Leaving Button's corpse stashed in the bush, the three of them ran out and matched their pace with the wagon—something which made them nervous given how wildly it was swaying around.

“Excuse us, mister, but would ya mind stoppin' fer a minute?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Hunh?” The wagon lurched to a halt and the jester pony sniffed at the air. He swung his head, and little bells on his jester hat chimed as he did so. Staring off towards the horizon, he asked, “You talking to me, invisible mint faeries?”

“Mint faeries?” Apple Bloom whispered.

Sweetie Belle sniffed her foreleg and wrinkled her nose. Having rubbed against the toothpaste-soaked corpse, all three of them smelt like a lethal injection of oral hygiene. “We really need to take a math,” she muttered.

The stallion continued looking in the air over their heads. He had a short, pink goatee, off-color from the rest of his hair. It was probably dyed that way, much to the horror of his stylist.

“We're down here,” Scootaloo said.

He looked down, then jerked back as if startled to see them. “Oh. So you are. What can I do for you, dudes?”

“Dudes?” Sweetie Belle frowned. “We're fillies.”

“Whaat? No way!” Leaning down, he sniffed them uncomfortably close. His eyes were somewhat foggy and didn't seem to focus properly. “You're pulling my leg, dude. There's no such thing as a filly mint faerie.”

“He's insane,” Scootaloo whispered. “That means he did it, right?”

“Scootaloo, I think we need more than that,” Sweetie Belle said.

“C'mon, it's obvious! What else do we need?”

“Actual evidence?” Furrowing her brow, Sweetie Belle pulled the others into a huddle. “And not so loud. He'll hear us.”

“Evidence?” Scootaloo frowned. She also lowered her voice. “This is getting complicated. What kind of evidence do we need?”

“Something like a confession,” Apple Bloom said.

“How are we going to get that?” Scootaloo asked.

Pulling out of the huddle, Apple Bloom looked up at him and asked, “Uh, excuse us, mister...?”

“The name's Foolhatty, dude.” He said, and bowed to the bush next to them.

“Okay... Mister Foolhatty, did ya sneak into our friend's home last night, tie him up, paint him red, make him foam at the mouth, and murder him?”

He glanced at Apple Bloom with wide eyes in what appeared to be a fleeting moment of clarity. Then he laughed. “Wow. You dudes sure have a crazy imagination. How about a puppet show, huh? Every dude likes a puppet show.” Yanking off his harness, Foolhatty grunted. He kicked a block under the wheels and went around the back. A loud snap caused the fillies to hop, and the entire unsteady contraption folded outwards like some kind of mechanical origami flower.

In the center was a miniature stage, complete with red, velvet curtains and tiny stage lights. The side panels, however, were filled with multiple stacks of various specialty hats. There were jester's caps of many different colors, beanie caps like the ones Button usually wore, orange construction cones, lampshades, pointy magic caps, and red ribbons tied up in floral patterns like rose blossoms.

“That didn't sound like a confession,” Apple Bloom whispered.

“Maybe he didn't do it?” Sweetie Belle suggested.

“Maybe he did but he forgot?” Scootaloo shrugged.

“How could ya forget somethin' like that?” Apple bloom asked. The others shrugged. “I think we're missin' somethin' here.”

Pieces of wood clacked from behind the mini stage and the curtains suddenly sprang open. Crude wooden dolls of Celestia and Luna hung suspended by threads while Foolhatty stood on some platform in the back. His head stood above the stage and it was easy to see the wooden dowels that the strings were attached to. Foolhatty tilted and tugged at them to make the dolls move. He squinted pretty heavily and the dolls more flailed than danced.

While shaking the Celestia doll, Foolhatty spoke in a mock voice, “I, Princess Cake-er-Celestia do hereby declare that cake is a sacred food and that weight gained from eating it shall henceforth and forevermore be impossible to lose!”

“No wonder Mrs. Cake is so fat,” Sweetie Belle whispered.

“Ssh.” Apple Bloom tapped a hoof over her own mouth.

Pulling the Luna doll, Foolhatty spoke in oddly nasil tone, “Oh noest! The moon hast eaten too much cake, and now it is impossible to raise into the sky! Whatever shall we do, dear sisterly scone-bottom?”

“You fool! Everypony knows that the moon is on a strict diet of cheese! It cannot tolerate any other food without becoming bloated. There is only one thing that you can do, dearest sisterly eggplant face: drag the moon on the ground until it is light enough to lift again.”

