Bells jingled to alert Starlight that there was a customer entering the ice cream shop.
"Good morning, Melody!" she called to her friend from behind the counter.
"What’s up, Starlight?" Melody returned. She flashed three shiny jangles in her hoof. "You got that sundae I preordered?"
"Sure, it’s right here on the windowsill." Starlight turned around… but there was nothing on the windowsill. "Huh?"
"Is something wrong, Starlight?" Melody asked from the doorway.
"Well, it’s just… that sundae I made for you. It’s… gone."
"Huh?" Melody came over. "Did you just forget to make the sundae and now you’re making excuses?"
"What? No! I made it for you, honestly."
Melody considered the options. "Did it fall off?"
Starlight poked her head out the window, then looked down. "Nope. Nothing."
"Then that could only mean…" Melody was furious. "Someone stole it! Someone would dare to steal from the lead singer of the Rockin' Beats!" She raced for the telephone. "I’m calling an emergency meeting! In the meantime, you can make me a new sundae."
Sweetheart, Bright Eyes, Patch, and Clover all arrived roughly ten minutes later. "What’s the emergency meeting about, Starlight?" Clover asked.
"I didn’t call it, Melody did," Starlight replied. "Tell them, Melody."
Melody looked around for any sign of Bon Bon. When nothing indicated the seventh member of their group would show up anytime soon, she decided to just tell. "There’s a sundae thief on the loose!"
Bright Eyes blinked. "...That’s it?"
"Yes! You’d want something to be done if someone stole your sundae, right?"
"Well, yes, maybe, but that doesn’t mean I’d make all my friends come over for an emergency meeting over it," Bright Eyes retorted.
"She does have a point," Starlight put in. "If there’s a thief on the loose, that means less profit for the shop. Heck, what if my mom thinks I’m the thief?"
"Well… what do you want us to do about it?"
The bells jingled again. "Do something? Do about what?"
Bon Bon had just entered, holding an empty ice cream cone in her hoof. "Shorry o’m late," she said through a mouthful of waffle cone. "I decided to eat lunch before coming to the meeting, and plus, there was an ice cream truck on the way."
"...That’s alright, Bon Bon," Starlight assured her. "Melody and I decided to have the emergency meeting because someone stole Melody’s ice cream sundae."
Bon Bon immediately looked annoyed. "That’s it?! I was going to have dessert after lunch before you called this stupid meeting! Do you realize how long it’s been since I last ate something?! Thirty whole seconds!"
"I bet she did it," Patch snidely remarked.
"Take that back!" Bon Bon demanded. "I’d never stoop so low!"
"Girls, stop the arguing," Starlight interjected authoritatively.
"If you want my opinion," Clover chimed in, now that there was silence, "I bet it was one of the boys."
The other girls couldn't help but agree with the notion, all except for Sweetheart.
"Didn’t you already call Teddy a thief once, Melody?" she pointed out. "And your accusations didn’t hold up?"
"So? With everything else he gets up to, there’s no reason it couldn’t be him this time."
"You should leave another sundae out, Starlight," Bright Eyes suggested. "See who takes it."
"That could work," Starlight admitted. "But someone would have to watch it for a while."
"Not necessarily," Patch remarked, smirking devilishly. "I’ve got an idea. What if we spiked the sundae with something? I’ve got just the thing." She held up some sort of vial, filled with clear, thick liquid. "Whoever ingests this serum, it’ll be glaringly obvious they did."
"Why, Patch?" Sweetheart asked.
"Because it changes their appearance."
"How? Does it turn them a different color?"
"No."
"Make all their hair fall out?" Melody questioned.
"Keep guessing."
"Make them dance uncontrollably?" Clover suggested.
"No."
"Well, come on then, tell us!" Melody irritably requested.
Patch stifled a giggle. "Do you really wanna know?"
"Yes!" all six of the others replied in unison (although Sweetheart’s was much more meek).
Patch took a deep breath, then admitted the serum’s effects. "It causes their entire body to inflate like a balloon."
Upon hearing this, the other girls were speechless.
"Impossible," Bright Eyes finally retorted. "What would become of their bones and internal organs? Science would never allow for something like that."
"Maybe not, but magic does, and that’s all that matters."
"If that vial really is magic balloon pony juice and not just normal water with some thickening agent, then where did you get it?" Bright Eyes questioned her.
"Brightglow gave it to me."
"Who?"
"...You know what, never mind. It’d take a lot of explaining."
