Scootaloo was pacing across the floor of the club house while she waited for Applebloom to return. The Earth pony had gotten some idea in her head about how to deal with the pink freak, but then immediately left to make some kind of call. It was apparently important enough to leave her friends alone together while she ran off.
Not that Scootaloo disliked Sweetie Belle, they got along fine enough, but they just had nothing in common, nothing to talk about. Their whole friendship hinged on Applebloom. They did both enjoy card games, thankfully, but after the last one was lost in the fire, they really didn't have much to do together.
Like now, Sweetie Belle was working on one of her gadgets. Scootaloo didn't know anything about modern day things, she was lucky she even knew what a phone was. Displacement truly was a terrible experience she didn't wish on anyone, not that she hadn't been adjusting. Reading gave her more joy than anything else anyway, but she knew to refrain from doing so while her friends were active. Which...nobody was at that particular moment, but that could change in the next thirty seconds for all she knew. But that had been true for the last 5 minutes, thus the pacing.
Thankfully though, Applebloom chose that time to walk back through the door. "Alright," She declared, with as much vocal seriousness as she had anytime she was planning something, "I made the call, that should take care of the pen pal."
Sweetie Belle put down a screwdriver she was holding in her magic and walked over as Scootaloo turned to Applebloom, slightly impatient. "What about Pinkie?" the pegasus asked.
At a nod, Applebloom motioned for her friends to get closer. "That's what's next, huddle up." When Scootaloo didn't immediately do so, Applebloom looked at her.
"Huddle up?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.
Applebloom rolled her eyes, "C'mon, Scoots, it's fun." She offered a playful smile before Scootaloo got in closer, Sweetie Belle as well. They each put their hooves on each others shoulders, forming something of a circle. The earth pony’s smile faltered again to make room for a calculated expression reserved for plan making. "So the plan is simple. We're going to kill Pinkie Pie."
Applebloom wasn't surprised when she was met with a lack of surprise from her two friends. They weren't experienced in killing, but somehow it just felt right. "We'll need a few things however."
"Like what?" Sweetie asked. Surprised or not, she was curious how it would happen.
"The first thing is a scapegoat," Applebloom explained as she looked between the two of them, "A pony to take the blame for us, I have the perfect mare in mind." At this, she turned to the unicorn, "The second thing we'll need is an alibi to distance ourselves further. Sweetie, can you take care of that?"
Sweetie Belle considered for a long moment. She knew she wouldn't be able to, not under normal circumstances. She wasn't very powerful for what she was, even with all the cool tricks; that’s exactly what they were, tricks. She hadn't exactly done anything...substantial? Not like the ghosts or clones had. The bog monster had scared everyone away from the next district over, but Pyrmidia was basically empty anyway, and that was a long time ago.
No one knew who or what she was, except her friends, and that wasn't good. She'd die eventually if she didn't get...well, she didn't want to think about it. Right then she needed to tell Applebloom the truth, that she could create an alibi, well, if she used some of her limited power anyway. "For you? Sure, I can do that." Applebloom was her friend after all.
Nodding, Applebloom turned to Scootaloo. "Third, we'll need somebody to take care of actually killing her." She raised an eyebrow at her pegasus friend. both were smirking.
"Oh I'm going to enjoy this." Scootaloo almost cheered, a dark grin enveloping her features. "You leave that future corpse to me."
Applebloom smiled and broke off the huddle. "Excellent, now to actually plan it and figure out disposal of the body. I hope neither of you had anything else planned because this is going to take a while."
---
"And break!" Applebloom cheered, checking the last thing off the paper in front of her on her desk. "Once we're all done we meet back here."
Scootaloo grinned maliciously "This is gonna be fun."
"Okay," Applebloom stated as she walked to the centre of the room to address her two friends. "Let's go over step one again for clarification’s sake. I'm going to be finding our bait. What will the two of you be doing?"
"I'm going to be drawing attention at one of my hotspots," Sweetie Belle answered with a smile.
Scootaloo was smiling just as brightly, though there was a bit more of a dark edge to hers. "And I'll be following that pink pile of puke."
"Good, that's good to hear," Applebloom answered jovially, before expression shifted to one of being dead serious. "Just be sure not to FUCK IT UP like last time."
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle both shifted uneasily, nodding.
"Remember that I'm still homeless because of the two of you."
---
Applebloom was walking down main street, her face carefully blank. The sun was at its highest point in the sky, meaning lunch to the masses. As such the sidewalks were packed with pedestrians, and the roads had a large number of carts driving by. Applebloom walked with purpose. She knew where she was going and didn't deviate from her path for anything. That said, she probably could have eaten something herself, but food could wait.
She passed by Partyville's most popular micropark and stopped. She knew a thing or two about plenty of the ponies in this slice of the big Orange. One of those things being the eating schedule of her target. She looked around for the mare as she considered her next move. "Right, so how do I wrangle somepony that's smarter than a bag of rocks, but still an idiot?"
As she looked around, Applebloom saw plenty of ponies, but none of them were the one she was looking for, "Well this is the place she usually spends her lunch hours, where is she?" She looked up at the tree to see if she could find any signs of the pegasus she was looking for, but nothing.
"Hmm..." She thought as she turned around and noted the store across the street. Applebloom looked through the windows, but from this distance, and with carts passing, it was difficult to see. But even so she didn't see the iconic mane of the mare she was looking for.
Applebloom walked into the park and sat down on one of the few benches that was still empty. "I suppose I could be early." She considered, but then quickly shook the idea out of her head, all the evidence suggested she was right on time. "Maybe she finally started doing something with herself."
