Truth or Magic?

“Weeeeeeee!! Hehehehehehe!” Izzy squealed, sliding down through large vines.

The happy unicorn then got on top of the largest vine with her hooves while she was still in motion. As she got closer to the lower branches, she jumped off the vine and playfully jumped from branch to branch.

Three earth ponies were just finished sprouting the vines from the ground with their magic. At that moment, each one of their vines grew tiny flowers all around them. The branches also blossomed with all sorts of fruits such as apples, oranges, blueberries, and raspberries.

The earth ponies were satisfied with their fruitful results…until Izzy bounced on one of the fruitful branches and propelled herself into the air—causing the fruits to fall on their faces.

An apple dropped on Posey’s head; a few seconds later, a pile of apples and oranges fell on Posey. She popped her head out of the pile, annoyed at Izzy. “Hey, watch it!”

Izzy then landed on the ground while she was already eating a bowl of fruit salad. She happily trotted off in Maretime Bay with a pillar of strawberries stacked on her head.

The earth pony stallions wiped off the sweat from their foreheads as they finished their work with their plant magic.

“That should do. These vines should last for a whole week if we’re lucky.”

“I don’t know about you guys, but this magic feels so good! We can do anything with this stuff!”

“I know, right? It feels weird, but it’s still cool we can do magic just like the unicorns. I wonder if we can soon fly like the pegasi.”

“I dunno about flying. I think I’ll just stick to earth pony magic.”

Suddenly, they heard a twig break.

“Shh! You hear that?”

As they were looking around, they heard strange footsteps which sounded as if someone was about to approach them. Then just as they all turned right behind them, Toffee appeared before them with his hands behind his back.

The stallions took a step back, terrified at the presence of a bipedal lizard. “WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU?!”

Toffee breathed out a yellow smoke right into their faces, forcing them to cough. Then they got really sleepy and fell on the dirt unconscious.

Ignoring their snores, he pulled out his fingers and touched the vines with them. “Sleep tight, gentlemen. I have some important work to do,” he said, grinning.

His fingers injected a dark green ooze within the vines which made it grow thorns all around them.

Meanwhile, Izzy was drinking her smoothie and saw Pipp streaming live with her phone. The latter was doing this while standing in front of a large tree that was glowing bright yellow.

Izzy gazed at the sight of the beautiful tree. “Wooooooooow. Pretty tree! And it’s starting to grow ice cream?”

The yellow tree branches sprouted ice cream and dropped them unto the cones which were carried by its roots. The roots then gave one to Pipp.

“You saw that, pipsqueaks? An ice cream-sprouting tree! That makes it even better!! Who would’ve guessed we would all need something like this in our lives?” Pipp said, showing her audience the dropping ice cream.

Izzy caught a falling vanilla-flavored one and saw it had a smiley face on it.

“Aww, this ice cream cone is happy! If the ice cream is happy, then so am I! And if I’m happy, then my whole day is happy!” she said, jumping in the air with happy ice cream cone faces in the pink background.

However, neither Izzy nor Pipp noticed the dark green vines sneaking their way past them; they seized the helpless roots and poisoned it with their ooze. As a result, the infection spread from the root system all the way to every single part of the tree.

Thus, the branches started to change its bright color…into an unhappy one. Everything became dark green, and the ice cream suddenly stopped falling from its branches.

“Don’t you just love it when this day keeps getting better and better? I hope this never ends, especially when I have my favorite chocolate chip…🎶flavoooor🎶,” sang Pipp, licking her ice cream.

Just as Izzy was smiling back at her joyous treat, a dark green slimy sorbet landed on her cone. Izzy was taken by surprise at first, but she just casually shrugged it off. She licked it, tasted its flavor, and her pupils shrunk a bit—instantly overwhelmed by its strange taste.

“Hey, this tastes just as good! Hmm, I wonder why it stopped smiling though. Wait, did I forget to say thank you?! Silly me! Thank you, tree, for giving me this—huh?”

The sorbet opened its white eyes and stared curiously at Izzy. It jumped off its cone and walked just a few inches closer to her hind legs. Then it sat down and started to grow a candle on its head.

