//------------------------------// // End of Ponies - Petra Arc - Kaizo Edition pt 5 // Story: Short Scraps and Explosions // by shortskirtsandexplosions //------------------------------// The End of Ponies – by short skirts and explosions Chapter Twenty-Nine – The Pride of the Dead         “They said that most pegasi take twice as long to recover from a sprained wing as I did,” Rainbow Dash exclaimed in the middle of barrel-rolling her way over the green hilltops of Equestria.  “They said that leaving the hospital so healthy in less than a week was impossible.”         Scootaloo smiled against the wild gust of wind emanating from the blue mare's flyby.  “Heehee... Well you sure showed them, Rainbow Dash.”  The foal curled her legs underneath her body and gazed up at her soaring companion.  “Nurse Red Heart would need a freaking cannon to bring you back down for a physical!”         “Heh!  As if!”  The older pegasus spiraled up into the air, shredded her way through a low-hanging cloud, and came down in a gentle hover above the filly.  “Now that I'm out, there's no going back to that boring, smelly place!  Besides, it's barely a week until the Best Young Fliers' Competition in Cloudsdale!  I'd better catch up on my act!”         The little foal gasped wide.  “You're going to be in the Best Young Fliers' Competition?!”         “Pfft!”  Rainbow Dash rolled her ruby eyes.  “Does Princess Celestia wear a tiara?”         Scootaloo blinked.  “Uhhh... I dunno, does she—?”         “Yes.”  Rainbow Dash frowned, then smirked.  “You can bet your hooves I'll be at the Best Young Fliers Competition in Cloudsdale!  The pegasi of Equestria created that event for me to strut my stuff; they just don't know it yet!  But they will!”  She giggled in a low, devilish breath, “Eheheheheh—Yes, they will.”         The filly smiled wide, her pink tail hairs flicking.  “What will you win for coming out on top?”         “Hah!  Only the coolest prize ever!”  Rainbow Dash touched down, grinning so hard that her shiny teeth reflected the foal's face.  “After I make all of Cloudsdale faint from pure awesomeness, I'll get an entire day to h-hang out with the Wonderbolts!”  The end of this exclamation came out in a stammer as the mare's voice cracked.  She bit her lip, sucked in a thin breath, and then exhaled with, “Soooooo radical...”         “I'm so happy for you, Rainbow Dash.”  Scootaloo beamed.  “No other pony deserves better—”         “Pfft—You're cute, squirt.  But I shouldn't count my apples before they've hatched... er... or whatever it is that Strawhead says.  Ugh, am I actually quoting her?”         “Huh?  I don't get it...”         “Meaning...”  Rainbow Dash hovered back up and performed a few acrobatic flips in the air.  “...I still have to earn my place in awesomeness!  The Competition is less than seven days away, and if I wanna make Cloudsdalian history, then I can't afford to get rusty!  That's why I'm so freakin' glad to be out of that dang hospital bed!”         Scootaloo stood up, stretched her muscles, and smiled up at her.  “Well, let's get started, shall we?  What moves do you wanna try out first?  I'm ready to be your volunteer judge as always...”         Rainbow Dash screeched to a stop in mid-air.  She hung off of a wince, and then glanced down at Scootaloo with an awkward smile.  “Uhm... You see, that's just the thing, ya little squirt.  A long, long time ago—even before you showed up and began annoying me—I made a promise to another filly that she'd be my cheerleader at the Competition, and I owe it to her to help the pony practice.”         The foal did a double-take, too confused to be insulted.  “Helping a pony practice?  Who are we talking about?”         “Fluttershy.  Come to think of it, she's expecting me in a few hours.  I really can't leave her hanging.”         “You're helping her practice for the Competition too?”         “Pfft—What, have you got wood between your ears, kid?  Flutterhy's going to be my cheerleader.  I need to help her practice a few good shouts and screams if she's gonna to give me any helping hoves once it's time for me to do my stuff in Cloudsdale Colliseum!”         Scootaloo blinked.  “So, this is all about... uh... Fluttershy practicing, now?”         “Sure, why not?  Besides,” Rainbow Dash hovered upside down, grinning at the foal from above.  “You've given me enough awesome feedback to choose what I'm going to do for the first two phases of my act.”  She reached a hoof down and ruffled the filly's pink mane.  “I couldn't have done it without ya, squirt.”         Scootaloo blushed under the frazzled threads of her own hair.  She blew a few strands away to gaze evenly at the upside-down pegasus.  “Is there a third phase?”         “Yup, and I'm gonna make it a blast!”  Rainbow Dash soared straight up, spiraled, and flattened her wings against her body.  “Something that will blow the audience's minds!”  She fell down like a dead weight, all the while brandishing a drunken grin.  “Something that they will remember for as long as they live!”  At the last second, she flung her wings straight out, backflipped in the air, and landed evenly on four limbs before a wind-blown Scootaloo.  “An acrobatic feat so amazing that everypony will be lucky if the Coliseum's sky marble doesn't just explode into steam from the sheer epicness of my airshow!”         Scootaloo leaned forward, grinning ecstatically.  “Are you gonna do the Buccaneer Blitz?!  The Nebula Noodle Streamer?!  The Carbomite Mareneuver?”         “Pfft!  What do you think I am?”  Rainbow Dash rubbed her hoof against her chest and examined it while smirking.  “A sideshow attraction?  I'm gonna do something a heck of a lot more legendary than all three of those combined!”         “Uhm...”  Scootaloo wracked her brain, her face scrunching in the effort.  “The Gultophine Gravity Gut Bomb?”         “Ew—No!”  Rainbow Dash made a face.  “I wanna come out of this Competition a legend, squirt, not a corpse!”         “S-Sorry,” Scootaloo uttered with a nervous smile.  “It was the first thing that entered my head.”         “Why am I not surprised?”  Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, then said with a smirk, “No, Phase Three is going to have be something sky-shattering.  I'll likely pull off the Stratospheric Star Streaker, or the Quadruple Barrel Cloud Pierce, or—heh—maybe even the Sonic Rain...”  The mare stopped in the middle of her own words.  Her face winced, as if she was being stabbed deep in the chest with the mere thought of what she was contemplating.         Scootaloo saw it.  She squinted.  “What?  The 'Sonic What...?'”         Rainbow Dash gulped hard.  She smiled, and her next voice was a soft, humble thing.  “Nah.  It's a stupid idea.  The Sonic Rainboom is so crazy, it's only ever been done once.”  She sighed and gazed off towards the distant hilltops with soft, ruby eyes.  “And even then it was nothing but a freak accident.”         The foal wasn't fazed in the least by whatever was suddenly paralyzing Rainbow Dash.  She walked a half-circle around the blue mare with happy, hopping hooves.  “I used to believe in accidents, Dashie, but then I met you.”         “Kid, it's one o'clock in the afternoon,” Rainbow Dash said, squinting down at her.  “It's too early for such sap.”         “I mean it!”  Scootaloo hopped up and down in place, her grin twice as bouncy as her orange body.  “I don't believe that there's a single thing in this world you can't do!”         The older pegasus merely smiled at her.  “It's not a matter of if I can do it or not.  It's a matter of if I can do it...”  She gritted her teeth.  “... on the sp-spot.”         “Well, I can think of no better spot than in the middle of Cloudsdale, where all pegasi can see you do the impossible.”  She sat down on her haunches and drank the sight of Rainbow Dash in with soft, foalish eyes.  “So that they can see how awesome you are,” she murmured.  “Like you've shown me.”         Rainbow Dash was about to retort, but then her breath lingered.  She gazed down at the foal, and her features slowly softened.  The color of her eyes briefly mimicked a pair of rubies that reflected Scootaloo in the quiet, sob-stained sanctum of a dimly-lit hospital room.  “How I wish I could bring you with me instead of Fluttershy,” she murmured, perhaps without wanting to do so.  It hardly mattered; there were far more fragile secrets that had flown, ever so briefly, between her and this fanatic little filly.  “But... But...”  She took a deep breath, and in a single instant the brief solemnity crumbled under the hard smirk of the devilish weather flier underneat.  “We both know that you're stuck here, don't we?”  The last utterance was more of a test than it was an inquisition.         Scootaloo sighed at the sound of it, hanging her head.  “Yeah.  My parents are... lame,” she said in a voice that she forced to sound bitter.  “They're never going to break their silly little rule: that I have to be able to fly before anypony can take me to Cloudsdale.”  She bit her lip, shuddering with a brief anger at herself.  Still, it was a necessary lie that she had concocted long ago.  Inferring that she would be allowed to go to Cloudsdale would necessitate somepony like Rainbow Dash taking the next logical step of wanting to “speak with her parents” face to face before taking her on such an excursion.  She couldn't risk the implications of such a chain of events, no matter how tempted she was to pursue it.  “I really wish I could go with you too.”  She gazed up at her idol with a brave smile.  “But face it, Fluttershy really is your best cheerleader.  You've known her since you were a little filly at Flight Camp.  She knows all your moves in and out.  I hope she gives you the awesome backup you deserve at the Competition, Dashie.”         “Fluttershy's certainly my oldest friend,” Rainbow Dash said with a chuckling grin.  She exhaled, then ruffled Scootaloo's mane once more.  It was a rather gentle gesture, as if it was the closest thing to a hug that the older pegasus could settle for.  “But she's anything but my best cheerleader...”         “Heeheehee,” Scootaloo giggled, her cheeks rosy.  “Oh, I'll be cheering for you, Dashie.  I will be.  Even... Even if you can't see me.”         “Hmm... Don't be a stick in the mud.”  Rainbow Dash flew up and stuck her tongue out.  “I see everything, remember!”  She flapped her blue wings and soared towards the far end of Ponyville and the border to the Everfree Forest beyond.  “I gotta go meet up with Flutterhy!  Stay cool, kid!  Don't go sneaking into any hospitals while I'm gone, or Celestia-help-me I'll come back in a week's time and shove my trophy up your nose!”         Scootaloo called after her.  “Wouldn't it be easier just to shove my nose into the trophy?”         “Hahaha—You're silly, squirt!  One of these days, I swear, you're gonna pay for being a smart aleck!”                  The air of the Cloudsdalian ruins was dead and still.  Just then, something twice as dead began to move.  With slow and jagged progression, the marble slab to Scootaloo's hiding place was raised one quarter of a meter at a time.  The squeaking sounds of the thick door's secondary pulley system pierced the stagnant air as the little filly inside the hovel cranked the notched wheel that gradually lifted the heavy slab, once more allowing a space between the claustrophobic cave and the crumbled world beyond.         As the slab lifted, something that was pinned in place rolled down the decrepit hill of rubble.  The lower half of a dead troll's body tumbled to a stop against a dried-up fireplace.  The abominable guts of the creature were black and stale, the result of several days' worth of decay.  Its twin, a massacred torso, was shoved out from underneath the rising slab, followed by another deathly figure that trotted into the twilight by its own volition.         Scootaloo's eyes blinked tiredly, taking in the wreckage of her camp site with a dull, scarlet gaze.  Her cheeks were hollow, and her skin was blanketed with dried blood and mud-stains.  Her lower right leg had several layers of canvas wrapped about it.  Her other flank was also patched over with bandages that she had to apply by her lonesome, in the dark.         She had hidden inside the niche beyond the fallen slab for the better part of a week, during which she had subsisted on a single bottle of oats that she had long stowed away in there.  What other little supplies she had left inside that small cave, she had utterly used up, either to provide herself nourishment or to assist in the healing process of her wounded limbs.  As lucky as Scootaloo was, she certainly didn't feel fortunate.  The whole experience amounted to several days spent alone with her shivers, her fluids, and the rotting corpse of a troll's torso right under her nose.         Now she was gazing out at the remains of her living quarters atop the hill of rubble, and the last pony's first impulse was to turn straight around and trot right back into that horrible niche of death.  The camp was utterly ransacked.  No single piece of rubble, no single shred of scavenged tools was left lying on top of the other.  There was no perceivable method to what the trolls had done to her improvised home; they had simply destroyed anything they could find for the sake of destroying it.         The campfire had been kicked to useless ashes.  The canvas bags of supplies had been torn to shreds and spread all over.  Cloudsdalian spears were reduced to splinters and all of the little metal knick-knacks collected from the ruined city were thrown far and wide.  The most important possession that Scootaloo had, a wooden crate full of preserved edibles, was nowhere to be seen.  At first, she thought that the trolls had stolen it all in order to have something to fill their stomachs.  As soon as she trotted up to the edge of the hill, she saw splintery bits of the wooden crate spread down the incline, along with random bits of the bags, jars, and containers that had once housed food.  She imagined that the only things Trolls ate were the things that could squirm on the way down their throats.  Everything that the pony valued, the monsters had dashed to bits for the sheer thrill of dashing them to bits.         All of this wreckage certainly explained the howling noises of carnage that they had assaulted her barricaded cavern with during the first two consecutive nights of demolition.  Trotting limpingly across her camp's desolate edge, she took notice of what gave them their reason to whoop and holler in victory as they had.  Every single wooden pike that she had engineered into a line of defense had been removed.  To the last pony's numbing horror and self-loathing, she realized that she had provided each and every one of those pale beasts a sharp weapon to wield for the next time that they would attack her.         And they would attack her again.  It was only a matter of time.  