• Published 5th Apr 2012
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Prances with Ponies - Typewrittensoul

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Chapter 3 (side B): The Guardian

Thunder roared, and lighting flashed through the darkened skies of Equestria.

But Fluttershy pressed forward.

With growing desperation, she braved the raindrops pelting heavily against her face, body and wings, and just barely dodged a bolt racing up from the ground toward the sky.

The pegasus frantically shook her head from the near miss. She hesitated for just a moment as her mind was scrambled from the crashing explosion of sound that followed the super hot lightning ripping through the cooler air.

But her brain did not register fear as anxiety and adrenaline took hold once more.

She panted and scanned through the fog of darkness that pervaded the skies this cloudy night. There was a gap in the storm to the south and she took off toward it, flapping her rain-soaked wings that felt heavier as time wore on.

As Fluttershy weaved and peered vainly through the colloid wisps of condensed water, the pony chose to rest atop a thundercloud to catch her breath. Just an hour ago she had come home from her weekly spa time with Rarity and found that Dewey wasn't there. Not only that, but she saw that Angel was tied up in a coil of rope but had already managed to chew through half of his bindings. Her pet bunny angrily told her that Dewey had done it, but seemed to be holding back some parts of his story.

No matter.

She had to look for Dewey before anypony else saw him. Fluttershy knew how wild everypony's imaginations have gotten because the rumors about the Two-Legged Beast had taken a life of their own.

In fact, Rarity told her some of the most recent bits of gossip while at the spa, such as the one pinning the blame for Sweet Apple Orchards' broken fences on him, or Carrot Top's dug up garden, or even Cranky Doodle's missing toupee.

After taking flight once more, Fluttershy found herself near the part of the forest where she first met Dewey. In other words, the area where the Two-Legged Beast was last spotted roaming around.

The dark expanse of tress that comprised the forest gave off the feeling of a silent audience watching the performance of crackling flashes of lightning and explosive booms of thunder filling the stage. Movement caught her eyes.

“Twilight! Scootaloo!” Fluttershy called out to the faint silhouettes standing near the edge of the grassy plain below. Careful of the adverse conditions, the pegasus took extreme care to land next to the other ponies. The supersaturated soil squished between her hooves and was constantly eroding from the falling rain, which made her footing unsteady.

“Fluttershy!” The purple unicorn called back with relief obvious in her voice. She kept the younger filly close by, and stood protectively between the violet-maned pegasus and a dark figure near the forest. “Quick, you have to help Scootaloo get out of here before-”

Fluttershy's eyes widened in alarm and she ignored the other mare when she saw him. “Oh my goodness...Dewey!”

“Dewey?” Twilight exclaimed and watched in stunned fright as her friend rushed over to the unmoving form nearby. “No, Fluttershy! Watch out!” She leaped out to stop the other pony but slipped and fell from the slickness of the mud below her. “Flu-” Shaking her wet hair out of her face, Twilight struggled back to her hooves. “Fluttershy!”

“N-no...” Fluttershy quietly shuddered a breath.

As the torrential rain buffeted them all, streams of red were highlighted before Fluttershy's eyes as lightning flashed and thunder roiled in the sky above. Her tears mixed with the rain as she slowly shook her head, unsure if mirages could happen in this weather. “...no...”

Her hackles raised and her muscles tensed. Fluttershy took a step forward.

Her body began to glow a faint purple.

“No...” Fluttershy exhaled. She leaned against the subtle pull of Twilight's magic.

“No, no, no, no...” she stepped forward once more. At every “no” Fluttershy shook her head, hoping doing so would somehow change what she was seeing before her. Twilight's magic tried to pull her back even more.

Fluttershy struggled against the unicorn's attempt and with growing anxiety the pegasus screamed and grunted in frustration. “NO! No, no, no, Dewey!” It was all she managed to shriek as her friend's magic-enhanced pulling slowly drained the yellow pony of strength. “HE'S BLEEDING, TWILIGHT! LET GO! I HAVE TO SAVE HIM!” She cried in a panic only to be drowned out by a clap of thunder.

