Pony Zero: Crimson Fluttershy

by pmcollectorboy

Acquiring the Camera Obscura

The time Fluttershy disappeared had been the coldest summer day Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and Apple Bloom could remember. The weather remained warm and pleasant for them at the moment, but as the three stared at Fluttershy's cottage, which stood empty and absent of both owner and animals, they all recalled the odd event that culminated in the beloved pegasus' seeming abduction.

Scootaloo had been at the local park, trying her best to reach twenty head bounces of a rubber ball in an attempt to become as good as Rainbow Dash, the head bouncing champion. After a missed bounced sent the ball tumbling away down a small incline, she bounded after it to give chase for the wayward toy only to become entranced by a tiny tinkling, almost like that of a sleigh bell. Looking around yielded nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, not even the other fillies and colts playing in the park had seemed to notice the tinkling. After a second round of tinkling, Scootaloo spotted a strange red butterfly, its wings glowing an alluring luminescence, almost like the glow of a flame but giving no heat. Scootaloo remembered becoming entranced by the butterfly, by its angelic glow. She had lost track of time after chasing the butterfly but remembered wandering away from the park. Her vision had become fleeting and her memory even more fractured and shifting, becoming difficult to grasp in its intangibleness like fine sand, but somehow she remembered finding herself in a dark forest, the sun nowhere to seen, nothing but shadow embracing every branch and underbrush. In front of her stood a run-down mansion, its twisted front door opened to pitch darkness like a chilling howl, cobwebs, ruin and gloom covering the front from its foundations to its eaves, and a large courtyard surrounding her on three sides, its hallways and wooden beams also falling apart and covered in dust. In between leaving the park and finding herself standing in a foreboding forest in front of a crumbling mansion was a blur to Scootaloo, but she remembered clearly seeing Fluttershy calmly walk past her from behind like she wasn't even there and enter the gaping maw of the mansion, disappearing into the darkness. Scootaloo then fainted when she heard a horrific scream and the darkness expanded out from the doorway to engulf her.

After regaining consciousness back at the park, Scootaloo sought out her friends. When she saw their wide-eyed expressions and haunted, terrified faces, she shared her experience, only to discover her other two friends experienced identical visions. Each saw a mansion. Each saw a dark forest. Each saw Fluttershy. Each had lost track of a block of time before being faced with the terrible building and then waking up right back where she had started.

The three friends puzzled their experiences for the rest of the day, keeping the harrowing event to themselves. It wasn't until later on that they each realized how relatively cold the day had been for a normal summer day, when each of the three friends had to go to her respective homes.

Rarity had been the first to discover Fluttershy missing when the yellow pegasus missed several spa dates back to back. The unicorn had remained locked inside her bedroom ever since, bemoaning the loss of her best friend and weeping into the depths of her pillow. Sweetie Belle had been forced to spend a few nights over at Apple Bloom's house because of that.

It wasn't long before a rescue party had been formed and the town newspaper spread the message of the mare's misfortune. Several days of searching had turned up nothing, and eventually even the newspapers went back to printing the normal boring news. The rest of Ponyville wrote off Fluttershy as dead but buried an empty casket. Twilight and Rainbow Dash were the only ones of Fluttershy's friends who attended, doing so as a matter of etiquette. Oddly enough, Rarity flat out refused to show up. Pinkie Pie spent the day baking a baker's dozen of a baker's dozen of muffins. Applejack expressed her sorrow, naturally, through doing more work. Despite the funeral, Fluttershy's friends never gave up hope that she remained alive somewhere.

While doing a rare moment, for her at any rate, of silent pondering, Scootaloo decided that she had had enough of the town's moping and had gotten it into her head that she and her friends would do their own investigating. Featherweight, the scrawniest member of Scootaloo's class, organized an emergency meeting of the class newspaper staff. It would be completely unauthorized as it was the summer break, but they all wanted to do their part in finding out what happened to the town's favorite animal lover.

Featherweight had sent Shady Daze, the new class photographer out to "gather clues", and Shady seemed eager to put his new digital camera to work. Featherweight wanted Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and Apple Bloom to accompany Shady and help interview the townsponies, but Scootaloo knew they would just be spinning their wheels, so to speak, and had other ideas.

