When it seemed Twilight had a change of heart, Keen Eyes was pretty quick to come trotting back.  The detective had not expected the change of mind, especially this quickly.  Folding up the floating newspaper once more, he approached the group again.  "Solid idea," Keen Eyes said as the ponies decided it would be best to split up.  "Sure, I'll go track down this, Pinkie Pie." Keen Eyes answered.  She seemed like a solid enough lead than any to the detective.  "Er, what does she look like?" the detective suddenly asked, realizing he hadn't exactly met her.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:46, Wed 18 Apr 2012.

Twilight Sparkle was actually left briefly agape when Keen Eyes asked about Pinkie's appearance.  He hadn't already been jumped when he first came to town?  Pinkie must have been slacking off lately... but then again, there had been a lot of new residents coming to town.  Presumably even she could get overwhelmed.

"Pinkie's an Earth Pony about this tall, a little on the plump side, and has three balloons for a Cutie Mark.  She's all pink and her hair looks like cotton candy." Twilight explained.  "Mr. Cake said she was watching their foals, so that means she'll have a baby Pegasus and Unicorn with her too.  Just be careful, okay?  Pinkie Pie is sort of excitable like lava is 'sort of warm'."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:46, Wed 18 Apr 2012.

Mr. Cake, satisfied with having driven off the distractions, turned back into the kitchen and marched back to work with his head held high.  Mrs. Cake, meanwhile, tittered fondly as she looked up from working with their newest assistant.

"Ooh, Carrot... I love it when you get assertive~." the older mare cooed.  That playful remark seemed to catch her husband off guard and he deflated a bit, blushing behind his freckles and chuckling bashfully.

"Ah... w-well... Oh, Pansy's lending a hoof too?" Mr. Cake swiftly diverted the topic while his wife just grinned.  "That's awfully nice of you.  Though if you could stick around a while longer and help us with the breakfast crowd, we'd be glad to feed you for your work.  You wouldn't have to bake anything -- just help out handling the line?"

Regardless of whether or not Pansy extended further help, Mr. Cake would dive back into the task at hand.  With an extra pony working they got a good clip going -- all three moving in synchronicity kept the apples rolling along, getting dipped, and prettied up into even sweeter treats than they already were smoothly.  Her presence to assist was obviously a relief for the over-taxed couple and they were able to relax a bit while they worked thanks to the other pony's aid.

"Sure thing, Mr. Cake," Pansy replied with a smile.  The candy store was a great change of pace from her little garden shop.  The Earth pony briefly wondered if this is what Pinkie Pie got to do most of the time.  No ponies lined up at the garden shop.  Then again, would she even have any plants after a rush like this?  Plants, unlike cake, were meant to be consumed slowly.

Luckily, the Cakes did not name their confections in completely obtuse ways.  A fruit tart was a fruit tart, and a cinnamon roll was a cinnamon roll.  After finding the boxes and bags that were used to pack up the treats, and making herself familiar with the display case, she was ready to handle the line.  "Sorry for the delay, everypony," Pansy said as she unlocked the door to the shop at opening time.  "What can I get you?"  She asked, as the first pony in line came in, with his newspaper, and they both walked toward the counter.

Pansy's assistance was just what The Cakes needed right then.  They were able to make up for lost time and keep on track until all the Candied Apples were packed up and ready to go.  There would be somepony coming later on to pick those up, so for now they could be set aside and ignored while the other orders got filled.

The Cakes remained in the back baking and preparing fresh goods while Pansy covered the register.  Every now and then one of them would come hustling out to place a tray of wonderful-smelling sweets or buns in the display or up on a shelf somewhere.  Meanwhile the customers began filing into the shop.  Thankfully they were all regulars and thus remained orderly -- they kept in a straight line and nopony was shoving about or bickering.

"Wow, finally... I thought my flanks were gonna go numb sitting out there all morning.  Did you see all that noise with the police officer?" the first customer made chit-chat with Pansy while he peered over the open displays.  "I'll take three crullers and a grapefruit tart.  In a bag, please -- I've still gotta go get coffee for the office too."

"Only a little.  Must have been exciting though, whatever it was."  Pansy found the goodies quickly and packaged them up, wrapped in paper in the white bag.  "Here you go!"  Thankfully, they were all regulars, so hopefully they wouldn't stiff her, since she didn't know the prices.

