Pinkieviduality

by Ultra-the-HedgeToaster

3 – All play and no work

~Pinkieviduality~

---

Chapter 3 – All play and no work

This chapter is available as a "synthesized" audio book:
> [link] - no background music
> [link] - with ambient music loop

> [overview of all chapters]

---

Pinkie Pie was happy.

Every day was a fun adventure!

Everypony was always doing strange and exciting new things Pinkie didn't fully understand, and sometimes, they'd ask her to do silly things or avoid doing other things for equally silly reasons.

This day was no exception.

“Hi, Zeny!” Pinkie Pie energetically extended a greeting towards her fellow equine of the striped variety.

“Gaaaaah!” The other mare briefly displayed an equal show of energy, if only to spent it in jumping two hoof-lengths high and hastily distancing herself in reaction to the pink pony's spontaneous entrance.

Pinkie Pie giggled at this, which earned her a glare from the zebra in turn.

“What the...!? How did you get in here?”

“Through the door!” Pinkie beamed brightly.

The zebra face-hoofed. She then said something in response, but Pinkie's attention was already on the room's interior rather than its occupant.

One wall of the wagon was covered in strange wooden masks, their varying expressions prompting Pinkie to giggle and make silly faces to imitate them as she bounced from one mask to the next.

Stacks of paper covered the desk. The pages showed sketches of clouds shaped like strange animals or ponies – or perhaps animals and ponies made out of clouds.

Vials of various sizes and shapes lined the shelves, containing colorful liquids ranging from glowing greens and bubbling blues to gooey yellows and sticky orange substances.

As the pink pony eyed each of the oddly-shaped glasses, bizarre, twisted, stretched and squeezed ponies sharing the color of each liquid stared back at her. “Ooooh”-ing and “Aaah”-ing, Pinkie Pie poked one of the vials, eliciting a sharp hissing noise as the bubbling concoction stirred.

“Hey! Do not touch that! HEY! PIE!”

“Huh? What? Pie! Where?” Pinkie's head whirled around, mouth watering at the prospect of food.

“'Pie' is your name, is it not?”

“Is it?” The pink pony blinked. “I mean – yes, it is, it's Pinkie Pie. I'm 'The Real Pinkie Pie', yes. Now where's the pie?” Pinkie's face was full of eagerness.

“There isn't any pie!” Zenya groaned, applying hoof to face.

“What? Aww...” The exuberant mare's smile briefly dropped into a frown before returning full-force in a matter of seconds, as she once again turned back to investigate the vials, prodding another one of the thin glass-tubes.

“HEY! What did I *just* say?!” Zenya scowled at her.

“...That there isn't any pie?” Pinkie Pie tilted her head back at the other mare.

“I told you not to touch the glasses – that is, unless you want to have blown up in your face the resulting gasses.”

“Hihihi, that rhymed!” Pinkie giggled.

“Yes.” Zenya rolled her eyes. “I'll try my best not to do it again.”

After a second of silence, Zenya exhaled a sigh of exasperation.

“Why are you here, anyway?”

At this, Pinkie suddenly had the strangest urge to give a witty comeback regarding the outcome of “two ponies liking each other very much”. But for the life of her, she just couldn't remember the punchline.

Pinkie Pie shrugged off the urge and, with her ever-present smile, relayed what she had been told earlier.

“Tight Rope said I should come see you for sowing the tent.” She grinned. “Which I guess makes sense, since I'm a plant-pony and you're a stripe-y plant-pony, although I don't know how we're going to sow a tent, maybe we need to cut it into itty-bitty-tiny-little pieces and bury the pieces and then get a watering can and lots and lots of water so that we can grow lots and lots of many new tents, and–“

“Aha. That's great.” Zenya deadpanned. “I'll get the tent. You wait here.”

And so Pinkie did. For about two seconds, before continuing her investigation.

Once Zenya returned, she led Pinkie outside where a positively huge piece of cloth had been laid out in the grass.

Pinkie marveled at the sight, not paying much attention to Zenya until something she said caught her ear.

“...Guess I should be thankful for another pair of hooves.”

“Uh! Uhh! With six hooves you'd be like a spider-pony! I saw that in a paper-thingy! You could climb walls and–”

Zenya simply walked off, ignoring Pinkie's chatter altogether.

“– bitten by a magical spider, and you could be like a super-hero, fighting evil! Although you're always grouchy – I guess that would make you a 'gritty' hero, then? Hmm...”

