//------------------------------// // A search for clues // Story: Foalish Misadventures // by GrassAndClouds2 //------------------------------// Of Dinky’s friends, Snails lived the closest to the schoolhouse, so Dinky went to his home first. “I got my magnifying glass!” yelled Snails, from his upstairs window. “I’ll be down in twenty minutes!” “That’s a long time,” complained Dinky. “Sorry. But I’ve gotta go slowly so I don’t hurt my bugs!” Confused, Dinky opened the front door, and then froze. The house was swarming with bugs. “I thought Miss Raindrops was only letting you have a few!” “Yeah, but last night she said I could have as many as I wanted, so I got a few more!” Dinky watched as a loaf of bread was picked up by a mass of ants and carried off. “A few?” “Well, maybe a few more than a few. I’ll be down soon!” * True to his word, Snails made it down in about twenty minutes. He was wearing a cloak, a funny hat, and holding a magnifying glass and bubble pipe in his mouth. “I’m ready!” “Okay, great!” “I know the first place to start looking for clues!” Snails began to trot off, causing Dinky to scramble to keep up. “Bonbon’s!” “… why there?” “Snips was sick this morning. I think he was poisoned by Bonbon’s candy!” said Snails, eyes widening. “Maybe she’s behind this! Maybe this is some plot to make all the adults so happy that they buy her candy, so she can poison them and take over the world!” “Bonbon wouldn’t do that!” objected Dinky. “She’s really nice!” “Well, if it’s not poison, why would Snips feel sick after eating her candy?” “How many did she eat?” “Only fifty pieces or so,” said Snails. Maybe that’s why, thought Dinky, but instead she said, “I think we should try to find others to help us. My Momma always says that friends can help us overcome any problem. We should try to find our friends!” Snails thought hard. “But Snips is my best friend, and he’s sick. Who else is there?” “If Snips is sick, then let’s find other foals in the class,” said Dinky, beginning to run. “Bonbon’s store is close, so maybe Twist is there. Come on!” * “Help me!” The two unicorn foals skidded to a halt as they approached Bonbon’s Bonbons. Some pony inside was crying out for help. “It sounds like Twist is in trouble!” cried Dinky, beginning to run at the shop. “What if Bonbon’s baking her into her poisoned candy?” worried Snails. “Her candy isn’t poisoned!” Dinky rolled her eyes. “She’s not crazy or anything! Bonbon’s really nice, and—“ “Help! Bonbon’s gone crazy!” Twist cried. “Hah!” Snails began to rush on ahead. The door to the store was unlocked, but the shelves and barrels of candy were all overturned and scattered every which way. In the middle of the store was Twist, who had been bound securely to a chair. In front of her was a table, with several pieces of candy. And, on the other side of the table, were Bonbon and her mother Honeydew. “Oh, look!” chirped Bonbon’s mother. She was wearing goggles and a white lab coat. “More friends!” “You’re just in time!” Bonbon grinned widely. “For the most awesome candy ever!” Twist groaned. “It’s awful!” “My dear little BB is finally letting me help her with her recipes!” said Bonbon’s mother. “For years I’ve been trying to get her to make healthier candy, and for years she ignored me, but—“ “But today I feel too good to fight about it,” said Bonbon, giggling like a foal. Honeydew smiled brightly. “We’ve just finished the… uh…” “Blastin’ Broccoli Bonanza!” cried out Bonbon. “Now, come on, Twist, eat up! You love candy!” “Not this candy!” Bonbon frowned. “Twist! It’s very rude to turn down a gift!” She began to pry Twist’s mouth open so her mother could put the next candy inside. Snails turned to Dinky. “We have to do something!” Dinky nodded. “Shut your eyes!” She focused, closed her own eyes, and made her horn glow. Even through her eyelids, she could see the bright white light. This was the spell she’d used to help get away from the ponies who had tried to abduct her a short while back, and she still had trouble with any amount of light between ‘none’ and ‘blinding.’ I really should work on that more, she thought. But when she opened her eyes again, Bonbon and her mother were both blinking and stumbling around, temporarily stunned by the blast of light. Dinky raced over to Twist and began untying her, tearing at the bonds with her teeth. “Snails, help!” Snails sauntered over. “Help what?” Dinky got the bonds off of Twist just as Bonbon got back up. “Hey, you’re not getting out of here without trying our delicious candy!” She laughed. “Pinkie always says she’s got the sweetest sweets in Ponyville, but I’ll prove her wrong! With Mom’s sciencey stuff on my side, I won’t lose to her!” She swung a hoof upwards, as if to punch at an invisible Pinkie, overbalanced, and fell on her flank and knocked over a big shelf of candy. “I’ll beat her FOREVER!” Dinky helped Twist out of the chair – but then was tackled by Bonbon’s mother. “Hey!” “Here you go!” Bonbon’s mother took a candy and stuffed it into Dinky’s mouth. Dinky gagged. It tasted like… Zucchini! Yuck! Yuck yuck yuck! “Isn’t it good?” sighed Bonbon’s mother. “And it’s healthy too! Bonbon’s going to make a whole new line of vegetable-flavored candies, to help you foals grow up big and strong!” Bonbon said something that sounded like ‘More cauliflower, less chocolate!’ but Dinky wasn’t sure. She was focusing too hard on spitting the horrible-tasting candy out of her mouth. “Snails! Help!” “Coming!” Snails bent his horn at Bonbon’s mother and focused. His horn began to glow, slightly. A small puff of smoke appeared in front of it. Dinky sighed. Twist grabbed Dinky and managed to yank her out from under Honeydew. “Hurry!” The three foals took off for the door, with Bonbon and Honeydew staggering after them, the latter going on a long rant about how wonderful the new mushroom-fenugreek toffees were. Fortunately, the foals were a lot faster than the adults. “Thanks for rescuing me!” managed Twist as they exited the shop. “They wanted to make me eat all kinds of vegetable candy!” Her eyes widened. “And Bonbon wants to change her whole candy line to be the veggie stuff! She’s going to discontinue all her other kinds!” Dinky and Snails could only stare in slack-jawed horror. “We have to fix the adults!” Dinky eventually managed, a new determination settling over her. “Before Ponyville doesn’t have any more good candy!” “But how?” asked Twist. “What can we do?” “We need to find clues,” said Snails. “Let’s go to Bonbon’s and look for them!” “…we were just there,” said Dinky. “But we left without getting any clues!” Twist looked at Dinky. “Hey, can’t Trixie help? Isn’t this what she’s good at?” “She’s like this too. I think all the adults are.” Dinky thought. “Wait a minute! They all went silly after the Fair, right? Trixie was doing something with magic right before then.” “I bet she messed up a spell,” said Twist. “No, she wouldn’t do that,” said Dinky. “Trixie’s really good at magic. She’d never screw up a spell.” She nodded sagely. “But she said she interrupted some other spell. Maybe that’s what did it.” “Well, let’s go there!” said Snails, who seemed very anxious to hunt for clues somewhere. “Okay! Let’s go to Whitetail Woods!” * Dinky led the other two foals back to the place where she’d found Trixie a few days ago. It looked much the same, with the remnants of the spell circle and the ingredients strewn everywhere. “Trixie was right there,” said Dinky. She pointed at the spot. “But I didn’t see anything else.” Snails had taken out his magnifying glass and began to meander through the clearing. In the meantime, Twist looked at Dinky. “We can fix them, right? I want my mom and my sister to be normal again. It was nice at first, cause they let me have a lot of candy, but now they’re being scary.” “I’m sure we will,” said Dinky. “My Momma says that when friends work together, they can do anything.” “My mom said that too. But when I got Apple Bloom and Archer and Bee Bop to help me build the world’s biggest candy apple, we still couldn’t do it. We got halfway there and then we fell into the caramel and Mom made us stop and take baths.” “I don’t think that’s what she meant…” “Hey, look at this!” The two foals turned to Snails, who was staring at the ground. “Hoofprints!” “Really?” Dinky ran over. “Where?” Snails pointed. “Right there! Come on!” He ran off, following them. Dinky blinked. The depressions Snails had pointed at looked vaguely like hoofprints, but not like pony hooves. She wouldn’t have noticed them. “Are you sure?” “Yeah!” Dinky and Twist began following Snails, who led them through the woods at a fairly rapid place. They soon came to a small clearing full of small, blue flowers. “Those are pretty!” said Twist. Snails blinked. “I think that’s poison joke!” He grinned. “I’m gonna pick some and trick Snips into eating it!” “Poison joke?” Dinky had heard of that plant, from Trixie. “I thought that only grew in the Everfree.” “It usually does, but sometimes a patch grows in clearings in the middle of other forests near the Everfree, like this one. It happens if bees try to pollinate the poison joke but get lost and wind up in forests away from their usual hives,” said Snails. “Usually the other patches only last for a few weeks, though, and…” He trailed off. The others were staring at him. Snails blushed. “I like to collect bugs,” he said. “But one time, I got sick from poison oak, poison ivy, poison leaf, and poison bark all at once. So Raindrops said I had to learn about plants if I wanted to play in the woods anymore.” “Oh.” Dinky smiled. “I didn’t know you were so good at plant stuff!” Twist said, “Wait, how can we follow the hoofprints if they go through the joke? I heard that poison joke once turned a pony inside out!” “COOL!” Snails began to walk towards the patch. Dinky quickly grabbed him with her telekinesis and dragged him back as best she could. “Not cool! I don’t want to be inside out!” Snails sighed and looked down. “Wait. The hoofprints go into the patch but come right back out.” Dinky thought. “Like the pony was running away