“Attention!” Scootaloo shouted from her miniature podium, Sweetie Belle standing up tall and straight to her side. “This secret meeting of the Cutie Mark Crusaders and their VIP guest will now begin!”
“‘Secret meeting’?” Silver Spoon asked with a raised eyebrow. “What’s so secret about it? You put a sign up outside saying ‘important meeting, do not interrupt’. Heck, you even told your dad that you were going out to hold a secret meeting!”
“Silence!” Scootaloo ordered. “Us allowing you to be here in our top-secret headquarters is a privilege, not a right!”
“You asked me to come here,” Silver Spoon said. “And what secret?! Everypony knows about this place! Diamond and I took it over once, remember?”
“We’re workin’ on it,” Scootaloo said, leaning to the side to whisper into Sweetie Belle’s ear: “How much progress have we made into building our secret underwater castle?”
“None at all,” Sweetie Belle reported.
“Look,” Silver Spoon began, “I don’t have time for this. The two of you said that you had something important to discuss about Diamond Tiara’s disappearance, so either get on with it, or I’ll simply have to leave.”
“We’re getting to that!” Scootaloo cleared her throat and shuffled a few papers on her podium. “… So, you know that Diamond’s gone missing, right?”
“Scootaloo!” Sweetie Belle scolded. “We’re supposed to pretend she’s ill!”
“Yeah, I know,” Silver Spoon said, surprising Sweetie Belle. “I guess that detective spoke to you too, huh?”
“Yep. And we’ve been helping out with the case ever since.” Scootaloo turned her attention to Sweetie Belle, who was simply standing in one spot and staring into space. “… Sweetie Belle?”
“Oh, right!” Sweetie Belle turned around and grabbed a nearby piece of paper lying on a stool behind her. “This letter was delivered the Apple family earlier this morning, by Shady Daze. It was addressed from Apple Bloom.”
“He wouldn’t tell the adults where it came from, but using the right ‘persuasion methods’, we were able to get a definitive location!”
“NO! LEMME GO!” Shady Daze pleaded as he struggled against Scootaloo firm hold pinning his forelegs to the floor, whilst Sweetie Belle weighed his body down by cuddling against him. “STOP IT! THIS IS GROSS!”
“Tell us where that letter came from!” Scootaloo demanded.
“I WON’T! I WON’T RAT OUT A FRIEND!”
“Admirable.” Scootaloo nodded to Sweetie Belle. “Do it.”
“Pucker up, Shady!” Sweetie Belle said as she closed her eyes and moved her face closer to the colt's, her lips mere inches away from his cheek before he finally cracked.
“OKAY, OKAY, I’LL TALK!”
“Colts are so easy,” Sweetie Belle said with a giggle. “Thanks to our interrogation, we were able to ascertain an exact location of the letter’s origin!”
“An address, in other words,” Scootaloo simplified. “We have the exact address of ‘Birds’, the colt who sent the letter. If we go there, we should be able to find Apple Bloom and Diamond Tiara!”
“Okay…” Silver Spoon said, raising an eyebrow at the two. “And this has to do with me, how?”
Sweetie Belle gave Silver Spoon a confused look. “Don’t you want to go see Diamond Tiara?”
“Well, duh,” Silver Spoon said. “But isn’t this a job for the police? Just give Detective Gumshoe the address and let him take care of it.”
“… Are you some kinda idiot or somethin’?” Scootaloo asked, earning a scowl from the grey filly. “Think! Why did they run away in the first place?”
“Because they were being forced to marry each other, right?” Silver Spoon asked, shuddering as the words left her mouth and reached her ears. “Still can’t believe their families were making them do that.”
“Right,” Scootaloo said. “So if they come back…”
“… They’ll be made to marry each other,” Silver Spoon finished. “But maybe they can talk to their families about it?”
“If it were that easy, d’you think they’d have run away in the first place?” Scootaloo asked.
“Adults are stupid and selfish sometimes,” Sweetie Belle said. “They do things they say are good for us, but never take our feelings into consideration! I’m sure it’s the same here.”
“But if we can band together, we might be able to help them,” Scootaloo said. “If we can find them first, we can help them hide long enough while we talk some sense into their families!”
Silver Spoon put a hoof to her chin and thought about it. “… Do you really thing that would work?”
“Probably not,” Sweetie Belle admitted. “But at least they’ll be free to hate each other, and this way, we can see and talk to them again, even if it’s just one last time. And we can make sure that they’re okay, and let them know we’re there to support them, no matter what.”
