Trapception
IC date: Autumn 8
OOC date: September 27
Location: Main Street
PCs: Snapdragon Dragonheart Kludge
NPCs: Snakebite
GM: Applejack

What's the best way to avoid baths? ESCAPING!! Cackling madly, Dragonheart has busted the joint wide open, earnin' her and her jailbird brother a jaunt fer freedom! She scampers as fast as her legs can manage down the moonlit street, squealing gleefully and utterly oblivious to the whole 'foals have been stolen' business.

Snapdragon scampers along after his sister, little wings fluttering! HE HAS NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE DOING. But that's okay, because FREEDOM WHEE! Galumph galumph galumph yay outside no baths now all this night needs is COOKIES.

A certain amount of caterwauling follows the two foals. "Aaaeeeaaa! Aaaoooooo!" Is it some sort of beast, in pursuit of a nighttime snack?

Nope, it's just Kludge, using the Feralspeak names of the Dragontwins. "Wait up, you two!" he adds in normal Equestrian as he chases after the escapees.

Suddenly… COOKIES!

What? Yes! Cookies! Like, a whole plate of them, sitting under the shade of a box, propped up with a stick, that has a little piece of string attached to it. Sitting /right there/ in a little alleyway next to the Mane Affair.

COOKIES! … Wait. Dragonheart slows to a stop, ears perked, as she squints down the alleyway and fully ignores Snap and Kludge. Hmmm. She approaches cautiously; something about this sets her little feral senses haywire. "…auuuwa," she mutters.

But…but cookies! Free cookies! Freshly baked, just like granny would've made~ They'd probably already be gone by now but there are few foals left in the Harbor to enjoy them.

Kludge trots along, glad to be catching up but wondering what could have derailed the escape attempt. "What are you two looking at?" he inquires as he approaches.

Snapdragon skids to a stop, blinking over at Dragonheart. Why are we not running anymore? We were running! Running is fun, we should keep ru-… "Kookee!" Oh. This is why we stopped running. He looks about ready to bound right on over, but his sister's caution gives him pause. He blinks over at her, then at the plate. "…Kookee?"

"Cookie," Dragonheart agrees. "…weird cookie." She glances back as Kludge approaches, and then turns to squint harder at the plate. Well… maybe this is just a new way of making them? She approaches like a cautious cat and reeeaches out with a hoof to poke at the stick. Poke poke.

The stick wobbles, which makes the box shudder, then stop. Ooooh that could be very dangerous!

But…cookies!

Kludge sits down next to the twins and looks at the box and the cookies. "Hmmm," he says as he carefully pokes the box, giving it a thoughtful look. "Maybe if we had a stick of our own…"

Snapdragon eyes the box. And the stick. And the cookies. And the stick. And the box. He does not understand! He looks like he's considering grabbing the stick. Is it in the way of the cookies? He wants cookies. "Aaooowaah," seems to be his way of expressing this.

Dragonheart is already thinking of ways to make this work. She turns in a circle a few times until she can finally grab her tail in her mouth. Then she looks at Snappy. "Awwwuuuu," she says confidentially. "Hold." And then she stuffs it into his mouth. And slowly, she gets down and creeeeeps under the box with the intent to grab the plate of cookies and pull!

As one might expect, the moment Dragonheart actually lays hoof on the plate, something tugs the stick! The stick moves! And the box begins to fall! Oh no!

"Aumph." Mouthful of tail! Snapdragon has, apparently, done this before. Or maybe he's just open to any invitation to tug on his sister's tail. He waits for the cookies to be grabbed, then scurries backwards!

The long and short of it is that with their powers combined… Dragonheart gets her head trapped under a box. She flails and yowls. It's a heavy box!! And no cookies to show for it!

Clearly the solution to this is to TUG HARDER! "Aaauumpphawwaaumph!" Snapdragon braces his hooves and pulls! He's not a very big pony, though. This might not be terribly effective.

