Scooter Tracks in My Life

by Pyrus Nightwrite


Origins

AN: this chapter is a little bit darker than i expected to be, and as such i have added the "dark" category to the story. if you feel it doesn't belong there, comment and tell me it doesn't and i'll probably remove it. also, this chapter is a little longer than i expected as well, but that isn't that important.

“Scootaloo?”

why does EVERYPONY have to keep waking me up? Wait… is that…

“Pyurs?”

Scootaloo jerked her eyes open in a flash, scanning the room nervously. Magenta eyes met green and Scootaloo launched to her hooves.

“Am I dreaming…?”

“Well, I don’t think I’m a dream… if I am, being a dream is… painful.”

Scootaloo’s mind raced with everything that she knew about dreaming, the intense equations and difficult strategies she learned in school, along with her entire knowledge of the dreamscape including the algorithm of dream-seeing. She calculated the likelihood that she was dreaming and combined everything into one action that would tell the answer to everything.

Then she pinched her side. (What else did you think she would do?)

“Ow… Hey, you’re still here. That means… I’m not dreaming, right?”

“Should I be gone?” Pyrus responded with a confused look that bordered on sarcastic.

Now absolutely certain she wasn’t dreaming, Scootaloo’s emotions exploded from her heart. Relief, anxiety, sorrow, happiness and sadness all flooded her mind at once, and Scootaloo surged forward to the bed, upon which her target laid.
_______

Pyrus jumped, startled, as a tearing, smiling yet frowning filly collided with his injured body in a crushing embrace.

“Oh my gosh Pyrus I’m so sorry I never should have made you go I’m so glad you’re ok please forgive me for hurting you I didn’t mean to make-“

“Scootlaoo. One thought at a time please. I don’t think my head can take many more right now.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Pyrus was uncomfortable to say the least, with an ecstatic young filly crushing his beaten body, which was banging on the door of his brain demanding loudly to be free. There was something there, though, that Pyrus just couldn’t ignore. Some little hitch somewhere within him that kept him from shouting in pain and pushing himself free; Something about Scootaloo being there… made him feel good.

“Anyway, Scoots, Please continue?”

Scootaloo withdrew from the embrace, which Pyrus still couldn’t tell whether he was relieved or unsatisfied by, and looked directly at the ground. A teardrop began to form in the corner of her eye, which she tried to hide by turning her head. Alas, the floor whispered a “plink” as the tear impacted.

“It… it’s all my fault. It’s me that put you here; it’s me who made you injured. It’s ALL my fault… I never would have made you go…”

Pyrus recognized the idea Scootaloo was portraying, and took stock. What she was saying was true of course, but… there was that something again. The hitch told him: Forgive her… Forgive…

“Hey, you don’t need to think like that! It’s not all your fault. I was there too. If I didn’t let you get me up that tree, things would have been different too. You aren’t to blame.”

“But… But I hurt you…”

“Well, my head’s screaming my leg is on the verge of splitting in half, but otherwise I’m fine. It’s only pain, after all.”

“Really? Are you sure you’re okay?”

Pyrus to this day isn’t sure why he turned her face to him, or what drove him to look deeply into Scootaloo’s deep maroon eyes, or why he even felt that he was being completely honest when he said “Absolutely.”
________

Scootaloo looked outside again, some time later. After Pyrus had completely assured her that he was fine and she wasn’t a monster, Scootaloo had recounted the tale of how they had gotten to the clinic in the first place. He was mildly amused when she told him that they had carried him there, and even more so amused when she mentioned Applebloom’s remark on how his being covered in sap was rubbing off on her own mane. Scootaloo had deliberately left out her… episode with Sweetie Bell. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t really want him to hear that. After the story had ended, a somewhat awkward silence fell between the two, which left Scootaloo looking around.

The night was still dark, the moon cast an almost eerie glow on the trees outside. The stars in the sky seemed only there to be there, they were nothing special. Just stars on an average night in ponyville. MY night has been just a teeny bit less than normal, though…

Looking away, she glanced back at Pyrus, and gasped.

Pyrus’s mane was now streaked orange and black again. Like a tiger’s coat, there were stripes that ran down his mane, black and orange reflected the lights to Scootaloo’s eyes.
What the HAY!? How...? what…? WHY? Did his mane just… change colors!?