Now he removed the princess puppets and rolled a golf ball back and forth on the stage. “And thus for a hundred days and a hundred nights, the moon was dragged along the ground. And that is how the half-pipe canyons were created.”

He took a short bow and closed the curtains. “So dudes, what did you think?”

“Well, that was...” Apple Bloom squinted her eyes and tilted her head.

“Yeah! It was, er...” Scratching her mane, Scootaloo looked at the sky.

“Didn't something like that actually happen?” Sweetie Belle asked.

He shrugged. “Yeah. Sorry, dudes, but only educational skits are free. If you want real entertainment, you'll haf'ta pay. How's about 'Duck Duck Goose?' That's classic. It's only twenty bits, divided among however many friends you can bring. That's right; twenty bits for everyfaerie is a steal!”

“That was educational?” Apple Bloom drooped her ears. “But that didn't make any sense.”

“Uh, I'm pretty sure I remember something like that before.” Sweetie Belle rubbed her chin. “In the book I'm thinking about, it was right between a bunch of pressed leaves and the multiplication table.”

“You mean your school notebook?” Scootaloo asked.

“Oh, right.” Frowning, Sweetie Belle glared up at the stallion who was idly twirling the propeller on one of the beanie caps. “I'd accuse him of copying me, but why would he want to copy something that got an 'F?' ”

“Wait, that's bad?” Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. “Oh! No wonder I got an 'F' too.”

This prompted Sweetie Belle to direct her glare at Scootaloo.

Apple Bloom got between the two of them.  “Wait. This ain't helpin'. We gotta get him to confess.”

“But he forgot, didn't he?” Scootaloo said.

“Just make him remember, then,” Apple Bloom huffed, “somehow.”

Rolling her eyes, Scootaloo asked, “How are we going to do that?”

“What if we show him something that links him to the crime?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Ya mean actual evidence? That could work.” Apple Bloom frowned. “But do we even have anythin' like that?”

“Sure—all that broken string that was tied around him. That looked a lot like the string on his puppets,” Sweetie Belle said.

“That's perfect!” Scootaloo hopped and buzzed her wings. “We'll just have to—” She pointed at the bush that Button's corpse was hidden in, then paused. “What happened to it, anyway?”

Apple Bloom facehoofed. “We flushed it down the toilet.”

Wincing, Sweetie Belle hung her head. “Wow. We're really bad at this detective stuff.”

“What are you dudes doing? Workin' on some new drama skit?” Foolhatty asked over their heads.

The Crusaders' eyes widened and they instinctively huddled together before inching a few steps back. “We're just working on a murder mystery, he-heh,” Sweetie Belle chuckled weakly.

“Oh yeah! That stuff's classic. I'd better write this down.” The stallion rummaged in his wagon. While he was doing that, another wagon rolled up and stopped just behind him. This one was hauling a live tree. While the tree was taught with ropes, most of the weight was high in the air and the whole wagon swayed unsteadily. The driver snorted and scowled at them, as there was no way for him to get past.

Speaking much more quietly, Apple Bloom whispered to the others, “Maybe we should go. These wobbly wagons are givin' me a bad feeling. Ah don't want to be blamed for another disaster today.”

“We can't leave without a confession. There has to be some other way to get him to remember,” Scootaloo said.

“How? We don't even know why he did it,” Sweetie Belle said. She blinked. Muttering to herself, she added, “If he even did it.”

“Ya mean a motive?” Apple Bloom tapped on her chin. “Yeah, ought'a work.”

“Hey, dudes, I'm back!” Foolhatty stepped next to them while holding an oversized pink with green polka-dots notebook. “I'm always a sucker for good mysteries. Tell me all about it.”

“Uh...” Apple Bloom edged backwards.

Scootaloo stared to do the same, but Sweetie Belle nudged the little pegasus forward. “Quick. Now's your chance. Explain to him why he did it.”

“Me?” Scootaloo rubbed at where she'd been poked. “But—”

“Yeah! And make it good. Our lives are depending on this,” Apple Bloom added.

“Well, okay.” She gulped and ruffled the back of her mane.

“Yes?” Foolhatty asked a tulip garden.

“So, uh, last night, apparently, somepony snuck into Button Mash's room, painted him up in crude arcane symbols with red ink—”

“Ooh, this is gettin' goood.” Foolhatty scribbled away.

