Art Class

"Thanks again for letting me use your balloon," Phillip said, climbing into Twilight's old but still trusty hot air balloon.

"Don't you need a spell so you can walk on clouds?" Twilight asked.

"No," Phillip said, indicating the silver necklace he was wearing, which glowed faintly and had an emblem of a cloud. "An enchanted necklace used by Royal Guard that allows non-pegasi to walk on clouds."

"So what's your plan?" Spike asked him.

"Go to the Cloudsdale Delivery, ask around, work my way from there." Phillip tossed some sandbags out of the balloon and started up the engine. "I'll be back as soon as I find something I can work with."

"Wait!" a voice called. The trio looked up to see the Cutie Mark Crusaders dashing towards them at full tilt.

"What about the graffiti?" Apple Bloom said.

"Yeah! A package with stolen art appears in town at the same time as some strange graffiti? It's too much of a coincidence to ignore!" Scootaloo said.

"You can't leave! A detective should leave no clue uninvestigated!" Tootsie Flute said.

"Um...yeah! What they said!" Sweetie Belle said.

Phillip gave a small sigh. "Sheilas, I don't have time to chase after some juvenile delinquents with too much time on their hands."

"Joovy what now?" Scootaloo said.

"Juvenile delinquents," Dinky Do said patiently.

"I can look into it when I get back," Phillip said, heaving the last of the sandbags out of the balloon. The balloon began to rise up into the air.

"But when will you be back?" Tootsie Flute asked.

"Soon," Phillip said, touching the brim of his trilby in salute as he piloted towards Cloudsdale. Within a few moments, he'd caught a gust of wind and was off.

"Well, now what?" Apple Bloom said.

"Oh, I'm sure that you can think of something to try getting your cutie marks in," Twilight said with a smile as she and Spike returned to the library.

The five put their heads together. "Hey," Apple Bloom said. "We should look into the graffiti ourselves!"

"We should?" Sweetie Belle asked.

"Yeah," Scootaloo said enthusiastically, turning to Tootsie Flute. "You said it yourself; leave no clue uninvestigated!"

"You're right!" Tootsie Flute said with an excited jump.

"Are you sure?" Dinky Do said hesitatingly.

"Sure I'm sure!" Apple Bloom said.

"Well..." Dinky said. "As long as it's nothing too dangerous."

"Oh, relax!" Scootaloo replied.

"Are we all agreed?" Apple Bloom asked, then not waiting for an answer, declared, "Then let's go!"

"Cutie Mark Crusader Detectives!" the five cheered, heading for town hall.

"City services, please," Sweetie Belle asked the receptionist. The receptionist, confused into obedience by the abruptness of the emboldened fillies, pointed them down the hall, which the five quickly sped down.

They came to an office which they entered to find a unicorn stallion with a white coat, sky blue mane and tail, cut short, and green eyes with a cutie mark of a scrub brush sitting behind a desk, reading a file.

"Hi!" The stallion looked up at the five fillies entering. "Are you the one in charge of cleaning up graffiti?"

"Yes, I am," he said, sitting up straight. "I'm Clean Cut. What can I do for you?"

"You know that graffiti that popped up on the bulletin board in front of the schoolhouse?" Sweetie Belle asked.

Clean Cut groaned. "That. It took me an hour to scrub that off!"

"Have there ever been any graffiti similar to that?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Oh, yeah," Clean Cut said, sorting through a filing cabinet and pulling out several folders. He placed them on the table and spread them out. There were several photographs of similar graffiti that had appeared over town over the past two years, apparently. They were all of patterns of geometric shapes. All of them were placed somewhere in town, usually in someplace somewhat public, and made in a white waterproof chalk.

"They pop up about once a month, every month," Clean Cut said. "And they give me a bunch of trouble. That waterproof chalk is such a pain to clean."

"Why do you think whoever is doing that is doing it?" Tootsie Flute asked.

"Don't know," Clean Cut said. "I'd say it would be some kind of message, but we don't really have any gangs in Ponyville. Maybe it's just somepony trying to get attention."

The five fillies looked at each other. Gangs, eh?

One of the small local taverns, the Midnight Oil, was not a place where fillies usually hung out. Usually, it was a place for the Ponyville toughs with nothing to do except shoot pool and have a few drinks.

Understandably, there was a bit of confusion among the tenants when five fillies walked inside and headed for the bar. The room fell silent; every head turned to follow their bold journey.

"Hi!" Apple Bloom said to the bartender, a dark purple unicorn stallion with blue mane, tail and eyes and a bottle cutie mark, who returned her greeting with a blank expression. "Know of anypony in here who's part of a gang?"

The next thing the CMC knew, they were flying out the door and landing back in the street. Naturally, they had to land in a mud pool.

"Eww!" Sweetie Belle groaned, her white coat caked in mud. "Rarity's gonna have a fit when she sees me."

"I guess maybe sometimes the direct route isn't the best route," Apple Bloom said.

"You think?" Scootaloo said sarcastically.

"Oh, come on," Apple Bloom said, shaking the mud off her. The other four cried out and flinched as they were once again doused in mud. "We can't give up now! We've still got leads to chase down!" And with that, she dashed off, the other four following.

"What leads?" Sweetie Belle asked Scootaloo, who shrugged in response.