The young pegasus gathered her friends outside the home of Fluttershy, thinking they would find better clues there, but the doors and window frames remained boarded up by order of the mayor, presumably to avoid looters and fanatical devotees.

"So what do you think?" Scootaloo asked.

Sweetie Belle turned her head to look at her friend. "About what?"

"There's got to be some way in."

"But why are we breaking into her house?"

Scootaloo gave Sweetie Belle a hard look. "Something happened to Fluttershy that day to cause her to leave her home. We all saw it that day we experienced those visions. Now nobody stopped to think to search her house. We're going to change all that." She then turned her head back towards the cottage. "We've just got to find some way in."

"Chimney," came Apple Bloom's brief response.

"What?" Scootaloo asked, blinking.

Apple Bloom tossed her muzzle towards the roof. "Tha only way in is ahbviously through tha chimney."

Scootaloo turned the idea over in her head, staring at the only opening in the house to not have access blocked off. Apple Bloom, of course, was right, but it would be a tight fit, even for the small fillies.

With a groan, Scootaloo muttered, "This is going to suck."

After one climb of a tree, some precarious balancing, and a bunch of shuffling and scuffling, the three friends managed to make it down the chimney, suffering only a few scrapes on the way.

The silence inside the home seemed devastatingly eerie. The three friends, having spent a couple nights at the pegasus' home, were used to the lively chatter of Fluttershy's animal friends. The home they found themselves in had not a single peep of the tiniest mouse. Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom paused for a silent moment of reverence but Scootaloo immediately got to rummaging around, much to the annoyance of the other two, but they couldn't muster up the heart to tell her off.

"What are we looking for?" Sweetie Belle asked when she decided to break the silence.

Scootaloo opened up a drawer and stuck her nose in. "Not sure. Something out of the ordinary?" She turned away when she found nothing. "I mean what's the connection between Fluttershy and that creepy mansion?"

Sweetie Belle shrugged while Apple Bloom headed upstairs towards the bedroom.

"Ah think ah've found somethin'!" came Apple Bloom's exclamation.

Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo stopped their search of the living room to head upstairs. They found Apple Bloom standing before Fluttershy's bed, looking at the contents of a box.

"What have we got here?" Scootaloo asked.

Apple Bloom merely responded by tipping the box on its side, sending its contents tumbling out onto the soft bed. The three friends discovered a letter, an aging, yellowed photograph, a red crystal, and a strange camera. Sweetie Belle picked up the letter first and read it.

Dear Fluttershy,
Here is the family heirloom you had requested. It had been entrusted to me by your grandmother, who herself had been a good photographer. It is called the Camera Obscura. It has... unusual properties. In short, it has the ability to banish spirits by photographing them. I thought I could handle the strange world this camera opened for me, with my high intuition, but I had been wrong. I'm giving the camera to you because I have failed in my search for the meaning of your family curse. Perhaps an emotionally sensitive soul will succeed where a spiritually dense one failed. I imagine the shadows will be coming for me soon. Please keep the camera safe.

Yours truly,
Platinum Finish

As Sweetie Belle pondered the meaning of the letter, Apple Bloom picked up the photograph and gave it a glance. The image on the front seemed faded out to little more than dull, gray lines and shapes. Apple Bloom surmised that the photo was around 50 years old. On it seemed to be a small gathering in front of a rather familiar mansion. One seemed to be a young mare bearing a resemblance to Fluttershy. The stallion next to her was probably her husband. Then there was another stallion next to the husband, possibly a family friend. By his hat and the tools on his belt, he seemed to be an archeologist of some kind.

After Apple Bloom was done with the photograph, Scootaloo turned her attention towards the crystal.

"What do you suppose this is?" the young pegasus asked as she reached out to pick it up with her hooves.

Red memory orb(anger)
"Platinum Finish! Where have you been?!"
"I've been playing with the red butterflies."
"You've been missing for hours, young lady! I have a good mind to give you a sound spanking! What have you got there? A camera? That belongs to your godmother Shutterbug!"
"I've fixed it. She said I could keep it."

In a flash of light, the intruder memory disappeared, and Scootaloo pulled away from the crystal, stunned. Outside, the shadows grew longer.

"I think we'd all better go home for now," Scootaloo muttered.