“Uh, yeah. And, uh, he was also foaming at the mouth and tied up with a bunch of broken string, and, uh, dead.”

“Awesome! This'll made a great skit.” He grinned and held up the notebook with both hooves. “So who did it?”

“You did.” Scootaloo pointed at him.

He blinked his foggy gray eyes. “What? Uh, no, dude. The puppeteer isn't supposed to be part of the play. Hmm, what if we blame it all on Luna? Everypony loves to blame Luna.”

“No! This isn't a skit for some play. It actually happened. You climbed up in his room last night and killed him!” She furrowed her brow, flared out her wings and huffed. “And Luna is best princess,” she muttered under her breath.

“Say what?” Foolhatty raised an eyebrow. “Uh, sorry dude, but I was stuck on the road from Manehatten last night. It was a total bummer too. I swear, road crews keep digging ditches in the middle of the road. I mean, who does that? You're moving along, perfectly straight, and suddenly—” He swung a hoof in the air to make his point, but his angle was off and pointed into a field where the road curved to the left. “—bam! right into a ditch.”

“Er...” Scootaloo took a few steps back, then hastily whispered to the others, “Now what? He says he was somewhere else.”

“It makes sense, Ah guess. He does look half-blind,” Apple Bloom said. “Pullin' a wagon must be really hard.”

“Wait a minute. If he says he was somewhere else when the murder happened, then that's an alibi,” Sweetie Belle said.

“A what?” Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. None of the Crusaders payed any attention to the stallion looming over them.

“Is that evidence?” Apple Bloom asked.

While they were chatting, Foolhatty continued to scribble in his notebook. He pulled out a large, balloon-rimmed monocle and pressed it against his left eye, holding it in place by squinting. This odd eyepiece made it look as if his left eye was bugging out of his head.

“Um... yeah!” Grinning, Sweetie slapped her hooves together. “All the bad ponies in the mystery novels I read had alibis.”

“Really?” Scootaloo asked.

“Yep!”

Apple Bloom tapped on her chin.  “So, what yer sayin' is that when he tells us he was somewhere else when the murder happened, that means he was actually there?”

“Um... I guess?” Sweetie Belle shrugged.

“Wow. This detective stuff is really weird,” Apple Bloom said.

“You sure got that right.” Scootaloo nodded.

“Uh, dudes, I like your style and all, but you're not making any sense. Alibis are for eliminating suspects, not convicting them.”

They quickly scrambled backwards at the sight of Foolhatty's enormous eyeball bearing down on them. “But how else are we supposed to prove that you did it?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Sorry, dudes, but you're sapping up the wrong outhouse. You can't prove what never happened—and besides, I have no reason to kill anypony in the first place. It'd be bad for business if I started doing that.”

“Now he's sayin' that he doesn't have a motive either.” Apple Bloom pouted. “This just keeps gettin' worse and worse.”

“But what about the one I made up?” Scootaloo asked.

Foolhatty shrugged. “Whatever, little faerie dude. This skit's all kinds of messed up anyways, so if you have something else to add it's not like it can get any weirder.”

“Yeah! Tell him why he killed Button Mash!” Sweetie Belle stomped on the ground.

Scribbling in his notebook, Foolhatty muttered to himself, “Oh, so that's his name...”

Hesitantly, Scootaloo took a step forward. “W-well, we did find him tied with string, kinda like one of your puppets. So, obviously, that means, well, um, it means...” She took a deep breath and fanned out her wings. “It means that you were performing a dark ritual to turn him into a puppet!”

He raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything as he wrote that down.

“Yeah! You were going to turn him into a puppet because, um, because ponies like playing with puppets!” Having found her groove, Scootaloo hopped and smacked her hooves together, buzzing her wings too. “That's right. With Button turned into a doll, you'd have the perfect template to make cheap, plastic knock-offs of, and sell them to every household in Equestria! What do you have to say about that!”

With a half deadpan, he slowly pointed a hoof at his wagon. “I sell hats, bro.”

“Oh. Oh, right. Heh-heh.” Scootaloo quickly backpedaled.

“Hey! Are you kids going to buy anything or not? We can't sit here all day!” One of the ponies in the gradually expanding line yelled. That one was a midnight blue unicorn who appeared to be hauling the results of a hay-bale-stacking contest. It too wobbled precariously, even when the wagon was standing still.

