//------------------------------//
// The Cutie Mark Crusaders' Wild Ride 
// Story: Nothing Loves Me 
// by Cheerful Earful 
//------------------------------//

Based on Crusader's Wagon Ride by DigitalDasherBot.

"Slow down, Scootaloo! Don't you think we're going a bit fast?" Sweetie Belle called to the orange pegasus filly from the wagon behind her. They had just come from a disastrous party for a griffon in Ponyville proper, but a harebrained scheme to earn their cutie marks left them careening down a hill. Scootaloo's wings weren't flapping.

"I'm trying, I'm trying," she said with as much gruffness as her young voice could muster. She tried to jimmy the handle of the scooter to swerve and bleed off speed, but there were too many obstacles to allow her to do so. It was all she could do to avoid the stumps and shrubs that lined the path.

"What's takin' ya so long? There's a darned cliff up ahead!" Applebloom called, more annoyed than anything.
Scootaloo dared to take her eyes off the road for a few seconds, and looked back at her friends. The fear they saw in her eyes told them more than her words did.

"I can't," Scootaloo said.

She turned her attention back in front of her, and towards the rapidly approaching chasm. The fillies were jostled about as the scooter reached, and subsequently went over, the edge of the path, and hurtled towards the miles of empty space in front of them. The ground beneath them was rocky; too rocky to ditch the scooter or wagon.

The edge of the cliff grew nearer and nearer. When it became inescapably clear that they were going to go over the edge, Scootaloo turned back to her friends in the wagon. Sweetie Belle was crying softly, drowned out by the sound of the air whooshing around them, and Applebloom had fear etched into her face.

"Well girls," she said gravely. "It's been fun. I—"

Her words were cut short as she felt the ground drop out from beneath the scooter. All three fillies screamed in horror as they felt imminent death pushing them down towards the ground.

A shadow passed over them, obscuring the sun.