The defining sound of Sugarcube Corner was, at the moment, ponies milling about.
The Crusaders has seen the line outside but they hadn't quite realized just how packed the interior of the bakery actually was. Understandably, everypony was quite eager to get out of the miserable drizzling rain outside, even if that meant waiting in an area already filled past capacity. This wasn't one of Pinkie's parties; no furniture had been moved around to clear the floor. As such, though the store had contained many more ponies in the past, it was approaching a solid press of soaked bodies coming in from the cold. As fate would have it, this was one of the times when the Cakes were out of town.
“TWO FRITTERS AND A HALF DOZEN MUFFINS!” Pinkie's voice rang out like a clarion over the crowd. She moved like a whirlwind, having to simultaneously man the till, serve the seemingly endless line of ponies, and keep a constant flow of baked goods coming out of the kitchen. Pinkie, for her part, seemed to be in her element. Her main was frazzled, but there was a manic grin on her face as she tried to individually greet each customer as they came through.
To the Crusaders watching from the stairwell, it looked to be one of the most high-risk areas of the entire operation. Signalling the others into a huddle, Scootaloo leaned forward conspiratorially.
“Alright Crusaders, we gotta make it to the kitchen. Once we're back there, we'll be out of sight of the crowd, and as long as we keep a watch out for Pinkie Pie we should be into the easy part.” She cast a glance behind her at the crowd below. “There's no way we're gonna make it down the stairs with everypony facing this way, so what we really need is a distraction. Any ideas?” Apple Bloom tapped her chin before speaking up.
“Well, there's plenty o' stuff up in Pinkie's room, I could maybe find something noisy that we could toss at the far wall?” Scootaloo cast a glance up the stairs and gave a slight shudder.
“No good, Gummy is still up there. If he catches us, Pinkie catches us. I think we gotta work with what we got.”
“Is there anything in your belt we can use?” said Sweetie Belle, eyeing the band of pouch-encrusted fabric buckled around Scootaloo's waist. Scootaloo opened up some of the pouches, revealing that many were empty while a few contained some fishing line and little metal canisters, while a few others had some off-white capsules.
“Nothing that's any good here. If we need to put somepony to sleep or look for tripwires I've got us covered, though.” Apple Bloom made a mental note that Scootaloo had just set a new record for number of suspicious glances earned in the course of an hour.
“When this is all done, yer tellin' us where you learned and got all this stuff, got it?” Scootaloo smiled sheepishly at Apple Bloom. Sweetie picked that moment to prod Apple Bloom in the shoulder, a sly smile across her face as she looked out over the ponies milling about below.
“That idea about throwing something was a good one, and I think I just found something to throw...” She pointed down at a pony trying to cut a path back to the door, a box tied with string held in his mouth while a number of pies balanced on his back. He didn't look to be making much headway. The other Crusaders picked up on the idea quickly.
“You think you can actually grab one of those pies from here?”
“What's the worst that could happen if I don't? It's not like they'll see my horn glowing.” While she talked, Sweetie adjusted the horn silencer, making sure it was still securely in place.
“Eh, good point. Apple Bloom, get ready. If this works, we gotta be down the stairs and into the kitchen FAST.” Sweetie Belle narrowed her eyes, trying to watch the pies as ponies periodically stepped in the way of her line of sight. Focusing, she willed as much energy into her horn as she could muster. As she focused, she realized that she definitely had some amount of control that far out. She could, in a sense, feel the pies with her magic. Every time that she started to get a grip on one though, a lack of line of sight or the noise of the bakery interrupted her focus enough that she lost the spell. Grumbling a little, she clenched her eyes shut and tried to stop listening to the world.
To see the world through unicorn magic is somewhere between echolocation and finding one's way by touch. Sweetie could vaguely feel the presence of the ponies that her magic reached past, could feel the sorcerous warmth that radiated from the horns of other unicorns among the crowd. The shapes were blurry and indistinct- until she found what she was looking for. Like a blind pony feeling along a wall for a familiar doorknob, she could 'see' the pie pans as though they were etched in sunk relief. Oddly, the pies themselves were hazy at best, but she could see the pans as plain as day. Her eyes snapped open, a grin on her face and her eyes tinted with magic, before she reached out and yanked.