“Are you coming?” Zenya cut her off.

Bouncing along, Pinkie came across yet another new sight. From a compartment on the underside of the wagon, Zenya was dragging out a seemingly endless piece of cloth with red and yellow stripes.

“Is it your super-hero cape?” Pinkie tilted her head, a slight frown on her muzzle. “Isn't it a bit too big? Uh! Unless the spider-bite made you grow big, then it'd totally fit!”

Ignoring Pinkie Pie's ramblings, Zenya continued to lay out the cloth, spreading it out over a large area.

“We need to check the fabric for rips and holes”, she addressed Pinkie, trying and failing to level her gaze at the constantly bouncing mare. “I will take this side, you start... over there.”
.

-/-

.
“Have you found anything yet?” Zenya asked, engrossed in her work. When Pinkie did not respond, she looked up. Pinkie Pie was gone.

Then something in her wagon exploded.

Zenya rushed back inside – only to stumble blindly through a dense cloud of brightly glowing green smoke.

It took a few seconds of coughing and waving her forelegs about, before the colorful smoke cleared, and revealed a smiling pink pony holding an empty vial sitting, once again, right at the table with her chemicals.

“What did I tell you about touching those?!” she growled.

The pink pony gave a wide, toothy smile before reciting. “You told me not to touch the glasses, unless I wanted to have blown up in my face the resulting gasses! And I did want that! It was fun! And I love fun! Wheee!”

Zenya's face went utterly blank. One of the metaphorical cogs in her brain had gotten stuck trying to process what Pinkie Pie had said.

It took a few seconds for Zenya's brain to get unstuck. Its first action was to place Zenya's hoof in its usual place on her face.

“Just... go back to work,” Zenya groaned exasperatedly.

“But that work is boooo-ring!” Pinkie whined.

And now the cog had strawberry-marmalade spilled all over it.

Zenya just blinked.

“You are kidding. You are kidding, right? Please tell me you are joking.”

“I am?” Confused, Pinkie Pie looked around, as if searching for the punchline.

What followed were the longest ten minutes of Zenya's life, as the concept of “work” and why it was important was relayed to the mare peeking under each cupboard, desk and bed, physically looking for the punchline of a joke.

Some more minutes passed, until Zenya and said mare were back outside, where they were supposed to fix up the tent.

Pinkie Pie, however, appeared not to be listening to Zenya's instructions, instead occupied in once again staring at the zebra's stripes.

“Why does your coat look like that anyway? Did you paint it?” Pinkie raised a hoof to her chin in contemplation. “I think maybe you should try something with more colors in it, like your super-hero cape.”

Pinkie looked down at the red and yellow fabric. “Black and white is soooo boooooring!”

“...Hmm, what's that noise?” Pinkie asked, before noticing Zenya grinding her teeth furiously.

“Oh wow, I didn't know teeth could make sounds like that.” Pinkie Pie's face scrunched awkwardly as she bit her teeth together, trying to recreate the effect. “Hmm... this is harder than it looks... Can you show me how you do that? Oooh, and that with your eyes, too, that looks funny!”

The cogs in Zenya's brain caught fire and then melted into cheese.

"Excuse me for a moment," she spoke in a flat monotone, then turned and went back to her wagon.

She closed the door with deliberate slowness, grasping onto the door-handle with a hoof until it was fully closed.

There was silence, and Pinkie sat in front of the closed door, head tilted in confusion.

“Huh. I guess she went inside to change the paint.”

The silence was broken by a series of muffled thuds, of something hard repeatedly striking against wood.

“Aren't we going to fix your super-hero cape?”

More thuds could be heard. One of the wagon's walls shook. Several inaudible mutterings could be heard through the closed door.

“Just go... play somewhere else.” Zenya's muffled voice groaned from the other side.

“Oh, okay!” And with a merry tune on her lips, Pinkie Pie bounced off.

Fifteen minutes later, Zenya had calmed down.

“The mare obviously has... issues.” Zenya muttered through grit teeth.

She sighed, looking around at the mess Pinkie Pie had left behind.

Now calm, the metaphorical cogs in Zenya's brain ran smooth once again.

Something in her mind clicked.

“Wait, why was Pie rambling on about –“

Her eyes widened, darting across the room, taking in the details.