“Aw, for me? Thank you, little guy! Wait, it’s not even my birthday yet which is only two months away. Eh, I’ll blow it anyway. What can go wrong?” Izzy grinned.

But before she can blow it, the candle was already halfway melted until the flame reached down to the sentient sorbet. It then trembled and started to beep rapidly.

“What the—? Where is this coming from? Ugh, why is this so slimy now?” Pipp said, spitting out the gooey texture.

At that moment, the first sorbet exploded—launching Izzy right against a house. Then Pipp’s sorbet exploded as well, splashing all its gooey contents all over her face. The pegasus screamed as she saw her face on her phone’s camera which was still streaming live.

“WHAT. IS. HAPPENING?! Uh, uh, I mean, uh, gotta go, pipsqueaks! There’s been…uh, some unexpected changes which I’m not gonna get into. BYE!” Pipp finished, quickly ending her stream.

“Izzy, what’s going on?! Why are they—?” Another sorbet landed on Pipp’s mane. “AAAAHHHHH!! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!!”

Izzy immediately bucked the sorbet off her hair before it exploded in the air. “Is it just me or is this stuff getting more weird?”

“Oh, you think? I really couldn’t tell that a bunch of disgusting gooey stuff exploding everywhere is SUPER weird! Thanks!” Pipp sarcastically remarked, her left eye twitching.

Suddenly, the corrupted vines opened their mouths and ferociously roared at the ponies. Terrified, the ponies ran for their lives which just left Pipp & Izzy standing together—surrounding by approaching sorbet creatures.

“How did this all happen? Ice cream is supposed to be sweet, delicious, and fun! Not explodey! Wait, it does explode your brain though,” said Izzy.

That’s when she suddenly got brain freeze. “Grrrrr…had wa-a-a-a-ay too much…ice cream…”

Pipp and Izzy hugged each other as they braced themselves for the next explosive impact of the vines’ chilling rampage. However, Zipp swooped down and delivered a swift dropkick to the tallest vine. It roared in pain as Zipp landed down in heroic fashion.

“Mind if I crash the party?”

“Zipp!” both ponies shouted, happy to see her.

“So it looks like Hitch was right about one thing so far,” said Zipp, kicking the persistent sorbet creatures away from her. “Something went wrong with the earth pony magic!”

“How do we stop these things?” asked Izzy, casually eating a random sorbet creature.

Pipp looked at her with disgust. “Izzy, how can you eat that? Don’t you see how slimy—?”

This gave Zipp an idea. “Wait a minute. Izzy, you’re a genius! We just have to eat our way through these vines until they’re done for!”

“Do we have to? Seeing a bunch of gooey ice cream walking around is making me want to throw up!” whined Pipp, wanting to gag.

“It’s the only way to stop them from destroying Maretime Bay. Come on! We can do this!” encouraged Zipp.

The vines again roared at them while they spewed out all the sorbet monsters; even worse, the corrupted tree did likewise.

Izzy was the first to get inside one of the vines; she started to munch as much sorbet as she could. Zipp & Pipp followed suit and did likewise within the other vines.

After a few seconds, the corrupted vines started to yelp in agony and then collapsed together in the center of the town. All the sorbet creatures eventually stopped marching and exploding moments after the vines crashed.

Their destruction resulted in the tree being free from their infection. The sorbet reverted back to ice cream, and the root system was restored back to its healthful state.

The three ponies emerged from the messy debris and shook off the creamy slime. They saw every other pony covered with the remains of the sorbet, murmuring among themselves.

“That was so close…and disgusting!” Pipp groaned.

“Eh, I thought it was yummy! And I’m getting no brain freeze this time. Hmm, weird,” Izzy remarked, licking up every piece of the sorbet from her own hooves.

“I don’t know what just happened, but something clearly went wrong. Earth pony magic is supposed to be safe; I’m getting to the bottom of this,” said Zipp, flying off.

Sunny and Hitch were each holding signs of ‘Mr. Pulp Missing’ as they were about to enter Maretime Bay.

