"There!" Apple Bloom tied the last knot in her snare trap and stepped back to admire her work. "That ought to do the trick!"
Scootaloo looked down at the large rope loop that Apple Bloom had placed on the ground. "Are you sure the trap needs to be that big?" she asked. "I mean, we're not trying to catch a dragon."
"We might be!" Apple Bloom replied. "Somethin's been stealin' apples from this corner of the farm for a week now, and we're gonna get to the bottom of this mystery if it kills us!"
Sweetie Belle gulped. "I'd really prefer that it not kill us."
"Don't worry," Apple Bloom assured her friends. "I used the rope Big Mac uses to haul the plow around. If he can't break it, nothin' can!"
"That's true," Scootaloo conceded. "Hey, maybe if we catch this thing, we'll earn our trapping cutie marks!"
"Yeah!" Sweetie Belle agreed. "We can be professional creature catchers after all!"
"Cutie Mark Crusader Apple Napper Trappers! Yay!" The three fillies sang as they exchanged a high-hoof.
Suddenly, a rustling could be heard in the bushes. "That's probably the creature right now!" Apple Bloom said. "Quick, everypony hide!"
The three fillies dove into a nearby bush, and waited for their prey to spring their trap.
"Okay, that's it!" Tommy collapsed onto the ground. "My feet are officially on strike! Either we start spreading some ink, or I'm not moving from this spot."
"We're too close to the enemy to use ink," Brianna replied. "It'll give away our position."
"Then I say we all join Tommy's feet on the picket line," Danielle said as she sat down. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm hungry enough to eat that seaweed jerky now. Craig, could you—" She stopped as she watched Craig bite into a red, circular fruit he was holding. "What is that?"
"I dunno, dude," Craig admitted. "I plucked it off a tree we passed."
"You idiot! You don't just pick things off of trees and eat them!" Brianna scolded Craig. "It might be poisonous!" She paused for a moment as she considered the implications of her statement. "On second thought, go ahead and eat it. In fact, do me a favor and share that with Tommy."
Craig shrugged. "It tastes kind of like an apple to me."
"That's not an apple," Danielle insisted. "Apples are green, and tiny, and sour."
"You left out 'gross beyond belief,'" Brianna added, scrunching up her face.
Tommy jumped back to his feet and examined the fruit in Craig's hand. "Well, its core structure and seed count are consistent with an apple," he observed, "but I guess I'd have to see the tree it came from to know for sure."
"No problem, bro." Craig started walking towards the forest's edge. "Follow me."
Craig led the others out of the forest and onto a large, rolling field that was lined with rows and rows of trees, each boasting a bonanza of mysterious red fruit. "Wow!" Danielle exclaimed. "We must have stumbled upon a farm of some sort."
Brianna sniffed the air and gagged. "Oh yeah, definitely a farm."
Tommy started walking alongside a row of trees, staring intensely at each one as he passed. "Hmmm... Broad trunks... Thick, wide-spread canopies... Alternating leaves with jagged edges..." He turned back to the others and shrugged. "I don't know, guys. These trees look pretty apple-like to me."
"There's one last test we need to run." Danielle turned to Craig. "How do you feel right now? Dizzy? Nauseous? Feverish?"
"Honestly, I'm kind of bummed out," Craig admitted. "My music player ran out of juice a while ago, and I left my spare batteries back at the boat."
Danielle smacked her forehead with her hand. "That's not what I meant."
Danielle's stomach suddenly growled loudly, and she sighed. "To heck with it. These things won't kill us any quicker than that jerky will. Seriously, have you seen how they make that stuff?" Danielle reached up and plucked another fruit from a nearby tree, took a deep breath, and took a bite. "Whoa!" she exclaimed. "Bree, you gotta try one of these! This is really good!"
"Really?" Brianna reached up and grabbed a fruit for herself. Her eyes popped wide open the moment the fruit hit her tongue. "This can't be an apple!" she insisted. "This tastes awesome!"
Brianna devoured the fruit in about thirty seconds, and then started grabbing more fruit off of the tree and stuffing it into the pockets of her hoodie. "Hey, don't get too greedy," Danielle warned. "After all, this stuff belongs to someone else."
"Meh. Spoils of war," Brianna said in between bites.
"Yahhh!!" Suddenly, Tommy could be heard screaming over in the next row. "Help! Somebody help me!"
