"This is ridiculous!" Sour Sweet complained. "If we want to find a cryptid, we should be searching in a forest or a jungle or a swamp. Not in the middle of downtown Canterlot!"
Beside her, Sugarcoat held a mobile phone. "Reports on the internet say she's been seen swimming in the Canterlot River. And the Canterlot River cuts right through the center of Canterlot."
Sour Sweet grumbled, "Sunny, tell Sugarcoat she's being unreasonable."
Sunny Flare grinned. "Unreasonable? Last week, when YOU picked our activity, you led us through at least half of Canter County's forests, and got us lost twice!"
"I wasn't lost. YOU were lost. And not only did we get to look for bighoof, I ALSO taught you two how to pick edible ferns AND track several different kinds of wild game. These are things everyone ought to know, especially anyone in Crystal Prep Biology Club."
"Cryptid Club," Sugarcoat said.
"You know we can't call it that, if we want it to look good on our college applications."
"Cryptid Club is real! It just hides inside 'Biology Club' like a bighoof in the forest. Or a siren in the Canterlot River."
Sour Sweet rolled her eyes. "For the last time, mermaids aren't real! If women with fish tails were walking around downtown Canterlot...well, for one thing, they couldn't WALK on fish tails!"
Sunny Flare put a hand over her mouth, stifling a snicker.
Sugarcoat pointed at a picture on her phone's screen. "They don't have fish tails. That would be silly. But they do stay underwater for several minutes at a time, sometimes longer. Evidence points to their having gills."
"How would they possibly have gills? Everyone would notice if someone had gills!"
"Shh!" Sugarcoat grabbed Sour's shoulder.
"What do you mean, 'shh?'"
"I see someone in that cafe, and she looks exactly like the pictures and the video."
Sunny Flare looked through the cafe's front window. "Huh. She really does."
The girl inside waved to two other girls, who were just entering the cafe through the back door.
"Huh," Sunny said. "Do you really think a mermaid would spend her Saturday morning in a human cafe, though?"
"Why not?" Sugarcoat shrugged. "Sirens would be able to find all kinds of underwater treasure. They could probably even afford Stallbucks prices."
Sunny Flare peered through the window. "I don't see so much as a gill slit on any of those girls, though. I don't think they're mermaids. I don't think they have gills."
"Where are you looking?"
"I've caught and cleaned enough fish," Sour said, "to know fish have their gill slits on the sides of their necks, in front of their pectoral fins."
"But where would that be on a mermaid?" Sunny asked. "Those women in the cafe look like they have woman bodies, not fish bodies."
"A fish's pectoral fins are like our arms. So the gills would be...on their necks, just like fish. Or maybe down where the shoulder meets the neck."
Sunny laughed. "I can't believe we're trying to analyze fishgirl anatomy."
"That's science for you," Sugarcoat solemnly replied.
"Well the one girl with the blue hair," Sunny remarked, "has it up in a ponytail, and I think if she had gill slits on her neck we'd have seen them by now. And the purplehair has it up in pigtails."
"But they're both wearing jackets with high collars," Sugarcoat pointed out, "which might hide gills near where the neck meets the shoulder."
"Have I mentioned you people are insane?" Sour asked.
"Yes," Sugarcoat agreed, "every time you tell us we need to improve our weapons skills in case of zombie apocalypse."
"But that's just common sense!" Sour grimaced. "I really do worry about you two. What would you even do, if an axe murderer came after you?"
"We need to carefully check these women's necks all the way down to their shoulders," Sugarcoat said calmly. "Also, what about the orange haired girl? She's the one who was in the video."
Sunny Flare squinted. "Her hair is just so fluffy and long and BIG. She could be hiding bighoof in there."
"Ha!" Sugarcoat said. "Wouldn't that be funny?"
Sunny suggested, "Or maybe her hair is a second cryptid."
"We could just stand around here all day, talking about three boring girls in a coffeshop!" Sour snorted. "Wouldn't that be just SO much fun?"
"What are you getting at?" Sugarcoat's eyes narrowed.
"Cover me, I'm going in!" Sour pulled open the cafe's front door, and strode inside.