On the floor below, nopony was entirely sure what just happened. One moment it had been the usual busy press that Sugarcube Corner was on rainy days, and then... cherries. More specifically, cherry pie filling. Everywhere. The pies had flown on high from the midst of the crowd, before cratering into faces and flanks across the room. In the resulting chaos caused by ponies trying to get cherry filling out of their hair, impaled pie pans off their horns (only slightly more uncomfortable than chewing tinfoil) and trying to figure out who threw the things, nopony noticed the three small fillies slink down the stairs and bolt into the kitchen.
“Sweetie Belle, that was amazin'! I thought ya were just gonna toss one, not chuck 'em all everywhere at once!” Sweetie Belle smiled at Apple Bloom's praise as they began to relax, now that they weren't risking being seen by the crowd.
“Yeah, that went better than I was expecting it to. I guess I've thrown enough of Rarity's plates that I'm pretty good at tossing flat things by now.” Scootaloo cast a glance backwards at her friends, telling them to keep it down through her expression alone. She was fully 'in the zone', and was looking around for where Pinkie would be keeping a recipe book. As she looked up from the mess on the counter, her eyes went wide while her pupils shrank to pinpricks. She had just enough time to gesture frantically at the Crusaders to hide before she herself hit the deck. At almost the same moment, Pinkie Pie bounced into the kitchen wearing a rather malicious smile. She paused and sniffed the air, and looking around with a hungry glint in her eyes. Slowly, she rotated her head to the counter that Scootaloo was hiding behind, her face cast into a somewhat homicidal grin. Her friends could only watch from behind the stacked bags of flour they were hiding behind.
“Here chik-chik-chik-chik...” As she spoke, she moved towards the counter.
“I know you're around here somewhere!” Grinning, she picked up a rather imposing knife off the countertop and started to pace around it, eyeing the area that Scootaloo had disturbed.
“No use in hiding, I can smell yooouuuuu...” The knife dragged across the counter as she walked, disrupting the various baking goods there as the blade rattled against the wood.
Rounding the corner, she reared up and plunged the knife downward. It was all the Crusaders could do to not scream as they heard the knife thunk loudly.
“Elizabeak is gonna love this cake!” What Pinkie lifted from the cluttered table wasn't... well, wasn't what they had been afraid it might have been. Instead, it seemed to be a platter, the knife stuck into it beside the pile of pastry and icing that took up most of it. Platter held firmly in her mouth, Pinkie trotted happily back out to the front. Immediately after she left, Scootaloo fell sideways from her hiding place, trembling and panting for breath. She looked over at her friends, them huddling together in their hiding spot, before the three of them all broke out into a fit of nervous laughter.
“Oh man, for a minute there, I thought she found me!”
“An' when she was draggin' that knife toward ya, I just about passed out!” Scoot just nodded in agreement; she could feel her heart rate starting to come back down.
“Alright, let's get looking for that recipe book. And, uh, let's make sure we've got a good hiding spot to dive to if she comes back.” Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle nodded vigorously, and as they spread out to search the first thing they were all watching for was a good point to hide in a panic. Scootaloo checked the mess on the counter in more detail, laughing to herself as she saw the scattered sheets detailing how to assemble a chicken-shaped cake. Pushing it aside, she started sorting through the mess of dirty dishes, assorted ingredients, and recipes for seemingly anything BUT candy.
Sweetie Belle was faring little better. She'd opted for the part of the room furthest from the door to the front, and was using her telekinesis to push various books (or things that looked like books, as several scattered boxes could attest) off the high shelves. So far she'd found several things she recognized from the front of the store, several things she'd seen Rarity buy, and one extremely dusty book of “Sugar-free pastry recipes”. It didn't look as though it had ever been opened.
Apple Bloom had darted across the doorway to the far side of the room and was busily poking around near an industrial food mixer. She'd found some heavily batter-stained instruction manuals for the machinery, a few empty sacks of sugar, and... Hey, a pink notebook! That's a good sign! Flipping the page, her eyes went wide as she leaned back. Never in her young life had she ever seen a page with so many notes and pictures scribbled in the margins, such unreadable blocks of text that varied wildly in font size, or so many random interjections in what otherwise was trying to be a legible chunk of text- and she'd seen Scootaloo's social studies homework. She flipped the cover of the book shut. This was almost without question what they were after.
Diving across the exposed area of the doorway, Apple Bloom waved her friends over.