without looking where she was going and entered it by mistake. But as soon as she realized it she got out and went around it.” “Yeah!” Snails picked up the trail again, now skirting the path. “This way!” They continued to move through the woods, passing through clearings and along rivers, until they came to a much smaller open area. Dinky was a bit nervous, having never gone so far from home unchaperoned before. “What happened?” “I don’t know. The prints get smaller.” Snails bent down, peering at the ground. “Like the pony got tiny or something.” “Maybe it was the poison joke?” asked Twist. “Maybe,” said Dinky. Snails found that the hoofprints went in a big, confused, tangle all over the clearing before going into a small set of roots at the edge. “I bet the pony got small and got scared and went to hide in the roots!” said Dinky. “Poison joke takes a week to wear off,” added Snails, “So he’s probably still joked!” Twist knelt down. “Hey, come out of there!” There was a small scrambling noise. And then the world’s tiniest zebra poked her head out of the roots to stare at the foals. * “She’s not a pet,” said Dinky. Snails nodded his head enthusiastically and mumbled something that sounded like, “She’s little.” “Foals are little. Are foals pets?” asked Dinky. Snails paused as he pondered the question. Twist said, “If it was really her spell that made all the adults act silly, she probably knows how to fix them.” “But we can’t hear her,” said Dinky. The zebra had shouted something at them… they thought… but she was so little that they couldn’t understand what she was saying. That was why they’d had Snails grab her and carry her back to town, so they could ‘interrogate’ (that was what Trixie would call it) her there after they figured out how to make her audible. “Can’t Vinyl help?” asked Twist. “She’s real good at making things loud!” That was certainly true. Trixie had made several comments about things like ‘noise complaints’ and ‘disturbing the peace’ relating to Vinyl. And, to be fair, Vinyl’s sound equipment had been so loud that it had shattered windows a couple (or a few) times. But Dinky liked the white-coated unicorn anyway. Pinkie provided the food for the best parties, but Vinyl provided the music. Besides, Vinyl had offered to let Dinky and other foals learn about her sound equipment— Dinky paused. “Vinyl’s probably as silly as the other adults, but I think I know a foal who can help us!” Snails began to open his mouth to say something, but Dinky stopped him before he let go of the zebra’s tiny tail. “Twist, can you go with Snails to put the zebra somewhere safe? I’ll go try to find Vinyl’s student.” “Okay. Good luck!” * Vinyl’s studio was a total mess. Wires and random machines were everywhere, and the lights were flickering in various places. A low, static-y buzz was coming from one of the speakers mounted over the door. Scattered take-out containers and wheat-pizza boxes were everywhere. Dinky sighed with relief. It looked like Vinyl was still normal, at least. Dinky made her way into the central room of the studio, where Vinyl could usually be found. Unfortunately, the DJ unicorn wasn’t there. But the foal that Dinky was looking for was. “Bee Bop!” called Dinky. “Bee Bop!” Bee Bop was sitting on a record turntable and spinning merrily. “Wheeee!” She was wearing headphones and sunglasses that were similar to Vinyl’s, and was bopping her head in time to some beat that Dinky couldn’t hear. “Bee Bop!” yelled Dinky, trying to get her attention. “We need your help!” Bee Bop didn’t seem to notice. Dinky climbed up onto one of Vinyl’s tables and then jumped onto the big table with Bee Bop and her record player. “Hey!” Bee Bop looked over at Dinky, frowned, and got off the table. She removed her headphones with a quick flip of her wings. “Dinky, I’m busy! Vinyl said I could have the studio today, and I don’t want to waste the time!” She smiled. “She even said I could use all her good equipment!” “We need your help!” responded Dinky. “We think we know who made all the adults in town start acting really silly, but she’s really little and we can’t hear her. We need you to make her voice really loud!” Bee Bop hesitated. Dinky smiled to herself – Bee Bop did like being loud, so this would likely be a very persuasive argument. But Bee Bop still shook her head. “But I’m right in the middle of a big mix session!” “You are?” “Yeah! It’s a new sound! I sit on the turntable while it plays, and then the sound gets all loopy and scratchy. Vinyl says it could be a big thing!” Dinky thought. She needed to convince Bee Bop to help her. What could she say that would accomplish that? “…you know, Bonbon said she’s discontinuing her sweet candy and selling vegetable candy instead,” decided Dinky. Bee Bop’s mouth dropped. “What?!” “Uh huh. Forever!” “So there won’t be any candy in Ponyville?” gasped Bee Bop. “Not unless we make the adults normal again!” Bee Bop took off her headphones. “Alright. I’ll get the equipment. Let’s save the candy!” “The adults,” Dinky corrected. “Them too.”