The Tournament Of Friendship

by FourShadow

Chapter 24: One Confectionary To Go

Author's Note:

We are back!

The rain continued to drizzle on the grounds. A few drops of rain tapped against the windows of the school, but no one minded. And Trixie's friends certainly didn't mind this at all as well!

"Okay Trixie, show us your grand illusion, what have you mastered?" Octavia said, pulling up a chair in excitement.

"Show us what you've got," Amethyst smirked.

Trixie squeaked. "Okay, okay, let me think, okay... How about something spoookyyyy? Ooooohhhh," Trixie said in her best spooky voice.

"Oh, I don't know, how spooky are you talking about?" Vinyl asked.

"Not too spooky, I promise. If you want me to stop, just say the word, and the illusion will die," Trixie said, assuring her friend.

"Well... okay," Vinyl said, nodding.

"Okay, first thing's first. Can you girls just huddle together right here?" Trixie gestured over to the steps she was standing on, just nearby the rested keyboard. "Great! Okay, now..." Trixie closed her eyes, imagining her new illusion. "Let us create something dark and misty..."

Slowly, the room began to change around the girls. A misty thick fog began to roll in out of nowhere. And the light in the room began to dimmer down becoming darker, as dark as the night sky. The sounds of the sea crashing against rocks echoed in the girls ears, and the soft dinging of a bell. Looking down at their feet, they were no longer sitting on steps in a practice room. Why it looked like they were teleported out of the room and onto some dark rocks near a lighthouse.

The walls were gone, there was nothing there that looked like the practice room. But as the fog rolled in some more, three glowing red lights cut through like knives. And pairs of glowing purple eyes made themselves present.

My heart is pierced by Cupid
I disdain all glittering gold
There is nothing can console me
But my jolly sailor bold

Their bodies pushed through the waters, now walking on stones towards the group of friends, ever so ominously...

Come all you pretty fair maids
wherever you may be
Who love a jolly sailor bold
that ploughs the raging sea

The three Dazzlings approached the trio of friends, hips swaying with every step they took. Their eyes locked onto the girls as they walked towards them in hypnotizing manners.

My heart is pierced by Cupid...
I disdain all glittering gold...

Adagio bent forward to gaze deep into their eyes, almost hypnotic were the pupils in her eyes.

There is nothing can console me... but my Jolly Sailor Bold...

"Impressive, isn't it?" Trixie asked, feeling a little bit of pride.

"It's like they're right in front of me... and I don't know if she wants to kiss me or feed on my organs," Amethyst shivered.

Trixie giggled a bit.

"Don't worry, it's not real," Trixie said, nonchalantly waving her hands. "In fact... oh, check this out!"

Trixie looked at the three Dazzlings standing, and in a flash of light, they were miraculously changed into different looking forms. Their demeanor wasn't ominous, but their outfits were completely different. Suddenly they were dressed in various outfits; Aria was now a biker, Sonata was dressed in an Indian attire, and Adagio was sporting a construction worker outfit.

"Cool huh?" Trixie grinned.

"Wonder what they'd say if they were here right now..." Vinyl said, rubbing her chin.

"Oh I got that covered," Trixie winked.

"I haven't worn something like this since the 90s," Aria said, looking down at her jacket. "Put me in a biker bar, I'll blend right in."

"Oh reeaallly?" Octavia said, coyly.

"Mmmhmm," Aria winked.

"Say uh, Sonata," Vinyl asked, just for fun. "When did you wear that?"

"Well in the Old West, somewhere in 1882, my sisters and I were planning on staying in a small town to lay low, but I got tossed off the train by some outlaws. Next thing I knew, I was being taken care of by some Native Americans who nursed me back to health and got me back on my feet!" Sonata grinned.

"Mmmhmm," Vinyl said, folding her arms, deep in thought.

"Again girls, I don't really know if this is anything they'd say, but this is all from my imagination," Trixie shrugged.

"Oh, well, I think it's rather adorable," Adagio giggled, 'patting' the top of Trixie's head.

