Celestia's hooves twitched idly in the air as the morning sun crept across her bedroom towards her unsuspecting face. The bright beams of sunlight filtering in through her patio doors oozed across the space like liquid as it came closer. Each of her temporarily transformed hairs found themselves warmed and coated in soothing heat as the square panes of light approached her face. It was almost as if the light paused in fear as the alicorn wrapped in the skin of a pegasus squirmed and shook in place from her stimulation. Little chirping whines of distress escaped her as she reacted to whatever bad dream plagued her. The light blanketed itself over her fully up to her neck, slowly evening out the worry and squirming of fear into gentle snores of early morning sleep.
And then it pounced.
The diarch of the daytime skies spluttered and jerked away as an unending horde of photons sacked her eyelids and bashed their way into her eyes to loot and plunder the last bits of her restful sleep for the day. Celestia sleepily looked around her bedroom, feeling the semi-constricting embrace of her covers wrapped around her wings and draped up over one ear from her distressed movements in the night. She blew a short but fierce breath over her nose, victoriously feeling the sheet flopping off of her ear, only for her limp mane to take its place and bury her eyes under her forelock in the process.
The solar alicorn groaned and ground her head into the pillows, wondering for a moment how she might have overslept. But the orange fur that richly coated every inch of her form reminded her in short order that Luna's spell was still working. She still had another six days of hiding within the nature of Sunbeam still.
She stretched her wings across her bed lazily, the feathery appendages pulling at the covers tangled around them and gradually exposing the rest of her body in the process. Celestia pondered as to what true time off felt like, she had never had it before. Felt like exhaustion, actually. Just lazy 'I'm a tired pony with a day to burn.' But at the same time, she couldn't help but feel like she was missing something important.
The stupid golden book was still locked in the safe on the shelf where it couldn't wake her up. Luna had the sun. Twilight had sent a friendship report about an anonymous friend who showed her that everypony had hidden depths if you knew how to bring them out. Nothing was missing, but something still nagged at her.
Scootaloo! She had promised to chaperone the... crusaders. Covers flew and sheets scattered as Celestia erupted from bed. She hastily pulled forth her alternate identity and plunged deep into it as she burst out onto her bedroom patio. The sun seemed to light her orange feathers on fire as she took off from her balcony and winged off for Sweet Apple Acres.
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Sunbeam looked down with trepidation, and tightened the straps on her helmet. It probably wouldn't help, though. The structure she sat upon creaked and groaned with the forces of gravity and the winds as they tried to tear it down. "Girls? Couldn't you find something safer to try? Like knitting, or health inspections! Maybe jousting, I think that's safe."
Sunbeam audibly swallowed back her suddenly nervous stomach as the heights she beheld reminded her of how little control she had over her situation. She had found it that morning, the 'sure as tootin best way' for the girls to earn their cutie marks. And somehow, she had been marehandled into joining them on their unholy Tartarus-spawn of a homemade rollercoaster. As an 'outside expert', she received the honor of being the front seat pony in the front car of the creaking ride.
"Oh quit worrying, Mom! Besides, didn't Princess Celestia send something like a couple of dozen ponies to the hospital with her knitting? This is way safer than all those needles and thread!" Scootaloo adjusted her helmet as she began buzzing her wings.
Sweetie Belle chimed in as she squirmed down into her seat. "Yeah! We might catch Rarity-germs from that! She's always talking about fashion and clothing!"
"Ah don't even want to think about what mah sis would do to me if she caught me with pointy objects."
Sunbeam whimpered as she foresaw the clinic visit in her immediate future. "The knitting thing was an accident! And how is this held together without nails?! This is a very bad idea!"
"Ah wouldn't worry about it, the Whacky Glue should hold! This isn't a bad idea, it's-"
"CUTIE MARK CRUSADER ROLLER COASTER CREATORS! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"AHHHHHHH!"
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"Well, yesterday was a bust." Scootaloo kicked a pebble beneath the clubhouse, half-heartedly considering what to do next. Their roller coaster had been a roller buster. As they found out shortly after their breakup, Whacky Glue's manufacturer had listed a warning against putting excessive weight on it until it fully cured after 24 hours. And that it shouldn't be excessively vibrated.
Sweetie Belle patted Scootaloo on the back as the filly looked up at the remains of their roller coaster. The little white unicorn felt bad, since Scootaloo had been so excited at the chance to earn a cutie mark in something fun and exciting. Then she had been so miserable and inconsolable that not only had she not gotten her mark, but she had also hurt her Mom in the process. "Well, Scootaloo, at least you had your helmet. I guess roller coaster riding and extreme stunts aren't your talents."
Scootaloo didn't flinch as she buried herself in thought to ignore the clattering of Sweetie Belle tapping upon her helmet. "Yeah, I know. It's probably going to be some stupid talent like being a living cannonball or something."
Applebloom breathed on the helmet, scrubbing at it with a cloth using the moisture from her breath as a polishing liquid. "Ah don't know; Scootaloo didn't do much of an extreme stunt. Miss Sunbeam was pretty amazing the way she just popped out of her seat and caught'chya in her side before doing that loop-de-twirly thing to make it through the third loop while it was collapsing. Ya might just need to practice yer... uh, Extremitude more!"
The yellow filly looked over to Scootaloo's mom sheepishly, flinching as the mare redoubled her glare. Applebloom turned away, shivering at the otherworldly intensity of the gaze as she did. The orange mare was still clutching her ribs where Scootaloo's head had hit her a day later. "At least we didn't have ta visit the clinic. Ah guess we really are the luckiest fillies in the world! We'll get our cutie marks fer sure today!"
Sunbeam groaned and shifted the ice pack she had tightly pressed against her barrel. Her imperious scowl glared down upon the three fillies, who cowered away slightly. "Yes. We were all VERY lucky yesterday. Which is why we are going to do something relaxing and easy today."
Scootaloo grumbled out a long-suffering sigh at her mother's protectiveness. "Didn't you say something about not smothering me once? Because relaxing and easy sounds like lame and boring to me, Mom. I'll be fine. We'll be fine!"
"No." The three filly's faces all dropped with disappointment at Sunbeam's flat refusal. The old mare laughed at their tiny sighs of sadness. Nothing could possibly go wrong with her plan other than a few poor wilted shrubs. And it was sure to keep them busy for a few days tending to their new charges. "No, no! Don't be like that. I think a little gardening is in order."
Applebloom fixed her chaperone with a look of disbelieving boredom. "Gardening? If mah cutie mark was gardening, Ah would think that Ah would have gotten it by now." Applebloom looked back at her flank, sighing as it was still blank. She turned back to Sunbeam, waiting for her to admit she was just trying to get a day off or a free filly landscaping service.
Sweetie Belle's brow furrowed in thought as something struck her. "Wait, is Extremitude even a word?"
Sunbeam scooped her filly up, dragging Scootaloo closer to her slightly smotheringly. "Well, you may not have a cutie mark in normal apple farming, but I think you might have one in exotic gardening." Her eyes twinkled in anticipation of a filly finding her destiny right before her eyes.
"Ooh! Ooh! Mom and Dad have an exotic plant! And it just made some seeds!" Sweetie Belle hopped up, her legs jiggling stiffly below her as she arced through the air.
"Oh. Well that will do wonderfully. Why don't you bring them down for us!" Sunbeam smiled as her impromptu plan came together. No ma’am, no high energy hijinks, no stress, just teaching foals the value of an honest day's work. Nothing could possibly go wrong with gardening! It couldn't! Wouldn't! She watched Sweetie Belle run off towards the farm's gate, and happily hummed to herself. "So, how did that cheer of yours go? Cutie Mark Crusaders Exotic Gardeners?"
"Uh, yaaay?"
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Sunbeam winced as she plucked out yet another thorn from her flank. The stinking, sticking oozes from her titanic battle with the Red Bellied Piranha Plant had been easy enough to clean from her coat, but the stinging barbs were still making their presence known a day later.
At least it had not been an orange bellied or purple one. She didn't particularly care for the idea of being set on fire or poisoned by acidic spit. Applejack had raised a fit worthy of Luna at the sight of their battle-zone. With the way the plant had turned the ground to mud, and spread a thousand tentacles covered with inch long or worse thorns, she couldn't blame the farmpony. At least there was a small mercy in that she blamed the crusaders far more than she did the elder mare.
Sunbeam scowled down at the Cutie Mark Crusaders once more as she spit the thorn from between her lips. Somehow her charges looked as fresh and clean as they did on the first day of the week. The trio guiltily looked at the impressive pile of thorns, wincing as each new thorn clattered against all the rest.
Sweetie Belle finally spoke up, still hanging her head in shame. "I'm really, really sorry for all the trouble Miss Sunbeam. I didn't know it was a carny- cari- a meat eating plant. My parents picked its parent up a few years ago. I thought it would be a really cool to play with the way it was always gumming me."
Sunbeam finally smiled, reaching down and tussling Sweetie's mane with one of her scratched and beat up hooves. She couldn't stay all that mad at the girls; they had no way of knowing what the plant really was. Hay, she hadn't known what it was until it had burst into monstrous growth under her magic. Most botanists didn't bother to spread the word about the dangers of Zebabwaen 'houseplants'. "Sweetie Belle, most ponies wouldn't even recognize that plant, let alone realize how big it could get. It's alright. I'm still just shocked and surprised at how fast I got it to grow by mistake."
"So yer not too mad at us, right?" Applebloom looked up into Sunbeam's eyes, employing the pitiful look that years of chore warfare with her sister had forced her to create.
The orange mare turned away hastily, concentrating on staring into the back of her stuffed saddlebags and on grooming herself. "I'm not mad, but I'm afraid the past three days have left me rather achy and my coat is full of things that itch when I move. I'd like to watch you girls, but I'm afraid that I'm in no condition to do so." Sunbeam stretched her wings, wincing at the pops that marked each tug of her muscles against their bones.
The three fillies let out a collective awww of disappointment as they were let down by their adult supervision. The trio tragically trudged towards their half-finished tree house, their minds slowly going as blank as their flanks with each trudging step. Sunbeam looked up from where she had been nibbling at her fur to pull a burr free, gazing out over the destruction the three had wrought in their small corner of the yard over the past few days.
The skeletal remains of their 'roller coaster' still partially stood despite being built from the junk that had fallen with Sunbeam out of their tree house on Monday. Even then, it was layered with thorny vines radiating out from the mud pit of the now withered and dead Piranha Plant. The hulking remains and impressive durability of things that should not, could not have held still astounded Sunbeam.
One last time, she supposed. She had the things for it in her bags. She closed her eyes, muttering prayers to the enkindler before she called out to her trio of filly-shaped headaches once more. "Girls! Wait!"
Six eyes darted back to her, inquisitively shimmering with renewed hope. Sunbeam hoped her idea would be acceptable to them as she dug into her bag and pulled out several dozen tweezers and three massive magnifying glasses. The old mare hesitantly sing-songed to her charges their normal chant. "Cutie Mark Crusader Groomers and Natural Object Investigators?"
"Yaaaaaaay!"
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Brakes squealed upon the newly commissioned Friendship Express as it rolled down the tracks into the Ponyville Central Station. The mighty train shuddered and rumbled as it coasted to a stop besides the terminal, hissing steam as it did. From within its confines passengers burst forth onto the unsuspecting station like a party from Pinkie's cannon.
Inkarelda Pie yawned and stretched lazily as she stepped out from the train's sleeper car. Attached to her by a towing yoke, the luggage for the two Pie siblings emerged from the car behind her squeakily upon unoiled wheels. Contained within the block of luggage was the flipperier of the two, likely still sulking as Inkie sniffed at the fresh and deep air languidly. She released the sigh of relief she had been saving up all trip like a helium balloon soaring up into the skies as she stood there.
Other than trying to create a mock Shepland accent, Berry had been remarkably well behaved. She knew he hated enforced stillness. Sure, there had been that poor waiter on their first night. And then there was that conductor on the next... and that kerfluffle involving that guardspony, fifty pounds of coal, and ten gallons of maple syrup. Inkie hastily revised her mental statement to 'mostly harmless and relatively behaved'. After all, he could have used those Pinkie Party Poppers his eldest sister and soon to be foster guardian had gotten him for his last birthday.
Inkie shook herself out of her thoughts, returning to the task at hoof. The smooth and magically sculpted concrete and marble of the train station gave way to the cobble and gravel streets of Ponyville just ahead of them beckoningly. "C'mon, Berry! We're almost to Pinkie's new place!"
She tugged at her harness, determinedly stepping towards the edge of the platform. The heavy weight of her brother within the luggage block was already annoying her, irritatingly her enough to yell back towards her brother. "Berry, c'mon and release the brakes already! I know you're mad about the foal leash bit, but it's so that nopony here freaks out and so you won't get dragged off into trouble!"
