared behind the curtain. A loud chomp told AJ that it was gone. She couldn't believe that Twilight had been dragged into this. The unicorn was normally so intelligent that it scared Applejack a little to think that Twilight enjoyed herself so much.
“Are we almost there?” Pinkie called.
“Yeah, I can see the trailer,” Applejack grumbled as she continued towing the cart. “There are still some mares hanging around it.”
“How fat are they?”
“I dunno. There are one or two chunky ones, I guess. Then again, they can move on their own, so I think you're probably bigger than they are.”
“Awesome!”
“Just what do you think you're going to do with that thing?” The gray guardspony held a hoof, bringing Applejack to a stop. He eyed the wagon with suspicion. Twilight strode to the front of the group and cleared her throat.
“Well, one of my friends came here last night to see...uh...” She waved a hoof at the wagon. “...You know. And she couldn't get in because she wasn't quite heavy enough. She's gained a bit of weight today, and wants a second chance to meet him.”
“I don't think you could gain that much weight that quickly.” The lanky guard said.
“Believe me, she did,” Applejack said. “I had to drag her over here. I guarantee you that nopony else is as fat as she is at the moment. Why don't you take a look for yourself?”
“No harm, I suppose.” The gray, gravel-voiced pony said. He followed Applejack to the back of the cart and poked his head behind the curtain. “Whoa! By Celestia's flank that's a big pony! No offense, of course.” Pinkie just giggled in response. The guard withdrew his head. “C'mere, you gotta see this. I ain't ever seen anything like this.”
The khaki pony just shook his head, as if he knew his partner had a tendency to get overexcited about stuff like this. That assumption was correct. For all Mosh Whiplash's partying, his fans tended to be remarkably well behaved. The security force was really more of a glorified sorting system than anything else. He stuck his head behind the curtain. This time, his partner's excitement was entirely merited.
“Cor blimey.” He didn't belong to any nationality that typically used that exclamation because that nationality didn't exist in Equestria, but there were no other words to describe it. “We gotta get Mosh out here.”
“Yeah, I know he doesn't like getting his parties interrupted, but he really needs to see this.”
Both guards scurried over to the double doors of the rattling trailer, which looked ready to go to pieces at any moment. As the door opened, bass loud enough to make DJ-PON3 jealous blasted out (carrying glitter and powdered sugar along with it), causing the grass to tremble. The short guard shoved earplugs into his head, and his lanky companion putt on a pair of fuzzy pink earmuffs. They disappeared into the trailer.
“Okay, move me into position!” Pinkie hissed. “Twilight! Donuts! I need you to top me off before he comes out! I gotta be as fat as possible if I want to meet him.” Two entire boxes of donuts descended into the wagon, and emerged empty. “Okay, make sure you time everything right!” The wagon rocked. Pinkie was probably trying to bounce around in excitement despite being unable to get off the ground.
“WHOOO!” The door of the trailer flew open and Mosh Whiplash stumbled out. To any casual observer he appeared to be smashed out of his mind, and also on about half a dozen different other illicit substances. He wasn't. The only remotely illegal thing in his system were trace amounts of the “special ingredient” in the brownies that one of his admirers had brought, and it's influence was negligible anyway. In reality, the only things he was under the influence of were sugar, caffeine, and sleep deprivation. His coat appeared to be lime green, although it was just as likely to be dye as anything else. His mane was so caked with glitter and frosting (probably) that it's only identifiable characteristic was disheveled-ness. On that scale, it scored a solid “very, to the point of barely being recognizable as hair”. Enormous blinged-out sunglasses his his eyes.
“Alright let's see what we got GOT!” He stomped his hooves in excitement.
Applejack sighed. This was definitely the weirdest thing she had ever been part off. She pushed the button on the side of the wagon. The music started, with a bombastic series of tones that would have inspired Strauss to imitate them, had he ever set foot in Equestria, which he hadn't. Hiding subtlely in the background was the sound of Pinkie adding her own “Duuuunn duuuunnnn DDUUUUUNNNN!”
The curtain slid open.
Mosh's eyes were bright orange. Applejack could see that now that he had lowered his glasses. He also had very good teeth for somepony who seemed to eat nothing but junk food. Applejack could see that because his jaw had dropped so far that if a pony were so inclined, they could probably see far enough in to know what he had for breakfast. Applejack turned back to source of his sense of awe. She didn't see the appeal. Still, it was hard to remain unimpressed by Pinkie's valiant attempt to put on weight.
Pinkie sat, or rather sort of awkwardly propped herself, on her stomach, which had expanded so much that her legs no longer reached the ground. She was almost perfectly rounded; the only break in the continuous curve around her body was the point where her body met the floor, where her weight caused her belly to squish out a bit at the edges. The wagon creaked as she rocked slowly back and forth, her bulk shifting subtly and smoothy in time to the music. She flapped a foreleg at him and squeaked in excitement.
“Hi!”
“Hi!” He waved back, his smile so wide that a doctor would have considered it miraculous he hadn't dislocated his jaw.
“So can I come to the party?”
“Yeah, you can!”
“I'm fat enough?”
“The more pony there is, the harder the party!”
“Awesome!” Pinkie attempted to leap off of the wagon, and succeeded only in scootching herself about two inches forward. “Applejack, a little help here?”
Applejack rolled her eyes for what felt like the zillionth time that day and lifted the front end of the cart. As the wagon tipped, Pinkie began to roll forward with a slow squish, turning over exactly once before coming to a stop directly in front of Mosh.
“Hi, again!”
