"It's gonna work THIS time!"
Spike's lips pursed, and the little dragon briefly turned himself into a miniature sandblaster as a cone of fine particles pinned the seventeeth scroll to the wall.
Bits of paper and paint fell off the abused patch, leaving a nicely reversed stencil of the doomed message surrounded by crumbled white stucco.
Big Mac quietly watched Spike as he managed, time after time to demolish his paperwork in new and creative methods. Fire, ice, a tiny bolt of lightning, even a minature sunbeam that had disintergrated a windowpane on it's way out of the library? With a shake of his head, the pony turned to leave Spike to his massacre of the library's writing supplies.
A relatively tiny, grumpy, and tired-eyed Guard pegasus looked up at the stallion.
"You are NOT a dragon. This is the residence of one Spike, is it not?"
"Eeeyup."
"Then in the name of Princess Luna, stand aside!"
Big McIntosh obeyed without a word of backtalk.
"Bloody country hicks", thought Moonlight Wings as he crossed the threshold, noting the broken hinges. "Don't they know what a doorknob is?"
His reward for entering was a thick, black cloud of smoke in the face. Sucking in a lungful, he found himself dizzily staggering up to a pair of small reptilian creatures. "Princess Luna never told me there were TWO of them.". Now four, and they were doing the strangest little dance...
"*hic* Meshage.....meshage fromph Princessh Loona for Spike duh dwagon!"
The purple and green quartet walked up and pulled the scroll from Moonlight's mouth, splitting it into identical copies that they all read with a concerned expression. The herd of giant red apples in the room looked the note over as the four purple worms crawled in and out of them, waving their papers in front of the fruit.
Moonlight's eyes ceased to track the same target as he turned to leave. A sparkling portal beckoned.
"Missshun accompwished! Fer the Suns and Moons, AWAAAAAEEEIGH!"
The pegasus leaped through the already holed window, crashing into the air. Rising (sorta), the messenger headed towards one of the Canterlots he could see in the distance. He was sure it'd be the right one, the little butterfly-winged ponies were telling him so. They smelled like corn flakes! Hee hee hee...wearing the remnants of the window frame like a collar, a very, very smoke-addled Moonlight Wings bobbled through the skies. One might have been able to say he was heading in the general direction of the capital every minute or so, but how he was doing it upside down, even Rainbow Dash couldn't have figured out.
Below, Big McIntosh galloped for home in the afternoon sun, a royal-sealed scroll held between his teeth and a half-empty cart trailing behind.
---
He was late for lunch, as the plate full of flaky biscuits on the kitchen table would have shown. The somewhat bloated and sticky collection of fillies seated around the table were too full to notice much as Granny Smith placidly gummed a honey-soaked tidbit. They'd failed at getting a cutie mark in biscuit eating.
Defeat was sweet. And went well with a big glass of milk.
Scootaloo commented on it with a sugary belch. Sweetie Belle stifled a giggle and Apple Bloom tried not to laugh as Granny gave them the wordless eye- considering her mouth was pretty much stuck together from all the honey.
The clatter of wheels marked the arrival of Sweet Apple Acre's champion biscuit eater, followed by a bang as the front door and Big Mac's head had a brief reunion. Granny managed to wrassle her mouth into a honey-strung smile.
"Well, mister-late-fer-dinner, it's a good thing Applejack ain't here or you'd be goin' hungry!"
He spat out the scroll onto the table, Apple Bloom slapping a hoof on it to keep it from rolling off onto the floor.
"I thought I went and fetched all the mai-OH MAH GOSH WE'RE GOING TO CANTERLOT! ON A CHARIOT!"
Aching tummies forgotten, the three fillies read aloud as the stallion helped himself to the still-lukewarm plate of food.
" "ask Rarity's and Applejack's...", hey, that's ME!"
"Am I Rainbow Dash's well-wisher?"
"She rescue you from any lately?"
"HAY!", erupted from the chomping mountain standing at the table. A crumb adhered to Sweetie Belle's horn, dangling on a gummy line.
"Apple Bloom, you help Granny git packed. Miss Belle, you take this here message to yer mama. Scootaloo, git yer things an' come back here."
Three small dust clouds sat at the table for a moment before settling to the floor. The scroll had vanished like magic.
---
Rocketing down the dirt road, Scootaloo shouted back to the rattling wagon Sweetie Belle was grabbing four-hooved for dear life:
"HEY, WE SHOULD TELL RAINBOW DASH WE'RE GOING TO SEE RAINBOW DASH IN CANTER...."
Her wings stuttered in confusion, letting the wagon skid to a stop in front of Sweetie's house.
"Um...if Rainbow Dash is sick in Canterlot, who's been up in that tree since last night?"
"Maybe another pegasus?"
"Yeah, but they didn't talk or anything. Somepony could be hurt up there!"
"Do you think they need help?"
The two briefly got stuck trying to get in the front door together, but the yelling from inside a few minutes afterwards resolved into the rattle of suitcases and the weather team being called out as a search party.
---
From the sky, a blue dot atop a tree was easy enough to see, if you knew where to look. Cloud Kicker had been in the square when all the excitement had started (and thankfully, ABOVE it when that crazy horse went wild), but when there'd been reports of a crashed pegasus spotted in the forest? She should have found a thunderhead to sleep on, it'd have been a more quiet day! With Dash hoofing it up at the Games, guess who got to play lost and found on the weather team? Her, and whatever wings she could scrounge up.
She glided in for a landing. Why, it was just a little fellow! Maybe he'd fallen out of someone's cloud, but there wasn't any blood or feathers scattered around. Pretty good landing...for a unicorn?
The distinct lack of wings and stubby black horn poking out of the colt's skull was a shock. That he hadn't even reacted to a grown mare landing next to him was another.
"HEY! MEDLEY!", she shouted at the raincloud-cutie-marked flier winging it overhead. "GET BACK TO THE HOSPITAL! TELL DOCTOR STABLE WE'VE GOT A UNICORN COLT, MAYBE A YEARLING, PROBABLY FELL OUT OF A CHARIOT, NO RESPONSE BUT STILL BREATHING, AND BRING A BACKBOARD."
Stroking the shock of blue and red hair on the colt's head, Cloud Kicker could only wait for help to arrive.