Chapter 3
Port Pizza occupied a special niche in the Ponyville food market. The emphasis here was more on the arcade than it was the Pizza. Which wasn’t that much of a problem, it was a place for foals to have fun, and they certainly were having lots of it.
Port Pizza had been around for a while; Kelso had come here a couple times when she was young, usually for birthday parties or some situation similar to that. True to its name, Port Pizza was decorated in a pirate/high seas theme. There was a mural of a different famous ship from history on each wall. The one Kelso happened to be looking at, on the northern wall, was of the Equestrian paddle steamer SS Canterlot, the ship was uniquely designed for its large paddlewheel attached to the stern, and the single tall smokestack in the middeck, it had the distinction of being one of the first Equestrian steamships, built during the years before the fall of the Old Monarchy as a token show of progressivism. The SS Canterlot was a ship that sank after sailing through rough weather nearly a hundred years ago while en route to the country of the Kangaroos, the Commonwealth of South Island. The sinking of the SS Canterlot was made famous by the fact that there were no casualties. All fifty crew members, and nine passengers aboard the ship had made it off safely, not to mention, that one of the passengers just happened to be Princess Luna the Mad herself.
The SS Canterlot was regarded as one of the worst shipping accidents in Equestrian history, while there had been no loss of life, when the ship sank, it took about a hundred thousand Equestrian Pounds worth of goods right to the bottom. That was adjusted for inflation, of course. Kelso looked over to Pinkie Pie, and couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. The obnoxious pink pony was staring intensely at the mural of the SS Canterlot, almost as if she was engaged in a deep philosophical discussion of it with herself. Kelso was about to ask what she was thinking about when she stopped herself.
Asking Pinkie Pie what she was thinking about was a horrible idea. If the obnoxious pink pony opened her mouth, it would not close again. Having just saved herself from certain doom, Kelso looked back up at the line that they were standing in and frowned, it was still rather long, and to her complete expectation, this was going to take a while. ‘Pinkie Pie?’ Kelso asked.
Pinkie Pie snapped out of her trance and looked up at Kelso. ‘Huh? Oh! What’s up Kelso?’ she asked.
‘We’re going to be here for a while, there’s an empty table over there you can sit down at, you don’t need to wait in line with me’, Kelso said as she stuck out her hoof and pointed at the empty table.
Pinkie Pie looked over at the table and nodded her head. ‘Okay, I’ll wait over there!’ she said cheerfully as she stepped out of line and trotted to the table and took a seat. Pinkie Pie looked out at the rows of arcade machines, her gaze lost in the shining lights of the holographic control panels, they were all so pretty! What caught her attention most, though were the foals that were playing the games. They all looked so happy! Their bright smiling faces made the pink party pony feel great. Before she knew it, Pinkie Pie was humming a song.
‘There's one thing that makes me happy, and makes my whole life worthwhile, and that's when I talk to my friends and get them to smile!’
Pinkie Pie remembered the words to that song like were written on the back of her hoof. She had made up plenty of songs over the years; most of them were impromptu compositions with next to no planning. She’d have an idea for one in the middle of the night and she’d start humming something that sounded good. That song, stuck with her though, it had always been her favourite.
Come on everypony smile, smile, smile! Fill my heart up with sunshine, sunshine! All I really need's a smile, smile, smile! From these happy friends of mine!
‘Pinkie Pie?’ a voice asked her.
Pinkie Pie looked up in surprise to discover that Kelso was standing over her, expertly balancing two large boxes of Pizza on her back. ‘Oh hey!’ Pinkie Pie said with a smile. She didn’t know how, but she had completely lost track of time.
‘Everything alright?’ Kelso asked. ‘You looked like you were entranced’.
‘Oh’, Pinkie Pie said with an embarrassed grin as she rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof. ‘I was just watching the foals play... they all look so happy, it just... fills my heart up with sunshine!’ she admitted.
Kelso let out a sigh and shook her head. ‘Could you possibly get any more obnoxious?’ she asked as she took one of the boxes of Pizza and set it on the table.
‘Is that a challenge?’ Pinkie Pie said with a mischievous grin.
‘No!’ Kelso cried out. ‘No it is not!’
Pinkie Pie let out an obnoxious giggle, snorting every so often, before letting out a hiccup.
