She burst into my office like a raging thunderstorm. There was fear and anger in her green eyes. Tipping her hat back, she let out a disparaging cry.
“Help me! Please!” she said, tipping back her hat and shifting her weight nervously from hoof to hoof. “They’re gone! All gone!”
“Hold it there, missy,” I said, pulling my hooves off the desk and leaning forward with a flip of my mane. “Rainbow D. Dash, private eye, at your service. What are gone?”
“The harvest! The jars! All gone!” She collapsed on the floor with a sob and put her hooves over her eyes. “Gone!”
I stood and trotted over. “Tell me what happened.”
“The Zap Apples! They just disappeared! Stolen!” The blonde mare lifted her head and blinked her tear-streaked eyes at me. “Please help me, Rainbow Dash.”
The crime scene. An overturned apple cart lay by the barn, an empty jar dripping into a puddle of spilled rainbow jam. There were hoofprints in the snow, being quickly coated over by the falling flakes, and one tree had been ripped in half. I surveyed the magical trees. All were barren, except for one square apple, resting on a snow drift. Stepping over to it, I examined the fruit. I nudged it with a hoof and it rolled over. Into the apple was carved a face. The eyes were crossed and the tongue stuck out at an odd angle. I cursed and crushed the apple with one hoof.
“What is it, Rainbow?” Applejack asked.
“I only know one pony who would draw such a face on an apple. And today we stop her thieving hooves, once and for all.”
I knocked on the house’s door and waited, shivering softly in the falling snow. I heard a scrambling from inside, and the door was flung open with magic. A lavender unicorn filly with pale blonde hair stood in the doorway with a big grin on her face, but the grin immediately fell when she saw me. “You’re not Aunt Amethyst and Tootsie Flute. Who are you?”
“Muffin!” a voice called from out of view. “Dinky, who’s at the door?” A mare walked forward. She had a gray coat and blonde mane, but unlike the unicorn filly in front of me, she was a pegasus. “Can I help you, Rainbow Dash?” It was a wonder the mare could see me at all, with her eyes crossed up like that. She spoke slowly, with a faltering lilt to her voice. Putting an arm around the filly, she said, “I’m sorry about my daughter. She’s waiting for her cousin and aunt to come over.”
“Not a problem, Miss Ditzy. She is a foal, after all.”
“There are fresh muffins on the stove, Dinky.” Ditzy Doo nudged the foal into the house. “Please, come in, out of the snow.” I followed the mare into her home. It was tidy, but pillows had tumbled onto the floor when Dinky rushed off the couch. A few muffin tins sat on the kitchen counter I could see through a doorway. They were rapidly being emptied by Dinky.
“Muffin! Save some of those for Tootsie and Amethyst!” Ditzy laughed.
“You can always make more, Mom!” Dinky said through a mouthful of muffin.
Ditzy chuckled. “Have a seat.”
“Thank you, Miss Ditzy.” I fluttered onto the couch, folding my legs under me.
“Call me Derpy,” she said, fluttering down next to me. “Everypony else does. Was there something you needed, or did you just come by to be neighborly?”
“Actually, there is something I wanted to ask you, Derpy,” I said. “It’s about a case I’ve been working on. A theft.”
“Oh, no!” Derpy said. “What was stolen?”
“All of the Apple family’s Zap Apple harvest, plus the jam. Only one clue remained.” I reached into my saddle bag and pulled out a photograph of the apple. “This.”
Derpy’s screwball eyes examined the photo. “I can see why you would come to me,” she said. Unbeknownst to many, Derpy was one of the greatest art examiners in Ponyville, although her talent was chemistry. She was also an excellent baker. “However, I don’t know who did this. It certainly wasn’t any of the published cartoonists in Ponyville. It could have been a child, but it was most likely a unicorn, as no one else could have made the cut so clean. It could have been anypony.”
“Where were you this morning at nine o’clock, Derpy?” I asked.
“I was buying cider from Granny Smith at Sweet Apple Acres. Would you like to try a cider muffin?” She smiled and offered me one of the pastries.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the muffin. “Did you see anything while you were there? The culprit would likely have been there at the same time.”
“Well...” One of Derpy’s eyes went up, the other down. She tapped her muzzle and thought. “I saw Granny Smith, Big Macintosh, Applejack, and... Applebloom and her friends were there, too.” Her eyes focused as much as they ever did. “I don’t think there was anypony else there. There might have been other ponies buying jam or cider, but it was really slow.”
I bit into the muffin thoughtfully. It was delicious. “Thank you, Derpy. For the information and for the muffin.”
It was time to find three crusaders.
“CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS CUPCAKE BAKERS!! YAY!!!!” The force of the shout blew through my mane, forcing snow in my direction like a wind tunnel. Shaking out my mane, I walked forward into Sugarcube Corner.
