The seven of them stacked up outside the old house at the edge of town. They'd been tracking a new, magical threat to Canterlot for weeks now, and it seemed like they'd finally gotten it cornered.
Twilight Sparkle adjusted her glasses and checked the palm-sized device in her hand. "The magical readings are coming from inside the house."
Her dog, Spike, helpfully hung around for reassurance.
"It's a good thing we're not already inside," said Rainbow Dash. "That would totally be a horror movie cliché, 'oh, it's coming from inside the house!'"
"Can you focus?" said Applejack, from behind her. "And stop wavin' that gun around!"
"Hey, my finger's off the trigger, I remember what happened last time," said Rainbow.
"Um, I think I'm having a problem with my gun," said Fluttershy. "The safety doesn't seem to be working."
"Darling, it's a Glock. It doesn't have a safety," pointed out Rarity.
"Oh dear."
"Can we just get moving, before we totally ruin the element of surprise?" asked Sunset Shimmer.
"Pinkie," ordered Twilight, gesturing with her non-gun hand.
"Yep!" Pinkie Pie replied, igniting the small pyrotechnic tube in her hands. The explosive charge blew the door off its hinges and the seven of them charged inside.
They swept the first room, finding nothing. Twilight held up her magic detector again. "The sorceress seems to be on the upper floor, I think."
"The second, or the third?" Sunset asked.
"We'll just have to find out," Twilight replied.
Applejack and Rainbow flanked the walls to the staircase. "On my signal," said Applejack.
"What's the signal?" Rainbow asked.
"Yes, that seems important," Rarity added, as she lined up.
Applejack said, "The signal is 'go.'"
Pinkie ran forward, zooming up the stairs.
"That...wasn't the signal, was it?" asked Rainbow.
"No." Applejack sighed. "Let's go."
The group of them raced after Pinkie, catching up with her on the landing.
"You have to stay with the group," Sunset reminded her. "Who knows what we could run into? We're dealing with powerful magic here."
"I mean, aside from unicorns and mind control and demons and sirens and more mind control?" said Pinkie.
"Yes," said Twilight. She checked her detector again. "I'm getting a split signal now. We should search this floor."
The group spread out again. They were interrupted by a gasp from Rarity, and came rushing to her rescue.
"This is simply horrible!" Rarity had her hand over her mouth as she stared into a closet. She holstered her gun to free up both hands for horrified mouth-holding.
"Um, what are we looking at?" Rainbow asked.
"This dress...it was bought new last week, according to the tag. I can only imagine this sorceress plans to wear it to the Fall Formal this weekend. It's exactly the dress I was planning to wear!"
"Um...the fiend?" said Fluttershy.
"I'm glad you understand."
"But what does this have to do with anything?" Applejack huffed.
"Now hang on, it might actually tell us something," said Twilight. She frowned. "Wait, Canterlot High's Fall Formal is this weekend?"
"When is Crystal Prep's?" asked Sunset.
"Last weekend. It's possible she wore the dress to Crystal Prep instead."
Rarity brightened. "Really?"
"Wouldn't you know if she did?" said Applejack. "Weren't you there?"
"Twilight's a shut-in nerd," Pinkie reminded her.
"But then how did she get an invitation to a dance at Crystal Prep?" asked Sunset.
"Well, if we find her, we can ask her," said Rainbow. "After we kill her."
"Isn't that a little violent?" Fluttershy put in worriedly.
"There's also the problem of shooting first and asking questions later," Rarity commented.
"Well excuse me if we happen to live in a state with laws that make it easier to buy a gun than learn the arcane arts of magic," Rainbow shot back.
"Yeah, Texas is great," said Applejack.
"Girls, please focus," said Twilight. "Have we found whatever was on this floor that the detector was detecting?"
"What about this spell book?" said Pinkie, indicating a large, old book on a table.
"How do you know it's a spell book?" Sunset asked.
"I made the assumption based on the tell-tale ancient runes on the cover and the fact that the cupcake recipe doesn't sound that appetizing."
"Cupcake recipe?" muttered Twilight. She shook her head. "Nevermind. There's definitely something here, but I don't think it's exactly advisable to go touching magic artifacts."
"I kinda already did." Pinkie grinned bashfully.
"And you were okay?" said Twilight.
"Aside from having to see that yucky cupcake recipe."
"Okay, we should keep moving. We can come back and deal with the book later," said Sunset. They headed for the third floor.
It wasn't too hard to locate the sorceress. She was the old crone wearing a cloak and hovering a few inches off the floor.
"Stop right there!" shouted Sunset.
"Or what?" said the sorceress.
"Did we have a plan for that?" Pinkie whispered.
Rainbow pointed at the gun in her other hand.
"Or we'll stop you!" Twilight replied for the group.
Rainbow rolled her eyes and shrugged.
"Okay, let me 'splain a thing or two to you," said the sorceress. "Firstly, you be-yatches have no idea who you're dealing with. Secondly, you can't stop what you can't catch!" She cackled and reached a hand into her pocket, throwing a handful of powder to the floor, where it exploded into a smoke screen.
Coughing, the girls backed off. "You know, we don't have to do this now," said Fluttershy. "We could have a nice showdown at the school, were we've always had them before."
"What makes you think she's going to be at a school?" said Rainbow. "She's old!"
"Yes, but she has quite a lot of clothing that certainly doesn't fit her age," said Rarity. "And her age certainly doesn't fit her lingo."
"So she's got some sort of age-changing spell?" said Twilight. "It could be in that book."
"You mean this book?" said Pinkie, appearing just then from downstairs with the article in question.
The sorceress suddenly emerged from the smoke. "Put that down!"
"Maybe there's a spell in there to vanquish her," said Rainbow.
"Any trick in the book that we can find," said Rarity. She paused and looked around. "Nobody got that reference?"
"What?" said Sunset.
"Come on, from Donovan's most famous song?"
"We ain't got time for some rapper," said Applejack.
"How dare you!" Rarity shot back.
"What about this spell?" said Twilight, flipping pages. "'Witch Wipeout.'"
"Are we really going to do magic on the fly when she's literally right across the room from us?" said Sunset.
"I mean, the option is still open to have large chunks of her vital organs sprayed across the room from us," Rainbow said, again indicating her gun.
"Just...let me focus," said Twilight. "Okay, this spell's pretty easy. Just a few simple things and..."
The book began to glow. It lifted out of Twilight's hands and floated upwards, gently closing. After that, it zipped across the room and whacked the sorceress across the face so hard it knocked her right off her feet.
The group tentatively approached. "Huh," said Applejack. "Looks like she was wearin' a mask." She bent down to pull it off.
"Derpy?!" the all exclaimed at once.
"Yeah, and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids and your dog."
"We're the same age as you," Fluttershy pointed out.
"Hey, I think that blunt force trauma fixed her eyes," said Rainbow, kneeling down in front of Derpy.
"Why did you do it?" Sunset asked.
"Do what?" Derpy frowned.
"The whole..." Sunset gestured. She glanced at the others.
"You know, the..." Applejack frowned. "What did she actually do?"
They were all quiet for a moment. "I think we just kind of followed the magic trail on the assumption that something nefarious was going on," said Twilight.
"And then we attacked her," said Fluttershy.
There was an awkward silence. "Um, so..." said Pinkie.
Rainbow hit Derpy with the book, in the back of the head this time. "Let's just get out of here and tell everyone the sorceress is up to her old tricks again and given this town's track record nobody will question it, especially since it's either our word or hers."
They all quickly cleared out.
Derpy sighed. "I really wish they didn't do this every Halloween."