“Did… did your mane… just… change?”

“Huh? Oh! Well… yes. It’s… it’s a long story.”

Scootaloo sat on her haunches, and looked at her friend with a wayward grin.

“Unless you have somewhere to be, I have time. And by the looks of things… you aren’t going anywhere any time soon.”

“… Fine. I guess I’ll tell you the story…”

She watched him shift into a more comfortable position in the bed, watched as he closed his eyes, and watched as the black mane invaded the orange, slowly phasing and conquering what orange there was, sweeping from the top down like ink drops trickling down a paper.
_______

“I’m sure you remember that I was born in Canterlot. But, I can promise you it isn’t the Canterlot you know. Canterlot has always been the royal city, the pristine and pompous Heart of Equestria. But, that image isn’t necessarily true. Sure, Celestia lives there, and sure, there are some high class dodoes and royalty running around, but there’s more to Canterlot than that. Take me for an example.

“I haven’t told you this yet Scootaloo, but… I don’t know my father. I never knew him. To be honest, I doubt my mom even knows who he is. My mom… well, when I was younger I was little more to her than another pony around to take funds from her precious booze money. Sure, she fed me whenever she wasn’t drunk, and gave me a “home” but there wasn’t much more than that. The 'home' I speak of is nothing more than a 2-room shack in the lower levels of Canterlot.

“Down below the Castle, down under the pompous, pristine towers, there is a pile of tiny, crammed together houses. Hay, the train was higher up than we were. From above, this neighborhood looked like a chess board decided to play a game of monopoly and was interrupted by an earthquake. The ponies that lived there were mostly those who came to Canterlot to get rich, and the ones who drug the rich ones down to their level. This is where my life began.

“I bet you’re wondering what this has to do with my mane, right?” He paused as Scootaloo nodded her head. “Well, my mane used to be completely orange. It was the same color you might see right now, but there was no black. That all changed the year before I got my cutie mark. In that Celestia-forsaken smudge they called a neighborhood, most of the ponies my age were already beating each other up for the bits they found dropped on the street. As you can probably tell, I am not and have never been very strong…”

He looked at his slender shoulder before sighing and continuing.

“As such, I was picked on a lot. But there was one filly, a pegasus named Scribbles Scetchalot, that saw in me what everypony else shook off as weakness. She had a light blue mane, orange fur that was a little brighter than mine, and blue eyes. I met her at school, I don’t even remember how. But I do remember that we’d always, Always been best friends. Scribbles was… more than just a friend to me. Much more like a sister. She and I did everything together, to the point where if we were apart for more than a day the other kids would start to ask if the other was arrested or something (also not uncommon in this neighborhood). A Royal Guard even mistook us for twins once.

“To this day, she is on my mind. What I wouldn’t give to see her again…”

At this point, Scootaloo caught a twinkle on Pyrus’s face, and gasped in shock. He’s… crying? Did she really mean so much to him that moving away moves him to tears?

Pyrus continued. “She… She died three and a half years ago…”

oh

Tears shoved their way out of Pyrus’s eyes now, each one fighting to reach the sheets of the hospital bed first. With his eyes closed, and his voice choking every once in a while, Pyrus forced the story along. “We were on a school trip. I don’t remember what we were doing there; all I remember is that it was in the higher terraces of Canterlot. One of the other colts in our class, a large pegasus pony named Jailbird, thought it would be funny to prank Scribbles and I while we looked over the purple railing at the Canterlot street below us. He and his friend Pile Drive both grabbed us, pushing forward and then immediately after caught us on out fronts while shouting ‘SAVED YOU LIFE!’

“That was the plan anyway. It was less than successful.”

“Pile Drive managed to pull it off. But when Jailbird shoved against Scribbles, she flailed open her wings in panic, which smacked him in the face. That brief moment of pain caused him to forget to catch Scribbles before she went careening over the bars and off the edge. Scribbles could fly, but she needed to get a running start, and it was only for a few moments at a time. The wings she carried couldn’t save her from the hard concrete that moments later received a new coat of paint with a fine layer of my only friend’s crimson blood.”






(DISCLAIMER: i don't own the charicter Scribbles, she belongs to my friend EmilyThePenguin, who has given me permission to use her.)