by Perdita Finn
“Let’s do it! C’mon!” Pinkie Pie squealed as she started to run off. It would be an adventure.
“In the meantime,” Twilight suggested to the other girls, “we should look for the relics.”
“Where do we even start?” wondered Applejack. “It’s not like there’s some mysterious, thievin’, cloaked figure we can chase after and say, ‘Tell us where you’re keepin’ the relics!’”
Rarity frowned. She held up her hand, pointing.
A cloaked figure was sneaking behind one of the set pieces.
“Hey!” called out Rainbow Dash. “Stop right there!”
Startled, the cloaked figure whirled around for an instant before speeding off in the opposite direction.
Rainbow Dash met everyone’s eyes. The chase was on! She touched her geode. It was time for a little superpowered running!
Ten minutes later, the rest of the girls caught up with Rainbow Dash. She was out of breath. “I can’t believe I lost them!” She gasped. “My geode gives me super speed, but I guess being awesomely fast isn’t all that helpful when the person you are chasing knows their way around better than you do.”
Sunset Shimmer caught up with the others. She looked defeated.
“I thought you were followin’ Chestnut?” Applejack asked.
Sunset Shimmer’s face fell. “We couldn’t find her.”
“But”—Pinkie Pie giggled—“we did find the cupcake fountain!” She pulled two cupcakes out of her purse and handed one to Spike.
Sunset Shimmer shook her head. “Then we got lost and somehow ended up here. What have you guys been doing?”
“We spotted a super-suspicious cloaked figure but they got away,” explained Rainbow Dash. She peered into the corners. They couldn’t have gone far. They had to be here somewhere. But where?
A nervous production assistant hurried over to them. “There you are!” she said. “Where are your costumes?”
“Costumes?” Fluttershy was confused.
“We have got to hurry,” insisted the production assistant angrily. “I’m so gonna be fired if you aren’t ready. The director wants to shoot in three minutes!”
What was happening? How had they ended up getting parts in the Daring Do movie? No one knew, but they all had to admit—it was pretty exciting!
Dashes Chases
The girls arrived back on the set dressed as Power Ponies, all except for Sunset Shimmer, who had somehow gotten the part of the Mane-iac.
“I think there’s been some kind of mistake,” said Applejack. They didn’t know what their lines were. No one had told them what to do.
But no one was listening to her.
“Action!” called Canter Zoom, and the cameras began to roll. “Wait.” He stopped a moment later. “Who are these girls?”
“They’re the Power Ponies,” explained the production assistant.
Canter Zoom shook his head. He looked like he was about to explode.
“I’m fired, aren’t I?” said the production assistant in a soft voice.
“You are so fired,” confirmed Canter Zoom.
“Hey!” Applejack called out. She pointed at the cloaked figure disappearing behind a set piece.
The girls and Spike raced after the figure. They ran from movie set to movie set, hurrying past old castles, across racetracks, and hurling themselves over the hoods of cars. They chased the cloaked figure through a desolate planet in outer space. Directors and lighting technicians yelled at them, but they didn’t stop. They had to catch the cloaked figure. This was how they could save Canter Zoom’s movie—and maybe Camp Everfree. But they could not catch up. The figure disappeared again, and the girls didn’t know where to go next. At last, they sat down, utterly exhausted.
They were on the set of what looked like an ordinary downtown street—except that there were large buckets of what looked like chocolate pudding.
“What’s this place supposed to be?” wondered Applejack.
Rainbow Dash sighed, peering into every corner. “And where did they go?”
“They must be around here somewhere,” said Twilight, confused. “Wherever here is.”
Pinkie Pie licked chocolate off her finger. “Are you kidding? This is the set of Stormy with a Side of Pudding!”
Applejack scratched her head. “Stormy with a side of what, now?”
“It’s my all-time favorite movie!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.
The other girls looked at her blankly. They’d never heard of it.
“I’ve tried to get you all to watch it, like, a gazillion times,” said Pinkie Pie, exasperated. “I’ve heard they use real pudding…” She licked her finger again. “And now I know they do!”