Inkie pulled once more, and found herself rewarded for her back-cracking tug with the sensation of their luggage moving freely once more as a wheel untangled itself from the harness. "Thank you! Was that so hard? We need to get you to Pinkie in a hurry so she can introduce you to the town in a hurry before they can get all grumpy and form an opinion of you based off your being a seapony!"
The grey sister trotted down the ramp, stopping at the bottom to look at the skyline of Ponyville stretched out before them. It was amazing to look out onto the town, which seemed like a massive city compared to their own hometown far to the southeast. Why, on the horizon somepony could see Canterlot itself shining like a beacon on the mountainside. "Wow, just look at that, Berry! Boy, when Pinkie gets the Apples and everypony else to look past all their silly superstitions about your race, this is gonna be an awesome place to live!"
The grey mare began trotting once more, paying not a single drop of attention to the growing gap around her. After all, one doesn't see a grey and flat-maned Pinkie TROTTING every day.
"Hmm, well when in Ponyville... Now how did Pinkie do it?" Inkie mused to herself as she began to alter her gait and stride. "A-one, anna two, annaaa-" Inkie broke out into humming as she picked up her sister's signature bounce to the tempo of a happy mining song. The streets cleared before what the townsfolk assumed to be a bizarre Mirror-Pinkie from the Mean Dimension. Though it did give Inkie all the room in the world to get the bounce right as she obliviously bounced down the road.
She might not have been so cheerful if she had remembered the first rule of foalsitting. Or, as Pinkie would shortly remind her, she never had quite made certain that the foal in question was actually in the object she was pulling.
Berry popped his head out of a set of bushes on the far side of the platform as he gleefully watched his sister hopping away. He hadn't heard her warnings and reasons and rhymes, since he had hopped off before the train had even come to a halt. As far as Berry was concerned, it was a golden opportunity to sneak around and explore his new hometown. Maybe he'd even prank a few ponies while he was at it.
The succulent smell of baking apples drew his attention away to the south. Apples... apples... Wait! THE Apples! He'd heard about them from Pinkie! They'd be perfect to be the first ponies in town to introduce himself to. Maybe they even had a pond he could jump into to give them a scare! The little colt took off as fast as his string and stick artificial back legs could handle, following the smell of Applicious goodness.
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Berry clumsily climbed over the low picket fence, grumbling to himself as his rear legs snagged on the points of the low fence and tried to get away. He detached them from around his flipper tail and flopped onto his back, fighting the stubborn jury rigged legs to break them free. The ropes that kept them together and moving in time with his forelegs tangled around his natural ones irritatingly as he fought with them. They came loose at last, taking a picket point with them and spilled themselves all over the seapony colt in a crash and tangle of straps and wooden rods.
"Stupid pieces of junk. Wee little buggers don't know when tae stop getting caught on things." Berry tapped his chin around the strap draped between his eyes, mentally checking his accent. It still didn't seem quite right. How could he become memorably harmless and approachable if he didn't have the right accent?
The blue colt laid his head back against the ground, staring at the fields that had been hiding behind the fence. Row after row of apple trees laid themselves out before him; the outskirts of Sweet Apple Acres looking enticing to the young seapony. So, he had found the place. Now what was that next step again?
The sound of grass crunching underneath hooves sparked fear in Berry's heart as somepony approached. He flipped and squirmed and finally dove into the nearest bush with as much haste as he could manage just before the approaching pony came around the corner.
"Hello? Who's out there?" An orange and blond earth pony stood on the rough path, cautiously scanning over the bushes for the source of the crashing and grunting she had heard earlier. Berry quieted himself as he watched her look around semi-cautiously.
"Gosh darnitall, Ah swear Ah'm turning jumpier than Fluttershy." The orange and blond mare took off her Stetson hat, wiping the sweat brought on by the last heat of autumn away. Given the red apples of her cutie mark, Berry decided to make the obvious conclusion and assume that she was his sister's friend, Applejack.
He kept up his vigil just as she did, watching her carry two saddlebags of tools towards what looked like a water mill on the side of a pond. Perfect. Pinkie had told him about how the Apple Clan could be some of the most superstitious ponies in all of Equestria, sometimes even more than his own family. And the local branch's matriarch, a 'Granny Smith', apparently knew some old, old tales about 'wild' seaponies.
Big sis Pinkie would love the prank he was about to pull. Silently, he reattached his hind legs and waited. His hooves carefully displaced grass as he crept along after Applejack, intent on reaching the pond not very far away at all. And all the while unaware of the conversation going on to his north...
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Inkie sing-song hummed to herself as she bounced up to the front steps of the Sugarcube Corner. The sun was still shining, the streets had been clear and grumpy free all the way from the train station, and even though he seemed to still be sulking Berry had been an absolute angel all the way over. Inkie could feel her tail begin to quiver as the Pie sense recognized that two long-separated relatives were about to be reunited.
Ponies whispered in horror at the sight, convinced more than ever of the facts they had brainstormed up regarding the doppelganger mare. The backsides of buildings and store stands found themselves filled nearly to bursting as ponies hid wherever they could. Two Pinkies were enough Pinkie to destroy the world! Especially when you combined a Pinkie and a dull and grey anti-Pinkie!
Three sisters with flowers on their hindquarters did everything they could not to faint as they chanted nearly silently to themselves. "The horror. The horror. The horror..."
Inkie looked back at the brightly lit square, noticing and commenting on the lack of ponies as she put her back against the porch railings of the sugary business. "Did the apple farm run out of apples or something? Maybe they heard you were coming, Berry."
The grey mare flattened herself against the ground and crept up the disabled pony ramp, keeping herself and her luggage low enough to never enter into the lines of sight from the business's windows. The block of bags creaked and groaned as it wobbled up over each plank of wood and faithfully followed behind her without worry as she snuck to the front door.
Within, the animated voice of her sister bubbled out in great Pinkie-ish splashes of noise onto the customers, unintelligible through the thick oaken door. Perfect. Inkie could see through a tiny crack in the door that her sister was working behind the counter, pinned down and an easy mark for her prank. Inkie began to pull props from the limp depths of her mane, preparing to out-Pinkie Pinkie Pie.
Inside, Pinkie obliviously continued to serve the Brunchy-Snacky-Not-Quite-Lunchy crowd. Well, not entirely oblivious. The flipping that had plagued her tail over the past two weeks had developed an odd quiver with each movement. She knew exactly what that was; her family was finally coming to visit her in town! Though she was curious as to why the great pony tide that normally threatened to sweep her and her counter away had stopped flowing. It wasn't like there was somepony blocking the door, rig-
The doors burst open, blinding everypony present in a brilliant light show. Pinkie winced against the light, trying to make out who the silhouette with a harness in the doorway was.
"~OOOOoooooh- Happy-Happy Birthday, O' Pinkie Dear to Me!
Happy-Happy Birthday to the One I Love to See!"
Pinkie stood gobsmacked behind the counter as Inkie rushed into the store, letting the doors shut behind her. The grey mare slipped from her harness like a butter-greased eel and began to cavort about the store, amusing patrons.
"Hey! Inkie, random musical numbers out of nowhere is MY gimmick! Get your own!"
"Happy-Happy Birthday, a Seapony for Thee!
Happy-Happy Birthday, Isn't Berry as Cyute as can Beeeeee?"
Pinkie spluttered once more as her sister reached into her luggage block and pulled out what she thought was Berry. Granted, the large plush doll was an eerie match for the seapony. The grey mare didn't even notice as she twirled around and stuffed the doll into Pinkie's grip. "Hey, this isn't Berry, Inkie!"
"Happy-Happy Birthday, we're here to make your life better in every single way!
Happy-Happy Birthday, Baby Brother is here to staaaa-Mrph!"
Pinkie panted slowly as she lay atop her sister. After a few seconds of trying to dance with her to keep up long enough to say something to Inkie, she had given up and simply tackled the mare and stuffed a hoof in her mouth. A few years of eating sweets really hadn't done any wonders for her physical shape.
The Berry doll was still clutched in her grip for a few moments before she roughly shoved it into Inkie's own. Everypony looked on in shock at the sight of an irritated Pinkie Pie as she slowly climbed off of her sister. "Three things, Inkie. One: Not my birthday."
Inkie mumbled something behind Pinkie's hoof, convincing the pink mare to remove it. "It's been thirteen Perticultural Cycles since your actual birthday." She helpfully pointed out.
"Okay, it is my birthday on the Perticultural Cycle. Boy, I need to get a window rock farm. Okay, second, THIS ISN'T BERRY!" Pinkie demonstrated her point by roughly squishing in the plushie's head with a hoof, getting a squeak out of the toy and a gasp out of Inkie. The grey mare jerked back from it, letting the seapony doll drop to the ground. "Third, why in the hay is Berry coming to live with me while underage instead of living with Ma and Da'?"
Pinkie tapped a hoof waiting as customers milled around the pair. She could hear Mrs. Cake coming out to find out what the holdup was and manning the register reluctantly at the sight of the awkward family reunion. Finally after waiting for a few minutes for her sister to come out of her shock and watching the patrons’ lean closer and closer in in anticipation she took action.
Pinkie took her sister's head and shook it like a magic 8 ball until she came out of her fit. "Yes Inkie, it's a fake Berry. Why is he coming to live with me?"
"The farm is getting too dry for him. He's suffering and getting sick from dehydration and dust inhalation!"
Pinkie sighed as they got to the heart of the matter. Well, that was a much better reason than her own to leave. "Thank you. I'd be happy to throw a flippy welcome party for him. I mean, c'mon! This town is weeeeeieiiiiiieeerrrdo central for all of Equestria! He’ll fit right in." Pinkie's statement got a self-depreciating laugh from all the patrons as they agreed with the pink party pony. Pinkie's tail flip-flopped suddenly with a quiver, silencing them just as suddenly in horror. A new Pinkie Sense was never a good sign. "Say, Inkie? What does a flippy tail mean?"
"I- uh- I mean it means that a seapony is about to get in trouble. The longer it flips the more trouble that will- Pinkie, you look a little sick. And red in the face, are you okay?" Inkie's explanation ground to a halt as she noticed Pinkie biting her lip. The pink mare's face slowly turned tomato red as her eye twitched and her breath whistled between her clenched teeth.
Inkie backed away and the patrons scrambled for the nearest exits. Pinkie looked like somepony had just broken a Pinkie Promise.
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Luna was busily using the first break of her day to make certain that all of her joyful, relaxing paperwork was in order. When she had simplified the tax system in a massive reform on Wednesday, she had found herself with no more petitioners left. Luckily, she still had plenty of reports on the armed forces to read and act on. Though, with the sorry state her Tia had let them slowly decay to, Luna wondered if it was a good idea to even both-
"SEAMUS BARTHOLEMEW PIE! You're in BIG trouble, mister!" The voice rocked the halls of like the force of a great typhoon. It was like that of a legion calling out the battle. It's fury more than enough to rattle the windows.
And all that Luna could say for the longest time was "What the hay was that?"
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Applejack nearly dropped her tools as the lingering shout echoed through the air. Her ears were ringing, and she had to be miles away from Pinkie. "Well boy howdy, Ah bet Pinkie's kin just embarrassed her with pictures of her being serious."
Sploop!
The farmpony startled again as the sound of swish-splashing water dribbled into her ears. Applejack very carefully crept to the edge of the flat roof, looking down on her combination irrigation pond and water well for whatever might have been dropped into the pond. Up on top of the thirty foot tall pump house, she could see the pond in its entirety. The deep blue waters of its immeasurably bottomless center rippled with a disturbance as Applejack backed away from the edge of the roof.
That had never happened before. There had never been any fish, or any other kind of life in the pond. She hoped that it wasn't something living on the unexplored bottom. But what else could have disturbed it? There was a 30 stride clearing all around it, too far for a tree to drop its branches into the water. The water wheel slowly sluicing water into the farmhouse's water tank didn't look like it was missing anything. And the small windmill powering the screw pump for the whole assembly was intact; she had just made sure of that.
Deciding to take a closer look, Applejack packed up all of her tools and threw her saddlebags through the door for the upper gear room of the pump house. After shutting and latching the door, Applejack carefully descended down the staircase encircling the outside of the building. The old stairs creaked and groaned, ominously reminding her of yet another thing she had to replace. Then again, Applebloom had some skill as a carpenter, maybe she could-
Nah. Bad idea. Because then the problem would be 'the pump house is on fire'.
Below her, water noisily slurped and bubbled once more. Applejack nearly jumped clean out of her horseshoes as she heard it, and could feel her heart pounding faster than she could gallop as she saw the faint ripples that slowly arced across the surface. Oh hay, there was something living down there. And if it lived too deep for her family to find, it had to be one ornery sunovagun. She just hoped that Fluttershy could make the darned thing see reas-
"Shoo be doo..."
Applejack stumbled in her tracks at the bottom of the stairs, nearly tripping over herself in her haste to stop. Now this was a just plain old unfunny prank. "Ah- Ah don't know who's out there, but that ain't a funny joke! Show yerself!"
