Half an hour later...

Back at the school’s main gymnasium, which was thankfully right beside the campus’ dorm buildings, most of the decorations have been strung up across the ceiling beams and high-walled windows. Colorful streamers helped to illuminate the space with technicolor beams, while carefully-blown balloons hovered in the air with enough helium to hold up the banner signs freely. Instead of just hanging it off the ceiling, Sandbar and Gallus figured out how to have them semi-suspended by balloons to float around with the banner, “First Annual School of Friendship Charity Bake-Sale.”

About half a dozen ponies were working around the large space to make sure everything was ready. All of the tables were already set up and arranged, with most of them covered with long sheets of tarp to hide the plastic containers underneath. Most of the baked goods had already been made, including the cookies which nearly took all night by the evening baking classes. All that were left were the brownies, but they were expected to all be ready before the main event began. Only two of the tins were out so far, which were thankfully the ones made before Yona’s little “Shopping trip.”

Because of that, the mood all around seemed fairly chill by the time Smolder returned through one of the open windows with a couple water jugs.

“Oh, wow!” After putting the last of the stock behind the bleachers, she took a moment to look around with an impressed whistle. She had been so busy hauling boxes of supplies between the gym and the main lobby, that she barely noticed how well the decoration duties were going. Sure, it was still a gym through and through, but it was easy to see that a lot of effort was being made to make this worthy of Pinkie Pie’s approval.

Smolder was quick to help a pony who was trying to reach up with a streamer with their magic. The dragoness easily took the end of the streamer and tied it to the ceiling beam, which made the mare down below smile and wave graciously. Smolder then flew over to the stadium seats across the gymnasium, where a certain blue gryphon was busy fiddling with the helium canisters and a clawful of balloons. “Wow, Gallus! You could’ve saved me some work while I was gone.”

“Nnnnghhh… I think Starlight asked a few ponies to come over and help out with decorations while you were out. Ugh!” Gallus threw down the wad of uninflated balloons in frustration, and used both claws to carefully fidget with the tank’s nozzle. He grunted briefly, but eventually sighed with a smile when he heard a distinct click from the container. “Here we go! The stupid child-proofing on these things is so annoying.”

“Ugh, tell me about it! It’s like those lighters Sandbar always bought in bulk…” Smolder rolled her eyes and sat down beside Gallus. She made sure to pick up that pile of balloons, and held them out for the gryphon to use while he started using that canister. To Gallus’ credit, he seemed to pick up a quick and well-practiced pace as he started to inflate each colorful balloon one by one, tying the ends and letting them float away across the gym.

Smolder didn’t say anything for a while, but eventually leaned in with a faintly devilish smirk. She discreetly whispered into the gryphon's ear, “Speaking of Sandbar and lighters… you know where he is?~”

Gallus paused and looked up from the canister, staring off for a second with a flat expression. He didn’t even need to look over at her face, since that cheeky tone of voice made it clear what she was specifically wanting to ask about. The gryphon exhaled through his beak, before looking back at her with a playful roll of his eyes. “Well… I was planning to get all the balloons finished before suggesting a little ‘walk’ myself~”

Gallus shot an equally knowing grin back at her with a perk of his brows, but then immediately went back to his work like nothing happened. Smolder nodded to herself with an antsy smile, and remained beside him to help out like a good friend should. Of course, while Gallus continued to fill up balloons back-to-back, Smolder snickered and suggested, “Dude, we should totally take a few balloons with us when we do! Could you imagine adding that with helium?”

“Hehehehe…” Gallus snickered and nodded his head. “Wow, I didn’t even think of that, but I already love it~”

Both of them stopped giggling when they overheard that faint, but frantic-sounding voice in the distance outside. The two stared at each other, before turning to the open window Smolder where just came from. They looked just in time to see a familiar teal color flash past, and that voice sounded much more like their vacant friend.

Now Gallus and Smolder were looking worried. Sandbar’s voice was now close enough for the other ponies in the gymnasium to hear him. A couple of them turned their heads up towards the gryphon and dragon, which made her clutch her backpack a bit tighter than expected. Luckily, all the ponies turned to the closed doorway when they heard the sounds of galloping hooves and clanging door-chains. Sandbar’s voice also sounded much more terrified as it echoed down the hallway. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!!!”

The doors bursted open like the stallion was about to object to a wedding ceremony. “GUYS!!!”

Sandbar threw himself through the doors hard enough to fall and skid belly-first across the floor. He didn’t hear any of the panicked gasps around him, nor did he notice any ponies when he got back on his hooves. He threw his head up and cried out, “GALLUS!! SMOLDER!! SOMEONE BROKE INTO M--”

His muzzle instantly clamped up, and his pupils shrunk in fear. He had left the gymnasium before Starlight Glimmer sent more students down to help, so he didn’t expect to see several ponies here as well. He jerked his head around to look for his friends, who were still seated high above and covering their cringing faces. Sandbar’s muzzle skewed uncomfortably with a pained wince, but he was thankfully unable to finish his words. After taking a weak and trembling breath, the stallion grew an unconvincingly nervous smile.