Apple Bloom bit her lip. “How much fer one of them fancy bows?” she asked.

“Ah, yes. The prized flowers of the element sisters.” Foolhatty caressed one like a cat. “They're absolutely priceless, but for you wacky faerie dudes, I could part with one for, say, forty bits.”

“Okay.” Rummaging in her mane, Apple Bloom pulled out some pocket lint and a moth, which flexed its wings a few times before fluttering off. She looked over her shoulder back at her friends. “Can I borrow some bits?”

“No! You can't—” Scootaloo scrunched up her face. “That's way too many bits. Why do you even want it, anyway?”

“I just do.” Apple Bloom stamped her hoof. “C'mon. Ah only need a few more.”

After tossing a few coins onto the small stage, Sweetie Belle pointed up at the hat rack on the left. “We'll take a beanie cap.”

Foolhatty picked up the coins, squinted at them closely, then dropped them individually to hear them ring. He nodded before scooping them off the stage into a pouch. Sweetie Belle grabbed the top cap with her magic and pulled it down.

“Hey. Why'd ya go and do that?” Apple Bloom frowned. “We don't need one of those.”

“Yes we do. We threw Button's old hat out the window, and he can't keep what he has on now.” Floating the headpiece in front of her, Sweetie Belle blew on the colored propeller. She nodded in satisfaction as it spun.

“And you don't need another bow. You already have a closet full of them,” Scootaloo added.

“Yeah but that one was special.” Apple Bloom sighed. “Ah really wanted a souvenir from Button Mash's killer too.”

“Uh, speaking of that...” Sweetie Belle bit her lip. “He's kinda packing up.”

Much to their surprise, the wagon folded down just as quickly as it had sprung up. Foolhatty was already hooking the harness back up when Scootaloo ran over. “Wait! You can't just leave!”

“And why not, little mint faerie?”

“Because you haven't taken the blame for Button Mash's death yet,” Scootaloo said.

“This still?” He snorted and shifted his weight, extricating himself from the harness so that he could point to an empty spot next to them. “Who did you say you were again?”

“We're the Cutie Mark Crusaders!” Apple Bloom declared.

Foolhatty nodded and pulled out his notebook again. He scribbled that down. “Well, little dudes, thanks to you all I have a brand new skit that I'll be performing for the whole town tonight.” He grinned and blew on the book, as if trying to clear of dust that wasn't there.

“Uh...” Sweetie Belle shuffled in place.

With a huge grin, he held it in the air before pivoting and stuffing it in his saddlebags. “I call it, The Death of Button Mash, by the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”

“What!?” they practically yelped.

“Yep!” He nodded as he clicked himself back into his harness. “So long, bros. It's been weird.” And with that, he grunted and strained his ropes as the cart failed to move. Glaring back, he gave a swift kick to the block under the wheels and then his cart started lurching off. Finally clearing the way, there was an audible sigh from the many ponies stuck behind him. The Cutie Mark Crusaders sat there with their mouths open as many dubiously balanced wagons rolled past.

“Wow, we really messed that up,” Scootaloo said eventually.

“Gee, ya think?” Apple Bloom glared at her.

“Now what do we do?” Sweetie Belle asked. “We only have until tonight, and then the whole town will think we killed him!”

“Or sooner.” Scootaloo stuffed her hoof in Sweetie Belle's mouth. The townsponies walking along the street were starting to give them strange looks again. She grinned and waved.

“Actually, that whole play thing gives me an idea.” Apple Bloom tapped on her chin. “Yeah! Ah know just what to do!”

“Really?” The others asked. “What?”

“Uh... not here.” Apple Bloom blinked. One gray mare with a bubbly flank was giving them a death glare. A couple of sheepish grins and ten-point swan dives into the nearest bush later, she pulled her friends into a tight hug and whispered, “Sweetie Belle, I'll need lots of string. Scootaloo, gather some wood. Ah'll bring—” Apple Bloom nodded towards Button's deceased corpse. “—ya'know back to the clubhouse and get 'em cleaned off. Meet me as soon as ya can.”

“Okay.” Scootaloo nodded.

“Sure.” Sweetie Belle dropped the beanie cap on Button's head. “Cutie Mark Crusader Button's secret plot servants!”

“Ugh.” Scootlaoo winced.

“Why?” Apple Bloom moaned.