We stood outside the library, in front of the mailbox. I reread the letter to make sure it sounded okay.
Dear Dad,
How are you and mom? I’m doing well. I’m staying in the town of Ponyville. The ponies here have all been very helpful and welcoming so far.
One of the ponies here is trying to figure out why some timberwolves have been seen in the nearby woods recently; they live in the Everfree Forest to the south, but don’t normally come this close to town. She is worried there might be something wrong, so she asked me if I could write to you for information on them. Anything you think would be helpful.
Send a response to me at the Golden Oaks Library, here in Ponyville.
Will write you more soon.
Chaser
I rolled up the parchment carefully and wrapped the sealing ribbon around it. I flipped open the mailbox, which had apparently not been used very often, judging by the dust and rusty hinges. Twilight Sparkle must not get mail very often. Or write letters, for that matter. I wondered why she would have a dragon scribe if she didn’t write letters to people. Perhaps she only preferred to deliver them in person? I dismissed the thought, deciding I’d come back to it later. I blew out the dust inside the mailbox, doing my best not to get any in my face, and slipped the letter inside once it had cleared away. “There.”
“Alright,” Applejack said, nodding slightly as I wrestled with the rusted-stuck flag on the box, “now that that’s done, I think we’re-”
TWUNG-THUP! CRKK-CRASH!!
“What in tarnation?”
CLANG!!
My head whipped around to locate the source of the noises, and out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Applejack doing the same. We scanned the horizon in opposite directions for a moment before she cried out, “Over there!” and pointed towards some houses to the northwest, where several ponies were already rushing to investigate. Without a word, we took off towards the disturbance.
The sound had come from behind one of the rowhouses a few blocks from us, if the growing crowd at its perimeter was any indication. I knew long before we had arrived that it would take some time to get through the huddled mass, so I opted to skip the crowd all together. I opened my wings and jumped into the air, joining several other pegasi already hovering over the scene.
The house stood at the edge of the town, near a steep embankment, which led down to train tracks after a short, but dangerous drop. The back of the house contained a small yard with a strangely bent-out fence. Well, most of a fence; a large hole had been bashed through the middle of the back fencing, several boards still hanging off the embankments’ edge, threatening to drop if the connecting lateral supports gave out. Behind the house, lying on the tracks below, was a broken weathervane nestled among several busted fence beams, which had apparently fallen off of the roof. That had caused the crash, and the damage. I was more interested in the origin of the other noise I could now hear- groaning.
Sweeping around to get a better angle on the wreckage, I could see a dark-coated pegasus colt lying partly underneath the weathervane, his lower half sticking out over the tracks. Thank the Sisters, he seemed to be only stunned; the now twisted metal of the weathervane had missed piercing him, in some places by mere fractions of an inch, by the looks of it. Other ponies had begun to notice, as well, and a murmur was moving through the crowd as they spread the word to those behind. Someone needed to help him, obviously, but everypony seemed too stunned to move.
Then I heard a noise that made my blood freeze in my veins. Moments later, a scream from the crowd came forth. “Look!” All heads turned down the track. It was the train, coming just now around the corner, oblivious to the colt on the tracks. I could see the conductor, who looked at the crowd of ponies gathered at the side of the hill with confusion, before turning to spy the weathervane on the track. His face dropped into horrified shock, and he slammed back the brake lever as hard as he could.
It wasn’t going to be hard enough.
I saw Applejack shove her way to the front of the crowd, and glance down at the terrified colt below. She immediately began sliding down the embankment, towards the tracks, a look of grim determination on her face as she leapt off the dirt wall of the decline, landing roughly on the track and tumbling a few feet to finally stop next to the trapped colt. I couldn’t let her tackle this alone; there was no way she could lift the weathervane and grab the colt from under it, before the train overtook them. I zoomed towards the weathervane as quickly as I could.
We met the foal at roughly the same time. Applejack looked up at me as she leapt to her hooves, and then down at the foal. “Rumble,” she said, addressing the colt, “hold still. We’ll get you outta here!”