She was starving, weak, scarred, and hopeless.  If they meant to suck out all of the energy in her to make her an easier target, they were succeeding.         Scootaloo knew this.  She understood the victory that the trolls were about to have at hand.  Regardless, she did not run back into the niche.  She did not collect all of the various scraps of belongings around her and try to find a new place to hide out.         The last pony sat there, on the edge of her destroyed hovel, and stared blankly out onto the gray, twilight-soaked ruins of Cloudsdale.  Her breaths were as slow as her heartbeat, and the only things that moved were the muscles just above her bandanged limbs, twitching with a throbbing pain that never left her for one second ever.  Just sitting there and doing nothing, she could have risked getting infected.  She could have risked losing a leg, or maybe two.         Scootaloo was suddenly finding it very hard to care. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         Braxx's eyes were bright and green.  Scootaloo never had a chance to notice before, for he had almost always been wearing goggles during the few slim moments that he and the other goblins ran into her, scoffing and tossing insults the last pony's way.  Now, she could see his wide eyes with full detail, as she was standing over the severed half of his skull which had been torn off at the jawbone.         Gazing away from the partially decayed cranium, Scootaloo could see the scattered bits of Braxx all around her, forming a dried pool of crimson streaks and half-solid intestinal masses.  Limping beyond the remains of the one goblin, she trotted through the puddles of his ill-fated companions.  Scootaloo surveyed the scene of the trollish ambush, studying with solemn clarity the same place she was too paralyzed by fright to observe with any logical detail a week prior.  From her estimation, the bodies of twelve goblins—maybe thirteen—were spread out all throughout the plateau, their limbs torn and carried as far from each other as the trolls' amusement would afford.  Across the great black chasm, the much-desired tools of the goblins glittered like a dream that could never be realized.  Here, the many half-lings had met a hellish faith upon the precipice of achieving their singular goal.         Scootaloo imagined that this tragedy had succinctly sliced the numbers of her impish neighbors   in half.  That was, of course, assuming that the many goblins who had run off like she did were nearly as successful as the last pony, given the tangibility of the word “successful.”  The half-lings were intelligent, resourceful, and tactful, but even in their combined numbers the pegasus couldn't help but wonder if they had any greater tenacity to deal with the pale monstrosities than she did.  What was more, as she searched through the long-dried carnage of the scene, she was at a loss to find evidence—any evidence—that Devo of Hex Blood had survived.  It was the first time since raising the slab to her niche that the pony came close to feeling something.         This faded just as soon as it flickered across her mind.  Soon, the last pony was fishing through the dried guts of the goblin, shoving aside the meatier masses of their remains to find what little shreds of tools, leather bandoleers, shivs, and canvas straps that she could.  There was no energy to her task, no excitement or vigor.  She had been reduced to a thought, a ritualistic process, a dull spirit of scavenging that had no extra breath to gasp or sob with. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         Scootaloo limped and limped towards the top of a hill of rubble where a tiny pond of aged water had gathered.  She had come here on multiple occasions before to collect the liquid in her canteen.  Those were moments when she had the ability to make a fire and boil what there was to contain.  Now, struggling to stay upright on two battered rear limbs, fighting to move her thin body with two forelegs, the last pony could hardly be in the position to rejoice or complain at what was at her disposal.         The filly's mouth was parched, a desert of desperation.  She could barely feel her own tongue amidst the dryness between her cheeks, as if there was still a need to use such a muscle.  She dropped a bundle of blood-stained, useless tools salvaged from the scene of the trollish massacre.  The pegasus fell to her knees—wincing—and dipped her quivering skull towards the murky waters.         She could barely make out her dull brown reflection from the grime that had collected at the water's surface.  Narrowing her vision, she could spot flecks of ash floating in the tiny stream.  The pond had been christened with the dead flesh of all of Equestria's ponies.  Suddenly, however, this was no longer a deterrent.         Scootaloo bent over.  She closed her eyes and kiss her lips through the icy layer of the pool.  She opened her mouth and sucked in what she could.  It immediately tasted like rust.         The filly couldn't help it.  She sputtered.  She gasped and wretched and grimaced.  Gnashing her teeth, she let the first wave of disgust course through her body.  She shivered and spasmed, and yet her mouth was slightly less dry.  Stifling a dull whimper, she closed her eyes—harder this time—and leaned her mouth down into the dead pool again. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         Scootaloo could barely climb back up the hill of rubble to her niche, whatever was left of it.  During the effort, she had to pause and catch her breath over five times.  Her body heathed and her muscles throbbed.  At several points, she realized that she would have no energy to gallop anywhere if the trolls were to see her and chase her down.  This mortifying comprehension didn't quicken her pace much.  She sauntered up the rubble as icily as she had come back down several hours before.  The canvas bundle of desperately-scavenged junk felt like an anvil on her back.         Finally, the last pony made it back up to her camp.  She laid the canvas bundle out in front of her niche.  One at a time, she lethargically examined the many random items she had pried from the dead bodies of the eviscerated goblins.  In the glinting twilight, they suddenly seemed twice as useless as they were when she first stumbled upon them.         The filly's nostrils flared.  Halfway through the examination, she dropped all that she was doing and slumped down to her haunches.  She exhaled long and hard, as if a sudden weight was being pressed into the bottom of her lungs, pushing up, expelling all strength that had remained in her body.  A great drowsiness was curtaining over her, resonating with the same deep ache that accentuated the growing pit in her stomach.         Before the filly's scarlet eyes could close for good, her vision was pierced at a distance by a pale object.  Blinking, she glanced over, her shaved neck tilting to give her a better view.  Curious, the last pony attempted standing up on four legs.  It was an embarassingly difficult process, and it took the filly the better part of a minute before she could summon the strength to trot over towards the pale item in question.         Bending over, the pegasus hoofed through a pile of ashen debris.  In the trolls' wrecklessness and chaos, they had neglected to see where one miraculous object had rattled to a stop beneath their rampant destruction.  It balanced now in Scootaloo's trembling grasp, a tiny box of sky marble, shimmering immaculately with its glossy, ivory surface.         The last pony's brown lips trembled as she opened the clasped container.  A breath escaped her lips, squeaking with the first sign of emotion since she had stumbled out of her cave.         Three blue feathers fluttered in the cold breeze of the Wasteland.  They were just as bright and pristine as the day when Scootaloo had placed them into the salvaged container.         The pegasus bit her lip. Snapping the item shut, she clutched it to her chest and sat there, haloed by her lonesome breaths.  Her ears twitched, and she looked up, glancing over towards the niche and the granite slab hanging halfway over it.  The filly's jaw clenched, and with a refound determination, she limped over to the freshly scavenged tools.  Placing the container down, she produced a tiny metal shiv stripped from a dead goblin and then marched over to the decaying torso of the troll.  With careful precision, she raised the shiv to the monster's gaping mouth and began chiseling away at its black, razor-sharp teeth. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         Hours later, Scootaloo had formed a serrated dagger out of a chunk of wood with several severed troll teeth sewn into the length of it with Cloudsdalian twine.  She clutched this to herself along with the white container as she nested herself once more within the claustrophobic hollow of the tiny cave.  Having lowered the slab back into place with the secondary pulley system, the last pony had lit a tiny fire.  One torch burned dimly, courtsey of her last and only bit of flint and tinder.  Once the fire consumed itself, she would have to find another way to keep herself warm and illuminated.  She would also have to find a way to keep herself nourished, as nothing she had scavenged that day presented itself as edible in any fashion.  This could very well have been the last night she had to be alive, and she hardly cared.         She had the feathers of Rainbow Dash.  Everytime she tried to build herself a home or salvage all of the decrepit treasures of Cloudsdale, one thing or another would simply tear it back down again.  Regardless, she had the feathers of Rainbow Dash, and all three flimsy threads felt infinitely more valuable than the sum of the young filly's battered parts.  Glancing at the ivory container in the flickering amber light, Scootaloo weathered a soreness in her throat.  She hugged the box to her chest and curled deeper into the corner of the place.  Her eyes ached—twitching under brown lids—for they didn't have enough moisture to produce tears.  Scootaloo huddled in the belly of desolation, allowing unconsciousness to claim her.  She was uncertain if she would wake up from it, but she was not anticipating it either.         “Hey, uhm, Scootaloo?”         “Yes, Wart?”         “Is it just me, or is it really empty around here?”         The last pony shuffled to a stop, squinting at the lengths of Strut Eighteen as she and her green companion emerged from the elevator car.  The pegasus had resorted to packing a reserve set of armor, one that exposed her twitching brown wings as she stood in the middle of the desolate metal street with a backup rifle retracted along her spine.         “Come to think of it, you're right,” Scootaloo murmured as she scanned the practically abandoned sights of warehouses, saloons, blacksmiths, shops, and shanty apartments of the Hex Blood neighborhood.  “Then again, there weren't many imps around where we docked the Harmony three platforms below.”  She adjusted her goggles and glanced down at the teenager.  “The Wasteland's due for a stormfront in a few hours.  Maybe they have a reason to clear the streets of Petra.”         Warden shook his head.  “An imp city this big can withstand an artillery barrage from dirigible dogs, much less your average stormfront.  I may be new around here, but I've never known goblins to clear the streets for a simple lightning storm, especially since this isn't even the topmost strut.”  He gulped in a sudden nervousness as his green ears tilted back.  “Maybe there's a clan meeting we don't know about?”         “Something...” Scootaloo thought aloud.  “Something has happened.”  She took a shuddering breath as a pulsating adrenaline shot through her blood vessels.  “I didn't bring the Harmony down from the clouds earlier because I thought goblins might be looking for us since what happened at Strut Eleven.  But now...”  Scootaloo glanced once more up and down the abandoned alleyways.  “This isn't right.  It's almost as if...”         Both figures flinched as a loud shot rang through the metallic streets, echoing off the plated bulkheads.  Warden gasped and leaned nervously against the last pony, his branded skin quivering in the flickering light of a nearby tesla coil.  “Wh-What was that?”         “Sounded like a steam rifle to me.”         “But it doesn't sound like any of the Rust-Bleeders' that were firing at us yesterday!”         “That's because it's a different model,” Scootaloo said, her brow furrowing.  “I remember it from the battle with the trolls outside the mines.”  She took a deep breath.  “It's the Hex-Bleeders' design.”         “How can your ears be that good and not be pointed?”         Just after he said that, another shot rang out, echoing louder this time.  Both the pony and the goblin spun to face a direction that was closer towards the imp city's stalk.         “That last one came from... from...” Warden stammered.         “Devo's warehouse,” Scootaloo declared.  “Hop on, Wart.  We gotta find out what the heck's going on.”         The anxious teenager climbed on top of Scootaloo and held on for dear life as the pegasus dashed down an alleyway of bursting steam and towards the far end of the district. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         Just as soon as they both rounded a street corner a block from Devo's headquarters, they nearly tripped over a dead goblin's corpse.  Warden gasped and Scootaloo slowed to a firm trot, gazing left and right at the steambolt-riddled bodies of half-lings on either side of them.  There were bulletholes in the walls and floor of the street, scattered here and there with tiny fires that blanketed the riotous disarray.  As she made her way towards the distant structure of the Hex Blood warehouse, she carefully observed the colors on the imps she was passing by.  The collective corpses—nearly two dozen total—matched the symbols of two clans and two clans only:  Glass Blood and Hex Blood.         “It... It was a gang fight!”  Warden murmured, his aquamarine eyes twitching in comprehension as they passed body after body.  “But... But why would the Glass-Bleeders and Hex-Bleeders turn on each other?!  They're like partners!  They extract steam from the same mines!”         “Franken of Glass Blood is dead, Wart,” Scootaloo murmured as she navigated a cluster of burning debris in the middle of the rampaged street.  “I can't imagine many of his fellow brothers and sisters are all too happy about the fact.”         “But we know who killed off Franken!”  Warden exclaimed breathily, his heart racing so hard that even the pony underneath him could feel it.  “It was all of Haman's thugs!”         “From the looks of things, a fabricated truth traveled faster than ours did,” Scootaloo remarked.  A paleness spread briefly over her brown features.  “This is all my fault.  