The Drone Epidemic!

Without taking much time, Twilight successfully found Muffins, who was just walking around, observing the chaotic situation as best as she could, without getting infected.

“Hello, Muffins.”

“Oh, Twilight! Where have you been?”

“I’ve been… busy. See all these antiponies? We have to fix them. Where’s Kurojyaku? We’re going to need more help.”

“Kurojyaku? He’s returned to Dodge Junction.”

“I see. So, could you please help me? We’ve found a solution to our problems, and I need your help.”

“Alright.”

“So, all we have to do is to set up bait for the antiponies, and we do it by grouping more antiponies.”

“Fighting fire with fire? I like it!”

“We already have made a cage for the antiponies, here,” said Twilight, bringing her friend to the cage, just to see a pony approaching the cage, trying to interact with a ponydrone.

“Shoo!” The pony immediately ran away.

“So, as I was saying, we have this cage here to catch and lure other antiponies.”

“So what I need you to do is to lure some antiponies while I go to make some more cages, alright?”

“Okay.”

Thus, Twilight went off to make more cages and Muffins was left to try luring more ponies.

Walking around the area, she found more barrels, but they mostly were filled with stuff, and being the courteous pony that she was, Twilight found that she was obliged not to use those barrels and continued searching for more. It wasn’t long before she arrived at Big Mac’s stall again, finding Big McIntosh back to normal.

“Hey, Big Mac!”

“Yeah, Twilight?”

“Do you have some spare barrels that I can use? I need them for a spell.”

“Ooh, what kind of spell?”

“One that makes barrels into large metal traps. I need them to be able to catch those antiponies.”

“Antiponies?” asked Big McIntosh, curiously.

“Yes. Those yellow ponies you see running around.”

“Oh, darn those yellow ponies, they keep trying to get my beautiful yellow apples.”

“I see. If they have, then that means you might have some empty barrels, right?”

“I sure do! Here, take them.”

Without hesitation, Big McIntosh gave Twilight the barrels, and also a rope to tie them with.

Thus, now Twilight had some barrels, albeit with some yellow goop inside them, and with them and Muffins’ help, they soon caught as many ponies as they could find, restoring the whole Ponyville back into ponies.

On the other hand, Princess Celestia was having trouble with the places she visited. Although she was sure that she had restored every ponydrone in sight back to normal, she was sure that she had still missed a few ponies as the population count didn’t add up. Not only did she do the count herself, but she also asked her guards to do the same, and when doing a roll call, some ponies were noticeably absent. While she hypothesized that some of them were possibly in other areas, she found the number of disappeared ponies to be too large for that theory to hold much water.

So, after her side was virtually done, she returned back to Ponyville, where she met up with Twilight once again.

“Twilight, I’m done with the rest of Equestria, how’s Ponyville going along?”

“I’m done,” said Twilight, who was just turning the cages back into barrels. “Though, I feel like Spike is still missing. I haven’t seen him around yet. Oh, and also Rainbow Dash, Cheerilee, and a few more are missing.”

“I see. So, it’s not only on my side then.”

“Only?”

“Yeah, I’ve been missing some ponies at other places in Equestria too. I thought they could be outstation, but the number of missing ponies has been far too many.”

“I see. So, what should we do?”

“We have to think of a search plan.”

“Wait, maybe there’s an answer to this in the library as well!”

“Hmm, maybe. It won’t hurt to look.”

And so, the both of them went to the Library of Magic again.

To be continued...