//------------------------------// // I Might be Going Insane... // Story: Overactive // by Mariorulez14 //------------------------------// Author's Note: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and all associated characters, locations, etc. are property of Lauren Faust and Hasbro. I do not own these characters, nor do I claim to own them. Now then, continue on with your entertainment endeavors. Overactive A story by Mariorulez14 Chapter 1 Living in a small town, I didn’t get a lot of interaction with other fans of My Little Pony outside the world surrounding my computer. The only one I ever really knew in real-life was a shy girl that always disappeared into the crowd whenever I tried to talk to her…Shelby was her name. In fact, the time she told me she watched the show was only one of two times we ever actually talked. I’d see her every now and again by her locker or sitting in between the vending machines and I started to develop a bit of a crush on her (even to this day, I’m still not sure if it was because she was cute or that she didn’t laugh at me when I admitted I watched a show for little girls). It was around the time the episode Sweet and Elite aired that school got really crazy. I was pulling all-nighters for the next couple of days trying to keep up with the homework, but I’d finish one thing and find 3 more to do. After 3 straight nights of no sleep, the idea of a mini-marathon of ponies snuck its way into my head. I looked at the clock – 12:38 a.m. I thought to myself, what the heck, it’s late enough. I was getting frustrated with cosines and tangents anyway, so I started up my episode playlist and relaxed for a bit. All those sleepless nights came back to haunt me though; next thing I knew, I was face-down on my laptop with Sweetie Belle singing her jazzy rendition of Fluttershy’s lullaby sounding through my headphones. “…That’s so ironic it hurts,” I grumbled, a feeling a bit embarrassed that a lullaby – even Sweetie’s – was the thing to wake me up. I combed through my short-ish hair, wiped the dribble off my right Alt key, closed my computer and tiredly stumbled into the bathroom to prepare for the day. ---------- Most of the time, I’d see Shelby walking to school by herself looking kind of paranoid, like something was following her. Today, however, she was sitting at the bus stop looking as exhausted as I was. My first thought was, the girl you’ve got a crush on it sitting where you usually do. You’re tired beyond belief. If you do something stupid, you’re never going to forgive yourself. Nervous as I was, I mustered all of the courage I had and, in a classic display of cliché, approached her and completely botched the words I intended to say. What should have come out as “How’s it going?” came out as something along the lines of “Hats on Groening”. I would have sworn she giggled, but she didn’t move other than a quick glance in my direction…not even a smile. Either I was going completely insane from lack of sleep or… “You like her, don’t you?” My vision was then filled with what looked and felt like cotton candy, sending me stumbling around groping at whatever what clinging to my face. I managed to it off, and when I saw what – or rather, who – it was… “…Yeah, I’m going completely insane.” ---------- I stared at what I was holding for a while, not knowing what to think. It was a pink pony about the size of my Chihuahua, with blue eyes and the same cotton-candy mane that blinded me a few seconds prior…a smaller-than-normal Pinkie Pie. It’s not like I hated Pinkie Pie, she was my favorite pony after all…it’s just that I wasn’t exactly prepared for her to go full-out Jockey and jump on my head. “So am I right? Do you liiiiiiike her?” My mouth simply refused to make words. Here I was, standing in public waiting for a school bus, holding a character from My Little Pony. “Kinda…” was the first thing that I managed to say. The pink pony’s face widened into a smile as she wiggled her way out of my hands and down to the ground. “Hee hee, Mr. Human has a marefriend! ~” she sang as she bounced in a circle around me. I let out a sigh as I sat down by Shelby, not caring about nerves anymore. I sat there for a couple minutes watching Pinkie Pie sort through a bag of party goods she got from somewhere when I heard a soft voice to my right. “I see Pinkie Pie...” I jumped a bit and looked over to see it was Shelby. Her eyes were almost as big as Pinkie’s as she stared unblinkingly at the party pony, who was busy stuffing fully-inflated balloons into a saddlebag that wouldn’t normally hold them. “You can?” I asked her. She nodded, still keeping her eyes on Pinkie. “Heh, so I guess I’m not going into sleep-deprived madness”. I made the motion of wiping sweat off my forehead as I said this out