Trixie blushed a little bit, looking at her friends who smirked. "... Okay I know Adagio would say that. She always calls me adorable."

Octavia rolled her eyes, chuckling. "Well you keep on going with the illusions, I think I'm going to help Bon Bon find Lyra," Octavia said, walking to the doors.

"Okay," three chimed.

"Let us know if you need help, okay?" Trixie offered. "I'm sure she's fine, but if there is something wrong..."

"I'll know who to holler. I know," Octavia winked.

The door slammed shut.

"So, okay, anything else you can do?" Amethyst asked, excited like a little girl.

"Well... that was honestly all that came to my brain at the time," Trixie blushed, rubbing her scalp.

"Wait...", Amethyst stopped, thinking for a moment. The thought started to make her grin, and snicker a bit. "Oh-oh, this is gonna be good," she snickered again.

"What, what?" Trixie asked.

"Well... I wasn't sure if I should ask, but there was a funny idea I had for a prank rolling around in the back of my head," Amethyst grinned, cheekily.

"What is it?"

"Oh, it's a good one, and Trixie? I think your illusions are the key..."

---

While Trixie dazzled her friends with her newest tricks, the Rainbooms and their new friends took refuge over in the home economics room. It was mostly used as a hangout by CHS during break hours, since the place included a few couches along with plenty of outlets for students to plug in their equipment if they needed a charge. And a small TV was in there as well. Sugarcoat and Applejack were curled up on the couch while Pinkie Pie and Lemon Zest were over in one of the kitchens. The rest of their friends just sat at a table playing a game with sets of cards that they brought along with them.

"Sugarcoat? Mind if I ask you somethin'?"

Sugarcoat nodded. "Of course".

"How come you're so blunt and honest with everyone? ... Uh, not to be rude or anything, I just... I was just askin'."

The bespectacled girl smiled. "I understand, Applejack. But there's a reason I'm blunt. Ever since I was 6, my dad always told me to be honest with everyone, no lie, no nothing. Now, I understand telling the truth can hurt... but lying to your friends can be just as hurtful. But you know what helps when you're being honest?"

"What?" Applejack intrigued.

Sugarcoat stood up and grabbed a soda from the fridge. "One thing that helps me, in most cases, at least, is adding a bit of positivity or constructive criticism. You put those elements in with a hurtful truth, it could help you be a better person. It helped me with my friends at least."

Applejack giggled. "When did you learn to use that?"

"4 years ago. I uh... I might have... I might have made Lemon Zest cry by accident," Sugarcoat blushed, clearly ashamed.

"Well, what did you say?"

Sugarcoat popped the tab on the soda can. "I gave her my opinions on one of her favorite cartoons. ... it made her cry. But after a talk with Indigo, she managed to reel me in, and I was able to get Lemon to understand that it was just my opinion and she shouldn't take it straight to heart. As I say, if you like something, you go ahead and enjoy it, don't let someone like me stand in the way." Sugarcoat took a sip of her drink and immediately performed a spit take, splattering the wall with impeccable accuracy. ... "This is not soda."

The home ec door opened up, and entered a frantic looking Bon Bon.

"Bon Bon? You okay?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"No, I'm not," Bon Bon shook her head. "I don't suppose any of you two saw Lyra?"

They shook their heads in response, making the baker groan.

"Great... Look, if you see her, let me know, okay?"

"Well, what happened, darling?" Rarity asked.

"Okay, one... it's weird to hear you call me that when you're wearing the rock and roll mohawk," Bon Bon pointed out. "Second, she went off to get a snack, but she didn't come back. I know she gets side-tracked from time to time, but I don't know, something doesn't feel right," Bon Bon said, holding onto her arm.

"I'm sure she's fine, she's got teleporting powers, she probably just boomed somewhere else," Rainbow Dash shrugged.

Bon Bon sighed. "I hope so. Just let me know if you see her, okay?"

"Okie-doki-loki!" Pinkie chirped.