“So what d’you say?” Scootaloo asked, approaching Silver Spoon and extending a hoof forwards. “You in?”
Silver Spoon stared at the hoof for a few seconds and, with a sigh, lifted her own hoof off the floor. She shook Scootaloo’s hoof, wiped her hoof against the floor, and gave the two other fillies a grin. “So, how were you planning to get there?”
“Actually,” Sweetie Belle said, “That’s where you come in.”
“We need somepony with lots of money to get us some train tickets to Manehatten,” Scootaloo explained.
“That won’t work,” Silver Spoon told them. “I don’t know how Diamond managed it, but I don’t think I could get away with sneaking all three of us onto a train without an adult.”
“Blast!” Scootaloo shouted as she kicked the floor. “Then what do we do?”
“Now now,” Silver Spoon said. “There is a way to get there, but I’ll need you two to put on a convincing performance for my father.” Motioning for Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle to move in closer, Silver Spoon began relaying her exact plan to the two of them.
Silver Bullet slumped down into his favourite reclining chair and sighed. Another long day at work, and another day where nothing exciting happened. Of course, he couldn’t simply call in sick and take the day off. Patrolling the border of the Everfree Forest and taking down any threats that move in too close to the town was an important duty, not that creatures ever came near the border of the forest during the day. Or at all in the last century.
Still, at least the town was able to feel safe with him and his team around, and it was thanks to his efforts that his daughter could sleep at night without fear that a timberwolf or a pogre would snatch her away and gobble her up.
“And now to continue from where I left off,” Silver Bullet said to himself as he reached for his copy of Much Ado About Everything and opened it up to its bookmarked page. He managed about two paragraphs before he heard the front door open and then close.
“Father?” his daughter’s voice called out. “Are you back yet?”
“I’m in here, Spoony.”
“Spoony?” an unfamiliar voice asked, followed by the sounds of giggling, and then a yelp. “Hey!”
“It’s kinda cute,” another unfamiliar voice said, followed by yet another yelp. “It’s not a bad thing!”
“Shut it,” Silver Spoon’s voice said. Finally, his daughter’s bright-red face came into view as she entered the parlour, followed by two fillies both rubbing their forelegs.
“Spoony, you should have told me you were bringing friends over,” Silver Bullet said with a sigh. “I was planning to take you and your mother out for dinner tonight.”
“Actually, father, we have a favour to ask,” Silver Spoon said, climbing up onto the side of her father’s chair and looking him in the eyes with a sad look on her face.
“Oh? What is it?”
“It’s about Diamond Tiara,” Silver Spoon began. “She’s ill. And it’s pretty bad, too.”
“The doctors said she needs surgery,” Scootaloo said, her ears and her face falling as she turned her attention towards the floor. “They said the chances she’ll make it aren’t that high…”
“We were planning to get her a get-well present,” Sweetie Belle said, “And we know there’s this certain item she’s wanted for a long time now, but it’s not sold here in Ponyville. The only place we can get it is Manehatten.”
“So we were wondering,” Silver Spoon continued, “If you could take us to Manehatten, and we could put our money together to buy Diamond’s present?”
Silver Bullet looked over the three sad little fillies standing before him and frowned. Lowering his book, he reached a hoof out to touch his daughter’s cheek. “Sweetie, that’s a nice gesture and all,” he said, “But Manehatten’s so far away. If we leave now, we would be arriving late at night, and wouldn’t be home until the afternoon tomorrow.”
“But the surgery is tomorrow!” Silver Spoon shouted, tears in her wide eyes. “Please daddy. If we show Diamond how much she means to us, she might pull through.”
Scootaloo had to resist the urge to gag as she pretended she cared that much for the spoiled pink filly. ‘Just remember, it’s for Apple Bloom’s sake,’ she told herself.
“Please!” Sweetie Belle pleaded, her ears pinned to the sides of her head and her lower lip quivering as she made eye contact with the stallion.
“… Please?” Scootaloo asked, her wings stretched but hanging low as if they were hurt. A common sign that a Pegasus was distraught.
“… B-But what about your parents?” Silver Bullet asked, desperate to hang onto whatever control over the situation he may have had left.
“They said it’s okay,” Silver Spoon assured him. “We already asked them, but none of them have the money for all of us to go. Only you do.”
“B-But it’s a school night-”
“Who cares about school if our best friend isn’t there to enjoy it with us?!” Sweetie Belle screamed, tears flying through the air as she turned her head dramatically and cried into her foreleg. Scootaloo held her as she sobbed, and Silver Spoon gave her father one last pleading look.
