Dead Rising: Case Equestria

Case 1-3: Engaged

Objective: Twilight came and told us that a suspicious mare had come across the saferoom, and asked us to came back to check out the situation. Man I sure hope things don't get worse from here...

Date: September 25th, 9:10 A.M.

TIME BEFORE ROYAL GUARD Arrives: 69:49:57

As Rainbow Dash and Spike left the Pegasium's lobby and went outside to the Silver Strip, they noticed that they were at the other end of the strip and decided to fly so as to not encounter too many zomponies. Spike climbed onto Rainbow's back and she took off at a moderate speed so as to not make the dragon on her back too nervous. Once they were in the air they flew for a while in silence until Rainbow decided to strike up a friendly conversation.

"So what do you think of Flash Dancer Spike?" Rainbow Dash asked her companion innocently, who turned a bright shade of red and tried to hide it in vain.

"I-I have no idea what you mean!" He stammered as his words betrayed his emotions. Rainbow saw this and began to snicker at what her teasing had done to him. "Anyways!" He said trying to change the subject, "What do you think Twilight meant by a 'suspicious' mare?"

"No idea!" Rainbow said as she pondered on the subject, "knowing her, by 'suspicious,' she could have meant that the mare had insulted Celestia even a tiny bit." They both got a laugh out of that statement.

"Yeah, I'm sure she would have in that case!" He said chuckling, "in fact, sometimes I even feel like her relationship with Celestia isn't just 'student to teacher!' Heck I wouldn't be surprised if she was crushing on the princess at this moment with the adoration she's shown for her!" This cause them to burst into another fit of laughter until they heard a voice over the communication stones.

"Ahem!" The voice said clearing it's throat, and with that the chuckles came to an abrupt halt as Spike and Rainbow shared a nervous glance.

"Um...hey Twilight..." Spike started out a bit lamely, "what's up?"

"Oh nothing really." She said with a bit of sarcasm in her voice, to which Spike and Rainbow flinched a bit, "you know just listening in on you guys to see what you're talking about, and when I did gee wasn't I surprised at what I found out."

"Now Twi-" Spike tried to interject hastily, but to no avail as Twilight had gone into full on rage mode, ranting about many things, all of which hurt Spike and Rainbow's ears due to the volume. They quickly tried to find a solution to the problem.

"Hey uh Twilight?" Rainbow asked tentatively.

"WHAT?!?" The obviously enraged mare said as she fired back a question.

"Uh we're kinda um..." Rainbow said as she looked for something, anything to use as an excuse. "losing your signal -krschh-" The mare said imitating a static noise.

"Wait what? I hear you perfectly fine!" Twilight said, obviously baffled by the cyan pegasus's statement.

"Yeah -kfrregls- you're cutting in and out!" Spike said as he too imitated a static noise, although much less believably. Rainbow noticed it and gave him a look that said "-kfrregls-? seriously?" Spike simply shrugged in response.

"Wait but what do you-" Twilight said desperately trying to respond.

"Yep -Krsck-!" Rainbow continued, "you're -shhcik- fading in and out!"

"But-"

"Call -Gshhh- you back -Krschiunk- later!" Rainbow said hastily as she ended the conversation abruptly.

[Back at the Safe Room]

To say that Twilight Sparkle was confused about what had just occurred was an understatement. Her train of thought was accurately comparable to trying to load a PC game made in 2012 on a Windows 98 computer, simply put it just wasn't working. However, her brain finally managed to process one thought after a few moments: "Magic doesn't have static cutouts like that."

[At the Silver Strip]

Spike and Rainbow smirked as they heard a roar of fury that belonged to none other than Twilight herself. They burst out laughing as the pegasus struggled to keep herself flying a midst all the chuckles.

"She seems pretty mad huh?" Spike said as he finally recovered from his bout of laughter.

"You think?" Rainbow said snorting at the understatement.

"...Worth it?"

"You bet!" Rainbow said as they grinned and gave each other a bro-hoof. The rest of the way back to the safe room was uneventful as they made their way back through the Plaza and fought through a minor amount of zomponies. Unfortunately, one of Spike's spiked bats broke on the way, which he mourned greatly while Rainbow gave a comforting pat on the back and assured him that Applebloom could make him another one. However, just before getting through the door to the safe room, they saw a familiar pony at the cafe known as 'The Dark Bean.'

