Last time on 'Oh Great Job On The Fight There' Quest:
>Confronted the Helmet Head and the ponies under its control with Twilight and Rarity on the edge of town.
>As expected, you were thrown around a bit by Snips and Snails.
>You were able to shove a handful of sneezing powder in Snips's face, making him sneeze and seemingly bringing him back to normal.
>Made him run off, away from the fight.
>Twilight ended up getting knocked out fighting with Snails.
>Rarity was overpowered by Fluttershy, Pinkie and Zecora.
>Picked Twilight up and tried to hide her a bit away from the fight.
>Seeing Rarity now under its control, you desperately jumped on and attacked the helmet head.
>Was doing good for a while, until someone or something hit you in the back of the head, knocking you out.
>When you woke up, you were alone in the snow where you fell, half frozen to death.
>Twilight isn’t where you left her.
>Going to her house, you find it empty.
You are Rusty Shackleford, a human who has found himself in Equestria with no memory.
Currently, you are in Twilight Sparkle's house. After searching and calling for help, you find it's empty. The front door was also ajar when you found it. There's a few candles on one of the tables, nearly burnt all the way to the bottom. You are really cold and really tired.
You search around some cabinets and cupboards hoping to find some more candles or maybe a lantern, but come up short. As you do, the candles that were already burning go out, leaving you suddenly in the dark. Seeing nothing else to do, you trudge back into the cold night to find anyone else to help.
It's still the dead of night and the snow is still coming down. It's already piled up to above your knees, which only makes getting around harder. Most of the houses are silent and dark, which isn’t surprising at this time of night you guess. The streets are completely deserted.
You are very tired, can't stop shivering and now your stomach is making painful sounds.
You have no idea how long you were lying there in the snow, but if you stay out here any longer it's probably going to be the death of you. You go over to a near by pony house. You're sure who ever lives there will at least let you come in and warm up.
You knock on the door, calling for anyone to answer, for help. When no one does, you try the knob. It rattles and falls out of the socket and the door opens up a crack. It's hard to see in the dark, but you think something tried to break the door here.
"Hello?" You call out into the house. The living room and the hallway beyond are all dark. No reply. "Is anyone home? Can I come in?"
There’s still no answer, but you can't stand the cold anymore right now to worry about that. You go inside, trying to close the door behind you as best you can, then search for a closet. You raid it and wrap yourself up in some linen blankets you find.
You then move on to the kitchen and attack the fridge. There’s some fresh raw apples and carrots. You devour most of them.
You feel much better having some food in you and you think these sheets should be heavy enough to keep you warm.
You try some of the draws in the kitchen, thinking that would be a good place to find some kind of light source. And you do! A flashlight, oddly enough. You still aren’t sure what it is with ponies and technology.
But it doesn’t seem to be working. Whenever you try the switch, it doesn’t turn on. Maybe the batteries are dead. None the less, you pocket it and take it with you.
You return outside and start heading towards town hall, thinking if there’s any trouble, that’s where the ponies will go. The blanket helps you keep warm, though it still difficult getting through the heavy snow. Again, there’s no sign of anyone outside.
It takes a while, but you eventually make it to town hall. Like the rest of Ponyville it seems its dark and dormant, like no ones home. The stage from earlier today is still set up, but barely recognizable under all the snow. There are no signs of any ponies around out there.
You try the door again, but there’s no answer. Surprise.
You try the knob and the door opens. It seems that it wasn’t locked.
Inside you come to what seems like a reception area. At the far wall is a wide desk with a bunch of pens and papers. Along another wall is a couch and a few chairs, as well as a table with a few magazines splayed around. There is also a water cooler.
There's only one other door so you follow it, leading you to a spiral staircase that goes up to the second floor. You climb up to the top landing. There is a door with a opaque window with the words MAYOR'S OFFICE stenciled in bold black letters. The door also is not locked.
Inside, the office seems deserted. There’s a large desk back up against a window. On one wall is a large looking map and an ornate looking wood globe. It's dark.
You search around the office, then go back down stairs, trying to find anyone.
"Hello? Is anyone around?" You keep calling out to no avail. "Hello!"
There doesn’t seem to be a soul around.
You search for a basement, thinking that maybe they would have gone there to hide. But if there is a basement to this building, you cant find it. There aren’t any door or anything that lead to anywhere beside the mayor's office or the reception area. You even go outside to see if there’s a doors out there that are set in the ground, but there’s so much snow, you can't tell if there even is one.
Coming up with nothing here at town hall, you decide to try Sugar Cube Corner. If nothing else, maybe the Cakes will help you.
Trudging through the heavy snow to Sugar Cube Corner, you see something lighting up the night sky around the area. As you get closer and come around a corner, you see Sugar Cube Corner is lit up. Despite being half burnt out, every light it seems to have seems to be, lighting up the immediate area, the street and the other dark buildings close by.
The street directly in front of the bakery is full of ponies. Dozens, if not hundreds. It seems like everyone in Ponyville is here, standing around in the deep snow, some wandering around, going in or out of Sugar Cube Corner.
You try to sneak closer to get a closer look, trying to keep hidden. You're not sure if these ponies are under mind control, and so you don’t want to take any changes.
You walk along the back wall of a building across the street from Sugar Cube Corner and go down an ally back towards it, hiding behind a garbage can. You try to keep quiet with all the crunching snow, but there are so many ponies walking around you don’t think anyone will notice.
From this vantage area, you have a closer look at all the ponies. None of them seem bothered by the cold, not even wearing anything warm. None of them are talking either, just standing around quietly, not particularly looking at anything.
