A request by Lurks-no-More:
Sunburst has to find Flurry Heart's missing stuffed snail before she wakes up from her nap and throws a tantrum / causes a calamity.
“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no,” Shining mumbled, turning over every bit of furniture in his search. Across the hall in the nursery, Flurry Heart was starting to whine. It was a slow, building sound, whose gradual rise in volume and pitched warned that a tantrum was imminent.
Also she’d opened a portal to the stygian pit and things with too many legs were trying to come through.
“Where is it!?” Shining shouted.
“Okay, don’t worry,” Sunburst said. “I have a plan. When you go looking for something missing, it’s always in the last place you look, right?”
“Yeah?”
“So, I need you to look in one more place, and then stop looking.” Sunburst explains. “That means the Whammy will be there.”
Shining’s muzzle scrunched up. “Does it work that way?”
“Which one of us is the wizard?”
“Alright, fine. Fine.” Shining took a breath then looked under a couch cushion. “Ah-hah!”
Nothing. He swore under his breath, and then lifted the whole chair off the ground to check under it. “It’s not working!”
“Of course it’s not working. I just told you to stop looking. But now the cushion wasn’t the last place you looked.” Sunburst grabbed Shining by the shoulder. “I need you to get it together. You need to swear to me that no matter what, the next place you look is the last. You’re done searching after you check inside the toy chest.”
“But I can’t do that,” Shining set his teeth. “What if I can’t stop her from crying and Cadence thinks I’m a bad father? Or if we’re all devoured by horrors from beyond the veil?”
Sunburst slapped him hard across the face. “You’re a soldier. Push through your fear and swear to me!”
“Right. Right.” Shining drew a breath. “I swear, after this, I am done looking.”
He opened the toychest, and there it was.
“Huh,” he said. Then a moment later he added, “You know, in retrospect, we probably should have checked the toychest first. Alright. Time to go save the world!”
He turned back to the hallway door to run to the nursery, but Cadence was already standing in it. Flurry was floating beside her, sleeping quietly, and the portal had vanished.
“She didn’t need her toy. She needed to be burped,” Cadence said. Then, with a narrow look at her husband, she added, “And you’re both idiots.”