//------------------------------//
// Trail - HapHazred 
// Story: AppleDash Group Collab 
// by DbzOrDie 
//------------------------------//

Applejack slowly poked her head through the doorway, her eyes narrowed and lips pursed. Balanced on her rump was a basket, filled to the brim with apples, but she didn't look like this was anything to celebrate. This time, something fishy was afoot.

It didn't take her long to notice another apple, laid out on the wooden floorboards, tempting her.

"Another one!" she hissed, picking it up by the stalk and tossing it into her basket. "That's thirty one apples!"

Applejack was by no means a great detective, but she knew enough to know that thirty one apples did not simply get 'dropped'. Not even Applebloom was this clumsy.

And besides, why would they take the crops indoors? Apples had to be processed first, the earth pony way. They had to be checked, and cleaned, then checked again... Quality came first.

Applejack held her nose close to the ground like a bloodhound as she stalked the halls of her house. Not a few moments later did she find the thirty second apple, on the second stair of the staircase. Applejack put it with the others, more suspicious of foul play than ever.

"Who'd be so silly as t'leave all these apples 'round the farm?" she whispered to herself. She briefly wondered why she was being so quiet... she couldn't help but feel manipulated somehow.

And there, right in front of her bedroom door, was the thirty third.

Applejack exploded into the bedroom, driven by the adrenaline of knowing she had found the culprit of this mysterious crime.

"Ah ha!" she shouted. "Found y—oomph!"

She was tackled almost instantly by a blue ball of feathers, knocking her, her apples, and her dignity to the ground.

"Ha! I knew it would work!" Rainbow exclaimed. "You are so predictable!"

All the pieces fell into place. Rainbow left the trail of apples... some silly prank, Applejack imagined, to make fun of her and her apparent (but false, in Applejack's opinion) obsession with her crops.

"Rainbow!" she roared, pushing the exited pegasus off of her. "I'm not... It ain't like I was overwhelmed by the smell of apples!" Her temper began to fly as Rainbow started to giggle childishly. "I'm more than just some apple fiend! I was jes' tryin' to find who'd be so useless as to lose all the crops!"

"I know! That's what I meant!"