Rainbow Dash was frustrated. “Ugh! We’re running out of time. We’re supposed to be hunting down the missing relics and catching the bad guy, not eating pudding! If we don’t win the dance video contest, this is our only backup plan.”
Everyone was so focused on Rainbow Dash that nobody noticed the shadow of a figure moving closer to them.
“We’re trying.” Twilight Sparkle sighed. “Maybe we should make our way back to the Daring Do set. There might have been some clues we missed.”
But it was too late.
The cloaked figure was right behind them… with a large net! “Ahh!” screamed Sunset Shimmer.
The figure threw it over the girls—but Rarity instinctively touched the geode she wore around her neck, and a protective diamond dome encased the girls. They didn’t get entangled in the ropes.
Rainbow Dash didn’t wait an instant when Rarity dissolved the dome.
“Don’t worry; I’ve got this,” she shouted to her friends. She raced off after the cloaked figure, knocking over a bucket of chocolate pudding in her path. She zoomed at top speed from one set to another. She screeched to a halt in an abandoned lot.
“I saw you come in here. Where are you?” she said to herself.
She heard the soft thud of a footstep and then the quietest of creaks. At the other end of the room was the door to a closet. It was slightly ajar. Very cautiously, Rainbow Dash tiptoed toward it. She slipped inside. Mops and brooms and buckets. Some bottles of cleaning solvents. Stacks of paper towels. And a costume.
Rainbow Dash studied it. She’d seen it before. “Hey! This is just like the outfit Daring Do wears in the nightclub scene. What’s it doing in here?”
But before she could go ask her friends, the closet door shut behind her—and locked.
Rainbow Dash tried to jiggle the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. She was trapped! She pounded on the door. “Hello? Anybody out there?” There was no answer, but at least she had her phone. Except she didn’t. With a groan, she discovered that she didn’t get any signal in the closet.
Rainbow Dash pounded on the door again and screamed at the top of her lungs. “Help! Help! I’m trapped in here!”
But no one knew where she was.
Pudding and Pie
Rainbow Dash had run so fast that none of the girls knew where she was. But they knew they had to find her.
Rarity was worried. “I simply don’t see how we’ll do it. As fast as she moves, she could be anywhere on the lot by now.”
Sunset Shimmer stared at her, amazed. “You just used your geode, thank goodness—and I wish I’d brought mine. One touch and I’d be able to see Chestnut’s memories and get to the bottom of this whole thing.”
Pinkie Pie looked unusually thoughtful. She pointed at the overturned bucket of chocolate pudding—and the chocolate footsteps that led away from it. “See?”
“You’re a genius, Pinkie Pie!” Twilight Sparkle exclaimed.
“I know!” Pinkie Pie beamed.
“C’mon; this way,” said Sunset Shimmer, already following Rainbow Dash’s trail.
Pinkie Pie dipped her finger into one of the buckets again. “For the road!” she told the others.
Unfortunately, with each step, the pudding trail got fainter and fainter. “She must be here somewhere,” said P
inkie Pie when she could no longer detect any chocolate at all. They were in the abandoned lot.
“Rainbow Dash? Where are ya?” called Applejack.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” added Twilight Sparkle, facing the opposite direction.
Fluttershy was listening. That’s when she heard muffled sounds coming from behind a closed door. She pressed her ear up to the closet. “Hello? Rainbow Dash? Are you in there?”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Someone was pounding on the door from the other side. A muffled voice shouted, “Yes! Help! I’m locked in!”
“It’s okay, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy reassured her soothingly. “We’re here.”
Sunset Shimmer quickly assessed the situation. “I’ll go find someone with a key,” she announced.
Twilight Sparkle stopped her. “Wait.” She pulled on the chain around her neck. She was wearing her geode. She held her hand up to the door—and a moment later, the handle turned.
Rarity gasped in amazement. “Did you just make that lock unlock itself?”