I should have brought us to Devo immediately after all that mess in Strut Eleven.”         “But... But Haman's goons could have tracked us down by hovercraft!”  Warden leaned down to murmur in her ears.  “You were looking after yourself.”  He gulped.  “You were looking after us...”         Scootaloo opened her mouth to respond to that, but for the moment she had no way to justify Warden's knee-jerk defense, and it hurt suddenly to dash his words away to the ash of the Wasteland.  Over the last several hours, she had done what she had always done.  She had tried her best to survive, and suddenly there was blood shed—the blood of her client.  In being responsible for herself, she had been irresponsible as an Outbleeder.  She had done the proper thing to survive, but for once in her life it had been bad for business.         She was a bad business pony.         Two hooftrots into the comprehension of this, Scootaloo jerked to a stop, for a burning steambolt ricocheted off the metal street below her.  Wart shrieked and clutched her pink mane, trembling.  The last pony raised a hoof up to the edge of her copper rifle and glared at the front of the warehouse.         A line of soot-stained Hex-Bleeders were squatting behind a row of overturned hovercraft parts and chunks of skymarble, using them as a makeshift barricade as they trained a line of steaming rifles at her figure.         “Stay where you are, pony!”         “Not another step, or we'll blow your brains out!”         “Speaking of brains...”  Scootaloo spat back over the sound of venting pipes on either side of the street.  “...are they still attached to your eyeballs?  Cuz if you look down the sight of those guns a second time, then you might see a certain red bandanna on my skull!  It should appear familiar to you!”         “Can it, glue stick!”         “Nobody gets through to the boss' headquarters!”         “Until the council of families sends a gremlin defense squad to police this district, all non Hex-Bleeders are to remain off limits, or else you'll get a bullet shoved through you!”         “I'm trying to tell you!”  Scootaloo exclaimed with a rising growl.  “I've been working for your boss these last few days!  I need to see Devo as soon as possible or whatever's happened here will merely be a prelude to something way worse!”         “Not on your life!”         “Even if the boss had recovered already, we're not sending a sky-stealer in to see him!  Not in his condition!”         “C-Condition?!”  Warden gasped, raising his startled face over the last pony's mane.  “What happened to Devo?!  What's he recovering from?!”         “None of your business, no-bleeder!”         “Now the two of you, turn around now—”         Suddenly, a blue figure rushed out of the warehouse, waving a double-barreled rifle in her grasp.  “Oh, for the love of Petra, let them through, you morons!”         “But... B-But Miss Raimony—!”         “Don't you see she's the friggin' Outbleeder?!”  The brown-haired goblinette slapped one of the guards' upside the head.  “Do us all a favor and shoot at imps who aren't wearing the family's bandanna!”         “I'm sorry, ma'am.  But with all that's happened, we couldn't afford to take chances.”         “Right, right.  I get it.  Still, kudos for not shooting the pony on sight with those hair-trigger fingers of yours.”  Raimony stood at the edge of the barricade, sighed exasperatingly, and motioned the two souls forward with a muscular arm.  “Hop on over, pony.  It's about dang time you showed up.”         Scootaloo swiftly trotted up and leaped over the barricade with equine grace.  When she landed on the other side, she heard Warden's gasping sharply.  Glancing over at Raimony, the last pony saw why.         The brown-haired imp's vest was stained in dried splotches of blood.  Her bangs were in disarray, and the edges of her limbs were bandanged from having sustained several bullet grazes.  “About ten hours ago, the steam really hit the fan,” Raimony murmured in a shuddering breath.  Her thin green eyes were glazed over with lack of sleep and sanity.  As strong and proud as she stood, there was an undeniable wave of jittery shivers running through her extremities.  “Out of nowhere, legions of Glass-Bleeders charged my father's warehouse.  They didn't give a warning.  They didn't even say why they were here.  Franken's imps simply charged into the building, pummeling or shooting any goblin who resisted them, until they got to my father's office and... and...”  Raimony quivered suddenly, a wave of strength being mercilessly peeled off her features as she briefly wilted in front of the two.         Warden's soft eyes matched the goblinette's vulnerability.  Scootaloo didn't waste a moment being gentle.  “Is Devo dead?”  Her scarlets pierced the prime Hex-Bleeder's daughter.  “Did they kill your father off?”         Raimony gulped hard.  A frown resurfaced on her face, summoning the strength back into her voice.  “Follow me.” ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         “We summoned the local militia of Strut Eighteen as swiftly as we could.  They ran into the warehouse and swiftly suppressed the attacking Glass-Bleeders.  However, a lot of our industrial equipment got caught up in the crossfire,” Raimony exclaimed as she and a pair of armed guards led the two through the hazy interior of the clan's building.  The air was thick with death and smoke.  Glancing aside, Warden and Scootaloo saw laborers struggling to put out fires and salvage the family's steam-powered machines.  In the far corners of the place, goblins twitched and groaned in agony as medics struggled to patch their leaking bellies back together.         Warden clung tightly to Scootaloo during the entire forlorn trek.  For the past twelve hours alone, the teenager had displayed increasing levels of intimate trust and physical attachments.  Here, upon the thresshold of the Hex Blood family's collapse, Scootaloo felt immeasureably guilty for something that just hours ago felt like the most sincere thing she had ever done for a creature in decades.  She suddenly feared more for Warden's well-being than she did for all of the bleeding, stumbling Hex-Bleeders.         Raimony continued speaking as she led the two of them to her father's office, “We're doing what we can to recover from the sudden attack.  In the meantime, most of the women and children from the neighborhood have been moved to our facilities within the stalk adjacent to Strut Eighteen.  It's safe and secure there.  So long as our steam factories within the stalk are properly barricaded, it will take ten platforms' worth of goblin thugs to break through to them.  They should be safe for the moment.  I only wished that the streets of the district faired better.”         “How many Glass-Bleeders attacked you in total?”         “Pfft—All of them, if I had to say!”  Raimony exclaimed, running a nervous hand through her hair as she nevertheless marched boldly up the steps to Devo's loft office above the smoldering warehouse interior.  “I really don't know what could have pissed them off so badly.  Considering all of the work you've been doing for my father as of late, maybe one or both of you can shed some light on this craptacular nonsense.  I'm at my wit's end between trying to get us to recover and trying to fend off the attacks of Glass Blood stragglers.  It's next to impossible to get a word to the other thirty-four platforms, and I get the deep feeling somebody out there wants that to be the case.”         “Just let me speak with Devo,” Scootaloo said as she marched up the steps after her with Warden in tow.  “If anything, I know what happened to Franken of Glass Blood.”  She suddenly jolted in her place, for she had a double-barreled steam rifle pointed at her skull.         Raimony's eyes narrowed harshly on her.  “You know?!  Was this all part of the Outbleeder intercession that my father forced you into doing?!  Couldn't you have at least brought this to our attention before the very Blight of the Dimming coursed through my family's very streets?!”         “At least give her a chance to respond, lady!”  Warden frowned—then cowered as she threatened to slam the length of her gun across his skull.         “Shut it, scamp!”  Raimony growled.  “I've been up to my armpits with my own clan's blood and I need answers!  The least you can do—The least you both can do is pay us back for the invulnerability my father granted you when he made this pony the Hex Blood Outbleeder!”         “Franken is dead, Raimony.”         Raimony twitched.  She gazed numbly at Scootaloo, and her pale shock outwashed all shades of anger.  “D-Dead?  But... But how would he be able to launch such an attack on us?”         “From the looks of things,” Scootaloo said as she gazed down from the steps at the wrecked warehouse interior, “The attack was swift, passionate, and impulsive.  As horrible as things have been, I don't think you've dealt so much with a coordinated invasion as it was an act of anger and revenge.”         “But... But my father was always a strong ally to the Glass-Bleeders,” Raimony said in a suddenly weak voice.  “It was his one and only link of trust with Rust Blood.  He would never do anything to destroy that.  Why would Glass Blood attack us so angrily out of nowhere?  I don't understand...”         Before the goblinette's face could register any more emotion, Scootaloo leaned forward and emphatically said, “Let me speak to your father.  Let me see if either of us can figure this out.”         Raimony took a deep breath.  She gazed at her bodyguards and nodded.  The bandanna-bearing goblins shuffled up the last few steps and opened the door for Scootaloo.  The last pony marched up, then stopped briefly at the entrance.         “Hop off, Wart.”         “Huh?”  The petite goblin squirmed on her backside.  “But Scootaloo—”         “I need to speak to Devo alone,” the last pony said.  After a deep breath, she added, “As I've always had to.”         Warden trembled.  Nevertheless, he complied, slowly climbing off her spine and standing on the catwalk.  Scootaloo gave him a last, reassuring gaze before marching into the office.  The green teenager wrung his hands together, suddenly twice as affected by the dismal sounds of the wrecked place now that she was absent.         Raimony stepped up to his side and leaned against her rifle, squinting curious at the office doorway.  “'Scootaloo'?”         “Erm... Uh huh,” he stammered with a nervous smile.  “Trust me, she's a lot more gruff than her name sounds.”         “Yeah, no crap.” ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         Scootaloo couldn't see Devo's legs from the cluster of metal spokes acting as a desperate pair of tourniquets to his battered limbs.  The elder, blue goblin was lying on his back, positioned upon an improvised cot of wood and canvas lying beside his rusted desk.  The far corner of the room was stained in dry blood and highlighted by claw marks, marking the area where the prime Hex-Bleeder was likely cornered and pummeled mercilessly by a group of riotous imps.         As the last pony entered the room, two hovering medics parted ways to reveal the slowly-stirring elder.  His bruised jaw was encased in a steam-powered breathing apparatus.  With thin, copper eyes he turned his head to gaze up at her.  She saw half of his balding head covered in whelts and scrapes.  His snow-white dreadlocks were stained crimson.         Tiredly, the clan leader lifted a trembling hand and gave the medics a four-fingered wave.  After exchanging nervous glances, the two subordinates complied by leaving the room.  Scootaloo and the old goblin were alone, like they always were in a way.         The last pony stared down at the imp, dredging the familiarity of his person up from the sea of life support with her exhausted scarlet eyes.  He gazed back, and in spite of his battered self, he managed a smile.         “It's hard to 'give a pony her colors' when all I'm seeing are stars.”         “You look like crap,” Scootaloo bluntly said.  “If I were in your shape, I'd not worry about heavenly bodies that the sky couldn't afford us anyway.”         He chuckled at that, a wincing thing at best.  “Do you truly believe your own words?  Or is all of your hope gone already, pony?”         She blinked at that statement.  Spike's words about the Observatory of Nebula were like distant shadows to a forgotten dream.  Everything in Petra had gotten so bloody, so complicated, so chaotic.  Still, they didn't feel painful to Scootaloo, not even now as she stood over the body of her battered employer.  The only thing that remotely pierced her heart was the probable fact that she was the one responsible for his condition, and even the sharp sensation of that was fading with each second that ticked away in that awkwardly quiet office, lulled into obscurity by the steamy hiss of his life support.         “I'm alive still for two reasons,” Devo said breathily.  “One of them is luck.  The other is that I still believe that in spite of all that's happened today, in spite of all I've endured, there's still a blossoming of Petra to be had.  Life is only gets ugly because it's trying to escape something beautiful that it doesn't think it can handle.”         “Devo, if you're ever going to die of anything someday, it'll be from living life like an incorrigible sap,” Scootaloo said.  She swallowed and muttered in a serious voice, “Just tell me what happened to you.”         “Hmmm... Children.  Such angry, desperate, passionate children,” he said, seething through his teeth as a wave of pain soared up his body.  He stroked a hand down over his thigh, where the leg braces had been brutally torn apart under his waist.  “They came here in a berserker's spirit of vengeance, bitterly embroiled for reasons even they hardly understood.  As they were reducing me to a piece of meat, I couldn't help but wish that there may have been a way to salvage something intelligent from their rampaging figures.  Alas, my guards caught up with them, and they rightfully did what I paid them to do.  I am alive here and now by the blood of others.  A life this pathetically long is marked by such red stains.”  He gazed up at her in earnest.  “Imps kill each other on a daily basis, pony.  I hope you realize that it has always been my last resort...”         “I'm not asking you to assure me of your righteousness, Devo,” Scootaloo said in a dry sigh.  “I have no doubt whatsoever that you're better than most of the creeps who make up Petra.”  Her eyes narrowed.  “Still, I need to know what they wanted with you—why they attacked you.”         “Hmmm... It goes without saying that I was in the eye of the storm that's wrecked my district,” Devo said.  “My darling daughter—strong to the end—is endeavoring to deal with the gravity of things, but even she wasn't here to bear witness to the mayhem when it was at its strongest.”  He swallowed and stirred painfully where he was lying.  “Those attackers wanted me to suffer, wanted me to bleed, wanted me to die in place of their prime Glass-Bleeder.”         “You're sure of this?”         “Yes, pony,” Devo murmured.  “They... They said things... Impossible things.”  He winced and shuddered.  “They said that I had murdered Franken, an absurd notion at best.  And yet, the hatred for me was most evident in their eyes.  Whatever the truth is, I doubt very much that they could be convinced I wasn't responsible for some horrible massacre.”         Scootaloo took a deep breath.  She gazed off towards the metal lockers of the red-lit office.  “Devo, Franken of Glass Blood is dead.”         He blinked.  He gazed sickly up at her.  “Then I take it that he wasn't there to meet you at Strut Eleven yesterday...”         “Oh, his corpse was, alright,” Scootaloo murmured, gulped, then added.  “So were a legion of Rust-Bleeders.  They tore the platform to pieces in their attempt to kill me off.”         Devo's copper eyes narrowed.  He shifted where he lay, winced, and bravely sat up, propping himself with quivering arms.  “So that was transpired in such an ill-fated district yesterday...”         “Why?” Scootaloo looked back down at him.  “What has the rest of Petra heard?”         “The chaos that broke out in Strut Eleven was hardly a minor thing,” Devo spoke, struggling to stay upright.  He emphatically spoke, “Platforms have had their fair share of skirmishes throughout the years, of course, but hardly an all-out conflict.  Several gremlin security ships flocked to the site after reports of explosions and gunfire of an unprecedented nature in that area.  It wasn't as though any clans of importance lived in that run-down district anymore, but—”         “It's where the Glass-Bleeders had expanded,” Scootaloo finished for him with a nod.  “Under Haman's guidance, Franken occupied a factory along the stalk there.”         “Don't you mean an extraction plant?”         “A factory, Devo.  I was there.  I expected to meet with Franken so that he could tell me some important secrets about Haman.  As I could tell from his slit throat and strangled body, he never got the chance to meet with your Outbleeder.”  She took a deep breath.  “Still, I found enough crap there that made the visit to Strut Eleven infinitely worth it, from an investigative stance.  The foundry within the stalk had been converted to an assembly line, replete with metal-works.”         “What were they assembling, pray-tell?” Devo nervously inquired.         Scootaloo's brow furrowed.  “Bombs, Devo.  They were making bombs out of mixture of moondust and fire granite.  I saw only the residual leftovers of some grand and foreboding operation.  I have every reason to believe that the Glass-Bleeders were secretly building tons of ordinance for some reason, and now all of those explosives have been relocated somewhere, but I have no idea where.”         Devo blinked.  Slowly, he laid himself back down with a breathy glow.  His pained eyes danced across the metal bulkheads of his tiny office's ceiling.  “Fire granite... explosives...”  He gulped hard.  “It all screams of ogres...”         “There's nothing concrete to provide, but everything points to Haman being in league with one or both of the factions from Mount Ogreton,” Scootaloo said.  “What he could gain from such an alliance, I have no clue.  But he was there in the Valley of Jewels along with Franken of Glass Blood and Waven of South Blood.  Now, Franken is just as dead as Waven, and a bunch of bombs are missing.”         “Did you... manage to procure a sample of such explosives?”         Scootaloo's nostrils flared.  Her eyes fell to the floor.  “No.  I had the opportunity, but not the spare time.  Rust-Bleeders used Franken's corpse as a means to spring a trap on me.  They must have found out that I was meeting with him.  The next thing I knew, I was galloping away as fast as I could just to keep myself alive.”         “And a precious life that is, quite worthy of preserving,” Devo uttered.  “As there are little to no other ponies in this world, one cannot blame you for such flight.  Still, if what you say is true, then it is a shame that we do not have something physical to show for it.”         “If I can make a guess,” Scootaloo said, “Then Haman's thugs have likely scoured Strut Eleven for all remaining evidence as soon as they chased me out.”         “Even if you or any of my brothers could get there to perform a search, the place is crawling with gremlin security now,” Devo said.  “Rumors are flying around the whole impcity that nearly a hundred goblins have died, mostly no-bleeders.”         “That sounds exagerrated,” Scootaloo said.  “But it hardly matters.  Damage was done.  Haman's goons were desperate to make sure I didn't get out of there alive.  They failed only because I made many of them suffer for the attempt.”  After a breath, she inquired, “Were any yellow armbands fished out from the destruction, I wonder?”         “If the Rust-Bleeders are as careful to cover their tracks as you postulate, then I'm sure they've pried the clan colors off of their fallen.”  Devo shifted, wincing briefly as the steam-powered breathing apparatus rattled against his chin.  He sighed and murmured, “Haman's deviance is far more startling than I had originally imagined, in light of all this.  It begs the question: just what does he intend to do with so many explosives?  If he was coerced by the ogres to sell them through a black market all of the sudden, then that might make some sense, but it's not like he'd be making any greater profit than he used to months ago when the weapons trade transpired officially.  Also, the speed and desperation of the Glass-Bleeders' production at Strut Eleven is alarming, assuming they've managed to convert a foundry into an aseembly line without any other clan knowing.”         “I can think of a far more pressing question at the moment,” Scootaloo murmured, pacing about the room briefly, for a part of her was dreading the fact that she probably knew the answer to this:  “Why did the Glass-Bleeders impulsively attack your clan of all families?  If they had any lick of sense, they'd have assaulted the front doors of Haman's palace.”         “That vexes me as well.  But now my facilities are stripped bare and my defenses are thin.  I'm hardly in the place to investigate, pony.  And I regret that I put you in the position to nearly get yourself slaughtered at the hands of enemies I only half-suspected I had,” the elder said in a low tone.  “It was irresponsible of me.”         For some reason, that statement hurt Scootaloo more than any of the other sights and sounds of that startling day combined.  She gulped hard and murmured, “Devo, please, you don't need to—”         “It's funny,” Devo dryly said.  Then, after a wincing hiss, he added, “After all I've endured, after all that the young warriors of Glass Blood did to my home and body, what stings the worst is the words they had to assault me with during the whole ordeal.”         Scootaloo raised an eyebrow.  She turned to look at him.  “And just what words were those?”         He shuddered.  “They said that they wished to rip my hands off, to burn the blood off of them that I had personally spilled.”         “'Personally?'”         He glanced over at her, his eyes painfully thin.  “They said I was heartless and proud... a fool and a butcher all the same, for having been at the scene of the crime...”         Scootaloo's scarlet eyes narrowed.  Slowly, she paced closer to his cot-side.  “What... What do you mean...?”         “It sounds as ludicrous as it is startling,” he murmured.  “But they were all of one accord; they believed whole-heartedly that I was there, pony, that I was there at Strut Eleven, and that I had not only been stained with the blood of their clan leader, but that I had been boasting of it... as a statement of Hex Blood supremacy.”         Scootaloo's features tightened.  A deep heat was resonating up through her body and burning out through her solid eyes.         “I did not believe a single word they had to say,” Devo rambled on.  “They were poor, mad goblins, driven to violence first and logic last.”  He exhaled long and hard.  “And then, you come and confess that you yourself found Franken dead.  Still, I am not relieved.  I can't fathom for the life of me why any imp would think I was actually there at the site of such an atrocious massacre...”         Scootaloo seethed.  “I can,” she growled.  Spinning around with a flicker of her red bandanna, she marched boldly out of the room before Devo could protest in confusion. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         The door to the prime Hex-Bleeder's office burst open.  Warden and Raimony looked up, along with two guards.         Scootaloo marched angrily across the catwalk and down the steps leading towards the lower floor of the warehouse.         “Where in Dimming's Blight are you off to?!”  Raimony exclaimed.         “Twenty-One Strut,” Scootaloo grunted.         “Wh-What?!”  Raimony did a double-take.  “Pony, maybe horses are just slow to get a clue, but it isn't exactly a picnic outside those doors right now!  Strut Eleven became a battlefield and the whole impcity is going nuts.  If anybody approaches Haman in this time of unrest—no matter how many legs she has—she's likely to get shot!”         “Let me worry about when or how I die,” Scootaloo grumbled.         Warden was scrambling to keep up with her, panting.  “Scootaloo!  At least don't go alone!  Whatever you're going to see him about, maybe I can help—”         “No.  Stay here with Devo and Raimony.”         “B-But it's dangerous!”  The teenager exclaimed, hobbling down the steps after her.  “Don't go alone!  I hate it when you go places alone—”         “Look, will you just friggin' do what I say?!”  She flashed an angry look over her shoulder, wings fluttering and losing a feather or two, like dead skin.  “I'll be back.  Celestia help me, I'll be back and I'll be in one piece.  Now sit your butt down until I'm back, ya little Wart!”  She galloped away at a full canter.  Sveral Hex-Bleeders spun curiously as her lone figure sped off.         Warden bit his lip, clinging limply to the metal staircase railing.  He then sat down on a step and hugged his knees to his chest, his ears twitching anxiously, confusedly.         “You can't afford to sleep in!”  Rainbow Dash stood in downtown Ponyville, shouting up at a pale gray pegasus with a mohawk.  “I mean it, Wyndi!  You're in charge of the team while I'm gone, and that means you've gotta be awake at all times in case there's a horrible hailstorm or some other cruddy stormfront that you'll need to break apart!”         “Hey!  I earn my shuteye!”  Rainbow Dash growled back, squinting in the sunlight as Wyndi shoved a cloud or two away before bucking them to steamy bits like a dutiful weather flier.  “Do I need to remind you how I got this job?!  How about you try taking down three tornadoes single-hoofedly in one night and maybe then you can earn the right to be chief weather flier of your own town!”         “Everypony around here knows how awesome you are, Dashie,” Wyndi smirked while kicking a few more clouds into mere vapor.  “For Phase Three of your act at the Coliseum, try not to fall asleep!”  She briefly giggled.         “And you try to keep Ponyville in one piece!”  Rainbow Dash barked while an orange filly glided up from the edge of town.  “I mean it, Wyndi!  You're in charge of the team because I trust your gut instinct as a leader!  Keep an eye on everypony!  Don't let Stu Leaves fly blindly into any trees and try and keepWhurring Streak's head in the game!”         “I'll make Stu my wingpony for the night patrol,” Wyndi said with a nod.  “As for Worsty, don't worry.  All that stallion needs is some positive reinforcement.”         “Dear Epona, I hope I don't sound that silly when I'm giving the team a speech,” Rainbow Dash grumbled to herself.  Her colorful tail was tugged from behind.  She spun around.  “Yeah, what?!”  She blinked, then bit her lip nervously.  “Oh.  Eheh—Hey, squirt.  What's up?”         Scootaloo blushed.  She humbly held a pair of goggles dangling over her hoof.  “Sorry to bug you, Dashie.  I-I know that you're leaving for the Competition soon and all.  So, I fixed these up for you at the last second.  All the cracks and burn marks should be gone from the day that you saved the... the...”  She winced at the memories she was forcing to see the light of day again.  With a brave gulp, she smiled and offered the article up for the older pegasus to take.  “Anyways, I bet you could make good use of these when you leave all the other young fliers in your dust.”         Rainbow Dash blinked.  “Eheheh... Oh, squirt.  I'd love to be wearing these things.  For real.  Ahem.”  She sat on her haunches, leaned over, and planted her hooves on either side of Scootaloo's, lowering the goggles back into the filly's chest.  “But they've got these really stuffy rules at the Competition.  Pegasi participants aren't allowed to wear anything more than a contestant number.  It's all on account of some bullcrap about 'performance enhancing' or whatnot.”         “Oh... Uh... Well, I guess that's okay,” Scootaloo shamefully murmured.  She glanced aside, shifting where she stood.  “I wouldn't want to do anything that could get you disqualified.”         “The only reason they'd boot me out of the Coliseum would be for sucking in all the awesome from everpony else,” Rainbow Dash said with a wink.         “Or sleeping in the locker-room!”  Wyndi exclaimed from up high.         “Hey!”  Rainbow Dash glared up at her subordinate weather teammate.  “Hailstorm patrol!  That means you should be flying a lot higher right now!”         “Yeah, yeah, Captain.  Do the whole team a favor and bring back a tall bottle of Cloudsdalian Ale when you return in three days' time.  Everypony in Equestria knows that Spitfire hordes the stuff somewhere beneath her uniform!”  That uttered, the mohawked pegasus flew skyward and was gone.         “Ugh... She's going to let a cyclone hit the local pound just to rain cats and dogs across Ponyville,” Rainbow Dash grumbled as she stared off over the many thatched rooftops of the town.  “I just know it.”  Her next breath was a limp, shuddering thing.         Scootaloo gazed curiously at the older pegasus.  “Uhm, Dashie?  Are... Are you nervous?”         The blue mare blinked.  She turned to look at the filly, immediately flashing a smirk.  “Are you kidding?  I'm ready as ever to spin circles around Cloudsdale!  It's Ponyville that I'm worried about!  Ugh... The weather team is a total klutzfest without me being here to act as their awe-inspiring captain.”         “Don't you think about them!”  Scootaloo grinned wide.  “In a day or two, you're gonna be hanging out with another team!  The best team that there is!”         “I am?”  