After school hours were always strange.
The school almost always had somebody wandering the halls. It turned the bustling corridors into a desolate and empty facade. A shell of it’s former self. The feeling of unease only managed to multiply when the staff began turning off every second light, turning the feeling of unease into dread. If not for the sun shining in through the occasional window from a classroom, the place would’ve felt completely inhospitable.
A particular girl found herself wandering these creepy halls. It was a strange sight to see a girl like herself walking with such ease and gusto, like the terrible setting barely even affected her. Her skin was a light pink, curled purple hair with a single pink streak running down the middle. She wouldn’t have seemed too out of the ordinary in a high school filled with teenagers.
Except, of course, for her designer outfit.
She had money, and she wasn’t afraid to show it off. A designer yellow coat, a jeweled necklace worth more than the average house, and a diamond tiara on her head worth more than the average suburban community. Why wasn’t she slightly off-put by the terrifying halls of CHS after hours? The befogged hallways? Perhaps she thought she could simply pay off anything that lurked in the shadows.
Of course, nothing actually did lurk in the shadows. It was a high school, after all, and not a morgue.
Her name was Diamond Tiara. Daughter of Filthy Rich and Spoiled Rich. In her fingers hung by her side was a small note, ripped straight from the notebook of a student. She had barely batted an eye at such a ludicrous and childish request written on it’s lined surface with a ball point pen.
Meet me at room 513 512 after school. Alone.
Although there wasn’t a name left on the note she had found on her desk late last hour, she could make quite an accurate guess at who it was, judging entirely off of the absolutely terrible and downright ineligible handwriting.
Scootaloo.
It had to be. She was part of the Canterlot Movie Club. A girl from nowhere town. A tomboy with abscent parents. A child with no money. Diamond Tiara thought her, plus her squad of two other girls, were the most annoying characters in the entire school. She had the fashion sense of a dead rat, almost always wearing awful baggy pants and whatever t-shirt she found in the dumpster of a chuck-e-cheese that day.
It was almost like she never put any work into herself. To be fair, her hair was almost always cut short, yet she managed to find a way to make it look messy. At least the other two members of the CMC had the decency to at least attempt to hide their atrocities. Sweetie Belle curled her hair everyday, while Apple Bloom did the bare minimum of putting her hair into a bow. Somehow, Scootaloo scraped below the bare minimum.
She was loud. She was boisterous. She was annoying.So, so very annoying.
Diamond Tiara stopped infront of the door. With a quick visual check between her hasty note and the plaque to the side, she gripped the doorknob and pushed the door open.
There weren’t many abandoned classrooms in the school. Unfortunately for Diamond Tiara, this was one of the few classrooms that had been missed in the remodel after Sunset Shimmer’s… breakdown, let’s call it. The place was full of outdated wooden boards, cans of paint, and building supplies. The room had obviously been used as a storage room at one point, judging by the literal hallways made from desks stacked ontop of eachother picariously.
“Scootaloo!” Diamond Tiara shouted from the door. “I know you’re the one who wrote the note! Stop hiding like a chicken!”
“I’m not hiding!” A familiar voice said from deeper in the room. Diamond Tiara’s face scrunched her face into a frown, crossing her arms and delicately crossing the boundary into the room. It had a faint smell of ancient cigarette smoke. Like getting a whiff of the paper sleeve vinyl records came in.
“Then where are you?” Diamond Tiara asked, pausing momentarily to swipe her finger across the teacher’s desk. A blob of dust came up with her finger, leaving a trail across the wooden surface.
“Back here!”
“Back where?” She asked.
“Back- just-” Her voice was intterupted as she heard a loud crashing sound. One of the many towers of desks had succumbed to the weight of gravity, giving in and falling down with a huge scene. Diamond Tiara watched as a plume of dust began rising from somewhere in the back of the classroom.
“As you were saying?” Diamond Tiara asked, looking at the dust on her finger still. She rubbed it inbetween her thumb, watching as it rolled over on itself in disgust. Yet, she still didn’t get a response from Scootaloo. Her eyes flickered away from her own fingers for a moment. “Scootaloo? As you were saying?” She said louder into the back of the surprisingly deep classroom.
She let out a sigh as she, yet again, didn’t get a response. With an eye-roll that could level worlds, she started walking once more.
The desks were towering above her, getting only tighter and tighter against her sides as she walked deeper in. How a classroom could ever even get ten percent this bad, she had no idea. Her sour face only deepened as she came to a cobweb. For a moment, she considered simply turning around. But she was Diamond Tiara. She wouldn’t let a lowly spider get the betterment of her. She crouched down, probably putting a wrinkle in her designer coat, and began walking once more.
The desks finally spread out into a small clearing. For a moment, Scootaloo was nowhere to be found, and Diamond Tiara resisted the urge to scream in frustration. But, when all hope seemed lost to the poor girl, she looked down.
“There you are!” She said with a huff, finally uncrossing her arms. “What are you doing on the floor? Are you trying to look homeless? I almost got a spider-web on my jacket! Do you know-” Then, finally, Diamond Tiara noticed exactly what Scootaloo was doing.
A heavy metal desk had fallen down directly onto Scootaloo’s left leg. It looked almost like it had painfully split it right in half, a dark liquid beginning to coat her pant leg.
Unbenounced to Diamond Tiara, the Scootaloo laying on the ground forced back a smirk.
“S-Scootaloo?” She whispered. “O-Oh my god! S-Scootaloo!” She fumbled with her fingers for a moment, the paper note being dropped and completely forgotten about. “F-Fuck! Scootaloo!” She quickly leaned down, gripping underneath Scootaloo’s armpits and began pulling. “I-I’ll get you out of here! O-Okay? I’m gonna pull harder, okay? Scootaloo?” But Scootaloo stayed silent, her head going limp under Diamond Tiara’s grip. “One, two-” And then, she tugged.