“Girls! I'm pretty sure I found it!” She opened it and showed it to them, letting the chaotic writing speak for itself. Sweetie Belle stared it down as though daring it to give up its secrets, while Scootaloo leaned back after a few seconds, blinking rapidly.
“Yeah, that's probably it. I don't think there's any way that we're gonna be able to read anything out of this though-” The Crusaders dogpiled into a corner as Pinkie Pie bounced back, balanced a tray of cupcakes on her unusually messy (even by Pinkie Pie standards) mane, and bounced back out.
“Let's just bring it back to the hideout and figure it out there. I'll just drop it off in her room when we're done!” The other Crusaders nodded their agreement.
“Sounds great, but...” Sweetie Belle interjected, “how are we getting out of here again?” The group looked at each other.
“Well... can't we just go back out the way we came in?” Scootaloo said.
“Past Pinkie Pie, up the stairs without being able to see anypony who I can throw stuff from to make a distraction, then past Gummy? Let's save that for a back up plan. There's gotta be another way out!” The three fillies began looking around, quickly writing off the air vents (too small, even for them), the window (in direct view of the door to the front), and trying to bake a portal through space and time (none of them had any practice at gypsy witchcraft). It was Apple Bloom who finally noticed the slightly obscured stairwell going into the basement.
“Come on, there might be a window down there we can git out of!” pouring out of their hiding spot, they rounded the corner and galloped down the stairs.
Pinkie stuck her head into the back room, one eyebrow raised.
“Huh, thought I heard something. Oh well!”
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*THUNK* “OW!”
Scootaloo rubbed her head and stared up at what she had just run in to. There was no lighting in the stairwell, and with the entrance already obscured it had gotten dark fast. As Sweetie Belle forced a dim light spell into existence, they looked up at the door that Scootaloo had just slammed into.
“Dang Scoots, I think ya cracked the frame!” Sure enough, the wood near the handle was looking worse for the wear, and a thin sliver of light could be seen where the door met the frame, near the handle. Shaking her head, Scootaloo went up and tried to push the door open. It didn't budge.
“Great, it's locked. Now what?” Apple Bloom pushed her way past and started scrutinizing the door.
“Ya did a real number on it when ya smacked it there. Could probably bust it open if you gave it another run or two.” She looked over to see Scootaloo giving her an unbelieving look.
“Are you seriously saying we start breaking stuff?”
“Would ya prefer to explain to Pinkie that we went through her room, tried to take her book and chucked pies around the store?” Scootaloo glared, before giving a somewhat defeated sigh.
“We are in so much trouble if she catches us. Okay, stand to the side.”
Up above, Pinkie's groove was thrown off a little as her ears momentarily flopped down over her face.
“Alright, one...” Scootaloo pawed at the ground, staring down the door.
Wondering what the floppy ears were about, Pinkie's eyes suddenly fluttered.
“Two...” Scootaloo lowered her head, preparing to charge like a bull.
Above, Pinkie's knees gave a spastic twitch. Huh? Beware of opening doors?
“THREE!” Charging forward, there was a rather loud crunch as the door frame splintered and gave around the lock, followed immediately by the sound of pots falling onto a stone floor. The other Crusaders poked their heads in, and saw Scootaloo laying in a pile of metal pots, apparently having continued through the door and knocked a fair number of pots off a shelf. “Well that sucked.”
“Scootaloo, y'all right?” Apple Bloom ran over to lend a hoof, and in short order was pulling a slightly battered looking Scootaloo out from the pile.
“Yeah, doesn't feel like I actually did anything serious.” She rubbed her head again. “Still though, ow.”
“Heh, I knew ya could be thick headed at times, I didn't think it'd be this handy!” Scootaloo shot a momentary glare at the beaming Apple Bloom. “Alright, let's take a look around, see if we can find a way out.”
Meanwhile, on the floor above, Pinkie was sneaking looks into the back room as much as she could, with the line still rather long.
“Hello? Anypony back here?” Glancing around, she gasped as she saw the vacant spot where she'd left her recipe book. Her face fell into a scowl the likes of which normally only seen when Pinkie Promises were broken. “ALRIGHT, WHERE ARE YOU! I KNOW SOMEPONY'S HERE, GIMMIE MY BOOK BACK!”
The Crusaders jumped at Pinkie's voice.