of habit and looked back over at Pinkie. Strangely enough, Pinkie was staring at Shelby with the same surprised expression, although with a smile on her face. “You can see me too?” Pinkie chimed out as she started to walk toward an obviously freaked-out Shelby. Shelby let out a little “yes” and squeaked as Pinkie Pie got closer. “You don’t have to be so scared, you silly-filly!” Pinkie, well, she teleported for lack of a better explanation; one minute she’s 3 feet in front of Shelby, the next she’s reclined on the back-rest of the bus stop bench next to Shelby’s head. “You remind me a lot of my friend Fluttershy, always scared of things.” Shelby was as confused by Pinkie’s Houdini act as much as I was, but still gave a scared cry when she saw Pinkie appear out of nowhere right next to her. She stood up and pointed at the pony. “You…you’re just a fictional character…” she said in a quiet voice. Pinkie was right, she was a lot like Fluttershy, I thought to myself as Shelby continued in her confused stupor. “You can’t be real, but I can see you…” At this point, the sidewalk traffic had started to roll in. The first of the businessmen that usually walk to work looked over and saw a girl pointing at what looked like a pink-dyed Chihuahua. Once he got closer and figured out it was a Technicolor horse, he turned around and went home, probably thinking to himself he was going insane. Right there with you, man… Pinkie just looked at Shelby with a confused look. “Of course I’m real, everypony’s real! Fluttershy and Twilight and Rarity and Applejack and Dashie, and of course me…but maybe we’re not because we’re in a completely new place we’ve never seen before. I wonder where everypony is, there was this weird portal that I ran into because I thought it led to a party dimension but it lead here and everypony else followed me in and now I’m here!” During her rambling, Pinkie Pie had gotten off her perch and wandered around, attracting looks from a couple young children who smiled. “Hey girls,” I said out loud. Shelby looked at me with a hint of insanity in her eyes, while Pinkie looked at me like I was going to throw a cake in her face or something. At least seeing a pink, talking pony from a kid’s show was enough to break Shelby out of Fluttershy-mode. “You think we’re not the only ones that can see Pinkie?” “I…I don’t know. Maybe?” I’m kind of glad that I’m getting her to say more than one thing…her voice is kind of cute. Pinkie ran up to me and pulled my face down to her level. “I know the answer, but I might get a little boring.” I started to say, “What are you talking about?” but she shoved her hoof in my mouth (it tasted like strawberry ice cream for whatever reason), ran around the street corner and came back wearing a lab coat, glasses and pulling a whiteboard that she started to scribble on. The first thing she drew was a little stick figure person and a pony. “You humans have something that everypony in Equestria has, an imagination.” She bounced up and down, writing the word “IMAGINASHUN” at the peaks of her hops. She pointed a hoof at the stick figure’s head, then at the pony. “Imagination lets the humans create things, like a TV show about me, my friends and everypony in Equestria-“ “Hold on.” By now, Shelby had gone to sit down on the bench and was giving Pinkie a puzzled look. “You mean that Ponyville’s real?” “Duuuh, of course it’s real," Pinkie reiterated. "Me and everypony else couldn’t be here if we weren’t! Like I was saying, show about everypony in Equestria. But some people don’t have an imagination and aren’t good at making things up, and they’re the kind of people that don’t like to have fun or parties!” It looked to me like her mane deflated a bit, but then sprung back up as she continued. “Human-people with imaginations can see us, but the ones without imaginations cant. You two must have lots and lots of imagination if you can see all of this!” Pinkie’s face broke into an enormous smile as she ran back around the corner and came back with no trace of the items she had originally. All of a sudden, there was a loud “HONK!” as the bus started down the street toward our location. Pinkie, caught off-guard, made a sound a lot like Shelby’s earlier yelp and fell on her back, causing Shelby to giggle. She has a witch or something, even her giggles are cute. I looked around us one last time to see people either ignoring Pinkie, staring at Pinkie or taking a few aspirin and making themselves think they didn’t see Pinkie. Shelby did the same, then looked over to me with that same shyness as before. “So, um…want to sit by me on the bus?” As much as I wanted to dance around with happiness, I put on a halfway-decent poker face and said “Sure.” We got on the bus and sat down…and Pinkie followed us on. “Aw