Scootaloo raced through the Everfree determined to find her friends and save them from the Changelings. From Rainbow’s memories, they were tough and clever. Their leader, Queen Chrysalis was a devious mind. She was easily annoyed, though, as Scoot thought with a chuckle to herself. She charged through the forest, brushing across the thorny bushes and rough tree bark. She needed to find her friends. Why had Applebloom thought it a good idea to split up? Bad things always happened in stories when the heroes split up.
She had to push through for them, though. She had to put aside all the glaring eyes and all the unearthly noises. She needed to ignore the eerie cackle of the wind through the dried tree branches, and she needed to dismiss all of the claw-like boughs trying to capture her. With each of these realizations, Scootaloo slowed down, until she finally reached a stop.
“Ugh, this forest. I don’t think I can handle it much more!” She slowly proceeded before hearing the sound of somepony crying… Sweetie Belle.
When Scootaloo entered the clearing, she found the pink-and-purple maned unicorn lying in the mud with tears streaming from her eyes. “Sweetie?” Scootaloo asked as she approached. She was used to her friend being a little distraught, but it had been a while since the last time she had broken down this badly, and certainly not since they became the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Sweetie had certainly grown stronger through their friendship. This was out of character for her to say the least.
“I… Applebloom… she… she said I-I couldn’t be a-a Cutie Mark Crusader anymore!” she sniffled out. She kept stuttering over the words as she sobbed. She couldn’t even look at Scootaloo through her crying.
“That’s silly, Sweetie! Why would Applebloom ever say that?” Scoots’s smile wore off as Sweetie sobbed even harder.
“She said… she said…” Sweetie’s words stopped in their tracks as she succumbed to a new wave of crying.
“She said what?” Scoots was worried for her friend. She and Sweetie Belle had been friends ever since Scootaloo could remember. She wanted to cheer her up, but she didn’t know where to start. How could she reassure her best friend that what she was talking about would never happen? The changelings were behind all of it. She wasn’t sure how she could convince Sweetie, though.
“She said she didn’t want me to be her friend anymore!” Sweetie sobbed, before burying her face in the dirt and crying again. Her face was stained with the mud from the floor of the Everfree, marking her otherwise beautiful white face. Scoots figured that she would be the first one out of the three of them to get whatever stallion she wanted.
She also had the advantage of being the daughter of a fashion designer.
“Come on, Sweetie, that’s silly. Applebloom would never say that! It was a changeling!”
Sweetie only sobbed in response. Scootaloo wasn’t even sure she could hear over the sobbing. She wrapped a hoof around her friend and hugged her close. “Come on, Sweetie. Applebloom is our friend forever. I don’t think she would ever leave us!” Scootaloo was having a hard time believing that Applebloom said any of these things, and if she hadn’t seen that changeling earlier, she would have probably told herself that it was probably all true, as much as she didn’t want it to be. As it stood, though, the changeling had to be behind it all.
She wondered if it could be the same changeling that she had seen herself. And she knew that only Sweetie Belle would be able to reveal it as a changeling. She needed to convince Sweetie that it was a changeling, and she had no idea how she was going to do that. When Scoots had seen the Sweetie Belle Changeling had confronted her, it seemed so real, but she knew in her heart that it wasn’t true. She knew that if Sweetie could see it the way that she had, the falsities between the real Applebloom and the Changeling one, she would see it was all just a farce to try and break her.
“Stay right here, Sweetie, I’ll be back as fast as Rainbow Dash. I have just the idea!” She ran off into the forest to find the real Applebloom and show the unicorn how much she was really appreciated.
The forest wasn’t so scary, Scootaloo told herself. That creepy feeling she felt crawling up her neck… it was just the wind. She let out a silly little giggle when she thought that. She was starting to drive her own fears into herself. Sure, she had grown brave since Rainbow and the camping incident, but it wasn’t enough for the Everfree, and Scoots figured it would never be enough. Then there was Fluttershy’s memories: the cockatrice and the manitcore, even the parasprites. Scootaloo gulped harder as she wove through the underbrush.
“Applebloom, where are you?” Scoots said, the worry expressing itself more than she wanted it to. She came across the yellow mare with the familiar pink bow not long after. “Applebloom?”
“Oh, it’s you,” Applebloom snapped with contempt. The anger in her voice was apparent, and as obvious as the bow in her hair. The glare she shot Scootaloo was burning a hole in her eyes, she could almost feel it. “Ah thought you flew off to find Rainbow Dash.”
“You know I can’t fly, Applebloom,” Scootaloo said, trying to piece it together. Then it was as clear as the moon in the sky. The changeling. She had been here too.
