Chapter 3
“Mmmmmmnnnn…”
Beneath a lone tree just off the path through the canyons, a lone pegasus let out a dozy sigh and a yawn, and stretched as she awoke from a deep sleep. Warm, comfortable, and half-lost in a dream, she forgot where she was for a moment and, as far as she could tell, was tucked into a snug bed with her head nuzzled into a fluffy pillow. Lost in the moment, she couldn’t decide if she were home and had woken up just moments before her alarm clock rang, waiting to silence the shrill sound and have her mother’s voice from outside her room holler at her to get up for school. Perhaps it was a weekend and she was in her old clubhouse, cocooned in a warm sleeping bag between her foalhood friends…
Or you’re in the dirt. Alone.
Reality hit her as if she had run full speed into a wall as she awakened fully and opened her eye. Scattered rays of early morning light bled through the leaves above, casting their speckled shadows across her body. No bed, no pillow, just her old cape folded into a crude pillow and her tattered scarf stretched across her body. She stared skyward as she usually did when she first woke up, but this time found herself overwhelmed with a rush of sad nostalgic memories biting at the back of her throat. It had been years since she lost everypony, and although she did miss them from time to time she had, for the most part, made peace with the fact that they were gone and never coming back. Somehow this time, for no real reason that she could find, she found herself fighting back tears as vivid memories returned to her.
Stop it. You’re a grown mare, and they’ve been gone for well over half your life.
Her thoughts cut deep, but reminded her not to dwell on the past and pushed the building dolor out of her heart. She stretched once more and her bad wing popped loudly as it always did when she spread her feathers. She yawned loudly and rolled onto her side, folding her wing over her face to shield it from the dots of sunlight that had awakened her. With her face buried in her warm feathers she closed her eye once more and dozed. She had no destination in mind for the day, and no real motivation to go anywhere other than to find something to eat. There was a nearby town south of here; with a swift pace she could be there in a little over an hour and no doubt do some odd jobs for a bite to eat.
“Maybe I’ll get lucky and find an apple tree.” She said quietly to herself.
With that thought in mind, she looked to the sky once more and could just see the glow of the sun peeking over the cliff. This area was due for good weather for some time, and even at night it was warm enough to sleep outside. If she was lucky enough to find something to eat here, she could stay in the canyons quite comfortably and rest her hooves for a while.
“Please let me find apples.” She said aloud once more, “Or daffodils.” She was silenced by the hungry grumble of her stomach, which she patted gently, “I’d even settle for some good grass…”
The more she thought about it, the idea of camping out for a while instead of staying on the move was actually sounding better and better all the time. Every night for as far back as she cared to remember she had slept in a different spot; usually wherever she could find that was warm and out of the way, be it in a town or otherwise, was what she would call her bed for the night. It would be nice, if only for a while, to find a place to call her own; a place away from towns and strangers. It would be just like when—
Like when I went camping with Dashie and the girls.
She squeaked quietly as she abruptly remembered happier times. She told herself again not to dwell on the past but to no avail. Vivid memories of her foalhood returned to her: Of her times with Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, with Rainbow Dash, of her mother, and she could feel warm tears trickle from her one good eye.
“For the last time, Scootaloo. Stop it.” She said to herself in a cold tone.
It was rare that she would be moved like this by the past. It had been so long ago, and she had long since steeled herself against it and tried her best to just focus on the future. However, every so often something would bring a surge of memories onto her and she found that talking to herself as she would scold a young foal would put her tears to rest.
“You have one eye left, Scootaloo,” She said in a much softer tone than before, “If you keep looking back you won’t be able to see ahead of you.”