“I hope nothing terrible happened to him,” said Sunny.

“Me too. From what Bonanza told us, he seems like a nice pony. Do you think somepony is responsible for his disappearance?” Hitch asked.

“No idea. I can’t imagine anypony wanting to kidnap him…or worse!” worried Sunny.

“I hope not. ‘Cause nopony messes with any friend of our friend! If we’re lucky enough to catch him, he’ll regret the day he decided to—WHAT THE?!” Hitch exclaimed.

Looking at his direction, Sunny widened her eyes in shock at the chaotic aftermath as they just walked into the town. Half the homes were covered in slime, dark green sorbet was splattered all across the street, and so much property was destroyed.

Then they saw everypony ganging up on the three earth ponies who were initially responsible for the growth of the vines. Curious, Sunny and Hitch walked through the crowd and stood beside the shaken stallions.

“What’s going on, everypony?” Hitch demanded.

“Those guys did this! They created all this mess!” a mare angrily shouted.

“Those nasty bomb thingies destroyed my wagon! Do you have any idea how long it took for me to build it?!” another pony roared.

“Our ice cream is ruined!” a filly cried.

As they all proceeded to utter more of their furious grievances, Sunny gently pushed the ponies back from tearing the terrified stallions to shreds.

“Everypony, stop! Can you at least let them explain their side of the story?” Sunny suggested.

Breathing a sigh of relief, one of the stallions stepped forward. “Listen, folks, I swear by my grandad’s wooden cane we have nothing to do with this mess! We have no idea what just happened or how any of this happened!”

“We don’t even remember what happened here!” his comrade added. “All we remember is we were just finishing our gardening of the vines until—until some creature came by. That was it.”

The ponies then murmured and wondered who that creature was.

“What creature? What did it look like?” Hitch asked.

“Well…I’m not exactly sure,” replied the first stallion.

“You have to do better than that. Think! Every detail matters. You all saw what it looked like, didn’t you?”

“Wait…I think I do,” the second stallion spoke up. “I’m pretty sure that creature was wearing…some sort of suit attire. He looked like a lizard, a tall one, and he somehow put us to sleep.”

“A tall lizard? Hmm, we’ve never heard reports of a creature like that before,” noted Hitch. “Is there anything else we should know of?”

“Sorry, Sheriff, that’s all we got. Honest,” answered the third stallion.

“Alright then. Okay, everypony, this is officially a crime scene! Nopony walks around this area until we complete our investigation,” Hitch ordered.

Once everypony left, Sunny once again looked at the ground—still trying to process what just happened.

“I don’t believe it. I never thought this would ever happen…”

“I knew it! I knew earth pony magic would mess up one day!” shouted Hitch. “I feared it would go rogue, and what just happened? It went rogue!!”

“No, somepony did this. What if those ponies are right? What if there is a creature responsible for this?” Sunny wondered.

“If they blacked out during this incident, then it’s hard to take their account seriously. For all we know, they were experimenting with their magic too long,” argued Hitch. “If this keeps happening, then I will have to take some drastic measures.”

“No, there has to be more clues to this! Something just doesn’t seem right! I know somepony is behind this. We just need to figure out who it is,” replied Sunny.

“Funny, I was just about to say the same thing!” said Zipp, descending from above.

“Zipp, we could really use your detective skills right now! There was—!”

“Don’t worry, Sunny, I know. In fact, Izzy & Pipp saw the whole thing as well. Believe it or not, Izzy is having…too much fun at the moment.”

“Heh, classic Izzy,” Hitch muttered.

“So there’s word of a lizard beast running loose? Huh, now things are getting interesting. If it’s the culprit, then we better track it down before it hurts somepony,” Zipp advised.

“Wait, hold on. I think there’s something we’re completely ignoring: if this creature is responsible, then how did it manage to create all this ice cream or…whatever they are…out of those plants? How did it manage to corrupt earth pony magic?”

This made both Hitch & Zipp silent in thought for a few moments. “That’s…a very good question, Sunny. Looks we got a mystery to solve!”

“Hopefully, we find some answers. There’s no time to waste!” urged Hitch.