Pinkie reared back on her hind legs and pointed to her right-hoof alligator.
"Hit it, Gummy!"
The alligator blinked as he stood on the table next to Pinkie's phonograph. Although it was impossible to tell if his tail hit the needle's arm and made it swing out over the revolving record on purpose, or if it was simply some autonomic reflex making his tail flick wildly about that created a happy accident, the needle nevertheless plopped down and translated the vinyl grooves into crackles and hisses that came out of the phonograph's horn.
"Ah-hem-hem," Pinkie said, holding a hoof to her chest. "Mi mi mi miii!"
As she waited for the song to start, she picked up the scroll in front of her and unfurled it. Scrawled atop the top of the parchment was 'Emergency Song #2348: for purposes of celebration of rescue of friend/acquaintance from water well mishap (leap year variant)'.
As the bouncy horns started blaring from the phonograph, she bounced along with them and sang, "Oh, if you should be feeling down, I'll tell you why you shouldn't frown--"
A harsh shout came through her bedroom window: "Pie!"
Pinkie froze in mid-air, but the record scratch she expected to hear didn't happen; the phonograph was still spinning. She landed lightly, faced the alligator, and drew her hoof across her throat.
"Gummy, stop the music!" she called.
Again, it was impossible to tell if the alligator put any conscious thought into snapping its toothless jaws down on the spinning vinyl record; and yet as the record revolved it took him with it, where he knocked the needle away and killed the music. While Pinkie trotted to her window, Gummy let go of the record. It flung him through the air behind her. The pink pony leaned out the window and, over the small backyard separating the rear of Sugarcube Corners from the building across the way, saw the wrinkled face of her donkey neighbor leaning out of her own window
"Pie!" Polly T. Burro called. "Could you be ever so thoughtful and stop that racket, please?!"
Pinkie sighed and rolled her eyes. It was a familiar conversation, one they'd had many times in the month since the Burros had moved to Ponyville.
What is it about those donkeys than means no fun? she thought. She's like Cranky Doodle times....a million!
She leaned out the window and called, "But Polly, I have to practice my emergency songs!"
The donkey raised an eyebrow. "Whatever do you mean, 'emergency songs'? Why....would you be needing songs in an emergency?"
Pinkie chuckled. "They're not for emergencies, they're in case something unexpected happens and I don't have one ready. That's the emergency! You've always gotta have a song ready! How else am I going to reveal plot critical details while spreading so much fuuun?!"
Polly T. Burro cocked her head and asked, "Plot critical details?"
"Yeah, like say Applejack starts planting some new trees, but she didn't tell me any details in advance! That's pretty critical, because then I'm going to just be thinking, 'Oh, Pinkie, how am I supposed to siiing about this? I don't have a song ready!' And it's just going to drive me BANANAS!"
"Well, Pinkie," Polly said, her saccharine voice laced with arsenic, "surely you don't need to be practicing songs now, do you?"
"But....but....can't you just....close your window?"
"No, I most certainly can not. The night air does wonders for my fillyish complexion."
Pinkie's head drooped until it slammed into the window sill. "Fiiine," she called. "But if something wonderfuntastic happens to you tomorrow, don't expect me to sing about it!"
"No need to make such a dreadful ruckus," Polly said, narrowing her eyes. "It was only a simple request." She rolled her eyes and, in a very loud voice, muttered to herself, "The absolute nerve of someponies!"
And with that, Polly T. Burro turned off her light.
Pinkie trudged over to her phonograph, hit the switch to stop it spinning, and collapsed into her bed. She reached over the side of the bed and yanked her alligator up by his tail. She raised him to eye-level.
"Gummy, what are we going to do with that grumpy donkey?"
"I just don't know what I'm going to do," Pinkie cried out as she lay sprawled out face-down on the picnic blanket. "I haven't had my daily recommended dose of fun in a month, ever since that party-pooper moved in. It's always 'Pie, stop that!' or 'Pie, have some consideration!' I can't do anything without her telling me to stop. I'm going stir-crazy!"
"Stir-crazy?" Twilight asked without looking up from her book. "Aren't you being just a little bit overdramatic?"
"No! Mr. and Mrs. Cake haven't had to use their mixer in a month because I've been stirring so much batter!"
"Pinkie, that's not what stir-crazy means."
She raised her head, looked at her five best friends, and asked, "It's not?"
All five shook their heads in harmony.
She groaned and let her head fall until her face hit the picnic blanket again. "Well anyway, she's driving me batty, which makes sense because she's such a kooky old bat!"