It was a saying she had heard from a drunken vagrant many years ago in a town she could no longer remember, but somehow it had seemed so wise that she had never forgotten it. Scootaloo picked up her goggles and looked at the ghost of her reflection in the lens. She could just barely make out a scraggly purple blob that was her mane, and one purple eye staring back at her. She couldn’t make out her bad eye on her makeshift mirror. An eye that would forever remain closed: sewn shut by a rough scar. It served as a grim reminder of the night when everything truly changed. Images of that night came to mind, of Fluttershy gripping her tightly and carrying her away while Rainbow Dash stayed behind to fend off the trio of thugs that had pursued them. She had seen only their silhouettes against a full moon, but she will never forget their leader’s voice. It was a cruel mare’s voice, full of hate and spite.
‘Sparkle wants the yellow one too! You two after her; Rainbow Dash is mine!’
Scootaloo’s memory of that night becomes hazy after that voice. Her next clear memory is daylight. Daylight, cold, wet, and pain, lying sprawled on a river’s edge with no sign of Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy, and left for dead with a broken wing and unable to open her left eye.
Lucky Goggles she thought with a smirk as she ran her hoof over the broken lens. Although it had actually been a piece of the lens that had robbed her of her eye, she was well aware that whatever had broken the lens may very well have killed her had she not been wearing them.
“Besides,” she said as she slipped them around her neck, “They were Dashie’s.”
Homeless and always on the move, Scootaloo had little time or need for belongings. Including her goggles, she had only three possessions which she carried with her. She picked up her old cape in her mouth and roughly shook it back and forth to shake the dust off of it. It was faded and tattered from years of wear and tear, but somehow it had survived with its patch intact and still looked every bit as brilliant to her as the day she put it on for the first time. Scootaloo found herself smiling as she tied it around her forehead, and then carefully pulled it down to cover her bad eye. She may have outgrown wearing it as a cape, but it was the perfect size for a bandana.
Unmoving, she stared down at her old scarf which still lay in a heap on the ground. It was her most precious belonging, as it had once been her mother’s scarf. Scootaloo had never met her father; he had left her mother before she was even born, and she saw very little of her mom. Always working long hours and seldom home, Scootaloo often only saw her for a brief moment in the mornings before school. From a very early age she had found herself walking to and from school by herself to arrive at an empty house and fix her own meals. As a foal she always felt that her mother hadn’t thought much of her, and had tried to fill the void with her friends and her self-proclaimed big sister Rainbow Dash. It wasn’t until she was much older, and far too late, that Scootaloo came to understand just how much her mother had loved her and how hard she worked to provide for her as a single mother. With one deft move of her leg she grabbed the scarf and tossed it loosely around her neck. It had been used to swaddle her as a baby, and now served as a blanket for her when she slept. Somehow, it even still smelled like her mom.
She stood for a moment, with her eye closed, and tried to lose herself in the delicious warmth of the scarf. Somehow she just couldn’t; something didn’t feel right. She stayed as quiet as possible; trying to understand what was missing to put her on edge…
No birds.
She had noticed a nest full of baby birds on her way along the path just the other day, and could hear them sing long into the evening and all morning since she had woken up. Suddenly they had gone dead quiet. Scootaloo didn’t like this. For reasons she couldn’t understand, her instincts were screaming at her to hide. Always one to trust her instinct, she did just that: She took a brief moment to make sure she had left as little evidence of her stay behind as possible and leapt with all her might onto a nearby fallen tree. She ran across it looking for a place to duck out of sight and, noticing that the log was hollow, crawled inside of it. She was almost able to see her campsite through a small knothole in the log.
Nothing at first. There was nothing but the faint sound of the wind slipping between the leaves for only a moment, until she heard it in the distance. A sound not unlike jewelry clinking, but following a discordant off-beat rhythm and somehow threatening enough to press Scootaloo’s ears flat against her head. Eventually the sound made it into view, following the uneven hoofsteps of a pony. The pony was moving slowly and staring at the ground, and stopped at Scootaloo’s campsite.
A chill trickled down Scootaloo’s spine when it occurred to her that the pony must have been following her hoofprints in the dirt. For whatever reason she was being followed or perhaps hunted by this pony. Scootaloo wanted, needed a better look at the hunter, but stayed put. He had moved out of view too quickly and she wasn’t willing to risk blowing her cover just to satiate her curiosity. She listened as the threatening jewelry sound clattered down the road, this time much faster. Having lost her trail, the hunter must have had no choice but to follow the road.