Beakers with potentially dangerous chemicals had been placed out of order, labels gone. Several of her notes and sketches lay haphazardly strewn on the ground. An old book had fallen under the table somehow, with all its bookmarks scattered. Faintly glowing stains had been left on the carpet, and one of the old masks lay on the floor, right in a puddle of red ooze.

But Zenya didn't care about that.

She rushed to the cupboard Pinkie had left ajar, and opened one particular drawer, whose contents had been arranged neatly, in a well-organized manner, and kept clean of dust.

Had been. Not anymore.

“PINKIIIIE PIIIE!” Zenya yelled, running outside. “KEEP YOUR DIRTY HOOVES OF MY COMICS! Those are mint-condition collectors pieces! If you so much as bent a page, so Unkulunkulu help me, I'll akunikele ibe umnyama, and not even Ihashe'best can save your spirit from Ngcina'mveliso!”

.

Comments

[borgvicugna]

U_U
Cute story. Glad I don't know anyone like the "real" Pinkie Pie. Never would get anything done, because...Hugs.

[Ultra-the-HedgeToaster]

8487718
Hehe, yeah.

The fastest way to render an entire society unable to act -- send adorable ponies.

[Reese]

Oh, dear. :D

[tsaukpaetra]

It's good to be helping.
Keep going! ;)

[nemryn]

I like Zenya. The idea of a zebra who just can't be arsed to rhyme all the time is a fun one.

[Smiling Armor]

It took a few seconds for Zenya's brain to get unstuck. Its first action was to place Zenya's hoof in its usual place on her face.

I love this fanfic sooooo much!
Say, when's the next chapter coming?..

[Doctor_Den]

why do good stories often fail to end?

[Ultra-the-HedgeToaster]

9907575
Because this is my writing process:

images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/359fa84c-4492-4ffc-a3fe-cca85d9f8cd3/db19b9m-f988cc9c-fa8c-4ad1-a0d1-f86e9c7f1cb2.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzM1OWZhODRjLTQ0OTItNGZmYy1hM2ZlLWNjYTg1ZDlmOGNkM1wvZGIxOWI5bS1mOTg4Y2M5Yy1mYThjLTRhZDEtYTBkMS1mODZlOWM3ZjFjYjIucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.G4qaJ-KvA9TRe0FAtzGDS8W2QN4flXndBXUoPPQjDkY
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/359fa84c-4492-4ffc-a3fe-cca85d9f8cd3/db19b9w-c33e4b1e-d38b-4a78-8236-966ab80fa175.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzM1OWZhODRjLTQ0OTItNGZmYy1hM2ZlLWNjYTg1ZDlmOGNkM1wvZGIxOWI5dy1jMzNlNGIxZS1kMzhiLTRhNzgtODIzNi05NjZhYjgwZmExNzUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.NI_89UcjY0rtolR1Zn4SmttaR9skCm2AS5FRHWMuTIM
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/359fa84c-4492-4ffc-a3fe-cca85d9f8cd3/db19b9q-8b7d5de4-deac-4737-a02d-f61181e66d9a.png/v1/fill/w_733,h_1090,q_70,strp/what_it_looks_like_when_i_write_a_story_by_ultrathehedgetoaster_db19b9q-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTE3NSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzM1OWZhODRjLTQ0OTItNGZmYy1hM2ZlLWNjYTg1ZDlmOGNkM1wvZGIxOWI5cS04YjdkNWRlNC1kZWFjLTQ3MzctYTAyZC1mNjExODFlNjZkOWEucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTc5MSJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.LcFN9km0OEap4x4gWTAC1a-bfnRhWqR0za2G0YeHPhw

...But yeah, I'll get back to Pinkieviduality eventually. There's tons of stuff already written for this story... the trouble is that most of what's already written takes place later, and I still need to write the earlier chapters.

People have already cried "dead" on other stories of mine before, and I proved them wrong.

[Doctor_Den]

9907627
it is alive! 😨😱😵

[Andy Ray]

But... But!..

I'll just track further updates...

[Doctor_Den]

*annual check of the patient's pulse and vital signs

[Doctor_Den]

Good day. I've recently been working on a comic based on the "Just Two Clones, Having Dinner" story and continuing it.
https://www.deviantart.com/dendoctor/gallery/82414357/-c-l-o-n-e-s-the-series-of-storyline-comics
Therefore, I would like to ask: can I partially film your story as the backstory of the Pinky clone?

[NotShadowLotus488]

9907627

Alive?