Rainbow Dash blinked, the wheels in her head briefly turning slower than those of the foal in front of her.  She snapped out of it.  “Of course!  I am!”  She smirked.  “I may be captain of the working pegasi around here, but the Wonderbolts are bound to make me a frickin' admiral once they get a load of my tricks!”         Scootaloo nodded furiously.  “And who better for them to induct than the Best Young Flier, huh?”         “Y-You bet!”  Rainbow Dash stood tall and proud, her blue wings stretching.  “After this weekend, every pony in Equestria is gonna be cheering my name!  The Wonderbolts would be losers not to make me a member of their team!  Especially after I perform the Sonic—”         “Rainbow!” a voice rang out from above.         “Nnngh!”  The blue mare jolted where she stood.  Her wings snapped tight to her ribs in a pathetically pensive gesture.  She exhaled, relaxed, and frowned upwards.  “Now you say my name loud!”         “I'm sorry,” Fluttershy murmured, hovering limply towards the two ponies. “I wasn't sure if you would hear me if I wasn't assertive with my volume.”         “Where was that gusto earlier when you were practicing your cheers?”         “Uhm... You told me to work on 'lots of control' and 'passion.'  You said nothing about 'gusto'.”         “Nnnngh...”  Rainbow Dash ran a hoof over her face.  “Fluttershy, you forgot 'screaming and hollering.'”         “Mmmm... I was hoping you'd forget that,” Fluttershy bit her lip and rubbed her forelimbs together demurely.         Rainbow gazed down at Scootaloo with a tired grin.  “You see the kind of fluff I have to put up with?”         “I don't think it's all that bad,” Scootaloo uttered.         “Why, hello there, Scootaloo,” Fluttershy said, smiling warmly from above.  “My, your mane is looking cute and sparkly this afternoon—”         “Fluttershy, for real.  You've got—like—a billion pets in your cottage,” Rainbow Dash droned.  “Don't crowd in on mine.”         “Oh, I apologize.”  Fluttershy shrunk into herself and hovered a little higher.  “I really don't like crowds.  I'll be waiting for you at the edge of town.”         “Yeah, uh, I'll be with you in a minute.”  Rainbow Dash gulped, kneading the ground with her hooves as she gazed slowly and forlornly towards the edges of Ponyville.         Scootaloo blinked.  She raised an eyebrow.  “Dashie?  Aren't you... Aren't you gonna be late to the admittance process if you don't fly to Cloudsdale soon?”         “Oh.  Eheheh... I'm leaving, alright.  I'm just being chillaxed about it, y'know?”  She took a deep breath and flapped the last bit of dust off her wings.  “Besides, the only pony who gets herself worked up over being late is Twilight, and she's not gonna be there.”  She exhaled again, gazing numbly towards the northern horizon and the hazy shape of the pegasus' city looming in the distance.  “It's just gonna be me and Fluttershy... after all...”         The little filly blinked at her.  She smiled gently.  “Your friends know how loyal you are, Rainbow Dash.  I'm sure they all want to be loyal right back at ya.”         “Hmmm... Too bad not all ponies can make the impossible happen,” Rainbow Dash said.  She bit her lip, then added, “Easily, I mean.”  She glanced down and gazed at Scootaloo.  It was a look of pride.  “Some ponies have got it made from the start, even when they're alone.”         Scootaloo felt her heart skip a beat.  Her tail flicked as a warmth flushed over her upper body.         Rainbow Dash smiled in the sunlight.  Her expression melted as she cleared her throat, flapped her wings, and bolted straight for the northern horizon.  “Enough standing around.  I better hurry and knock the horsehoes off of all Cloudsdale so I can get back in time to stop my weather team from leveling Ponyville to rubble.  Kick their butts for me if they get out of line, squirt!”         “I'll try—”         “Uh uh!”  Rainbow Dash cawed from the heavens like a blue falcon.  “Either kick butt, or kick no butt!  There is no try!”         “Heeheehee—I'll keep that in mind!”         “I don't care if you keep that in stomach!  Just stay frosty!”  The blue pegasus was gone.         Scootaloo exhaled long and hard, leaning against the body of her metal tray.  She fumbled with the goggles in her grasp before gazing down at them.  The foal saw her reflection, her two bored eyes, and then—with far less approval—she angled the lenses so that she saw the image of her two stubby, useless wings.  Sorrowfully, she cast a gaze back up towards the northern horizon where the bodies of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had disappeared.  Cloudsdale was a distant shadow, a heavenly silhouette of awesomeness that the filly could only dream about, that she was doomed to miss out on during that weekend of all weekends.         Sighing, she strapped the goggles loosely over her head like a canvas crown.  Turning about-face, she kicked at the earth and glided herself and the tray beyond the edge of Ponyville.         Scootaloo's metal tray slid to a stop against a brown wall of the barn.  With a creaking of wood, the little filly climbed the ladder up to the upstairs loft.  She ascended and trotted over to her little sleeping corner.  Lethargically, she grasped her hooves onto a suitcase and opened the thing.  Scootaloo dropped the goggles inside, burying the thing from sight until its rightful owner returned to the suddenly colorless village.         The orphan was about to close the suitcase back up when her violet eyes were caught on something.  Reaching in, she clasped a tiny paperback novel in her grasp.  Opening the book on werewolves, she flipped to the middle of the tome.  The faded image of her parents appeared once more before her.         Scootaloo took a deep breath.  Life, for all of its hardships, wasn't too terrible of a thing.  It was the tendency for things to be sapped from life—warm, happy, and glorious things—that made existence occasionally too painful to bear.  Scootaloo's scant seven and a half years were littered with the abysmal gaps left behind in the absence of ponies, prosperity, and opportunities—all things that the filly knew she would miss forever.         The orange foal shut the novel and hugged the book to her chest.  With a deep breath, Scootaloo gazed skyward.  The ceiling of the world was painted with the same color as Rainbow Dash's coat.  Everytime she gazed upwards on a cloudless day, she was blessed with a reminder of the coolest equine in existence.  Still, even there, alone under the shanty roof of the dilapidated barn, she suddenly couldn't settle for a tropospheric facade of the real thing.  The skies of Equestria were about to shimmer with the awesome glory of the Best Young Fliers Competition.  For Scootaloo, it only meant another grand opportunity that she was going to miss.  It meant another abysmal hole in her life.         The little filly still didn't know when her foalday was.  Suddenly, that didn't matter.  She had it within herself to seize new opportunities worth marking anniversaries for.         With a devilish smirk, Scootaloo dropped the novel back into the suitcase, closed the thing up, and bounded over towards the rest of her meager belongings in the corner of the barn's loft.         An hour and a half later, Scootaloo had finished with her preparations.  She had a tiny saddlebag hanging over her body, filled with a compass, an old map of Equestria, a sleeping bag, and several sweets from Sugarcube Corner.  After tightening the canvas material over her blank flank, she kicked the metal tray out of from underneath the barn and immediately hopped onto it.         Smiling bravely into the dimming afternoon air, Scootaloo glided her way north, passing through the trees until the wide green fields of Equestria stretched before her.  She knew that it was slightly foolish to be starting the trip this late in the day.  She knew that a full night's rest followed by an early morning excursion would have been the smart thing to do.  However, Scootaloo wasn't pressured to do something wise.  She needed to be swift.  From all that Rainbow Dash had told her, the competition was barely a day and a half away.  Scootaloo had to hurry if she wanted to make it there in time... if she wanted to give her idol the surprise of her life.         Kicking and kicking against the soft earth, Scootaloo wheeled herself quickly northward, her eyes locked on the image of Cloudsdale hovering in the distance, like a beacon of hope.         “Haman!”         “Haman of Rust Blood!”         “Prime Rust-Bleeder, sir!  Please speak to us!”         “Strut Eleven and Eighteen are in chaos!  Are we next on the list?!”         “Will the Hex-Bleeders or Glass-Bleeders strike anyone else?!”         “Are all our women and children safe?!”         Several Rust-Bleeder citizens were gathered in front of a large, four-story building erected within the center of Twenty-One Strut's Alpha Level.  Imps of all sizes clamored their way towards the front of the crowd, shouting and pleading for the attention of the yellow-skinned elder who was presently hobbling up the steps to his luxurious abode under the guidance of Fredden and several other goblins.  A group of yellow-banded half-lings with rifles stood before the front of the entrance, acting as a living shield against the district's anxious population.         “Please, Haman!  We must know!”         “Is this the rebellion that you warned us all about?!”         “Where's my husband and son?!  They went on assignment and never came back!”         “Have you sent my brothers to battle the rebellion within Petra?!”         At the very top of the stairs, Haman paused.  He turned towards Fredden and leaned into the bodyguard's pointed ears.  After an exchange of mumbled words, Fredden adjusted his shades, faced the crowd, and waved his arms wildly.  The citizens of Twenty-One Strut collapsed into a nervous murmur as the bodyguard spoke out loud, “Your ever-faithful prime Rust-Bleeder is pressed for time.  The clan leaders of this impcity are in the process of establishing an emergency meeting to discuss the ramifications of the bloody feud that has transpired so many struts below.  Although Haman will be busy with attending to such negotiations, he has agreed to deliver a swift speech unto you.”         That said, Fredden shuffled back.  Haman stood as tall as he could, leaning against his cane as he gazed down at the many frantic and trembling imps.         “My fellow goblins, the madness of the Wasteland is always looking for new and horrid ways to seep into the magnificent society that we have established for ourselves here.  Since the Blight consumed the world, Petra has become something of dazzling beauty, a pristine example of goblin perseverance.  It is, of course, not without its enemies.  The selfishness in the black hearts of power-hungry goblins occasionally shows itself.  I believe that what has transpired between Glass Blood and Hex Blood is an example of grotesque ambition in the claws of irresponsible imps.  I knew Franken of Glass Blood; he was a good goblin and a hard worker.  I was proud of him, though I cannot say the same about his subordinates.  Stupid thugs: imps behaving like that with guns.”         Haman briefly shook his head with disdain, summoning a somber murmur from the crowd.  His ear-stalks drooped and his amber eyes glossed over sadly.         “I have been known to shed blood before,” he spoke gravely.  “But it was entirely in the name of integrity, to keep wayward imps from destroying all that Rust Blood has become.  What Franken's brothers have done is wage war cruelly and indiscriminately upon another clan.  They have done so in a barbaric and chaotic fashion, all without the integrity of a solid chain of command.”         A voice shouted forth from the crowd, “But they had reason to believe that the Hex-Bleeders had massacred their families!”         “Gremlin security teams say that they saw the Prime Hex-Bleeder at Eleven Strut!” Another imp exclaimed.  “Over a hundred Glass Blood laborers who went to work in the foundries there never came back!”         “But Devo and his troops were seen leaving the site unscathed!”         A loud commotion once more billowed through the crowd.  Fredden frowned and whistled for attention.  The many goblins briefly settled down.         Haman spoke, “While I cannot personally speak for what Devo has done, I can certainly account for what he has said in the past.”  His face did a rather poor job of maintaining a neutral expression, but none of the anxious souls attending appeared to have noticed.  “At every clan meeting for the past few years, the prime Hex-Bleeder has been notorious for spouting out words of eccentricity and then clouding them over by immediately denying any affinity for impcity rebellion.  It is quite possible that in a day and age when Petra is most fragile, the clan leader of Strut Eighteen has at last shown his true colors.  If this is what Franken of Glass Blood witnessed just before his dying breath, then I admire his silent courage as much as I mourn his grand legacy.  It is against the nature of a goblin to expose the sins of another before public scrutiny.  That Franken would die of such horrible means is a sign that, quite possibly, his partner with the Hex-Bleeders had run out of ways to conceal his family's deeper intentions.  But, as probable as all of these possibilities may be, I must declare them as purely speculatory, and I shall wait upon the council's decisions with a patient heart.  Whether or not it all justifies the blood spilled between Hex Blood and Glass Blood remains to be seen.”         “Haman!  Sir, what of our fellow brothers in arms?”         “So many of us are missing!  Are they on duty with Miss Ryst?”         “Has security been increased in lieu of all this chaos?!  Is that why the streets are empty of so many Rust-Bleeders?”         Haman raised his hand and eased the crowd with a gentle motion of his cane.  “Be at ease, my fellow goblins.  If you must know, yes, I've had to employ a great number of armed laborers in patrolling the impcity.  This is all in the name of protecting Hex Blood's interests.  Miss Ryst and her advisers have many of our brothers spread out throughout Petra to make sure that no more goblins fall from the feud between Hex Blood and Glass Blood.  This is why so many of you haven't seen your loved ones lately.  Rest assured, you shall all be reunited soon.”         “Oh, I very seriously doubt that,” a voice coldly emanated from the very rear of the crowd.  “An empty promise is still an empty promise.”         Haman blinked.  Fredden craned his neck to see the author of that voice.  He visibly cringed upon making eye contact.         The huge, stammering crowd swiveled around to see a four-legged creature standing in the middle of the district behind them, her frowning features bathed in golden lamplight.         “However, it does give him ample time to go through with plans of his own,” Scootaloo murmured aloud, her iron-wrought scarlets trained angrily on the prime Rust-Bleeder.  “Which I'm willing to bet is merely within a matter of days.  Is that right, Haman of Rust Blood?”         Fredden gulped.  To maintain composure, he barked at his fellow guards.  Every yellow-banded  imp within eyesight cocked their steam rifles and aimed at the last pony.  The pegasus icily reached back for her copper rifle, summoning a nervous hush from the crowd.         Haman cleared his throat.  After waving his cane, the many guards nervously lowered their weapons.  He paced a few steps down the front entrance of his headquarters and smirked in the equine figure's direction.  “And just what plans are those, sky stealer?  Forgive my lack of manners, but Devo's bizarre choice for an Outbleeder has a reputation that proceeds itself.”         “I imagine I do,” Scootaloo replied, glaring daggers from afar.  Her voice carried like so much steam and smoke hissing across the district.  “As my reputation has relied on sending bullets through the skulls and guts of the many assassins you've flung at me on Strut Eleven.”  Her brow furrowed menacingly as she gestured towards Fredden.  “Or have you already forgotten the many souls your lackey there has ill-responsibly sent to their deaths in a fool-hardy attempt to cover up your own crimes against impkind?”         The district exploded in an uproar.  Half of the goblins shouted and hissed angrily at the pony.  The other half murmured in shock and confusion.  Fredden was wincing, his pale brow forming beads of sweat.  Haman, in the meantime, was calm and collected.  He smirked as he strolled a few lasting steps down the entrance and leaned on his cane.         “Allow me to get this straight,” Haman said.  “The imps of Glass Blood perform a full-frontal attack on the property of Hex Blood.  Within hours of such a horribly bloody event, an Outbleeder representative of Hex Blood—a pony at that—marches up to the threshhold of my neutral domain and attempts to stain my hands with an atrocity that I had nothing to do with?  My dear sky-stealer, I am quite used to the many families within this impcity laying their troubles on my shoulders, but this is utterly ridiculous.”         “What's utterly ridiculous is that this goddess-forsaken city, with all of its politics and red tape, could actually allow you to get away with the murder of Franken of Glass Blood,” Scootaloo said, immediately causing several imps within earshot to gasp at the audacity of those words.  She didn't stop for an instant.  “Just what do you intend to get away with next, Haman?  I wonder, will it make even less Rust-Bleeders return home from whatever suicidal task you send them on for the sake of accomplishing your vile agenda?”         A wave of angry shouts, cat-calls, and shaking fists swarmed the last pony's way.  Several random objects and chunks of street trash were thrown at her.  She didn't bother dodging most of the debris.  Absorbing the crowd's anger and detritus with equal vigor, she spoke loudly above the roar of the district.         “You may be able to fool your many minions into worshipping everything you say or do, whether you're crippling the economy of those who manifest Petra or making underhanded deals with the likes of ogres—”         “Ogres?!”  Fredden suddenly spoke up.  His skull rattled angrily, forcing him to adjust his shades upon his face.  “How dare you?!  Haman of Rust Blood endured the torture of ogres just to stay alive and lead his family today—!”         “Shut your face, you mouth-breathing pile of garbage,” Scootaloo hissed up at the bodyguard in a cold voice that frightened away the jeers of those closer to her.  “You couldn't silence me with a thousand bullets yesterday, so don't pretend like you can make any more of a difference with your useless tongue today.”         Fredden bit his lip.  Just like that, the goblin with a hundred riflers at his beck and call shuffled into the shadows.  Sighing, Haman spoke above the drooping head of his subordinate, “Your accusations are quite colorful, pony.  I can see that Devo's eccentricity has infected you.  Surely you've heard that he was witnessed at the scene of bloodshed yesterday?  Or perhaps he had you in his violent employ upon such an occasion?”         The crowd roared all the louder in Scootaloo's direction.         She sliced fearlessly through it with a glare and a sneer.  “Don't assume I'm like all of your sychophantic pawns, Haman, ready to scarf down your bullcrap.  I was there, yes.  I was there in Strut Eleven yesterday.  I saw the leftovers of a massive project, a construction program that resulted in the manufacturing of countless kilograms of explosives, all of ogre design.  Whatever the purpose of such an endeavor, it took the death of Franken to preserve it, and it took dozens of your hired hands dying while trying to kill me, hoping that they could bury me along with him.”         The population of the district was no less noisy, but many of the voices were cast in a crossfire of momentary confusion and doubt.  It took Haman's authority to redirect the anger back at the pegasus.         “So you don't deny that you were responsible for the deaths of many Rust-Bleeders, pony?”         Scootaloo gritted her teeth.  “I did what I had to do in order to stay alive and expose—”         “Expose what?!” Haman balked.  “The truth that my brothers and sisters defended themselves to the bitter end against Devo's most bizarre ally yet?!”         Several citizens who hadn't seen their loved ones in days immediately sobbed and collapsed at those words.  Several more growled and angrily marched towards the pony as the entire district rose in volume around the equine's guilty figure.         Haman went on, “Or perhaps you've come here to answer for the death of Darper, one of my closest advisers, who leaves a wife and child at home to manifest Petra on their lonesome?”  He smirked, having to practically shout over the rising cacophony of a restless mob.  “You come here, sky-stealer, laying bold and factless accusations upon my head, and yet you are a creature of the Wasteland.  You are born unto violence and tempered by it, whereas I have only ever sought to justify my own honor through minimal bloodshed in this great oasis granted us by Petra.”  Haman shrugged, gesturing with his cane while smirking like he suddenly owned the universe.  “Some of us only want to maintain structure and order, the very foundation of business, while radical idealists like Devo think that Petra must undergo a change.  Well, I've known that goblin for a long time, and I have no shame in admitting that he has long overstepped the boundaries that he's become far too demented to respect in his age.  I fear that it has cost him both his assets and his life.  I have it within me to respect the consequences of his folly.  Do you have it within yourself to know a loss cause when you see it, Wastelander?”         The line of angry goblins drew closer and closer to Scootaloo.  She did not budge.         The last pony shifted her backside, feeling the weight of her copper rifle.  Somewhere far below, Devo was bleeding to death.  Somewhere far deeper, Rainbow Dash's remains lay hidden in a heap of all of yesterday's colorless years piled up on top of one another.  Nothing in life was ever simple, and for a brief and heart-throbbing moment, all bloody roads led to the fragile skull containing Haman's sniveling smirk.  “Don't preach to me about lost causes, Haman,” Scootaloo said, feeling her own blood turn cold.  It was queerly thrilling, something that she hadn't felt in months, for the warmth of green flames had almost incubated something decent and civilized within her.  Suddenly, blissfully, all of that was wanting to peel away, like dead skin rejoining the ash of the Wasteland.  “You're tempting me to teach you a thing or two about losing a head.”         The crowd briefly jolted upon that last statement.  The many guards flanking Haman reached for their steam rifles once more.  The prime Rust-Bleeder in question merely smiled.  “Oh, how charming.  Is that threat, sky-stealer?”  His gnarled fingers gripped tighter around the transparent globe atop his cane.  “Because the only reason you haven't been reduced to a bullet-ridden corpse on sight is due to the fact that there is still honor to be had in my district, and it respects that bandanna on your head more than Devo and all of his self-destructive tendencies as of late.”         Scootaloo was hardly aware of the smirk until it was already spreading across her face.  It felt in a way like falling from a great windy height, only this time she wasn't desperate to catch anything... or anyone.  She would drop herself if she had to, the grin on lips was that paralyzing.  “Oh, is that all it is?”  She reached her hooves up in a movement that made the thugs' knees tremble as much as their trigger-fingers.  “Then allow me to remedy that.”  She was already mouthing a runic command halfway through disrobing the Outbleeder article from her skull.  The bracelet of horns over her hoof sparkled and the magazine in her rifle was already glowing.         Just then, upon the brink of chaos, an impish figure rushed up and clasped Scootaloo's hooves from behind.  Several clawed fingers latched onto the bandanna, keeping it on her head.  The crowd murmured in mixed confusion and shock.  The last pony turned to look.  She immediately frowned.  “Raimony?!”         “Thanks for looking so grateful,” the daughter of Devo spat.  A vent of steam licked her brown hair from behind.  She twitched momentarily, but proceeded with lowering the pony's limbs down to the street.  “Father's gotten worse.  I want you to stop making yourself out to be a jackass here and go see him before it's too late.”         “I think I'll get a lot more done with Haman and his goons here,” Scootaloo said.  Her scarlet eyes narrowed.  “Or has it ever occurred to you that what happened to your father was more than the Glass-Bleeder's doing?”         “You wanna become extinct?!”  Raimony exclaimed, tossing her eyes towards the thick crowd and the angry squad of riflers lining the steps above them.  “Do it on your own time, in the Wasteland.  Right now, my family still needs you.  Alive.”         Scootaloo's nostrils flared.  She slowly glanced back at the crowd.  They hissed and spat at her like a sea of trolls.  Unlike trolls, however, they had waited for an excuse to tear her to shreds.  Scootaloo was briefly more encumbered by her own stupidity than she was invigorated by her own wrath.  Oddly enough, it was the thought of a young green goblin's muted sobs that finally shook her out of the frosty shackles of the moment.  With a sigh, she marched away from the crowd with a limp gait that underwhelmed the initial fervor with which she initially confronted them.         “You're doing the smart thing,” Raimony remarked, walking cautiously along with the pony.  “If I was in your place, I wouldn't pick ridiculously impossible fights while I still had the choice.”         “Keep talking,” Scootaloo droned.  “I'd rather hear your worthless drivel than theirs.”         “When you speak again with Devo of Hex Blood, Pony,” Haman's timely voice rang out from behind her, “Send him my condolences and respect, but most of all ask him a question I've meant to inquire of him since the last council meeting: 'Are we not goblins, even if half of us are corpses?'  It is most relevant in lieu of what's happened as of late, wouldn't you think?”         A few voices actually chuckled, scoffing at the equine figure as she walked away with the image of Devo's daughter.  As the last pony trotted further and further into the distance, the confused and agitated crowd gradually dispersed, leaving Haman behind along with Fredden and his other followers.  The smirk trailed away from the prime Rust-Bleeder's lips.  For the briefest of moments, he weathered a nervous grimace.  Shrugging a shiver of anxiety off his bony shoulders, he shuffled about and walked his frail way into the heart of his four-story dwelling. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         Scootaloo's hoof slapped angrily over a lever.  With a rattling jerk, the body of a tiny elevator car rolled down a shaft leading away from Strut Twenty-One.  The great golden body of Petra loomed above and below as the sighing pegasus stood limply in the company of the green-eyed goblinette.         “It would have been so easy,” Scootaloo muttered.  “Just one shot, just one bullet, and all the pretense would end.”         “And just who's skull is the subject of this rambling discussion?” Raimony asked, hugging her arms to her torso and shivering.         “Haman expects to get away with everything that he's done,” Scootaloo continued, her eyes distant as she murmured to the bulkheads of the shaking elevator car.  “I don't know what hurts more, that he's already done so much bad to Franken and Devo, or that he's going to do a heck of a lot worse and there's no way of proving it to all the families of Petra...”         “Hmmm.  A goblin who covers his tracks,” Raimony said with a nod.  “He's got the money and imp-power to do what he's been doing for years.  Just what do you have?  Hmm?  Loads of guns and a death wish?”         Scootaloo blinked.  Her brow furrowed curiously at both the choice and tone of Raimony's words.  She gazed up at the goblinette, squinting.  “And just what made you an expert on Wasteland guile?”         “The same as you,” Raimony hissed, her right-eye twitching.  “I was also there when the exploding world burned everything away but the baser shades of our strength and loathing.  Yes yes yessss...?”         Scootaloo snarled.  In a flash, she bucked Raimony upside the chin.         The goblinette violently flew back, her body impacting hard with the metal webbing of the elevator car's wall.  She couldn't move, for she suddenly had the barrel of a copper rune rifle extended against the nape of her neck.         “You!”  Scootaloo snarled, her eyes burning holes in the figure's blue skin.  “I tossed words and insults Haman's way, but all I really wanted was you.  Haman may have been the spirit behind all the bloodshed at Strut Eleven, but as soon as Devo told me that he was seen at the site, I knew it could only have been you who planted the seeds of discord.  It's because of you that Hex Blood is in shambles!  It's because of you that Devo's at death's door!”         “There are things far simpler than a bullet that can tip the scales of the wrecked world, four legs,” Raimony said.  Slowly, her blue skin turned to red under rivulets of unfolding scales.  Staring fearlessly down the sight of the pony's rifle, Razzar next murmured, “And yet, there are things far too fragile to ever bother tasting the kiss of such a necessary poison.  I can see past your anger and spit, my fellow sister.  