"Hey isn't that Bon Bon?" Spike inquired as he spotted the blue and pink maned mare calmly sipping a cup of joe, not even paying attention to any zomponies around her.

"Hey yeah it is!" Rainbow said in surprise. As they walked up to her Rainbow cheerily greeted her, "hey Bon Bon what are you doing here?"

"Oh hey Rainbow Dash!" Bon Bon said as she gave a happy wave to the two. "Oh and Spike what a surprise to see you back after all this time! I was just wandering around getting supplies with Lyra, but then she ran off and I've been trying to find her!"

"Oh really? Well where do you think she is?" Rainbow asked with a hint of worry in her voice.

"Hm..." The other mare mused as she rubbed her chin in thought, "Well she just ran off a little while ago so she should be around here somewhere! Maybe we should check in one of these shops!" She suggested as Spike and Rainbow agreed. As they looked around they noticed a couple of clothing stores as Spike decided to change out his duds as did Rainbow. Spike decided to wear a Dark Blue T-Shirt with an image of a Pony DJ that said ''Music is my life!" along with some khaki shorts and a pair of black sneakers.

"Handsome devil!" He remarked grinning as he examined himself in the mirror. He turned to Rainbow Dash and saw her outfit, which consisted of a Wonderbolts T-shirt (go figure) and that's it. "Hm... I wonder why ponies never wear any pants..." He thought to himself. He shrugged it off as they left the store and continued to another store nearby. This one seemed to be a mare's clothing store and in it they found a familiar aquamarine unicorn that Bon Bon knew all too well.

"Lyra! There you are!" Bon Bon exclaimed happily as she galloped over to her friend, who in turn gave a look of surprise at the sudden appearance of her best friend and roommate.

"Oh hey Bon Bon what's up?" Lyra asked casually.

"Nothing much, we were actually just looking for you right now!"

"Aw that's sweet of you to worry, but I was alright over here considering I was just browsing through these clothes here." The unicorn explained.

"Ah trying to be more 'human' I suppose?" Bon Bon teased as her friend blushed slightly.

"No! ...Maybe..." The unicorn sighed as she had been found out.

"Ah it's alright Lyra, just try not to go too far the next time you do something like this!" Bon Bon said patting her friend's back in a comforting manner. Meanwhile while this was occurring Spike and Rainbow were still dwelling on one small factor.

"Hey what's a human?" Rainbow asked nudging Spike to get his attention.

"I'm not sure, I think I read back in Canterlot that it's some type of mythical ape of some sort, but I didn't find much on them." Spike said recalling a bit of the studies he had done when he was younger. "Apparently they were said to have lived in another world called 'Earth!'"

"Earth huh?" Rainbow inquired as she absorbed the information.

"Yup, and that's not all!" Spike said continuing on, "Apparently the planet didn't have pegasi controlling the weather, and get this, they didn't have any magic at all, or anybody to raise the sun and moon!" He said a bit freaked out by his description.

"That's terrible!" Rainbow said in horror, "It's like some huge version of the Everfree forest!"

"I know!" Spike agreed, "The texts I read also said that a lot of them wanted to come to Equestria to start new lives here!"

"Well why wouldn't they after living on a planet without any weather control or magic?" Rainbow Dash said nodding her head in understanding.

"Yeah, that's not the weird part though, apparently they used to write stories about Equestria, some far-fetched, and some were pretty accurate, and I mean scary accurate." The dragon added.

"Hm... how weird..." Rainbow Dash said trying to wrap her head around these ideas.

[In the Safe Room]

Twilight and Pinkie Pie were waiting around casually to see if the Pinkie Sense would act up, when suddenly Twilight noticed that Pinkie had a distant stare, and remained frozen. "Uh...Pinkie? You okay?" Twilight inquired to her friend in a worried tone of voice. This question however cause Pinkie to snap back to herself, but with a grim look on her face.

"Twilight, I must go." Pinkie said with a determined tone of voice.

"Go, go where? We're stuck here remember!" Twilight reminded the usually bubbly mare.