I had to get the metal trap off the colt so Applejack could grab him. I briefly wondered as to why somepony would have a weathervane so large and complex in the first place, but the thought took a back seat to the task at hand, and I decided to inquire about it later, when lives weren’t on the line. I shoved against the weathervane as hard as I could, but it wasn’t enough; the goddess-awful contraption was bent into the track, and I couldn’t reach the twisted metal to unhinge it from it’s place. “It’s stuck!” I had to yell over the hiss and screech of the approaching train.
The train whistle blew at that moment, but it was barely audible over the screeching of brakes on rails. The steam engine belched thick smoke into the air, and the crowd had worked into a frenzy on the ridge above, screaming and waving about in a near-frenzied panic. “Let me, Sugarcube!” Applejack shouted, swapping places with me, “You grab Rumble, on three!” She turned away from the twisted hunk of metal as though it were merely another apple tree waiting to be bucked. I dropped down, and shot out my forelegs to tackle the foal, as I had done to Spike last night. My wings were already flapping almost to buzzing in anticipation, and I dug into the ground with my outstretched hooves to keep from slamming into the frame of the vane before she’d lifted it.
“One!” Applejack bellowed over the noise of the locomotive. She turned and looked back one last time, to confirm her angle, and I saw the fear in my eyes reflected in hers as she lifted her legs.
“Two!” I could see the train conductor’s pupils, and the sweat beads dripping down his face. My hooves had dug a small pile of dirt up in front of me as I revved my wings so hard I thought they would rip right off and fly forward without me.
“Three!” There was a metallic clang, and the weathervane trap shot upwards, twisting away from Rumble as it contacted Applejack’s hooves, proving the weaker of the two. I was already moving, the dirt flying away as I lifted my hooves and flashed forward as fast as I had ever flown. I felt his tiny body as I scooped him into my forelegs, and I tucked him up and in, clutching him close as I buffeted my wings out, using the wind from the oncoming train, and the heat of the engine, as a thermal draft that rocketed the two of us into the air at tremendous speed. My entire body strained with the sudden wind shift, but I kept them outstretched as far as the pain would let me.
There was a sound like a wild, primal scream as the train smashed into the weathervane and tore it away from its place on the track, throwing it high into the air with the force of impact. It whistled as it flew, spinning like a top, flashing in the sunlight and throwing reflections in every direction as it did. Landing roughly behind the crowd with a loud metallic groan, it bounced several times before screeching to a stop about fifty feet away.
Meanwhile, I had lost control of the climb due to the extra weight of Rumble, and the unexpected speed at which we had lifted. We spun out, spiraling off to the left, away from the crowd and the train, and began falling almost immediately. “Hold on!” I yelled, and I felt Rumble’s hooves wrap tighter around my neck and stomach, as I bent out my wings above me, angling them like a scoop at the ground, in an attempt to slow our descent. At the last second, I twisted, and collapsed my wings in, slamming into the ground on my back to avoid hurting Rumble. The impact knocked the wind out of me, but I had managed to slow us down enough to avoid any major damage.
I lay there in a painful daze, Rumble clinging to me for dear life, as Applejack came galloping over, her breath labored more from worry than effort. “Chaser!”
I coughed, and rolled over, trying to extract Rumble from where he was attempting to burrow into me for safety. “We’re okay.” I gasped as my lungs finally remembered how to inhale. “We’re-” I interrupted myself, coughing dryly several times as I sat up. I finally managed to pull Rumble off, and set him down next to me. He curled up into a ball and sat there, shaking like a tree in a storm. I tried again. “We’re fine. Just a bit shaken up. And sore.”
The train finally gave a last heaving sigh, and ground to a stop some thirty or forty feet down the track, completely obscuring our view of the crowd behind its many cars. I could see the engineer and his crew scrambling down out of the engine in a panic. I flopped back down, heaving great long sighs of breath, grateful to be alive, even if it hurt to be so at this moment. I patted the colt next to me gently on his back, and breathed, “It’s okay, Rumble. You’re gonna be alright.”
The engine crew of the train came galloping over to the three of us just as Applejack was helping me stand. “Are you kids okay?” asked the engineer, an older stallion in dirty white-washed overalls and a railman’s cap. “We come ‘round that corner and saw the crowd and we couldn’t figure out why they were all standin’ around like that.”