You need not thank me.”         “Thank you?!”  Scootaloo growled.  “Since we've talked, I've nearly been riddled to death by Rust-Bleeder bullets and burned to a crisp by a gremlin lightning gun, and I'm supposed to thank you?!”         “Death has stalked you in many yellow shades these last two days, yes yes yessss.  But I was hardly an accessory to such boomer blasts, four legs.  If I was indeed an active participant in yesterday's bullet-flinging, I must say with little pride an even littler joy that you would be far too meaty to be angry at me right now.”         “Give me a reason to friggin' believe a shape-shifting snake in the grass like you,” Scootaloo icily said.         Razzar gazed placidly at her, adjusting her chin against the barrel of the unsmoking gun.  “Because you just asked me for a reason, four legs.”         Scootaloo blinked, exhaling slowly while contemplating that.         Razzar's eye twitched as she said, “Haman would be satisfied to see your guts join the stains of this dead world.  I would be satisfied with nothing but silver, for it is all business, you see.  The death of the last pony is profitable to no one.  Devo, on the other hand, is a necessary brick in the bloody wall that must go down in a matter of days.  Yes yes yesss.  The world has seen many Devo's, all idealistic, dreamy, and full of spit.  They perish in the great abyss of all boomers' hopes and dreams like ash across a hot plate.  But we are far from common creatures, dear sister.  When you and I die, so will the need to mourn things die us.”         Furiously, Scootaloo yanked her gun away.  She fumed while Razzar struggled to regain her gangly balance.  “What the heck is your deal?”  Scootaloo grunted, not once lowering her rifle as she glared across the moving elevator at the lizard woman.  “Is it within your blood to play two sides at once?  Why go out on a limb to keep me alive while doing so many things for Haman?”         “Must I remind four legs that I am a partner and not a servant?”  Razzar cracked a few kinks in her neck and picked at a molting shred of skin hanging off her shoulder.  “There are many things my life has taught me.  It's taught me:  'keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.'”         Scootaloo's eyes were narrow.  She was residually aware of the sight of her own reflection in the naga's green eyes.  “Can you even tell which is which anymore?”         “Hmmm... One meat you can eat, the other you can't stand to savor.”  She said with a fitful twitch as her grayer eye glazed twice over.  “When the world lost its color, the only thing real was my stomach.  My children became my first enemies; they would hardly be my last.”  She gulped and darted her tongue out before adding, “Now the only real thing in my life is a money pouch.  When my work with Haman is done, and our partnership is over, he will once again become as tasty as any other conniving body in the Wasteland that pretends to have a soul.  Mmmm... he would do well not to meet me again in the future.”         “You're nothing but a pestilence to this city,” Scootaloo said aloud.  Her grip on her rifle tightened as she tongued the edges of a runic word hanging off the precipice of her mind.  Regardless, she murmured on, “You're going to rip Petra apart.  You, Haman, the bombs—it's all amounting to a mountain of chaos.  It's already consumed South Blood, Glass Blood, and Hex Blood.  Sooner than later, it'll tear this whole impcity asunder.”         “A pony's spit is always spot on.  Believe it or not, I'm old enough to remember that about your kind,” Razzar said as she gnawed on the back of her knuckles and gazed sideways at the pegasus.  “Hmmm... Even when you're poetic, you're bound by truth.  Yes, Petra is doomed.  What remains to be seen is if this is really a deterrent to such a darling sister.  Tell me, four legs, what is simpler?  A crusade to end one of many goblins, or a collapse that will wipe out all goblins?  The former might open a path to your goal, but the latter is the only true way to eliminate the barrier that stands between you and the pits.”         “I'm not a murderous psychopath like you,” Scootaloo exclaimed, frowning.  “I'm bound by honor, by a contract with Devo—”         “And what business is an impossible contract, four legs?  Devo provides you very little, Haman provides me a lot, but only the oblivion of tomorrow provides all,” Razzar remarked.  She gulped and murmured in a sickly voice, “Must I remind you that we were both born to be lost causes?  Every day since the death of all things has been an endless repetition defeat.  The only victories are shallow accidents at best.  Scavengers are made by the weight of the corpses available to them for pilfering.  Why be so swift to stop death when it is our only trustworthy companion in the Wasteland?  Hmmm?  I told you to be patient, four legs.  I hope you had realized that the best business to be had in Petra was one that required twice a scavenger's restraint and half a warrior's spirit.  And just what did you do, regardless?  You marched into the meat of Fredden's and Haman's minions, and you barely marched out without becoming meat yourself.”         Scootaloo took a deep breath.  Slowly, painfully, she lowered the barrel of her rifle, all the while keeping a frown locked onto Razzar's face.  “The only reason things are impossible in this world, Razzar, is because we haven't bothered to see it all through yet.”         “Truer and truer spit, four legs, yes yes yesss...”  Razzar squinted at her from an angle.  “And do you remember the first time you did something impossible?  I mean truly impossible, to survive?”         Scootaloo's eyes twitched.  She stifled a foalish whimper.  She searched and searched the vestiges of her mind, but she was suddenly incapable of dredging forth the colors of the rainbow.  Standing there with only the shedding skin of Razzar to separate the two souls, she could think of nothing but gray shadows.         An eleven year old Scootaloo was in the middle of hacking away at a useless pike of wood with her shiv of troll teeth when she heard something moving behind her.  Wings twitching in fright, the emaciated little pony spun about.  Her eyes quivered desperately with the effort it took to keep the sunken ruins of Cloudsdale in focus.  Everything had become a blur to her starving, witless soul.         Still, from the side of her dilapidated camp, she thought she saw a movement.  As she waited patiently, her ears took in the sound of a rustling noise, of small limbs scurrying through the powdery rubble of the pits.  Gulping, she laid her tools down and marched down a hill of debris, squinting and gazing hard into the Cloudsdalian detritus beyond for a better look.         Something bounded away in the distance, paused, then looked back at her.  Scootaloo's heart skipped a beat, neither joyous nor frightened.  She slowly crept further toward it.         “It is hardly a rewarding thing, is it, four legs?” Razzar hissed bitterly.  “For us to do that which was once impossible?  Even if that very reward is the sanctity of our putrid lives?”         Scootaloo was sweating hard.  With each passing second that she stared into Razzar's face, the naga's right eye appeared cloudier and cloudier, like a twitching ball of white fur.  Scootaloo ran a hoof shakily over her brow, gulped hard, and murmured, “What... Wh-What exactly are you trying to tell me...?”         “Simply that it is impossible to kill you, four legs,” Razzar murmured as the elevator slowed in its descent, lowering the two towards the body of Strut Eighteen.  Her twitches had dwindled to a sad quivering of dry lips as she stared long and hard at the pegasus.  “In all my lonely years, I've slaughtered heaps of meat across the Wasteland: boomers, trolls, dogs and ogres.  But you?  You are twice the spirit and half the spit, four legs.  Killing you would be my first murder in decades, and I think the two of us deserve a lot more color than that would allow.”         Scootaloo exhaled long and hard, pulling her hoof down her pale face to stare back at the mercenary.         The drying figure twitched one last time and uttered, “Let boomers be boomers.  This stopped being our world a long time ago.  Boomers are too young or demented to know the colors we did.  They can't wake up to the fact that every day is a funeral.  Hmmm... yes yes yes...”  She pulled her clawed hand up to the lever and yanked it.  The elevator halted, and the doors rattled open.  She cast a final glance at the last pony.  “I do believe this is where we get off.”  As soon as she said that, her skin peeled over and blended with the metal bulkheads, and she was once more lost amidst Petra.         Agan, Scootaloo was alone.  Even if Razzar's words echoed and rattled through her skull until the end of her days, she would remain as alone as the naga was.  When she walked out onto the Alpha Level of the Hex-Bleeder's platform, her hoofsteps were loud and ringing things, like thunder, and pegasus no longer had the strength to scare the lightning into hiding.         The last pony trudged through the wreckage of Cloudsdale, limping.  There were no goblins.  There were no trolls.  There was only her and the bright shape darting ahead.  Slowing her gait, the last pony crouched low in the rubble, momentarily becoming one with it, hiding.  It took all her strength not to surrender to exhaustion right there.  Every moment that passed, she imagined that her next fit of slumber would be her last.         With a firm jolt to all her muscles, the pegasus forced herself back onto her hooves.  She rounded a hill of debris, and finally stumbled upon that which she hadn't realized she was pursuing until she saw it.  A tiny, one-eared rabbit looked back at her, almost as lifeless and starving as she was, and upon a shared glanced the bunny slowed down to an icy lurch in a way that Scootaloo's pounding heart suddenly refused to.         “There were so many of them, prime Hex-Bleeder.  My brothers and I fought them off.  I ordered my very own son to shoot and kill.  When the attackers all fell, I took it upon myself to count the dead.  They were children, Devo.  They were childen, and I had no other choice but to fight them back and evacuate the steam pits.  We've lost the extraction point, prime Hex-Bleeder.  It was all I could do to get our brothers and sisters on board the train before our lives were forfeit. By Dimming's Blight, how did it all come to this?”         “Shhh...” A trembling blue hand rose up to cup the edge of Matthais' pained face.  The pale elder knelt beside Devo's cot, opposite to where Warden and Raimony were perched.  The blue clan leader with dreadlocks managed a weak smile.  “Old friend, you did what you had to do.  You protected your family, and my family, as well as all other souls that dwell within my authority.  There are many goblins safely hiding inside the stalk right now who owe their very existence to you for what you've done.”         Matthais gulped, his expression locked within a perpetual grimace.  “I have only ever wanted to win your respect, Devo.  But now, after all that has happened, I feel that is not enough to p-purge my soul of the blood I've spilled.  Each year that passes, the burden gets worse and worse.  How can I ever be pure enough to manifest Petra when it all boils down to this?”         Devo summoned the strength to gaze passionately up at his ally.  “It is beyond even the mightiest of clan leaders to absolve an imp's soul of its sin.  I can only hope to strip you of your self-doubt.”  He swallowed and weathered a wave of pain.  “Please be strong, Matthais of Teeth Blood.  I may yet depend on your courage and tenacity a little longer...”  He added with a cheekish smile.  “As clumsy as it may be at times...”         Matthais smiled back, breathing in a confidence tempered by decades.  He clasped Devo's wrist with two hands and breathily said, “I have and shall always owe my life to you and all of your Hex-Bleeders.”         Devo slowly nodded.  “Of that I am forever grateful, old friend.”  He squeezed Matthais' grip in his.  “Go and see your family before the stormfront comes to provide the enemy another ambush.  For I fear we may be in for another Dimming.”         Matthais swallowed, nodded, and stood up.  Just as he shuffled out of the office, he nearly bumped into the icy gaze of a pegasus.  The two old souls briefly stared at each other, suddenly too jaded to maintain a hatred that was older than time.  Matthais shuffled out past the guards outside of Devo's room, and Scootaloo slowly trotted in.         Warden's ears wiggled upon seeing her.  Nevertheless, the youngster sat beside Devo, sympathetically holding the elder's other hand as he lay there attached to the breathing apparatus.  Raimony stood a few paces away, arms folded, keeping an emotionless distance that her face was gradually betraying with hard, quivering lines.  All three imps stared up at the last pony as she entered.         Devo spoke first.  It was a raspy, wheezing effort through his breathing tubes.  “My daughter implied that you had gone to see Haman personally.”  There was another wheeze.  The elder stirred on the cot and spoke on, “Since you're back in one piece, I imagine either you've changed your mind, or I should now be worrying about the Rust-Bleeders rushing in our front doorsteps with as much bloodlusting vegeance as the Glass-Bleeders.”         “Devo...”  Scootaloo started, then stopped.  Wincing, she glanced over her shoulder and gazed at the doorway through which Matthais had departed.  Looking back down at the imp, she sat on her haunches by his cot-side and murmured, “I need to ask you something...”         “I've gotten word from many other families,” Devo said weakly with a pinch of enthusiasm.  “In spite of all of the hateful words spreading around, the majority of the other clans are voting to hear me out at the next council.  Still, I'm afraid that I will not be in the best of shape to attend a meeting in the next few days, but Raimony most certainly can speak on my behalf.  Perhaps you can assist her.  As Outbleeder, you've managed to win the respect of several prime bleeders who hold a great deal of distrust in Haman.  That's quite a remarkable feat, all things considered”         “Devo...” Scootaloo's ears flicked slightly as she bent over to murmur towards his bruised skull.  “Is what Matthais said true?  Do you no longer have access to the inner pits of the sky marble extraction mines?”         “Now pony...”  He raised a hand to touch her forelimb.  “We mustn't give up hope.  I know things are grim, but I believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that Petra can still blossom in this day and age—”         “Devo, don't get philosophical.  Don't get sappy.  And, most of all, do not coddle me like...”  Scootaloo winced, but said it anyways.  “...like a charity case.  