"Well," Rainbow said right before taking an enormous bite of her sandwich and chewing it loudly with her mouth hanging open. "If she's gonna--"
A chunk of half-chewed food arced across the picnic blanket and plopped into Rarity's snifter of fruit punch. She gagged as she turned around and poured its contents out on the grass.
"Whoops," Rainbow said, her mouth full. "Sorry."
Still engrossed in her book, Twilight asked, "Have you tried talking to this Polly T. Burro? Maybe if you two sat down and had a nice, quiet conversation, you'd find you actually have quite a lot in common."
"Aw, nuts to that," Rainbow said with her mouth full, spraying bits of sandwich everywhere. "If somepony's not down with your awesomeness, you just gotta be even more awesome, so incredibly awesome they realize they're just jealous. And then they...." She trailed off into deep thoughts, then shrugged. "....worship you or something. I dunno, I forget what happens next."
"Although one must never forget a proper sense of grace and decorum." Sarcastically, she added, "Isn't that right, Rainbow Dash?"
Rainbow flapped a hoof dismissively as she crammed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth with the other. She gulped loudly as she swallowed. "Decorum, schmeh-corum," she said, jumping to her hooves and striking an aerodynamic pose. "If somepony's jealous of you doing what you do best, then it's their fault! Right, AJ? You're with me on this."
"I just don't know, y'all," Applejack said, adjusting her hat to shade her from the sun. "Someponies just wake up in the morning and like to put on their fussy britches, and no amount a'hooting and hollering will make them change their ways. Sounds to me this Polly T. Burro is one a'them, and there ain't nothing nopony can do to change that."
Still sprawled out on the blanket, Pinkie put her hooves on either side of her head and squeezed until her eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.
"But I don't know how much longer I can stand this!"
With a hungry gleam in her eye, she grabbed a giant yellow squash somepony had set aside and chomped away at it until her whole head was stuck inside it. Then, the opposite side started to quiver until her head burst through it with a wet, juicy pop, chewing away at the juicy fruit. The dislodged part of the squash's skin rested atop her head between her ears.
"I mean, she's driving me out of my gourd!"
"Have you tried suffering in absolute silence?" Fluttershy asked. "I can give you some pointers, if you want."
"Darling, surely you've overcome that by now?" Rarity asked, rolling her eyes and throwing her head back. As she did so, she raised a hoof and fluffed her perfectly manicured mane.
"Yes," Fluttershy said defensively, "but I still have the pointers."
She reached into the saddlebag resting at her side and pulled out a scroll as thick as her foreleg. She undid the ribbon holding it together. Having been so tightly-wrapped, it unfurled itself with such force that one end shot across the picket blanket, rolled down the hill they sat atop, and sped away across the grassy field.
Twilight leaned over and inspected some of the pointers, then made an impressed whistle. "Oh, my, such meticulous attention to detail. I'm impressed!"
Fluttershy smiled and said, "Thank you, Twilight."
"But still," Rarity said, "we do hope you've overcome these by now."
Fluttershy turned more red than yellow. "Well, yes....thanks to you guys."
As everypony aww'd and gave Fluttershy a group hug, Pinkie Pie tried removing her head from the gourd. She planted her back hooves on it next to her ears and strained herself until her her skull popped free. But she put so much force behind it that when she did actually come loose, she flew ten feet through the air and started rolling down the hill.
"Thanks again for helping me reshelf all these books."
"Aw, no problem," Pinkie said.
Twilight magically levitated all the books off of a shelf and into the hooves of Pinkie, who stood next to her. The pink pony beamed back, then zipped out of sight. Twilight lifted up her feather duster and dusted the shelf's recesses. When she finished, she turned to Pinkie with a peppy smile on her face. But as soon as she saw what was in the center of the library, she started blinking heavily and her jaw dropped. Pinkie reared back, spread her hooves, and gestured to the towering spires of the book city she'd built.
"Ta-dah!" she said. "I call it, uh....Booklyn! Yeah!"
Twilight slowly walked among the book-buildings. "Uh, Pinkie Pie, you do know these books have to go back on the shelves, right?"
Pinkie ducked behind a book-building with a cry of, "Wait, wait, wait!"
Twilight sighed and narrowed her eyes.
"He's fearsome," Pinkie announced in a deep voice. "He's unstoppable. He's....the Gummysaurus!"
Holding Gummy's forelegs up in the air, Pinkie waddled him out from behind the building like he was a foal just learning to walk.
"Baa-naah!" she sang. "Watch in terror as he turns this city to rubble!"
She twisted him aside, making his waving tail knock over a stack of books.
Twilight gasped. "That's a first edition!"
The unicorn trotted forward, dived to the ground, and just barely managed to catch the book that spilled off the top of the tower in her hooves. She sighed with relief. Then the rest of the books toppled over and bopped her on the head, one at a time.
