“...We just cross out what our new friend wrote, and everything should go back to normal,” Sunny Starscout finished.
Hitch handed the page to her. “That sounds too easy. There’s gotta be something more to it than that.”
“Maybe not,” Zipp said, taking out her phone. “Pipp, call Mane Melody. I’m calling mom.”
“You’re calling mom?” her sister replied as she pulled out her own phone.
“Yeah, I know.” Zipp called her mother and explained the situation while Pipp did likewise with Mane Melody. “Just keep an eye out for the cobwebs to go away,” said Zipp.
“And turn on one of the faucets,” Pipp told Rocky and Jazz.
“Everypony ready?” Hitch asked. They all nodded. “Okay, Sunny. Do your thing.”
Sunny took a pen and crossed out each new word that Lemongrass had scribbled in. As soon as the last word had been crossed out, and rewritten so that everything was cleaned up, Rocky pointed out that water was flowing from the faucet once more! And Zipp’s screen showed the cobwebs dissolving into the air, releasing Thunder back onto the ground.
“Oh, thank hoofness,” Queen Haven said as she went over to his aid.
The sisters ended their calls. “Well that’s it,” Zipp declared. “Problem solved!”
Hitch shook his head. “Not quite. I’ll have to bring you in, Lemongrass.”
“W-What? But I apologized, and it’s all fixed!”
“True, but you did still end up causing major disturbances in both Maretime Bay and Zephyr Heights.”
Alphabittle walked over to them. “I have a better idea. Lemongrass can work for me for a while; I'll keep an eye on her.”
“Community service, huh? Sounds good to me!” Hitch decided, and the five friends returned to their regular, unplagued homes.
Not long after Discord’s victory at Ponyville Ciderfest, he returned home to gather all the loose pages back into the Book Of All Stories. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, now dripping with glue, licked his claw, and began reattaching the pages…but not necessarily in their original positions.
Then, a fight broke out between a small swarm of singing teabags and some glow-igami, causing a few more pages to slip from his grasp and fly off across his dimension. “Oh, fiddlesticks,” Discord groaned. "When are those pages headed to now?”
Then he saw another page that had fallen behind the staircase that led nowhere. He skimmed it and chuckled. “Oh, what the hay, one more for the road!” He released the page into the void of swirling purple and blue clouds.
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The page landed in Bridlewood at the hooves of a pale orange unicorn mare taking a walk under the stars. The white horn sticking out of her wavy green mane glowed as she lifted it with her magic to inspect it. The mare smiled, deciding she would take it home with her to write on later.
____________________
Zipp woke up as the sun rose over the horizon the next morning. She stretched her hooves and did some morning calisthenics before ascending the Brighthouse’s elevator to the upper floor. “Good morning, Unity Crystals,” she said to the floating gems before stretching her wings and shooting into the air.
She circled the town, soaring higher and higher until she hovered above the clouds, before doing a backflip and smoothly gliding back down. As she soared along the shore, Zipp waved at four foals who had decided to have a beach day. The kids waved back as she flew on toward town.
As she flew, Zipp noticed that some of the giant flora that the Earth ponies had created with their magic had started to wilt. A handful of Earth ponies stood around them, seemingly confused. She dropped to the ground to meet them. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“There sure is, but we don’t know what, exactly,” one of them answered.
The white pegasus took out her visor and scanned the giant stems. The heads-up display definitely detected an anomaly, but it couldn’t identify what exactly it was. “Hmm, this is gonna need some deeper testing.” She put her visor away and started taking samples.
Then her phone rang, interrupting her gathering - it was her friend Sunny Starscout! “What’s up, Sunny?”
“Hi, Zipp,” the Earth pony said. “Can you come to the smoothie cart? I…think I have a problem.”
“Sure thing,” Zipp replied. She flapped her wings and flew toward Sunny’s smoothie cart on the Mane Street boardwalk, reaching the cart a minute later. “I’m here. What’s the problem?”
Sunny just passed her a smoothie. “Do my smoothies taste weird today? I’ve had…a few complaints.”
Zipp took a sip - or rather, Zipp tried to take a sip, but the smoothie was too thick and didn’t go up the straw. She took the lid off and drank a bit, then spit it out. “Yuck, it’s all slimy!”
“What?” Sunny cried, turning back to her smoothie cart. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!”
Zipp thought for a moment. “Hmm, slimy smoothies, giant plants wilting…” Her eyes widened with realization. “The foals at the beach!” She darted over to the railing and looked down; she saw two of the foals stuck in the water, and the other two were trying to pull them out.
Zipp put on her visor, zooming in on the foals who were stuck in the water, but the visor showed her a different chemical composition, as well as a match to the earlier anomaly. “The water’s not water!” she exclaimed as she jumped over the railing and glided down to help them.
“I’m here to help,” she reassured them, and took the hooves of one of the foals, a colt. After a few moments of grunting and pulling, Zipp hovered over him and tried pulling up. Soon, the foal’s hooves slipped out of the slime and the pegasus flew him to the safety of the sand. Soon, the other foal was out of the slime and back on the beach.
“Is everypony okay?” The foals nodded. “You’d better head home; the water’s like this all over town.” They thanked her and as she turned back toward Maretime Bay, her phone rang again. It was her sister, Pipp! “How’s the concert prep going, sis?”
“Oh, thank hoofness you answered!” Pipp gasped, out of breath.
“Of course I answered,” Zipp replied, confused. “Wait, why were you afraid I wouldn’t answer?”
“Because there’s been a bit of a…situation in Zephyr Heights this morning.”
