The fireponies from the closest town (Twilight wasn’t sure, but she thought it was Baltimare) arrived after thirty minutes, alarmed by the glow. The wounded survivors were transported to the hospital, while the rest of them stayed in a hotel. One of the pilots and four passengers (including Flitter and Surveillance) were missing.
Twilight was tossing and turning on her bed. The doctor had examined her and sent her to the cheap hotel on the skid road, giving her painkillers and telling her not to overexert herself for a couple of days. Too bad, Baltimare fireponies took her proposal to help them searching the crash site as opposing the doctor’s orders.
Next to her, Scootaloo was sleeping calmly in her bed. Listening to her steady breath, Twilight was staring through the window, searching for the familiar silhouette of Flitter, sneaking through the dark street.
“She’s dead,” she said to herself, “No one could survive that…” Still it couldn’t calm her down. Despite the painkillers, her head and eyes still hurt. Finally, she got out of bed and went to the corridor. She trotted to bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror.
The unicorn on the other side of the shiny glass only barely resembled her. She thought that with bags under her bloodshot eyes and unkempt mane, only lack of scars and wings differed her from Flitter.
“Hello, Twilight…”
Feeling all her muscles tense, she quickly spun around, aiming her horn at the pony behind her, who jumped back, slipping on the tiles and falling down.
“Apple Fritter?” she asked, sighing with relief, seeing the familiar mare cowering on the floor with tears in her eyes.
“A-Ah’m s-sorry, Ah sh-shouldn’t sneak up on you like that…” Apple Fritter stammered.
“No, I’m sorry,” Twilight said, helping her to get up, “You know since she ran away, I’m a bag of nerves… It… it’s like three years ago again, and now this disaster…”
“Ah… Ah can’t sleep,” Apple Fritter suddenly interrupted her, sobbing openly, “Ah still see the fire and explosion and… Ah was just going to visit my family in Ponyville!”
Twilight didn’t know what to say, instead cursing her lack of social skills. She patted Apple Fritter’s head, uttering some platitudes ponies usually were saying in such situations.
“Ah think Ah’m gonna go back to my room,” the mare said shakily.
“How about some tea?” Twilight asked. She didn’t really want to go back to bed and lie there, sleepless, till morning, “I think there’s a café downstairs.”
“No, thanks,” Apple Fritter replied, and quickly left the bathroom. Twilight, however, decided to go downstairs.
The café, which looked like a typical harbour for the travellers and other souls lost in the city, was almost empty at that time of night, except of a blue unicorn, trying to wake herself up with a large cup of coffee.
“Hello, Trixie,” said Twilight, recognizing the guest immediately. Trixie, who looked a bit tipsy, looked at her (or rather in her general direction), and said:
“Trixie is sorry.”
Why is everypony apologizing to me tonight? Twilight shook her head mentally, looking at the miserable-looking unicorn. Am I the one who caused this?
“Really, Trixie, you don’t need to apologize,” she said, “I have no grudge against you. Let bygones be bygones.”
Trixie didn’t reply, instead she rested her head on a table, pouring the coffee all over herself.
Just great… I can’t leave her like that, Twilight thought. She felt another twinge of pain in the back of her head when she used her magic to levitate Trixie from her chair. Fortunately, she woke up, and, supported by Twilight, was able to walk to her room.
“Have you got the key?” the lavender mare asked.
“Trixie has it here,” the blue unicorn levitated the keys unsteadily, trying to fit it into the lock.
“Give me that,” Twilight said. She took the key and opened the door. The room was even messier than the bat-ponies’ flat in Detrot, but Trixie didn’t care – she went through it and, with a squeal of the mattress’ springs lay on her bed.
“Can I help you somehow?” Twilight asked.
“No. Tri… I have to think,” Trixie said.
“Oh… ok. Goodnight then.”
“Goodnight, Twilight,” Trixie turned her head to her, “And thank you.”
“Well, that was awkward,” Twilight said, when the door closed behind her. She suddenly felt very sleepy, using even basic magic like levitation after teleporting from the burning airship exhausted her. She decided to go back to her room, which was two floors above the place where Trixie lived. She couldn’t teleport, so she used the lift, hoping that it wouldn’t jam.