You can see activity inside Sugar Cube Corner through the large storefront window, but beyond the fact that there’s a lot of ponies in there, you can't tell what's going on.
You sit there, squatting in the clod behind the trash can, watching the ponies walk around. You're hopping to find some pattern in their behavior that you can exploit and get past them. But there are so many ponies. And they don’t seem to be following any pattern at all. Some aren’t even doing anything except standing and staring at a wall.
You don’t think there is anyway you can get any closer to Sugar Cube Corner without being seen.
The situation has gotten out of hand so you decide to return back to that joke shop from before. Luckily it's not far away.
As it was before, the lights are off and there’s a sign on the door that says "Sorry, we are closed." You don’t have time to follow the law right now, so you carefully elbow the glass window on the door, brush away the glass and unlock the door. It opens with a light jingle of a bell.
The place is full of whacky toys and playthings. One shelf has whoopee cushions, another has magic kits. There’s invisible ink, rubber spiders, itching powder, joke gum and more. In the far corner, there is a whole giant stack of sneezing powder. There’s a large cardboard cut out of a goat dressed as a clown and a big polka-dot tie, with the words "Silly Billy's Patteneted Sneezing Powder!"
There’s plenty of cans here, more then you could carry by yourself.
You scour the shop and eventually find a few empty saddle bags. You fill them up with sneezing powder cans as much as you can, which amounts to 40 or so cans all together, 10 cans in each pouch. You are easily able to hold each bag over your shoulders.
You back out of the alley and decide to go the long way around to the back of Sugar Cube Corner. It's easy enough, the dark night finally working to your favor.
The back of Sugar Cube Corner is much less well lit the the front, though there is some light coming from a back window somewhere. From the corner of the adjacent building, you can see there is only one pony here, seemingly guarding the door. You can't see who it is exactly, but you can clearly see the silhouette of a unicorn's horn.
You try to get closer, taking small careful steps so to not make a lot of noise in the snow. There’s a few barrels and trash cans back here, giving you a few places to hide. You are able to get to the one closest to the pony by the door without any incident.
Now that you are closer, you have a better look at them. It's Rarity. She's standing with her back to the door, blankly monitoring the alley. She doesn’t seem to have noticed you.
Hatching a plan, you take out a can of sneezing powder and remove the cap. Then you gather up some snow and form a snowball. Satisfied with it, you take it in one hand, while holding the powder in the other, getting ready to run.
You throw the snowball and it hits the wall a little ways down the alley. Rarity turns to the noise and starts heading down that way. As soon as she does, you hop up and sprint towards her as fast as you can, powder in hand.
She hears you coming just before you reach her and turns to face you, her horn glowing bright. Before you can get as close as you want to, you're surrounded in an aura and are lifted off the ground, turning upside down.
Desperate, you take a handful of powder and throw it in Rarity's face, but the powder doesn’t reach far enough and dissipates to nothing before it gets to her face.
You quickly get up, scooping some snow as you do. You quickly pat out another snow ball and fling it at Rarity. It overshoots and flies past her head. She doesn’t seem to notice, continuing to just stand there watching you.
Slowly, you back away from Rarity, keeping your eyes on her as you do. She follows you for a few feet, but stops in her tacks after a while. You keep backing up away from her until you turn a corner, losing site of her. You wait a few minutes to see if she'll turn the corner again, but she doesn’t.
You sneak along to the opposite side of the alley. Taking a peak around the corner, you spot the bags of sneezing powder sitting in the snow not far away. But Rarity is back, sitting at her original post at the back entrance of Sugar Cube Corner.
OK, round 2.
You make another snowball and lean just a little bit in the alley. You take aim and throw the snowball down the alley, trying to hit a wall down the way to distract Rarity.
It beans her in the side of the head.
She springs to alert, her horn glowing and her hooves spread out in a stance ready to take action. She looking all around her in every direction, trying to see what hit her. Luckily, it seems she didn’t notice you down on this edge of the alley.
You see this isn’t going to work, so you loudly tap the wood side of the building you are next to, trying to get Rarity's attention.
You then quickly hurry around the other side of the building and come back to the alley from another side. Carefully, you peak around the corner. You spy Rarity, her back to you, looking around the area you just were. The cans of powder are lying not far away, but are closer to Rarity then to you. There is also the back entrance to Sugar Cube Corner, which is even closer.
Stealthily, you slowly walk over to the cans of sneezing powder. They're just sitting there, one or two of the cans having rolled out of the bags. If you could get just one...
Rarity turns around and immediately spots you a few steps away from the cans. Her horn is starting to light up again.
Desperate not to lose another encounter with Rarity again, you scoop up a bunch of snow and throw it at her wildly, not even bothering to make a snowball. The flurry hits Rarity in the face, making her back away and shake her head, buying you enough time to get to the bags. You're able to get your hand on one can before you are once again dragged back up into the air.
Just as before, you are held upside down by magic, Rarity standing a few feet before you. And once again, you are desperate and take the can of sneezing powder, open it up and throw it at her. The can flies end over end and hit her right int the snout. As it does, the impact causes the powder inside to poof out in her face. Slowly, she opens her mouth as if to yawn, tilting her head back and...
"ACHOOOOO!"
You fall to the ground face first (again!) into the snow.
"Oh my, excuse me!" You hear Rarity say, keeping you head down in the dirt. "Rusty! Darling, are you OK?! What are you doing on the ground? And... where are we?"