Bon Bon just chuckled, rolling her eyes as she stepped out of the room. Lemon and Pinkie Pie, completely oblivious to Bon Bon's entry, just focused on their own activity; cookies!

"Salt?"

Lemon was handed the salt which she tossed into the batter.

"Baking soda?"

And the baking soda was handed.

"Baking powder?"

And the baking powder was given.

"Chocolate milk?"

The cup was passed to her and she took a quick sip. "Okay I'm good! Pinkie, you think you can finish the rest?"

"You got it! Done!"

Lemon was frozen. Not even a few seconds had passed, and Pinkie Pie had gotten all of the ingredients mixed up in the bowl nice and evenly. "How??? How did you even mix all of that up so fast?"

"It's Pinkie Pie! Don't question it!" Applejack called from the couch.

Lemon's finger drooped. "Oh. Well okay then. You did this before?"

"Yep! I am a master of baking! I do wish I could do it more often though," Pinkie frowned.

"Why can't you?"

"Well... I kinnnnndda made some guys mad these last couple of months. And I'm kinda known as a party killer here now," Pinkie slumped, her hair slowly deflating into limp and flat.

"Aww, Pinkie... need a hug?" lemon asked.

"... Yes."

Lemon pulled Pinkie into a hug. "Hey, it's okay... it's okay, Zesty's here..." she rubbed her back, holding Pinkie close in a warm embrace. "Hey. Tell you what. I got something that could cheer you up."

"What?"

Lemon reached over into the bowl with a small spoon, scooping up some dough. "Cookie dough?"

Pinkie clutched the spoon and took a bite of the dough. After the third bite, she stopped. A smile grew on her face and her hair poofed back into it's lively and bouncy nature.

"This is the best. Cookie dough. Ever!!!!"

Lemon squealed a little.

"You made all of this?'

"Well, duh! You were right next to me for the past 10 minutes!" Lemon giggled. "Besides, this is family recipe, I've got this on lock down!" She grinned as she tried a spoonful herself. "The trick is... sometimes you have to know the person. If you want to get them to smile, you need to know what their problem is, you have to know what emotions they're going through. Depending on their problems... that's when you can find out how to make them smile again. It's how I got Indigo to deal with losing at a soccer game, it's how I got Sugarcoat to deal with not landing her first date, Sunny and her ex-boyfriend, Sour and..." She looked back to the table and whispered to Pinkie. "Sour Sweet when she lost her mom--"

"--HOW DARE YOU--"

"I'm sorry, I needed an example!" Lemon cried. "Anyways... look. The key to get people to smile again, is just knowing what's bugging them or getting them down, and that's when you can fix it. Just a little willpower."

Pinkie smiled before hugging Lemon again. "Thanks Zesty."

"Aww, no problem Pinkie," Lemon cooed, hugging her again. "Now come on, lets get the cookies onto the sheet! But don't let me have too much of that batter, or else I'm just going to eat the whole thing," Lemon giggled.

Just then, a single hand was heard knocking on the door, almost erratically. Rarity walked up to answer it, and opened it, revealing an out of breath Trixie.

"Trixie? What on earth happened to you?"

Trixie raised a hand up, silently asking her to wait. "First... whew, I need to hit the gym some more... there's, uh, there's an angry mob down the hall," she said nonchalantly.

"What?" Rarity asked, confused.

"There's--"

"Hey! Isn't that the chick who hated on that Daring Do Movie!?" An angry voice called.

Trixie froze. Her eyes looked down the other direction out of fear.

"GET HER!" Another angry voice shrieked before an entire crowd shouted with fury. Trixie immediately ran away from the door, and to Rarity's shock, an entire angry mob was seen running down the hallway. But what made this disturbing was the amount of people that were running with pitchforks and torches! Their screams were like banshees, and a few voices shouting 'Burn her!' were among them.

And as they ran, Sour Sweet stood up, watching the pack dash through like a stampede, all the while just casually munching on a tortilla chip.

"This reminds me of one of my family reunions. Though we do this mostly if there's no more steak and we need to run to the store!" She yelled over the crowds. When the running mob died down, there was only Amethyst and Vinyl running down the hall.