The farm mare scooted back from the sandy bank of the pond slightly, warily eying the dark waters. She had always found the unnatural stillness of the pond to be unsettling, but she wished it would go back to it right that second. Applejack watched for a minute, looking for movement on the surface or the bubbles indicative of a pony hiding under the water. But with not a sign of her prankster appearing, she decided it would probably be a good idea just to go.
The only thing she had left to do was to shut the pump house water grate. And a good thing too, because she was starting to get the sneaking suspicion that it wasn't a prank she was dealing with. But that was impossible; Granny Smith had just made the old stories u-
"Shoooo-be-dooooooo-be!"
The unearthly phrase had come from much closer the second time. Too close for comfort in fact. Close enough that she should have seen the pony that had uttered it. Close enough that it sounded almost as if it had come from under the water. Applejack ran around the land side of the pump house for the small inlet canal, hoping that she would be able to quickly get the grate protecting it shut before anything else happened. The little canal was only six hoof lengths wide, big enough and deep enough for two ponies to have comfortable space between them fully submerged, but it had a choke point at the point where it fed in from the pond, designed to keep most things deeper than the surface out.
All those old stories about ponies being pulled down into the darkness of the ocean couldn't be true! She was not gonna get ponynapped by some overgrown fishie with delusions of ponyhood!
Applejack skidded to a halt beside the stone-lined inlet, grabbing the pulley rope that controlled the grate's height with her teeth. Nervously, she looked back out over the pond, looking for signs of her tormentor. Not a thing, which made her even more nervous. As she tugged on the rope, she comptemplate whether or not it was waiting in ambush for her to fall into the water, silently plotting.
Applejack tugged with more strength than she intended as she swallowed back her growing fear, ripping the rope in half at a point that had dry rotted most of the way through. The farm mare flopped onto her back from the sudden release of the tension she had put onto the rope, dazed from the impact her head had taken. Rubbing her scalp, she looked at it accusingly. "What the hay! Ah just replaced that thing last month!"
Applejack rolled back to her hooves and reared up so she could stomp on the top of her grate with her forehooves. She had just oiled it that morning; it should have gone in with a single hammer blow of hooves. Instead, it squealed in mockery of her as it twisted in its frame and jammed itself against the guide rails that contained it.
Ripples grew on the water once more, sloshing noisily against the shore. Applejack looked out over the water and felt the grip of a windengo snap up her heart in its icy embrace. An equine figure slithered just beneath the water's surface, one with what appeared to be a flipper tail in place of its hind legs.
The farm pony jumped up fully onto the thick grate, trying to force it to go down as her stalker drew near to the entrance of the inlet. She couldn't believe that the grate was putting up enough of a fight to make her pant as she hopped up and down on it with all of her body. Small squeaks kept escaping from the mechanisms of the grate, matched by tiny grunts from her as her heart raced from the concerns at hoof.
"Shoo be doo, Applejack. Shoo be doo!"
"Ya’ll ain't real! Ah'm just hallucenawhatin from working too hard! Shoo! Shoo, ya' pesky delusion!" Applejack didn't notice as she instinctively bucked a hindleg at the approaching threat. Between her stomps upon the grate, she was too busy trying to think of Applebloom instead of the possibility of her getting dragged off into the deep blue sea or finding herself in one of the other fates from the old scary stories Granny Smith used to tell. She slipped for a moment, nearly falling off and dunking a leg in the water.
Applejack climbed up once more, ignoring the now water slick state of the grate as she lined up one last time and stomped with all of her might. With a squeal of metal on metal, the grate finally crashed down and locked into its filtering position. The slick water-coated metal offered no traction to the suddenly unbalanced mare, spilling her into the small waterway.
Fresh water slightly stung her eyes as she glubed out some of her air beneath the surface as she at finally saw her tormentor for the first time. He was just a little colt, no older than her little sis. And he was as blue as somepony could be. Hay, he was to blue what Big Macintosh was to red, in his own way. But he was just... wrong.
Applejack could barely stand to look at him, feeling the oddest sensation that things didn't line up right, like there was an aura of something else all around him. She tried her best to shy away, mostly flailing about underwater with her senses of direction befuddled. Bubbles escaped from both of them as he edged closer, touching his nose to her own with an electric shock that made her queasy.
Tiny gills fluttered on his neck, the exhaust from his respiratory system escaping in tiny bubbles from his oddly clenched shut nose. His dark blue mane drifted around him and towards Applejack loosely as he reached his oddly shaped forelimbs/foreflippers towards her. "Shoo be do?"
Water tried to flood Applejack's lungs as she did the only thing she could and scream at the seapony trying to grab her. With a coughing gasp and wheezing breaths, she surfaced and splashed around on the water. A cold and densely furred head rammed her softly in her barrel, shoving her against the side of the inlet. The farmpony scrabbled against the stones, pulling herself free of the water to roll and flail to pull herself further away.
Applejack looked back, seeing a decidedly different sight. The seapony suddenly looked... normal. He had surfaced, his head losing the off-kilter dimensions that had been so disturbing underwater in the process. Hay, he looked like a normal colt all of a sudden. The little gills had vanished and he was visibly breathing through his nose as he took a step onto shore with a flipper that morphed into a forehoof before her eyes.
He... he took a step onto shore. Granny Smith had never said they could walk on land! Applejack backed away in fright as fast as she could, turning her head away as she prepared to make a run for Ponyville, and help. She could faintly hear somepony calling her name past the water sloshing in her ears and the rushing of blood in her head as her heart pounded to escape her.
"Keep away from me, ya varmint! Ah ain't going with you down there! Keep away! Granny Smith! Twilight! Help me!" Applejack's hooves tore divots into the ground as she broke into a full on gallop for anypony who would hear her.
"What the hay!?" Berry jumped up, flopping painfully onto shore as he watched Applejack run off. He wasn't that scary, all he did was go 'Shoo be do' like the old stories said that ponies heard whenever seaponies came to take somepo- oh... Granny Smith would have told her about that, and-... oh what had he done?
He nipped Applejack's waterlogged hat out of the water, flopping it once with a flick of his head to get the worst of the water out of it before setting it down on his head for safekeeping. "Ah think Ah need 'me sister right now tae help me smooth that lil' spot o' trouble over."
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Inkie and Pinkie decided to forgo their normal theatrics and quirks as their tails turned to twin flip-flopping messes. On a hunch and the slightest sense of direction, they were rushing towards Sweet Apple Acres to try and catch Berry before he scared Applejack into causing a scene. Most ponies in town followed Applejack's lead on dealing with new ponies, and if she was scared of him...
Pinkie really didn't want to think about it.
"How much further, sis?" Inkie could feel her speed flagging. For all of her strength, her endurance at straight up running was less than that of her now experienced sister. Granted, her experience was in 'run away, run away!', but it was the thought that counted.
Pinkie counted down the landmarks they had passed in her head. They had already passed the abandoned clocktower, the west-side windmill, the windy hill roads, Sunbeam's house and- Ooh! There was Carrot Commons! "We're almost there, Inkie! Just a little more and-"
"Run fer yer lives! The seaponies are a coming, the seaponies are coming!" A few hundred yards away, Applejack crested the top of a hill while screaming her terrified warning out to the world. She didn't even notice the sisters as she ran down its other side, taking the straight path for the center of town.
"Oh COME ON! I'll take the back ways and catch her, you go find that flipper fiend and give him a very stern talking to, sis! And no cake! He gets no cake!" Pinkie turned to run after her panicking friend, only to be jerked to a halt by her sister nipping on the massive pink fluff of her tail. "Oh, right. Directions! Half a mile straight ahead, big wooden arch with lots of apples on it! Follow that road until the cutsey barny-house thing appears around the corner! Talk to the big, biiiig stallion Big Macintosh, he'll know where Berry is."
Inkie released her sister's tail as she spoke, wiping her tongue off due to the flour that was dusted inside of the pink disaster.
"Thank you, Pinkie!" Inkie turned back to the road, giving Pinkie a second to get going before immediately whipping back around to where her sister had been standing.
Rats, somehow Pinkie had already disappeared again, with the only sign of her presence left being a chunk of her tail that had been perfectly sliced from the rest of the cotton candy doom. Nopony had ever figured out how Pinkie did it. "One day! One day I swear I shall discover your deep, dark secrets and the source of your skills Pinkie! The title of 'Piesiest Sister in the Land' will be mine, mine! But first..."
Inkie took another deep breath and broke back into a gallop, hoping to catch her delinquent brother.
---------------------------------
Sunbeam sat upon a makeshift bench below the Crusader tree house, wincing every time she heard a crash above her head. So far, the crusading as far as she was concerned was a terribly bad idea. In the course of four days, she had been squashed by a tree house, used as an impromptu safety cushion in the middle of a roller coaster collapse, had to put down the mother of all Piranha plants, and then she had been set on fire by magnifying glasses while she had been getting her coat groomed. It was looking more and more like the three together, no matter how good of a set of friends they were, were just too dangerous to let them hang out together.
But in her current state, she wasn't good for much other than watching them play-work far above, fiddling with their clubhouse. Hay, with some of the safety features she had put into place before she had dropped nearly dead of weariness, they should be safe from everything short of intentionally hitting each other in the head with hammers. But that was what foal nets and helmets were for. And when had Luna found time to make a few copies of Scootaloo's helmet?
Nevermind, she was going to give herself a stroke if she kept thinking about it. She pondered back to a few minutes earlier, when Applejack had run past screaming in the distance. The foals hadn't noticed her since they had been busily sawing at the time, and she couldn't take them with her or just leave them alone to go check. And even if she could, she was a wreck, and far too battered to make much of a difference. She could probably fly for a bit, and that was it.
Sunbeam started to roll onto her side, stopping and jerking back into an upright laying position as slight tears entered her eyes. She shifted the matching ice packs on her dock, moving them to cover up her lightly toasted cutie marks. The charred and burned fur there still pulled at her skin. Owwies.
A roughshod and heavy hoof tapped her on an unburnt shoulder, nearly getting smacked with a wing for its trouble. Sunbeam jerked her head around and followed the crimson limb the hoof was attached to up and up and up. Big Macintosh's gentle and concerned gaze made her feel oddly fluttery inside as he spoke. "Well, howdy Miss Sunbeam."
"Morning, Mister Macintosh." Sunbeam turned on her polite charm, giving Big Macintosh a smile. The brilliance and kindness in that small gesture made him feel like the sun itself was smiling down on him, even as Sunbeam crashed his mood a little. "Say, do you know why your sister ran by screaming a few minutes ago? She's usually so unflappable."
"Eeenope. Was gonna ask the same of you." Big Macintosh shifted the stalk of wheat in his mouth as he drawled. The big farm stallion followed Sunbeam's slightly nervous glance away up to the tree house, for which he gave a slow and appreciative whistle. "Mighty fine work."
"I hope so. I've already had it dropped on me once. The next time hopefully it'll be strong enough to squash me and my worries flat." Sunbeam sighed in resigned irritation. She gave it two hours, max, before she would probably end up getting dragged kicking and screaming to save the crusaders from themselves again. "This crusader business isn't going to work."
"It will." Big Macintosh kept watching; smiling as Applebloom used barn raising techniques to lift a wall with her friends.
"I want to think that it would be good for them, but they've done such foalish things... I want to tell Scootaloo to stay away from Applebloom and Sweetie Belle for her own safety." Sunbeam turned her head down to avoid watching what she just knew in her heart would go horribly wrong.
"Don't. Have faith."
"Faith?" Sunbeam turned to Big Mac, wondering what he was getting at. She scooted closer, away from the tree house a little further.
The gentle stallion bumped her back, pushing her closer to the tree house as he watched his littlest sister properly secure the wall. "Faith that they pull their heads out of their plots. Faith that they can learn ta work together."
Sunbeam pursed her lips, wanting to say something. The slow rub that Big Macintosh began upon her back interrupted her, soothed her enough to close her eyes. "I stopped trusting that ponies would always do the right thing a long time ago. Especially myself."
"Been burned?" Macintosh shifted a little closer, pushing his flanks flat against her own.
"Eeyup."
Macintosh raised an eyebrow in curiosity as she leaned back against him while still carefully keeping her head away. "If a bad apple spoils the barrel, maybe it's time to get a new barrel."
"What's that supposed to mea-?"
"Hey! Hey! Excuse me!" A grey mare slid to a halt beside the suddenly separated and blushing pair. Sunbeam had to look twice for a moment. A grey and straight-maned Pinkie Pie was something that she never expected to see. The resemblance was disturbingly close, or at least so she was thinking as the mare bowled over her thoughts with a babble of words. "I was wondering if I could get directions to the farmhouse-barny-thingie of Sweet Apple Acres that my sister Pinkie referred me to. Or, if you've seen him, my little brother. You couldn't possibly miss him."
Big Macintosh lifted a hoof and pointed nearly due east for the mare. “That way, Ma'am."
Inkie resisted the urge to facehoof as she mentally rued her sister’s sense of direction.