come on, you can’t just leave a pony out alone in a place where she has no clue where anything is!” Pinkie said to Shelby and I. I saw a couple heads turn, and I saw a couple of the guys pinch themselves. I leaned down and whispered to Pinkie, “Sorry about that, but can you tell me why you’re gonna tag along to school with us? Think about it, you might embarrass us or get yourself into trouble.” Pinkie was obviously not in a thinking mood and slammed her hoof on the bus floor. “Well you don’t have to be a meanie and walk away without telling me where you’re going!” She had a point… “Pinkie,” Shelby whispered down to the pony, “school’s a pretty boring place. There’s almost no one smiling, there’s no baked goods…” Shelby shot me a “play along, we can escape” wink and made a little production of looking around before she continued. “…And there are no parties.” I went along with the act, making the biggest frown I could muster and nodded my head slowly. Pinkie just let out a huge gasp, sat on the floor and assumed what I assumed was a thinking pose. “Your school sounds boring…” Pinkie Pie got a twinkle in her eye while I shot a “we failed” look over at Shelby. “…I think it needs a super-special, cheer-‘em-up mega-party!” Pinkie pulled out the saddlebag she was stuffing balloons into earlier and started to open it, but I harshly whispered “No.” The pink party pony looked a little dejected as she put the saddlebag over her back “It’s not that we don’t want you to throw a party, Pinkie…it’d sure make school a lot more interesting.” Shelby put a hand on what I think was where a pony’s shoulder should be. “It’s just that I don’t think the people working at the school would appreciate a confetti bomb going off during fourth period.” Pinkie raised her head, smirked and poked Shelby in the nose. “You silly-filly, these aren't confetti bombs," she said as she reached into her bag and produced several egg-sized rubber spheres with pins in the top. “They’re cake-batter grenades.” I chuckled. “Not much better, the janitors would be even more ticked off if something like that happened.” I looked out the window and assessed our location, a minute or so from the school building. “Listen Pinkie, when we get to school, you need to lay low…stay somewhere you’ll be comfortable but you’d be out of sight to people that could see you.” Pinkie Pie put on a serious saluted. “Okie-dokie-lokie!” This got a giggle out of Shelby and me because of how silly it looked. The bus stopped and the doors opened. Shelby and I got up and started walking while I continued to lay down the plan for the day. “Okay, I was thinking the cafeteria. That way you can get something to eat or drink if you get hungry.” “Ooh, I’ve never been in a cafeteria before! What kind of food do they have? Cookies, chocolate bars, cupcakes?” Pinkie was obviously excited about going someplace with food, and I didn’t want to shatter her dreams with the reality of today’s lunch being mashed potatoes and green beans. “We have chocolate milk-” That was the only thing the sugar-craving pony needed to hear. She ran into the school building at speeds rivaling The Flash, Rainbow Dash and Sonic combined, leaving a pink blur-trail of where she had gone. “…At least she’s out of our hair for the next couple of hours,” I said to Shelby. I think she retreated back to shy-town since she only nodded and walked ahead. ---------- I walked to second-period Biology and sat down, half-listening to the conversations going on around me. It was mostly about school and home life issues, but I’d heard a couple of the football players talking about seeing an orange pony with a hat around the apple orchard to the south of the school. If Pinkie’s story is right, I guess it makes sense that Applejack and the others would be around, I guessed to myself as the intercom buzzed to life. Expecting to hear the secretary call someone to the office as usual, it was the principal. And he sounded beyond mad. “Attention student body,” he began in a hiss, “there has been an incident in the cafeteria including 400 pounds of cake batter and 3 gallons of chocolate milk.” I swear my heart stopped beating as soon as "cake batter" was said. "Wonderful, Pinkie’s already messed something up," I muttered under my breath as the principal continued. “If anyone has information relating to this, I’m offering a week off from school if the information is reliable.” He managed to grunt out “Thank you” and practically slammed the intercom’s telephone back on the receiver. After the intercom fell silent, the room went back to its normal random chatter while I sat tensed up in complete shock and disbelief. Eventually my muscles loosened up just enough to put my face against the desk and groan. Today’s going to be one big headache…