“… O-Okay,” he conceded. “I’ll go… grab my wallet…”
Silver Bullet climbed out of his chair and slowly made his way to the kitchen, stopping as he passed Sweetie Belle to think of something he could say to cheer her up. ‘Who am I kidding? I’m no expert when it comes to crying children…’ Giving up, he simply wandered into the kitchen without a word.
“… Wow. That was good,” Scootaloo said after the stallion was gone. “How’d you-”
Sweetie Belle held up a bottle of eye drops and gave her friend a sly grin and a wink. “From Rarity’s room. I’m sure she won’t miss ‘em.”
Scootaloo gave an appreciative whistle. “Dang, I never knew you could be so… cool.”
“Hey, he’ll be back soon,” Silver Spoon told them.
Sweetie Belle nodded and put the eye drops away, slipping back into her façade of a child whose heart was being torn in two.
“Okay, are we all ready to go?” Silver Bullet asked as he returned to the parlour. The three fillies nodded, and Scootaloo helped Sweetie Belle to her hooves. “Right. You know where to find this… present of yours, right?”
“We got an address from the animal-lady by the forest,” Silver Spoon said.
“Animal-la- Ah, Miss Fluttershy.” Silver Bullet nodded. “You understand that this will just be a simple ‘get there, buy the present, and leave’ trip, correct?”
“Yes,” the three said in unison, Sweetie Belle’s voice partially muffled by her hoof.
“We understand,” Silver Spoon said. “We’ll just get what we need and then we’ll go.”
“You ready?” Scootaloo asked Silver Spoon as their escort, Silver Bullet, checked the station’s map for a false district name given to him by his daughter.
“Ready,” Silver Spoon confirmed, turning to Sweetie Belle, who nodded to show that she too was ready.
“Let’s go!” Scootaloo whispered as she led the way out of the station and towards a nearby line of cabs. “I’ve been here once before. We can use those ‘cabs’ to get where we wanna go quickly.”
“Wow, that’s cool,” Sweetie Belle said. “So they’re like that taxi thingy we have in Ponyville?”
“Only you gotta pay,” Scootaloo said. “Silver Spoon, get yer money out.”
As Silver Spoon rooted through her saddlebag for her purse, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle climbed up into the cav. “You know where this place is?” Scootaloo asked as she showed the written address to the cab driver.
“Sure do,” the stallion said.
“Silver Spoon!” The three fillies jumped at the sound of Silver Bullet’s voice. They turned their heads to see the stallion trying to push through a crowd of ponies in order to reach them. “What are you doing?! Get back here!”
“Get in!” Scootaloo instructed, pulling Silver Spoon into the cab before she could say anything. “Drive drive drive!”
“Pay me first,” the stallion said.
With a groan, Scootaloo snatched Silver Spoon’s purse, opened it, pulled out a hoofful of bits and dropped into stallion’s tray at the front. “Now go!”
“… With pleasure!” the stallion said as he grinned at the generous tip the fillies had given him. With a whinny, the stallion galloped down the street, no stranger to the whole ‘cat-and-mouse chase scene’ that was playing out at that point in time.
“He’s coming after us!” Sweetie Belle shouted as she watched Silver Bullet board a cab behind them. A cab that soon began following after their own.
“Darn it! He’ll catch us if we keep going at this speed!” Scootaloo thought for a moment, and then turned to the cab driver. “Hey, when we get close, drop your speed and we’ll jump off!”
“What? Are you mad?”
“I’m from Ponyville!” Scootaloo told him.
“Oh. Fair enough. Just don’t blame me if ya cripple yer wings.”
“WHAT WAS THAT?!” Scootaloo shouted, moving forward the kick the stallion in the back of the head, only to be held back by Sweetie Belle. “LEMME GO! I’LL CLOBBER HIM!”
“He didn’t mean it!” Sweetie Belle assured her.
“LEMME GO! LEMME AT ‘IM!”
“Calm down!” Silver Spoon said. “Remember we’re here for Diamond and your blank flank friend!”
“Her name’s Apple Bloom!” Sweetie Belle shouted to Silver Spoon.
“I’LL TEACH HIM NOT TO MAKE FUN OF DISABLED PONIES!”
“Shut up!” Sweetie Belle and Silver Spoon both shouted to Scootaloo in unison.
“He wasn’t making a jab at you!” Silver Spoon told her.
“Don’t tell my friend to shut up!” Sweetie Belle scolded Silver Spoon.
The stallion in front of the fillies sighed. “First those two fillies that got into a hooffight with each other an’ now this. Why me?”