Sunbeam scooted to the edge of her makeshift bench to look closer at Inkie. Slowly, she spoke with care as she examined the middle Pie child. "So, you're Pinkie's slightly younger sister, right? Inkie Pie, isn't it? She never mentioned anything about a younger brother."
"Well, there's Inkie, Blinkie, Pinkie Pie! All throwing parties up to the sky! No matter what we do, the sisters three are there for you! Just never ask us why, for we are the sisters Pi'd!" Inkie looked up from the bow at the end of her sing-song dance number, glancing at her small and surprised audience.
Sunbeam raised an eyebrow in confusion and interest as she cleared her throat. Beside her, Big Macintosh shifted uncomfortably in the presence of somepony else who used Pinkie Logic to get by in life. And above, three young fillies cheered as they looked out over the balcony of their half-rebuilt tree house.
Cheekily, Sunbeam finally spoke up, poking fun at Inkie's song. "Isn't Pi 3.14, instead of just three?" Sunbeam gestured with a hoof for Inkie to come forward and join them as they all chuckled. "Well, I'm Miss Sunbeam, the boulder beside me is Big Macintosh, and the three heralds of adorable doom above us are Scootaloo, Applebloom, and Sweetie Belle."
A chill wind ran through the orchard for a moment, bringing the faintest whiff of something sugary.
Inkie nodded as she scooted up near the pair to break the wind. She had figured that they were the ones her sister had been talking about, but their larger than life presences seemed almost mystical and ancient, especially Sunbeam. "Pinkie told me all about you, Miss Sunbeam! And, well, the '.14' is the one I'm looking for." Inkie looked around cautiously, looking past row after row of apple trees stretching off into the hills all around them.
There was still no sign of flipper or fin from her little irritating brother. Maybe he had found some water nearby. "Well, we're still working on the song. The changes to it have been held up in the sisterly committee ever since Pinkie left. Say, by the way, is there any water around here? I'll probably find him taking a swim."
Sunbeam frowned in confusion. She turned to Big Macintosh, curiously shrugging to him as he glanced back. She spoke up, hoping to be illuminated. "Why would it be easier to find your little brother in a body of water?"
"Well... uh, he's kind of a seapony." Inkie sheepishly scratched the back of her neck with a hoof as she spoke, ignoring the trio of exclamations from above. Kids always seemed to like Berry at first for some reason.
Sunbeam disappeared under a whinny of dismay and several hundred pounds of Big Macintosh. Well, it hadn't helped that the mention of seaponies seemed to provoke a reaction as great as that of an elephant facing a mouse. The mare in disguise groaned in annoyance under the burden smothering her. A slow rolling shrug of her shoulders unbalanced Big Macintosh and shoved him off of her to fall in a great heap upon the ground.
Lazily, Sunbeam cleared her throat and continued her conversation, a bit more eagerly as something stirred within her. "Well, I really hate to be rude, but how in the hay do you have a seapony for a brother? The race was lost to the depths of the oceans 1200 years ago when Discord twisted them, and Princess Celestia has been trying to cure them ever since. She hasn't found one yet that hasn't gone semi-feral."
Inkie whimpered and shrank back a bit at the slight exclamation from the orange pegasus. Uncomfortable words slipped from her mouth one by one as she responded. "Well, uh, it involves a trip to the beach, Da's shotgun, and some very bad things that happened to Ma there involving a seapony that shouldn't be repeated in front of foals." Inkie looked up to the trio of onlookers, who all slid back from the edge slightly. Though she did notice Scootaloo paling to a near white and wincing in sympathy.
"Begging yer pardon, but why didn't you uh... well, since this is dry land and he's a seapony..." Big Macintosh trailed off as he nervously looked around, afraid that he might get pounced without warning.
Inkie shot a venomous glare towards him that convinced the farm stallion to return to keeping his mouth fairly sealed. The soft sound of Sunbeam clearing her throat reminded her that she needed to relent a little. She could understand why Macintosh might have implied what he did, even if she didn't like it. "Berry is our brother. No matter whom his daddy was; his mother is our mother. He's our kin, and we had to at least try."
Bushes rustled in a faint cold trickle of wind that swept into the small clearing. The sweet smell prickled Sunbeam's senses once more and squeezed a vague sense of unease into her subconscious. She spoke up, drawing from personal experience as she decided to try and help gently lower Inkie's expectations. "Inkie, how old is Berry? Princess Celestia has tried to raise a seapony herself to counteract the damage done to them; they've escaped and returned to the sea to go feral by age six."
"Oi! Ah take offense and insult from that, yae big overgrown turkey! Ah'm ten, not six!" There was a shuffle atop the tree house as the fillies separated like electromagnets set to repulse. A light blue head with a dark blue mane popped over the edge as Berry laid down on the outer balcony of the treeborne building. Looking smug with himself, he continued. "And Ah'm fine and fancy free, not fera-whatsing!"
Big Macintosh performed his best Fluttershy imitation as he stepped behind the widely wing-flaring pegasus mare. Inkie hopped to one side and proceeded to nearly growl like her mother and hop up and down in frustration. "Berry! Get down here right now! You are in big trouble, mister, and you're going to have a long pleading and groveling talk with Miss Applejack over what you just-"
"Eeei!" Sunbeam interrupted Inkie with a happy exclamation, erupting into flight in the process. Berry had just a moment before the happily chanting mare swept him up into her hooves. "Yes-yes-yes-yes-YEEES! A seapony who isn't taint-" Sunbeam stopped her midair pirouette as she sniffed deeply with her nose. After not liking what she smelled, she held him further away from her body gingerly. "But you are slightly tainted with his magic. So how are you still up here?"
Berry confusedly and nauseatedly dangled from her grasp, limply looking over at his captor. "Well, ah remember getting pounced by a wonderful mare with no sense of space and getting spun around until Ah got sick..."
"Sorry, it's a bad habit I've learned from Twilight Sparkle, you'll meet her later."
"Right, well Ah have a headache some days, but it does nae affect me judgment any. Mah sister Pinkie got her cutie mark just before Ah was born. Her first party ended up celebrating mah birthday after an hour or two, so Ah would assume she knows more." Berry squirmed reflexively, not liking the sensation of behind held up nearly weightlessly. The sensation of flying was hard and vexing in an odd fashion on his stomach.
"Of course.... now I know. The rainboom." Sunbeam gave him the slightest of kisses to Berry between his eyes. The little colt blushed and her daughter grumbled in irritation and indignation. She turned around to Big Macintosh, still hovering in the air holding Berry. As the stallion flinched, a thought returned to her. "Say, what did you do to scare Applejack so badly? I remember her saying something about seaponies as she ran off in the distance."
Berry pointed at the ground queasily as flight began to take its toll on his stomach. "Can yae get me tae the ground? Mah stomach wants tae play with yae."
Sunbeam jerked her forelegs out, holding Berry at a distance as she realized the dangers of a sudden chance of upchuck. Slowly, she began descending, careful not to jostle the poor seapony any further. Or that was the plan, before a sudden shooting pain burned down the length of her wings, spilling them to the ground from six hooves up. Her ungraceful grunt of pain and efforts to curl her wings back close to her body drew Big Macintosh over to look at her. Even though he kept her bulk between himself and the colt, he carefully inspected her wings, noting her reactions to his prods and pulls. "You pulled yer wing muscles. Probably overstrained yerself this week. No more flying today."
Sunbeam felt Scootaloo jumping up against her side, likely after having jumped off of the tree house. She breathed through her clenched teeth, holding back her hisses of pain each time she tried to shift her burning wings. The slow ruffle of feathers against her side hid the way she took shallow breaths as she nodded to Big Macintosh. "Might be for the best. Experience with Dash?"
"Eeyup."
Tiny orange hooves nearly choked Sunbeam as Scootaloo hugged her around the neck and held her down. The matron of the sun in disguise wrapped a hoof over her daughter's back, pulling her in close as she poked Berry with the other forehoof.
The seapony colt climbed up onto the makeshift bench that Sunbeam had been sitting on a minute before, curling around so that he could look at everypony on the ground. "Well, uh, in regards tae mah little accidental tiff with Applejack, I- uh, Ah might have wound her up by chanting 'Shoo-be-doo' underwater fer a few minutes before she slipped and fell in. And while she was hypo-hypo-technically underwater but nae underwater, Ah might have had tae have headbutted her back tae shore, while she got a good long look at meself and panicked."
A disgruntled sigh filled the air as Sunbeam let her head slowly sag to the ground until she could bury her nose in the soft grass and close her eyes. She didn't need the frustration, did NOT need the frustration. Now she was going to- wait, could he have touched her? No, he was still in his prison, it was so unlikely that it bordered on the odds of Twilight spontaneously turning into an alicorn.
Meanwhile, Inkie facehoofed. The family's worst case imagined scenario short of Berry actually hurting somepony and getting jailed had come to pass in its entirety. Berry inched closer to her, his short little breaths panting in her ears as she hid her eyes behind her hooves. Slowly, she lowered her hooves once more, seeing Berry slowly averting his eyes in shame. Inkie's thoughts dashed to darning the way that Berry was somehow still cute and pathetic enough to somehow convince everypony that he wasn't all that guilty?
"Ah... I mean, I messed up bad, sis; didn't I?"
Inkie embraced her little brother gingerly, resting her head against his own as she spoke quietly to him. "Berry... there was a reason we wanted to keep you hidden until you got to Pinkie's place. She's pretty mad at you, yeah. But she'll forgive you; she's a good pony like that. And it's my fault for not fully explaining the plan to you when I had the chance, even if you did keep on snoring off in the middle of my talking." The grey mare slowly slipped her head off of his forehead, pulling Berry tighter in the process. She let Berry rest his head on her shoulder as she patted him on the back for a minute to soothe him and calm herself down.
Big Macintosh looked around at everypony gathered, wondering if he should say anything. Screwing up some courage, he spoke out at last regarding his sister. "Begging pardon, Ma'am, but mah sister is the second fastest pony Ah know. She's probably in town already."
Sunbeam forlornly looked over in the direction of Ponyville, wondering how the town would handle the sight of seeing Applejack decrying seaponies. Wonderful. A whimper of pain escaped her lips as she attempted to move her wing once more as she anticipated being called upon to try and fly Berry in ahead of the farmmare. "I don't think I could fly at the moment to help, little one.”
Two small sets of thumps tumbled down behind everypony as the adults discussed a plan further. Scootaloo didn't even flick her ears at the sound as she watched her mother animatedly talk and tried to plan out their response to Applejack's panic attack. The soft crunch of wheels on grass did get her attention, just in time for her to turn around to see the two pairs of hooves nab her.
The discussion between the adults cut short suddenly as a tinny bell rang out three times behind them. Tiny wings buzzed with worry and air-defying awesome fury as Scootaloo sat on her scooter. Sweetie Belle and Applebloom gestured for Berry to get aboard as the three adults looked at each other with concern.
Applebloom held out a helmet for Berry, ignoring the splutters from Big Macintosh. "Climb on; we're the only way you'll get there in time!"
Sunbeam rose up from her sprawl, protesting the tableau. "Scootaloo, I cannot believe you're letting them ride with you. You know better than to-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. She can't really hear you over our awesome need for speed!" Sweetie Belle piped up over a cringing Scootaloo's apologies, cutting her short. The little filly yanked Berry up into the wagon, plopping one of their silvery helmets on his head as she reached over to Scootaloo. "Don't worry, Scootaloo! You're definitely an expert! You've got years of experience, you'll keep us safe!"
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Ponyville had calmed down from its earlier bout of Anti-Pinkie induced terror. Clearly the two had annihilated each other, and while the passing of Pinkie Pie was an unfortunate thing, her sacrifice would be remembered. Sure, there was still Twilight going 'The Stupendous and Spectacular Sparkle', and Celestia was still missing for the week, and there was that issue of cotton candy appearing in the darnest places, but the poor town could only handle one crisis at a time.
Business sedately continued as the rather jaded residents decided to treat the day like any other. The crisis of the day had been resolved, and nothing further was likely going to happen. After all, if bad things were about to pick up again, one of the six local heroes would be running through town warning everypony.
"Run fer yer lives! The seaponies are coming; THE SEAPONIES ARE A'COMING!"
And there was their cue. In a flash, the streets emptied out with practiced speed as the farm mare ran by. Ponies dove inside their homes and locked their doors and windows in fear. Food stands closed up on themselves like turtles, some nearly overturning in their proprietor's haste to find a nice alley to hide in. A mad, babbling rush of words and cries filled the air as Applejack ran up to the library.
"Twi, Twi! Sugarcube, you've gotta help me!" Applejack pounded on the front door for several seconds in a manic terror. A brief note of surprise twisted in her mind as she wondered why it hadn't given way already. With no answer coming from within, she flipped around to put her back against the door.