"I'd be shocked to hear she actually got a job, but I suppose anything is possible." she thought, but as if by fate spiting the idea, a sky blue pegasus turned the corner around the general store and walked into the park. Applebloom grinned as she noticed the telltale signs of her scapegoat.
The mare in question was looking down at a piece of paper she was holding up with one of her hooves as she walked. She looked downtrodden, as if she had been rejected a dozen times for a date with somebody she really liked. "...leaves Ghastly's Ghouls, but I checked there last week, if they were going to order it, they would have told me."
Applebloom's lips curled into a smile as she observed the pony, listening to her speak over the several other ponies within earshot. "Perfect."
The Rainbow-maned pegasus, Rainbow Dash, sat down on the bench with Applebloom, seemingly not noticing her presence as she looked over her page, which seemed to be a list with eight or nine crossed out names. "I don't get it, the book came out a month ago, why does nobody have it?" She pulled a pen out of her mane and drew a line over the name three from the bottom, those below it remaining intact. "I mean, it's a popular series, do people just not read anymore?"
Applebloom grinned, noticing that Rainbow Dash still didn't know she was there. "Heh, this'll be easier than I expected."
---
Across the district of Partyville, beyond the lunch-seeking masses, and past the shopping market stood a resolute book store. Oakfields stood at the centre of a three way intersection, meaning you could see the store long down the middle street. With a parking lot to its left, and a museum to its right, it was the backbone of the intersection.
Among the few ponies out and about their day was a small purple dragon walking into the store. Spike looked around the front of the store, noticed it was pretty empty, and walked on. The shopkeeper stallion waved at him, but was promptly ignored. Spike looked around for Twilight, but upon not noticing her, spotted a doorway that wasn't a bathroom, and walked over to it.
Learning that it was a stairway, he walked up and found a small apartment, which Twilight was in. She turned to look at him, prepared scowl melting into a familiar smile and she waved him in. "Welcome back," She greeted.
"Hey, how's it going?" he returned as he looked around the place. Twilight was sitting on a pile of books in front of a desk, more books lining the thing. He rolled his eyes as he walked over to the couch and flopped onto it. It lost any firmness it had years ago, so he sighed silently in bliss at how much he sank into it.
Twilight stood up from her stack of books and walked over to Spike, taking a seat on the other half of the couch, smiling just as happily at the comfort from the old loveseat. After a moment she reopened her eyes and looked at the dragon. "So what'd you get up to out there?"
Immediately his expression shifted to one of displeasure. He rolled his eyes as he stood up. "God, where to start?" He thought indignantly, beginning to pace on the other side of the coffee table, occasionally looking back at Twilight, "First off, the prices on things here SUCK. I tried to buy lunch and it cost me almost half my money. Do NOT eat at Fresh Cut's diner." As he continued explaining, Twilight levitated a book over to herself and began to read while she listened. "After that, I tried to scam some of the locals."
Looking up from her book, Twilight rolled her eyes good-naturedly, "Sounds like a fun time for you," She mused, "They're REALLY stupid."
Spike brought his claw to his temple, squeezing it slightly in exasperation, "That's the problem, they're TOO stupid!" He wasn't actually all that upset at her, but she rarely knew what she was talking about when it meant dealing with others. Handling scams was his department, hers was...internal affairs, if he had to think of a way to word it. Really, she took care of the small things they both needed, the things he either didn't know how to do or considered monotonous and boring. It was that and just the idea of somebody that you could depend on that he trusted her and stuck around. There was also the fact that she was able to hear what he wanted to say, despite never speaking a word.
"Sure, but that'd make it easier."
...then again, she really *didn't* get how any of it worked. And his morning was just tiring enough that he didn't feel like going into detail with it and felt like playing along for now. "No, you don't get it, I was basically gifted half their crap."
Twilight raised an eyebrow at the comment. "And that isn't a good thing? That's easy theft right there."
Having all but told Twilight to reply with that sentence word for word, Spike melodramatically acted offended. No manipulation was fun if you didn't overdo it a bit, after all. "Twilight, don't insult me, I like a challenge."
Spike mentally counted the seconds until Twilight's confused response. "...Spike, I will never understand you." Two and a half, seemed she was getting a bit more delayed.
With the topic over, Spike switched gears to something slightly more pressing. "Anyway," Spike thought, walking over to inspect the kitchen area. "Other than a few morons, I ran into this stupid bitch that froze me."
The tone in his thoughts was restrained rage, which Twilight was familiar with, Spike had a short fuse at times. "Froze you?" She asked, not wanting to set him off herself. Much preferring to just let it run its course.
"Yeah, you know, with magic?"
Twilight looked up from her undead lexicon to see Spike looking over the counter, it was mostly empty, but he looked like he was removing some dust. "Why didn't you shank her before that?"
"I DIDN'T GET THE CHANCE!" He yelled in his head, probably frustrated at the lack of vocal chords in that moment. As he did his butterfly knife was pulled out and stabbed into the counter. He was carving something into it. "Everything happened before I knew there was a threat."
She couldn't really tell, but if Twilight had to guess, Spike was carving a name into their countertop. "Sounds like she knew what she was doing, bitch tricked you."
"Either way," He thought, quickly slicing letters into the countertop, "Next time I see her, Ol' Trusty is going straight into her jugular."
Spike pulled away from the counter, leaving the name 'Pastel Garden' prominently carved into the wooden surface beside the microwave.