‘I give up! I give up!’ Kelso cried out as she set the second box of Pizza on the table. Pinkie Pie merely grinned at her. Kelso now knew for certain, Pinkie Pie was clearly evil. She rolled her eyes sarcastically at herself before turning to Pinkie Pie. ‘I didn’t know what you liked, so I just got two large cheese pizzas, want a slice before we head out?’ she asked.
‘Oh... no thank you!’ Pinkie Pie said. ‘I’m not hungry anymore!’
‘What?’ Kelso asked, giving the pink pony a deadpanned look. Pinkie Pie merely shrugged as she got up from the table and picked up the Pizzas for Kelso.
‘I’ll carry these!’ Pinkie Pie said with a smile as she trotted out towards the door. They headed outside and got back to Kelso’s car. Pinkie Pie set the pizzas in the back seat as Kelso started the car back up, getting into the far left lane and driving on towards home.
‘Where do you live at? I can go ahead and take you home’, Kelso said.
‘Ponyville’, Pinkie Pie said.
Kelso deadpanned Pinkie Pie, giving her a look of contempt. She was about to make a number of rude sarcastic comments, but decided against it. ‘What street do you live on?’ Kelso asked tactfully.
‘Um...’ Pinkie Pie said as she struggled to remember. Kelso could already tell that this was a waste of time, she set the car’s autopilot to head back to her and Viola’s flat and waved Pinkie Pie off.
‘It’s fine, you can stay the night with me and my roommate, and tomorrow morning, we’ll head down to the PPS Headquarters and look up for full record, and if we don’t find anything in our systems, we can always check the National Health Service registry’, Kelso said.
Pinkie Pie’s jaw widened into a bright smile, so wide in fact that Kelso had to do a double take, a pony’s jaw shouldn’t be able to move like that! ‘Thank you so much! You won’t regret it!’ Pinkie Pie said.
‘Oh I already am’, Kelso muttered under her breath.
...
They pulled up outside of Kelso and Viola’s flat not too long after, Kelso returned to her usual parking spot and stepped out of the car. Pinkie Pie reached back and grabbed the Pizzas out of the back seat before following Kelso inside. They trotted up the stairs and Kelso pushed open the door to the flat.
‘About time!’ they heard a voice call out to them. ‘I was about to call down to headquarters and have them send uniforms out looking for you!’
Kelso smiled as she looked to Viola Auditore, who was sitting on the sofa reading an eBook on the holographic display of her PIP. The holographic field over Viola’s eyes faded as she stood up and trotted over to her, just as Pinkie Pie trotted inside and placed the Pizza boxes on the kitchen counter.
‘Who’s this?’ Viola asked as she looked at the pink pony before her, and then glanced down at the Pizza boxes. ‘And what happened to Māo Xióng take out?’
‘Long story’, Kelso said with a frown. ‘This is Pinkie Pie, I found her sleeping on my car, she doesn’t know where she lives, so she’s going to stay the night here, and we’ll take her down to headquarters tomorrow morning and check her NHS records to find where she lives’.
‘Hello!’ Pinkie Pie said with a wave.
‘Why didn’t you just check your PIP?’ Viola asked as opened a Pizza box and pulled a slice out.
‘I did! That was the first thing I tried! She doesn’t have a record, not with us, not with Manehattan, or Fillydelphia, or Canton!’ Kelso explained.
‘Heh, it’s sad when the moral of the story is breaking a law at least once so the police can help you when you need it’, Viola said with a smirk as she chomped down on her Pizza. ‘Hmm! Hey this is good!’
Kelso’s mouth began to water, she pulled of a slice of Pizza and was about to take her first bite, when she notice Pinkie Pie looking at their oven. ‘It doesn’t work, it’s broken’, she said.
Pinkie Pie ignored her and opened it up, sticking her head inside.
‘Hey! What are you doing!?’ Kelso cried out.
‘Fixed it!’ Pinkie Pie called out as she pulled her head out of the oven, shutting the door and turning it on. The oven kicked to life and began to warm up, causing Kelso’s mouth to fall open. Pinkie Pie turned around and smiled warmly at the two mares. ‘The regulo-thingymaggiger wasn’t on all the way!’
‘The what?’ Kelso asked.
‘Honey can we keep her?’ Viola asked with a playful smirk.
Kelso looked at Viola and offered her a serious looking frown. ‘Absolutely not!’