Applejack's green eyes darted about anxiously as she scanned the town for any sign of her flippery attacker. But there was no blue hooves or tails, only two great fields of pink obliterating all sight of the to-
That was the last thing she saw as the pink hooves wrapped around her head and yanked upon her, dragging her into the darkness of the Golden Branches Library.
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Meanwhile on the road into town, a quartet of foals blasted their way over the hard dirt and rough cobblestone of the country street. Applebloom and Berry sat barrel to barrel in the wagon; the yellow Apple filly having offered no chance for her brother to protest before she had shoved Berry into the wagon so they could leave. Beneath them, Sweetie Belle wondered how in the hay she had been pressed into service as an improvised pillow beneath her fellow crusader and the seapony. She wasn't even pudgy! She wasn't comfortable at all!
As she squirmed to get back upright, she did have a few questions for the seapony. "Say, Berry. Kind of an awkward time, but did, uh, Inkie! Yeah, did Inkie say you were Pinkie's brother?" Sweetie Belle got a grip on the wildly bouncing front lip of the crusader wagon as she spoke, trying to pull herself free. A bump in the road bounced the oddly close pair above her into the air, only for them to slam back down on her and nearly squish her flat again.
Berry gulped in fear as he tightened his helmet down onto his head a little further. The feel of wrinkling wool made him hope that Applejack's hat hadn't been squashed beyond all recognition by the rough ride. "Aye, the fae filly of fickle fun is me sister. Yer suspension needs some work, by the way. Ah could feel me marbles rattle out three miles back." Rattling wood and metal reminded him of something. He reached back and pushed his detached hind legs back down into the bed of the wagon as he tried to make room for Sweetie Belly to sit up.
The whipping wind around them buffeted stronger than ever as Scootaloo picked up even more speed, prompting Applebloom to duck down to reduce her drag. Pulling Berry down with her, she spoke her mind to him. "Ah guess ya don't get along well with yer kinfolk if yer moving her. Kinda like Rarity and Sweetie. They're always fightin'."
"HEY!"
"Nae, Ah'm on pretty good relations with the lot of 'em. Pinkie loves me little tail like yae wouldn't believe when Ah behave. No, Ah moved tae town 'cause home is gettin' tae be uninhabita-whatsing for me." Berry finished off with a wince as Scootaloo jumped the wagon over a low bump once more, the impact running his chin into the bed of the wagon. A whimper escaped his sealed lips, and from Sweetie as she slowly wriggled up between him and Applebloom.
"You can't go home!?" Sweetie's voice cracked as she exclaimed her horror.
"Nae exactly. Ah can't stay long because it would cost too much tae humidify the place, even fer us Pies. And putting a pond that high up? Ah'd have tae be outta me mind to suggest it. Oh, and Ah think this is our turn." Berry held on tight as Scootaloo poured her power into making the turn. Everypony in the wagon squeaked out gasps of horror as it came up off of one wheel and threatened to tip over.
The blue seapony grabbed Applebloom with a hoof and pulled her close so that their weight would right the wagon. Their conveyance skewed and slid about as they cleared the corner of the intersection into town, settling down before too long. For a moment, their eyes met and the slightest twinge of a need to say or do something to compliment her crossed Berry's mind. But it wasn't to be as Sweetie pushed a hoof up and separated the two.
Scootaloo called back to the wagon as she slowed down in caution at last. "Hey, guys? We made it! Now, I hate to interrupt the mushy-mushy back there, but where is everypony?"
The eerie sight of the deserted hamlet streets greeted them as they looked around. Houses were shut up like the parasprites had returned, and the fearful gazes of the townsponies could be seen glinting behind their barricades. Sweetie followed her hoof up for air, separating Applebloom and Berry the rest of the way with a great deal of force. Squeezing herself upright between the pair cramped the wagon tremendously, uncomfortably pressing everypony flank to flank.
Sweetie looked around at the town, seeing her sister's shop boarded up yet again, its door trembling with its owner's overreaction. "Great, my sister's getting all 'dramatic' again. I've got to get her to go on one of Mom's vacations."
"Doesn't your mom go to the running of the minotaurs in Prance?" Scootaloo called back to Sweetie Belle as she slowed down and carefully navigated, wondering why clouds were slowly getting sucked towards the center of town.
"Ee-exactly! That'll show her 'drama'. I guess Applejack beat us here somehow..."
Applebloom nodded glumly and sighed. "Ah guess all that training with Dash pays off eventually. Whooo, boy this is gonna be bad."
Scootaloo zigzagged around a fallen sign in the marketplace, swerving enough to shake her passengers. She slowed down further, starting to pay closer attention to the sounds and sights of the town. Applejack had beaten them there, and then what? Where had she gone? She grumbled to herself as she slow-poked, feeling almost like she was crawling for how slow she was going. "Great. This looks like it's gonna be like Zecora all over again."
"Ah'm thinking worse. Zecora just got run away from; she never really, uh... scared the cutie mark off of somepony like Berry here did. And zebra's don't quite have a history, no offense, Berry." Applebloom glanced over as she spoke; glad to see that Berry just shrugged over her comments. She followed the arc of his body down almost unconsciously, tracing down his back until her eyes halted on where the hindquarters would be on a normal pony. Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head as she saw the terrible lack of something there.
Sunbeam's words came back to her, reminding her of the fate that had befallen his race. That wasn't fair at all; he had to get it, right!? "Oh no! Ya don't have a cutie mark! Ya'll can get cutie marks, right!? Ah don't even want to think of a bunch of ponies who couldn't!"
Berry snorted, his tail slapping unconsciously against the bed of the wagon as he did. "Ah'd think so, aye."
Sweetie Belle sighed in frustration just as her earthy counterpart sighed in relief. Still cutie-crazy! It was a crisis situation at hoof! If they couldn't get this resolved by dinner, she might go to bed hungry for exasper- exasperc- oh yeah, exasperating the situation!
"Yer probably gonna get one before we will." Applebloom looked down at her own blank flank and huffed in disappointment. Everything they touched seemed to fall apart or catch on fire. Even poor Sunbeam; they hadn't meant to focus those three magnifying glasses on the same point. She was probably going to ban their meetings. For-ever!
Wait, that's it! "Wait, girls! Ah think Ah heard Pinkie say one day that Twilight's library got designated the emergency meeting point! Mah sis probably went there fer help!"
As if to answer her revelation, Scootaloo screeched to a sudden halt, nearly bowling her fellow crusaders and guest off of the wagon with their momentum. Sweetie Belle pushed herself off of the yoke of the wagon carefully, wondering if the roaring in her ears was because she had hit her head. Then it struck her that Berry and Applebloom were both sitting ramrod straight beside her.
"What, what- is... oh no." Sweetie trailed off as she looked towards the library. Swarming around it like oversized army ants, over 500 ponies milled in frustration and panicked shouting. The library shook ever so often as one would get bounced off of it by their fellow rabble, and the lightest sheen of water coated it in places as clouds squeezed and squished together over it.
And Twilight stood upon her balcony, trying to calm the crowd, paused mid-speech by the appearance of the crusaders. Her shout of dismay shrieked over all like Dash doing an airshow. "Oh what the flying feather!?!"
"Hey, look! There it is!"
Scootaloo reversed her wingbeats, beginning to back up the wagon and scooter as the crowd inched closer with likely one thing on their mind. She cringed, and turned to her friends for a moment before she got ready to flee for her life. "This is gonna suck, guys."
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Pinkie did her best to scowl at Applejack, though her heart just wasn't quite in it. After she had finally caught up with her and yanked her into the library to keep from causing a scene, the poor mare had gone nearly catatonic. It was actually a bit too much for Pinkie to stay mad at, even with the accidental mob of scared ponies pounding at the door outside. Hay, she was feeling more than a little scared herself.
What kind of a party would calm Ponyville down before? They had never turned into a scared mob before.
The party mare gently shook Applejack by the shoulders once more, trying to get her to do anything other than shiver while curled up in a ball. Nudging the side of Applejack's head with her nose just elicited a small squirm from the farm mare before she curled up in on herself tighter while panting a slight more frightenedly.
Pinkie scooted out of the small alcove in Twilight's upstairs hall that she was holding Applejack in, turning to Twilight in a desperate loss for ideas. "Twilight? I don't know if I can fix this."
Twilight shook her head back at Pinkie, uncertain as to what needed to be done herself. She had a few tricks that might shake Applejack out of her stupor that her currently far too close new friend had shown her. But using any of them would require her to leave the crowd of worried ponies that could very easily panic at any moment. And she had no clue if her crowd-calming tricks would even work. Their mood was like nothing Twilight had ever seen before. "I don't think I can help, Pinkie. It's almost as if Applejack and what looks like a quarter of Ponyville are all under a spell or something."
Twilight stepped back out onto her study loft's balcony, looking out over the crowd. The old wood beneath her hooves creaked and groaned as she moved out, irritating her with its noisy protests. The crazy mob looked up at her as the ponies within it milled and chattered in a near deafening roar that not even being 20 hooves up could calm. Twilight cleared her throat, speaking loudly and clearly in her uneasy voice. "Everypony! Can I have your attention, please? Up here!"
The crowd continued to mill around outside her door. Banners had been erected, shouting 'Seapony Go Home', amongst far less savory titles and proclamations. If anything, the crowd had been slowly getting louder, as if something was driving them towards a frenzy or stampede. Not a single one of them had paid attention to the unicorn stewing above them as she tried to get their attention.
Grrr.
How dare they just ignore her like that. Twilight pointed her horn up to the skies, calling storm clouds from all across the land. The little tame puffs of dew hanging in the Ponyville skies were quickly adsorbed by dark monsters that gathered over the town into a towering thunderhead. She could feel her mane floating up into the air as static traced the path of least resistance into her properly prepared horn. Then the lightning came to visit.
The deafening crack-boom silenced the crowd, focusing them on the panting unicorn above. Twilight giggled a disturbing off-kilter giggle as she saw that she had their full, undivided attention at last. Amazing how much attention a little electricity could bring. Silly little ignorant ponies.
"Thank you! Now then, before I was so rudely ignored... GO HOME! Applejack is going to be okay! It was just a nervous breakdown brought on by stress on her farm combined with a prank by Pinkie's little brother that got wildly out of hoof!"
The crowd mulled between themselves, trying to make up their minds as to what to do. The crazy pony did apparently have a lightning generator, and she was keeping them from Applejack. But what if she was right and it was all just a big prank? More than a few thankfully peeled off from the crowd and went home as they made up their minds one way. Others, though, grew louder as they came to a different conclusion.
"Where's the seapony!?!" "The SEAPONY!"
Twilight turned back, walking to the door and looking inside to Pinkie. First Applejack had come screaming about the seaponies, and then all these other ponies had come, seemingly insane since they all thought that seaponies could be more than 300 miles inland. And Pinkie seemed to have something to do with it.
The party mare instinctively looked up into Twilight's eyes and shook her head violently to discourage her. Twilight watched bewilderedly as Pinkie dragged Applejack out into the middle of the hardwood planked floors and set about putting a party hat on Applejack's head. The less said about the glass of cider at her side, or the three noisemakers she was trying to insert into the farmpony's mouth, the better.
"Riiight." Twilight kept her musings about the collective sanity quotient of the town to herself. Especially since she wasn't helping that particular equation lately. Stupid Trixie. Stupid cockatrices. Stupid crazy family reunions involving scaring the harmony out of Applejack.
The crowd had only gotten noisier in the thirty seconds she had been away from the balcony. She thrust her hooves into the air, gathering a crackle of energy to shut everypony up once more. She wiped an escaping lock of mane back into place as she looked out over the crowd and made her pronouncement once more. "Everypony, I have thoroughly investigated any and all possible seapony claims, and it is my findings that there is no seapony! All of this has to do with a bad prank gone wrong from Pinkie's family! Everything will be fine, please return to your homes expediently and I will make certain that Applejack... gets- immediate-... oh hay."
Everypony looked at each other confusedly as Twilight trailed off with a dumbfounded look of horror on her face. Why was she so scared if there was no seapony? Then as gravel crunched underneath a plastic wheel, somepony in the back of the crowd realized she was looking right past all of them. Everypony turned to see the set of ponies that had come around the corner behind the crowd. The Cutie Mark Crusaders and a blue seapony colt.
"OH WHAT THE FLYING FEATHER!?!"
The crunch of Scootaloo's scooter-wheels coming to a complete halt in gravel somehow echoed loudly in the sudden silence. As one, the crowd collectively leaned in towards the new development, spotting the foals and the seapony behind them. Somepony tried to squeeze out of the pack to get a closer look at the... incredibly adorable doom that was to befall them all. But his neighbors didn't like getting crowded out, and what started as one led to the whole crowd beginning to steadily advance on the foals.
The Crusaders naturally didn't like the suggestion of that one bit, and zipped around like they had just set Princess Celestia on fire, making a run for it as fast as they could. Not that it helped them any. They were running, that meant they had done evil! Stopping them had become the sudden mob's instinct, and the chase was on.