“What are you doing, Fluttershy!?” Twilight hollered over the raucous boom. “It attacked Scootaloo!”

“NO! No, no, Dewey wouldn't!” Fluttershy's hooves dug into the mud as she was pulled backwards. She struggled against Twilight's magic, seeing the distance between her and Dewey grow more and more.

“We have to...get...away...” Twilight strained against the normally gentle pony's strength against her magic “...before it...wakes...up...again!” While she was trying to be careful, and was already tired from producing an anti-lightning spell to protect against any stray bolts from striking them, the unicorn was still taken by surprise by Fluttershy's ability to resist. Slowly but surely, Fluttershy began regaining momentum and continued toward the unconscious Two-Legged Beast. “Please listen, already! It's dangerous out here! We have to get Scootaloo...away!”

“You go then!” Fluttershy snapped out, and continued to pull. She stretched her hoof out, almost close enough to touch his shoulder. “I'm not leaving...without...Dewey!”

A bolt struck down right on top of them but shattered from a previously invisible bubble. The foce of the lightning broke Twilight's concentration, and her grip on Fluttershy loosened up enough that she managed to force her way right next to the still motionless body.

Fluttershy slid to a stop and fell into the mud. Ignoring the mud dirtying her coat, she crawled closer so she was face to face with Dewey. “Dewey? Dewey!” His eyes remained closed. He did not look to be breathing. “Oh no, please...Please wake up, Dewey!”

Twilight focused once more and strengthened her anti-lightning spell. Feeling confident that she had enough magic, Twilight turned toward Fluttershy who was desperately prodding the Two-Legged Beast. She opened her mouth when-

“Fluttershy! Twilight!”

“Scootaloo!”

Rainbow Dash came soaring in, hovering nearby and was quickly followed by Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Applejack.

“What are you girls doing here!?”

“Sweetie Belle and Applebloom told us that they lost track of Scootaloo!” Rarity said distressingly. Despite the obvious emergency, the white unicorn had managed to bring with her a fashionable rain slicker and umbrella, which she transferred over to Twilight's back.

“They tried comin' along wit' us, but we told 'em ta wait back at tha cottage.” Applejack stepped forward and announced from under her soaked stetson hat. “And they said they saw tha Two-Legged Beast!”

“Oh no...Fluttershy!” Dash rushed to the other pegasus's side when she saw the yellow pony hunched over and panic stricken.

“My heavens! What is that...thing!?” Rarity cried out in dismay.

Applejack and Pinkie Pie took note of the creature, taking defensive positions around Scootaloo as the unicorns stayed in the front.

“Rainbow Dash, hold on!” Twilight warned and grasped out with her magic.

“Can't do that, Twilight!” The pegasus rolled and dove out of the way of the unicorn's spell and swooped down to a stumbling, but safe landing next to the yellow pony. “Fluttershy, how bad is he?”

“I...I don't know...he's bleeding...and unconscious...and...I don't know what to do!” Fresh tears ran down Fluttershy's face.

“Calm down, girl! You have to focus.” Rainbow Dash placed her front hooves on Fluttershy's shoulders, urging her. “You're the only one who can save Dewey, so he's depending on you right now. His life is in your hooves, you got that?”

“D-depending on me?” Fluttershy asked under her breath. “He's...?” The patter of raindrops drowned her thoughts as her eyes drifted down toward the being under her hooves.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course!” Dash said in full confidence and combed back a stray hair from Fluttershy's muddy face. “You're the expert, Fluttershy. You're meant to do this stuff.”

“Rainbow!” Twilight called out as she rushed forward, followed by the other ponies. “You're calling it 'Dewey' too? What's going on?”

“Listen, I...” Dash glanced toward the girls, trying to think of a way to explain. “You see..a few weeks ago...Dewey's not a Two-Legged Beast...but I tackled...he's weird...b-but he's not bad, you know?”

“Huh?” Pinkie was the first to respond, frustrating the pegasus as she tried to keep her cool for Fluttershy's sake.