There was a terrible ripping sound as Scootaloo’s pants leg finally gave up, ripping in half at the knee. Diamond Tiara fell backwards, letting Scootaloo fall to the ground in a heap. Her eyes widened as she stared, quickly realizing that where Scootaloo would usually have a leg was instead just replaced with…
...with nothing.
Scootaloo couldn’t hold back the smirk any longer, but bit the inside of her cheek to stop laughing.
“Oh my- oh my- oh no-” Diamond Tiara quickly stood up, covering her face with both of her hands. “No-no-no-no-” She began backing away from the crime scene in shock, back towards where she came from. Unfortunately, however, she bumped into something surprisingly fleshy.
She turned around.
“Got’cha!” Rainbow Dash was standing behind her in a super-hero pose, arms against her hips as she stared down Diamond Tiara. Dash let a smirk envelop her features as she watched Diamond Tiara wilt under her gaze. “So. You’re the punk that’s been-”
One of the few things Rainbow Dash wasn’t expecting, however, was the sound of a shrill shriek to fill the room. Diamond Tiara screamed, loud enough to shatter even the most delicate of wine glasses. Dash grasped her ears tightly, as did Scootaloo, who was still laying on the floor and pretending to be injured.
In a plume of smoke, Diamond Tiara turned tail and ran back down the small ally way composed of desks. Both girls kept their hands over their ears for a few moments longer, listening as the screaming became fainter and fainter as she ran down the hall.
“Well.” Rainbow said, removing her hands. “That was cruel.”
“Ow…” Scootaloo rubbed her ear. “That… really hurt.”
“What, the desk falling on you? Or Diamond’s scream?” Dash copied Scootaloo in rubbing her ear. “Man, that sucked.” She groaned.
“Give me my leg.” Scootaloo said, sitting up on the ground and looking up at Dash. She reached behind one of the many tipped over desks, pulling out the plastic appendage. From inside the hole where the stump would sit, Dash grabbed the sock and chucked it at Scootaloo. She caught it, pulling her torn pant leg up and over her knee. “Thank god I didn’t get ketchup on my pants.”
“Why not? Would’ve sold it better.”
“Do you think Diamond Tiara needed any more selling?” Scootaloo asked, pulling up the sock around her stump. “That scream sounded pretty real to me.” She reached her hand back out. “Leg.”
“Here.” Dash handed her the leg. Scootaloo took it, rotating it around in the air for a moment so it was facing the correct direction. “Man, it’s still weird seeing you with… you know- or, without a leg.”
“It feels weird showing you.” Scootaloo said, sliding it on. “I usually hide it. I feel kind of… exposed without my pants covering it.”
“Exposed should be the last word you use.” Rainbow said. “Trust me, sis, that thing is sweet.”
“Think so?” Scootaloo gave the leg one last tug.
“Yeah, I do.” Rainbow grabbed Scootaloo’s outstretched hand. “Let’s get you up, ya’ paraplegic.”
“Para-” Scootaloo scoffed as she found her balance. “I am not a paraplegic!”
“What? Why not?”
“Because paraplegic means you’re paralyzed.I am not paralyzed.”
“How do you know that?” Dash asked, both of them walking down the ally.
“Because the doctors thought I was.” Scootaloo said, walking. Somehow, it still managed to surprise Dash at how easy Scootaloo made walking look. Other amputees she had seen usually had a slight hobble, or a favoring of a leg. Not Scootaloo. Perhaps there was strangely little ankle bending in her gait, but to the untrained eye, it wasn’t even noticable.
“The doctor’s thought you were?” Dash asked. “What does that mean?”
“You know-” Scootaloo shrugged. “When I got in my accident. They thought I was paralyzed waist down for a little while. They eventually figured out that it was just temporary paralysis, and that I was fine.” She let out a hollow chuckle, looking down at her leg. “Well- mostly fine.”
“Scootaloo?” Dash had stopped short of the door, looking at her with concerned eyes. Scootaloo took a quick step back in surprise at the sudden change in demeanor. “What accident?”
“My…” Scootaloo took a breath. “How I lost my leg.”
“You weren’t born like that?” She asked, genuinely concerned.
“No. No- of course not. Why would I be born without a leg?”
“I dunno. You just make it look… easy without having a leg. Like you’ve walked without a leg your whole life.” Dash turned closer to Scootaloo. “But… what accident?”
Scootaloo adorned a face of mild uncomfortableness. She found a nearby desk, coincidentally the same one that Diamond Tiara had swiped her finger across earlier. She propped herself up on it, sitting down and letting her legs- or, leg and plastic- dangle down.
“Well…” Scootaloo interlocked her fingers, leaning forwards. “I was in an accident when I was younger.” Rainbow listened, leaning back and forth on her heels. “I don’t remember a lot about it. I don’t even remember loosing my leg. But there was- a car tried merging onto the highway. Car somehow didn’t see us, and- we spun out of control.”
“But your okay, right?” Dash asked with concern.
“Well-” Scootaloo made a broad gesture at her left leg. “Relatively?”
“Oh. Right.”
“I was pretty banged up. Lotta’ stitches. Lotta’ blood.” She shook her head. “Have I… ever told you about my parents?”
“Your parents?” Dash asked. She looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “Huh. I guess not.”
“Yeah.” Scootaloo swallowed. “They didn’t make it.” She looked down.
“Didn’t… make it?” Dash asked in shock. “What do you mean, ‘didn’t make it?’”
“I mean- I don’t have parents.” Scootaloo elaborated. “I don’t even really remember them, either.” Dash stood in shock.