“Aw horseapples! She's onto us! Quick, find something!” Scattering around, it became abundantly clear that the closest thing to an exit was the relatively small window about three quarters up the wall where the wan light was trickling in from. It looked to be at about ground level outside. Sadly, it didn't look to open, either.
“If she sees the door, she'll know we're down here!” Sweetie Belle looked around, fighting the rising feel of panic. “Rarity will be mad at me forever if she finds out I was doing this! We've gotta get out, can't we like break the window or something?”
“Anything heavy enough to break the window is too heavy for us to throw up there!” Sure enough, the pans that had any kind of mass were actually rather bulky. Much more so than they could lift, even with Sweetie's limited magic helping. The three of them spread out in panic, looking for something, anything that would help.
Pinkie was now splitting her time between serving the customers and ducking into the back to look for the intruders, and gradually spending less and less time out front. “I KNOW YOU'RE BACK HERE!”
Down below, Apple Bloom called the others over. She had apparently found a stockpile of extra baking ingredients.
“Alright, here's the plan: We got a pile of pots and stuff down here. Pinkie's also got a bunch of ingredients back there. Do y'all remember when we were gonna be Cutie Mark Crusader Backyard Scientists, and we made all those bottle rockets?” the others nodded. “Well, there's a few big jugs of vinegar and plenty of bakin' soda back there. I'm thinking I use the pots and stuff around here and build us a cannon! We can blow our way out!” Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo gave each other a disbelieving look, but after hearing Pinkie holler upstairs again, they flinched and turned to Apple Bloom.
“Alright, do it. We'll keep watch.”
The next few minutes went between hushed silence when they heard Pinkie yelling while looking for them, and frantic bursts of activity when they figured she was out in front. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo had no idea what exactly the cannon was supposed to look like, but Apple Bloom seemed to have a pretty clear plan in her head, and was looking increasingly pleased as the various pieces came together. Objects were tied together with some scavenged rope, gaps were sealed with concrete-like blends of various baking supplies, and the unit slowly came together. Finally, it was apparently done.
“So... how does this work?”
“Simple! See, the bakin' soda is already in the main chamber there,” Apple Bloom pointed to the two large pots they had more or less fused together, creating a rudimentary pressure chamber with several tubes running to and from it. “And when we pour the vinegar in here and cap it, the pressure builds! Then once it's high enough, we open this valve, and that makes this unit launch whatever's in the barrel!”
The others were pretty mystified as to the specifics. What they got out of it was “Pour stuff in here, let Apple Bloom deal with it, shoot things”. Seemed like a good plan so far.
“Right, let's load it and get out of here!” They spread out, searching for a good pot or pan to use to load the thing with. A couple of minutes later saw a pile of cast iron pans and a sauce pot all stuffed into the firing barrel, and Apple Bloom alone by the machine while her friends kept a safe distance.
“Alright, when this goes it's gonna make a lot 'o noise, so be ready to get out fast! Pinkie'll know we're down here for sure, so we gotta be gone by the time she gets down here!” Stepping over, she hefted a jug of vinegar almost as big as she was, and poured it into a nozzle. An acrid smell began to rise from the machine as she quickly screwed a cap on.
“Aright, firing in five! Four! Three!” Her friends hunkered down as she began her count down. The improvised pressure tank was beginning to shake a little as the pile of baking soda reacted to the flood of vinegar. “Two!” the cap on the tube she had poured the vinegar down was bulging outwards notably. “One!” The entire machine was beginning to rattle, the pressure almost palpable.
When Apple Bloom hit the valve, the room exploded into a cacophony of sound and smell. The scent of third-grade science hit like a truck, while the pile of cast iron erupted from the barrel in a cloud of vinegar foam to crash into the window. When things had quieted enough that they dared to lean out from the various spots of cover they had taken, their jaws dropped.
In one spot, a pan was embedded in the wall. There were dents and gouges around the entire window, and a big crack across the pane itself from where one of the pans had clipped the edge. Not one had managed to make a direct hit though, and the window was still in one piece.
“I KNOW YOU'RE DOWN THERE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”
Apple Bloom swallowed nervously and looked to her friends. “Anypony got a back up plan?”
Scootaloo was staring intently at the window as she stood up from cover.