"Hold on! Can't talk! The fourth wall needs me!" The pink mare declared as she jumped into a nearby drawer with ease, and disappearing altogether. Twilight, baffled by this, attempted to look in the drawer that her friend went into, only to find filing folders that were commonly found in such an area. Twilight, having already been stressed enough couldn't handle this mixture of shock, stress, and lack of logic in one sitting.

"Twilight.exe has stopped working." Her brain said to itself as it tried to cope with the situation, "Please reboot system and try again."

[Back in the Plaza]

"Well anyways ladies we've got a safe place we can take you to." Spike offered, breaking out of his previous discussion with Rainbow. "It's not that far and we were heading towards it anyways so you girls can come if you want."

"That sounds great! Thanks!" Lyra replied happily as the four set off for the safe room. It wasn't that far of a trip since the store Lyra was at was literally like a minute's walk away from the maintenance vents. When they got back in the safe room Lyra and Bon Bon thanked them for helping them out and Lyra thanked Spike with 15,000 bits. Needless to say, Spike and Rainbow almost fainted at the sight of this amount of cash.

"Where in the world did she get this much cash?" He whispered to Rainbow, who was equally confused.

"Don't look at me!" She replied, "I don't know her that well, just keep it for now and we'll see when it comes in handy!" After that they agreed to just keep as an attachment to Spike's backpack for cash purposes. Then they went up to the room where Twilight and the others were. Rainbow swiftly went over to Scootaloo to check on how she was doing and found that she was back to her old self. The two sisters happily shared a nuzzle of affection as the others in the room watched with full smiles. Spike on the other hand wasn't so lucky as he walked in only to find Twilight glaring at him and giving the silent treatment. Spike nervously tugged at the collar of his shirt while deciding to turn to AppleJack instead.

"So AppleJack?" He inquired to the Orange mare of the Apple family, "who was that mare that you said seemed suspicious?"

"Well little buddy, " she answered with a low tone of voice, "she seemed normal enough at first, telling us she needed a safe place to hide from those zomponies, and naturally we let her in, but..."

"But?"

"Then she started asking questions...and that wouldn't be weird but she seemed to want to know everything about us, and it got creepy."

"Hm..." Spike grunted while rubbing his chin in thought, "That does seem pretty weird. I'll go check it out for ya AJ!"

"Thanks Spahke, it means a lot to us here!"

"Hey it's no problem!" Spike assured the mare as he headed into the hallway. After a bit of searching around through the rooms he saw a mare he hadn't seen before in the cafeteria section of the safe room. It was a mare with a dirt brown mane that was shaped not unlike Rainbow's mane-style, and a bit darker brown coat. Her tail oddly enough was quite poofy and consisted of the dirt brown shade, but also had another shade of light green put into it. Her hooves were colored a strange lime-green color. Spike noted her appearance and walked in to talk to her. "Hello there!" He greeted her casually, holding out his hand to shake her hoof.

"Why hello there!" She said with a smile that seemed a bit forced as Spike noticed, and also a bit too happy tone of voice. "You must be Spike!"

"What?" Spike paused in surprise, "How did you know my name?" He asked in suspicion while narrowing his eyebrows. This seemed to catch the mare off guard for a split-second, but she recovered, which Spike was quick to catch this reaction.

"W-Well who else would be the only dragon that Twilight and the others were telling me about?" She said a bit too hastily. "Anyways, enough of that!" She said quickly changing the subject, "My name is Sugar Song!"  she introduced herself while shaking Spike's hand.

"Hm...AJ was right..." Spike thought to himself, "everything about her simply gives off the impression that she's hiding something, I'll let it pass though, don't want her to catch on..." He then shook her hoof in return while giving a casual smile. "Well it's nice to meet you! If you need anything don't hesitate to ask!" He said turning to leave as he waved to her.

"It was nice to meet you too Spike!" She said waving in return. "I hope to see more of you soon!"

"Weird mare..." Spike muttered to himself as he returned to the room where Twilight and the others were. As he walked in everypony turned toward him to hear his opinion of the mare in question. "Well..." he began, "She really is suspicious alright, there's no question about it!"

"So what should we do with her?" Rainbow asked, giving quick looks to the others around the room.

