Ponyville.
Scootaloo's alarm clock was the first thing she heard every morning after she came back from a night of hunting, and she never got used to being awakened by the loud beeping sound. She groaned as she heard the repeated beeps. She moved her head off the pillow to look at the clock, not believing that it was seven already. She mumbled to herself and slammed her hoof onto her alarm clock, breaking it apart instead of shutting it off. She sat up with a growl and picked up the clock to throw it into the wall, falling back down onto the bed when the alarm finally died.
"Ugh, it's no good. I'm awake now," she muttered groggily to herself, rolling out of bed to the floor and dragging herself into the bathroom. Scootaloo flicked on the lights and looked into the mirror, wincing as she did so. "Yep, that's just what I thought would happen. Great." As she went to wash her face, she tried her best to avoid the fact that her eye was now surrounded by a ring of black and she could barely see out of it. It hurt more emotionally than physically, since it was a reminder of how she messed up last night. Scootaloo turned on her shower and got inside, letting the cold water rush over her eye and body in hopes that it would help keep any bruises that she had gained from last night's crusading. She leaned her head against the side of the shower as the water ran down her body, trying to figure out where the next attack on the fillies would be. Ten minutes later, she opened her eyes again and realized with a shock that she had fallen asleep in the shower again.
"Oh crap, I'm going to be late!" she screamed as she turned off the water and raced out of the bathroom, zipping through her house without even drying herself to her scooter, while she shot out the front door, slamming it behind her with her hoof as she raced off down the streets. Her house was located in a small corner of Ponyville that was out of the way, forcing her to race to work each morning. That suited her fine, since it gave her a chance to practice her scooter skills on her way there. Scootaloo shot down the street, weaving around the stands and barrels that got in her path, waving to all of the ponies that waved to her in the morning.
"Yee-haw!" Scootaloo yelled as she rode up a cart that made a ramp and launched herself into the air, landing on the roof of a building. She turned her scooter sideways right before impact and started grinding the pipe line along the roof, allowing her to skid right over the early morning traffic and make up for lost time. She flipped off the roof and landed wheels down on the other side of the intersection, but came grinding to a halt when she saw a cart wheel bounce by her followed by a pony chasing after it furiously. "Hey, what's the matter?" she asked him as she rode beside him.
"My cart lost it's wheel again!" he yelled as the wheel got farther and farther from him. "That's the...third time this month!"
"I got it," Scootaloo said as she crouched down on her scooter and started flapping her wings, shooting herself after the wheel. She grinded along beside it, timing her moment perfectly. She shot out her left leg and kicked the wheel over, allowing it and her scooter to skid to a stop before she hit anything. "There you go, one runaway wheel stopped. Now I gotta go, I'm late enough as it is."
"Thank you!" the pony yelled out after her as she raced away, heading towards the other end of town as fast as her wings could carry her. She jumped her scooter onto a fence and grinded that a bit to avoid a large crowd of ponies, before wrapping a hoof around a light pole to turn faster to the left as she almost reached her place of work. She worked at a gym on the outskirts of town She crouched down even further to gain as much speed as she could, waiting until the last second before she flipped off the scooter and landed on all fours, while her scooter skidded into the corner where she kept it during the day. She felt her mane with a sigh, the wind having dried it but left it a mess. She was already ten minutes late for her job so with a sigh she opened the door and walked inside.
"'Morning," she said to her boss as she walked inside, looking around at all of the equipment. Horse Power (the name of the gym) was where she worked and it was the only gym in town, having opened ten years ago. It was a state-of-the-art gym that had been built next to Ponyville so that all ponies could enjoy it. It was about the size of three houses and sat just beside the river that eventually made its way down from Fluttershy's. All of the latest workout equipment was in there, and Scootaloo was in charge of all of it--that was when her boss wasn't yelling at her. Her boss happened to be the most 'ripped' pony in all the land, Snowflake. The name didn't seem to fit the snow-white horse, who looked like something from those bodybuilder magazines that lined the gym. He watched her with a raised eyebrow as she entered the gym, pointing at her eye when she walked over.