After a long and awkwardly silent cab ride, the three fillies finally reached close enough to their destination that they had the driver slow down enough to jump out and escape into an alleyway, evading the pursuing Silver Bullet for the time being. After some twists and turns, and raised voices, the three at last found the house of the one named ‘Birds’. Who turned out to be a colt who appeared no older than they were.
“Wow, my son is more popular than I thought,” the mare at the door said as her son climbed down the stairs behind her. “Don’t be too long now. It’s well past Ted- I mean, ‘Birds’’ bedtime.”
Birds sighed as his mother retreated back into their house, leaving her colt alone with the three cute fillies outside. “Let me guess: you guys are Babs’ friends?”
“Hey!” Scootaloo shouted. “You know Babs?!”
“… I guess that’s a ‘yes’, but if you’re surprised by that then that must not be why you’re here,” Birds deduced.
Sweetie Belle nodded and pulled out the letter sent to them by Apple Bloom. She gave it to the colt, who shook his head with a groan. “As if the transmitter wasn’t embarrassing enough, now three little fillies have been able to track me down.”
“Apple Bloom was here, wasn’t she?” Scootaloo asked, narrowing her eyes at the colt and giving him a suspicious look.
“Yeah, she was,” the colt admitted. “But she left some time ago. Babs and Diamond were also here, but you literally just missed them.”
“They’re with Babs?” Silver Spoon asked. “Where? Where can we find them?!”
“Why should I tell you?” Birds asked. “I don’t even know who you all are.”
“We’re their friends from Ponyville is who we are!” Scootaloo told him.
Sweetie Belle stretched a hoof out to stop her friend from making any advances towards the colt. “Please, we just want to make sure that they’re okay. We think that somepony’s on their way to take them back home, but they can’t go back yet. Not under these circumstances!”
“The arranged marriage, right?” Birds asked, surprising the fillies. “Apple Bloom told me all about it. Frankly, the idea that somepony’s future can be decided by another disgusts me… If you three are really their friends, then… I guess I’ll help.”
The colt took the letter from Sweetie Belle, grabbed a quill pen from beside the door, and wrote something onto the back of the paper. “Here are some directions for reaching Babs’ house. It’s a little dangerous out here for outsiders though, so perhaps I should go with you.”
“Then why bother with the directions at all?” Silver Spoon asked with a puzzled look on her face.
“… J-Just follow me… Mum! I’m going out for a bit!”
“This late at night?!” Birds’ mother called out.
“It’s just to escort these fillies home safely!”
“Oh! Well in that case, don’t take too long!”
Birds closed his house’s front door and moved past the three fillies. “Mum… really admires gentlestallionly behaviour,” Birds told them as he led the way down the street. “She lets me get away with anything so long as it’s for the sake of chivalry.”
“Even getting into fights?” Scootaloo asked.
“Well, I tend to avoid fights really. Not much of a fighter.”
“Hey,” Sweetie Belle said, “What’s up with this arranged marriage thing anyway? We don’t really know all of the details.”
Birds shrugged as he turned to look at the filly behind him. “Neither do I. According to Apple Bloom, it’s some kind of ‘family politics’, and also a way for the two families to become closer together. The way it sounds, though, is that they never even gave her a choice in the matter.”
“That’s terrible,” Sweetie Belle said.
“It’s actually pretty common,” Silver Spoon said, surprising the other three ponies. “In the past, arranged marriages were the norm in rich families, often as a way of securing relations with other wealthy families or to marry into a lower-class family that they saw potential in. Of course, families that were close to each other also arranged to have their children marry. It was sort of a tradition.”
“What was wrong with just goin’ to the park and playing hopscotch?” Scootaloo asked.
“Of course, these days arranged marriages are only big in a few places in Equestria. Canterlot is the biggest city to still enforce the tradition. It died out quickly in Ponyville.”
“Why’s that?” Birds asked.
“Ponyville is a town made up of families that migrated from all over Equestria. It’s a town of mixed cultural ideals, and the least popular ones like arranged marriages and racial discrimination died out quickly.”
“Oh? Yet there’re still at least two families that-” Birds stopped as he noticed something in front of him. “Hold on,” he told the fillies, kneeling down and picking up the yellow feather on the ground at his hooves. “… This is one of Marlene’s feathers.”
“Uh… Who?” Scootaloo asked.
“Marlene. One of my pet parrots,” Birds explained. “What’s it doing here? … Oh, that’s right. Marlene landed on Diamond’s head…”
“Hey, can we hurry this up please?” Sweetie Belle asked, shiver and dancing on the spot. “It’s so cold out here!”
