Testing

Fluttershy hovered through the forest that stretched between her house and Ponyville proper. She had gotten a tip that a deer was wounded somewhere in the forest and it was really sick. Being the bleeding heart that she is, Fluttershy had to make sure the poor deer was okay..and help it if it wasn't. She wasn't even told where it was, just that some ponies had seen it and that it looked hurt.

She weaved through the healthy vibrant trees. Their leaves were bright green, their trunks were solid and thick. Much like the animals, Fluttershy also looked over the plants of the forest. She didn't love them as much as the animals, but she would never let them know that.

She was looking the trees over when she saw a streak of blood on the ground...then another...then yet another. This deer was hurt, badly. Worse than that, this blood was fresh and bright red, not dark and crusty. The mare quickened her pace, flying through the maze just as quickly. Her heart thumped in her chest with worry, her mind raced with the possibilities. She rounded a particularly large tree when she saw it.

There in the clearing was a dead deer...but it wasn't just dead. It was eviscerated. The chest cavity was cracked open, the ribs broken off and thrown around, fresh warm blood flowed freely from it, staining the grass, and its intestines hung from the branches like twisted party streamers. The scene almost made Fluttershy faint. Almost. Instead of fleeing the scene wildly like any rational mare would do, the fear stricken pegasus inched closer: not out of stupidity, but out of disbelief that this was actually happening.

She stared into its cold dead eyes, the black spheres just stared back. It made Fluttershy stiffen up. This was real. This was happening....and she was in the middle of a crime scene.

A crunch of leaves came from behind her

She spun, only to come face to face with a mask. The mask was pure white, and no features other than a sick green smile. "EEP!" Fluttershy stumbled backwards, only to fall into the chest cavity of the dead deer. Blood coated most of her body, she started hyperventilating. A maniacal green smile looked down at her, then her world went dark.

--

"DINNER!" Applejack picked up a small metal baton in her teeth and beat the metal triangle next to her furiously. The ringing stretched out all across Sweet Apple Acres, it permeated every orchard, every barn, and every outhouse. It could even be heard in some parts of Ponyville.

As soon as it rang, the Apple family all converged on the old farmhouse. They knew better than to keep the Applejack waiting, as honest as she was, she was impatient as the come. She tapped her hoof and waited...and waited...and waited. After what seemed like hours, though was barely five minutes, neither of her two siblings showed up. With an annoyed grunt, she went back inside, grabbed her lasso and decided she would do some sibling wranglin'.

She trotted through the orchards, lasso at the ready. After several minutes, hours in AJ time, she found her little sister Applebloom sitting on a log. The little crusader looked bored out of her noggin', so AJ decided that maybe some tact was needed in this particular situation, she lowered her lasso.

"AB? What's the matter, sugarcube? Ah rang the dinner bell, didn't y'all hear it?" Applebloom looked up.

"Hmm? Yeah, ah heard it, but Big Mac said ah wasn't a'sposed to move from this here stump until he came back..." The filly rested her head on her hoof. "Now ah'm bored..."Applejack briefly pondered asking her little sister what Big Mac was doing, but she decided that worryin' the little thing wouldn't do any good, so she told her to go wash up then get some dinner back at the house. Being the obedient filly she is, Applebloom nodded and went off to the house.

"Now where'n the hay is Big Mac? Ain't like him to go that hard on Applebloom.." It was true for the most part, out of the two of them, Big Mac was the one that let the Crusader and her friends get away with things the most. Ever since herself and him had been declared AB's legal guardians it had been like that. Applejack didn't like this, not one bit.

The country mare trotted through orchard after orchard without seeing her brother. Shoot, nothing even seemed off about the orchards...well, until she saw a cut down apple tree.

"Sweet Apple Massacre! What happened here?!" She rushed over, somepony had obviously chopped it down with an axe, so probably a unicorn. This was a staple of the Apple Family's profit, if they had somepony cutting down their trees, it needed to be dealt with ASAP. With a furrow of her brow and a tip of her hat, she silently promised that she would find whoever did this and make sure they paid.

Something tapped her on her shoulder. The country mare turned around, expecting Big Mac, but instead was greeted by the flat side of an axe smacking her across the face. The mare stumbled, then fell to the ground. As her vision began to go dark, she thought she saw a green smile.

--

"Okay...okay, so there I was, right? So there I was, bouncing right along the road, when all of a sudden, Poof! Right there on the ground was this free candy!" Pinkie held a piece of candy up to her speedster friend: It was in a white wrapper and had a green smile on it. "And I was like 'Free candy?! You know it!' So I took it!" Rainbow Dash simply rolled her eyes at her crazy friend.

"Fascinating story, Pinks....but I got bigger problems. Y'know, like two of the Wonderbolts have gone missing in the past week, remember?" Dash had heard about the disappearances and immediately worried. What was the flying team going to do without its captain and second-in-command? An even better question: Could she audition for one of those parts? The Best Young Flier knew that sounded terrible and conceited, but she was adamant in her belief that she could lead the flying team in this, their hour of crisis. Then something hit her, Pinkie had found a piece of candy, and not eaten it. "Say, why haven't you devoured that thing yet?" her blue hoof pointed at the candy.