“... uhhhh… t-they uhhh… they broke in… a… a higher score in pinball than m-me… I umm… I worked really hard on… on that…”

Even Sandbar knew that answer was flimsier than a faberge egg, and he hung his head as he sheepishly walked off with an embarrassed chuckle. The ponies were all looking at one another, but none of them seemed too keen on pressing into whatever issue that stallion was going through. Gallus and Smolder were able to easily sneak off, and they got out of sight by the time Sandbar snuck off around a corner. The pony was soon grabbed by two pairs of claws from behind some bleachers, and was yanked away from any of the other students’ sights.

Sandbar found himself standing under several rows of shadows, with Gallus and Smolder looming over him worriedly. Neither of them seemed mad or upset, but their friend’s behavior was definitely leaving them on edge. Gallus was looking around to make sure nopony was too close or able to eavesdrop on them. Meanwhile, Smolder leaned in and whispered in a firm tone, “Dude… what the heck happened?”

Sandbar closed his eyes to take a couple calming breaths. Unfortunately, he still appeared rightfully freaked-out when he hissed back at her, “Someone broke into our dorm and stole from my bag!”

With the way he emphasized that last word, it seemed that Sandbar wasn’t talking his regular schoolbag. Smolder seemed to know the distinction too, as her eyes immediately shot wide-open with a silent gasp. Gallus whipped his head back at him with an equally mortified look. “W-What!? You… You mean the bag?”

“Yes, I mean THE bag!” Sandbar clenched his eyes shut and tried to control his breathing. He was looking around just as paranoid as his friends. “I don’t know how much they took, but it was a lot. Right now I need your guys’ help to get a new hiding spot, okay!?”

“Shit!” Smolder winced and hoped that nopony away from the bleachers heard her say that. “Ugh… Okay, how about I come with you while Gallus stays here? It’d be too suspicious if we all left at once.”

“Wait, did they only take some of your stash?” Gallus leaned in and narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Like… what did they actually take?”

He scoffed and rolled his eyes in frustration. “What the?! I don’t know, dude! I know that my chocolate edibles AND the vanilla hash oil is missing! The cannabutter too…”

Smolder blinked a couple times. Her eyes began to widen slowly. She looked away from the guys, but the gears in her head were clearly turning enough for them to notice. By the time Gallus and Sandbar realized how silent she got, the dragon’s pupils shrunk to the size of two near-invisible slits.

In her head, Smolder kept hearing her friend’s cheerful declaration not too long ago:

… ‘Yona Found Butter!’

… ‘Yona Found Butter!’

Smolder almost didn’t realize she said that out-loud, since her voice came out in a petrified creak. Sandbar and Gallus looked at each other for a second in confusion. “Huh?!”

Smolder flew out of the gymnasium like it was on fire, nearly breaking off a few of the bleacher seats in the process. She barreled out through the open window, leaving the half-dozen other volunteers puzzled and stunned in place. Sandbar and Gallus had no idea what she was talking about, but her certainty was enough to worry both of them immensely. Despite not knowing where she flew off to, the stallion and gryphon were able to make a hasty escape through a back door to track her down…

In less than a couple minutes, Smolder managed to reach the outside of Sandbar and Gallus’ dorm room. She was already given an emergency copy of their key a while back, so she easily unlocked the door herself. Smolder closed the door behind her, and reached into the back of the tiny closet to find an old hiking bag. The zipper was still undone, so she just lifted the top flap and tried to look through carefully. “Nnnnghhh, come on! Is it here?! I need to make sure before…”

Smolder gasped, and her face paled when she pulled out a sheet of paper that was left inside by someone else. It was then that Gallus and Sandbar arrived back at their dorm, and yelped out in surprise of seeing her there. The dragoness looked like she wanted to strangle Sandbar when she held up the note. “DUDE, YOUR GIRLFRIEND DID IT!”

“WHAT?!?” Both guys shouted that at the same time, with Sandbar being the one to quickly snatch that paper from Smolder’s claw. As soon as he saw that scraggly hoofwriting, his expression turned to that of complete horror:

Sandbar almost put down the note before noticing something hastily written on the bottom of the page:

“URRRRRGHHHH!!!” Gallus groaned hard with his face in his claws. Sandbar fell to his rump in a terrified stupor, landing right beside that broken plate he forgot to pick up the other day. Meanwhile, Smolder had to lean against the wall to keep herself standing; but alas, her knees were quivering in dread as she clutched her chest and tried not to hyperventilate.