“Then explain why Ah saw ya flying away, back toward Ponyville and abandoning us all?” Applebloom turned her back on Scootaloo, but not before she could see one moonshine-glimmer reflect off a tear streaking off her face and landing in the mud. “Ya don’t want ta be mah friend. Ah heard ya loud an’ clear. And Ah don’t need ya rubbin’ it in.” She gave one backward glare as she went down off the path, away from the orange Pegasus.
“It was a changeling, Applebloom. I saw it for what it really was!” Scoots rebutted.
“It was not. Ah saw it mahself. If it had been a changelin’, Ah think Ah would’ve seen it.” She sauntered off, farther down the path. Her resolve, her jaded reactions put Scootaloo off. She knew that Applebloom was strong-willed and a bit stubborn—that was why they got into so many arguments—but she was sure that that this was out of character, even for her. She would not just distrust her for something so serious.
“Come here, Applebloom. If you don’t trust me, then let me look you in the eyes and tell you. You’re the Element of Honesty, so you must know a thing or two about when others tell the truth.”
“Ah’ll humor you one last time, Scoots, but then Ah don’t want you comin’ near me or Sweetie again.” The yellow earth pony before her turned and stared her down. This was nothing compared to Fluttershy’s ‘Stare,’ but it still had the effect she wanted. Scootaloo knew this was the only chance she had to convince Applebloom she wasn’t lying.
“There’s a changeling in the forest with us. I saw it as Sweetie Belle trying to convince me that I wasn’t her friend anymore. After all I’ve been through with Sweetie, I knew it wasn’t her. I hit it on the head, and it changed back into a changeling. I found Sweetie earlier, and she was crying. She said that you told her that she wasn’t a Cutie Mark Crusader or her friend anymore. I know you would never really say any of that. Now, we need to go to her, prove to her that we’re still her friend.”
Scootaloo could only hope that it worked.
Sweetie Belle remained in the dirt, the darkness surrounding her. She didn’t want to return to somewhere where her own friends had abandoned her. She wanted nothing more than to return to the happy little life she had, with two friends who she could do anything with. She tried to smile through the tears that had come from her abandonment. Even Scootaloo, who so briefly appeared, had left her.
She was alone, and she didn’t know what she did wrong. All her life, when she needed her friends they were there. She was left without any clue as to why her friends had gone. Then she heard laughter. A sharp laughter that cut through the night like a knife straight through her ears, into her brain.
“Such a weak creature,” said one voice.
“How could she ever believe that she was ever loved?” said the other.
“We’ll have it so much easier once she’s gone.”
“Yeah, Scoots. Ah don’t think we’ll need her, or her magic.”
“Or lack of magic, you mean.”
“Yeah, yer right.”
Sweetie rolled over to look deep into what was shaped like her friends—their manes, tails, and coats were the right color, but their eyes weren’t. They were a deep, almost creepy green. Those eyes she had only seen twice before… changelings. Scootaloo had been right!
“Get away from me!” she shouted before scooting back and flipping over. Before she could get on top of her legs, she was trampled by her company. They looked like Applebloom and Scootaloo, but they weren’t acting like them. Perhaps they hadn’t studied enough. Scootaloo had told her, but she didn’t believe her. The apparition of Applebloom had looked so convincing. All her experience of changelings: the wedding in Canterlot, the time they had been kidnapped and taken so far from home… even the memories of Twilight and Rarity…
She knew just what they were doing now. They were trying to ruin the friendship the Cutie Mark Crusaders had forged. They were trying to take the most precious thing from her that she ever had: friends. Ponies who had cared for her since the day they met. They never did anything just for their own gain; they had never broken up. Through all the fights, all the disagreements, all the schemes and misguidance, they remained friends.
Now she counted on her friends to help her, as they always seemed to be able to do.
Applebloom and Scootaloo were, at that time, locked in a stare. Applebloom was trying to determine the truth behind her ‘friend’s’ statement. There was something about being the Element of Honesty that resonated within her. The statements, as far as Applebloom could ascertain, were the truth beyond all truth.
“Ah believe ya. Now, let’s go save Sweetie Belle.”
The pair dashed through the underbrush, Scootaloo trying to remember her path through the Everfree back to the unicorn in deep need of a friend. They weren’t aware of the true danger she was in, but they hurried anyway. Scootaloo knew that she needed to get back to the best friend she ever had.
That sweet unicorn she had met so long ago, it seemed, in the schoolhouse of Ponyville, trying to fit in. She was a School-Aged Pegasus who couldn’t lift herself more than a few inches off the ground, but that didn’t stop Sweetie Belle from coming over and introducing herself.