"Hey, you girls see any angry mobs anywhere?" Vinyl asked casually. A speechless Rarity slowly pointed down the hallway where the mob had run down. "Okay, great, thanks!" And so Vinyl and Amethyst dashed down the hallway. Rarity blankly looked at Sour who didn't seem fazed by the random event.

"... That's why I don't use the internet that much," Sour shrugged, taking another bite of a chip.

---

Bon Bon did complete sweeps of the hallways upstairs, she wasn't anywhere to be seen. She stopped by nurse's office, science lab, gymnasium, everywhere! Where was she?

She slammed a door shut just as she wandered back downstairs again. Lyra wouldn't just vanish like that, would she? No, she didn't. She was her best friend, she'd never do that. But where had she gone? Little did she realize that someone had been following her close by...

As she looked down the empty corridor with the faulty light fixture, her hands slapped her sides. She was at a loss. Something wasn't right.

A soft click of a device echoed in the hall. Not having enough time to react, Bon Bon froze as her body glowed with radiating dark blue energy. She felt a burn in her heart and she collapsed onto her hands and knees, yelling in agony. Twilight's face showed no emotion as she did her work, absorbing every last ounce of magic from Bon Bon. The last remnants of magic were taken, making Bon Bon slowly fall and black out.

Octavia turned around a corner, and froze. Worried about being seen, she threw herself in an empty locker, hiding inside to avoid being caught. Luckily her body managed to squeeze herself in there enough to not be seen. When Twilight was done, she closed the pendent and turned around. Octavia squeaked slightly, realizing the girl was standing only a few inches RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. Twilight didn't look up at the locker where Octavia had shoved herself into, as she was more focused on the pendent.

The poor rocker tried desperately not to move a muscle until one turn of her shoulder made a bump into the wall. The girl's head bolted up, hearing the sound. Octavia could feel her heart pound against her chest, ready to burst out. Twilight slowly walked up to the locker, standing right in front of Octavia. She heard the dent again, hearing it come from within.

Oh no, I'm dead, I'm dead I'm dead I'm dead I'm dead...

Twilight looked at the locker and with one hand, she yanked the unlocked locker open, making Octavia close her eyes in fear. But then she heard the locker door slam shut. One eye dared to peek, realizing that she had opened the locker next to her. She shrugged at the noise, and looked down at the pendant, sighing.

"What am I doing... this isn't right. Those girls, they... no. No, no, no. This is for the world. I'm not letting this planet get destroyed..." And she looked right up at the locker in front of her. Octavia could feel her staring down into her soul. "Annnd I'm talking to myself in the middle of a hallway. That's not awkward or anything..."

Twilight walked down the hall, turning around a corner and leaving the scene as soon as possible. When she was gone, Octavia kicked the locker door open and squeezed out with a POP, trying to stretch her body from the tight space. Her mohawk poofed up after being compressed underneath a shelf.

But when she looked to where Bon Bon had fallen... she was gone! Where did she go? She passed out, and then... gone! How? How was that possible?Octavia panted heavily, trying to calm down. Now wasn't going to be a time to panic, she had to stay calm. .... Oh who was she kidding, there was a madwoman out there sucking energy out of her friends!

In the bathroom, she splashed several handfuls of water into her face, trying to snap back to her senses. She breathed and panted, trying to catch her breath. Rubbing at the spaces underneath her eyes and her forehead, she looked at her own reflection. It took all of her will to not throw up.

"Okay Octavia... get it together, it's okay," Octavia heaved. "So first Lyra goes missing, and now Bon Bon. And now we know who's responsible for this heinous act," She said. "But if she's taking their magic, then what happens to them?"

She splashed more water into her eyes, trying to think some more and more.

"Magic theft, resulting in them vanishing," she said out loud. "Think, think... okay. What could have happened to them, where could they have gone?"

Octavia really didn't know the answer. But what she did know was this; That girl did something to her friends. Whatever she did, it needed to be undone. She straightened her pose, and growled in the mirror. She wasn't going to let them vanish just like that. She was getting them back, no matter what.

