Applejack silently cursed as she tore down the street leading out of Ponyville together with Fleur.
They didn’t have any hopes of catching up to the fleeing crusaders. The fillies had been spooked and it had given Scootaloo a boost in her already impressive speed on her scooter. The fact that she had been pulling a cart with Sweetie Belle and Applebloom inside didn’t seem to pose any kind of problem for the pegasus.
The trio couldn’t been seen anymore, but they most certainly could be heard. No doubt a lot of ponies had heard them and would possibly come investigate. Applejack thought about hiding Fleur first someplace on the farm, but decided to risk taking her along to the crusaders clubhouse to show the fillies that there was nothing to be afraid of.
The orange farmpony cast a look over to the model running at her side. The sight of only Fleur’s head bobbing along next to her was something that would no doubt come and haunt her in her dreams one day. Fleur seemed to be able to keep Applejack’s pace without any trouble so the farmpony sped up a bit more. No doubt the crusaders would be at their clubhouse by now.
____________________________________________________________________________
Scootaloo put on the brakes suddenly as they had finally reached their destination.
Applebloom and Sweetie Belle held on tightly and barely managed to not be propelled from the cart. Without pausing even for an instant the fillies jumped from the cart and ran after Scootaloo who already was halfway up the ramp to the clubhouse.
The little pegasus dashed inside and waited just long enough for the other two fillies to enter before slamming the door shut and barely avoiding hitting the flank of Sweetie Belle with the door.
“What do we do now?” Applebloom asked and quickly shut the windows. “Why didn’t we go to the farm?”
“Applejack is the headless horse!” Scootaloo looked around for something to keep the front door locked. “She might have already been there!”
“Did you see what she did to Fleur?” Sweetie Belle curled up into a ball and wished her parents or Rarity were here to help them fend off the evil lurking outside somewhere. “Perhaps she did the same to the others!”
“Then we need ta get to the farmhouse!” Applebloom tried to stop Scootaloo from barricading the door with a chair. “Maybe they need our help!”
“Or maybe they are in on it!” Scootaloo barely managed to keep the stronger earthpony away from the door. “Perhaps Big Mac or Granny Smith is the Pony of Shadows!”
“Ah might have noticed that, don’t ya think?” Applebloom answered back and advanced towards the door.
“Well you didn’t notice Applejack being the headless horse did you?” Scootaloo’s retort stopped her friend in her tracks.
Applebloom had to admit that she had not seen her sister suddenly change into a decapitating monster of nightmares. She wisely decided to join Sweetie Belle in cowering on the floor instead of going back outside. Scootaloo just stared at the pair for a moment.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for help?” Applebloom answered the pegasus’ question.
“Rarity will come and help us. I am sure of that.” Sweetie Belle nodded quickly to reaffirm her hopes of her big sister coming to their rescue.
“What if she can’t?” Scootaloo paced around in front of the pair. “Perhaps that’s where AJ got to Fleur!”
“Oh no!” Sweetie Belle started whimpering quietly.
“We need to defend ourselves!” Scootaloo suggested and found an ally for her idea in Applebloom.
“You are right.” The farmfilly looked about the rather chaotic clubhouse. “But with what?”
That was a good question and had already been asked in Scootaloo’s mind. She looked around and decided that assaulting the monster with an assortment of various Rainbow Dash-themed fan-made object would not work. Then she found a possible solution piled in the corner of the room.
“The grape juice!”
“Really?” Applebloom sat up and gave her friend a skeptical look. “Grape juice? What’s that supposed to do?”
“Perhaps it doesn’t like grape juice.” Scootaloo had already formed a plan and now only had to convince her friend to go along with it. “Or maybe we can blind it by filling up some balloons with it and throwing them at it.”
“But it doesn’t have any eyes. How are we supposed ta blind it?”
“I..uh…hmmm.” Scootaloo had to admit that Applebloom’s objection was a good one.
“Maybe it really likes grape juice and will rather eat it than us?” Sweetie Belle stopped her whimpering sounds to contribute to their defense plans.
“Yeah! That!” Scootaloo nodded feverishly.
“Well…we got plenty of balloons and juice…that’s fer sure.” Applebloom eyed the large piles of glasses filled to the brim with grape juice.
It had been another unsuccessful attempt at earning a cutie mark. That time they had tried their hooves at juice making. Apart from large quantities of said juice that unfortunately was unfit for consumption and various stains in their coats of varying degrees of stubbornness to be removed the efforts had been futile. Together with a lot of balloons they had been given by Pinkie Pie they now had an option to make some kind of defensive weapon.
Without much hesitation they began filling up the balloons with juice.
_________________________________________________________________________
“Found anything yet?”
Spike carefully set down another pile of books beside Twilight. The Princess had been going through every available book covering law, privacy and freedom of press to find some method of keeping them away from Fleur. Apart from a headache forming in her left temple she had come up with nothing useful.
“No.” Twilight closed the book she had been reading and rubbed her temple with her hoof. “There are plenty of cases about court decisions about privacy, but none on them in combination with the press and public places.”
Twilight had to slowly come to the realization that her library was lacking in the field of law and order. She would have to order more books on the subject once this entire business was over.
“Pass me the next one and please see if we have anything on those topics in the latest shipment from Princess Celestia.”
