The Drone Epidemic!

The library was in a better state than before, but it was still very messy. Entering the main hall, most of the books had returned to their shelves, but the floor was still covered with yellow and black stains. In a corridor of the library, the trio saw a lot of small and long objects scattered around the floor and they picked them up to find that they were in fact pencils, pens, rulers, bookmarks, and the like. Turning the items around, they tried to find differences between the items of the same category. Eventually, they gave up, considering that all pencils were exactly the same as each other, and all pens were exactly the same as each other, and so on.

“They’re exactly the same!” cried Muffins. “Can you imagine? All the different librarians turned into mere copies of stationeries?”

“I can, now that it has happened,” quipped Twilight. “Though, let’s hurry to the secret section first.”

“I agree. Maybe we’ll have some answers there.” Celestia answered.

“Hold on! I have some things to tell you!” said a voice, who they noticed was Amethyst Maresbury. “I’m one of the only librarians left! Most of them just walked into a dark corner and with a ‘poof!’, they turned into the objects you behold in front of - well, no, behind you.”

“You mean?” Celestia asked.

“Yes! The darkness caused them to be like this!” Amethyst replied.

“So bring them back into the light!” Twilight instructed.

“I did try a few, but nothing happened.” Amethyst said.

“I see. Well, we have to do something about them. How about we collect them?” Twilight suggested.

“Collect them?” Muffins asked.

“Yes! It’ll be much easier keeping them this way. What do you think, Muffins? Muffins!?” Twilight cried out.

While they were talking and walking to the secret area, Muffins stayed behind, trying to write stuff using a ponydrone pen. As she wrote, the ink stopped halfway, and she tried shaking the pen, just to get a whole splatter of ink onto herself.

“Muffins!” cried out Twilight as she saw what had happened.

“No, Twilight! Don’t go near her! She might infect you!” Celestia warned.
[hr{
Indeed, Muffins had started to change, starting with her face. Her eyes, covered with the goop, slowly turned solid and glowing. Her mouth sealed up and so did her nostrils. In terror, she tried to scream but only muffled sounds could come out of her newly formed cheek valves, as she slowly forgot, among other stuff, how to speak.

Looking at Twilight and Celestia, her body, now half yellow, started chasing after them, seemingly asking for help.

“Run!”

The two ponies ran and ran until they eventually lost sight of Muffins, but by the time that happened, they were already outside the library, where it was getting dark.

“What do we do?” asked Twilight.

“It’s getting late, why don’t you come to the castle to sleep?” Celestia requested.

“Okay.” agreed Twilight.

So, the two headed back to the castle for some sleep. They have another busy day of investigation ahead of them.

To be continued…