"'Cover her?'" Sunny asked.
Sugarcoat said, "It's just an expression...I think."
Inside the cafe, Sour neared the three targets...but stopped partway to their table.
"Maybe we're supposed to go in and provide a distraction," Sunny guessed, "to help Sour get a closer look. Come on!" She led the way inside.
Sunny pointed out the front window. "What's that?" she exclaimed.
Sugarcoat's eyes followed Sunny's gesture. "Do you mean the tree? It's been there for a while."
"Psst!" Sunny whispered to Sugarcoat. "I'm trying to distract those girls from noticing our friend."
"Oh," Sugarcoat whispered back. "I have an idea." She picked up a dirty plate from a table, and dropped it. The dish shattered noisily. "Sorry!" she said. "Plates can be so...slippery."
"What are you DOING?" Sunny gripped Sugarcoat's arm.
Sugarcoat said nothing.
Sunny glanced over towards the suspected sirens' table. Sour Sweet was gone.
***
When Sunny pointed outside and loudly pretended she saw something, Sour Sweet moved closer to the supposed sirens' table. She still couldn't very well see the orange haired girl's neck, not with all that fluffy hair in the way.
When Sugarcoat picked up a dish, Sour smiled and moved in closer yet.
When the dish hit the floor, the orange haired girl's head swiveled. The movement flung a mass of fluffy orange hair into Sour's face. More hair seemed to envelop Sour's body.
A person really could get lost in here, Sour joked silently to herself.
Something seemed to grab Sour and pull her in.
***
Sour's eyes saw nothing in particular, only a featureless blank like haze or fog. She reached for her face, trying to wipe away whatever might be blocking her vision.
"What is this?" she whispered. "Where am I?"
The haze thinned, grew patchy. Sour saw shadowy tree trunks. The mist didn't entirely clear, but Sour could see enough.
She was in a landscape of swamp and forest and more swamp. It reminded her of where her aunts used to take her hunting when she was younger, back in rural Mansylvania.
On every side, water dripped from trees and shrubs and vines and big tall hillocks of grass.
Thicker portions of mist sometimes drifted in front of Sour, seeming to form tattered sheets and writhing tendrils, almost like a living thing.
She shivered. Creepy.
Then she glowered, baring her teeth. The wilderness hasn't ever been born that can scare Sour Sweet! she wanted to say.
She laughed. Next she pulled a ten inch knife from her boot, and slashed a mark on the nearest tree, in case she needed to find her way back here.
Watching for any sign of humans or of anything relevant at all, marking each tree as she passed it, she squelched through the waterlogged landscape.
***
As Sour walked along the highest bits of land between stagnant pools of water, she noticed a change beneath her feet. She'd passed from muddy dirt to stone. She squatted to look more closely. The stone was cut in rectangular blocks, set to form a path or narrow road.
As she followed the path, her feet took her away from the swamp, up a hillside. The hillside became ridge, ridge became mountain.
Mist cleared to show her a gateway of rough hewn stones, an entrance into a dark stone passageway maybe eight times taller than a human.
As she walked, the floor was generally smooth and clean. In a few places she saw decaying shafts of wood, and old arrowheads or spearheads which had come loose from whatever used to hold them.
After she'd walked about a quarter mile, the gloomy passage grew brighter again. Soon, Sour entered a chamber where a bright beam of sunlight penetrated from high above, illuminating a raised cylindrical platform or dais in the room's center.
"No," Sour said. "I recognize this. It's like that old movie, Indigo Pones and the Raiders of the Lost Harp. This is a trap!"
But in front of her, in the center of the sunbeam, rested another object that tickled her memory. A metallic cylinder, like a handle, dotted with rectangles and studs.
"No bucking way," she gasped. "A lightsaber. Or a replica, at least." Without thinking, she quickened her pace, and leaned against the dais to closely examine the strange artifact.
"It's absolutely perfect," she breathed. "I love it. I've GOT to have it!"
Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed it. She held it carefully so that neither end pointed towards her, and thumbed a stud.