“We’re alright, Dusty. It’s okay,” Applejack assured the stallion. “Nopony got hurt, and that’s the important thing. Is the train okay?”
Dusty, the engineer, glanced back swiftly at the train, grinning. “Oh, it’ll take a lot more’n a few scraps of iron to throw ol’ Dinah off her track! She’ll be fine, Applejack. I’m just glad you three are okay!”
By this point, the crowd had managed to make its way around the train, and was quickly merging with the train’s passengers, who were curious as to the sudden stop, I imagined. A swath of earth ponies and unicorns came charging around the front of the train, almost stampeding to reach us. Pegasi came soaring over and out of the train cars, reaching us first. One pegasus in particular landed right next to us, looking very upset, as the others gathered around and quickly formed a large circle. He glared down at the young colt, Rumble, with a stern disapproval that could only come from family.
“Rumble! What in the hay were you doing?!” he spat. Rumble responded by bursting into tears and stammering out an unintelligible apology.
“Hey,” I said, still wheezing a bit as I took a step towards the furious stallion, “why so angry, huh? I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose.”
He looked up from Rumble, his eyes scanning for a moment before noticing me standing in front of him. His nostrils flared as he pushed his nose into mine. He was a few inches taller than me, so I ended up looking up at him as he bore down on me. “And just who are you?” he challenged.
Applejack stepped forward, as the crowd began to encircle the four of us, and placed a hoof on the angry stallion’s shoulder. “He’s the stallion who just saved your little brother’s life, Thunderlane.” She shoved him away from me, and stepped between us, glaring at him. “So back off and simmer down.”
He snorted, but didn’t advance. Instead, he looked around us, towards Rumble, and said “You better have a real good reason for almost getting yourself pancaked.”
Wow. I couldn’t believe someone would treat his own brother like that. “C’mon, now. Do you have to be so mean?” I side-stepped Applejack, and came up to face Thunderlane again, standing as tall as I could. “Don’t you even care that he’s alive?”
Thunderlane did a double-take, and looked at me with a mixture of shock and rage. “Of course I care! He’s my little brother. What kind of stallion do you take me for?”
“The kind with more muscles than brains,” answered Applejack, snorting derisively. “Just ignore him, Chaser. He’s always like this.” She turned to Rumble and helped him to his feet. “C’mon, sugarcube. You okay?” Rumble nodded, and wiped his eyes. “You wanna tell us what happened?” she asked him, her tone soothingly maternal.
He had stopped crying, but his voice shook as he turned towards Thunderlane and said, “I’m s-sorry big b-bro. I d-didn’t mean to! I was trying t-to fly cool, like you, for m-my friends, a-and I ran into the w-weather thing on Mr. Nimbus’s house!”
Thunderlane put a hoof to his forehead, his brow furrowing as he tried to rein in his anger. “Rrgh. That’s great. Just great. Do you know how much it’s gonna cost to replace that thing?”
“D’you know how much it woulda cost to replace Rumble, you cloudheaded featherbrain?” Applejack was in no mood to entertain Thunderlane’s attitude, and her face was starting to turn dark as she whirled around from Rumble to face him again.
I stepped back, away from the two of them, as they proceeded to stare down in a fashion akin to sharpshooters at high noon, like in old cowpony novels. As I did, I bumped into a pony behind me, and spun around to apologize before dropping my jaw in disbelief.
Half the town had to be standing around us! They crowded in, gawking at the scene unfolding between Applejack and Thunderlane. I spun around in a slow circle, seeing ponies in every direction. There were more than a hundred of them, muttering to each other, pushing to get a view of us.
The pony I’d bumped into looked at me and asked in a hushed voice, “Is... is he okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” I answered, “he’s fine. Just a little shaken up.”
The pony turned back to face the crowd, cupping his hooves over his mouth, and shouted, “He’s okay!”
The crowd exploded in celebration around us, whooping and hollering, whistling and applause filling my ears. It was extraordinarily loud, and I almost stumbled backwards towards Applejack, who seemed not to notice as she continued glowering at Thunderlane, who returned the stare with equal ignorance of the noise. Rumble seemed confused by all the sound, but as he looked around at the crowd, a smile finally began to grace his features.