Thankfully for Pansy, the cash register was easy to operate.  Like so much of visual information in Equestria, it worked with pictographs -- each of the large buttons were labeled with a picture of the various products the shop offered.  Since The Cakes had a consistent menu and only deviated on special occasions the register was uniform as a result.  With a little doing Pansy could click out the orders and it would pop up a total along with a cheery little ring of its bell.

The Earth Pony paid his bits and hustled off, giving a muffled thanks around his mouthful on the way out.  The next pony in light trotted right up, flexing her wings about as she smiled brightly from her side of the counter.  From there the orders came and went smoothly enough -- there weren't any real problems aside from having to ask someone to wait a while as other baked goods were brought out, or having their order packaged to go in some particular manner.  Most of them were present for breakfast and were already devouring their treats before they even got back out the door again.

A small sort of problem did pop up though as the line wore along.  One of the customers -- a cute blue Unicorn colt with a few bits hovering over his head -- shouldn't have been there.  It was already high time for the local kids to be in school, yet here this one was playing hooky and looking to buy himself some candy.

Like usual Strawberry was just sort of standing on the sidelines, looking a bit out of sorts as she tried to figure out what exactly she could do. Finally Twilight brought up that they would need some volunteers to see if they could find Pinkie Pie at which Strawberry jumped at the oppurtunity raising a hoof.

"Oh! I'll help!" She hastily volunteered.

"Alright then.  Detective?  You, Toast, and I will go look for Pinkie Pie.  Applejack; you keep tracking the cart.  Officer Blue Shield; take to the sky and find Rainbow Dash, then join up with Applejack afterward." Twilight was always at her best when she was planning and scheduling, plus now it felt like there was more direction to their search.  That apple cart was as good as found~!  "Any questions?"

"Heheh.. Sorta, Twilight?" she grinned a bit. "Can ya' pop over ta get Rainbow on the right track? Ah'll gowith Blue Shield to follow the tracks." Applejack suggested, then trotted over to the Poicepony.  "Err... thanks for... helpin'. Let's get to looking, huh?" she offered a hoof, then turned to trot off after the tracks directly.

Chasing the Tracks to... Business District, Right?

It seemed things were starting to move; and with this Pinkie Pie's description Keen Eyes was ready to depart.  "Alright, let's get to it then, ladies." Keen Eyes said and began at a trot towards the school house.  At this point, Keen Eyes didn't know if the other two ponies were following yet.  He tried not to move too fast so that it'd be easy for them to catch up and keep pace if that were the case.

<To Ponyville Schoolhouse>

Hmm, well, that was unusual.  Pansy debated for a moment whether or not to get Mr. or Mrs. Cake out here to deal with the colt, but decided she could probably handle it on her own.  The Cakes were already super-busy as it was.

When the young unicorn made it to front of the line, she paused before taking his order.  "Hey, shouldn't you be in school today?  What are you doing here, buying treats?"  She delayed getting his food right away.  There might be a reasonable explanation, and he was still a customer.  But she doubted it.

"No questions from me, lets go!" Toast hopped once.

With that she followed off after Keen Eyes, trying to outpace the detective however before she even made it too him she decided that the pace was just a bit too brisque for her blood. So she instead decided on just keeping the pace with the other pony.

To Ponyville Schoolhouse
This message was last edited by the player at 03:29, Thu 19 Apr 2012.

A more savvy pony would have had a cover story for getting out of suspicion, but it was obvious the young colt hadn't thought that far ahead.  He froze with eyes wide as he was called into question, stammering as he tried to formulate some excuse for himself.

"I thought so.  Now, if I let you buy the snack you want, do you promise to go straight to school?"  The kid probably hadn't had a chance to get breakfast, and the shop had been a little late opening.  Pansy was going to try and cut him some slack.

The colt brightened up at that deal.  "Really?  Y-yeah, I will!  Thanks lady!"  he chirped eagerly.  Honestly, he'd been expecting to get held there until his parents could be called on him, so getting the chance to not only get his treats but also slip by unpunished was more than he'd hoped for.  He floated his bits up onto the countertop and ordered two creampuffs... obviously to go.