Kludge crawls over and slides his hooves under the raised edge of the box, then starts to lift to help Dragonheart get free. Definitely a weighty box - even given how rambunctious the Dragontwins are, they likely wouldn't be able to tip it over from the inside.

That box wasn't the only box in the alleyway! Look! Behind the first box, there's a second! And a third! And they've all got little plates of cookies underneath them. And sticks. And strings. All the strings lead around the corner. It's a veritable minefield of little poorly-made cookie-traps! Who in their right mind would do such a thing to a bunch of poor cookies?

Dragonheart yowls "sssSSSTOOOPPPPP!!!" when Snappy tugs harder, but at least when Kludge lifts the box, she's freed! Free at last! She shakes off — and then dives under again! Because there are COOKIES, darn it!

Snapdragon gives a small yelp of surprise as the box is lifted and he drops back on his rump, blinking. "Aaaaeeeooowah!" Well, clearly Kludge and Dragonheart have /this/ one covered. He's gonna go look at that other box with /new/ cookies!

"Fierce hunter, aren't ya?" chuckles Kludge at Dragonheart's commitment to the cookies. He finishes upending the box, putting it open-side up away from the cookies. A scowl crosses the craftpony's face when he sees the other traps. "Someone's hunting," he mutters, giving the twins a concerned look.

A smile starts to cross his face as he watches the ex-feral foals. "Maybe we should hunt /them/ instead," Kludge muses. He assumes a feline hunting pose: nose to the ground, butt up in the air - wiggle wiggle! Time to stalk these strings!

Dragonheart sits up with a face full of cookies. OMFNOMF. And seeing Kludge adopt a hunting creep, she does the same, stalking after Snapdragon gleefully as she licks the crumbs off her muzzle.

Snapdragon has stalked his way up to the next box. No one can say he doesn't learn from experiences - namely, Dragonheart's. He doesn't want /his/ head trapped in a box. So he's plopped down outside the box, and is streeeetching a hoof in to try and grab the plate. Two hooves. One front and one hind. There goes a wing. Pretty much anything that's not his head is okay, right?

Twang!

There goes the second string. And the second box starts to fall towards Snappy!

What's around the corner, anyway!? It's… IT'S… More string. Leading around the next corner of the building and towards that small space of a back-alley between buildings. So much string!

Kludge looks at the mass of string, then carefully sits down on as many of the strings as possible. "Maybe if we go fishing," he murmurs, gently scooping up several of the pinned strings leading towards the next alley. Once he has a decent grip on them, he starts tugging the strings, just slightly to start.

Dragonheart wiggles her rump and…pounces! Her pounce misses Snappy but puts her head in the way of the falling box. BONK. "OW!" she yelps, but hey it keeps the box up for Snapdragon to escape after!
"Aaawaaaaooouu!" Snapdragon grabs for the plate and rears back, scrambling to get out from under the falling box. He probably loses some cookies in the process, though!

A simple tug on the strings reveal not much. Except for making that last box-trap fall over. Thunk. Over the cookies it was holding hostage too. The other two strings drag their attached sticks closer. On the other side of the strings? They're pretty tight and not moving much! Hmmmmmm!

Well. That was not as productive as hoped. Kludge stands up and walks over to the twins. "Trickier than it seems, eh?" he asks with a smile, lifting the mostly-fallen box off of the foals and moving it open-side-up out of the way.

Dragonheart struggles out from beneath with Kludge's help and huffs in anger. Stupid box! STUPID STRINGS! "NO!" she yowls. "NO NO NO NO NO!" And she charges at the strings, follows the strings, determined to go all the way to the big ball of string that inevitably waits for her at the other end. It needs a GOOD POUNCING! "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!"

Snapdragon blinks and glances up from his faceful of cookies. A couple crumbs are stuck to his nose. "Aaaaaeeeeeaa!" He calls after Dragonheart, hesitating a moment before scrambling off after her.