Bright Eyes shook her head. "Go ahead and let her use it, Starlight. Then we’ll all get to see just how dumb she’s being. When she’s making Clover look smart, that’s how we know she’s being absolutely stupid."
"Yeah!" Clover agreed. "...Wait, what did I just agree with?"
"Very well," Starlight said. "Serum, please, Patch."
Patch gave the serum to Starlight. "Five drops," she specified. "We want the thief big enough that we can see them from a distance."
"Even if it really does work…" Sweetheart sounded concerned. "Couldn’t someone… pop? Or float away?"
"Oh, not at all," Patch clarified. "Brightglow said balloonified ponies can neither pop nor float away and that it isn’t otherwise harmful for them in any way, only inconvenient and embarrassing."
"What about wearing off? Does it do that?"
"Don't you worry about a thing, Sweetheart. It'll last no longer than a day."
Starlight, meanwhile, was making up a new sundae, this time mixing in three drops of serum. Then she left it on the windowsill to replace the one that had been taken. "It’s settled then," she addressed the group, giving Patch her serum back. "I can’t stay at the counter because soon I have to go sweep the floor on the salon side of the building, so I probably won’t catch whoever takes it, but if whatever the heck this stuff is works, then the thief will blow up very large and be visible from a distance."
"And when it does work, will I get a complimentary celebratory sundae?" Patch asked hopefully.
"...You know what? Sure, it’s on me," Starlight agreed. "You’re doing a great service for this shop by catching the thief. Meeting adjourned."
An hour or so later, Ace and Lancer were near the soccer net they usually used, waiting for Teddy to arrive. "Man, where is he?" Ace wondered, twirling his soccer ball around in his hoof.
As if on cue, Teddy appeared, rising from behind the hill. "Sorry I’m late," he said as he finished climbing up. He wiped something off his mouth. "Let’s play!"
The three boys played their games as they usually did, except that Teddy decided to stop playing earlier than he usually did.
"You okay, Teddy?" Lancer asked.
"Yeah, I’m just a little tired," Teddy said, walking away from the soccer net before sitting down near a tree. "I’m taking a nap." He yawned, unhinging his entire jaw as he did so, then lay down on his back and fell asleep.
"Eh, forget him." Ace went back to playing keepy-uppy with his ball. "We’ll take it in turns to play goalkeeper, Lancer. See who scores more."
Ace and Lancer switched places, and were just about to start, when they heard an odd hissing noise.
"Do you hear that?" Lancer asked.
"Yeah… where’s it coming from?"
They looked around, but there wasn’t a whole lot of things around that could be making the sound. They realized it was coming from Teddy’s direction.
Lancer suddenly jumped in shock. "Look at his belly," he whispered to Ace, pointing at Teddy. Somehow, the sleeping pony’s belly had gotten larger. "What’s happening?" he asked unsurely, as Teddy’s belly continued to inflate.
"I… don’t know," Ace admitted, equally perturbed. "Do you think we should call a doctor?"
"Maybe… but what would they even do? I’ve never seen anything like this." Lancer kept watching, and was shocked when all of a sudden, Teddy’s entire torso took on a ball-like shape.
The changes didn’t stop there. Teddy’s body became larger and even more of a sphere, and his four legs sank further into the sides of his body until only his hooves were jutting out, with puffy areas around them as though he were wearing armbands the same blue color as his fur. During this, his seemingly weightless body bobbed around and rotated so that his considerably large belly was now facing the ground. His tail now looked very small in relation to the rest of him. Because he had no longer had a visible neck to speak of, Teddy’s massive, round body was directly behind his head, and pushed his sunglasses off of him and onto the ground.
Teddy, however, failed to wake up from his slumber, despite all of these changes. The process finally stopped when he was an inflated sphere measuring twenty meters in diameter. His head had a puffy area below it where his neck would be.
Ace and Lancer were well and truly awestruck by the sight. They didn’t know why it had happened, or more importantly, how it was even possible in the first place. "I don’t believe it," Lancer quietly said. "How’s he gonna react when he wakes up?"
"I don’t see a point in waiting until he does," Ace decided. He went over to his very large friend and nudged him. Pressing his hoof into Teddy caused said hoof to sink in a little before Teddy’s body sprung it back. It was a most unusual feeling, not least because Ace couldn’t feel anything underneath it. "Hey, uh… Teddy?"