“Yer not makin' a gosh darned lick'a sense, Dash,” Applejack was next to speak. But she tilted the brim of her hat and lent a smirk toward the disparaged blue pony. “But if you an' Shy kin' say he ain't a bad apple, I reckon tha's as good as gold, there!”

“We should do something, Twilight!” Rarity said as Scootaloo huddled close behind her. “The poor thing looks close to death!”

Twilight followed Rarity's gaze and watched as Fluttershy turned the Beast onto its back with some effort and began ripping on its clothes in order to fasten strips of fabric around the sources of bleeding. The purple pony looked to each of the other girls, reading the same thing from each of their eyes and faces. “F-fine!” she finally said. “He needs medical attention, but it's imperative that we get him out of the storm first. Fluttershy's cottage is the closest place, but the lightning makes it too dangerous for me to use my teleportation spell. So we'll have to head there on hoof.

“Pinkie and Applejack, you girls take Scootaloo and head straight to the cottage and gather up all the medical supplies and blankets and anything else you think will help!”

“Roger that!” Pinkie said with a salute.

“As good as done!” Applejack followed with a nod of her head.

The two earth ponies took off, with AJ carrying the pegasus filly on her back.

“Rarity, I need you to use your magic to levitate the Two-Legged Beast-”

“-Dewey!” Dash corrected her.

“Uh, Dewey...while Fluttershy and Rainbow perform first aid on him on our way to the cottage. I need to focus solely on the anti-lightning spell.”

“Understood, darling.” The white unicorn nodded.

Twilight turned back to the yellow pegasus pony, who was currently tightening a knot with her teeth. “Fluttershy, when we get to the cottage tell us exactly what you need in order to save him.”

“Right.” Fluttershy said with renewed determination and hovered close to Dewey, who was now enveloped in a light-blue glow and floated off the ground. “I'll definitely save him.”


--


Several hours had passed since the night and the storm ended.

Fluttershy was sitting next to the bed, with her head perched next to Dewey's hand when Rainbow Dash came up the stairs.

As the blue pegasus silently approached, she noticed how Angel was asleep at the foot of the bed.

Looking toward Fluttershy, she spoke in as soft and assuring a voice as possible. “You need to get some rest.” She paused for a moment, waiting for a reaction before continuing.

With eyes closed, Fluttershy groggily mumbled out “...Iamresting...”

“I mean actually resting. As in, sleeping for more than an hour?” Dash contended with a shake of her head. “And definitely not while sitting up like that.” She sighed when Fluttershy simply turned her head to face away while resting on the bed. “You wouldn't want him to think you were some kind of Four-Legged Monster when he comes to, and sees those bags under your eyes...” Dash tried to joke but it seemed to have failed to stir the other pegasus. She quickly decided to change tactics. “You did good, Fluttershy. I know it. I promise I'll call you when he wakes up, alright?”

Fluttershy wordlessly nodded, picking her head up and slowly stood on all fours. With some apprehension, she stepped away from the bed for the first time in hours. All of her joints were creaky and stiff and her rear legs burned from having her weight focused onto them for so long. Fluttershy looked to Dash with bags under her eyes large enough to go on vacation. “I'll...just take a quick nap downstairs, then...”

With slow steps, Fluttershy made her way to the main floor of her cottage.

When they had first reached the cottage a few hours ago, it was simply chaos. Ponies were screaming and yelling for instructions, animals were screeching and chirping from the ruckus. But only the drawn out creaks of wood and ticking of a nearby clock were the prominent noises as Fluttershy reached the bottom floor.

After they had stabilized Dewey's condition, the ponies gathered around to hear Scootaloo's side of the story.

Apparently, when she had gotten separated from the other Crusaders, Dewey had come along to help guide her out of the forest. The three fillies had gone to the forest in search of the Two-Legged Beast's nest in the first place, and Scootaloo talked a bit how she was scared at first, but mentioned how he tried to lighten the mood with funny faces and bumbling around. That was when the storm came in.

While walking out of the forest, a stray lightning bolt had struck a tree branch and Dewey pushed Scootaloo out of the way, breaking his arm in the process when Twilight came along.