Rounding the next corner reveals that the strings are all attached to…a really, /really/ big stick, just sticking up /right there/ in the alleyway. with a rope tied around it. Leading around the corner.

But this time no chasing is required. No sooner is the corner rounded and the stick (more like a log) seen than something pulls the rope from around the corner! Making it shudder, tip, and fall. Making the shadow of something that was supposed to be part of the alleyway also begin to fall.

It's a /giant box/! Falling to claim the whole alley! Can Kludge make it to his kids before the box eats them like SO MANY BAIT COOKIES?

"Wah— aa!!" Dragonheart turns to run — and sees Snapdragon barreling toward her. "NO!" she yells. "BAD! NO BAD BAD BAD GO!!!" And she charges him to full-body tackle him out of the way. … Who knows if it'll actually work, but her heart's in the right place!

Kludge runs after the Dragontwins, trying to keep them in sight. When the giant box starts falling, he speeds up in an attempt to keep it from trapping the foals. It works…

…partially. The craftspony trips on the strings and rope, falling on his side in a tangle mostly under the path of the box. While he's accidentally able to catch the edge of the box, all Kludge is able to do is keep it open far enough for foals to crawl out - if they hurry.

As for the stallion, it's going to take an additional set of hooves to untangle him, much less get him out of the box once he loses his grip.

"Aaaauuuuaaaaahh!" Tackled! Snapdragon topples backwards, hooves flailing as he's body-checked out of the path of the box. "Kluuuuuu!" Whether he's wailing because he actually noticed Kludge's dilemma or because his sister just football tackled him is anypony's guess.

"Huh." comes a voice from behind where the once-feral foals ended up, after escaping the MegaBox. "That's not how I thought this would go at all. Oh well! Don't look a gift croc in the mouth, right?" With poor Kludge all tangled up and struggling just to keep the box from closing down around him. A gruff, gravelly voice, belonging to a strange pony wearing an aussie hat and cape.

And a bag. Don't forget the bag. This is important, because it gets put to immediate use, trying to scoop up the siblings! Swoop!

Football tackling is fast! The two foals roll out of the box and thud to a stop, leaving their caretaker-slash-father trapped under the heavy box. Dragonheart pants, fear creeping up her spine and met with obstinance. When that new pony arrives, she gasps and jumps to her hooves, frizzing and hissing. Bags? Weird ponies? Klu in trouble?!?!

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO OUR FOALISH HEROES?

Snapdragon scrambles to his hooves as well, wings puffed out and ears flat. He's still wailing. "AAAAOOOOOAAAAAUUUUUWAAAAHHHEEEEEEE!" VOWELS. One may surmise that 'go away scarypony' is about the gist of what's going on here.

Thumps and snarls come from the inside of the box. If one could see in there, they'd undoubtedly see a limb-tangled stallion trying to stand up, shove his way out of the box, and curse out the foalnapper - in no particular order.

Wailing and hissing? Well shoot, the figure can do that too! Only he does it with his bat-styled wings flaring out and fanged muzzle, and red slitted eyes! "HSSSSSSS!" Boo!

Then the figure brings the bag down, trying to swipe both of the feralish foals with one bag-motion! "C'mere!"

Eep! Snapdragon makes a sound somewhere between a squeak and a mewl, scurrying around to hide behind Dragonheart when the batpony hisses. Yup, that's scary. Nope nope nope he's not staring that down.

Dragonheart even skitters and scoots backwards, absolutely TERRIFIED by this guy. "D…don' take bruvver," she whimpers, still managing to shield him, what little good that does. "Don' take bruvver, peez!" That word you say when you really want something! That will work, right?

The figure pauses. Just for an instant. Please almost worked! Or maybe it was the actual legible sentence. Then he follows through. SWIPE! Foals in a bag.

"Awww… The two most adorable ones yet." the figure notes, slinging said bag over his back, between his wings. "Maybe I can get double for the cuteness. Hm." FLAP! In moments, the figure has lifted off from the alleyway, zooming off to places unknown!