"Ow ow ow ow OW!"
When it seemed like the novelanche had finally abated, she exhaled and slowly got to her hooves. She turned around and glared at Pinkie, who had waddled Gummy off and was making him knock another building over.
"Pinkie!" she shouted.
The pink pony spun around. "Yeah, Twilight?"
Twilight affected a nonchalant smile. "Pinkie. Is there a particular reason you asked if we could have a slumber party last night?"
Pinkie chuckled nervously. "Wh--well, why, um, that's just what good friends do. Have fun old slumber parties!"
"So it had nothing to do with Polly T. Burro?"
Pinkie trembled, then lifted her pet alligator up so he hung and swung from her hooves. She burst out, "Oh, alright! It's Gummy. He's mad at that fussy old meanie-pants."
Gummy blinked.
"So we needed to get out of Sugarcube Corners for a little while. And I made him a book city to stomp around in, because you know how alligators get when they can't indulge themselves."
Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Indulge themselves?"
"Yeah!" Pinkie said as she hugged Gummy tight. She gave him a playful growl. "Let them get in touch with their inner alligator. I even made him a swamp out behind Sugarcube Corners so he could get that visceral thrill of lazing in the brackish water and lurking among the reeds and lily pads. Though I didn't know where to get reeds and lily pads, so I made my own out of drinking straws and construction paper, but I haven't heard any complaints." She hugged Gummy again. "Bless your little heart, Gummy. You know how hard Pinkie works for you!"
Gummy blinked again.
Twilight stepped among the books strewn over the floor and crossed the book-city to Pinkie's side.
"Pinkie, you know you're always welcome here, but I don't think it does either of us any good if you're just using me as an excuse to run away from your problems."
Pinkie sighed and let Gummy droop to the floor. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
Twilight started walking Pinkie towards the front door. "Here's what I want you to do: I want you to walk over to the Burros' house, knock on the front door, and ask if you can talk it over. Just give it a try, alright?"
"Alright," Pinkie said morosely. "Thanks, Twilight."
"No problem. You know I'm always here to help."
Twilight closed the bottom half of the library's front door, then trotted back across the librarywhile looking over her shoulder and waving at Pinkie. Pinkie waved back before turning to go. When Twilight put her eyes forward again, she realized the book city had slipped her mind only a split-second before she put her hoof down on an open book lying on the floor, slipped forward, and knocked all the book-buildings down like tenpins.
As Pinkie trotted through the town, she steeled herself. "Alright, Gummy," she said to the alligator bouncing up and down on her back. "You heard Twilight: we're going to march right up to Polly T. Burro and talk this over like adu--"
As she rounded a corner and came within view of Sugarcube Corners, she halted in her tracks and gasped at the sight in front of her eyes. Then she took off at a gallop.
"Just what do you think you're doing?!" she yelled as she got close.
Polly Burro stood next to the swamp Pinkie had painstakingly dug with her own two hooves. To her horror, it was now half-filled in, and the dirty shovel the donkey held made Pinkie think she wasn't about to stop anytime soon.
"I'm filling in this ghastly hole," Polly explained.
Pinkie leaned close to the donkey and stared into her eyes. "No, you most certainly are not!"
"Yes, I am," Polly said calmly.
"And just what gives you the right to do that in my backyard?!"
As Polly lifted a scroll into the air, Pinkie's eyes glanced sidelong at it.
"Why, the deed to the property does," the donkey said, planting the shovel in the ground. "For you see, this little mud puddle is on my land."
"Oh, really?!"
Pinkie swiped the scroll and unfurled it. Her eyes blazed over the dense block of text, occasionally flicking up over the top of it to glare at Polly, who smiled smugly and leaned on the planted shovel's handle. However, the deeper into the text Pinkie got, the more her head hurt and her eyes watered. After a minute, she gave it back.
"Give me the gist of it," she demanded.
"The gist is, I own the land you are now standing on. And since I own the land, I am filling in a hole on my property."
"I don't believe you!"
"It doesn't matter what you believe," Polly said sweetly, "only what the deed says."
"Oh, really?" Pinkie gritted her teeth and pointedly stepped over the swamp. "I'd like to see you try, because I'm not moving."
As the afternoon wore on, rumors of Pinkie Pie's last stand had spread among the Ponyvillians and drawn a sizable crowd.
"Oh, I don't know how much longer I can watch this," Fluttershy murmured, turning her head away.
Applejack whistled. "Pink's got grit, I'll give her that."
In the brouhaha's epicenter Pinkie stood adamant over her hoofmade swamp, although her resolve was starting to flag. Her legs ached from standing in one place for so long and her stomach rumbled from not eating.
