"Twenty-nine. Twenty-Eight. Twenty-Seven. Twenty-Six. Twenty-Five. Done." Fluttershy said as she opened her eyes to see she was all alone outside the castle. She had to have counted backwards from 100 to 25 to give the others time to sneak away and find places to hide all over town and they were pretty fast too. She had a note under her hoof to read about the rules.
1. No next level magic spells or flying out of reach.
2. No flying or teleporting away from the seeker. You can only run.
3. No cooperation among those hiding. Only the seeker and the first person they find can work together.
4. The mare(s) who isn't found by 3:00 is the winner, unless the seeker has found everyone.
"Guess I better get started. But I don't even know where to start." Fluttershy said and looked around left and right to try and find anypony nearby, but she had no luck in any trees, lakes, or on the castle. She looked at a clock in the distance. "12:00. I have time, I'm sure I'll find them, but where to start?"
A trio of purple feathers blew past her face and she found a trail of them on the ground as she saw them leading away from the castle. She heard footsteps and galloped after the source. If she could find Twilight first and recruit her, this would be a breeze and she wouldn't need to worry at all about winning.
The Feathers stopped and she heard panting around the corner and saw a familiar shadow on the wall of the alley. She'd done it. Dumb luck or lousy hiding skills, Fluttershy found her first mare and what was likely the best answer to finding the others in under 15 minutes of the game, she had this in the bag.
"I'm so thankful you're making this easy for me, Twilight. I was worried I wasn't going to find anypony and that everyone would just be stuck in place waiting for me for hours." Fluttershy smiled and hovered in glee.
"Bawk bawk bawk." The voice from around the corner said.
"Why yes we can stop for corn on the way to find the othe-" Fluttershy cut herself off as she realized that, while Twilight was sometimes confusing with words, she definitely wasn't a chicken, in more ways than one.
Fluttershy found a pony shaped rocking chair around the corner with a bucket covering the head of some purple round animal. She hovered closer and removed the bucket from the head to reveal a chicken with purple paint all over it's lower body and was sitting on this abandoned chair.
A few minutes later, Fluttershy was at Lyra's door with the chicken on her back, explaining to Lyra where she found it. "So that's where I found Roulette. She must've splashed right into the paint at the arts and crafts store."
"Thank goodness. My cousin was gonna kill me if I let a snake or chicken hawk make a meal out of her pet chicken." Lyra said as she took Roulette back in her forelegs and got a bit of paint on her stomach. "Sorry for the trouble."
"It was no problem. Enjoy your bath, Roulette." Fluttershy said as she waved goodbye to her new fowl friend. Roulette just clucked again asking for corn.
"Well that was fun. I can't wait to tell the girls back home. I bet Applejack will really get a kick out of-" She said and stopped in her tracks and put a hoof to her head to regain her focus. "Focus, Fluttershy! You've got a cake to win and friends to find."
Fluttershy went by the other library in town to try and see if Twilight would sneak around there and kept her eyes peeled for others. She made her way there as fast as she could and entered to find nothing. She searched for plenty minutes to no result and she decided to try elsewhere.
"What was I thinking? She's too smart to hide in a library of all places. This is Twilight Sparkle." Fluttershy said to herself.
"All I'm saying is that it makes no sense to close a coffee shop all morning and open it in the afternoon, when it's almost 100 degrees out here." An angry mare said to a coffee shop worker in the door as a blonde mare in the background fainted.
"Well none of the staff enjoys getting up so early and it's hard finding good work these days!" The gruff employee said in quick response to her as a pony in the background gave the blonde mare a snowcone.
"You can't tell me that you get many customers out here in this heat without practically bribing them to purchase your coffee. It's like running an ice cream parlor in the middle of a blizzard!" The mare snapped back a him
"No It's not! Coffee gives people energy! It completely out matches the heat!" He barked back at her in hopes of ending the argument.
"And soup cures the common cold sometimes, but you don't see any parents making their sick kids drink the boiling stuff in the sunlight!" She was getting testy right with the employer and tempers were flying.
Fluttershy knew that a friendship problem could help ease her mind on all of this searching so she flew over to both ponies and smiled. "Um...excuse me what's the matter?"
"I came out here to get an iced lemonade, not a boiling cup of dark doom, but these guys are charging 5 bits for a small bottle! That's practically robbery!" The mare was sweating and getting angrier by the minute.
"This wise cracking woman thinks she knows more about the coffee business than we do, when it comes to prices!" The gruff colt said once more.