Now’s your chance, Scootaloo! MOVE!!!
Scootaloo wasn’t one to pick a fight for no reason. There was no reason in the world for this pony to be tracking her, but she definitely wasn’t about to confront him just to ask why. The last time she had caused trouble was months ago when was out of money and had broken into a veterinarian’s office for some first-aid supplies to treat an infected cut. There was no way that was the reason this pony was following her; knowing her luck, it was some random bandit who thought he had come upon an easy target.
And what a way to start my day. You could have at least let me find breakfast first, you jerk.
Resisting the urge to just stay huddled in her log, she crept from the hiding place and began to backtrack. If her follower was an experienced tracker it wouldn’t be long before he realized he had lost her trail and backtracked himself. If not, he’d hopefully keep going down the path trying to pick her tail up. Scootaloo would take a third option: her plan was to climb the rock face and head east from here. There was tall grass to hide in up there until she reached solid gravel and shale, which she could travel on without leaving a trail. From there she’d sprint as fast as she could south to that settler’s town and lay low for a while.
The rock face was uneven with plenty of spaces to hook her hooves into, and only went up about twenty feet. Tempered legs from a lifetime of running and her light frame made the climb easy: she had no trouble getting to the top and, once there, she flattened onto her stomach to keep her follower from spotting her. Keeping low to stay below the surface of the grass, she careened left and right to disguise her movement. It was a technique used by the Wonderbolts that Rainbow Dash had told her about, used to lose the sound of their flapping wings to the wind. With the breeze that was gently blowing the grass about, it would hopefully work to hide the sounds her body made as she slipped through. There was no way he knew where she had gone, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
She felt the crunch of loose gravel amid the grass and took a deep breath. Bursting out of the field of grass she pushed her body faster than she had ever pushed before. She dodged a tree and passed a large rock and—
—and BLAM!!!
—A loud echoing burst the likes of which she had never heard before roared mere inches from her ear, making her lose her balance and sending her stumbling into a rough impact into gravel. The sound was loud enough to send a ringing pain jolting through her ears, enough to disorient her long enough for something small and hard to be pressed against the back of her head.
The hunter… It’s not possible…
“You so much as move, so much as breathe in a way Ah don’t like, and the next one makes daylight through that scruffy head of yours.” Said the unfeeling voice of a mare behind her.
It wasn’t until the smell reached her that she came to realize just how much trouble she was in. It was a faint smell of burnt sulfur, no doubt from the thing that had made that terribly loud sound; the thing that was now held against her head.
“You’re coming with me.” said the voice.
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Yay! The author mentioned me! *squee*
For my next prediction, Apple Bloom transforms into Cthulhu! Right? Guys, did I get it?
No, but seriously, the Masquerader is Pinkie Pie, and putting out the bounty on Scoots is her fiendish plan to re-unite the CMC, cause that's just a Pinkie thing to do. Yes?
3336181. Im With You
3336181 Personally, I think the Masquerader is Sweetie Belle, but I guess we'll see.
hmmm.....I think the Masquerader is Cadance
3336732
Nah, Sweetie Belle's already been revealed as having her own role elsewhere, heading the Diamond Dogs. Personally, I think it's quite improbable that the Masquerader is Pinkie, but I don't have any better guesses at the moment. Cadance is plausible. Fleur de Lis is possible, but quite unlikely.
3338047 It's obviously Celestia in disguise. Geez. What are you thinking?
I think the Masquerader is a combination of Celestia, Luna, and Cadance. Am I right?
I think the Masquerader is somepony comepletely new.
TinyPlaidNinjas did you just make a South Park reference?
3336181
I dunno. It kinda sounds like Mentally Advanced Pinkie logic, but it fits well with the scenario.
No its going to be tom and he reunite the CMC
And pinkie hired applebloom to hunt scoots
This should have been