"Three tickets please!"
Misty stared at the foal standing in front of her, a massive grin on her face as she asked for... tickets? Tickets to what?
Oh, no...
"Pipp said that this was spooktacular!" The filly held up her cell phone, as did her two friends behind her. All three were wearing identical nightgowns, and Misty recognized them from Pipp's Nightmare Night party that she had thrown earlier that night, the one that Misty had sabotaged so that Opaline could see the ponies' magic in action. They were the Triplets of Terror, Pipp had said, and they were undoubtedly terrifying Misty right now.
They can't mean - they really can't mean - I didn't actually mean - Misty stammered in her head, not wanting to say anything out loud. She was hidden under a sheet, disguised as a ponyghost, but she didn't want any of these ponies to recognize her. They might tell Sunny and her friends, and Zipp was already on to her, and she would surely know that something more was up now. She might figure out that Misty wanted Sparky, and then the whole plan to get dragon fire for Opaline would fail!
Misty had tried to get the young dragon for her mentor by luring Sunny and her friends into a makeshift haunted house, separating Sparky from the rest of the group, and trying to catch him, but he had evaded her once again. Meanwhile, all of Sunny's friends were running through the haunted house, going through all of the freaky shows that Misty had set up, and Pipp had apparently been streaming the entire time, then posted it on her Cliptrot for everypony to see.
This evidently led to this massive line of ponies stretching out from the doorway to Misty's fake haunted house, expecting a spooktacular experience, just like Pipp had advertised.
Misty frantically ran through options in her head.
One: she could say that the haunted house was closed for the night, tell them all to come back next year, and go back to trick-or-treating like good ponies on Nightmare Night.
Two: she could run away screaming and pretend as if this had never happened, and get out of there as fast as she possibly could. This option seemed a bit more appealing to her if it wasn't for the fact that everypony would be greatly suspicious of her now.
Three: she could run a haunted house and give these ponies the spooktacular Nightmare Night experience like they were expecting. And because this seemed like the option that would end up with the least amount of ponies being suspicious of her...
"Um, yes," Misty said, purposefully making her voice several notes deeper, though it didn't sound very good. But at least it disguised her, more or less. "Right... right this way."
She ducked out of the doorway, careful to make sure that her ghost disguise was still on, and hurried back to her control room as ponies began to pour into the haunted house, looking around eagerly for what they had seen on Pipp's live stream. Misty pulled the sheet off, leaving her mane even more frizzy than it was before, and frantically scanned the gears and levers and buttons in front of her, trying to decide what to do first.
"Okay... don't freak out, Misty... don't freak out... everything's okay..." she whispered to herself as sweat poured down her face. She caught a glimpse of her nervous reflection in one of the monitors and was slightly startled by how she looked. She was so frantic and panicky! This wasn't the kind of pony Opaline would want to go on quests to get dragon fire, right? She had to calm down, and show Opaline that she could handle this! She could get out of the messes that she got herself into instead of running away or counting on the alicorn to sort them out. Misty could do this!
With newfound determination, Misty raised her hoof, a defiant look on her face, and smashed her hoof into a button.
On the monitors, Misty watched as a group of pegasi shrieked with horror as they were suddenly surrounded by ponyghosts. They turned tail and ran out of there as fast as possible, but before they could get out, Misty pulled a lever, and the door slammed shut, trapping them inside.
She giggled. This was fun!
Turning her attention to another group of ponies walking through and looking bored, Misty flipped a switch, and the stair in front of the ponies suddenly collapsed into a bottomless dark pit that really wasn't bottomless at all, but that didn't matter, because these ponies totally bought it, and were freaking out, scrambling back up the stairs. Misty slid her hoof across the control board, and as soon as the ponies stepped off of a stair, it would collapse, chasing them up until they were trapped on the upper landing.
Misty slammed her hoof on another button, and doors slammed shut, ponies in picture frames moved, ponyghosts would fall from the sky and chase ponies through the house, and Misty saw several ponies recording what was going on, just like Pipp had done! There would be even more ponies coming now! Misty expected to feel scared and mortally terrified, as the prospect of dealing with even more ponies was very daunting, but she was surprised to feel confident. She pressed a button, and the front doors creaked open, allowing dozens more ponies to enter, scattering through the place, looking eager for a good fright on Nightmare Night...
The blue unicorn was a whirlwind, causing ponies to run for their lives, and she was having the time of her life doing it. For the first time, she was actually good at something! It was so much fun to scare ponies and watch them run away in terror, while she remained nice and safe inside her control room. She had completely forgotten about Sparky, completely forgotten about her mission, when her necklace suddenly tugged at her neck. The eye opened, and smoke suddenly filled the room as the form of Opaline's head suddenly towered over Misty.