"You think this is bad, you should see the other guy," she said with a smirk as she wrote down the time she arrived on the sign-in sheet on his desk. He picked it up and looked down at the time, giving her a shake of his head. "What? Are you worried that I'm not getting enough sleep again?" she asked him with a bit of a growl. He didn't speak much, aside from his yells of victory, but during the time she worked here, she had learned how to understand him--more or less. He sighed and shook his head, docking her for being late for the fifth time this month. Snowflake sighed again and pointed to the poles, indicating that they needed to be wiped down. "Aye aye sir," she responded with a salute while she grabbed a tube of wipes, thanking her stars that he was as understanding as he was. She was constantly late, often coming in looking like she had been beat up (which she had been) and often she was tired and slept on the job. Yet he still only had hired her.
"At least wiping these down gives me a boring task to clear my head," she muttered to herself as she started to wipe the bars down, while Snowflake flipped open one of the workout magazines and started to read from it. Ponies had started to trickle in, most of them were ponies like the Wonderbolts that mostly did sports, or ponies who either thought they needed to lose weight or really needed to lose weight. Her job was mostly to supervise the ponies' work-outs, and to make sure they didn't use the weights irresponsibly--especially the teenagers that often hung out around here. Even if it didn't look like she was watching, her eyes were always on those who entered the gym. Her friends came around every once in a while, but it was more to check up on her than it was to actually work out. As she finished wiping down the last of the equipment, she walked over to the bench press machines to start her work out. The ponies next to it kindly stepped aside for her and watched with smiles as she added four hundred pounds to each side. Now, even for magical horses, eight hundred pounds was quite a lot. Snowflake's max was a full thousand, but that was because he looked like a tank.
"There's no way she can lift this," one of the ponies muttered to his friend.
"Ten bits says that you're wrong," the other one--a regular at the gym--said back with a smile as Scootaloo slipped under the bar and placed both her hooves on it. She smiled to herself while she lifted the bar off the rack with a grunt, started to bench it multiple times, much to the shock of the pony that had made the bet. Snowflake had helped Scootaloo with her workout when she asked him six years ago, and she had only gotten stronger ever since then. And working at the gym, besides allowing her to work out to maintain her crime-fighting body, also gave her an excuse for why she was so muscular and avoided any awkward conversations from curious ponies. She placed the bar back up on the rack after a set of twenty, walking away as the sound of bits clinking in a pony's hoof were heard. She was heading for the treadmill when a voice called out to her.
"Well well, if it isn't the eighteen-year-old blank flank," the snobby voice said from behind her.
"Tiara," she muttered to herself, not bothering to turn around while she continued to head towards the treadmill as another voice piped up.
"Yeah, it seems that she really has no special talent," another snotty voice said with a smirk.
"Spoon," Scootaloo muttered again, placing a hoof on the control panel to start up the machine.
"Wait, she does have a talent. Losing parents!" Tiara's voice said with a laugh. Scootaloo's hoof cracked the screen with much force as she slowly turned around to face them. "First, it was your mom and dad--and then you lost that stupid bat guy. Your track record really is terrible with family. No wonder no pony bothered to adopt you after all these years." Some of the ponies that had been watching frowned at what the two mares were saying, but Scootaloo simply looked at them with an emotionless stare. She didn't care what they said, and beating them senseless would be disrespectful to what Batman had taught her...to be in control and only fight for others or one's self defense.
"What's the matter? Too ashamed to say anything?" the pink pony with the diamond crown said to her with a sneer, her greyish friend snickering beside her.
"No, I was just admiring your bangs. They do a great job of hiding the lobotomy that you got," Scootaloo responded with a smirk, watching as Tiara's face turned bright red. The other ponies watching snickered at the burn, while Diamond Tiara only got more frustrated.
"This might come as a shock to your tiny mind, but my intelligence is so great that I got to leave college before finishing because of how bright I was," she snarled back with a growl.
"Really? I thought it was because your daddy lost most of his money and couldn't afford to send you to that rich school where they teach mares how to be manikins?" Scootaloo asked with a smile of her own, which grew even wider when Tiara's face went from red to white.
"You dare...?" she growled in a dangerous tone as she started to walk towards Scootaloo, but her advance was stopped by a massive stallion leg that placed itself in front of her chest. She looked up at the frowning face of Snowflake, who took his hoof off her chest and pointed it across the room at a sign on the wall. It read, "If you're here to work yourself to perfection, you're in the right place. If you're here to be mean, you will be thrown out and posed at." She glared at him before turning to leave with a huff, Silverspoon following her with her nose held high. Snowflake glared at them until they left. Then his eyes immediately softened and he ran over to see if Scootaloo was alright.