"Hold on, Bon Bon. I'm coming," Octavia said as she marched out of the bathroom.

---

Bon Bon's eyes opened up wide like someone had slammed a steel door down. Pulling herself up, she found herself in a new environment. Cold and dark, and spooky. She realized she was on the ground in front of the school. But it looked wrong, something looked incredibly wrong. The school was enraptured in vines and plants, like it had been abandoned for a really long time. What happened? Where did she go? How did she end up here in front of the school?

Just when she was about to cry for help--

"Bon Bon!"

Her spun around faster than sound. "Lyra?"

And nearly tackling her to the ground was her best friend, scared out of her life.

"Dah, Lyra!"

Bon Bon felt Lyra's arms wrap around her chest out of fear, trembling and shaking.

"Hey, hey, it's okay Lyra," Bon Bon said, embracing her friend, rubbing her back. "It's okay... shh..."

Lyra's voice shakily breathed as she tried to find the strength in her to speak.

"Bonnie, thank goodness you're okay..." she whimpered.

"Lyra, what happened?"

"I... I don't know. I was just eating a snack, and then all the sudden, I felt like energy just... drained, right out of me! And everything went black, and the next thing I knew, I was... here!"

Bon Bon's eyes widened. "That just happened to me..."

"What!?"

"Lyra, easy! Look, I wasn't sure what happened to you, so I went to go find you, and then I felt like a ton of energy was drained from me as well, and then I blacked out. And just like you said, suddenly I'm... here."

Lyra quivered. "you don't think this is something going wrong with the magic, do you? Or some curse that was put upon us from the horse-gods to torment us--"

"Lyra."

The ninja stopped, as her friend gripped her shoulders.

"Look at me," Bon Bon said, holding Lyra's shoulders. "Look, I don't know what happened to us. But I don't think we died. Whatever happened, we probably just got stuck in some void or alternate dimension or something. Our friends are still out there, and they'll know something is wrong, I'm sure of it. But right now, we just need to stay calm. Okay?"

Lyra slowly nodded, making Bon Bon smile lightly.

"Good." She ruffled up Lyra's hair a bit, making her giggle. "We'll be okay. I'm sure of it."

"But what do we do?"

Bon Bon gazed up at the storms up in the air, looking at them with great interest. "Well. I don't know about you, but we should at least take cover underneath the main entrance."

The two of them dashed over to the main entrance, just underneath the cover above the doors.

"We'll wait out here. Hopefully the girls will find out what happened to us... I hope."

Comments

[The Bricklayer]

...So, the vanishings are piling up... I like the style of this chapter, first you give us a breather and then the scary shit sets in. You ever been on TV Tropes Four? Seriously, this is prime Cerberus Rollercoaster stuff here.

[CSC]

Good update.

[Scholarly-Cimmerian]

Nice work. I really like the way it segues from fluff and humor with Trixie and her friends, to the Rainbooms and Shadowbolts, and then back into the serious stuff with Sci-Twi's magic-snatching. Bricklayer's on point, this is a real rollercoaster.

[sonicfan05]

Very good balance between light and serious moments in this chapter!

On one side, I liked that you have each Shadowbolt teached one of the Rainbooms their own element (Example: Sugarcoat teached Applejack about Honesty, and Lemon teached Pinkie about cheering people up with Laughter). I have a feeling that the Rainbooms may come to play against Sci-Twi later on.

For the other side, while I'm worried about the gang, it's a nice callback from the EqG special: Mirror Magic, when the Rainbooms got trapped from within the magical mirror.

I sure hope that Octavia is going to report of her discovery to her friends and NOT go up against Sci-Twi alone! That plan usually never goes well!

[Twilight_Shimmer]

9747030
In my opinion the BEST way she could END Sci Twi's actions here and now would be reporting to her Principal Luna and Principal Cinch

[Ibliscorn]

I just realized that Lyra and Bon Bon seemed to have been sent to the Upside-Down