"Speak," Batman said to her, once she had passed the question that he asked her every time she got on to talk to him. The tone in his voice told her that she wasn't the only one having some problems at the moment. And if Batman was having problems, then she would need to be quick so that he could get back to work. But since she had his attention, she might as well use it to her advantage.
"Hey Dad...Batman, I'm having some issues with my work again," she said with a sigh as she looked back down at the flier for the ball, frowning at the sight. "Last night I busted into a rich business pony's home, after I found out about his involvement with the Demon Spawn from one of my...sources. Most of the mission was normal, sneaking through the building and busting up guards when they were foolish enough to mess with me. But where it got weird was when I made it to the top, where one of those hooded ponies that are behind all this crap was talking to the owner of the building. The business pony went down without a fight, but the hooded one did something...that shook me up."
"You let your emotions get the better of you during a mission?" he asked her with no tone of disapproval in his voice. Instead, it was filled with hidden worry for her well being. But Batman was a master of hiding his emotion, so Scootaloo was only barely able to pick up on the hidden emotions, but she smiled when she heard it all the same. "You know how dangerous that can be when you lose your focus for even a second. I almost lost my arm when that happened and I've trained all my life. You're lucky you got out unscathed."
"Um..."
"What did you break this time?"
"My skull. But don't worry, nothing of importance was lost," she said quickly when she heard his sigh on the other end. "Anyway, back to what I was saying. "The hooded one threw a stone at my hooves that had the six pointed star, that we discovered was the symbol that they were using to summon the demon, which I've found is called Azarock."
"I'm going to tell you right now, if the rest of that name has zinthos in it, you run for your life," Batman said quickly, wanting to say more but stopped when he heard Scootaloo huffed in annoyance. "Sorry, continue."
"As I was saying, after he threw the rock at my hooves, one of the fillies I failed to save emerged from it, but she was completely consumed by some sort of demon that possessed her dead body," Scootaloo said with a shiver, remembering the cold eyes that had only shown death. "She attacked me along with the hooded pony and forced me to defend myself, ending in her being thrown out a window near the top floor. I tried to catch her, but she slashed through my grapple's rope and...ended herself. The hooded pony attacked me after than and I accidentally kicked him out the same window. I tried to save him, I did! But...my rope was cut...and I wasn't fast enough to catch him."
"It's alright. You didn't mean to kill him and were only defending yourself," Batman said to comfort her, having been placed in similar positions before. "And he chose his own fate when he joined the criminals. It was not your fault." Scootaloo wiped the tears away from her eyes with a smile, taking comfort in his words
"After that, I found a few papers on the desk there that had some interesting information on them," she explained as she looked at the papers again. "One of them is a list of ponies that I will give to the princesses later today, but the other one is the reason I called you. It's a flier for the Canterlot Ball, a special event that the princesses have every year around this time. What I want to know is, why did they have it there. Are they planning something? If so, what?" Batman went quiet again, letting her know that he was thinking about her problem.
"I think I know the reason behind it," Batman said at last after nearly two minutes of thinking. "My theory is that-"
"Hi there, Batmare, how's it going?" a new, much friendlier voice on the other end said.
"SUPERMAN! What are you doing in here?" Batman roared on the other end, Scootaloo snickered as Batman began to roar at him, while the calming voice of Superman sometimes made its way through, trying to calm Batman down.
"Calm down, Batman, I just dropped by to say 'hi' and--Ow! Stop it! Put the ring away!" Superman pleaded with a pained laugh as Scootaloo began to laugh at the two's antics. Batman had told her all about Superman from a biased perspective, but one day Superman had answered one of her calls and the two of them had a nice talk about one another. Superman was a super being that fought alongside Batman in the Justice League, and she told him about how Batman had inspired her to be a crime fighter. "Okay, Okay, I'm leaving. Just let me give you the documents you asked for. See you later Batmare, I'll say 'hi' again when Batman isn't being all brooding on me."
"God, I hate him sometimes," Batman said with a growl as Scootaloo heard him sit back down on his chair. "Where was I? Right, my theory for the Ball is that most of the most rich and powerful ponies will be there along with members of the Demon Spawn, who will be there to meet with them. It would be the best place for them to speak in public without having attention drawn to themselves, plus you told me that the top ponies on the list you found had little information on them. So we have no idea what they look like or if they'll be there."
"But I have to go anyway?" she asked with a groan.
"Unless you have another contact that you're sharing all this information with, then yes, you will have to do this personally," Batman said with a small laugh. "One of the many joys of being a crime fighter, having to sit through boring parties and occasions to get the information you want. Have fun."
"You can be cruel sometimes, you know that?" she said with a frown, not looking forward to this. She hated all things that had to do with fancy or upper-class, to the point where she punched out one of the royal brothers when he tried to flirt with her. Even though she apologized, Celestia never let her near him again. "Do I really have to do this?"
"My orders. Trust me, it will either be worth it or you get to go to a fancy party. So it's a fifty-fifty that you'll come out positive," Batman said with a chuckle.
"Do I really have to learn how to be fancy?" Batmare prostested.
"Trust me, if you don't act like the rest of them, it will only draw suspicion to you and alert your enemies to your plans. I go to my share of parties and events, and while I may hate it personally, the guest would never know because I learned how to put on another face. That is what I want you to do for this ball, become another pony for a while," Batman said with knowledge, before his end went quiet.
"Something the matter?" Scootaloo asked him.