"Yeah, don't worry about me," she said with a smile as she read the concern in his eyes. "I learned how to deal with their taunting years ago. I just can't believe that they're acting like this at this age. Seriously, are they ever going to grow up?" Snowflake gave her a worried glance before looking at an image that he had up on his back wall, an image of a giant black bat. "Yes, I'm fine even though they brought that up. It's been ten years. I can handle it." Snowflake gave her one last glance before he headed back to his desk while the other ponies headed back to their exercises as well, leaving her alone to simply shake her head at the two's attempt to bring her down. She knew that she shouldn't have brought up Tiara's father to get back at her; he was a nice-enough pony who had fallen on hard times. But while he might be a nice pony despite being poor now, it had made Tiara completely unsufferable. As she shook the conversation out of her head, Scootaloo walked onto the treadmill and turned it on, not looking at the cracks she had made on the machine as she started it at a slow pace and allowed her to overhear the conversation going on next to her.
"Did you hear that they found another dead filly the other night?" Cloudchaser, another regular, said to her sister Cloudkicker as they both used the treadmills beside Scootalooo. "That's the fifth one in a little under six months. What if none of the fillies in all of Equestria are safe anymore?"
"Don't worry about it, don't you remember who found the filly? Batmare," Cloudkicker whispered in return, looking at Scootaloo (who had kept her eyes forward the entire time) to make sure she wasn't listening before continuing. "If Batmare's on the case, then it won't be long before whoever is doing this is brought down. Remember the ponies in the clown masks that tried to blow up Canterlot? She stopped them."
"But can she be trusted?" Cloudchaser asked. "I mean...no pony knows who she is or what her goals are. All she does is appear and take out any who commit a crime."
"Look, I may not trust her completely, but any pony who wears the symbol of the hero Batman can't be a bad pony," Cloudkicker reminded her as she looked at the image of the bat on the back wall. "And we all remember what Batman did for us." Scootaloo turned off the treadmill and walked away, smiling sadly to herself at the memory of Batman's sacrifice. Every pony believed that he had died that day; that he gave his life to defend them from the terror that was Morgaine--every pony but her. She looked over at the clock near Snowflake's desk and sighed when she saw that only an hour had passed since she had arrived here to work.
"Oh well, might as well find something else to do," she grumbled as she walked to the pull-up machine, hopping up onto it without her wings. She began to lift herself up while thinking about how things had been going in Ponyville. After Batman and Morgaine were done tearing apart Canterlot, a lot of the ponies in Equestria had decided to try and be more like Batman, kind and caring to others in order to try and honor his memory. Luna had even created a special branch of her forces call the Dark Knights in memory of him, despite the two of them not really liking each other. Celestia had dedicated the day he fell as a holiday in his honor to remember him, so every year ponies dressed up like him and celebrated his memory. That reminded her, the day was coming back up again and she needed another cheap costume. Last year she had ripped her other one, when a crazy pony tried to use magic to turn the Elements of Harmony into bugs. That had been a weird one. She pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind while she started thinking about what she needed to do after work. First, was to go to Rarity's to get the suit repaired again, followed by a trip to Twilight's to see if she had any idea on what to do about the ritual and see if there was any way to reverse it.
"Hopefully there will be a way to stop this spell," she muttered to herself, ignorant of the crowd that had gathered behind her as she hit her hundredth pull up. "From what I was told this spell is serious bad news. I can't protect all the world's fillies forever, eventually one of the criminals are going to find a way to get by me. And when that day comes, having some strong pony in my corner would be nice," she continued to think to herself as she repeated her pull ups, wondering what Batman would do if he were in her position. He would probably figure out immediately who the culprits were and have a plan to defeat them. She smirked as she remembered how he always seemed to have an answer for everything, even in areas where he wasn't that skilled. No pony had ever been able to figure out just how he managed to do what he did without wings or magic, but she knew how he did it. He had a heart greater than any magic or stronger than any pairs of wings. And that was the pony she wanted to be one day. So she would continue to train and fight the forces of evil to one day become the bat.