"What," she hissed, "are you doing? I told you to get me dragon fire, and here you are-" The alicorn paused as she looked around, only now just realizing where they were. Her eyes landed on the monitors, showing ponies who were looking a bit confused at why all the scary things had stopped. "What is you doing, exactly?"
"Um..." Misty shifted her hooves nervously. "Well, you see, the truth is... Everypony found out about this haunted house, and they all wanted to come inside, and I couldn't just say no, because I think some ponies are already on to me, and I have to stay here in Maretime Bay if I'm ever going to get Sparky for you, so I just had to let them in..." She lifted one of her hooves and gently nudged a lever, which released a dozen bats into one of the rooms, and the three fillies inside ran away screeching with fear and excitement.
"Well," Opaline said, but Misty wasn't done. For some reason that she couldn't explain, she was filled with a strange confidence that she had never felt before, and she was going to do something with it.
"I'm just so tired of running away from my problems, Opaline! I want to be the one to get myself out of my own messes instead of having you do it, or running away and leaving them behind, hoping that they'll solve themselves because they won't, they'll just create more problems, and one day, everything will come back, and you'll be trapped in all of the lies that you've told and the stories that you've made up. I want to be able to solve those problems instead of running from them!" Misty took a deep breath, surprised with herself for how much she had said, and how much of it she had meant.
Opaline was surprised, too. She stared, open-mouthed at her ally, running through possible outcomes in her head. Finally, she said, "You've done well, Misty. But this was not the right way to solve this problem. Now all of these ponies will be looking for something that was invented at a moment's notice to be used as a trap. You need to get out of here before any of these ponies get suspicious of you."
Misty lowered her head and said, "Okay, Opaline. I'll come back home right away."
The alicorn sniffed. "Good. Oh, and Misty, don't fail me again. Next time I send you out, I want you to get me that dragon fire." She emphasized each word as if Misty was nothing more than a newborn foal who hadn't learned to speak Ponish yet. "I'll see you in a while."
The smoke in the room was sucked back into Misty's amulet, and the eye shut once again, leaving Misty all alone once more. She turned to stare at all the ponies who were running through her haunted house, delighting in what she had created, what Misty had created. Not what Opaline had done, but what she had done. This was all because of her, and she wasn't going to let it go to waste. She was going to show Opaline that she could do things, too, and that she could solve her own problems!
Misty stood in front of the control panel and hit another button.
"What a Nightmare Night," Pipp said as she and her friends pushed open the doors to the Crystal Brighthouse after a long round of trick-or-treating. "It was so much fun!"
"Yeah!" Izzy said enthusiastically. "That party you threw was amazing, Pipp! And look how much candy we got! And the haunted house was fun-"
"Don't remind me," Hitch squeaked, his voice several octaves too high. He hadn't let go of Sparky since they had left, and he had only recently stopped shaking. "It was a little too much fun."
"Isn't it strange that we've never seen it before?" Zipp asked, thinking hard. "Sunny, didn't you say that there weren't any haunted houses in Maretime Bay before tonight? Why would one suddenly show up now, all of a sudden, with no warning at all?"
"Probably just somepony from Zephyr Heights or Bridlewood who wanted to expand their business to Maretime Bay," the earth pony said cheerfully.
Izzy sighed and sat down on the couch. "I just wish Misty could have come with us. I saw her at Pipp's party, and she had such a cool costume, and she looked all alone, so I invited her to come dance with us, and to come trick-or-treating with us, but she disappeared after we left." She made a sad face at her pumpkin full of candy, then brightened again. "On the bright side, there's lots of candy!" As if she had to prove her point, the unicorn opened her mouth and dumped half her candy inside.
"Izzy, don't eat too much candy," Sunny reprimanded her. "Besides, we've still got that Nightmare Night party in Zephyr Heights, right?"
"I got Jazz to crittersit!" Pipp told them as she spread her wings, flying up towards their room. "And, ponies, there is no way we are going in these costumes, but not to worry, I have a full wardrobe prepared for all of you, so come on! We're going to be late!" She flew into the bedroom and landed by her bed, pulling off her golden headdress and reaching for her phone, which had been dinging several times in the last few minutes.
"Huh. Maretime Bay's First Haunted House, a Spooktacular Adventure?" she read, scanning through the blog curiously. "Guess I gave that place just the amount of popularity that it needed!" She glanced at the door and sighed, putting her phone away. "I'll look at it later. I mean, it'll always be there tomorrow, right? There's nothing too spooky about a haunted house. I'm sure it's fine."
The next morning, Maretime Bay woke up to find the wildly successful haunted house completely gone, as if it had never even existed.