"Well..." Twilight began, eyebrows furrowed in thought, "she hasn't done anything yet, so I guess she can stay, but if she does anything suspicious we'll call you back her Spike!"

"Alright then." Spike confirmed. "Maybe we shou-"

"You could've told me the front door was locked!" Flash Dancer cut in, startling everypony in the room. Spike surprisingly was the first to recover from the shock as he managed to reply.

"Heh...sorry about that!" He said with a bit of a blush, "but well you didn't really tell us you were coming either to be fair."

"Hm...fair enough I suppose." Flash Dancer shrugged as she glanced around the room at the other mares. "Well well Spike you didn't tell me you had an entire harem of mares in here!" She said with a teasing smirk. Everypony in the room except for the crusaders, who didn't know what a harem was, turned tomato red at the mare's statement.

"B-bu-wha-HUH?" Was all Spike could vocalize as he tried to deny the accusation. Flash Dancer however giggled at his speechlessness and turned to the other mares, who gave mixed reactions to the scandalous statement. Pinkie Pie was confused, not knowing what to make of it, Twilight and Applejack simply glared at her, showing her their disdain, poor Fluttershy was as red as could be she hid her face behind her mane, while Rarity was downright offended by it, and looked about ready to give the mare reporter a piece of her mind. Rainbow Dash, already having experience with the mare, simply rolled her eyes at the comment.

"Hey sis, what's a hair-em?" Applebloom asked curiously as Applejack let out an 'eep' and quickly turned to her sister with a nervous look on her face, and saw her younger sister along with her friends waiting eagerly for her answer.

"Uh well...uh..." the older Apple sibling fumbled through her words as she tried to think of an explanation. "Well ya see...it's a group a mares that have...oh horseapples!" she thought to herself, cursing the fact that she was the element of honesty, and as such couldn't lie worth well... poop.

"Relax everypony I was only joking!" Flash Dancer said cracking a grin that did little to shift their dispositions towards her. However, this did distract the younger trio of fillies from Applejack, who gave a sigh of relief at her stroke of luck. Flash Dancer simply shrugged and turned towards Spike once again. "Anyways did you tell them what we found?" She said, her statement piquing everypony's interests.

"Not yet, but I was about to." Spike said. "Well, Rainbow and Flash Dancer managed to make it to the central security room with me, but there was a problem!"

"What problem?" Twilight said with worry.

"All the records were either destroyed or erased, and the guards at the station were both dead." The dragon said glumly as he recalled the grim state he and his companions had found the room in.

"Ohnothisisn'tgoodatallguys!" Pinkie Pie said while bouncing in her usual hyper state albiet with panic, "Thisisn'tjustnormalbadthisis super-duper-not-good-at-all BAD!" She finished, emphasizing the word bad by stretching her arms out in alarm.

"Pinkie's right darling!" Rarity agreed, "If you couldn't find any record of what happened how are you supposed to prove that Rainbow Dash is innocent?"

"I don't know..." Spike said gloomily while deep in thought, "We don't really have any leads right now so I can't tell you what to do..."

"Well...I'll keep looking for things to find, while you guys can try doing anything you think would help!" Flash Dancer chimed in helpfully.

"I guess that's as good a plan as any!" AppleJack agreed. The orange mare then turned to address Spike and Rainbow, "while she's doin' that ya'll should keep on the lookout for more survahvors and anything else that's suspicious, Twi will keep ya posted on anythin' Pinkie's Pinkie Sense turns up."

"Will do AJ!" They both nodded in agreement. The group then went back to their separate activities as Spike, Rainbow, and Flash Dancer left to go about their business. As Spike and Rainbow passed the cafeteria Spike turned to give one last look to Sugar Song, and found her staring right at him. This unnerved Spike greatly, and continued to do so as she gave him a smirk that was filled with something Spike just couldn't put his finger on. Spike shuddered and slowly turned to keep going into the vents.

"What is it Spike?" Rainbow asked, noticing his discomfort.

"Nothing..." he replied, still a bit shaken by the previous event, "just a bad feeling that things are about to get a lot worse..." he muttered bitterly as they headed towards the great expanse of the mall once again.

TIME BEFORE ROYAL GUARD Arrives: 69:09:12