Mistaking the scene of a blood-splattered Scootaloo as Dewey attacking her, the unicorn used her magic to telekinetically swing another tree branch to break his leg. When that did not seem to stop him from crawling after them, she threw the branch against his head, in order for the two ponies to escape. And that was when Fluttershy arrived to the scene.

As Fluttershy arrived at the base of the stairs, she overheard Pinkie and Applejack talking near the kitchen where they had cooked food for everypony after the surgery.

“That ol' Pinkie Sense o' yours was a lifesaver.”

“I know! I never thought I'd get to use my 'Incoming Lightning Strike' twitch!”

“Without it, we'd've been fried like no tomorrow!”

Ambling on, the pegasus continued toward the couch when a soft high pitch voice called out to her. She turned and saw Scootaloo with her ears drooped low.

“I'm really sorry I got your friend hurt, Miss Fluttershy.” Scootaloo walked up to the pegasus mare with despondent eyes.

“Oh...no, sweetie...it wasn't your fault at all.” Fluttershy offered a warm smile and leaned down to nuzzle the younger pegasus, which she hesitantly reciprocated. “It was all just a very bad accident.” When she pulled away, she saw that the violet-maned filly still looked down, not seeming persuaded by Fluttershy's words. “I'll tell you what. If you still feel like you're partly to blame, then you can tell Dewey that you're thankful for helping you when he wakes up. Does that sound alright to you?”

Scotaloo nodded, a bit relieved that there was something she could do to relieve her guilt, before she scrambled back to the other Crusaders and Rarity, who was taking care of the sleeping young fillies at the moment.

Fluttershy saw Twilight standing near the couch, with worry plain on her face. With a few more beleaguered steps, the pegasus managed to lie down on the couch and let out a deep sigh. Only the clock's ticking filled the silence for a moment, when Twilight spoke at a rapid pace.

“Fluttershy, I am so, so sorry! I thought Scootaloo was in danger, and so I-”

“Twilight,” Fluttershy interrupted with a haggard voice. It took a moment for her to continue, which piled more weighty anxiety onto the unicorn's shoulders. “It's not me who you should be apologizing to.”

Twilight cast her eyes downward, frowning at her glaring mistake. “I know! I know that, but...I don't know how to talk to him! Can't you tell him for me or something?”

With her head resting on the couch, Fluttershy looked toward the magical prodigy. “Don't you have a spell that would let you talk to him?” Fluttershy asked tiredly.

“Magic doesn't work like that.” Twilight admitted with a shake of her head. She sat down next to the couch and thanked Celestia that she was able to talk about a familiar subject to mitigate some of her anxiety. “It doesn't just make things happen by chance. For a translation spell, for example, I would need to fully understand the language I'm translating what I want to say from and into. Or at very least have some sort of key to get the process started. If I didn't do that, it would be like trying to fit a mismatching puzzle piece that wouldn't complete the picture.”

“Oh.”

“I'm a bit surprised that you'd need me to use a spell to talk to him, Fluttershy. You were always eager to translate with animals, before.”

“No, Twilight...” Fluttershy stepped off of the couch and sat onto the floor next to her purple friend. “The thing is...I can't talk to him...” Fluttershy admitted with a bit of embarrassment and shame. “I've spent weeks trying to understand him...but I simply can't. We tried charades, we tried with drawings...but beyond really simple things, I've never been able to communicate with Dewey the way I have with the other animals.

“I don't know his real name...I don't know where he's from...I don't even know what he really is...of course I know that he isn't what the newspaper and the townponies have been saying about him...but if anything, I've learned that he's a smart guy, Twilight. I'm sure at the very least he'll understand what you're trying to say. He did with Rainbow Dash when she attacked him when she first saw him.”

“I hope so...”

Twilight looked around the mess they had made of Fluttershy's cottage. Bandages, tattered clothes and dishes were placed all over the floor, and yet she was too fatigued at the moment to be neurotic about it. But then something caught her eye on the side table next to her. “Was he the one reading my books?” she asked when saw the familiar blue cover of Carl Stagen. In fact, it prompted her to remember seeing the other books Rainbow Dash had borrowed were on the desk upstairs when they brought Dewey to the bed to rest after the surgery.

