They had traveled ten yards from Pluck's home before encountering their first obstacle—a young pink unicorn named Flurry. "Where are the two of you off to in such a hurry?" she asked, eying them curiously. Pluck skidded to a stop just in front of Flurry, but Sunbeam, lacking reflexes of any sort and already quite anxious, yelped softly before toppling over her mint-colored friend, sending all three of them tumbling to the green grass lawn in a heap.
"None of your business!" growled Pluck, sitting up and shaking the dust and little bits of debris from her body.
"Ow! Get off of me, jerk! You'll ruin my mane!" cried Flurry, wriggling beneath the other unicorn. Pluck held Flurry's hair in place with one hoof, using the other to deflect the awkward blows that the prone filly was launching towards her face. "Get off! I don't have time for any of your stupid games!"
"We aren't playing stupid games! The only thing that's stupid around here is you!" retorted Pluck, rubbing Flurry's mane savagely into the wet ground.
"How rude!" snorted the pink unicorn. "Somepony ought to teach you some manners!" With that, Flurry launched a ball of mud that exploded against the other unicorn's face. With her foe momentarily stunned, Flurry took the opportunity to extricate herself from beneath Pluck.
"I'll get you for that!" shouted Pluck.
"I'd like to see you try!" responded Flurry.
Sunbeam lifted herself gingerly from the ground, blinking the dirt from her eyes and flapping her wings to clean her flanks. By the time she had regained full awareness of her surroundings, she found the two unicorns struggling in the grass, hooves flailing wildly at each other. "Oh, dear," moaned Sunbeam, trotting over to try—and fail—to bodily separate the two brawling fillies. Finally, a sharp yank on Pluck's tail managed to drag her away from Flurry. "Please, Pluck, stop!"
"I'm sorry, Sunbeam," huffed the mint-colored uniform, glancing around her body for bruises. Convinced that she was fine, she shot a wicked glance at Flurry, who had been similarly occupied, but now returned the glare. "But you know that I can't stand her."
"The feeling is mutual," hissed Flurry, whose horn was glowing a beautiful, hot pink. Sunbeam and Pluck had only an instant to wonder what she was doing with her magic before—
"Gah!" squawked Pluck, who fell to her knees in a fit of laughter. The tickling spell was one of the first that young unicorns were able to master, and it found infinite use in playground squabbles and in exacting petty revenge. Sunbeam looked from the spasming Pluck to the smug Flurry with growing concern.
"How do you like this?" Flurry asked, easing up on the spell only enough so that she could concentrate on gloating. This, however, gave Pluck the opportunity to compose her own thoughts and plan her counterattack. "I might just keep this tickling spell going all day long. It would serve you right, you know, for—eep!"
It was another simple spell, but Pluck's itching spell had just as powerful an effect on her foe as Flurry's tickling spell had had on her. Both unicorns now laid writhing on the ground, horns glowing as they fought to maintain their spells. "Oh, please, stop," groaned Sunbeam. "You know that this isn't going to prove anything, and all you're doing is hurting each other..."
Finding that the two could not be reasoned with, Sunbeam fled to the nearest cottage, the home of Golden Harvest and her younger sister Carrot Top—another filly, just about the same age as Sunbeam, Pluck, and Flurry—and explained to them the problem. Together, the three galloped back to the lawn where the battle still raged on.
Realizing by the sound of approaching hoofbeats that they would soon be caught fighting—something which would not go over well with either Pluck's sister Heartstrings or Flurry's mother and father—both unicorns realized that their battle could last no longer if they wished to remain out of trouble.
Struggling closer to Flurry, Pluck held out a shaking hoof. "Truce?" she inquired breathlessly.
Pausing for only a moment, the trembling Flurry grasped the hoof in her own and shook it. "For now," she replied, and with that they released each other. When Golden Harvest, Carrot Top, and Sunbeam found them, the two were trotting innocently through the grass, occasionally tapping each other on the flank. "Tag! You're it!"
The two orange-colored Earth ponies looked from the prancing unicorns to Sunbeam, who quivered nervously. "Well, this is—strange," she squeaked.
SOMETIME LATER...
"Sunbeam, you betrayed me," Pluck said, pacing back and forth before her nervous friend. "I trusted you as my squire, and you interfered with an entirely legitimate magic duel. The typical punishment, according to Myths and Legends of Ancient Equestria, is death."
"D-death!" stammered Sunbeam, suddenly terrified. She flopped over the back of the couch and cowered in the shadows.
"But I forgive you for your mistake. The stresses of our journey must have already gotten to you," Pluck continued, waving her hoof around as she rationalized Sunbeam's clearly irrational actions.
"Um—yes," squeaked the quaking pegasus.
"And I therefore order you to bed right this moment. You'll need to rest up before we set out again tomorrow!"
"To bed?" Sunbeam raised her head above the couch, and cocked an eyebrow at Pluck. "But it's only five o'clock in the afternoon—the sun hasn't even set. And I don't think it will for another hour. And what do you mean 'tomorrow?' I'm sorry, Pluck, but do you really think it would be a good idea to go through this whole ordeal ag—"
"Get some rest!" demanded the unicorn, her horn glowing silver as she levitated Sunbeam out of her cottage. "Tomorrow our true journey shall begin!"