“Nice!” Sunset Shimmer grinned.
“I’m thinking maybe we should all start wearing our geodes around,” Applejack suggested. “Never know when our new magic might come in handy.”
Twilight opened the door and Rainbow Dash burst out of the closet. “Am I happy to see you!”
The girls noticed the costume clutched in her hands.
“How did you find me?” asked Rainbow Dash. “I gave up banging on that door five minutes ago.”
“Pudding never lies,” said Pinkie Pie without a giggle or a grin.
Sunset Shimmer was looking at the costume. “Is that the dress that went missing when we first got here?”
Rainbow Dash nodded. “Yeah. But I didn’t see the person who locked me in, and there’s still no sign of the relics.”
“I say we head back to the scene of the crime. Maybe there’s somethin’ there that could lead us to all the relics,” Applejack suggested.
But another idea had suddenly occurred to Twilight Sparkle. “Or we could let the culprit lead us to them!”
“How?” asked Rainbow Dash. “I just told you I didn’t see who locked me in.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea who our thief is,” explained Twilight Sparkle as the girls crowded around. “But we’re going to need Canter Zoom’s help to catch her.”
As they were putting together their plan, another text arrived from Starlight Glimmer. Bad news. I saw wisps of magic at the Sweet Shoppe. They seemed to be disappearing into shiny surfaces—metal, mirrors, that kind of thing. Nothing else to report.
Sunset Shimmer sighed. They might be on the verge of solving this mystery—but it sounded like there was another waiting for them when they got back to Canterlot High.
Answers and Apologies
Canter Zoom studied the missing costume. “You found this in the supply closet?” he asked.
Rainbow Dash nodded. They’d explained everything to him.
“We didn’t find the relics,” added Twilight Sparkle. “But we don’t think the thief has had a chance to take them off the lot yet. We wanted your permission to search the Tricorner Villages set from top to bottom. Maybe we’ll find a clue that will lead us to where they’re hidden.”
“Of course,” agreed Canter Zoom, relieved that he might be able to save his movie after all. “I’ll help you.”
But first he had to see to a few things. He pulled Chestnut Magnifico aside. “I need you to get to hair and makeup,” he told the star. “As soon as we get the relics, we’re going to start shooting again.”
She sniffed, her nose in the air. “We’ll see.”
Canter Zoom took a big breath, trying to keep his cool. “Juniper,” he said to his freckle-faced niece. “Could you do a smoothie run? I’m sure all this sleuthing is going to make everyone thirsty.”
“Absolutely!” answered Juniper loudly, jumping up.
No one was left on the movie set. Chestnut had gone to her trailer. Canter Zoom had followed the girls. Juniper was off getting smoothies. That was when the cloaked figure appeared. A hand reached behind a canvas flap and emerged holding… the relics!
The girls jumped out from behind a building. They hadn’t left the set after all. They’d set a trap.
The cloaked figure whirled around and her hood fell away. It was Juniper Montage! She dropped the relics, stunned.
“I told you it wasn’t Chestnut!” Rarity announced triumphantly.
“Look!” said Juniper Montage, scrambling. “I found the missing relics.”
But the girls weren’t buying it. “Because you’re the one who stole them,” Sunset Shimmer accused her.
Canter Zoom couldn’t believe it. “She wouldn’t,” he said, shaking his head.
“She would. And she did,” said Twilight Sparkle. “What she didn’t expect was for Rainbow Dash to come to the Tricorner set before she was able to sneak them off to a safer hiding place. So she was forced to hide them in the first place she could find.”
Twilight explained that the fact that Juniper had admitted she knew “every inch of the studio like the back of her hand” was the first clue. That’s how she was always able to find hiding places so that she could sneak up on the girls when she needed to. Plus, Juniper had also admitted she had keys to “just about every door in the place,” including, Twilight pointed out, the closet near the abandoned set.
“When did you figure out it was her?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“I started to piece things together when I unlocked the door to get you out of the supply closet,” Twilight revealed. “But I knew Juniper would never admit she was the one who had taken the relics.”