"THWWWWWWWWWWWMM!" A blue beam of plasma about four feet long appeared.
"YES!" she shouted. She swung the traditional Jedi weapon back and forth. The tool was like a machete, but lighter, less clumsy to wield. It was almost like wielding light itself: weightless, obliging, swifter than thought.
She swung the immaterial blade so that the tip sliced a chip out of the dais' edge. The fragment of stone fell to the floor, bouncing once or twice.
Sour heard a distant rumbling.
"Oh, crap."
She searched the ground for something to set upon the dais in the lightsaber's stead, something that might be of similar weight.
"Oh, who am I kidding?"
Sour sprinted back into the gloom, towards the tunnel's entrance.
"I guess I DO have an impulse control problem," she said to herself. "But at least I've ALSO qualified for the Crystal Prep track team."
As Sour ran, the rumbling behind her grew louder. She peeked over her shoulder, seeing a large round object.
A minute later, Sour looked again. Her pursuer was gaining on her. She was pretty sure it would catch up with her before she reached the tunnel's exit!
Sour looked over her shoulder a third time. She was going to lose the race! In a desperate move, Sour tumbled forward, landing in a half kneeling position. She raised her lightsaber.
By the saber's light, she saw the boulder more clearly. It was red, and...
Was it a giant cranberry? Just like the cranberries her relatives back in Mansylvania grew thousands of acres of, the cranberries Sour secretly hated the taste of?
Sour hated cranberries SO much.
Sour growled, and readied her lightsaber to strike. If her pursuer was a giant cranberry, she could carve a hole into it, burst it before it had a chance to crush her!
Just before the fruity attacker sped onto Sour's blade, she thought she saw upon the massive sphere the face of her grandpappy.
That old man always was a jerk. Sour sliced into his wrinkly, mean visage with a howl of defiance!
For an instant, a red mist filled Sour's vision. As a huge, squishy weight struck her head and body, she slipped and fell. Crimson liquid submerged her, a thick, noisome fluid which resisted her attempts to escape.
She struggled to rise, strove to find air.
As she swam, her free hand felt an opening in the hallway's wall. She grabbed onto it, using her grip to pull herself upwards. She found another niche, and another, using them as handholds.
Her head broke the surface. She took deep, gasping breaths. Around her, the cranberry sauce flood gradually subsided, oozing towards the gateway through which she had first entered this cranberry haunted place.
Sour looked at the handholds by which she had gained air, and noticed a thin crack in the rock, with light leaking through. She grasped a handhold again, experimentally pulled.
The crack widened, the light so bright that for a moment it blinded her. Sour fell into it.
Sour landed upon a cafeteria floor, landing with an "Oomf!"
She looked up, seeing a pink girl with floofy hair. Not as voluminous as the suspected siren's orange hair, back in the cafe...but, Sour supposed, voluminous enough. Voluminous enough to have somehow provided a portal of escape from the mysterious inner realm of enormous, floofy hair. A way back into the normal world of humans.
The pink girl reached up into her own hair. She pulled out a chocolate cupcake.
"How..." Sour wondered aloud, "...where did you get that?"
"This?" the pink girl squealed cheerfully. "I don't know. Somehow, whenever I need a cupcake, my hair just has one."
"I recognize that cupcake!" Sour said. "I saw it on the plate of a woman at Stallbucks."
The pink girl blinked. She knelt beside Sour, and snatched Sour's hard won prize from Sour's hand.
"No!" Sour shouted. "My lightsaber!"
"This silly thing?" The pink girl waved it around out of Sour's reach. "It's a rock."
"It's not a rock. It's a lightsaber, and it saved my life! I struck down...exploded a giant cranberry with it!"
"Mmmhmm," the pink girl said. "It's a rock. But it's a MAGIC rock."
"Give it back!"
"No way. By the way, my name is Pinkie Pie. And you are?"
Sour sighed. "My name is Sour Sweet. But give me back my..." Her eyes focused on the object in Pinkie's hand. It was, indeed, a rock. Gray, a bit lumpy, longer than it was wide. "How is that a rock?"