The other Inklings rushed over to the next row of trees, their weapons drawn and ready for whatever they might encounter. What they found, however, was Tommy dangling upside down from a tree, a rope around his ankle, surrounded by three small creatures similar to those they had seen at the train station. The yellow one of the three creatures was yelling at Tommy and pointing at him with its leg, while the others, one with a white coat and the other with an orange one, appeared to be dancing around him.
Danielle couldn't help but chuckle at the scene, and she turned to Brianna. "Are you getting flashbacks to the time when we—"
"We set a trap for 'Slendersquid' and caught your dad instead?" Brianna smirked. "I am now."
"Don't just stand there!" Tommy pleaded. "Help me!"
"Get a hold of yourself!" Brianna replied. "Just transform and you'll slide right out of that thing!"
"Oh. Right." Suddenly, Tommy began morphing into a small, bright-orange squid, causing the orange and white creatures to stop dancing and take a few steps away from him. The yellow one, in contrast, just kept on yelling as Tommy slid out of the trap and flopped onto the ground.
"Any idea what that thing is saying?" Danielle asked.
"Not conclusively," Tommy said as he transformed back into his humanoid form and plugged his ears, "but given the circumstances, I'm guessing she's mad about the fruit we took." He turned the pockets of his pants and sweatshirt inside-out, and held up his hands. "See? I don't have anything!"
The yellow creature scowled at Tommy for a moment, and then turned to face the other Inklings. She immediately started pointing and yelling again, this time at Brianna. "What are you yelling at me for?" Brianna demanded, pointing at Danielle and Craig. "They're eating your stupid food too!"
"Yeah, but we don't have a bunch of fruit stuffed in our pockets," Danielle pointed out.
"Hmph." Brianna glared at Danielle, and then back down at the yellow creature. "Fine. You win," she spat pointedly, digging into her pockets and dumping her fruity spoils onto the ground. "Are you happy now?"
Suddenly, the sound of a rifle firing echoed through the orchard, and a blast of orange ink flew over the yellow creature and struck Brianna square in the face, sending her sprawling to the ground. She popped back up almost immediately, sputtering mad. "Whoever did that is toast!" she raged.
The inky trail of the blast led back to the orange creature, who stood over Tommy's rifle with a sheepish look on its face. "Don't play with that!" Tommy said as he snatched the gun away.
"Why you little shrimp!" Brianna lunged at the orange creature, and it took all three of the other Inklings to hold her back. "I'm gonna splat you so hard, your unborn children are gonna feel it!"
Despite the language barrier, the three creatures got the gist of Brianna's message, and they quickly turned and ran screaming from the area, leaving the Inklings to deal with Brianna's rage. "Let it go, Bree!" Danielle pleaded. "It was an accident!"
"Let me go!" Brianna demanded. "If they get away, they'll blow our cover!"
"We're fine," Danielle tried to explain. "I mean, how old could they have been, eight? Ten? The others won't believe them about us any more than Dad believed us about Slendersquid. They run away, we hide, the ink dries up, and nobody knows we were ever here."
"Fine." Brianna yanked her arm free from Danielle, and started picking her fallen fruit back up off the ground. "But I'm taking these for my pain and suffering!"
"You had to play with their stuff, didn't you?" Apple Bloom shouted at Scootaloo as the Crusaders dashed across the orchard.
"Hey, I wasn't the one calling them thieves!" Scootaloo shot back.
After running halfway across the north fields, the Crusaders spotted Applejack coming towards them with Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, and Fluttershy in tow. "Land sakes, girls!" Applejack exclaimed as the Crusaders approached. "Where are y'all goin' in such an all-fired hurry?"
"We found the rascals who were stealin' our apples!" Apple Bloom replied. "But Scootaloo had to go and make 'em mad!"
"It was an accident!" Scootaloo insisted. "The thing we caught dropped something, and I wanted to see what it was, but then it shot this orange stuff onto—"
"Orange?" Twilight and Rainbow exchanged looks of concern. "Where did you see these creatures?" Twilight asked.
"It was just over the hill a ways, near the edge of the north fields," Apple Bloom explained.
"Come on, girls!" Rainbow Dash said as she leaped into the air. "If we hurry, we can catch them while they're still in the orchard!"
The ponies raced over to where the Crusaders' encounter had occurred, but by the time they arrived, the only evidence that remained was a rope, a trail of ink from Scootaloo's shot, and a few discarded apple cores. "It's them all right," Twilight confirmed as she examined the ink. "This is the same substance we found in the Whitetail Woods."
Rainbow grimaced as she looked down at the ink. "All right girls, spread out!" she ordered. "These hairless bear things couldn't have gotten far, and we need to find them before they cause any more trouble. Twilight, you and I will search the orchards from the air. Applejack and Fluttershy, you two case the forest from the ground."