The Mayor watched on in worried anticipation.
As the deed levitated in front of Twilight, the unicorn furrowed her brow in concentration and poured over the legalese until she sighed and magically rolled the scroll back up. After shrugging at the Mayor, she approached Pinkie Pie.
"I'm really sorry, Pinkie, but the deed says the land for Sugarcube Corners stops there," she said gently, pointing at a spot about three feet behind Pinkie. "This part of the ground really does belong to the Burros."
Pinkie looked on the verge of tears. "But-but--!"
The Mayor turned to the two donkeys standing in front of their back door and asked, "Mister and Missus Burro--"
"Ah, ah, ah," Polly said. "It's pronounced....Beu-rau."
"Yes, of course, Missus Beu-rau. Are you sure you won't reconsider selling this portion of the property?"
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid I must insist," Polly said.
"But why?!" Pinkie cried.
"I plan on building a fence, and there's no sense not building it right on the edge of my property."
Although she kept up her wide grin, comprised of purest disdain masked by simpering politeness, her husband Trifle Burro shuffled his hooves and looked distinctly embarrassed at his wife's behavior.
"Polly, dear," he asked, turning to her, "must you insist on this? They seem like perfectly nice--"
"But Trifle, you do know how much I love my garden parties, and tell me, how can I have a garden party if I don't have a garden? Now that's enough from you. Miss Mayor, you may proceed when ready."
The Mayor sighed and nodded to Bacton Stable, the town's keeper of the peace.
The buff stallion adjusted his peaked cap, put on a tough expression, and stepped forward. "Alright Pinkie Pie, let's go."
"I made that swamp with my own two hooves," she cried. "It's mine!"
Stable sighed, grabbed her by the tail, and dragged her away. She dug her hooves into the dirt, but the stallion's strength was too much for her. She left long tracks gouged into the dirt as he dragged her behind the property line.
"It's not fair!" Pinkie yelled as she stalked back and forth through the confectionary shop's back room. "It's just not fair!"
"We're awfully sorry, Pinkie," Cup Cake said. "Oh, so sorry."
Carrot Cake added, "We honestly thought the property line went that far back."
"But just look at Gummy!" Pinkie cried. "He's heartbroken!"
The Cakes turned and looked at the table, where Gummy stood and swished his tail back and forth.
"Oh, Gummy!" Pinkie said with a pained smile, as if finding the silver lining in the storm cloud. She wiped away the tears welling in her eyes. "Look at you acting so brave and stoic. But you don't have to hide your true feelings from us!"
As Rainbow Dash flapped her wings, she said, "You can just make another one, you know. I mean, it's just a hole in the ground--"
In a flash, Pinkie Pie was in Rainbow's face, making the pegasus yelp and draw back.
"How dare you say that," Pinkie growled. She turned away from Rainbow and looked to the distance wistfully. "It wasn't just a hole in the ground, it was....it was a little piece of Gummy's home! It was a special place I gave him so he could return to the wild he can never know." She sniffled.
"Real wildernesses....ses....doesn't have drinking straws," Rainbow said, rolling her eyes.
Pinkie glared daggers at her.
Applejack got between the two and eased them apart. "What Rainbow's trying to say is, I don't think Gummy's gonna mind much if you dug another one, so long as it's made with the same care as the first one."
"And we'd all be happy to help," Fluttershy said. "It's no problem at all. I could even get some of my little mole friends to help dig it."
Rarity added, "Yes, and I could dig....oh, no, I can't do that....well, I could get water....oh, no, what if it splashes?....Aha! I could be in charge of making it look fabulous! A little feng shui would be just what Gummy needs, wouldn't it?"
Pinkie sat on her haunches and crossed her forelegs. "It just won't be the same."
Twilight ambled over to Pinkie's side. "Pinkie, ask yourself this: is that swamp really so irreplaceable? Or is the real reason you're so upset because of your little feud with Polly T. Burro?"
As Pinkie sniffled, her eyes fell to the floor. She mumbled, "Well, maybe I am a little angry...."
Twilight a put a hoof on Pinkie's shoulder and smiled. "There, you see? The swamp's not important, you're just fixating on it so you can hate her."
"But still!" Pinkie shouting, shrugging the caring hoof off. "She had no right to do that!"
"I'm sorry, but she did," Twilight said.
Fluttershy walked over and added, "Technically it was on her property."
Pinkie jumped to her hooves, trotted to the back door, and stared out the open top half. Across the yard, Polly T. Burro was directing her husband where to plant stakes to mark the new fence. Polly glanced up, saw Pinkie and waved. Pinkie waved back, but everypony in the shop could hear her teeth grinding.