This time, Mosh didn't answer. He was too busy staring. In all his years of touring, he had never seen a pony like this. He reached out a hoof and gently prodded Pinkie's belly. Extraordinary. So soft, with a perfect amount of squishiness. Just the right degree of plumpness. So round and smooth. And that trio of balloons on her flank was certainly a good sign. Impossibly, he grinned wider.
“Boys, roll her into the trailer. We have PARTY to start!”
Applejack yawned. Despite the fact that the trailer had been parked across town from Sweet Apple Acres, she had felt the bass shaking her bed. She didn't understand how anypony could get so close to the barkers (she didn't know the technical term for a subwoofer; she only remembered it had something to do with the sound a dog made) without having their heads blasted right off. The shaking had finally ceased at what she estimated was five in the morning. Despite the fact that her role was technically over, she couldn't help but be curious about what had transpired the previous night.
She peeked nervously over the hill to the site where the trailer had been the night before.
If the trailer had any remaining market value, it had vanished completely. It was mostly still there. Something (probably the music, she thought) had blasted half the roof off. A few bolts held the twisted hunk of metal to the top. The windows were similarly damaged, and the double doors lay flat on the ground about fifty feet away from the gap in the wall that they were supposed to cover. The entire area resembled a crater, as if the trailer had dropped out of the sky and crashed to earth in a cloud of confetti. Frosting oozed out of the cracks at the trailer's base. The air reeked of sugar and syrup.
“Can I help you?”
She found herself face to face with the khaki guard pony from the night before. He looked exactly the same, except for the enormous bags under his eyes.
“Uh, I'm looking for my friend? She's pink, and has balloons for a cutie mark?”
“Oh, her, right.” He took a swig from a bottle that looked like it was full of alcohol, but was actually full of an energy drink. Applejack guessed accurately that he had been up all night due to the music. “She was the fat one, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She's still in there. I might as well go get her for you. It's just about time for us to move on to the next city anyway.” He ambled shakily towards where the doors should have been, but didn't make it. Pinkie stumbled out. A lampshade hung over her head, the rest of the lamp still trailing behind her. A mass of streamers, stuck to her tail with...something, rustled as she stumbled down the ramp. Once again, she was back to her normal size.
“Best party ever!” She flopped on her face.
“Pinkie! Are you okay!?” Applejack grabbed at the lamp and struggled to remove it from Pinkie's head.
“I'm better than okay! I'm way past that! I'm like, p-kay! That's the next step up from o-kay, right? Or does it go the other way like grades do? I guess that would make it n-kay then, wouldn't it?”
The lamp came free from Pinkie's mane with a pop. It shouldn't have made that kind of sound, but everything had been so weird lately that Applejack just ignored it.
“Wait, where'd the rest of her go?” The guard cocked his head.
“Twilight says I have a really fast metabolism!” Pinkie chirped.
“Uh, so, does he know that you aren't so squishy anymore?”
“Yeah, he's cool with it. He says I partied so hard that he's going to write a song about me! Although he did say that he'd greatly appreciate it if I'd get fat again next time he comes to town.”
“A song, huh?” Applejack didn't really know much about rock and roll ponies other than the fact that this one had been especially loud, but even with her knowledge she could guess that Pinkie wasn't going to get a song written about her. At least not one that she hadn't written herself. “Are you sure about-”
“Well, that was pretty awesome!” Pinkie interrupted. “Or maybe I should just say 'fun'. Awesomeness is more Rainbow Dash's thing after all. Anyway, I should probably get back to work. I was supposed to help Mrs. Cake clean up the shop before Mr. Cake gets back from Canterlot. See you later!”
With that she trotted off towards Sugarcube Corner, oblivious to the trail of sugar she left behind her.
“I just don't get how they do it,” the guard grumbled. “If I tried to party all night like that I'd keel over.”
Applejack just shook her head. She'd be surprised, but well...Pinkie.
“Must be a party pony thing,” she said.
She soon left to head back to her house for a nap, but not before watching the security team hitch themselves up to what was left of the trailer and tow it down the road, bits and pieces falling off of it as it rolled on. The mayor would not be happy about the mess. Then she would see the hefty commission that Mosh had paid for permission to use the venue, and she'd immediately smile and ask if he could come back. Maybe they'd finally have the cash to fix the town hall.
Several weeks later, Applejack walked into Sugarcube Corner. It had been the first time since Mosh left town that she could stand to be in such close proximity to the mass of sweets the store contained. Even the stack of caramel apples in her kitchen had made her a bit giddy. She knew what they felt like Just sharing the same air as Mosh's trailer had made her entire coat all sticky with sugar. A bath had been required, and a long one at that. After she finished, she had to chase a flock of hummingbirds away from the water.
Pinkie bounced down the stairs. The whole store shook a little. Applejack had another moment where she realized, with much chagrin, that she had more insight into Pinkie's mind than she wanted. The pink pony was keeping her weight up in case Mosh came back to town. Pinkie had always been an eternal optimist.
“Oh, Pinkie...” Mrs. Cake stopped Pinkie at the foot of the stairs. “You have some mail. It's on the table. And can you please stop bouncing everywhere? You're going to knock something over.”
Applejack opened her mouth to say “WHHHATTT!?” before remembering that it was Pinkie, and that she probably shouldn't think too hard about it.
“Can I see it, please?” she said instead.
“Sure.”
“Blah blah blah...for your invaluable contributions...blah blah blah...the song 'Big Ball of Partyin'' blah blah... in the amount of … Whoa that's a lot of bits!”
“I know! I can buy like, forty cakes with it! Which is good, because the letter says that Mosh is coming back in a few months and I need to start getting fat again. You wouldn't happen to have any extra candy apples around, would you?”
Applejack fought off an eye twitch as she tried to think of the bright side. At least this time around, Pinkie wouldn't eat her lawn. Probably.