Teddy mumbled as he started to wake. Then it seemed as though he was trying to move, although this only resulted in him slowly bobbing forward a little, making tiny bounces along the ground a short distance. When he came to his senses, he realized he felt very different. "Huh? How did you guys get all the way down there? And…" There was some kind of blue mass at the bottom of his field of vision. The mass, he quickly realized, was part of his body. "What the…?!" He futilely wiggled his hooves. Aside from that little bit of wiggling, they would not budge. "What happened to me?!"
"I wish we knew…" Lancer shook his head. "Does that… hurt at all?"
"No? I don’t think so… but why am I like this?!"
"Because you took the bait!"
Ace and Lancer turned (Teddy was already facing in that direction, and it wasn’t like he could do anything about it) to see Patch coming up the hill, wearing her camera around her neck. "How’s the weather up there, Teddy?" Melody, Bright Eyes, and Clover came up behind her. Patch looked back at them. "See? What’d I tell you? A balloon pony. All your book smarts were no match for magic alicorn serum, Bright Eyes."
"What?! What are you talking about?!"
"Well, you see, Lancer," Melody began, "Teddy here stole something of mine."
"Didn’t Sweetheart prove he didn’t take that cassette player?" Ace asked. "Even before she proved it, it seemed a little odd that the school suddenly had a janitor we’ve never seen before or after…"
"This isn’t about that. Today, he genuinely did do it!" Melody informed them. "But I believe Teddy can tell you the rest."
Ace and Lancer looked up at him.
"I… I don’t know what she’s talking about!" Teddy insisted.
"Yeah, right," Patch snarked. "I gotta say, it’s a good look for you. Fits your overinflated ego."
Except for Sweetheart, the other girls laughed at the joke. Patch snapped a photo of Teddy.
"What is wrong with you?! Help him, you psychos!" Lancer snapped.
"Sorry," Patch said. "He turns back to normal in a day."
"Come on, girls." Melody gestured for them to go back with her. "I think the lesson is learned."
They all followed Melody. Sweetheart stopped briefly and turned to look back at the boys, but then resumed following her friends.
"Doesn’t this seem a little harsh?" she asked, concern in her voice.
"Nah, like I said, he won’t pop or float away," Patch said as they continued to walk off. "Just means he’ll think next time before he steals someone else’s ice cream sundae."
Back where Teddy was, Ace got a grin across his face. "Hey, Lancer. I just thought of a new way to play."
Teddy’s eyes widened. "No. No."
But with Teddy powerless to stop it, Ace lifted up his light body and punted him into the air as he came back down.
"Whoooaaa!" Teddy experienced little to no pain from the kick, but he slowly rose up into the air and then just as slowly landed, making gradually shorter bounces each time he connected with the ground.
The group eventually returned to the ice cream shop, where Starlight and Bon Bon already were. "It worked, Starlight!" Melody was delighted to report. "Teddy did it! Now he’s nothing but a big ol’ blimp."
Patch showed Starlight the photograph, at which the latter grimaced a little. A pony blown up like a balloon was not a sight she’d ever expected to see. "Well… nice to know you got him."
"Uh-huh! So how about my reward?"
"Coming right up!" Starlight reached behind her. "...What’s this? It’s gone," she said when her hoof didn’t connect with anything.
"Again?!" Patch exclaimed. "Why were you even keeping the sundae on the windowsill?!"
"Look, I’m sorry," Starlight apologized. "I’ll make you a new one right now."
While Starlight set to work on that, Bright Eyes realized something. "Hold on a sec. Patch, that inflation treatment does make the victim immobile, correct?"
"Yeah. And they can’t really move their hooves, either, so those wouldn’t be useful."
"Girls," Melody said. "Do you know what this means?"
"Either there’s another thief on the loose," Sweetheart realized, "or Teddy is innocent."
"Or…" Clover said, "there’s another thief on the loose."
"...Clover, that’s what she just said."
"Oh, right, sorry, Melody, I forgot."
"But Teddy must have done it," Patch said, confused. "How else could that have happened to him?"
"Later, guys," Bright Eyes told them. "Sweetheart and I are supposed to meet Bon Bon at the cinema."
"Don’t you mean ‘theater’?" Starlight asked.
"Well, she called it ‘cinema’ on the phone earlier today," Bright Eyes said as she passed through the doorway. "Come along, Sweetheart."
Bright Eyes and Sweetheart arrived at the cinema/theater well in advance of the movie starting. Bon Bon had done the same and currently had her entire head submerged in an extra-large popcorn bucket. "Hello, Bon Bon," Sweetheart greeted.
Bon Bon yanked her head out. "Oh, hi, girls!"