Twilight could only watch in horror as the square around her library vacated like the crowd had been told that she was about to release ravenous mare-eating parasprites. There was no way the Crusaders could escape a crowd like that, she had to get help, or do... something! "Spiiike! Take a letter!"
Twilight rushed back inside, leaping over the upstairs loft railing to land on all fours on a summoned cloud just before she hit the ground. She had a cape; she just needed those stupid smoke bombs to distract the crowd and a magic amplifier. She kept yelling to Spike as she dashed and flash-teleported around the library frantically looking for the supplies. "Tell Princess Celestia that we need her here on a matter of life or death right now!"
Spike tripped over his own tail in his haste to get to a writing desk. Pinkie stomped on his tail, flipping him back upright with the leverage against the thick spade of his appendage as she threw some smokey-bombey looking orbs in Twilight's direction. Thunder rumbled outside from the storm Twilight had created, forewarning of lightning to come as Pinkie tried to keep up with Twilight.
The librarian turned part-time magician caught her gaze for a moment, seeing the single most un-Pinkie-ish look of desperation that Twilight had ever seen on her face. "What's wrong? Is Berry hurt!? Are they- GAAASSP! - Are they Sapping and Leafing him before running him out of town!? He's allergic to treesap and I don't know what to do-ho-ho-oooO!"
"Angry mob chasing him and Crusaders!" Twilight teleported out of sight after her terse statement; running off to somewhere in town. A second bright flash heralded her return for a second as lightning flashed outside. "Keep Applejack safe until help arrives, I'll save him!" Pinkie held a hoof up to her eyes as Twilight teleported away again.
Like hay was she going to-FLASH! "On second thought, Spike watch Applejack, I need a convenient distraction, Pinkie!" Twilight appeared directly next to the worriedly fretting party pony and grabbed ahold of her tightly to bring her into the teleport field. Spike looked up from flaming his letter to Canterlot just in time to watch the adult supervision vanish in a final flash of purple light.
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"Bad day, bad day, BAD DAY!" Sweetie Belle clung to her friend and her new acquaintance as Scootaloo swerved around another curve at speeds best described as 'normally death-wishing insanely reckless'. Applebloom squeezed her and Berry back tighter as they all screamed once more. At least they were getting proper experience in what a real roller coaster felt like.
"Ah think we've gotta go left!" Applebloom had a tiny map of Ponyville opened up and plastered to her face as the wind of their passage whipped at the four foals. Berry shivered, wrapping his tail around one of her forelegs like a snake, squeezing the earth pony until her leg had nearly turned blue. He himself had sat back down backwards, as the motions he got from looking forward didn't at all agree with his stomach.
"Buzz like the wind, they're gaining on us!" And his position let him watch just how close their pursuers were getting. Lightning flashed above them once more as the storm grew more intense. The faint shapes of the weather team could be made out up above, backlight by the flashes as rain began to fall.
Their ride turned suddenly rough as they rolled onto a cobblestone section of the road. Sweetie gleeped in a strangled yelp-like fashion as Scootaloo decided to take the stone bridge over the Everfree creek like a ramp, launching them into the skies. Three foals screamed in terror as one screamed out her awesome to the world as they flew through the air, pegasus magic working on the scooter and wagon unconsciously to land them relatively softly and level.
Sweetie Belle nearly spilled forward onto the wagon's handle as they bounced from the landing, swerving and weaving before Scootaloo could correct their course. Two sets of hooves grabbed her by the forelegs and hauled her back, sitting her between the disturbingly interested in each other pair of foals behind her. The unicorn filly shook her head to clear the ringing from her ears, noticing they were on the Canterlot-facing side of town as she did.
She glanced back out of morbid curiosity, noticing with a degree of discomfort that the crowd chasing them was suddenly far closer than it had been. "He's right Scootaloo! Go faster!"
Scootaloo looked ahead as she flapped even harder, feeling her wings finally actually working to push them. Buildings zipped by almost faster than she could see them, a multicolored flashing blur to either side of her as she buzzed. The faintest sign of a black line between buildings ahead was the only thing she had to go on as she decided to try and shake the crowd. "Hang on, this is going to be crazy!"
Scootaloo threw herself into a hard left towards the nearly hidden alleyway. The Crusader wagon skidded out behind her, scraping against the brick of the walls with a small shower of sparks and dust. One of the girls yieep!ed out in terror, but Scootaloo couldn't stop. The alley was part of Pinkie Territory. You just didn't stop running in Pinkie Territory, after all. Scootaloo buzzed for the other side of the alleyway, peeling her friend's wagon off of the wall.
The roaring babble of the mob crushed up against the building facades as they all tried to squeeze into the alley at once. Two by two, though, ponies quickly began squeezing into the tight space of the alley and chasing after the quartet. Scootaloo bobbed and weaved, expertly avoiding boxes and piles of stuff left in the alley for better days. She still couldn't make out what the crowd was saying, and quite frankly she wasn't interested in finding out, either.
If she could just get them to the other side of the alley, there was a road that led out of town that would let her escape with a minimum of running. All she had to do was keep buzzing, and avoid any- oh no. "RAMP!" Scootaloo's forewarning only gave the group a second or two before her front wheel hit the bottom of the wide old floorboard.
Scootaloo's pegasus magic flared in shock as the group launched into the air, her wings fluttering in a desperate attempt to fly. Moments passed as she picked up lift, pulling even farther up into the air than she should have been able to reach. Especially with that wagon attached. She buzzed hard enough to sound like a bumblebee as she fought to control their flight, trying to aim for a nearby flat street as they squeaked over the top of a home.
The pegasus filly could feel the burn in her back, hoping beyond hope that her magic would hold. All she could hear were the screams of her friends as they realized that they had fallen into a near freefall towards the street, and the whistle of wind in her ears. Wait. That screaming wasn't coming from behin-
Sticky wetness slammed into her from the right, spinning them all into a flat spiral out of control. Scootaloo vaguely could sense where ground was, despite spinning fast enough to make her close her eyes to avoid getting sick. She tried to turn into the direction of her spin to correct it, knowing there just wasn't enough time to save herself from it, let alone her friends.
Pegasus magic ached in her bones as the ground loomed towards her, half lost in the sticky pink haze that was shrouding her vision. Billowing white fog rushed in from nowhere; shrouding the ground in a protective layer as cloudwalking magic writhed over the freefalling foals. The roiling smog slowly yielded like molasses as the quartet slammed into it, trapping them in a cloud that more resembled a bunch of weather-magic ooze than condensed water and air. Their fatal connecting flight with the ground cut short of the target as they slumped to the cool, wet cobblestone and dirt.
The scooter and wagon whistled over their heads; crashing to the ground nearby with an almighty clatter of bending and twisting metal, unbouyed by the syrupy cloud material that all but pinned the foals in place. Scootaloo clawed at her face in the near whiteout of the fog, scraping the sticky pink substance off as best she could.
Rushing filled her ears in a moment, pressure knocking her off of her hooves. Water squirted up her nose and into her ears as the spray peeled the goo free bit by bit. She was wet, wet all the way down to her soul as the jet tapered off, and she rubbed the dripping water from her eyes so she could look towards Berry. The seapony colt's tail dripped with wetness from where he had channeled the water vapor into a liquid stream, his face sheepishly scrunching up with worry.
Scootaloo shook her head. "Thanks Berry."
"Ah'd say the time for thank'ye's is later; running time first. Ah spy with me little eye something that ends in 'mob'. Can we make like yer name an' a scoot?" Berry pointed past Scootaloo, wriggling back from the perceived danger as he did. The crusaders all followed his hoof to the corner behind them, where the panting and wheezing crowd of ponies glared back at them as they caught their collective breaths.
Scootaloo jumped back to her hooves, whipping her head around to look for her scooter and her friend's wagon so they could make another run for it. Tears greeted her instead. Her brand new scooter was in a crumpled heap on the ground; its handlebar twisted in half backwards to touch the cracked rider's board. The wagon was worse off, its axles bent and a wheel folded in on itself from the fall. There was going to be no way that they could ride off this time, they'd have to- wait!
Sweetie Belle picked herself up from the ground, crawling to her hooves beside Scootaloo painfully. "What are we gonna do?" Sweetie's voice cracked on her last word. The filly shook herself out, boggling at the dust that billowed from her coat. "Ew! What am I gonna do!? Mom's gonna kill me if I come into the house like this!"
Scootaloo looked around, knowing that she had heard her target before the crash. "Rainbow Dash, HELP!"
The Mare of Speed emerged atop the spa's roof, picking herself up from where she had crashed. Her face and front half was nearly completely coated in the pink cotton-like goo, which dripped with some kind of brownish substance. Eew. Struggling due to the coating of the mysterious pink goo coating her wings, she flapped unsteadily to the ground to land beside the group as she began to babble a heartfelt apology. "Oh my gosh! I was getting attacked by that stupid creepy cloud and I didn't see you guys until it was too late! Please tell me I didn't get anypony hurt! Wait... What happened to his back legs!?!"
Scootaloo followed Dash's outstretched hoof to Berry, whom Dash stared at incoherently. The miniature pegasus jumped up and grabbed the weather mare's leg, pulling it around until it pointed at Applebloom and Sweetie Belle. "No time to explain, everypony was alright, get these two out of here, crazy mob is coming! Get them way out of town so they're not chased!"
Dash opened her mouth to protest for a moment. Some foal was trying to tell her what to do, but it was the good kind of advice. And onrushing crowds tended to have a clarifying effect on her positions on the matter. Sweetie and Applebloom barely had time to protest Scootaloo's choices before they were swept off of their hooves as the chromatic pegasus rocketed across the street to grab them and get them out of danger.
Scootaloo let out a breath of relief that her friends were safe. Dash would probably take them out of town where they would be- She sent her friends out of town, instead of the source of the problem. What was wrong with her head? How the hay was she supposed to get Berry out of town now?
A tin can bounced off the dirt beside her, reminding her of her imminent brush with the mob. Berry was busily trying to wriggle away from them, flopping like a sea lion to move quicker. Scootaloo ducked another thrown can, punching up with her hoof to deflect a rock as it flew towards Berry. Sweeping in underneath him, she grabbed one of his hooves to help pull him onto her back. "C'mon, Berry! We've gotta go!"
"You're a pegasus; I'm too heavy for you to carry!" Berry helped her pull himself onto her back despite his protesting. The wobbling surface was hard for him to balance on, even with his grabbing of Scootaloo's barrel just before her wings with both of his legs.
Scootaloo wanted to agree with him. The colt was lined with extra-dense muscle, and coated in a thin layer of blubber to keep him warm under that fur of his. Behind her, she could hear the mob getting their wind back and starting to do more than walk briskly towards them. Her legs burned, trembling under the weight as she adjusted the seapony on her back. But she still had a little bit of strength left to give.
Her first trembling step became two. Two steps became a weak trot forward. She gritted her teeth and bounced her back, pulling Berry higher up onto her center of gravity as she turned her trot into an unsteady and unstable run, wobbling back and forth across the road to freedom. She couldn't stop, she couldn't slow down. If she did, she'd never get going again.
The slightest hint of a surge in her stamina helped her pick up the pace. "You know, it's a good thing I failed math last week, because that means to me your math just doesn't add up!"
Berry oofed as Scootaloo hopped over a piece of debris in the road, shaking his head just afterwards. "That was a terrible joke. You should feel bad for it!"
"Didn't need the joke for that!" Scootaloo ran for their lives. Her heart felt like it wanted to go for a run of its own as she kept up her pace, and her legs felt like they were about to clatter off of her into a thousand pieces. Berry wriggled down atop her, minimizing their drag with his position and the manipulation of the flowing of the air around them. The crowd was still faster, their roars nearly atop of them as they ran.
Scootaloo nearly tripped as she turned the next corner. Something tried to grab onto her tail, likely unicorn telekinesis judging from the tingle in the pressure on it. Purple dropped in from above them, landing directly behind the pair as they squeezed free of the grip on them. Scootaloo looked back, veering off ever so slightly as she spotted Twilight Sparkle in a cape standing tall against the mob, holding it back with a great shield that she could hear as it crackled in protest from the impacts against it.
"Wait, stop, she's not trying to hurt us!" Berry waved his hoof in Twilight's general direction, wondering why Scootaloo wasn't slowing down.
His ride shook her head as she unsteadily turned the corner onto Clydesdale Lane, picking up her speed again with a kick against the ground as she did. "She's holding them back, and I don't think forever! We've gotta get out of town!"
Ahead, the road to Canterlot stretched out into the distance, separated from her by the edge of town and the other side of the looping bend of the Everfree Creek. If she could cross the bridge, she could get out of town before anypony could catch them; away and far enough from the Crazy Virus that was infecting town to go away so that somepony could calm down the mob. Or at least whatever it took.
Berry rubbed Scootaloo's back as she began to sweat all over, hoping to keep her from cramping up as she kept up her impossible run. "How are you still running!?"
