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// Night 1 
// Story: Several Nights at Pepperoni's 
// by Mod On Death 
//------------------------------//

	Bloomheart had had a late shift at Ponyville Hospital today and was finally glad to be getting home. Several times on the flight over she thought she'd conk out or something and crash. All she wanted to do was get to bed and sleep till whenever she wanted.
The store was dark as she got out her keys to unlock the door. That was normal, seeing as it was just past midnight. Unlike other places, they kept a reasonable schedule and knew that nothing good comes in after midnight. What did surprise her however was the noise she heard on the other side of the door. She stopped jingling the keys for a second and listened, hearing what sounded like fast footsteps.
"Who could that be?" she asked, trying to figure out if it was her husband our daughter moving about in the dark. She got the key and opened up the door to find...absolutely no one. "Definitely heard someone," she said as she locked up. She attempted to turn on the lights only to find that they wouldn't work. 
"I'm too tired for this shhhhh-" She stopped talking right then as she was certain that something had just started to move in the kitchen. Whatever it was sounded like it was in a hurry. Bloomheart, certain that it was a family member, called out.
"Sound?" she said, immediately feeling regret. She suddenly realized that if it was a family member then they would have turned on the lights. The fact that the lights wouldn't turn on either made her certain that somepony had turned off the breaker switch for them, leading to her coming to one conclusion.
Robbers! she thought, suddenly looking for someplace to hide. She heard more rustling and momentarily had her heart stop when she heard the door to the kitchen swoosh right open. She was suddenly in the room with the robbers.
Trashcan! she thought, quickly moving into the trashcan near the door as quickly as possible. It smelled, but it was better than the alternative. I'll need to remind Sound to take out the trash before we close up she thought in between moments of terror when she felt the pizza cheese sticking to her coat.
Bloomheart kept hearing the sound of running most of the night, her eyes peeled open by fear and adrenaline in the hopes of not being found. At one point she felt it had somehow become routine. The robbers just seemed to run around and not even search for anything. Either the robbers couldn't find anything of worth or their robber was a jogging pony that had gotten seriously lost. Eventually the running seemed to soften to her ears, her eyes feeling like they needed her to blink for just...

"Bah!" Bloomheart yelled. She quickly got up and tipped over the trash can she had been hiding in. She worried for a moment, sure that she had alerted the robbers when she looked around and saw nothing going on. She checked the time which was half past six and decided to look around to see what was stolen. Getting out of the filth, she looked around to see almost nothing disturbed in the eating area. She decided to check the kitchen when she noticed a large box just sitting in front of the counter.
"Whats this for?" she asked, checking the sight out. She saw hay on the floor and reasoned it must have been in the box when she finally noticed what had been inside it.
"SUPER FUDGE!" she yelled out, surprised by the large furry creature just standing there. She instinctively flew up to the ceiling, banging her head in the process and falling back down. Hearing the racket, Pepperoni and Sound came rushing down.
"What's going on?" Pepperoni asked, seeing his wife scurry backwards with her hind hooves.
"That thing! What is that?" She pointed over to the bipedal wolf standing right outside the box, scared of what it might be.
"Oh. That's an animatronic dad bought," Sound explained. "He said it's to keep kids entertained and stuff."
"Does it run around?" The two were confused by that question.
"What do you mean 'run around'? It's one of those singing robots." Pepperoni had on idea what she was talking about.
"Last night! I got home just past midnight and heard running through the restaurant! I even heard the door to the kitchen open!" Taking heed of what she said, the two checked back in the kitchen to see what had happened. Bloomheart followed behind. finding that the kitchen was left completely in tact.
"You sure that somepony was back here?" Sound finished checking the walk-in, finding nothing out of place.
"I mean, I heard something like running. It would start and stop. I'm sure of it." Bloomheart sat down and collected her thoughts. "I'm so sure."
"The only thing I'm finding suspicious right now is a weird smell. You know what I'm saying, Sound?" Sound nodded in agreement.
"Oh. That's probably me. I was hiding in the trashcan last night." The two went 'ew' upon hearing that.
"That's my bad. Forgot to change the bags last night," Sound apologized.
"Honey, I think you need to rest upstairs. You probably had a long night and just worried when you heard something odd."
"You're probably right. I'll just clean up and rest. Probably nothing to worry about." Bloomheart went upstairs, giving one last glance at the strange wolf animatronic. She noticed that one of its ears was ragged looking, as if something had ripped at it. Before looking away, she could swear that it looked right back at her.