Never once in all their friendship did Sweetie Belle ever ask Scootaloo to do anything she wasn’t comfortable with. Never once did Sweetie Belle ever want her to do something she wasn’t willing to turn around and do back. When Sweetie Belle needed help, Scoots was there, and when ever the Pegasus needed help, she could count on Sweetie to be there with only one question: “What can I help you with?”
Scootaloo knew she needed to be there for Sweetie Belle this time of all of them. She had been her friend through the thick and the thin. This was her chance to show the unicorn how much her friendship meant to her, but she hated to admit it… she was lost. She had wandered farther than she thought she had gone, trying to make it back to the place she had left Sweetie.
She stopped in her tracks, nearly letting Applebloom smack into her rear end. “Why’d we stop?”
“I… I’m lost…” She plopped her plot on the ground. She let her own tears finally flow. She had failed her friends again. She couldn’t find her way out of this stupid forest, and it could have meant Sweetie’s life. “I don’t remember where she is…”
“Ah’m sure we can find her, all we have to do is do a little explorin’!” She gave Scootaloo a smile. “We’ll be Everfree forest explorers!”
“Yeah. Like that would ever happen.” She turned her gaze to the ground.
“Of course it can! Hasn’t Rainbow told you about Daring Do?” Applebloom tried to pass her smile to the Pegasus, but it wasn’t working, and she couldn’t quite grasp why. In her head, she only had half the story, the part where Scoots was sad about disappointing and failing a friend of hers. She didn’t understand the depth of this failure, how Scoots feared that it would make her lose everything she had ever cherished about her life.
Scoots had finally been happy with her life. It had been something worth getting up every morning to see what her best friends were going to do with her to try and earn their cutie marks. She loved that sense of adventure, that feeling of belonging, that sense of… family.
“What can a fictional character mean?”
“She’s an explorer! If there’s a cutie mark in explorin’, then we might just get ours in it!”
“It’s no use. The Everfree’s too big for us to make it in time…”
Sweetie Belle was pinned in the dirt and mud, trying to figure out how to get out from underneath the two changelings. They were bearing down on her.
“How should we dispose of her?” the newly revealed Changeling asked its companion.
“I suppose we should suck all the love of her first,” the other replied, with a tongue dragging across its black fangs. “She seems to have quite a lot of it.”
“How delicious of a feast she will make!” They seemed to be drooling over her. Where was Scootaloo and Applebloom? Surely they would have been here by now. She couldn’t understand where they were. She didn’t want to let these changelings know that she had friends in the forest, so she didn’t call out to them… but she had one more trick in her arsenal… the spell she had used in the Harrow of Memories… she let out a little green ball of magical energy, letting it out into the forest, to find her friends. She only hoped it wasn’t too late.
Scootaloo could hear the song well before the orb of light ever reached her. She knew exactly what it was, and where it came from. It was Sweetie Belle calling out to her for help. And she would be there to answer the call. She met the ball of energy halfway and dashed into the clearing where Sweetie Belle was about to be drained of all the love and hope that resided within her. Scootaloo dove across, pinning both of the changelings under her. Applebloom helped Sweetie up, and the three of them took a position before the changelings.
“We ready to send them back to where they came from?” Applebloom asked.
“Yep,” Sweetie replied.
“I’ve had enough of these Changelings to last me three lifetimes!” Scootaloo asserted as the aura grew around Sweetie Belle’s horn, growing in intensity as the three friends floated up in the air. The blast that hit the changelings didn’t send them flying, instead it vaporized them. The three friends gasped as they realized what just happened.
“Ah said send them home, Sweetie, not destroy them!” Applebloom scolded.
“I didn’t do that! I swear! Sweetie contested.
“I know I hate changelings, but I don’t hate them that much!” Scootaloo mentioned.
It was then that two red eyes appeared in the darkness of the forest. Two very familiar eyes.
“Discord! What in the hay was all that about?”
“Well,” the Draconequus said, letting the rest of himself appear, “It was a test to see if you could handle the changelings, should they be the ones to attack the Left Fang. I admit, it was quite a thrilling task you three undertook, but I have the scale right here,” he smiled, holding up a brown scale, “I found it while you three were squandering about trying to figure out what path to go down. I just needed to be sure that you were prepared for whatever could be making their way to my fang.”
“So all this is a game to you? I… I can’t believe you!” Scootaloo spat out in disgust.
“A game? Do you seriously think I am that frivolous? No no no, my little ponies, this was a test of your aptitude and ability to handle yourselves in danger. I think you still need some work, honestly, but you faced Nightmare Moon, Changelings, and King Sombre and triumphed through it all. I applaud you,” he said, clapping his mismatched forelegs together. “Now, let us return to Twilight so that we may finish this quest and carry on our lives in so much less danger.”
In a flash, they were back at Fluttershy’s cottage.