"What would Twilight do?" Fluttershy asked herself and then had the idea to try and find an answer logically. "Um...I can see that your...brawn-again has...dicconcerted your previously unvariable relationship-" Fluttershy was interrupted from her slaughter of words as a voice rang out from the sky.
"Stop!" A voice rang out from above everyponies' heads and a purple blur, dashing out of the fake giant coffee cup on the top of the building, landed on the ground and revealed itself to be Twilight. "Brannigan. Disconcerted. Invariable. I don't use big words as much for that exact reason. Hearing mispronunciation can send a chill down my spine."
She paused when she realized she just gave herself away to Fluttershy. Before she could even turn around, Fluttershy tagged her and recruited her onto her side. "Well I can kiss that cake goodbye." She laughed to herself and rolled her eyes with a smile.
A quick few minutes of helping later, Fluttershy and Twilight were free to talk. "So I'm the first one you found. Dang. I thought I picked a better hiding spot, but my thirst for perfect grammar can't hold still." Twilight said.
"Well now that I've found you, you can help me find the others before 3:00." Fluttershy said to her. Both decided to check around Sweet Apple Acres for anypony who was in sight. They searched through all the hay piles and bedrooms on the farm and even the entire orchard which took them at least around 20 minutes to do, because the crops were really up this year and to them the orchard was easy to get lost in. They came out and sat at the picnic table to catch their breath and use their heads.
"I think we've searched the whole farm and haven't found a single hair of anypony. It looks like Sweet Apple Acres is empty." Twilight said as she panted, because the 100 degree heat was starting to effect her. She also heard a ton of oinking coming from the pigpen and wondered what they were up to.
"Oh the poor dears must be hungry. Pigs do just love to eat." Fluttershy said as she picked up a bag of pig feed and brought it over to the pen to put in the trough and fill it with yummy organic foods. "One piggy...two little piggies...three piggies...four and wait."
Twilight teleported away and came back with two lemonades and she drank the refreshing liquid which was as fresh as air to her and even tastier, but then she saw that inside the barn, she saw Applejack's hat sitting on a stack of hay. "That hit the spot...Uh...Fluttershy."
"One minute, Twilight. I only remember Applejack having 5 piggies on her farm, but she gave one to her cousins across the county last week so who are you little pigglet?" Fluttershy said as she hovered over a sleeping pig covered in mud that looked a bit rounder and wider than any other. She poked it as it slept and found a pair of wide eyes. "Eeeeek!"
The pig got up and shook the mud off of itself to show that it was really Applejack underneath. "Fwew! I thought I was gonna fall asleep in that mudpit with you girls lurking around before you found me." She smiled and climbed out of the pen.
"Oh, I thought you were a monster from the Everfree Forest." Fluttershy calmed her nerves as Twilight came back around with Aj's hat in her mouth.
"So why the mud pit?" Twilight laughed into her hoof waiting to hear Applejack explain her "unique" choice of hiding.
"Well, ya see...I was hiding in the barn in one of the crates and the family was out, but they said they completed all the chores..."Applejack put her hat back on her head, where it belonged. "But when I saw the pigs out here and hungry because the little porkers love to eat, I came by with a quick bag to feed them with and then I heard you both coming so I just plum dived in and hid."
Applejack could hear Twilight laughing about her story and then began chuckling herself. Twilight gave her a towel and she began wiping herself clean. "So Fluttershy, how many ponies have you found by now?"
"Um...just you two." She answered in her normal hushed tone as Applejack stopped cleaning.
"You haven't found Pinkie yet? That wily little filly, I can't let her steal all the cake again this year!" Applejack dropped what she was doing and ran out on the path to town like she was in a marathon. Fluttershy and Twilight fanned away the sand and dirt in the air among both of them coughing.
"Why is she running so fast?" Fluttershy asked Twilight as she was filled with confusion at her friend running off like a racecar with hooves.
"Did you forget? This year the cakes had a spare slice of Sweetberry Cake and gave it up to us, again, and we all put it up to this game to decide who gets it, again, and Pinkie has won it almost every time that cake was on the line and most of us haven't even gotten to taste anything more than the crumbs!" Twilight explained to Fluttershy. "Applejack just seems to have forgotten she can't help you."
"Oh right. That cake. I forgot what it was called. I only get to see it for a mere moment before it's gone." Fluttershy tried to remember what it looked like.
"Well it's already 1:00, so instead of wasting time with our minds wondering what it tastes like, why don't we go and keep looking for the others around town?" Twilight said as she checked a sundial in the area.