"Man, how many buckets worth of popcorn did you even eat before we got here?" Bright Eyes pointed at Bon Bon’s belly. "Looks like at least seven extra large buckets."
"Seven?! How dare you! All I had was six extra large buckets and one large bucket!"
"Sorry, sorry, it’s just that you seem a little…" Bright Eyes hesitated. "How can I put it… a little more… well-rounded?"
Just then, Bon Bon’s belly gave a hissing noise. She realized it was growing. "Huh?! What’s happening?!" Soon, her swelling tummy had grown to the point where she was wedged between her row of seats and the one in front of her, Bright Eyes, and Sweetheart.
Shocked themselves, the other two pushed Bon Bon out just as the latter’s whole body suddenly puffed into a mostly round shape. "Heeeeelllllp!" Scared, Bon Bon waved her legs desperately. Her still-inflating form expanded even further, making her a bigger and bigger sphere. As she grew, the speed at which she waved her legs gradually decreased as they slowly disappeared into her body. The picture of candies on either side of her back end stretched further and further the bigger she became. She felt the process of her rear end pushing out quite a far distance behind her, causing her back legs to spread.
It was a lucky thing the room was so large, because if it wasn’t, Bon Bon would get squished inside it. She moaned in pain as she expanded further and further. Her limbs spread further and further apart from each other. She could still feel her tail brushing against her, but it was much smaller now compared to her rump. Her belly had grown to the point where she could feel roughly sixteen seats brushing underneath it.
Bon Bon’s expansion came to a halt, leaving her in the form of an enormous ball filled with air, with her limbs feeling bizarrely far apart from one another… how could her body even accommodate this? Bon Bon wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to that. All she knew was that she didn’t like these changes and wanted them gone. "What the… my body! I look horrible! I’m so big and fat!"
"It’s actually air," Bright Eyes pointed out.
"Shut up! Help me!"
"Oh, I believe I have all the answers."
They heard that, then Bright Eyes and Sweetheart saw Starlight walking down to them before moving to face Bon Bon. "Do you have any idea why you might be like this, Bon Bon?"
"Patch must have snuck some of that weird juice into my popcorn!"
"Actually," said Starlight, "it was me who snuck some into your ice cream. Or rather, Patch’s ice cream."
Bright Eyes looked up at her big friend’s face. "Bon Bon, what is she talking about?"
"I don’t know, I don’t know!"
Starlight started to explain. "I found your behavior at the emergency meeting rather sus…" She stopped to clear her throat. "Sorry. Rather suspicious, what with how annoyed you were to be there. Your reaction should have been more along the lines of worrying about your food getting stolen. And as for your excuse for showing up late? I happen to know there aren’t any ice cream trucks operating around these parts. My mom’s ice cream shop is too popular for that. And I think it’s glaringly obvious what happened to the third sundae meant for Patch."
At this point, Bright Eyes, beginning to put together the pieces, was currently glaring at Bon Bon.
"After hearing what happened to Teddy, I had to rule out the possibility the thief was you, Bon Bon, so when I made that third sundae, I snuck in some drops of the serum I’d secretly kept when making the second sundae as bait earlier. I then deliberately left the third one out intending that if there was another thief beside Teddy on the loose, they would take it. Speaking of, I happen to know you weren’t with the others when they went to confront Teddy. Explain."
"Okay, you win!" Bon Bon cried. "I ate the first sundae, then I took the second sundae with the serum while Starlight was sweeping on the other side of the building, and I found Teddy while he was on his way to meet his friends… he didn’t steal it, I gave it to him under the guise of giving a gift without telling him what it would do in order to frame him…"
"And…?"
"AND I DRANK THE THIRD ONE!" With the current situation and the pressure she was under, Bon Bon was stressed beyond belief.
"I can’t believe you," Sweetheart uttered, saddened. "Stealing your friends’ ice cream and pinning it on someone else?"
"You’re paying for all of those," Starlight told Bon Bon.
"Okay… I’m sorry…"
"And," Sweetheart piped up, "I think it’s only fair you apologize to poor Teddy."
"Fine, fine…" Bon Bon said. "But I can’t do that until I’m out of here."
"How are we going to get you out?" Sweetheart asked, worried.
"No idea," Bon Bon said. "But would you please figure it out? I need to use the bathroom."
"Oh no…" Bright Eyes muttered in dread. She didn’t know if this was going to turn out better or worse than the time Bon Bon had gone to Taco Bridle and gorged herself to unreasonable amounts.