Scootaloo didn't answer. She couldn't, as she had begun to pant too hard to speak. The bridge out of town filled the expanse of her vision, growing closer and closer before them. She only had a few more streets to cross, she could do it, and she was going to get them out. Her breaths grew ragged as her pace faltered, nearly tripping on several occasions as- oh hay no!
Scootaloo skidded to a halt before a splinter group of the mob which had come around the long way. The ponies turned towards her slowly; their eyes looking faintly odd and their fur coats were washed out in a way that was outright creepy.
"There it is!" "Get it!" "Get i- why are we getting it!?" "It- uh... turned Applejack into a newt!" "A NEWT!?" "... She didn't look so slimy earlier." "That's because-uh... -um...Twilight made her better?" .... "Get it! "GET I- Hey, it's gone!" "Find it?" "FIND IT!"
Pinkie galloped away with the two foals on her back, looking for a way out of town. All the ponies in Ponyville were going Cra-ZY! And she didn't even want to get into the little ambusheroo back there. They should really stop that, that was just silly. She couldn't take her normal ways since she had passengers, which meant a whole loooootta running and screaming and flailing for their- she got the order of things wrong again, didn't she?
Pinkie started to turn down yet another side street, stopping as she spotted a group of ponies rather aimlessly wandering at the other end of it suspiciously. She shook herself out, rattling Berry's eyes in his head as she spoke. "Berry, if we live through this, you're grounded For-ev-ER!"
Scootaloo panted once more, clutching a great swath of Pinkie's mane to hold herself on the wildly maneuvering party pony. Even so, she couldn't help herself. "But he's a seapony. How the heck do you put ground in him? Are you gonna turn him into an earth pony or something?"
"Aye, very funny. It is tae laugh."
Pinkie looked back as the sounds of a crowd grew behind them once more. She couldn't tell if they were from at the bridge, or the side street. Cake Carol Lane was on her left, and she planted her forehooves for a moment to try and turn off onto it. Tin cans bounced off of her impervious mane back out onto the street as ponies alternatively ran in terror and rallied to face the perceived threat in turn.
"Run for your lives, it's gonna get us!" "Push it out of town!" "Get it!"
Pinkie's eyes widened in surprise as she tensed her hind legs and sprung off once more, zipping with all of her might to get away from the street rapidly filling up with Ponyvillians. She didn't know what the hay was wrong with everypony. Normally, they all ran away screaming from trouble, not run towards it looking to stop it. What had turned everypony into super-big ultimate meaniebritches?
Sure, Berry was Scary, (hehe) but he was riding HER! She was loved by everypony! Wait, they had gotten crazier when Berry had tried to get to the library. Did seaponies have a book aura that could drive everypony in the world mad with knowledge they weren't meant to know? Wait, nah... her little green book had all sorts of stuff like that, ponies could take eldritch knowledge of the stars! Or maybe that was just her.
Wait-wait! Twilight! Twilight could do something! At least she could stick them in a pony-proof bubble until Princess Celestia-Sunny-Beamy could show up and get all stern on them! It was a great plan!
She picked up her stride, her brother and his pegasus companion bouncing madly upon her back with each galloping beat of her hooves. She glanced up between her ears to Scootaloo, shaking her head to get the pegasus's attention. "Tell me when you see an opening! We gotta get back to Twi!"
Scootaloo nodded with a greenish twinge to her features as they ducked and wove through town. Her wings buzzed and buzzed again as she tried to use her pegasus magic to recreate the fog bank from earlier.
"Fae fickle sister of me own, if Ah ever do something this stupid again just stuff me, put me on yer mantle, an' call me the Fishie of the Week. It'll be less painful and less mortifying to me dignity." Berry woefully buried his head into the silken devouring curls of his sister's mane as his motion sickness slowly turned him greener than one of Granny Smith's specialty apples.
"Will do!" Pinkie felt Scootaloo tugging to one side and turned around a corner, seeing her lavender salvation still sparking and sputtering ahead in the middle of the street. "TWI-LI-LI-LIIGHT! We have a problem!"
Two sets of furrows jutted out ahead of Twilight, trails from where the crush of the crowd had been slowly pushing her and her shield backwards down Mane Street. The unicorn's horn glowed with a magenta and purple auras so bright that it was hard to look at; bright enough to feel heat coming from it as the tip began to imperceptibly smoke. Twilight's eyes watered as she looked back to Pinkie and the foals, her eyes widening at the cans flying past them as rest of the ponies in town who had somehow gone crazy came up behind the running trio. Instinctively, she reacted with decisive force; her shield arcing over their heads to slam shut its arch of power so close behind them that its sharp edge took off the tip of Pinkie's tail. The magic barrier spread completely across the road, then began to slowly spill down from above to seal up the section of street they were trapped within.
Twilight bit back a whimper as the smoking and sparking coming from the tip of her horn increased a little from the strain, and hoped the slight tears in the corners of her eyes would drip down. Her legs trembled as the push of the crowd slid her back another inch. Her limbs felt like they were burning up; probably just like her horn was literally burning up. "P-Pinkie, why did you bring them back?"
"No place else I could go, Twilight! They almost made it out of town before we ran into more. Quick, you've gotta zap Berry out of here!" Pinkie picked her flippery little brother off of her back with unnatural dexterity, holding him up in Twilight's face.
The crowd reacted instantly to his presence, recoiling from the shields. Twilight took the opportunity to pulse the shield, pushing it further out to match them and catch them off guard. The glow from her horn dimmed as the pressure eased from her spell's weave as it pushed out a yard both ways.
The crowd's dull roar of discontent grew quiet as they dazedly stumbled next to Twilight's shield. Twilight, the voice of Ponyville reason was opposing them so strongly? But- she would never do such a thing. All of their kind were terrors of the sea. She- she was under its dread magics! It had to be removed from town! They resurged against the shield, pressing it back once more and compressed it with their weight from both sides.
Scootaloo hopped from Pinkie, taking up Twilight's case since the mare was busy fighting off the mob. She really didn't want to explain how she knew all of this later. "Pinkie, she can't teleport us out! With this much power going into her shield, she would at best lose concentration on both; and you really don't want to see the worst!"
"So pony-sized hamster ball! She could turn the shield into a hamster ball and roll us out!"
Twilight shook her head, her shield flickering as she did. "C-can't. It's- it's like trying to pull something you're swinging really fast too close." Her horn flickered once more as the crowd pushed at her shield. "Tighter means you have to spin faster, and more force that I-I-ung! That I block means more energy too. But the-the more energy, the harder it is to-to hold together!" Twilight trembled with every word, her knees shaking as she held onto the brightly shining shield with all of her magical might.
Pinkie looked up to the shield, now closer on all sides than ever, then back to Twilight, who fixed her with a hopeful stare in return. "P-Princess Celestia should be here soon. I s-sent a letter through Spike to her. I-I don't know how much longer I can h-hold it." Twilight groaned as her shield was pressed in another inch from above by the small group of pegasi.
"But Princess Luna redirected all of Princess Celestia's magical communication spells to her so she could get a proper vacation!"
All eyes jerkingly turned to Scootaloo, who looked up into the deep overcast skies with horror.
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There were her targets. She adjusted her flight path 15 degrees to her left, dragging along her clouds as she approached her next position.
Everything had gotten out of hoof in Ponyville. Discordian magic surging again and again, mysterious screams at apparent family members from Pinkamina the Element of Laughter, signs of... cotton candy clouds, and reports of mares normally afraid of their own shadow turning as fearless as the Royal Guard and all but rioting in the streets. Nay, not a thing had escaped her all-seeing glare.
Clouds slowly circled the town behind her as she refined her approach vector; dark and thunderously crackling in anticipation of her pounce. She flicked with her left wing, starting a whirl in the clouds that would form an eye in the storm that would expose the noonday sun as she made her final approach. Her horn lit as she languidly flapped once more, casting a great seed of lightning into the gathering storm.
Her mental checklist went over all the necessary preparations for sufficiently cowing the crowd into submission for questioning once more.
Properly tamed Class 3 storm with rotation and lightning? Check.
Personal spells of intimidation to include aura of fear and draconic eye spell? Check.
Royal Canterlot Speaking Voice?
"WE DOTH DECLARE IT CHECKED!" Check.
Near vertical dive while flaring her aura out visibly to produce glowing contrail? Check.
The air spilled from the dark princess's wings, and she dropped from the skies like a mare on a mission from Celestia, pulling the storm down upon the town.
---------------------------------
Berry and Scootaloo cowered together under Pinkie as the storm above them began to spin. The drizzling rain smoked upon Twilight's shield as her horn glowed even brighter than before, illuminating the group with its harsh light. Thunder crackled above, lightning backlighting the clouds as the storm swirled around them. Twilight held her head up higher; she had to hold until Princess Celestia could arrive.
Scootaloo nudged her blue friend insistently as she looked up, wondering how she got into the mess she found herself in. "You know, Berry, I really wish Sweetie Belle hadn't opened up her big mouth right about now." Scootaloo kept watch upon the skies, looking for the white dot of her mother's form charging to the rescue. Luna had to know to pass along the message, right? She had to.
"It was a good idea at tae time." Berry followed Scootaloo's gaze up into the storm, watching and wondering what exactly she was looking for. After all, a storm as bad as what was developing? Wouldn't even an alicorn try to fly below it or around it instead of through it? "Scootaloo, she's not- err, nae going to come from above. Just a bunch of funny-shaped clouds up there. Nothing tae gawk at. The only thing Ah see is the black dot falling from it."
Pinkie looked up to see what all the fuss was about. She inched back a little bit further, trying to avoid contact with Twilight's shield as it was steadily compressed into a brightly shining barrier by the crowd. She raised a hoof to shield her eyes from the glare, looking up into the eye of the storm overhead past the pink glow of the barrier. "What dot? Oh, wait nevermind. That's not a dot, that's a really big pony falling from the skies!"
"WHAT!?" Scootaloo gasped a little bit as she looked up and recognized Luna's silhouette. "Princess Luna is going to hit your shield, Twilight! You've got to drop it!"
"The crowd will get us!" Twilight wanted to cry as her forehead felt like it was burning to ash. Then again, with the power radiating from her horn, it might just be. The Ponyville landfill manager flew up over the crowd, body slamming himself into the crackling and flickering shield, and that was all it took. Twilight cried out in pain and slumped to the ground with smoke curling from her horn. The magic barrier lit up to a bright white light as a great cracking filled the air. Then it shattered, breaking up into chunks that slung out into the air, dissolving away into nothingness rapidly as energy no longer sustained them. Pinkie gasped and dove to Twilight side, fanning off the unicorn's horn to stop the smoking.
And a great thunderclap shook all of Ponyville; a flash of light penetrating every nook and corner of the hamlet at the same time. The searing light seemed to reach right into ponies eyes, blinding them for a moment with its brilliance. Twilight could feel the wave of magical force billow over her, but not touch her, earning a yelp of surprise from her. Part of it arced back to her, a white bolt of energy that rushed through her body and tingled along every one of her magic nerves.
A loud and thunderous voice roared out over the stunned population of Ponyville, wherever they stood or hid, silencing everything. "Stay this madness!"
The town only had one thing to say to a visibly furious alicorn who's mane billowed stormily with the full fury of the solar wind and who's eyes glowed with the force of her terrible power. To somepony who projected 'not to be bucked with' strongly enough that the dragon lands and Aerie States could feel it, there was only one they could think to do. Everypony with a line of sight to Princess Luna bowed down in shame, hoping that she was feeling particularly merciful that day.
Luna's horn lit as she slowly stalked across the street to where Twilight lay prostrate and trembling. At the grasp of her magic, Twilight was lifted up to her feet, and supported by the dark blue glowing of the alicorn's magic; a shield created from the princess's power descended upon the group and hid them within its protective aegis as Twilight's rejuvenation took place. The princess of the night pressed out with her magic, forcing the crowd back from them as she slowly stalked forwards. Her piercing gaze slowly met the eyes of the front ranks of the villagers, meeting each in turn and categorizing them in an instant.
"Praythee, explaineth to us why thoust all accosteth our beloved Tia's Most Faithful and Just Student? What crime doth has been committed by her hooves? Why doth thoust all badger her? Doth thou all feareth a mere FOAL enough to chase them so?" Luna stalked closer to Twilight, draping a wing protectively over her savior's back. Ponies all around the shield jerked back as Luna's eye twitched with anger. "Explain thyselves!"
"This, us... would of all be my fault." Berry wriggled out from between a Scootaloo and a pink place to face the princess. He let his tail drag on the ground as he bowed his head in deference to the royal authority.
Pinkie shoved her hoof over Berry's mouth, shuddering back the ticklish giggles of her brother trying to do whatever it took to speak again. She bowed her head a little lower, glancing up to meet Luna's eyes. She had to protect her little brother, even if it meant getting banished and thrown in a dungeon in the place she was banished to. "None of this is Berry's fault. I'm sure there is a perfectly sane reason why all of this is happen-hey!"