“Oh no… Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no…” She turned to face her friends with a look of fear neither of them had ever seen on a dragon before. Her grim stare of mortal realization was enough to make the guys’ blood run nearly as cold as hers. She almost looked like she wanted to cry, but she thankfully held that back with a strong resolve as she sniffed strongly. Her exhale still came out close to a sob, but she pointed right at the door and spoke with a deathly serious tone. “G-Guys… We need to stop those brownies from leaving the kitchen. Right. NOW.”

“B-Brownies?” asked Sandbar with a tilt of his head. “You mean for the…”

In that split-second of realization, never did three students exit a room so quickly. Sandbar kicked his hiking bag to the back of his closet, and was the last to rush out of the dorm behind Gallus and Smolder. The dragon and gryphon flew at mach-one speeds down the hallway, ignoring all school rules as they brushed past other students and gusted wayward papers all around. Of course, Sandbar didn’t really help their frantic nature as he ran like a banshee behind them like a high-speed chase.

The three booked it across campus like Tarturus itself was about to open up. Smolder soared like an eagle across the open campus towards the Home Ec building. Gallus grabbed hold of Sandbar, and pulled him into the air so he wouldn’t get left behind in the dust. Smolder only paused long enough to hold the door for her friends, but all three were panicking in unison when they rushed down the hallway.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that they reached the Home Ec room in record time, the trio gasped when they skidded through the doorway and found an empty kitchen.

The rich, velvety aroma of chocolate was lingering in the air, while the room felt several degrees hotter from that recently-used oven. The mixing bowls were all cleaned and placed in the drying racks by the sink. The baking pans were empty as well, but were still cooling on top of the stovetop with dark brown crumbs around the inner-edges. The ovens may have had their lights on to indicate they were still hot; but judging by the dials all turned off, and nothing inside any of the ovens itself, it seemed that they just finished baking somehow.

“What the?!” Sandbar ran into the large multi-kitchen space, and darted around in a panic like a chihuahua that lost its owner at the store. “No! NO!! Wha… Where are the brownies?!”

“T-This doesn’t make any sense!!” Smolder ran around looking just as baffled. She knew that they needed to hustle to finish baking everything, but she also knew they could NOT bake that many tins of brownies in less than half an hour without her fire-breath. She even went as far as to try reaching inside each individual oven (thankfully something she could do without burning herself), but it was to no avail. Even though not enough time had passed, the girls somehow miraculously finished baking everything already…

“Something’s not right.” Gallus was still standing outside the kitchen space, but he seemed equally as unnerved while looking around the classroom adjacent to it. Most of the desks were empty, save for the few closest to the partition wall between the class and kitchen. A couple key items left behind were enough to warrant concern from Gallus, as well as Smolder and Sandbar when he pointed them out. Ocellus’ stack of books were left beside their satchel, neither of which the changeling ever left unguarded. In addition, a couple empty plastic wrappers were left on one of the seats. Sandbar walked over and picked up one of the crumpled bags, which was quickly revealed to have been literally bitten open. Gallus looked at the bag from the other side and asked, “Is that… Is that brown sugar?”

“Oh no…” Sandbar winced with a sudden look of understanding, recognizing those teeth marks well enough to discern who could eat that in one go. There were also several torn sugar packets scattered on the ground around the desk, although it was unclear if that was from only one culprit. Smolder decided to pick up Ocellus’ books for a moment, and took notice of a torn journal page that the stack was holding down to the desk. The dragon picked up the sheet, and gasped loudly enough to get the guys’ attention. “Look! I think Ocellus tried to use this spell! That might be why they’re not here…”

The glossy page looked to be from some Magical Science text, and titled, ‘How to Speed Up Baking in Seconds!’ Most of the paper was large blocks of text that went over the correct calibrations to make the spell work, but none of that meant anything to the non-magic students. What mattered was the fact that Ocellus somehow attempted to use a spell that only Starlight or Twilight could easily pull off. The three students could only imagine what else may have occurred while their friends were still in the room.

“Okay, I’m heading back to the gymnasium to make sure they don’t put those out!” Gallus quickly ran back to the hallway, but stopped long enough to point at Smolder and Sandbar. “Let’s split up to find our friends too! Smolder, you look for Ocellus! Sandbar can find Yona, and I’ll look for Silverstream!”

Gallus then flew off, hopefully to stop anyone in the school from trying any of those brownies. Smolder and Sandbar took a moment to make sure all the ovens and kitchen appliances were turned off, but were quick to exit the classroom for their rescue mission.

Meanwhile, the empty containers of all those used ingredients were left completely untouched, and still inside the trash can by the time the room was left empty once more...

Yona Found Butter

by TheVClaw

Chapter Two