“You know, I don't think the glass is all that thick. It's hitting it that's the problem. If we could...” as she was walking over, she shuffled her wings slightly, before pausing mid sentence and looking back. After being silent for a moment, she turned to Apple Bloom with a hard look in her eye.
“Apple Bloom, get this thing ready to fire again. This time we're hitting the window with a bullet that can steer.”
“But to reset this I gotta crack the pressure tank! It ain't a quick thing, and-”
“I'M COMING DOWN THERE! I'VE GOT A FRYING PAN, AND I KNOW HOW TO USE IT!”
“And I don't think we got that kind of time!”
Sweetie Belle chose this moment to speak up, staring at a stack of pie pans on one of the shelves. “You two get that thing ready again. I'll keep her busy.” Willing a stack of the pans down, she pushed them over to the door. “Scootaloo, close this behind me, if she sees who I am then we might as well be caught.”
With Scootaloo standing to one side, Sweetie Belle nodded. Scootaloo pulled the door open, and after launching a couple of plates to clatter into the dark stairwell Sweetie Belle pushed the rest forward, her identity obscured behind their bulk. The door shut behind her almost immediately after.
“Good luck, Sweetie.”
Pinkie was rubbing her forehead, having just caught a lightweight pie pan with it. When she looked up, she could see the faint outline of somepony at the bottom of the stairs, next to a stack of... something. “Who are you? Whaddya want with my book!” For speaking around the handle of a frying pan, she had remarkably clear pronunciation. Sweetie, for her part, responded with a clearly fake deep voice.
“Go back upstairs now! I don't want to fight you!” Pinkie raised her eyebrow at this.
“Fight? I don't wanna fight. I just want my book back. And I also wanna know what all the crasheriffic sounds were from down here. So gimmie my book back and explain what you're doing, and neither of us has to fight!”
Sweetie Belle steeled herself, and tried to remind herself that they're only pie pans, it's not like they can actually do any real damage! “I can't do that.”
Concentrating, she wrapped the top pan on her stack with magic. It was so easy to make them spin, especially when she wasn't trying to fight it. Up to speed in moments, she released it. It was just as easy to aim where to throw it, while she wasn't fighting to hang on to it. It streaked up out of the darkness and bent itself bouncing off Pinkie's forehead, knocked her head back slightly.
“OW! That was mean! No more nice Pinkie!”
In the storeroom, the sound of pans bouncing around might as well been the sound of a warzone for the tension it generated. Apple Bloom had poured some other liquid over the improvised sealant, causing it to quickly dissolve. As she was dumping out the sludge onto the ground, Scootaloo was hauling out more vinegar and baking soda from the stockpile. “Gotta clean this out first! If it's still wet, the bakin' soda'll react before we pour the vinegar in and there won't be enough pressure!” After being rewarded with a blank, uncomprehending stare from Scootaloo, she facehoofed. “Just go find a rag!”
Sweetie Belle was finding it easier and easier to throw the pie pans. Pinkie had taken to knocking some out of the air with her frying pan and trying to gain ground, but the barrage was keeping her nearly in place as the storm of tin whirled about.
“Ow! Who ARE you!?”
Sweetie Belle didn't give an answer, instead concentrating on trying to not have her shots blocked by the pan. She was discovering that she could keep some small degree of control over the pans after releasing them, not enough to make them turn drastically but enough to guide their angle of approach. It was proving enough to keep them dodging the pan more often than not, making for a very frustrated Pinkie. Sweetie Belle was slightly in a state of disbelief, she had not expected her plan to work this well. I'm really good at this! I should go play Frisbee with Rarity after this is over!
Inside the room, Apple Bloom was busy sealing the reloaded pressure chamber, while Scootaloo climbed into the barrel and found her footing.
“So when I hit the valve, that upside down pot you're standing on is gonna pop hard. That'll throw you up, from there yer gonna have to make sure you hit the window.” She looked over at the cast iron pan still embedded in the wall. “I don't reckon it'll be pretty if you miss.” Scootaloo gulped, before staring up at the window. Alright Scoots, you've smashed enough stuff lately, you can do this!
“Alright, I'm pouring in the vinegar! Hang on tight!”
