//------------------------------// // The Gift of Blood // Story: Bats in the Old Apple Barn // by adcoon //------------------------------// “You ever been to the Ponyville Hospital?” “Duh! All the time!” Scootaloo grinned proudly at her dubious accomplishment. “Once, I tried this wicked cool trick on my scooter, and—” “Scootaloo—” “—right through the window of the house on the other side of the street and down the stairs—” “Scoota—” “—and there was like blood and splintered glass everywhere—” “Scoot—” “—seen. I was as red as Big McIntosh when they rushed me to the hospital. Thirty three stitches, right here.” Scootaloo turned and pointed to her left flank. “It was so deep, you could see the bone!” Apple Bloom grimaced at the gory description. “That’s, uh, great Scoots. But maybe you should let Sweetie Belle continue.” “Oh, right.” Scootaloo sat back and grinned. “Sorry. It was sort of a scary story, though.” Sweetie Belle looked queasy. “I remember that,” she said and sank a lump in her throat. “You lost a lot of blood and had to get a transfusion. We were all so worried.” “Yeah.” Scootaloo rubbed the back of her neck. “It wasn’t my best trick. Everypony was freaking out about it. It’s a good thing they could get blood of my type.” “Lyra donated that, didn’t she?” Scootaloo nodded. “Yeah. Apparently we both have a rare type or something.” There was a moment of silence, then Sweetie Belle smiled and leaned forward to continue her tale. “Actually, it’s good that you brought this up, because I was just getting to that. A lot of ponies here in Ponyville donate blood. They have this list of ponies at the hospital who they can call when they need blood of a special type.” “Both my big sis and my brother are on that list,” Apple Bloom said proudly. Sweetie Belle nodded. “Some ponies donate regularly instead. My sister donates every two months. She’s done that for years. She says it’s to help all the ponies who get hurt or sick and need blood, but the Ponyville blood bank gets a lot of blood from regular donors, and there aren’t that many ponies here who need blood regularly, right?” Apple Bloom bit her lip. “What is all that blood for, then?” Sweetie Belle leaned closer, so that she could speak in a whisper. “There are some ponies who need a lot of blood. Because they drink it!” Her two friends gasped, holding their hooves to their mouths. “I’ve heard that the bat ponies used to hunt at night for other ponies. They would sneak in through open windows or old cracks in the roof while you were asleep. They would lean over you in your sleep, and they would drink your blood to satisfy their hunger. Sometimes they would drink all of it, and that pony would wake up as a bat pony and go out to hunt for blood too.” Sweetie Belle looked at her two friends, drawing them even closer to the edge of their chairs as she spoke. “They especially like the blood of young fillies and mares. There used to be many more bat pony mares, because they were the ones who had once been normal ponies before the bat ponies drank all their blood, but these days you don’t see as many, and we can thank Princess Luna and the blood banks for that. You see, the princess, she promised the bat ponies that if they stopped hunting ponies and instead served in her guard, then the ponies of Equestria would provide them with blood in payment. So now the bat ponies don’t come in through windows at night to suck your blood, because they get it at the hospital. “Except that, sometimes …” Sweetie Belle paused and held her breath before continuing. “Sometimes they get tired of what they can get from the hospital, they want it fresh from the neck of a young pony instead, or the hospital runs low and can’t give them enough, so they starve … and so they start hunting for young mares and fillies again.” Silence fell over the old farm. The fire crackled softly in the fireplace, and the three ponies sat in their chairs, listening to the silence and looking around at the shadows of the room. Apple Bloom looked at one of the windows uneasily. “Do you think—” The wind howled outside, and something scraped against the window. All three fillies screamed in unison and hid under their blankets and pillows as the scraping sound came again. They lay there as silently and still as they could, listening for any sound. A minute passed, and nothing more was heard. The three fillies slowly emerged and looked around. “T-that couldn’t have been …” Scootaloo looked to her friends for confirmation. “I mean, not really, right?” Sweetie Belle hugged her blanket tightly. “It … it was probably just a branch.” Apple Bloom nodded slowly and looked at the window. “Y-yeah, just a branch … I-I’m sure that’s what it was.” “But … maybe we should check all the windows anyway.” “Yeah …” Apple Bloom looked around the room and towards the stairs. “Yeah, that’s a great idea. Let’s … Let’s do that. Together.”