"Rarityyyy!" The sound of a whining, desperate voice pierced the calm air of Ponyville. It carried all the way down the street, then in through the closed door of the nearby Carousel Boutique.
Rarity was in the middle of delicate needlework, or had been. The needle in her magical grip went awry, and narrowly missed jabbing her delicate hoof. With her concentration broken, and her twitching ears full of a certain friend's voice, she was left with little choice but to see what was wrong.
"Pinkie?" Rarity began to lay down her sewing instruments, heading for her boutique's front door.
"I need your help!" Pinkie called out again from outside.
Rarity put on a worried look. It was rare that Pinkie Pie ever seemed so desperate. "Whatever is the matter, dear?" Her front door swung open at her magic's command.
Pinkie Pie trotted in slowly, her head hung low.
Rarity immediately noticed what was likely the cause for desperation, and half gasped, half shrieked. "Pinkie! What is wrong with your mane!?" She leaped forward and stopped just short of trampling her friend. Her hooves hovered over the matted, filthy mess that her friend's head and normally poofed hair had become. "By Celestia and Luna themselves! I have never seen such an atrocity as this!"
Pinkie looked up, eyebrows quirked in confusion. "Huh?" Her gaze followed Rarity's upwards. "Oh! No, my hair isn't the problem at all. What made you think that?"
Rarity leaned back and made eye contact with Pinkie. "What?" she asked dumbly. Her horrified look slid back up to study the ruined pink mane facing her.
Strewn throughout Pinkie's mane was a spiderweb of some gross and very gooey pink substance; it looked a great deal like taffy, or perhaps a similar candied product.
Pinkie giggled and replied to her friend. "Silly, no! I'm out of bubblegum, and the candy store is closed! Do you have any I could borrow?"
Rarity looked down again and furrowed her brow incredulously. "You... want to borrow bubblegum? That's all?" she asked. Meanwhile, her eyes flickered back up to her friend's mane, which normally held an admittedly darling aesthetic. Now, though, it was nothing short of being the natural disaster of the entire fashion world.
Pinkie Pie bobbed her head cheerfully in response to Rarity. "Yup! Don't worry, I can return it by the end of the day."
Rarity grimaced a little at her friend's suggestion to return used bubblegum. Gently, she set out to try and get Pinkie on her own desired line of thought. It seemed obvious enough that the other mare was, once again, not fully aware of her surroundings.
"Pinkie," Rarity started slowly, and gestured a hoof upward. "Should I assume that you're out of bubblegum because it's currently all in your mane?" She bit her lip in an effort to keep from gasping again at the terrible sight.
Pinkie's eyes widened immediately, then she looked up. "It's what!? Oh, wow! Thanks Rarity! I had no idea where that bubble from earlier went."
Rarity stared a moment, then facehoofed.
With that, Pinkie reached up with a single hoof of her own, tongue stuck out in concentration, then twirled around faster than the eye could track. When she was finished, a giant, perfect ball of pink, gooey bubblegum was balanced precariously on one hoof; in the middle of the sphere was a little alligator sticking out of the top.
Gummy made a small growl that held no obvious mood in it whatsoever.
Pinkie Pie let out a tiny gasp. "Gummy! There you are! I was wondering where you went." She leaned in and gave her beloved pet a quick nuzzle.
Rarity, for her part, stared at her friend, mouth agape and one eye twitching slightly. "Oh..." she murmured. "Well, w-was that all you need then, dar- Oh my." Before she could finish concluding her meeting with Pinkie, she spotted the new state of her friend's mane, which was entirely flat, and limp, rather than poofy and chaotic. What was more it seemed to cascade all the way to the floor.
"Pinkie," Rarity began instead. "Are you feeling quite alright?" The state of her friend's mane was universally a worrying thing whispered of throughout Ponyville. There had been several large events caused by Pinkie's emotional state, all of them well known. I wonder if poor Caramel has gotten over his fear of going outdoors yet... Rarity briefly reminisced.
Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie was busy bouncing the Gummy-ball gently in her hooves, with the pet alligator giving no signs of discomfort. "What? Oh, yeah! I feel great, Rarity. Why do you ask?" She turned, smiling happily as was usual.
Rarity released a somewhat tense breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. "Oh, well, no reason..." She let out a quick bit of laughter to avoid the topic. "But, Pinkie, your mane does seem to still be in a bit of a state." Frowning slightly, she made no efforts to hide looking over the pink hair that cascaded towards the floor, where it all rested in a big heap. The sheer length of Pinkie's mane gave Rarity the distinct reminder of an old foal's story of a mare trapped in a tall tower with a similarly long mane.