Outside, Sweetie Belle had started to 'chamber' her next few rounds before firing them, holding them in midair briefly as they revved up to a high spinning speed before firing them off. They were bouncing off the walls when she went wide, and she was pretty sure she saw sparks once when Pinkie managed to block one. Pinkie, for her part, was starting to wonder what she was dealing with. There was a growing cloud of pie plates that were flying at her, and her jaw was starting to hurt from catching so many hits with the pan. Just when she was preparing a no doubt painful charge down the stairs, a resounding boom followed immediately by the sound of shattering glass came from behind the door. This seemed to trigger a change in the behavior of her diminutive attacker, who simultaneously threw the five pans currently in the air. To her credit, Pinkie managed to block one and dodge two, but one caught in the leg and the other bounced off the wall to knock her in the flank. With a yelp, she lost her footing and tumbled down the rest of the stairs, crashing into the remaining pile of plates which collapsed on to her. Sweetie Belle took the pained groan as her cue to leave.
Ducking into the back room, she was met with the sight of shattered glass, foam and vinegar sludge everywhere, and a soaked but happy looking Apple Bloom. The window was shattered to the point where one might not suspect that there had been glass there in the first place, were in not for the shards on the ground. Getting out was quick enough, Apple Bloom climbing on top of Sweetie Belle to get out before hauling the lighter filly up. By the time Pinkie roused herself and pulled her way out of the pile of plates, the Crusaders were gone, leaving a broken window and a titanic mess in their wake. Her face contorted into the unusual shape of a scowl, as a small green reptile shuffled its way down the stairs to join her.
“Gummy, pack your things. We're throwing a 'nopony breaks into Sugarcube Corner and gets away with it' party.” Her face immediately brightened. “Ooh! I might finally get to use those military-surplus streamers I've been saving!”
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Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom met Scootaloo back at the hideout, after a nervous trek back spent watching for any pink ambushes. She looked, to their relief, to be totally unharmed, though she still had an unreadable expression on her face. Pinkie's recipe book was lying unopened on the floor nearby as she lounged in a corner.
“Scootaloo! Yer all right!” Scootaloo gave a nervous grin.
“Yeah, I guess I'm pretty good at breaking stuff. I mean, I guess I've gotta be...” She took a deep breath and stood up, turning sideways. “after all, I think that's my special talent.” Across her flank was what looked like a broken red brick, the two pieces at an angle to each other with a faint star burst background. She flashed her friends a nervous smile, clearly not sure what they would think. As she looked at them though, she realized that they were both already mid-air and moving at her quickly. She was quickly tackled to the ground in a hug.
“Scootaloo, that's amazing! You got'cher cutie mark! This was the best idea ever! Now we just gotta-” She was interrupted by an explosive gasp from Sweetie Belle, who was prodding her in the flank.
“Apple Bloom, she's not the only one! Look!” Sure enough, there was what looked like a simple blueprint for an apple on her flank, a light blue outline with geometric lines cutting through the darker blue of the interior of the apple. Apple Bloom's eyes lit up like fireworks. As she was about to start talking, her jaw went slack, and she pointed at Sweetie Belle's flank.
Following the line from her hoof, Sweetie Belle looked at her own flank, to see a marking that hadn't been there when the day started. It looked almost like the loop-de-hoop cutie mark that Apple Bloom had briefly had after the incident with Zecora's potions, but the loop was rimmed with a yellow jagged outline, almost like a buzzsaw, that seemed to indicate motion on the part of the loop. “So... what? Is my special talent spinning things then?” Her bewilderment was interrupted by Apple Bloom speaking up.
“So now we've all got our marks... what now? I mean, this is what we were crusading for, right?” This was met with more silence as they reflected on it. Searching for their marks had been what they did, what their friendship had been based on. Now that they all had their marks...
“This doesn't change anything!” Scootaloo stood up, a confident look on her face. “We set out to be Cutie Mark Crusaders Black Ops, and that's what we wound up being good at! But more than that, we got our marks as a team! We're supposed to work together!” The other Crusaders were starting to smile as Scootaloo got in a roll. “All that's different is now we know what we're supposed to be doing! We're good at this kind of stuff, so we just gotta figure out how to do this stuff more! Now, what say we figure out the cara-fill secret?”
This was met by cheers from the other two, who were already starting to climb out of their rather filthy stealth outfits. Bringing the book over, Scootaloo flopped down between them and flipped it open.
Eyes were squinted and brows were furrowed.
“Alright, so, CMC Black Ops codebreakers, I guess?”