The first thing she noticed after entering the room was that Scootaloo was still sleeping in the same position she’d left her. Her encounters with Apple Fritter and Trixie almost made her stop worrying about the brave little pegasus’ safety, but still hearing her regular breath lifted a large weight from her heart. Calmed down, she fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
***
She was woken up by her phone. Still half-asleep, she levitated it to her ear.
“Ms Sparkle?” a stranger’s voice asked, “My name’s Mayday, I’m from Equestrian Transportation Safety Board. We want you to identify a body we’ve found on the airship’s crash site.”
Suddenly she was completely awake, her brain working at the highest gear.
“Is… is that a pegasus?” she asked.
“Well, the body is partially burned, but I’m afraid it’s an unicorn stallion. We found no pegasi so far,” said Mayday. Twilight told her that she’ll meet her at ten o’clock and hung the phone up.
“Hi, Twilight,” said Scootaloo, entering the room with a wet mane, wearing a cyan towel with Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark on it like a shabrack, “Watch out, there’s a problem with hot water in the shower.”
“They found Surveillance’s body,” said Twilight flatly. Scootaloo stood frozen in the middle of the room.
“H-how about…” she muttered.
“They’re still looking for her.”
The pegasus, still wrapped in a towel, sat on her bed with a shocked expression.
“What will we do now?” she asked.
“I have to identify Surveillance’s body. I hope that they’ll let me help them look for Flitter. And you’ll go back to Ponyville. Your father called me yesterday evening, he’ll come for you.”
The filly only nodded, which surprised Twilight a bit. She expected Scootaloo to protest and offer her help in searching through the debris of the airship and the forest. That’s what younger, Rainbow Dash-idolizing Scootaloo would do, she thought, but she’s no longer an innocent Cutie Mark Crusader.
“I-I’m afraid,” Scootaloo said, “It’s not even about the foalnapping, but… three years ago…”
Twilight knew that a young pegasus had no memories about the night she had killed Rainstorm, the first victim of the killer known later as the Toolsmith. Unlike Vinyl, she had neither nightmares nor flashbacks about this, but the faint thought of this event was always present in her psyche, even though she didn’t usually show that.
“It’s ok, Scootaloo,” she said, sitting next to the pegasus, “Rainbow Dash and I will not let her hurt you again. Even if she’s alive, she’s probably wounded and still hides in a forest, so she’ll be caught soon.”
Scootaloo nodded, and hugged Twilight tightly, taking her off-guard. She wept in her arm for few minutes – an appropriate requiem for the fallen Royal Guards’ captain, as Twilight thought – before she sat in the previous position again, and wiped tears off her face with a towel.
“I’ll shower, and then I have to go and meet that pony from ETSB,” unicorn said, “Then I’ll take you to the airport, ok?”
“Ok,” Scootaloo replied, curling in foetal position on a bed.
“I’ll be back soon.”
***
When Twilight left the shower (the water was constantly switching between hot and cold, as Scootaloo said) and was heading back to the room, she noticed that the door to one of the rooms, the one belonging to Apple Fritter, was open. At first she didn’t know why it made her anxious, but then she remembered that it was also open when she came back to her room after helping Trixie.
She pushed the door and entered the room. Unlike hers, this one was a single-room, with a similar set of the old, cheap furniture. The curtains were closed and the empty bed was neatly made. Something, however, didn’t fit. Twilight sniffed the air, sensing a ferruginous, organic smell.
“No…” she whispered, and threw herself onto the bed. She looked behind it and saw Apple Fritter.
She was lying on her back, green hair sticky from the blood from the large, gaping wound in her throat, so deep that the vertebrae were visible. Her face was frozen in a twisted expression of fright, eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. Her front hooves were covered in small cuts, she also had a penetrating wound in her abdomen. Twilight, feeling the wave of nausea, looked at the small, white object lying in the pool of clotted blood near the body. She levitated it to her. It was a piece of paper with a hotel’s logo on the top, and eight words written on it in a frantic, yet familiar-looking hoofwriting:
One by one. You will be the last.