In return to Rarity, Pinkie Pie hummed in acknowledgement, then followed her friend's gaze for a second time. Her eyes found her mane, which was oddly straight and flowing down the side of her face. She tracked the hair, which led all the way to the floor, and then a whole stride across the carpet. "Wow, is all of that on my head?" She stared a moment longer in wonder, then looked up, smiling and laughing happily.
Rarity laughed alongside her, albeit far more nervously. "Heh heh, yes, uhm, do you need help fixing your mane?"
Pinkie sneaked out a couple more giggles, then slowed to a stop. "Nah, with hair like this you become an expert at fixing it. Don't worry, Rarity, I've got this!"
Before Rarity could answer, Pinkie stuck her hoof in her mouth, then made a show of blowing into it with a great deal of effort. A loud popping noise proceeded to fill the boutique, followed by the instant re-inflation of Pinkie Pie's mane to its normal, cotton-ball-like state.
Rarity stared flatly at Pinkie, whose mane was once again a match to her poofy tail. "Well then," she quietly murmured. "Is that quite everything, Pinkie? I was just about to step out to the Spa for my tri-weekly visit, actually."
Pinkie Pie, busily bouncing Gummy up in the air on her snout, stopped with another chime of laughter. "Nope, that was it— Ah, hey!" Her mane was taller than normal... and began tipping this way and that like a towering, unstable cake trying to collapse under its own weight.
Rarity had been trotting towards her hat rack, eager to get underway, and turned back to see Pinkie Pie, struggling fiercely to keep her mane upright. "Oh my— Pinkie, are you alright?"
Pinkie grunted, set down Gummy on the floor, then tried using both hooves to wrestle her hair into submission. "Yeah I'm— grr— I'm fine, no problems here!" The hair seemed by all rights to be defeating her, though, and only grew more out of control with each frustrated movement. "Ah!" she cried out, then fell backwards, oofing loudly.
Rarity covered her muzzle with one hoof in shock. "Goodness, Pinkie?" She trotted forward towards her friend, then used her magic to levitate the mass of fuzzy mane off of Pinkie's face. "Your hair seems to be out of control."
Pinkie quickly took in a gulp of air. "Wow, thanks, Rarity. I thought I was going to be a goner for sure." She giggled and stood up, one hoof supporting her mane off to the side. "Well, I gotta get going!" Briskly, she turned and made for the Carousel Boutique's exit, already thinking about the rest of the day. "There's a party for—"
Rarity heaved a sigh and grabbed a hold of her friend's tail, which she noticed was also a bit too long for its own good. "Pinkie, darling, why don't you accompany me to the spa? I think it's very much apparent that you're in dire need of a manecut." She frowned at the unstable, beehive-like style which Pinkie's hair had somehow morphed into.
Pinkie, stopped at the door by her friend's magic, turned around to face her. "What gave you that idea, Rarity?" She tilted her head slightly, ears laid back.
Rarity paused while putting on her sunhat, staring blankly at the other pony for just a moment. "Oh," she began quietly. "Well, you know, this and that... Just trust me on this one, Pinkie, you need a manecut." She trotted forward hastily, pushing her friend's rump along with her head and out of her home's door.
Pinkie giggled in response, letting herself be pushed. "Well, if you say so, Rarity! Also, it's called a haircut, duh! But yeah, I guess you're right, it is a little long." She ran her front hooves over her pink mane, gauging its length.
"You don't say?" Rarity asked rhetorically, rolling her eyes. All the while she trotted along briskly down Ponyville's main avenues with the local spa in mind.
Pinkie Pie nodded in response to Rarity. "But I do say!" She laughed again. "Hm, wow, I can't even remember the last time I even got a haircut. Isn't that strange that sometimes you can't ever think of things that you know you must have done? But you can't recall ever doing them? Like school, I don't remember even going to school!"
Rarity briefly eyed her friend, trying her best not to look at her as though she were crazy. "Really?" she began skeptically. "I thought you were home-schooled, Pinkie?"
Pinkie Pie's cheerful trot became a slow canter, then she stopped. "Oh yeah..." she murmured, a hoof held up to her chin in a thoughtful look. "Guess that explains that!" she stated plainly, then noticed Rarity was still walking and now pulling away. "Oh, Rarity, wait for me!"