Lunch came and it found Fluttershy in the woods behind the school. She had decided to eat outside since the weather was still nice. She sat on a log and pulled a sandwich out of her backpack. As she munched, she listened to the sounds of the forest, enjoying the rustling of the breeze through the leaves.
Fluttershy smiled to herself. It's so nice to get away from the noise and the crowds in the school. Just me and the birds and the trees. I wonder if there's any squirrels around?
She sat up and looked around. There were always one or two squirrels behind the school, having been trained to show up at lunch time by generations of students handing out food. Fluttershy glanced up in the limbs of the nearby trees and was surprised. There wasn't a squirrel to be found.
Her eyes popped open when she realized she couldn't hear the birds that usually chirped in the trees either. She scanned the branches of the trees and frowned when she couldn't find a single one.
“That's strange,” she said aloud. She stood up. “Is anyone there?”
When no furry friends presented themselves, Fluttershy frowned. She reached for a pocket of her skirt, but hesitated. She and her friends had agreed to not use their magic while Tempest Shadow was in town investigating everything that had happened to them since the previous year's Fall Formal. As such, none of them had been wearing their magical geodes for the last few days, but Fluttershy still carried hers in her pocket, just in case.
No, I don't need that right now. I just need to look around and see if I can find them.
Fluttershy dropped her hand to her side and began making her way down the path. As she walked, she noticed something wrong. The birds had stopped chirping. The woods were silent. Her expression became worried, her boots making the only sound as she shuffled along the path. A chill ran over her arms as she became aware she wasn't seeing any sign of life in the woods.
“H-hello?” she called nervously. “Is anyone there? Y-you don't need to be afraid. It's just me.”
A snap. Fluttershy's eyes opened wide and she bit her lip. There was another snap, then another. She froze and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that whatever it was would somehow ignore her.
Something brushed her shoulder and Fluttershy let out an ear piercing shriek that Pinkie Pie would be impressed by. It was countered by another shriek in a familiar register. Fluttershy's eyes popped open and she stared at Twilight Sparkle, who was clutching her chest with one hand and breathing heavily.
“F... F... Fffffff...” Twilight wheezed. Fluttershy turned red in embarrassment.
“Oh, Twilight, I'm so sorry! You startled me.”
“It's... okay,” Twilight gasped. She took a deep breath and stood upright. “What are you doing all the way out here? Lunch is almost over.”
“I was trying to find the squirrels. They're usually out here, but not today.”
“Really? That's odd. Are they hibernating early?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “Squirrels don't hibernate. They usually bunk down in their nests and only come out if they need to during the winter. But even so, it's still not cold enough for them to start doing that yet. And the birds have gone quiet.”
Twilight adjusted her glasses, listened for a moment, and frowned. “That is strange. How far were you going to go?”
“There's a clearing up ahead. I thought I'd check that out and see if any animals are there.”
Twilight pulled out her phone. “We still have ten minutes left. Let's go!”
Fluttershy smiled and the two friends kept walking down the path. After a few moments, they emerged into the clearing... or what was left of it.
“What the...?” Twilight said.
“What happened here?” Fluttershy said, stunned.
The clearing had been forcibly enlarged. Broken limbs and branches were scattered all over the clearing. Several trees were now listing at odd angles. One or two had been snapped in half and three were completely uprooted.
“What could have caused this?” Twilight asked.
“Nothing that normally lives in these woods,” Fluttershy answered. “Maybe it was a storm?”
Twilight shook her head. “The weather's been clear the last few days. Plus, a lightning strike wouldn't uproot the trees without setting this whole clearing on fire. An earthquake might, but we definitely would have known about that.”
She shrugged off her backpack and began rummaging inside it. She pulled out a... device was the only word Fluttershy could think of. It was a cobbled together mish-mash of all sorts of electronic devices soldered to what looked like an old microwave oven door. In the center was the anomaly detector she had brought to the Friendship Games.
“Is that your magic detector?” Fluttershy asked. Twilight had built it a couple of weeks ago when Sunset had been attacked.
“Yes,” Twilight said, powering it up. “If this wasn't natural, we need to know. With Agent Shadow around, we're probably going to need to deal with this as soon as we can.”
The lights around the detector spun, then began flashing near the top of the disc. Twilight let out a gulp.
“It's definitely magic,” she said. She looked up at Fluttershy. “And it's somewhere out there in the woods.”
Fluttershy put her hands up to her mouth. “You don't think it's going to come back, do you?”
Twilight shook her head. “I don't know. But I think we better get back to the school and tell the girls.”
“Right.”
The two turned to head back to the school, but there was a rustling in the underbrush. They turned just in time to see a raccoon come out into the clearing. Fluttershy quickly pulled her geode out, put it on and activated it. She knelt down and pulled some pet snacks out of her pocket. She offered them to the raccoon, who took the snacks and began munching.
“Um, I hate to interrupt your snack,” Fluttershy said, smiling gently. “But, do you happen to know what happened here?”
The raccoon looked up at her and began chittering. Fluttershy listened while Twilight looked on. After a couple of minutes, she thanked the raccoon and gave it the rest of the snacks. The racoon dashed off back into the woods.
“What did it say?” Twilight asked.
Fluttershy swallowed. “He doesn't know what it was, only that it was very big, very hungry, and very, very, angry. The other animals are terrified. None of them have seen or smelled anything like it before. They've all gone deeper into the woods.”
Fluttershy looked at Twilight, fear in her eyes. “Twilight, what are we going to do?”
Twilight looked around at the destruction and then back at the blinking light on the detector. She frowned.
“We're going to get the girls,” she said. “And then, we're going to find out exactly what we're dealing with here.”