With nothing else to say, they got moving to try and search for anyone else and looked at Sugar Cube Corner, the spa center, and the hospital just to cross a few more places off the map and they stopped by to try and get a snack for their stomachs at a concession stand where a bunch of fillies were racing on scooters.
"Scootaloo sure is fast. She's got this race in the bag with that big a lead." Twilight spied on an orange blur in a blue helmet as she ate a bit of a sandwich.
"It makes all of those days nearly getting run over by her so much more pleasant to laugh at." Fluttershy said as she remembered all the times Scootaloo would land in her backyard. "I'm sure Rainbow would be happy to see this."
"Go, Squirt, Go!!" Rainbow Dash's voice yelled out somewhere nearby and it breached Fluttershy and Twilight's ears.
"Or she is happy to see this." Twilight said as she and Fluttershy glanced over the crowd and line to see a rainbow tail behind and below the crowd seats as it was floating.
Fluttershy giggled to herself. "Here. Watch me sneak in and catch her by surprise." Fluttershy said and thought about all those years of Rainbow getting he jump on her. She ducked down and hid low to approach the sands and Rainbow had her focus on the race. This was her chance. She was going to jump and get Rainbow good. She leapted in the air to tag her, but fell flat on the ground as Rainbow darted away a few meters.
"Hahahaha! Did you really think, I'm too slow to notice a softy like you creeping up on me, Fluttershy?" Rainbow laughed as she was hovering over Fluttershy, who was getting back on her feet.
"You know the rules, Dash. You can't fly away. You've got to be on foot or you're out." Twilight said as she knew Rainbow Dash was a tricky one when it came to this game. Rainbow Dash then landed slowly and closed her wings with a loud flap.
"C'mon, Twilight. I can outrun anypony in my sleep. Fluttershy won't be too tough to out run. Wings or Not." Rainbow was glowing with her ego once again. "Just try me-ee!"
While Dashie was talking, Fluttershy took her chance and tackled her to the ground and smiled with a face that left Rainbow Dash in shock. She couldn't believe that she got taken out just that fast by Fluttershy and she was mentally kicking her own flank for letting her guard down so easily.
"No way! I wasn't ready! Gimme a rematch!" Rainbow Dash said and denied her shocking loss at the hands of her yellow friend and looked to Twilight for any hint of back up.
"Sorry, Rainbow Dash. You were just-" Twilight started the sentence off.
"Too slow." Fluttershy and Twilight both finished the sentence and smiled.
"Well Played, Fluttershy. I gotta give you credit for that one, you really got me there." Rainbow Dash got up to shake hoofs. "So, have you found Pinkie, yet?"
"No I haven-" Fluttershy was cut off by an intense amount of wind because Rainbow Dash took off to go searching for Pinkie for the same reason as Applejack.
"Am I the only one who reads the rules?" Twilight asked herself as the rainbow blur went far and fast and had no intention on holding back in her mad search.
"1:30. We've got an hour and 30 minutes before time is up, I think we should have no trouble finding the rest of them." Twilight said.
"Rarity and Pinkie could be anywhere in town. This could take a while to track them down." Fluttershy said as she looked around in hopes of any clues.
"Don't be so modest. You've practically found everyone without my help. You could probably find them without me." Twilight smiled, calmed Fluttershy's nerves and they both made the effort to search around town and only found footprints of a scuba diver in the direction of the Everfree Forest, and they were walking away from Rarity's Boutique. They had a shared look of concern on their faces, but hurried along to try and find anypony.
The trail ended at the edge of an inky black pond in the Everfree forest and Twilight decided to dig through it with a stick to see if anypony was swimming in it. This was ranked a monster free zone by all means, but she didn't want to test that theory too much. She was going to try and detect anypony who would be in there. Fluttershy turned her back and found a white marshmallow like figure in the distance.
"Rarity!" Fluttershy said in a gleeful whisper just loud enough for Twilight to hear and she zoomed closer to the white figure as Twilight only heard her whisper and turned around as the black pond started bubbling.
Rarity was brushing her hair with her magic and had a mirror up to her face and saw a pony walking behind her and before she could react, Fluttershy put her hoof on her shoulder.
"Got you." Fluttershy smiled and hugged Rarity snugly.
"Oh, dear. Looks like you found me." Rarity smiled as Fluttershy kept hugging her and Twilight walked up behind Fluttershy with some black ink on her hooves.
"I don't know what that was, but let's not stick around to find out." Twilight said and they all teleported back to teh entrance of the Everfree Forest in safety.