"Now, wait just a minute," Pansy cautioned.  She wasn't born yesterday, and she remembered when she was a young filly.  She turned to call back to the back room.  "Mrs. Cake?  The line seems to have died down a bit.  I'm going to get going, ok?"  The gardening pony took off her apron, got the young unicorn's order, and headed for the door.  "C'mon, I'll walk you to school."  Today was certainly turning out to be a little strange.

And just like that, the colt's face fell once again.  He hadn't been able to figure out a good excuse for him to be there in the first place, so he sure as all else wasn't able to weasel his way out of Pansy's attention either.  Her call to Mrs. Cake summoned the squat mare from the kitchen -- she stuck her head out with a nod and a wave of her hoof.

"Okay sweetie~!  Thank you so much for all the help!  Be sure to come back later and we'll have something scrumptious whipped up for you." Mrs. Cake insisted with a grateful smile.  Pansy really had been a life saver for them.

Meanwhile, the colt was left dejectedly following behind the responsible adult he'd unfortunately run into during his little misadventure.  He wore a sour pout as he trotted meekly in her wake, dragging his hooves and obviously contemplating if he'd be able to make a break for it.

Pansy nodded and waved to Mrs. Cake as she left the sweets shop with the colt.  A rumble in her tummy indicated that she'd be back soon, but she couldn't just let a kid run around with nobody watching him.  As they walked toward the school, she had to slow down to make sure she wouldn't lose him.

"Here, have a creampuff.  It'll make you feel better," Pansy offered, trying to cheer the unicorn up.  She wondered why he was playing hooky.  She'd always loved school.  "Why weren't you in school this morning? Don't you like it?"

While the colt did seem appreciative of being allowed to have his sweets, it didn't do much to cheer him up.  He just continued to pout even as he chomped on a mouthful of delicious puff pastry -- an impressive feat considering since The Cakes' sweets were enough to make anypony smile.

"School is just stupid.  I wanted to go to Magic School, but Dad says it's too expensive.  I'm a Unicorn -- what am I supposed to learn at dumb old normal classes anyway?" the colt grumbled.

"Well school's not just about what you learn from the teachers.  It's also about making friends, and learning to interact with all sorts of different ponies.  If you went to magic school, you'd only get to hang out with other unicorns.  Who knows?  You might end up best friends with a pegasus, or an earth pony, or a dragon.  But if you don't go to school, you won't know how to act when you meet new people."

"I've got friends, lady." the colt rolled his eyes despite Pansy's sage advice.  "But what I wanna do is learn magic~!  What if my Cutie Mark has to do with spells or something cool like that?  Normal school can't teach me anything important."

While there was obviously a huge amount of short-sightedness in the colt's point of view, there was a kernel of truth as well.  But surely there were other options available for him to learn magic without needing to play hooky.

"That's not true.  Normal school can teach you lots of important things.  But you're right, they can't teach you magic.  Have you thought about asking some of the other unicorns in town if they could teach you magic?  Twilight Sparkle might be willing to give lessons, since she's so knowledgeable.  And she's Princess Celestia's pupil.  You couldn't ask for a much better teacher than that.  There's options other than deciding it's magic school or nothing."  Pansy tried to have a little sympathy.  She was a simple Earth pony, and didn't have any magic herself.  Maybe it was a bit frustrating to not be able to learn something that is a defining factor of who you are.  Like a pegasus not knowing how to fly.  Not that she would know that either.

"I can't ask somepony like her!  She's way too important to waste time with me.  I might as well ask the Princess." there was a bit of excitement in the boy's tone regardless of his negativity.  Some hero worship, perhaps?  Many kids in town looked up to those six heroic ponies who'd saved the day so many times before, after all.  He was willing to listen to reason though; Pansy had his attention and curiosity.  "So... what other kinda options?"

"Well, there's lots of other unicorns in town.  You could ask your dad.  I'm sure he'd love to teach you.  Or you could try helping out around town.  After school, of course.  Magic is a doing thing, from what I understand.  The more you use it, the better you get at it.  I wouldn't mind a little magic around my shop to help out."  Pansy laughed at the last part.  Hauling heavy bags of soil and pottery would probably be a lot easier if she had magic to do it.