“Hello, Pinkie Pie,” I said, sighing. “Did you set them loose on Sugarcube Corner again?”
“OhmygoshohmygoshRainbowDash!!!” Scootaloo cried, rushing over to me with icing dripping from her nose. “IsawyoursonicrainboomtheotherdayanditwasSOAWESOMEandit--”
“Scoots, this is important,” I said, pushing her aside. “Pinkie Pie, where were you at nine o’clock this morning?”
“I was here, baking cakes for the Cakes with the Zap Apple jam I bought yesterday. I made Zap Apple frosting!” she said, shoving a cupcake into my mouth.
I swallowed the pastry roughly. “You kids were over at Sweet Apple Acres this morning, right?” I asked with a cough.
Scootaloo, still bouncing up and down in front of me, nodded quickly. She shook frosting all over me. “We were over there being the...” The other girls joined in. “CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS ZAP APPLE JAM SALESPONIES!! YAY!!!!!”
I brushed my mane back into place and glared at Pinkie Pie. “You aren’t one of the CMC now, are you?”
“Nope!” Pinkie said, grinning. “But I love their cheer so much, I just had to join in!”
I shook my head. “So you three were at Sweet Apple Acres. Did you see anything strange? Ponies there who shouldn’t have been? Ponies doing strange things?”
“Well, yesterday for school we were at the Canterlot Gardens,” Applebloom said. “We were arguing, and Miss Cheerilee dragged us away from the statue of confusion.”
“No, it was evil!” Sweetie Belle said loudly.
“Chaos!” Scootaloo shouted.
“Anyway,” Applebloom said, shoving her friends out of the way. “Then this morning, I saw one of those darned pink clouds. I didn’t really think much of it, seeing as there are a million clouds in the sky anyway. And then later -- what did you say happened?”
“I didn’t say,” I said. “But you have helped immensely.”
“What are you, a dictionary?”
“This is it, Applejack,” I said, pacing the floor of the barn. “The endgame. He knows we’ve caught him, and it’s only a matter of time before he returns.”
“He’s not getting the rest of my crop!” Applejack cried, wielding a leafblower. “He won’t know what hit him!”
“But won’t it be snow?” Pinkie asked, puzzled. I rolled my eyes and returned to my pacing.
“How do you know he’ll show up?” Rarity asked. “With Discord, you always have to expect the unexpected.”
“I know that,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But this time, we’ll be expecting the unexpected unexpectedness.”
“But that would make it expected, creating a paradox of expectedness,” Twilight asked, flipping through a book like the egghead she is.
“You mean Discord is back?!” Fluttershy asked, panicked. “Pinkie Pie! You told me this was a party!”
Suddenly, we heard a laugh from outside the barn door. It was the unmistakable laugh of a creature gone mad.
“Oh, it’s going to be such fun taking over again!” Discord cried. “Ooh, jam!”
“Now!” I yelled. Applejack bucked the barn door open hard enough to cut through the snow drifts. I shot out into the newly found blizzard of Skittles.
“Oh, can I taste the rainbow now?” Discord asked, enthusiastically grabbing me from the air. He stuck the tip of my tail into his mouth and sucked hard. The color drained out of my tail.
I gasped theatrically. “My tail! Discord, you monster!”
“It really does taste like Skittles!” Discord said, unceremoniously dropping me to the ground. “Now, I have to tell you ponies something very important, so listen up.”
A crowd of cotton candy clouds gathered and lashed my five friends and I to the barn. “Good will always prevail, Discord!” Twilight shouted before cotton candy covered her mouth.
“I’m not going to hold back this time,” Discord said menacingly. He leaned in close and glared at Twilight. “You thought you were oh-so-powerful when you defeated me before. Well, go ahead. Try to use the Elements. Because this time I’m not playing.”
Even I leaned away, eyes wide with terror. “What -- what are you going to do?”
“The same thing I do every time, Rainbow,” Discord said. “Try to take over the world. And it’s going to be so easy! I’ll admit, you ponies were tougher than I expected, so I didn’t really put any effort into fighting you off. Now? I’m sure to win.”
“Everypony take a seat,” a voice called. There was a squeaking noise as a large contraption was rolled forward. Vinyl Scratch smiled from behind the device. “I got this.”
Discord laughed at the unicorn. “And what, pray tell, is that?”
“Oh, it’s nothing special, it’s just my BASS CANNON!!” With that, Vinyl smacked a red button. An explosion of dubstep shot straight into Discord and shoved him through the Apples’ barn, disintegrating the cotton candy holding us at the same time.
“So... awesome...” I said, lying on the ground in awe. Vinyl shut down the machine. I stood up shakily and rushed over. “Where can I get me one of these?!”