"What happened out there, Rarity?" Twilight asked her. "We know you're supposed to hide, but -"
"Trust me, Darling. This is the last place I wanted to go." Rarity began to explain her reasoning. "I meant to go by the lake and swim there in water, but it's nearly impossible to see in this Scuba Gear and I got lost. I found the spring well in wherever I was and I just decided to hide there when I saw the Poison Joke Patch we've been on.Zecora even brought me a few scrubbing salts, because her house wasn't far off."
"Poison Joke?! Not again!" Twilight groaned at the idea of being magicless again.
"Oh, by the way. We're only missing Pinkie Pie." Fluttershy said and covered her eyes for any wind. She expected Rarity to run off, but she was still there and just looking at her like a confused statue.
"What's the matter, darling?" Rarity asked only looking confused at Fluttershy shivering on the ground.
"Oh, I thought you were going to run off for cake like the others." Fluttershy said and blushed a bit in embarassment.
"Oh, no thank you, darling. Cake goes right to my thighs." Rarity smiled at her like this was just average conversation. "I'm off to go home and catch a nap. Let me know when the game is over, or I'll meet you at the castle in just an hour. See you later." Rarity walked away to get home and relax. Wasting no more time, Fluttershy and Twilight were off to find Pinkie, because if she was that close to winning, she might as well get as far as she could.
At 2:50, both of them were out of breath and sweating and arrived back at the castle with no results whatsoever. They found Applejack and Rainbow Dash there with the same exact result and status too. Rarity, on the other hand, was fresh and shiny and relaxed and came with a smile to meet her friends. Twilight was going to explain to Aj and Rd that there was no point in them looking because of the rules, but she either didn't have the energy or she felt they were better off not being corrected.
"Well, we searched everyplace in town and we couldn't find her. Every rock and tree and place she'd probably be, but she has completely left this dimension it looks like." Twilight panted, but saw Fluttershy looking up at the castle and seeing flashes in a window up on one of the higher floors.
"You've got to be kidding me." Fluttershy flew into the castle slow and steady and the others just looked confused and decided to follow her up all of the stairs in the castle, which only made them sweat harder.
"You couldn't make a crystal elevator with this castle?" Rainbow dash whined in exhaust.
"I didn't exactly have the blue prints on a desk, Rainbow Dash. This castle came out of a box in a tree before I even know it could do that." Twilight rebutted and filled her complaint.
Fluttershy opened the door in the castle hallway and found a pink and fluffy figure eating popcorn and watching tv with a small green and purple figure, before she could react, Pinkie Pie jumped into the air and caught Fluttershy in a hug.
"You found me!" Pinkie Pie smiled and hugged Fluttershy. "I was starting to wonder if you guys even knew I was up here."
"You've been here for the past few hours?" Applejack asked her and took off her hat to rub her head in confusion and a bit of self shame.
"Yup." Pinkie smiled and told her.
"You've just been watching TV for hours?" Twilight asked her another question.
"Yup." Pinkie Pie grabbed a blue piece of cake and devoured it in just a few bites. This made the color drain from Rainbow Dash in surprise.
"You're already eating the cake? You haven't even won yet." Rainbow Dash's jaw dropped.
"I'm not eating the cake, I'm eating a cake. I have plenty of slices of SweetBerry Cake." She said and smiled about it and swallowed the cake. "I know a guy for rare ingredients. And technically Fluttershy already won." Pinkie then highlighted that she was hugging Fluttershy and vice versa, making Fluttershy the confused winner.
"I can always make more cake you know." Pinkie stuck her tongue out. With that, the other ponies, minues Rarity and Spike, fainted with X's on their eyes to show they were out cold. Pinkie Pie giggled to herself. "Strike."
Later that night, all of the friends, including Spike, were eating a cake of Sweetberry Cake together and having a fun time. They explained to each other their stories about hiding and getting caught and such. When asked, Pinkie explained the simple reason why she never made the cakes for all on her own before...
"You didn't ask." Pinkie shrugged and smiled and heard Rainbow Dash hit the floor once again along with the castle doors opening with a bunch of little hooves scampering closer.
"Hey, Rainbow Dash, I came in 1st place!" Scootaloo smiled and had a golden trophy on her back as Rainbow smiled back.
"Awesome job, Squirt. Why not stick around to have a slice of cake? You've earned it." Rainbow offered up a piece to Scootaloo, who happily agreed and accepted her offer to have some dessert.
Fluttershy then sighed in relief because her task was done and she didn't have to worry about looking for anyone else and it gave her a nice boost of self esteem, because in the end, she had nothing to worry about because she wasn't so bad at hide and seek after all.