Spike wordlessly passed her another book and then promptly made his way towards one of the many storage rooms in the castle.
Ever since the old Ponyville Library had been destroyed they had received shipments from Princess Celestia in order to replace any of the lost books. As they had more space here than in the previous Library the shipments kept coming much to the annoyance of Spike who had to always catalogue the new arrivals and file them away according to a system that was currently Twilight’s system of choice and was subject to change any moment. Re-shelving day was slowly becoming his least favorite day of the entire year.
A rather loud knock on the front door interrupted Twilight’s reading.
“Spike?” Twilight called to her assistant, but the dragon could not hear her way back in one of the storage room and half inside a large wooden box.
With a grunt Twilight got up and trotted towards the front door. The banging intensified her beginning headache and she quickly opened the door to give whoever it was a piece of her mind. Anything actually going on in her mind came to a sudden stop as she studied the strange creature in her doorway.
“Hiya Twilight!”
“Sugar is eeeevvviiiiillll!”
“Aaahaha…heeelp mee…ha ha ha.”
“Where is Spike?”
“I want to go home!”
Twilight stretched her neck to locate the fifth voice coming from the bundle of ponies in front of her. She saw a little filly stuck to Pinkie Pie’s belly with her back. By the looks of it the filly was known as Sunny Daze.
“What happened to you?” Twilight asked and regretted doing so as all of them spoke at once. The Princess held up a hoof to stem the tide of answers. “Just one of you please.”
“Spike!” Rainbow Dash snarled her answer.
“Spike?” Twilight looked from on pony to the other hoping to find some kind of sensible answer.
“Where is he?” Rainbow Dash tried looking past Twilight, which wasn’t easy as she only couldn’t move anything but her eyes.
As if on cue the dragon appeared from a room to the left carrying a pile of books. He promptly dropped them as he saw the strange apparition standing in the doorway.
“There!” Rainbow Dash spied him from the corner of her eye. “Go get him Colgate!”
“I’ll do no such thing!” Colgate replied sharply and turned to Twilight. “Could you please just get us out of this mess now?”
“I..uhm…what?” Twilight was still confused at what was going on.
“Spike accidentally switched the flour with powdered sugar.” Pinkie explained with a smile. “Now we are in a sticky situation.”
“No puns!” Rainbow Dash wasn’t in the mood for such things.
“HA! So it worked!” Spike gleefully rubbed his hand together. “Serves you right!”
“What? Spike?” Twilight turned around to her assistant in disbelief. “You did this on purpose?”
“Why you little…” Rainbow Dash desperately tried thrashing about to free herself, but only succeeded in angrily flicking her ears. In the process she glued one of them to Pinkie’s temple.
“Why would you do that?” Twilight couldn’t believe that Spike had pulled that prank.
“Let’s just call it payback for those specially flavored rubies you had given to me last week.” Spike answered with a grin.
“You gave him those rubies?” Twilight turned her attention back to Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. Both of them looking surprised and slightly sheepish at the same time. “Do you know what they did to him?”
“It was just a little prank.” Rainbow Dash defended herself. She had managed to flavor a few rubies thanks to Pinkie Pie’s help. “He’s a dragon. He can handle a few extra spicy rubies.”
“They gave him gas!” Twilight now was giving the pair a very angry look.
“So what?” Rainbow would have loved to shrug. “Just open the window.”
“You don’t understand.” Twilight grabbed the bunched up ponies in her magic and levitated them inside and finally closed the front door. “When a dragon has gas it is expelled by burping.”
The bunched up ponies just gave Twilight a blank stare.
“You remember what happens when Spike burps?”
“He makes a green flame?” Pinkie Pie guessed joyfully. She loved guessing games despite their current state.
“And what does that flame do?” Twilight asked and set the ponies back down.
“Smell bad?” Pinkie guessed again.
“Apart from that it also sends things to Princess Celestia.” Twilight could see that neither Rainbow or Pinkie were following her. “Spike had sent half of our books, a lot of furniture and various breakfast related stuff to her by the time we had his burping under control again. Princess Celestia was less than amused!”
The last part was a guess on Twilight’s part. The Princess in Canterlot had not replied to the sudden assault of various books, chairs, tables, plates and cutlery along with a stack of food with anything else apart from a note which read: “The pancakes were tasty.”
“Yes, that’s all fascinating but could we please get unstuck now?” Colgate couldn’t care less about pranks being pulled by any of them right then and there.
“Spike…get the hose.” Twilight kept glaring at Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. “Do you have anything to say? If not then the water will be cold.”
“We’re sorry.” Rainbow and Pinkie said in unison.
“So we are even?” Spike asked returning with a hose in his hand.
“Yeah, we are even.” Rainbow mentally added a “for now” to her answer.
“Just out of curiosity….where did the foal come from?” Twilight asked and began hooking up the hose to the faucet in the kitchen with her magic.
“I just wanted to get past them!” Sunny Daze answered as only she actually knew the answer. “I thought it would be faster to just tunnel under Pinkie, but Derpy’s sudden laughter made me jump when I was right under her and then I was stuck.”
“It’s because of the sugar!” Colgate felt the need to chime in. “Take this as a lesson to stay as far away from sugar as possible, Sunny!”
Spike rushed off to fetch a couple of towels while Twilight carefully used her magic to free Sunny Daze first.