Balloons and Needles

Chapter 4: Pokey Pierce, Investigator

Pokey had been cleaning up his shop after a small group of fillies had come in to try and see if they had a cutie mark in sewing, or in pointy things like he did. When they began to look around the shop it was nothing more than them innocently picking up needles and comparing them, but then they sent the orange Pegasus out to go and get some yarn from Ms Wooly's store down the road. She ended up returning with a cart full of yarns of every color, and the three of them quickly began to tear through the shop, trying to find out which needle was the best for sowing. Eventually they left after realizing that they weren't destined to be masters of sowing or the best needle makers, leaving him to clean up their gigantic mess.

"Why didn't they at least stay to help me clean up..." Pokey groaned as he continued to clean up. It reminded him of the week before, when he had to quickly clean up a white mess that Pinkie had left after her late night "party" in his room.

The morning after, when he woke up, he found his bed sheets in a crumpled mass on the floor, and a white trail leading to his window. He decided to poke the weird trail, thinking that it was part of some kind of joke, but when he leaned down he found where it had come from.

"Who played with Pokey Jr?!" Pokey shouted when he saw the trail's origin, where some of it was still sitting. He sighed angrily before going into his bathroom to clean himself up. Once he was clean he went outside to find out where the trail led. If someone thought that they could get away with what they did without him finding out who they were, they had another thing coming.

"Aha!" Pokey said as he found the trail leading out of his bedroom, across the street and into...

"SUGAR CUBE CORNER?!" Pokey said in surprise, barely managing to keep his voice down to a normal level. He quickly double checked by running around to the front of the building, seeing the familiar Sugar Cube Corner sign right out front. Ever since he came to Ponyville it had been his favorite place to eat, they always have the best cupcakes and baked goods, but finding out that somepony that lived inside the bakery had gone into his house at night and rode him like the stallion he was...

"Hiya!" Pinkie shouted as she burst into his store, making him drop a box of needles that he had been cleaning up. Because of all the needles he dropped he ended up dancing around the floor, trying his best to avoid getting a needle in the middle of his hoof, but it didn't work. As soon as he got to the edge of the circle the needles had created on the floor he managed to step right onto one of them, sending it all the way up into his hoof.

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" Pokey cried as he started to hop around like he was on a pogo stick, managing to bump right into Pinkie because she had moved further into the store to try and help him clean up because it was her fault he dropped the box in the first place. For a moment they just laid on the ground in blind confusion, neither of them quite knowing what had just happened. Eventually Pokey's brain started working again and he freaked out, jumping off of Pinkie and inadvertently sending the needle further into his hoof.

"OH CELESTIA WHY?!" Pokey cried out, sounding as if somepony was trying to rip his eyes from their sockets with a rusty spoon.

"Are you feeling okay?" Pinkie asked slowly, looking at Pokey with her head slightly tilted to the side. Pokey shot her a look that could make ponies turn to stone and cause even the largest animals to be riddled with fear.

"DOES IT LOOK LIKE I'M OKAY?!" Pokey shouted, putting his hoof up so that she could see how deep the needle was into it, but at this point she couldn't even see it. All she could see was a small red dot, with plenty of Pokey's dark red blood pouring out of it, leaving a small puddle on the floor. When Pokey looked down he felt extremely light headed and almost collapsed, but his current hate for Pinkie gave him the strength to stay standing.

"GO GET SOMEONE FROM THE HOSPITAL!" Pokey shouted at Pinkie, making her jump into action quickly, somehow coming back within a minute with Nurse Redheart. Nurse Redheart looked around in confusion at first, but when she saw Pokey bleeding out on the floor she snapped into action, quickly looking for the source of the blood, and then quickly getting Pinkie to cover it with her hoof while she looked for something to bandage it with. When she got back, a small bit of medical tape and bandages that Pokey kept in his hall closet in her mouth, she saw his color starting to drain.

"Pinkie, can you put your mane in his mouth?" Nurse Redheart asked, getting a confused look from both of them. Of course, Pinkie complied and literally shoved the end of her mane into his mouth, which he tried to spit out. Thankfully for him he didn't get it out, so when Nurse Redheart began to dig around in the wound for the needle he had something to bite down on so he didn't end up cursing loud enough to wake the dead from all across Equestria. In his head Pokey was thinking of a million ways to kill himself so he wouldn't feel the pain anymore, but it ended before he could follow up on the plan to stab himself in the face with the novelty needle that he kept nearby.

"Ok, looks like everything's ok, now we just need to-" Nurse Redheart said as she stood up, cleaning the blood off of her hooves, "Oh, he passed out" As she asked Pinkie to help carry him to the hospital Pokey let out a small breath of fog, which Nurse Redheart swore looked like a skull and bones.