A voice grew up from the crowd as ponies started moving off to my left, forming a tiny path for the speaker. “Coming through! Official business. Step aside!” In a few moments, the source of the voice was standing at the center of the crowd, coming in to our little circle right behind Thunderlane. It was an older mare, with a grey mane atop her tan coat. As she stepped into view, the crowd began to die down, and within moments the stillness around us was almost as deafening as the hollering had been. She adjusted her lapel, pushed her half-moon glasses up onto her nose and asked, “What in the name of Celestia is going on here?”
Instantly, Applejack’s demeanor changed, and even Thunderlane softened his hard gaze a bit as he turned towards the older pony. Applejack answered, “Miss Mayor! What’re you doin’ here?”
“The same as everypony else, I imagine, Applejack,” she replied incredulously, “trying to find out what’s just happened. There’s a train just sitting on the track, and a mangled mess of metal in the middle of the median!” She pointed towards the street, where we could clearly see the wreckage of the weathervane over top of the train. “Who is responsible for this... this... event?” she finished, finding no other suitable word to use.
Thunderlane pointed to Rumble accusingly. “My stupid little brother made a huge mess of things trying to show off to his friends.”
The mayor stepped back a pace, surprised by the answer. “What?” She craned her neck behind Thunderlane to gaze at the colt standing next to Applejack. “Is... Is this true, Rumble?”
Rumble started to nod, until Applejack put a hoof firmly on his back and answered for him. “It was an accident, Miss Mayor! He didn’t mean to cause any trouble. He was just bein’ a colt is all, and he hit the weathervane up there-” she pointed to the roof of the house in question, and I noticed for the first time the bent and broken base of the weathervane, where it had snapped clean off its perch, “- and fell onto the tracks. He got stuck underneath, and if it hadn’t been for me an’ Chaser here-”
“Who?” The mayor asked, stopping Applejack from finishing her defense. She looked around and spied me standing awkwardly off to the side.
“Chaser, ma’am,” Applejack told her, pointing to me now, “he grabbed Rumble from under the weathervane. Saved his life.” She smiled at me warmly. “If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t think Rumble’d still be with us.”
“Rumble wouldn’t have been in any danger if-”
“Thunderlane, that’s enough!” the mayor barked, stepping forward to put a stern hoof to his mouth, as a mother shushing her overly talkative child. “I do believe Rumble has suffered enough trauma from this ordeal without your ill-spoken words adding to his wounds.” She smacked his ear sharply, and he winced. “Your mother would have a field day if she were in town to hear you talk so harshly of your brother, after all the trouble I remember you causing at his age.” I tried not to smirk at him as he stepped back, almost cowed by the mayor’s display of control.
She turned towards me, curiosity in her eyes and a light smile playing at the edges of her mouth. “Mr.-” she began to say.
“Please, just Chaser... Ma’am.” I interjected, bowing clumsily. “It’s just Chaser.”
“Well, then.” She adjusted her glasses again, and the smile stopped playing and took its place under her nose as she continued, raising her voice to be heard throughout the assembly. “Chaser. As the mayor of Ponyville, it is my sincerest honor to thank you for your courage and selflessness in rescuing one of our own from almost certain death today. Your actions are surely an example to us all. Do you have anything you’d like to say to the fair people of our town?”
The crowd fell completely silent as they waited to hear my response. My mind went blank, and my legs froze up under me as my knees locked in place. I was not a fan of crowds or attention as it was, to say the very least. This level of pressure... My anxiety was in overdrive, pumping a fresh round of adrenaline into my system. I looked to Applejack for help. Advice. An exit. Anything. I tried to speak, but no sound came out.
“Uh, Miss Mayor!” Applejack stepped forward, her eyes flitting from side to side as she searched her brain for an excuse to avoid this. She looked almost as nervous as I was. “Uh, Miss Mayor, Chaser is... Pinkie Pie!”
The mayor glanced at Applejack as though her hat had swallowed her brain. “Chaser is Pinkie Pie?”
A gasp issued from my right. “Oh gosh! Then who am I?”