Luna's magic carefully wrapped around Pinkie's hoof, the aura pulling the pink appendage off of Berry with the utmost gentleness. The mare guardian leaned forward, kneeling down until she could finally look Berry in the eyes. Faintly, the slightest hint of a smile graced the corners of her mouth as she regarded him. "Forsooth, we must wonder how thine- oh, excuse us, our Old Equish is showing again. How is it, young seapony, that you came so far inland, clearly beloved by the Element of Laughter for her to defend you so?"
"The SEAPONY!" "Get the seapony!"
The crowd instantly shut up as Luna resumed her glare against them. Berry tapped her on the leg before she could berate the crowd further, looking up to her with an expression that Pinkie had carefully helped him tune until it made its target feel the most guilt and forgiveness that a look could generate. "Princess Luna? Pinkie is me- err, my big sister. And best friend forever."
Slight strains of somepony humming trickled through the area, drawing everypony's attention to Twilight. She abruptly stopped as Luna's wing tickled her withers, looking up sheepishly from where she had been bobbing her head. "Oops. Sorry, he kind of reminded me of my BBBFF."
"Right." Berry tuned back to Luna, continuing. "Well, half-sister. My real daddy was a seapony from the seas, but my Ma kept me and raised me like one of 'er own. Ah'm Seamus Bartholomew Pie. Err, Sea Berry Pie."
Luna smiled once more, her lip quivering for some strange reason lost to everypony else in the area. But her joyful mood wasn't to last, as murmurs from the crowd drew her attention. At her command, lightning flashed above, thunder shaking the ground they all stood upon. "Enough! What, praytell, is wrong with seaponies!? Their behavior is not their own fault, but inflicted upon them by that great corrupting wyrm Discord! And here is one, free from that corruption, a citizen of this fair land and a friend of the elements!"
Luna rose up, flapping to hover in the air over the crowd, advancing imperiously upon the nearest section of the nervously shuffling ponies. Her scowl returned, deeper and more infuriated than before as she lowered herself just enough so that she could lean forward and wave her horn threateningly. "Here all of you are, angrily protesting a fellow sentient being! A fellow citizen who has done you no wrong! And our Tia bragged to us of how advanced our little ponies had become. How tolerant and understanding they were. Have you forgotten not even a few weeks ago, when Zecora was properly revealed to you all? Was our Tia mistaken in her judgment, or just fooled by an act put on for her!?"
Nopony dared to answer, as they all laid themselves prostrate on the ground in fear.
"I wouldn't be quite so quick to judge, Luna. Look closer at little Berry, the situation is more complicated than it seems." The crowd jumped to their hooves and parted instantly as the regal voice rang out from behind them. Celestia stepped through the aisle, leading Inkie, Big Macintosh, and a rather haggard looking Applejack.
Luna turned from her Tia to Berry instantly, looking at him again. Pinkie pulled him closer for protection, nuzzling him as Inkie smiled from the other side of the shield. Luna jerked back, giving a quiet moan of horror as she realized exactly what had been going on, causing Twilight to wince and grab her aching head.
Celestia nodded as she opened a small portal in Luna's shield for herself and her trio of followers. "Yes, Berry remains touched by Discord. I had hoped to gain his guardian's permission to study him for a week to determine how he resists the curse, but I'm afraid we may be out of time already."
Twilight perked up, looking at her beloved mentor. "But you said there were no such things as curses!"
Celestia touched her horn to Twilight's, a golden glow coating the unicorn's horn and washing away the burns upon its tip. Celestia smiled a small, regretful smile as she continued. "First of all, well done my faithful student. Pinkie's family remains whole thanks to your efforts. Secondly, I'm afraid I haven't been entirely truthful with you. Again. But perhaps 'curse' isn't exactly the right word I should be using. A better description would be a 'Seed of Discordant Power'. And unfortunately, not all of them were properly cleansed, or easily destroyed."
Luna looked around at the crowd with newfound eyes. The signs were easy to spot once she actually started looking for them instead of being an assuming idiot. The mysterious events that had formerly equaled up to 2+2=Pie suddenly made sense.
Celestia stepped forward, putting a hoof across Luna's path before she could begin to speak. Clearing her throat, a golden glow pulsed from her horn, encompassing the local area. "Be still, my little ponies. I'm afraid that you have come under the influence of a rather unfortunate kind of mind-altering magic through nopony's fault. Go home and rest and you should feel better in the morning."
The crowd began to uncertainly part. None of them wanted to, but nopony wanted to disappoint Princess Celestia either, and their heads felt funny. The alicorn of the day carefully watched them leave, maintaining her aura of calm over the crowd. As soon as they all departed, though, her calm vanished as she descended into the slight twitching of her worries.
"Okay, that could have gone better." Celestia slumped a little, her form looking far less regal than normal with one of her wings in a sling and lacking her regalia. She looked up, fixing Twilight with a worried gaze. "Twilight, I'll need you to work on maintaining the peace in Ponyville. Discord is an ancient demon of chaos whom I, Luna, and Starswirl defeated long ago. Unfortunately, it seems his powers can still leak free through the seeds he left behind. Your fellow bearers will need to wait in their homes while Luna and I repair the wards on his prison and then bring the Elements so you can cleanse what he has already done."
"No. Anypony alone shall be easy prey for him, even with the tenuous touches he can exert." Luna intervened with her magic, picking Twilight and Pinkie up and placing them near the washed-out form of Applejack. "Two could be vulnerable, but three together should be... safe? Odd, there are only three of you. We know we saw the form of the Element of Loyalty, where could she have gone?"
Scootaloo took off her helmet, allowing her unruly mane to spread out so she could nervously scratch it. "Um, I kind-of maybe-sorta got her to take Sweetie Belle and Applebloom somewhere where they couldn't get hurt after she accidentally ran us over while blinded by a really creepy cloud..." She cowered as Celestia raised her eyebrow questioningly.
"Ain't worried 'bout Applebloom, nope."
Everypony looked to Applejack, who shiftily looked around to avoid eye contact. Big Macintosh sauntered over, elbowing her in her ribs for her remark. "Take it back."
"It's not her fault, Big Macintosh." Twilight woozily leaned against Pinkie as she shook her head out to clear the fog of exhaustion. "If Princess Celestia is right, then this power could... oh no. It could turn the Element of Honesty into the Element of Lies!"
Applejack shook her head rapidly, a tear gracing the corner of her eye as she fought the urges running through her body.
Luna sighed, her horn glowing as she sought Rarity out. A flash of light erupted as the fashionata appeared midair, teleported in by Luna. She shrieked; wriggling as she was held in place by Luna until the lunar diarch slowly lowered her to the ground.
Luna spoke up, cutting off Celestia as she did. "Now then, this settles things. Pinkamina must go with Twilight and Applejack, her element as it was wielded by Starswirl proved best at resisting the Wyrm's power. Our Tia has a spell that will allow you to cleanse Applejack. Her touch is not as deep as young Berry's, and your power alone should be enough. Rarity will serve as your counterpart for herself, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash." She looked to Twilight, who nodded uncertainly.
Celestia turned to Big Macintosh, who looked at his sister with worry and pity. As he felt her gaze upon his back, he caught her look, grumpily frowning at her. "Big Macintosh, I swapped places with my assistant when I received the news from my sister."
"Yer wing's hurt." Big Macintosh looked at her, wondering exactly how she had 'replaced' Sunbeam.
"Yes, an unfortunate accident. It's why I teleported in behind you and ran with you, instead of flying into town ahead of you. I know you care for her, and I'll try to..." Celestia cleared her throat as the words caught in it. "Ahem, sorry, I'll see about making sure she has more time to spend with you. For now, though, I must agree with my sister. Take Inkie with you, and stay with your grandmother."
She waited for him to protest, but he said nothing as he turned back to his sister for a moment. He shook his head as his eyes watered ever so slightly, and then took Inkie up with a foreleg over her forequarters. The Pie mare looked to her sister, who nodded hopefully to her. The two turned away as they were reassured, heading for Sweet Apple Acres once more.
Rarity hopped from one hoof to another, trying to avoid the slowly muddying ground and the drizzle from the still rotating storm above. She was squeaking with disgust as she kept up her exhaustive pursuit of cleanliness. "Eeeik! Mud! Mud! Keep it away, keep it away!" She shook her head, finding a dry patch of grass to hop to at last. And then, she spotted Berry. "AAAAAH! Seapony! Keep him away, keep him awaaay!"
"That's my brother, Rarity!" Pinkie hopped over, scooping up Berry in the crook of her leg. She presented the now thoroughly irritated colt to Rarity, holding him just in front of the fashionata's face. "See! He's mostly harmless!"
Celestia tapped Pinkie on her shoulder, regaining the attention. "Yes, a seapony. Rarity, I'm afraid that since it would be harmful to keep him in close proximity to Applejack, you will have to help watch him."
A chorus of 'What?!'s rose up from the collected ponies before Luna stamped her hoof in irritation. Lightning crackled out of the cloud to join her, silencing her opposition. "Tis not up for debate! The discordian infection of Applejack means that we have already been extremely foalish to keep him in such proximity to her for as long as we have! The closer they are, the more power the wyrm receives! Applejack must stay with Twilight, and he must remain outside of town for the time being!"
"Waaaaaaauuuuuuggh!" Everypony, even the princesses jumped as the roaring of air and the scream of two out of control pegasi heralded the return of Rainbow Dash as she fell from the skies, landing with Fluttershy in a skidding halt amidst the group. The reluctant buttery pegasus slowly, gently, and apologetically released herself from Dash's grip from where the chromatic pegasus had driven her into the muddy ground by accident.
Dash erupted from the scene of her crash, zipping about in a panic. "Where are they!? I didn't miss them; please tell me my stupid accident didn't get them caught by that mo- oh... Princess Celestia!" Dash's eye twitched as she sagged with a sense of failure. "I'm bucked, aren't I?"
"Nonsense, perfect timing! Rainbow Dash, did you take Sweetie belle and Applebloom to Fluttershy's cottage?" Celestia beamed widely at the prospect of something finally going right for her for once in her rotten week. Dash zipped backwards a little further as she noticed the solar diarchy’s regalia-less state.
Dash dropped to the ground, bowing to Princess Celestia. "Yes Ma'am- uh, Princess, Ma'am."
Luna smiled, in a manner not quite entirely resembling a shark. Fluttershy yieeped at the sight, zipping over with impressive speed to hide behind Dash. The lunar diarch picked up the duo of foals and the still spluttering Rarity, floating them all over to the pegasus pair. "Excellent! As fair Rarity's place of business is out of the question due to its proximity to Applejack, and Rainbow Dash's residence simply cannot support most of you, Fair Fluttershy's domicile shall perfect for the three of you to watch over Berry and these other... 'Crusaders'."
"Now wait just a minute! I'm not a foalsitter! I've got a storm... to- clear?" Dash looked up, staring in awe as pulses of light from the alicorn's horns drove the storm apart. Her wings jerked spasmodically as she processed the feat. "Right. Alicorns."
Luna ruefully chuckled as Celestia turned a knowing gaze to her. "Yes, uh... alicorns. We should have... perhaps have cleaned up our mess earlier, Tia?"
Dash shook her head, getting back into things. "Right, I'm just not the foalsitting type, Princess. Es."
Scootaloo buzzed her wings once, catching the weather pony’s attention. "I'll form a Rainbow Dash Fanclub Forever?" Scootaloo volunteered herself, trying to sound extra-enthusiastic about it.
"On the other hoof, maaaybe I shouldn't be so hasty..."
Rarity huffed, then spluttered as she considered what staying the night, or heaven forbid TWO nights at Fluttershy's cottage would entail. All those animals, all looking for... feeding, and care and... nonono! Petting! "Oh, no! No-no! I couldn't! I shouldn't! Ask Sweetie Belle, she knows that I am simply dreadful with foals! And especially not with... Berry, was it? I have a shop to maintain, and- and!"
Scootaloo rolled her eyes at Rarity's dramatics. As her gaze wandered up, she caught her mother's own for just a moment. At the look of waning patience on the look of the poor alicorn's face, she decided to bring it on. "And I'll pose for some line of foal's clothes for you while we wait, Rarity."
Berry mumbled out of the corner of his mouth at that. "Braver filly than me."
"Oh! And ALL of my friends would be happy to help as well!" She hooked her leg over Berry's back, dragging him next to her and patronizingly smushed his cheek to prove her point.
Fluttershy had noticed Berry's race as she rose up, quietly fluttering over to pick him up out of Scootaloo's grip, thoroughly irritating the colt once more. "Oh my. Oh my-oh my! Oh! I mean, how kind of you, Scootaloo, helping out a friend like that."
Rarity pursed her lips in thought on the matter. "Well, in that case, I suppose I could suffer through it for-"
Everypony disappeared in a flash of teleportation light as Luna acted hastily.