“I think 'studying' them would be more accurate, but yes, those books were for Dewey.”

“Sorry I made you think I wanted to start reading that stuff, Twilight.”

Fluttershy and Twilight both looked at Dash walk toward them.

“You probably didn't notice, but the doctor came in just now and is looking over Dewey.” Dash said to Fluttershy particularly. “I just wanted to let you know before I headed back upstairs.”

Fluttershy nodded her head, accepting that reason.

“You don't need to apologize, Dash.” Twilight sighed. “It's just, why did you think you had to lie to borrow those books in the first place?”

Dash rubbed the back of her head and let out a nervous chuckle. “Yeah...about that...” She then explained to the purple unicorn their reason about being wary from Twilight's episode with Pinkie's “Pinkie Sense”.

“What? Fluttershy, I'd never do that to your friend! I've learned my share of lessons about letting my anxiety get the best of me! But...” her ears pointed low, “...again I'm really sorry that I let those newspaper rumors about the Two-Legged Beast get to me. That's a lesson that I apparently never learned.” It was embarrassing to think about since she was the one who pressed for calm when the townsponies were frightened of Zecora. But was that only because she knew what a zebra was?

“I'm fully responsible for this incident. I should have known better.”

“Yeah, well...” Dash frowned. “I guess you wouldn't have done that if I didn't lie about the books.”

“No, Rainbow,” Twilight tried to assure the blue pegasus, “you only lied to me because you were keeping your promise with Fluttershy not to. I would have done exactly the same thing if I was in your place.

Fluttershy shook her head and looked apologetically at Dash.. “But there never would have been an incident in the first place if I never asked you to not tell Twilight...and...” She turned back toward Twilight next to her while growing close to tears. “...I'm sorry, but I lied about being worried by your experiments, Twilight...I was just so stubborn about my talent, and afraid that asking for help meant that I wasn't qualified to take care of the animals.”

“But you proved you were more than qualified, Fluttershy...despite not being able to talk, you were still able to communicate with Dewey and still became friends. And it's obvious to everypony that you're responsible for saving Dewey's life.” She looked upstairs at where the doctor was checking over Dewey, but was somewhat hampered from doing his job while being excitedly badgered by the Cutie Mark Crusaders, apparently all woken up now. “If anything I'm the one to blame for attacking him...and I have no idea how I could ever make it up to...” She averted her gaze from the pegasi, looking toward the book on the side table. Then, her eyes lit up and she gasped “Wait, THAT'S IT!”

Jumping to her hooves, Twilight rushed toward the front door and used her magic to open it.

“Twilight, where are you going?” Fluttershy called out in confusion.

Halting at the doorway, Twilight Sparkle looked back toward Fluttershy with a determined look on her face. “I'm going back to the library for a moment to get some books!”

“What for!?” Rainbow arched her eyebrows and unfurled her wings in surprise.

“Well, this whole time, Dewey's been studying the books, right? And Fluttershy, you've been worried about not being able to talk to him! So I figure, as soon as he wakes up, the least I could do to start making it up to him is by helping Dewey learn our language!” With her mind set in stone, Twilight gave a grin to the girls and hurried out the door back to the library, as the sun began to rise in the clear morning horizon.

Ponyville's pink party pony approached the pegasi looking out the door with an arched brow on her face, haven overheard their conversation. “So...is Harry's friend gonna be alright?”

The two pegasi looked at each other, and wordlessly decided what they had to do now, as well.

“Um, Pinkie...” Fluttershy began, looking toward the earth pony.

Rainbow Dash stood on her rear legs and hung her front hoof around the back of the earth pony's neck. “We need to have a talk.”

--



Author's Note: I had a lousy day yesterday and felt I had to cheer myself by writing about ponies. Because of finals, I need to focus on writing a few papers so I won't be updating for a few weeks. And because of [omitted] I have a lot of extraneous stuff that just makes my laziness an even bigger obstacle to overcome.

Thanks for the favs, thanks for the likes, thanks for the comments, but most of all, thanks for reading.