"Remember Nightmare Night?" Dash nodded. "Well I had to make sure this wasn't another of Twilight's traps!" Right. The pink mare had been duped by the egghead into going into a dark alley just to prove a point...which had failed. Dash guessed Pinkie had sound logic, but who was she to say what was logical?

"Mhm, of course....I'll give you five bits if you split it with me..." Dash had a craving for candy, in fact she often did. But she rarely indulged that craving. Athletes couldn't fill up on candy after all, and Rainbow Dash was one heck of an athlete. Right now though, she could use a little candy.

"Deal." Pinkie unwrapped the candy, the candy itself was a hard orange, probably the same flavor too. Dash was okay with orange, but she preferred something sweeter. "Buuuut.." Oh boy, here comes the but. "In order to get it," Pinkie put the candy between two hooves and pushed until it cracked into two pieces. "In order to get it, you gotta kiss me~!" Pinkie smiled and popped both halves into her mouth.

"Clever mare..." Dash smiled and winked at Pinkie. The two had been going at it for some time now, she wouldn't call Pinkie her marefriend though....buck-buddy was the more apt term. With a flap of her powerful wings, she was launched at the party pony. As soon as she made contact, her lips captured Pinkie's. The earth pony, always greedy, opened her own mouth and forced her tongue into Dash's mouth. Dash would usually allow this and let Pinkie have her fun, but the other's mare mouth held a treasure that Dash wanted oh so badly, so Dash took the offensive and struggled with Pinkie's tongue for dominance.

In the end of the objective-based make-out session, Dash won and was proudly chomping down on an orange candy. It was good alright, but something about it seemed.....off. As she was crushing the sweet morsel into small bits, she started to feel sleepy, she noticed Pinkie's eyes were already starting to droop. That was enough cause for alarm, the pink pony was never sleepy, not even after that 96-hour awake-a-thon!

The pegasus tried to stand, but found her legs to be jello. She tried to spread her wings, but only found that they wouldn't respond. A thump came from beside her, Pinkie was out cold. She could feel the sweet embrace of sleep creeping up on her too. She fell over, her ears catching words before she went.

"Two for the price of one, the boss'll be happy about this."

--

"Twilight, can we please go? We've been here for hours, and it's getting late...I don't want Sweetie to worry." Despite what most ponies thought, Rarity loved her little sister dearly. The little squeakycorn, or Squeaky-unicorn. It's a little pet name Rarity used as a joke for her sister's constantly cracking voice. Anyways, the little squeakycorn held a special place in her heart...and in some cases, her pocketbook. The little filly and her friends caused such heavy damages, that Applejack, herself, and Cheerilee all had to chip in to pay for it.

Twilight sighed and nodded. She had found no evidence over who did this. As far as she was concerned, Thunderlane got in a fight with Flitter and Cloudchaser, then simply left for his own safety. It was possible and would explain the various broken objects around the house....angry mares tended to throw things at the object of their anger.

"Finally!" Rarity exclaimed gleefully. "Perhaps I can even get some work in before the day is all said and done!" The pearl white unicorn pranced to the door and swung it open with magic. She was met by two ponies, both wearing black jumpsuits and white, featureless masks  with a crudely drawn green smile on them. "Ah!" Rarity jumped, then gave a nervous laugh. "Oh, my apologies...you startled me." The two faceless ponies stood silent. "Umm...hello?"

Twilight turned and saw the scene. Just the masks didn't sit right with the ponies. She trotted over to Rarity. "May we help you...urm....gentlecolts?" She wasn't quite sure if they were male or female.

"Twilight Sparkle?" Okay, male. She nodded hesitantly. "We have a letter for you.." The other masked pony produced a scroll from seemingly nowhere. The pony turned it towards her and opened it.

Twilight didn't understand, the words on the page were just gibberish. Plain and simply gibberish. To help herself, she pronounced the words out loud. "Elkraps Thgiliwt?" Before she realized that it was her own name spelled backwards, she froze in place.

See, the funny thing about unicorns is that there is a safeguard for them. Back in the early days of magic, names held power, more power than they do now anyways. Whenever a wizard said his name backwards, by force or willingly, it set them in a magic lockdown. All of the magic in their bodies would suddenly stop, their leylines would quit receiving the life-magic that ran through everything. While this made them completely still, it had the added benefit of also making them nearly impervious to damage. The only way to unlock a unicorn is to either wait it out, or perform the correct counter-spell.....which had been lost for a couple thousand years. So nowadays, you just had to wait three days and the magic lockdown would lift.

"Can't believe that actually worked..." Said the figure that carried the letter. "Hey, get that other one, I'll bag miss Elkraps, here." The other one advanced on Rarity.

"S-s-stay back! Do you hear me?"The kidnapper kept coming. "I-I'm warning you..." A black covered hoof reached out to Rarity, then promptly messed up her mane. Needless to say, the unicorn fainted.