The twelfth of September.

Normally, I would be woken up by sunlight irritating my eyes, and if that didn’t work, somepony would come in to force me to get up. The ‘five more minutes’ tactic never worked.

Today, however, there was nothing of the sort. No sunlight irritated my eyes, no ponies came in to shake me awake, and no loud noises startled me out of the dream world. I simply lay in bed, having a perfectly normal sleep, cuddled with Asylum until she had to get up, at which point I unconsciously grabbed her pillow to snuggle with instead.

It wasn’t until shortly after noon when I actually started waking up, my body having decided it had slept long enough. It still took me another ten minutes to actually crawl out of bed and kick my brain back into high gear, but eventually, I was up and at ‘em.

I soon realized why I hadn’t been woken up. The window that the sunlight came through had been covered by a spare blanket to act as a makeshift curtain, and after walking around the house a bit, I discovered that I was the only one in the building. Wherever the others had gone off to, they likely left me behind because of my sickness the night prior.

I, of course, was not complaining.

Once I was as cleaned up as I ever bothered getting, I contemplated my options. I could go out looking for the others, but getting caught up in whatever mess they might be dealing with did not particularly appeal to me. I considered doing Alterspace inventory, but the scalpel was the only real new addition and we already knew what it did. I pondered just going for a walk, but that always led to trouble.

Finally, I just gave up, flopped down in the middle of the kitchen floor, and lay on the refreshing cold tiles until I could think of something.

After several hours, I heard the front door open and close, followed by a few sets of hoofsteps. One set stopped after coming rather close to me. “Arrell? Are you okay?”

“The floor is boring...” I groaned. “Who’s talking to me?” I had one of my ears pressed against the floor due to lying my head on its side, so my ability to distinguish voices was diminished, and my eyes were closed so I couldn’t see.

“...did you go blind, too?”

“No...I’m just too lazy to open my eyes.”

A sigh. “It’s Risk. We’ve got an article problem.”

I groaned. “No articles...articles are bad.”

“Arrell, will you get up? This is serious!” A hoof smacked me in the back of the head.

Sighing, I forced myself to stand up. “Did you decide to fill the void when False became nice?”

“...what?”

“You know, yelling at me and sending me to the corner and hitting me for being lethargic?” I stretched my body out. “And you used to be the mediator, too.”

He seemed a little surprised by my accusation. I walked past him into the living room, where the rest of the Winter Solstice was gathered. Asylum looked up at me and smiled. “Feeling better?”

“Could be better, could be worse. Probably be in tip-top shape by tomorrow if I can get a good night’s sleep tonight.” I shrugged.

Asylum’s eyelids lowered slightly, and her smile became more suggestive. “Or maybe you’ll stay up a little extra late...”

“...so, this article?” I quickly changed the topic, trying to fight my growing blush. The giggle I heard from the pegasus made it hard to determine if she was just teasing or not.

“Well, we think it’s an article,” False replied, trying to hide a smirk on her face at our little exchange. “But unless Ponyville is being invaded by Diamond Dogs with OCD, I doubt it’s anything but.”

I blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Sweet Apple Acres had a bunch of apples stolen from its cellar,” Asylum explained. “Somepony, one, or thing dug a hole through the ground and right into the cellar.”

“...where does the OCD come in?” I asked.

“The holes were perfect squares.” Risk had entered the room now. “The tunnel was just big enough for a pony about your size to fit through, and there were no loose rocks or dirt or anything throughout it. It’s a perfect cube.”

I slowly facehoofed. “...great. Now we’ve got Minecraft in this world.”

“Can you speak in English rather than your weird human-speak?” Risk demanded.

“I am speaking English,” I replied. “That’s the only language I know. Aside from some website code. <html><body><p>Is this more to your liking?</p></body></html>”

They all looked at me weirdly. I shrugged.

“...that aside, we still need to figure out who would do this,” Risk continued, getting past my weird moment.

“Someone who likes apples, most likely,” Nimble suggested.

I chuckled. Risk looked like he was about to tell Nimble not to make jokes, or something to that effect, but he closed his mouth after a moment. “...that...actually...yeah, probably.” He sighed. “Seriously though...any clues?”

“I think what Nimble said is really all we can go by,” Asylum pointed out. “But we definitely need to get this article back quickly.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Don’t want it to be out there for too long.”

“That too, but it could also be helpful,” she replied.

“...you better not be planning a bank robbery, Asylum.”

She giggled. “No, not that. It could be useful for getting Nimble’s parents back.”

“...how so?” False asked.

“Well, think about it. They’re captured by Diamond Dogs, and we have a digging article...once we figure out where they actually are, it’ll make getting in and getting out a lot easier.”

False frowned. “What if this article has a negative effect like all the others?”

“Then one of you will have to take it from me when I’m done,” I responded simply.

Author's Notes:

Now, not completely related to this chapter, but I want to bring something up. It's been pointed out that, lately, I have been relying too much on video game and pop culture references for my storyline. While there's a good reason for this - the articles, specifically - I agree that maybe it's getting old. Once I wrap up the arc with Nimble's parents, I'll start spacing out the article arcs in Arrell's timeline more, having more original ideas without any article influence, while Asylum's timeline will have more article arcs with original ideas inserted into them rather than one or the other. So everyone wins.