Birds nodded and stood up straight, only to find another yellow feather in the distance. Only, it was the wrong way to Babs’ house. “What the?” Birds ran up to the feather, and found a third underneath a lantern some distance away. “This is bad,” Birds said. “I think Diamond may have taken a wrong turn and got lost!”
The three fillies gasped. “You gotta be kiddin’ me!” Scootaloo shouted. “As if things weren’t complicated enough!”
“We’d better go look for her,” Birds said. “When I said it’s not safe out here, I wasn’t kidding!”
Silver Spoon gulped. “T-Then what are we waiting for? Diamond could need our help!”
The four foals began running down the street, occasionally finding a yellow feather that would tell them that they were heading in the right direction. Eventually, they found their way towards what appeared to be an abandoned factory. An abandoned factory, with a huge hold in the fence blocking the entrance.
“Look!” Sweetie Belle whispered as she pointed a hoof towards two stallions entering the factory. On the back of one of them, was Diamond Tiara.
“This is bad,” Birds whispered, his breathing heavy.
“We gotta go help her!” Scootaloo said, preparing to enter when a hoof stopped her. “We can’t just-”
“We have to be careful!” Birds said. “These guys might be dangerous!”
“We’ve handled danger before,” Scootaloo told him.
“Look,” Birds said, “This is what we’re gonna go. I’ll go inform the nearest police station of the foalnapping here, an’ you three just stand guard to make sure they don’t go anywhere. Got it?” After a few seconds with no reply, Birds tried again. “Got it?”
“Yes…” the three fillies mumbled together.
Birds hesitantly nodded, and then left.
“So we’re gonna do something, right?” Scootaloo asked.
“Hold on!” Sweetie Belle said. “They’re coming out!”
The three fillies ducked behind the nearest bush that they could find and peeked out through the leave as they watched the two stallions conversing in the distance.
“Ewwww,” Silver Spoon said. “This bush is filthy.”
“Quiet!” Scootaloo scolded. “One’s comin’ this way.”
One of the stallions climbed through the hole in the fence and looked around, before turning and moving down the street, away from where the fillies were hidden. After her turned around a corner, the three of them waited for a few seconds, before jumping out and looking towards the second stallion.
“So what now?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Silver Spoon looked around her surroundings, both inside and outside of the fence. Her eyes fell upon a coil of rope sitting on the table beside the sitting stallion. “Hey, look,” she said as she pointed the rope out to Scootaloo.
“… I think I’ve got an idea,” Scootaloo said, a mischievous grin spreading across her face.
“After that, it was a simply matter of taking care of the guy out front an snatching his keys!” Scootaloo explained to Apple Bloom as she finished untying the rope binding her hooves.
“You three took out a grown stallion on your own?” Diamond asked in honest amazement. “How?”
Silver Spoon poked her head out of the bush she was hiding in and looked towards the stallion reading a book before her. At the stallions hooves, Sweetie Belle was nodding her head to tell her that she was ready. Above the stallion, on the tree branch hanging over him, Scootaloo was doing the same.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Silver Spoon took a deep breath, and charged out of the bush, heading towards the factory door. The stallion jumped up as he noticed the grey filly moving and called out to her as she banged against the door twice.
“Open!” Silver Spoon shouted, before turning to the startled stallion with a look of horror on her face.
“Hey-” the stallion started, but didn’t have time to finished before something heavy dropped down on him.
Scootaloo screamed into the stallion’s ear as she pinned him to the ground, her forelegs wrapped around his neck to keep him from moving.
Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle had grabbed the length of rope from the table and was already circling around the stallion, wrapping the rope around his hind legs.
Silver Spoon hurried to assist Scootaloo in holding the stallion down as Sweetie Belle wrapped the rope around his forelegs, eventually tying the rope into a tight knot when she was finished. “What do you know? Those Filly Scout classes were useful!” Sweetie Belle cheered when she was done.
“I got the key!” Scootaloo announced as she held the key she had taken from the stallion up into the air in a triumphant pose.
“Let’s just say that we’re resourceful,” Scootaloo said, grinning towards the other two fillies as they finished freeing Diamond Tiara.
“Resourceful, huh?” a voice called out, startling the five fillies as they jumped and turned their attention towards the door. Two tall stallions in black trench coats were standing there, grinning towards the fillies as one of them held a knife in one forehoof. “Or maybe you just got lucky. Either way, you made a mistake in coming here.”