Mischief Makers

Rainbow Dash awoke lying on her back and staring up at the clear sky. A shower of water was falling onto her face, and she seemed to be submerged up to her ears. Quickly she got to her hooves and looked around; she had been laying in a fountain located in one of Ponyville’s many parks. Quickly she hopped out of the water and shook herself dry the moment her hooves touched grass. It was only then that she heard the faint breathing coming from behind her. She turned towards it and let out a tiny gasp.

“Fluttershy, you ok?” Rainbow said, rushing over to her friend. The yellow pegasus looked up at her friend and smiled.

“Oh Rainbow Dash, what happened, and where are Twilight and the others?”

Rainbow’s eyes darted around the park after hearing her friends statement. Aside from a few birds sleeping in one of the nearby trees the two pegasi were alone.

“I don’t know,” Rainbow said as she helper her friend to her hooves. She then performed one more quick sweep of the area, which like before, turned up nothing. “But they can’t be far from here Shy.” When she looked back to Fluttershy, however, the yellow pony had her head down and hidden in her mane. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I knew I shouldn’t have been the one to open that chest Rainbow.” Fluttershy said sadly. “Now looks what I’ve caused.”

“It wasn’t your fault Shy, it was those twins that started all of this.” Rainbow said as she placed a hoof on her friends shoulder. Fluttershy poked her face out from behind her pink mane and looked at Rainbow.

“You think we can win this?” Her question caused Rainbow to let out a confident laugh.

“We’ve gone up against far worse than these two and come out just fine. So what if they have some fancy tricks, I’ll still kick their flanks.”

“Ok, but don’t do it too hard, Rainbow,” Fluttershy said softly. “They don’t seem evil to me, just playful.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes.

“Playful or not, I am so going to make them pay for this. Come on Fluttershy.” With that she began flying off in a random direction. After a second of hesitation Fluttershy followed her.

The two of them traveled through the park which, sadly, was just as deserted as the other parts of Ponyville they had seen. What really freaked them out though was that it looked like they could have all come back in a moment. Balls and kites lay on the hills where fillies and colts had been playing with them, and under a large oak tree sat a checkered tablecloth. In it’s center was an open picnic basket, filled with untouched food.

“Man, it’s like they all just left seconds ago.” Rainbow said, her mouth agape by what she was seeing. So much so that she failed to notice the large yellow box hanging from the tree in front of her until she slammed into it headfirst. This caused the box to fall from the tree and shatter into dozens of splinters of wood.

Fluttershy jumped away as bits of wood came sailing at her. A few slivers ended up touching her fur, but those could be cleaned off easily. One it was over she turned her head back. In the center of the wood pile was a pony sized golden statue of a bumble bee.

By now Rainbow had regained herself and looked curiously at the statue. Wisely she kept a fair amount of distance from it. The flapping of her wings, however, caused a tiny leaf that was blowing in the wind to land on the statues nose. Almost immediately after the bee opened its mouth and about ten yellow squares fell out of it.

“Oh now look what you’ve done!” Festivities said, suddenly leaning on Fluttershy. “Do you know how hard the bees had to work to gather all that honey? Now it’s all lost in the wind.” As if on cue the cards all lifted into the air and began floating around.

“You!” Rainbow cried before flinging herself towards Festivities. The emerald mare looked to the blue pegasus and grinned before vanishing again. Rainbow had barely enough time to veer away before she hit Fluttershy. So instead she got a faceful of grass and dirt.

“Now what good will come of that Rainbow?” There was a small pop above the pegasus and Festivities reappeared, leaning back in the air without flapping her wings. From them she pulled out a silver goblet and filled it with grape juice from a cloud.

Rainbow watched the entire ordeal, wide eyes and mouth agape.

“Wha-how-but-you can’t!”

*giggle* “Lets hope you’re better at catching honey than you are at speaking.”

Fluttershy was about to question Festivities, but the green mare seemed to read her mind. She made a lazy gesture with her hoof in the direction of a few of the flying yellow squares. One of them came close to Fluttershy's face, and the pegasus got a good look at the honeycomb pattern on it before the wind took it away.

