Barbara is a new student at Canterlot High School. Because of her ADD, she's having trouble making friends. The only friends she really has are her brother and his friends, as well as her older sister, but she's quite detached from her family. Lucky for Barbara, there's another new kid at the school, a boy who seems to be interested in her.

During an afternoon playing with her pet owl, Twilight got a letter from Princess Celestia, along with seven tickets. The letter told her of a tournament she was holding that was specifically for pets. She showed the letter to her friends who were all excited to enter Equestria's 1st Annual Petlymic games.

During their years as mercenaries working for RED, Rarity and Rainbow Dash have kept a big secret from their team. Rarity is actually Rainbow Dash's mother! When the news was first revealed to Rainbow Dash, she took it as a bad attempt at a prank, but then realized Rarity is not the type to joke around with something as serious as that. The two then started working together much more often, even more than with the others. During a break from beating the crap out of BLU, the two of them saw a news report live from Saddle Arabia. It showed ponies being executed brutally by a Mafia known as "The Herd." The two looked at each other and knew they had to stop this. Despite their teammates' disapproval and refusal to help, they set out anyway.