"It's nothing, just a case I'm working on," Batman said in his thinking voice. "Multiple murders, three bank robberies and the kidnapping of the Gotham mayor all seem to have nothing in common, but I have seen traces of a certain chemical at all the crime scenes that tell me that all the events are connected. Tomorrow night, I'm going to a run-down part of town where this chemical is made. I'll let you know how it goes when you call again. Now go get ready for that ball."
"How am I supposed to learn how to be an upstanding member of society in one day?" she asked with a huff.
"Oh, I think I know one pony who would be able to help you," Batman said with a smile that she didn't see.
"Don't say it. She'll never let me live it down." Batman chuckled again and said goodbye, leaving Scootaloo alone to hate herself as she stood up and headed for where she stored the suit, already going over ideas on how to talk to Rarity about this. While she knew that Rarity would not hesitate to try and teach her how to be a lady, she would still need a good excuse to tell her. Besides mending the suit, Rarity refused to do anything that involved the Batmare. So with a sigh, she headed up the stairs to her house and dreaded the rest of the day, wishing that she was instead being attacked by a hydra.
=====----=====
With her plan all thought out, Scootaloo walked down the street towards Rarity's, ignoring all the looks she got from the ponies as the stared at her bandaged head with the blood stains on it. She was tired once again from the night's crusade, but she needed to get into that ball to see what the Demon Spawn were up to, even if that meant a night of pain for her. But while she was on her way to Rarity's, she stopped when she heard the sound of ponies fighting near her.
"Come on, Sis, go easy on him. He didn't mean it," a pony whose voice she recognized said as Scootaloo walked up. She sighed when she saw that a fight was going on between two ponies, one of whom was a colt that didn't know when to shut up (named Motormouth) and the other a pony she knew well, Pumpkin Cake.
"He insulted our family again!" Pumpkin yelled at her brother as she sat on the cowering pony's back, smacking him in the back of the head. "And I'm tired of our family being insulted by this foal!" Pumpkin yelled at Pound Cake as she started to hit the pony again, but an orange hoof stopped her before she could.
"Scootaloo?" Pound Cake asked as Scootaloo picked Pumpkin up with on arm and placed her on the ground, walking over to the pony she had been wailing on and helped him up.
"Pumpkin, with me," Scootaloo said with a growl as the other pony ran off.
"Why? He started-"
"Now," Scootaloo said calmly, but it was enough to silence any other complaints she wanted to voice. Pound Cake chuckled to himself as his sister followed Scootaloo with her head sunk low, Scootaloo leading the filly away from the town and to a small field where a treehouse sat in a tree. Scootaloo sat down and glared at the yellow filly with the orange mane, who avoided looking into her eyes in fear of the bat stare. "Care to tell me what that was about?"
"He kept insulting my family!" Pumpkin said in a defiant tone, her sudden burst of rage being quelled by another look from Scootaloo. "He kept saying how my family is all sugar addicts and that we should get help as soon as possible! It's not my family's fault that we've run a sweet shop for generations! I couldn't take his words anymore and I-"
"You used what I taught you to beat a pony who only bad-mouthed you," Scootaloo said coldly, cutting off Pumpkin once again. "When you came to me a year ago asking me to train you how to fight, I did so since you promised me that you would only use the techniques I showed you to defend yourself and others, not to wail on ponies whose opinions shouldn't matter to you in the least."
"I was defending somepony, I was defending my family," Pumpkin retorted, to which Scootaloo stood up and indicated for her to do the same.
"When I was taught the martial arts by my Dad, he told me that stooping down to your foe's level is to make yourself like them," Scootaloo said as the memories flowed through her mind. "And I have lived everyday of my life following his example."
"Sounds like he didn't know what he was talking about," Pumpkin muttered, thinking that Scootaloo wouldn't hear her. How wrong she was.
"Come with me," Scootaloo said in a cold tone as she stood up again, Pumpkin following with grumble. Scootaloo walked her back through Ponyville and to a graveyard on the other side of the town, where a large number of gravestones stood, but a statue of a human in a batsuit stood above all the other statues. Scootaloo came to a stop in front of the statue and suppressed a smile. The statue was of Batman with his head held high as he stood in front of a scared filly with defiance in his eyes. She chuckled to herself at how he would react if he saw this, probably think that this was done as a mockery of him.
"Why are we here?" Pumpkin asked.
"Because I need to remind myself of why I took you on as my student," Scootaloo said with a sigh. "While you may be too young to remember the actual battle, I'm certain that you have heard the story of what he did in the short time that he was here. He used his skill and powers to protect us, not to take his vengeance upon those who angered him." 'And for healing my heart,' Scootaloo thought to herself.
"And what's that have to do with me?" Pumpkin asked.
"I want you to think about why you chose to be a martial artist. I know that you were picked on when you were little, and that you came to me to help you to learn how to control your emotions, instead of beating on others." Pumpkin sighed and muttered something about how she'd never do it again, which Scootaloo figured would be the best she could get out of her.
"And if you must know...Batman saved me in more ways than one," Scootaloo whispered, having told only one other this, and he wasn't a pony. "So I try to live out his memory in everything I do, and that includes teaching you the martial arts. He taught me how to control myself and that is what I'm trying to teach you." Pumpkin lowered her head and didn't say anything else, so Scootaloo decided it was time to let her go. She told Pumpkin she could leave and watched with a frown as she ran off back towards Ponyville.
"I don't know what to do with her Batman, she just won't listen to anything I say," Scootaloo said with a sigh. "Was I ever that much of a hoof-full when you tried to train me?" The statue didn't respond, but she knew what Batman would say anyway, stay strong and never give up. And speaking of never giving up, she still had to head over to Rarity's to learn how to be a proper lady. So with one last reminder to stay strong, she headed towards the Carousel Boutique.