//------------------------------// // Scramble for Shoe // Story: The Box in the Everfree // by Jh5kPony //------------------------------// "OF ALL THE BAD THINGS THAT COULD HAPPEN!!!" Rarity yelled in devastation. "THIS IS THE. WORST. POSSIBLE. THING!!!" Rarity broke down into mental breakdown. She was a victim. Of theft. Seemingly on cue, Twilight Sparkle walked in. Twilight saw the devastated pony rolling on the floor, mourning for the loss of something. Meanwhile, her shop looked like a mess. "Rarity! What happened?!" Twilight trotted over to Rarity, attempting to comfort her. "What happened here?!" "MY JEWEL-ENCRUSTED HUMANSHOE! IT'S GONE!!!" yelled Rarity, apparently unaware of the fact that her shop was a total mess...again. Twilight Sparkle let out a disappointed face. "Oh." Twilight said, somewhat disappointed at Rarity's scream of agony. She then took a brief look around the boutique. It was a mess. It didn't look like the mess Twilight would make over an extended period of time from studying. Rather, it looked like the type of mess Rainbow Dash could make in 10 seconds flat. Things appeared to be toppled around. Scattered everywhere, there were crudely drawn drawings with spelled poorly captions with badd grammr.. "I WAS GOING TO HAVE IT SENT TO THE HUMAN PRINCESSES." said Rarity. "WHY MUST THEY BE STOLEN TODAY?!" LOCAL MAILMARE SHOED TO DEATH Or at least suffering from serious head trauma Pinkie Pie went back to the Everfree Forest to gather more Berry-berries. They had a peculiar taste, yet added onto pastries and it gives out a flavour which humans appear to enjoy. Pinkie Pie herself didn't quite find them very tasty, and neither did most ponies. She scavenged through the Everfree plants. She came across something she thought she'd never have to come across again. That same cardboard box. The memories came back. Pinkie Pie found it hard to believe that the two corpses were actually two halves of a single corpse. Of a foal...baby...thing. Fluttershy's offspring. What was weird, however, was that the box was upside down. It had a book. Human Sciences and Magics by Lyra Heartstrings. Only problem, it had scrawls written all over the pages of the book. The scrawls look too legible to have been done by foals however. She then noticed a tag on the book. "IF FOUND, RETURN TO LIBRARY" She stowed the book away in her saddlebag, mixed with the berry-berries. She continued to scavenge for more berry-berries. On her search, however, was a left shoe. Not the kind of shoes worn by ponies, but rather by something that looks like it could fit on a human's feet. It bore a familiar theme. It looks just like something Rarity would make. Pinkie Pie, because she "knows everypony in Ponyville", knew this had to belong to, at the very least, Rarity's customers. She stowed the shoe into her now heavy saddlebag. She still managed to leap her way out of the forest. Meanwhile, in a different part of the Everfree Forest... "C'mon Fox Guy...we don't have all day!" "Well buck you, you're not helping! Now gimme that, Corno!" "Who keeps stealing mah rope?! Ah need 'em to lasso things!" Applejack said, as she examines her Rope Wall. Normally she'd have a collection of a variety thicknesses of ropes. There were labels describing which length of rope is meant for what, including "Work Rope", "In Case of Stampedes", "scaffold work", and the ambiguous "Secret but fun". Only this time, there were no more ropes. Applejack noticed a note on the wall. "A hooman dun stol it" Applejack, even with her distrust of humans, knew that this was too ridiculous to be true. At least until she saw painty hoofprints. Only these hoofprints don't look like normal pony hoofprints. No, they were that of humans. It WAS a human. A human had come here and stole the rope. Nopony, and Nohuman steals from Applejack while getting away with it. There were only two humans she knew of. And one of them knew where she lived and worked. Mr Jack... Ryan Jack, now being even more secretive, snuck his way to Fluttershy's home. He kept his appearance hidden, but this time wearing a cloak and hood, instead of his usual hat and coat. He was hiding a few objects underneath the cloak and hood. He approached Fluttershy's little cottage door. It doesn't seem anypony is home. He left behind a letter and his pistol. He then noticed something on his foot. He apparently stepped on mud on the way here. "Dammit..." he muttered, as he carried a variety of things into the Everfree Forest, leaving behind a trail of mud-coated footprints.