I turned to see a humongous smile surrounded by a pink face, inches from me. “Aah!” I jumped, “Pinkie Pie!”
She giggled. “Well, we can’t both be Pinkie Pie, silly!”
“Pinkie,” the mayor asked as she fixed her mane, “What are you doing here?”
“Well,” she began, taking a huge breath, “I was putting together the decorations for the party I’m throwing for Chaser here tomorrow and I thought to myself, ‘Self?’” She stepped to her right and looked over to where she had just been standing. “‘Yes, Pinkie?’” She stepped back, and looked the other way. “‘We should go find Chaser and make sure he knows what time the party is so he doesn’t miss it!’ and I said, ‘Pinkie, that’s a great idea!’, and I was like, ‘Well, I sure thought so’, and so I went out and I was heading through town trying to find him, and then I heard this big CRASH! and so I came running over to see what had crashed, and I saw this crowd of people over here, and I thought ‘I wonder if Chaser’s somewhere in the crowd’, and I said to myself, ‘Self?’, ‘Yes, Pinkie?’, ‘We should go check that crowd over there and see if anyone knows where Chaser is.’ ‘Another great idea! You’re just chock full of ‘em today, Pinkie!’ ‘I know, self. Thanks for saying so.’ ‘You are so very welcome!’, and so I came running over here to see what was going on and wouldn’t you know it, in the very center of the crowd, there he is! Isn’t it great?”
Complete silence for almost five full seconds, aside from Pinkie breathing loudly as she recovered from her verbal dumping. Then the mayor adjusted her glasses, again, and stepped forward. “Why, yes, Pinkie. That is quite the story. Are you meaning to say that you are throwing Chaser a party of some sort?”
“Yepperooni! Tomorrow afternoon, we’re throwing him a double-decker party- one deck for his ‘welcome to Ponyville’ party, and the other for his ‘thanks for saving Fluttershy from death by timberwolves’ party!”
“This is the pony who rescued Fluttershy?” The mayor looked, not at Pinkie, but at me. “... When did you come to Ponyville, Chaser?”
“Um, well... Yesterday morning...” I managed to choke out over the lump in my throat. “Uh, why?”
“You arrived only yesterday morning?” She seemed taken aback by my confession. “You have saved the lives of two of Ponyville’s citizens from terrible fates, in a single day’s time. We are in your debt.” She stepped away, so that she was centered in the circle of ponies, and proclaimed to the crowd, “This stallion is a hero, fillies and gentlecolts! Today we celebrate the arrival of this amazing pony in our fair town of Ponyville - I give you Chaser, everypony!”
A fresh round of applause and cheering rippled through the crowd like wildfire through desert brush. I looked around the circle, disoriented by all the noise. I saw that Thunderlane had almost completely disappeared into the crowd, and Rumble was poking his head around the back of the mayor, to try and get a better view of me. Applejack was grinning from ear to ear, and Pinkie Pie was... well, she was being Pinkie Pie. She had somehow produced party poppers, and was blowing on a party blower as confetti flew in every direction. My head was starting to hurt from all the noise.
Applejack sidled up to me and leaned in so I could hear her over the crowd. “Well, at least now you don’t have to worry about anypony dislikin’ you, right?”
I swallowed hard, wishing I could shrink away into nothingness. This was not what I had meant to do. “I was just doin’ what any good pony would do...” I said, echoing Applejack’s statement from earlier that morning. “I don’t... deserve this.” My vision was starting to go funny, and I was feeling light-headed. My head was throbbing, especially around the bump from earlier.
“Course you do, Sugarcube! ... Hey, are you okay?” She looked at me as though I had something on my face. At least, I think that was what she did. I wasn’t really sure what she had said or done at that point, to be honest. She, and the crowd, sounded very far away all of a sudden. And where was all the light going? I didn’t really care all that much, actually. My head was killing me!
Applejack tried to ask me something, but I couldn’t hear her anymore. I tried to ask her to repeat herself, but my mouth didn't seem to be working. My legs suddenly began to sway, and the world pitched sideways as the lights went out completely. The last thing I remembered was someone screaming my name from a very long way off. I thought it might have been Fluttershy...