“What kind of situation?”
Pipp turned her phone and showed her older sister the cobwebs that had covered the beautiful city and all the pegasi who were stuck in them.
“Wait, Pipp, are you stuck in one too?”
“Yes! It took like, twenty minutes, but I was finally able to reach my phone and call you.”
“Funny you should mention a situation,” Zipp pointed her phone at the shore. “Maretime Bay’s got a situation too, except here, the water turned into slime; plants are wilting, and Sunny’s smoothies are weird.” Pipp rambled something about the slime affecting business at Mane Melody, but the white pegasus was deep in thought. “Maretime Bay and Zephyr Heights both got hit with some kind of natural disaster…Izzy!”
“Izzy what?” Pipp asked, distracted.
“I’ll call you back,” Zipp said as she hung up, then called Izzy, who had gone to her cottage in Bridlewood the day before.
“Yello!” Izzy answered.
“Izzy! Is there anything different in Bridlewood this morning?” she asked. “I’m talking weird-different.”
“Hmm, lemme check.” The unicorn set her phone down on a table and stepped outside. A minute passed in silence before she came back. “Nope, everything’s normal-different here.” Her eyes widened and she gasped. “Does that mean something weird-different happened back in Maretime Bay?”
“Here and in Zephyr Heights! Our water is all slimy, and Zephyr Heights is full of cobwebs!”
Since there was nothing weird happening in Bridlewood, Zipp guessed that one of the other unicorns might know something. She messaged the rest of her friends, asking them to join her at Izzy’s cottage to make a plan.
Back in Maretime Bay, Hitch called an emergency safety meeting, and all of town was in attendance. After shouts for answers and guidance, Hitch calmed them, making a plan to mitigate the damage. “Continue your day as usual, but try not to use any water.” The assembled ponies went on their way, while Hitch and Sunny made their way toward Bridlewood.
In Zephyr Heights, Pipp was able to free herself from the cobwebs and live streamed across the city. She explained the situation, telling the rest of the pegasi that she’d be back after everything was taken care of.
Soon, they had all convened in Izzy’s cottage, and whipped up a plan. It wasn’t long before all five friends walked the streets of Bridlewood toward the Crystal Tea Room. They went inside, taking seats in the middle of the room.
“Hey hey, nothing means an eventful day in the Tea Room like you little ponies!” Alphabittle called to them from his counter. “What can I get for you?”
“Something relaxing,” Sunny replied. “We’ve had a stressful morning back home.”
“Oh? What made it so stressful?” he asked as he picked out warm spices and sage.
“It was strange,” she answered, with a bewildered expression. “Both Maretime Bay and Zephyr Heights found themselves in rather STICKY situations.”
Alphabittle took a glance at the jar of honey in his hooves, and a unicorn in the back couldn’t hold a snicker. Everypony turned toward the culprit: a pale orange unicorn with a wavy green mane and a white horn. She was leaning over a single page, now flushed with embarrassment and avoiding eye contact.
Zipp and Hitch stood and walked over to her. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” Zipp asked as she leaned against the table. The unicorn tried to hide the page under her forelegs, but Zipp quickly snatched it and slid it over to Hitch, who began reading.
“Lemongrass…” Alphabittle said flatly, his voice now tempered with a chiding tone .
“I’m sorry, I just thought it would be funny. I didn’t think what I wrote would actually become real!” she stammered.
Hitch finished reading. “What even is this? And how did it change reality to match it?”
“I have no idea! I just found it on the ground last night.”
Sunny walked over to join them. “Well, it sounds like the problem might also be our solution!” she said...
“...But even if we just cross out what our new friend wrote, the slime and cobwebs might still be an issue,” Sunny Starscout finished.
“That’s a good point,” Hitch chimed in. “Pipp, call Mane Melody. Zipp, call Queen Haven. Tell them we know the problem, but we don’t know if our fix will be immediate. We’ll need their eyes for confirmation.”
The sisters got out their phones and explained the situation to their targets. “Just keep an eye out for the cobwebs to go away,” Zipp said
“And turn on one of the faucets,” Pipp told Rocky and Jazz.
“Everypony ready?” Hitch asked. They all nodded. “Okay, Sunny. Do your thing.”
Sunny took the page, ripping it up as the page’s scraps grew smaller and smaller before all that was left of it were sparkles.
The ponies stared at the empty air among them. “No way back now,” Zipp said after a few silent moments. She and her sister looked at their phone screens and saw…no changes. The cause of the sticky plagues had been destroyed, but the plagues remained.
“Well, that didn’t work,” Zipp said.
“I guess the magic in the page was more permanent,” Sunny said. “Well, I suppose we just go home and tell everypony that we’ll have to deal with the slimy water and cobwebs longer than expected.”
“Can I come with you?” Lemongrass asked. “I’m the one responsible for all of this, and I wanna help fix my mistake.”
Hitch stood up straight. “That’s what I like to see, a pony who follows the law. You still have to face charges, but I’ll make sure your voluntary community service will suffice.”
All six ponies returned to Maretime Bay to start cleaning the slimy water. Even with the help of natural remedies and unicorn magic to help, they could barely keep the water purified long enough before the slime started oozing back into it. The plants that had started wilting had to be uprooted before new ones could be grown in their place. Maretime Bay had to resort to importing water from Bridlewood and Zephyr Heights until everything was restored to normal.
Zipp and Pipp returned home to Zephyr Heights to help the guards to clear enough of the cobwebs for normal flight patterns to resume, which took them over two weeks. Yet it would take three more months until the cobwebs were little more than a memory.