“Collect the honey for the queen bee, but do it before time runs out, or she’ll starve. Then who will make us our honey?” Festivities pretended to cry at the end of her sentence. She then held her hoof in front of their faces and a tiny seed fell from it into the soil. “You have until the seed germinates to win. Allonsy!”

~~~

“Ok, now move it a little to the left.” Games instructed to two of her stone tokens. Between their massive arms was the last of her crates that still needed to be unpacked. If her memory served her, which it did, this one contained some valuable and delicate items that required the utmost care. So she had taken the precaution of giving this job to her two best tokens.

“My apologies, mam.” one of them said. He spoke in as close to a cockney accent as a rock was able to.

“I told you we were going to fast.” the other complained. The first token looked back to him and dropped his side of the crate carefully.

“Oh, I’m sorry, ‘cause to me it seemed you were movin’ too slow.”

The other token dropped the crate as well and shifted the granite hard hat he wore.

“I was moving at the regulation pase. You were moving point thirteen millimeters further in your strides then me.”

“Like that’ll make a difference?”

“It does you regulation breaking pebble!”

“Now them’s fightin’ words you little-”

“Boys!” Games clapped her hooves together, getting their attention. “Less fighting, more unpacking please.” Both tokens lowered their heads to her, and the second one removed his hat and placed it over his chest.

“Er, right, sorry mam.”

“Our apologies, boss.”

Both tokens then took opposite sides of the box and began rearranging the rocks in their hands. Once they had taken the form of crowbars they pried between the wood, yanking the nails from the crate easily. Their hands returned to normal and they moved the led away from the rest of the crate, and immediately Applejack, Pinkie, Rarity and Twilight fell out.

“Hey, what are you four doing on my crate of....” Games trailed off. “What was in that crate again?”

“Two way portal, boss.” One of the tokens replied.

“Thanks.” She looked back to the four ponies. “Why were you in my two way portal crate?”

The ponies slowly looked around in a daze before fixing their eyes on the green pegasus.

“Wha-how did we get here?” Twilight asked first. rarity and Applejack both got to their hooves and stared around with befuddled expressions. Pinkie, however, got up as if nothing had happened and giggled to herself.

“Ooo, that was fun.” the pink pony cheered. “Can we go again?”

Games smiled at the ponies and casually waved her hoof. The tokens took notice, and with one final nod they left her alone with her guests. Once they had closed the door behind them the green pegasus brought out her chessboard and placed four pawns on it. There was a shifting sound from behind the ponies, and soon they each found themselves sitting in a newly formed chair. This time though, the ponies weren’t as taken back as before. They all kept their eyes locked on the smiling mare.

“Mind tellin’ us where our friends are?” Applejack asked with some annoyance in her voice.

Games Master let out a quick giggle. “Me? I haven’t done anything to them. Don’t worry though they’re in very capable-” She suddenly stopped herself and let loose a fit of laughter. “I’m sorry, I just can’t finish that.” The ponies all looked at her mixtures of confusion and annoyance. “Don’t worry your pretty little heads off. Fest has them right now, so they’re safe from harm. But while we wait for her to be finished with them, how about we play a game,” She flicked her hoof and the card with Twilight’s Cutie Mark appeared in it. “For this?”

“And what do we need to do for that? Another guessing game?” Twilight inquired.

“Nono, we’ll be playing a different one. A much more enjoyable one.” With a quick smile Games tossed her board onto the floor. It sank between the cracks in the wood like water and was gone in moments. Then the room began changing. It took on a black and white square pattern from the floor to ceiling. Chairs and desks became paper thin and squeezed their way between any cracks they could, until finally the room looked like one giant chessboard.

“This game is simple; each of you is a pawn and your objective is to get to the other side of the board. You can each move only one space, or two on your first turn. Each square has an obstacle for you to overcome. If you do then you’ll be allowed to move to the next square on your next turn. If not, then you lose.” Games held her hoof out and a tiny clock flew up above the ponies heads, only instead of numbers it had their faces. Currently the clocks hands were pointed to Rarity. “Looks like you’re the first one up. Good luck.” Games gave a quick wink to the ponies and jumped backwards into the wall, where she flattened out and vanished.