"This," the pink girl said solemnly, "is a magic rock, an enchanted rock, perhaps a cursed rock. Princess Twilight asked us to keep an eye out for it, because it's dangerous."
"You mean, because it can be used as a lightsaber?"
"Nah. It isn't really good for anything. But the Fauxsome Rock fools people who don't understand it, and makes people THINK it's cool and awesome. Even though it's basically stupid sh--I mean, it's crap. I can say the word 'crap' without offending you, right?"
"Huh?"
"It makes people hallucinate, gives them delusions. You said it was a lightsaber, or you thought it was, right?"
"I...I really did use it as a lightsaber."
"Did you say it saved your life? From a giant cranberry?"
"Um..." Sour blushed. "Maybe that sounds crazy to you. But I SAW the giant cranberry rolling after me. I FELT it try to squish me. When I KILLED it, I almost suffocated in cranberry sauce!"
"I understand. But I have a question for you. Did anything in your adventures seem familiar to you? Like maybe a little TOO familiar?"
Sour sighed. "The swamp, the forest...at first it was just like where the Mansylvania Sours used to take me deer hunting. Next, I discovered an ancient stone temple, but it was like a cheap imitation of my favorite Indigo Pones movie. And the lightsaber? You know what movie series THAT comes from."
"Yes," Pinkie agreed. "Did you say you almost drowned in cranberry sauce?"
"Yes! I almost died!"
Pinkie patted Sour's arm. "So where's the sauce? You ought to be COVERED in deliciously sour goodness!"
Sour looked at her own body. She was a bit sweaty, but otherwise undrenched. "Buck. I really did imagine the whole thing, didn't I?"
"Yuppers. But look on the good side."
"Well, I'm not dead. Ten minutes ago, I didn't take that for granted."
"So you see? There is a good side."
"By the way," Sour wondered, "where am I?"
"You're at Canterlot High School! I know it's a Saturday, but I came in to help prepare for a party on Monday."
"Huh. So that thing I risked my life for, or I thought I was risking my life for, it's useless? Or worse than useless?"
Pinkie rubbed her lips. "Guess so. Sorry. Being crazy isn't good for anyone."
***
"Who took my cupcake?" an orange haired girl shouted in a downtown Stallbucks. "Someone stole my cupcake AGAIN!"
"I swear it wasn't us!" Sunny Flare protested. "I don't even have a place to hide it."
"Well, SOMEONE keeps stealing my cupcakes. It's been happening for YEARS! And someday, somehow, I will FIND whoever keeps doing it, and I WILL have my revenge! Complete with evil musical numbers!"
A barista approached. "Excuse me, miss..."
"Adagio Dazzle, songster supreme. Someday soon, you and everyone else in this world WILL have heard of me, WILL recognize my face. You will all adore me, even worship me!"
"As that may be...miss, I'm afraid you've been making a scene. How would you feel about screaming at people somewhere else instead of here?"
Adagio nodded. "Very well. I shall leave."
"Thank you. Here's another two cupcakes for your trouble."
"How gracious of you." In a sweeping movement of voluminously floofy hair, Adagio left the cafe.
***
"So you see?" Sugarcoat thrust her phone at Sour Sweet's face. "That woman WAS a siren. I saw her diving into the Canterlot River, AND I captured video footage."
"Anyone can swim in the Canterlot River, if they aren't afraid of hepatitis."
"But if you keep watching, she stays underwater for fifteen minutes."
"And then she comes back up?"
"That part is kind of glitchy. A big mean dog was chasing us around, so I couldn't hold the phone still."
Sour sighed. "Well...who am I to criticize? Wait until you hear what happened to ME."
Addendum
Pinkie snarfed first!
Also, you know what every WOOKIE can do?
How did this story happen? Well, SisterHorseteeth wrote a fun story which won a contest,
TThe Mall and the Misery
When Adagio Dazzle finds Sunset Shimmer crying on the floor of the food court, it falls upon her both to clear her own name... and destroy whoever did this to her rightful nemesis. Adagio isn't the sharing type.
SisterHorseteeth ·
17k words
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so she also won a custom story commission.
