The unicorn watched as Chrysalis climbed down by jumping from branch to branch and the other two flew down.
As soon as they touched the ground, they looked off in the direction that the leader of the group had run.
They then collapsed to the ground and started laughing like maniacs.
That was when she noticed something that had been hard to spot due to the way they had been hovering and sitting in the tree earlier.
They were all foals.
"Okay, you were right. That was a good idea."
When they finally finished laughing, they realized that they had done nothing to help the last mare. Nightmare Moon got up first and started pulling the ropes with a blue magic field. Meanwhile, Chrysalis removed her fangs and started pulling at the knot in the gag with her teeth, and Daybreaker pulled the magic suppression ring from her horn.
"Think we should call the police?" The colt asked.
"Mmph. Rogagly..." The changeling queen spit out the rope. "Probably. Whatever those ponies were doing didn't look good. Not that they'll be able to do much of anything. Those ponies took all their stuff when they left."
"Well, maybe they'll at least be able to check the hoofprints or something."
The insect queen nodded, then went back to loosening the gag, finally pulling it off as the other two got the last knot out of the ropes.
"Well thank you for that," the unicorn sighed in relief. "Who are you, anyway?"
The white one stepped forward and spoke with a voice that tried, and failed, to sound foreboding.
"We are the Trio of Terror, here to scare everpony else into giving up their candy..."
"To explore the spookiest forest in Equestria..." the changeling added.
"And to get back at Rainbow and Pinkie for planting glitter bombs all over our street!"
The former hostage snickered. "Well then, my name's Red Shirt." She did the hoof gesture from the Space Trip books. "May the Force be ever in your favor."
Before they left, the changeling pulled a dress and some flowers out of the bushes.
"Almost forgot about these."
They all walked back to town together. As they approached the Nightmare Moon statue, they saw a good chunk of the town gathering for the story. The trio broke off and joined the group, while Red Shirt headed off to the police station to report her own foalnapping.
After Zecora had finished telling the story of Nightmare Night and Luna had scared the tails off everypony by posing as her own statue, the trio headed off to get ready for the contest.
"Hey, Kind Face, I was wondering something."
Kind Face looked over to Obsidian, who was busy attaching his tape recorder to a spare microphone that he had swiped.
"How did you manage to sound like Chrysalis?"
She smirked at him. "There's more to being a good actor than just looking the part. I can do almost as many voices as Bon Bon."
"Really? And you never thought to tell us that earlier?"
"Well we were kinda in a hurry."
"Why didn't you use that in Canterlot?"
"Didn't need to."
Feldspar looked up from the water buckets she was hiding behind the curtains. "Can you do anypony else?"
"Eeyup!"
Obsidian and Feldspar both stared at her.
"Okay. That was weird."
"Come to think of it," Feldspar asked, "how'd you come up with big bad-guy speech?"
"Oh, that was from a J. R. R. Trottien book I read a while ago. Anyway, how are you two doing?"
"I've got the sound rigged up."
"I've got the fog ready."
Feldspar and Kind Face had rigged the buckets with a line of trap doors all connected to a string, and on top of each one they set small cups of dry ice with loosely fitted lids. When their time came, Obsidian would hit play on the recorder, and the other two would pull the strings and set off all the dry ice buckets at once.
This show was gonna be epic.
Apparently, the Trio of Terror wasn't the only group to try adding pizzazz to the performance.
The first group to go out was the division of those "day guards" they had met earlier. What the two pegasi hadn't told them was that a couple of their friends knew how to play the trumpet and that they had Alula Erroria dressed up as Celestia making a grand entrance in the midst of them. Evidently, she must have borrowed a horn from Masquerade.
The trio had to admit, they were impressive.
Meanwhile, the "Founders of Modern Equestrian Science" pulled some outside help from some pegasus friends who weren't competing in costume. The pegasi surreptitiously pushed clouds into the area behind where the contestants were walking. As Allessandro Colta, Benjamin Flanklin, and Nicolta Tesla stepped out of the curtains, the pegasi kicked lightning out of the clouds behind them, making a dramatic background for the inventors.
Obsidian and Feldspar both wished that they knew how to do that.
The pegasus looked behind him. Thankfully, the alicorns and changeling hadn't followed him. He circled into a descending spiral and landed just outside the town. The first thing he had to do was warn them. Not that he cared about their safety, but these three would ruin his plans. If he warned the town, they would see to the defeat of his attackers, and he could get back to said plans. After all, there was not point in risking his own neck needlessly.
As he touched down, he saw a group gathered along the edges of a street. At one end of the street was a curtain hanging from a rope that had been stretched between two lampposts. At the other end, three ponies sat behind a table facing the curtain. By the looks of things, they included a clown, a purple glitter-covered vampire, and... Nightmare Moon herself...
She looked different this time. He couldn't quite put a hoof on it, but for some reason she seemed more... real.
"Okay," the purple unicorn looked at a list and spoke into a microphone. "The next one up in the costume contest is the Trio of Terror."
With that, a loud distorted guitar riff played over the speaker system and startled half the crowd, while clouds of fog rolled across the street. Lights flashed through the dense cloud from behind the curtain. Suddenly, the curtains parted and and three ponies stepped out onto the cloud.
The first was Daybreaker, wearing the same wicked grin she had worn in the forest. She was followed by a different Nightmare Moon from the one behind the table, who was in turn followed by Chrysalis, glowing green and dressed in a paper-thin disguise as Princess Cadance.
He fumed. His night, his perfect night, had been ruined by a bunch of foals in costume.
He stormed off, forcing himself to calm down.
It was just a setback. A setback to something that had taken decades of planning, but a setback nonetheless. He could get whatever petty revenge he wanted later. For now, he had some adjustments to make.