Fluttershy flew over Ponyville, making her way toward the Everfree Forest. I wonder why Applejack wanted me to meet her there. She spotted a tiny orange and yellow blob on the ground that was waving to her. Fluttershy swooped down and landed beside Applejack.
"Good, you came," the Earth pony gasped. Fluttershy was still confused as to why she needed to be here. It seemed that Applejack was able to read her mind because then she whispered, "you're prob'ly wonderin' why I asked ya to come here tonight. Well," she paused and glanced overhead at the waning moon in the sky. "It's because. . . . You remember a while ago when Spike saved me from the Timberwolves?" Fluttershy nodded. "Well, it seems he didn't come fast enough, because of this." Applejack lifted her mane from her neck, revealing a deep gash which seemed to now have become a scar.
Fluttershy's eyes widened. "You got that from. . . .from the Timberwolves?" Applejack nodded. Fluttershy continued. "Them does that that mean you're a werepony?"
The orange farmpony nodded before taking off her cowpony hat and holding up a small green crystal. "I got it from Zecora shortly after the attack. Helps me control my transformations." She whispered something under her breath which, to Fluttershy, sounded like it was in so,e type of ancient tongue.
When she had finished the quiet chant, her ears sprouting thick brownish-ginger fur that soon spread to the rest of her body. Her hooves slowly changed to paws and she grunted in pain. Her tailbone and muzzle extended, growing more wolf-like. Finally, her transformation was complete, with only her emerald eyes remaining the same. She had a red-orange apple-shaped gem in her chest that looked sort of like her old Element of Harmony. "Well," the ginger wolf said in a gruff voice that still sounded female and like Applejack's,"are you going to transform, too?"
Fluttershy shrugged. "I would, but I can't control my transformations like you can. Not yet. I only had my second transformation last night, so I don't really know how it works."
"First, ya want to prepare yerself by loosening your limbs," Applejack instructed her. "Then ya want to clear yer mind of all distractions. That's kind of hard when there's a huge wolf right in front of me, the normally gentle Pegasus thought bitterly. "Then ya want to stare at the moon until ya feel a little change in yerself, but don't stare at the moon too long or else you'll go plum crazy!"
Fluttershy followed her friends instructions carefully. She then felt her wing bones crack and cried out in pain. "Yer okay Flu'rshy." Her friend tried to calm her, but the Pegasus was in too much pain to register thought as her bones were cracking. She felt hot tears roll down her cheeks, joining together on her chin, then falling to the ground.
Her ears were literally burning with a terrible sensation. Her mouth hurt so much that it felt like her teeth were all falling out at once. Her vision then went blurry and she fell into darkness as her heavy eyelids fell over her cerulean eyes like shades, before opening again almost instantly.
"Applejack," she muttered, staring at the large wolf in confusion.
She looked at the gem on the wolf's chest, staring at her own reflection. Fluttershy ogled herself. Long ears with split tips; bat-like, leathery wings; to top off the look she also had crimson eyes and pointed teeth.
Her cutie mark, instead of being three butterflies, had turned into three pink bats. Maybe Applejack has a different cutie mark too. She looked the wolf's flank where there was a picture of a dark brown paw.
Bushes rustled behind them as a small orange cat with magenta stripes who had three scratch marks on her flank. The three scratch marks were each a different colour. One was a dark almost-red pink, the next a light whitish-pink, then the last, a dark purple. "Scootaloo?" Fluttershy gasped.
"Yep," answered the tabby cat in Scootaloo's voice, only a bit higher pitched. "Applejack asked me to meet you here." Two more tabbies padded into the clearing after Scootaloo, one with yellow fur and dark pinkish-red stripes, and the other had white fur and pink and lavender stripes. They both, however, had the same marks on their flanks as Scootaloo.
"And us!" Sweetie Belle chimed in.
Applejack leaped onto a boulder and sat. "Okay, y'all. We need to come up with separate names for ourselves, but they all need to have parts of our names in them so that we know who is who." The others nodded in agreement. "I'll start. I'll be. . . . Applewolf."
"I can be Sweetie Paws!"
"I'll be Apple Scratch."
"I'll be, uh, Scootastripe."
Everyone looked to Fluttershy. "I'll be, um. . . ." she looked to Applewolf. "What was it that Pinkie Pie called me when I first tramsformed?"
The ginger wolf thought for a moment. "I think it was. . . . Flutterbat?"
Fluttershy nodded. "Yes, I will be Flutterbat."
Apple Scratch padded forward. "So, what're we gonna do now, Appleja. . . . Applewolf?"
"Simple. We travel for a week and find other ponies who're like us. I've already told everypony in Ponyville that we're goin' on a camp in' trip."
The ponies all looked at each other and, as silence filled the clearing, they set off of their quest.