“Unless, of course, she was caught in the act of trying to remove them again!” Sunset Shimmer said as she figured it out.
Twilight nodded. “Which is why I told you, Canter Zoom, to send her on that smoothie run. So she’d think she had the opportunity to get the relics off the lot where we’d never find them.”
Juniper Montage hung her head in shame. “But instead of searching the Tricorners set, you all secretly followed me here.”
“Bingo!” squealed Pinkie Pie.
But there was still something Canter Zoom didn’t understand. “Why would you do this?” he asked Juniper.
“I’m sorry! Okay? I’m sorry.” She took a big breath. Her plan had failed, and there was nothing left to do but admit it. “I just can’t stand Chestnut. She’s always eating all the peanut butter praline crunch bars, which are the only candy bars I like.…”
Sunset pulled the crumpled candy wrapper out of her pocket. Another clue!
“That’s hardly a reason to—” began Canter Zoom.
“And I was mad at you for casting her as Daring Do!” Juniper blurted out. “I mean, I’ve told you over and over again how badly I wanted to play Daring Do, and you just ignored me!”
Canter Zoom was even more bewildered. “But, Juniper, you’re too young! You don’t have any experience.”
“I know!” she whined defensively. “But I thought if enough things went wrong, Chestnut would back out of the movie and then maybe you’d give me a chance.”
Now Canter Zoom was furious. “Not only did you jeopardize production and endanger the safety of the actors and film crew, but you also lied to me and took advantage of my trust!”
Juniper kicked at the floor. What else could she say? She tried apologizing again, this time a little more sincerely. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone, and I was going to return all the props, just as soon as Chestnut quit. I hope you can forgive me.”
Canter Zoom sat down heavily in his director’s chair. If it hadn’t been for the visiting girls from Canterlot High, his entire movie would have been ruined. Still, Juniper was his niece, she was young, and everyone made mistakes. “I can forgive you,” he told her, “but I am sorry to say you are no longer welcome on the set, and it will be a long time before I consider allowing you back here.”
He extended h
is hand and asked her to return her studio keys.
Chestnut Magnifico chose that moment to make a grand entrance. “Canter, there you are!” she trilled. “So sorry I’m not in makeup, but I’ve just gotten a call from my agent. I no longer have to work on that ridiculous documentary about nests next month. I swear, when they approached me, I thought they wanted to do a documentary about my organization for homeless animals, not on various nests around the world! Completely misleading! But no matter! That’s all behind us!” She waved a hand magnanimously.
Canter Zoom’s eyes widened. He might not have to rush the production. “Does this mean…?”
“No more scheduling conflict,” confirmed Chestnut. “I can extend my contract and continue filming Daring Do!” She caught sight of the missing relics and turned a questioning eye to Canter.
“Yes, they’ve been found,” he said. “And I don’t think we’ll have to worry about them disappearing again.” He glared at Juniper. She squirmed uncomfortably.
Sunset Shimmer couldn’t help but notice that she seemed more upset about getting caught than about having made a mistake. Applejack was right! If only she’d had her geode, she would have been able to find out what Juniper was thinking. But she hadn’t.
Twilight Sparkle cleared her throat to catch Canter Zoom’s attention.
The director smiled at her appreciatively. “And it’s all thanks to our visitors,” he acknowledged. “First you save Camp Everfree and now the Daring Do movie. You all are certainly on a roll.”
Rainbow Dash couldn’t believe it! Her far-out, totally unlikely plan was actually working! “Speaking of roles…” she said. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any extra parts my friends and I could play? You know, as a reward for saving the day? You wouldn’t even have to pay us. You could just pay down the deposit for repairs on Camp Everfree!”
Canter Zoom grinned. “I think we can figure something out.”
The girls cheered.
But Juniper Montage looked unhappier than ever. Even without her geode, Sunset Shimmer knew what she was thinking. Juniper Montage was hatching another terrible plan.