"What about us?" Apple Bloom demanded. "What do we get to do?"
"You want to chase these things?" Sweetie Belle asked. "I was going to say we should find a safer cutie mark to get."
"I've got an idea!" Scootaloo interrupted. "We were running pretty fast to get away from those things. I'll bet we could get a cutie mark in sprinting!"
"We were goin' fast, weren't we?" Apple Bloom said. "Why, we could be the fastest fillies in all of Equestria!"
"Why, uh, that's a swell idea!" Applejack agreed. "You should start by seein' how fast you can run back to the house."
"Cutie Mark Crusader Rapid Racers! Yay!" the Crusaders shouted as they turned and made a beeline for the farmhouse.
"Phew!" Applejack wiped some nervous sweat from her brow. "I'm glad to see them go! These bear things you were tellin' me about could be dangerous, and I don't want those three to get hurt."
"I'm sure those bears didn't mean to scare them," Fluttershy said. "In fact, the girls probably scared the bears, what with them being in a strange place so far from home."
"I guess we'll find out." Twilight jumped up to join Rainbow Dash in the air. "We'll meet back here in an hour, but give a yell if you find anything before then."
"Right!" With that, the ponies paired off and and began searching for any signs of their surprise guests.
After retreating into the forest, the Inklings tried to regroup and determine their next move. "All right gang, I think we've seen enough for now," Danielle declared. "We should head back to the boat, and—"
"No way!" Brianna objected. "The minute someone decides to believe those kids, we lose the element of surprise. We should move in right now, and claim this territory for Inklingkind!"
"We can't engage them now!" Tommy objected. "We should lay low for a while, let whatever concerns those kids raise dissipate, and continue gathering data from a safe distance."
Brianna glared at Tommy. "Look, Dr. Do-Very-Little," she snarled, "do you want Sarge to read us the riot act again? Our objective is—"
"I know what our objective is!" Tommy snapped back, his suddenly-sharp tone taking Brianna by surprise. "But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe an advanced species in its untouched habitat, and once we make contact with them, we lose that opportunity forever!"
"You coward!" Brianna jabbed her finger in Tommy's chest. "You're just afraid!"
"And you're just delusional!" Tommy countered. "Taking on several hundred mysterious creatures with a four-squid team is a suicide mission!"
"Relax, dudes." Craig threw one arm around Brianna and the other around Tommy. "Life's too short to—"
"Stay out of this!" Brianna and Tommy shouted in unison.
"Bree, Tommy, focus!" Danielle pleaded. "Those things'll hear you if you keep yelling!" The others ignored her, however, and eventually she ran out of patience. "Fine!" she said, throwing up her hands and walking away. "Stay here if you want. I'm out of here."
Danielle stomped off aimlessly into the forest, unsure of where she was going but too frustrated to actually care. She walked until the bickering of her teammates stopped ringing in her ears, at which point she stopped and rested against a tree while she thought about her next move. While both Brianna and Tommy wanted to hang around (albeit for different reasons), it just wasn't feasible without more supplies, and the creatures would eventually get suspicious if the Inklings kept mooching off of their farm. She considered just ditching her team and making a run for the coast, but she couldn't just abandon Brianna and the others like that, and besides, it wasn't like there was a kettle of fish and a working boat waiting for her. "Come on Danielle, think!" she demanded, banging her head against the tree. "What would a real leader do?"
The sound of nearby voices snapped Danielle back to her senses, and she dove behind the tree and peered out to see who was ambushing her. She spotted two four-legged creatures passing by less than twenty feet from her position, and while they were yellow and orange like the tiny creatures she had seen earlier, these two were full-size, and one even sported a special piece of headgear. Not the freshest hat I've ever seen, Danielle thought to herself.
The creatures stopped and looked around for a moment, but didn't seem to notice the Inkling nearby. Suddenly, however, a particularly-loud scream from Brianna echoed through the forest, causing the creatures to stop and look in the direction of Danielle's team.
"Darn it, Bree!" Danielle muttered under her breath. Running into a couple of small kids could be laughed off, but if these larger creatures bumped into her team, then there was going to be a confrontation, and things would go downhill in a hurry. She had to do something, and fast.
"Hey!" Danielle shouted as she stepped out from behind the tree and pointed her weapon at the creatures. "Stop right there!"
The creatures stopped and turned towards Danielle, and the two sides stared awkwardly at each other for a moment. Well, at least they listened, Danielle thought. Now what do I do?