Just give me a straight 'yes' or 'no' answer for once in our tragic lives.  Can you get me into the pits anymore after all that's happened?”         Devo gazed up at her, his copper eyes blinking.  He ran a hand up to his mouth's apparatus.  Raimony stirred briefly to stop him, but halted as soon as he breathed evenly with the tubes removed from his throat.  His voice was low and steady, like he was delivering a eulogy.         “No, Pony.  I cannot get you into the pits.  Whatever power I did have is gone now.  Even if Raimony and I salvage what reputation I have left in the next few meetings, I fear the repercussions that Hex Blood has suffered are far too great.  I simply... c-cannot get you safely to where you need to go.  It... it is impossible...”         Scootaloo took a long breath.  Her eyes dulled like the dead metal walls around them.  “When I came here, Devo, and I came to work for you, I had a goal in mind—”         “And we can still accomplish that goal, pony!”  Devo wheezed, pointing at her with a weak hand.  “Yes, it will take time, and it will take much faith and perserverence, but I have hope that it can be accomplish!  For you and for the future of Petra!  I... I still have something to give you, pony—”         “No, Devo,” Scootaloo softly said, shaking her head.  “You have nothing to give me anymore.”  Her nostrils flared.  In a somber breath, she raised her hooves to her head, removed the blood-stained bandanna, and laid it down beside his cot.  “Our business is over.”         Devo was silent.  Raimony blinked.  Warden's jaw had dropped in shock; he looked ready to burst, but he couldn't summon the breath to do it with.         Scootaloo stood up slowly.  With a shrug of her shoulders, she turned around and walked out of the room.  In the middle of the shuffling trot, however, she coldly droned over her flank.  “Come along, Wart.”         The teenager jolted at that.  He gave both Raimony and Devo guilty glances, gulped, and hobbled after the pony.  “Sc-Scootaloo?!  But... B-But where are we going?!” ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         The last pony was halfway down the stairs from Devo's office when Warden caught up with her.  “What was that all about?!  Aren't we going to help Devo?  His family's going through heck cuz of what Haman's framed him with and you're just gonna leave—”         “We're done here,” Scootaloo muttered.  “Are you working for him or are you working for me, kid?”         “Well, uhm, y-you, but—”         “Then follow me.”         A pair of foosteps marched out of the office, followed by a loud whistle.  “Hey!  Pony!”  Raimony frowned from up high.  “Before you utterly ditch my father after all he's done for you, would it kill you to have your last words to him be something of gratitude?!”         Scootaloo briefly stopped in her tracks.  Legions of nervous Hex-Bleeders paused in the middle of their recovery tasks to watch the awkward scene.  The last pony lingered in silence, delaying a response.         Raimony spoke again.  “All these days you cavorted around the platforms, you did so under our family's banner.  Sure, it wasn't exactly a walk in the park, but how long do you really think you would have lasted with only your own blood to answer for, Outbleeder?”         “I'm no outbleeder,” Scootaloo murmured, not bothering to look up at her.  “I'm a 'glue stick', and you are an imp.  It's always been that simple.  My only mistake was pretending for a few days that it wasn't.”         The goblinette folded her arms and practically snorted.  “Well, good luck prancing out into the wide desolate yonder as you look for any other family crazy enough to spare you from bulletfire, pony.”         “Thank you.  I won't.”  Scootaloo marched off.         Behind her, Warden nervously flashed a look between her and the Hex Blood goblinette above.  He flung apologetic glances every which way before awkwardly scampering after his four-legged companion.  “Scootaloo!  Please!  Wait up!”         By this time, Raimony was fuming.  She tried to walk away, to shrug the thought off her shoulders, but it eventually exploded out of her mouth and echoed across the walls of the bloodstained warehouse, shivering her subordinates to the core.  “You actually came close to making friends in this place, glue stick!  It was impossible, but you did it!  Always remember, my father didn't throw that gift away!  You did!”  When no response answered her loud cry, she frowned and kicked a nearby railing with a resounding clang.         “Sc-Scootaloo!”  Warden ran until he caught up with the pegasus' furiously marching body.  “Come on!  Don't do this!  Devo's in a bad place now!  His entire family is!”         “Yes,” Scootaloo nodded as they passed a bullet-ridden barricade and trudged onto the blood-stained streets of Strut Eighteen's Alpha Level district.  “That's rather unfortunate.”         “Unfortunate?!  It downright sucks!  Don't you think we owe it to Raimony and her dad to see this whole thing to the end?!  I mean, we were the ones in the center of all the havok in Strut Eleven!  We have as much a part to play in all of this as Haman and his goons do!”         “I don't owe Devo anything,” Scootaloo muttered, gazing straight ahead no matter how much Warden anxiously bounced around her.  “Not so long as he has nothing to give me,” she droned in a distant voice.  “It just isn't proper business—”         “Nnngh!”  Warden suddenly skidded to a stop in front of the last pony, blocking her path.  “Why is everything all about business with you all of the sudden?!”         “Wart, it's always been about business with me!”         “Really?!”  His aquamarine eyes hardened into green marble.  “Was giving me a flight around the monotrail train about earning silver?!  Did you save me time and time again in Strut Eleven just for payment?  Was it business when...”  He sharply inhaled, and those eyes lost their strength just as swiftly as he had summoned them.  “...when you showed me what it means to feel for all that I've lost?”         “Warden, right now, I just want to get out of here,” Scootaloo said, gazing down at him for the first solid time since they exited the Hex Blood headquarters.  “And I want to take you with me.  I want to take you someplace safe, someplace where you won't be under the gun by imps of like-blood who only want to prove how angry they are to one another.”         “And just where would you take me?!”  Warden shrugged wildly.  “Where in the Wasteland would I be safe?!  At least safer than you ever are, Scootaloo?!”         “I don't know—”         “Have you even thought this through—?”         “I said I don't know!”  Scootaloo barked, marching past Devo.  “Anywhere but here!”  She slowed to a stop, paling as she heard her own words come out.  “Anyplace will be safer than here in the next... few... days...”         The silence that followed was accentuated by the ghostly stillness of the battle-strewn street around them.  Warden slowly paced around, gawking up at the pony.         “You...” He murmured.  “Y-You say that as if you know something, Scootaloo.  As if you expect something even worse to happen than all the crap we and Devo's family have witnessed...”         Scootaloo shuddered.  There was suddenly only one soul she could share this with, and it was standing next to her.  “In a little while—in a few days, or in a few weeks—I will no longer have to worry about struggling to get to my old friends' remains.”  She gulped hard, as if waking up to the confession this suddenly was.  “Because there won't be a Petra standing in my way, at least not like it is now.  Things will be... far simpler for me when that time comes.  So, as you can see, the sooner we leave this Celestia-forsaken city, the better.”         Warden gazed at her in disbelief.  The width of his eyes was only outmatched by the gape of his jaw as he strolled closer to her and asked, “Was it... Was it Haman who told you about this just now?”         “No...”  Scootaloo murmured, the scarlets in her eyes blending with the rust red of the stained world all around her.  Everything was hissing and steaming, like a giant brass giant that needed to fall over and die sooner than later.  “It was Haman's lackey, Miss Ryst...”  She added in a hollow breath, “Two days ago...”         “You...”  Warden clutched his hands over his chest, suddenly shivering, shivering hard.  “You kn-knew this since the day of the clan meeting?”  He gulped.  “And you didn't tell Devo...?”  His ears pointed back angrily as a frown poured across his face.  “You didn't tell me?”         “I wasn't sure if I wanted to believe it or not...”         “Liar!”  Warden suddenly shrieked, forcing Scootaloo to look at him.  “You weren't sure if you wanted to take advantage of it or not!”         “Wart... seriously, kiddo,” Scootaloo said with a shy.  “It's way too complicated to explain—”         “Uh uh!  No you don't!”  He stomped his foot down and seethed up at her.  “I may be young, but I'm not a complete idiot!  You were given an offer too good to refuse!  So you stuffed it in your back-pocket without telling me or the one goblin in all of Petra who was willing to help you get what you want!  Now that everything has gone super-crazy-ugly, you've decided to take the easy route!”         “It's not so much easy Wart, as it is simple.”         “I think you're just scared!  I've seen you face down entire firing squads, killer hovercraft, and leagues of Rust Blood assassins!  But now you're just scared, and it's lame!  Totally not frostbeams!”         “Please, kid,” Scootaloo sighed and ran a hoof over her throbbing temple.  “Enough with the whole 'frostbeams' schtick.  It was getting old even before I met you—”         “And just why did you bother to scoop me up off the streets to begin with?!  Huh?!  Or do you not remember?”  Warden folded his arms, frowning, seething.  “You said that a goblin gave you a second chance at life, and that he was giving it to you again.  And so, for your sake, for Devo's sake, you wanted to do something honorable!  You wanted to give back!  Whatever happened to that pony?”         “Wart, if I knew then what I knew now about all the stakes that I'd be in, I wouldn't have stuck my head into this whole matter to begin with!  There's no sense in it!  There's no profit in it—”         “Profit?!”  Warden's eyes bugged.  “Are you an imp or are you a pegasus?!  I thought you actually cared about me and all that was good to be had in this world!  What happened to you?  What happened to the last steward—”         “Nnngh—For the love of oats—Take a friggin' look around you!”  Scootaloo snarled, forcing the teenager to jump in place.  She swung a hoof around, accentuating the bloodstains, burn marks, and bullet shells littering the grimy lengths of the metallic platform.  “Do you see beauty?!  Do you see  birds or fruit trees or crystal-blue ponds of water?!  Huh?!”         “I... I-I...”  Warden nervously trembled.         Scootaloo's eyes flared as she sneered at him.  “This is not my world, Wart!  This is not what I was born to preserve!  I want to be a good pegasus!  I want to preserve a life that is full and rich and gorgeous—but it's too dang late for that!  There's just too much, Wart!  Too much filth, too much hate, and too much blood!  Not in any lifeless spot in the Wasteland, not in the smog-ridden horizons of twilight, not in the briars of gnarled thorns, and certainly not in this cancerous... bastardization of industry you call 'Petra' will I ever find something that's good and clean to uphold!  I want to shed light on the desolation of this world, but that is going to have to be a new world, Wart!  It will not be this—all of this—but something bold, incalculable, and unprecedented!  It has to become something else!  This whole mess all around us can burn for all I care!  What good did it ever do for me, or for you for that matter?”         “This bastardization happens to be full of my flesh and blood,” Warden said with a rising snarl, doing his best to weather the trembling anger coursing up through his petite body as he glared back at her.  “The imps here may have branded me, spit on me, and treated me like filth—but not once, even before you ever took me from the streets, did I give up on hope.  It's the same hope that you said the Wasteland shouldn't rob from me.  I've struggled to stay alive only because I've wanted to, Scootaloo, even in all of this mess, because someway, somehow, I want to do something that matters, that will make the manifestation of Petra worth it, that will excuse all of those painful months I've lived on my own after what was done to my parents and what was done to me!”         “Wart, you can give all you like to this grimey world, but you'll be hard pressed to find souls who will pay you back for all that you've done.  And even then, the only kind souls are dreamers with more words in their mouths than mettle,” Scootaloo said.  “I rightfully can't blame you, kid, for wanting to believe in more than what's there.  Years of being hungry and homeless has made the best of us delirious!”         “Oh shut up!”  Warden spat.  “What the heck do you care?!  You're just bitter!  All your life, you've only ever been one pony!  It's gotta be easy to give into desperation when all you've got to answer for is yourself!”         “Easy?!  Easy?!”  Scootaloo stomped her hooves right in front of Warden, flinging the gasping youth onto the ground.  She snarled down at him, almost spitting.  “What could you possibly know about desperation, you thoughtless, immature child?!  Am I bitter?!  Of course I'm bitter!  You try living your life like it's all that matters in the universe, forsaking anything and everything that you ever once held dear for the sake of continuing to be, no matter how despicable the act may become!  Do you really want to know what it means to be desperate, Wart?!  Because I'll tell you what it means!”         Scootaloo shuffled forward, her shaved mane hair bathed in twilight.  The dangling ruins of Cloudsdale hung above like a dark cloud, obscuring the next few seconds of breathlessness as she squatted down on her haunches, her lips pursed as she eased the shivers in her body to stillness.         The tiny rabbit stared at her, its body trembling, its nose wrigglingly anxiously.  It's one good ear twitched as the thing tilted its head from side to side, gazing at the pegasus from afar.         The last pony gulped.  Slowly, she smiled, a very empty thing, but gentle nonetheless.  Her hollow cheeks winced from the effort it took for her chapped lips to curve.  A pair of scarlet eyes narrowed, blood-shot and dry.  Peacefully, with the grace of a drooping flower, she reached her right hoof out at the rabbit's body.  The gesture was sincere, harmless, inviting.         Nervous, the bunny merely sat where it was, staring back for the next minute and a half.  Finally, after a stirring of its limbs, the starved creature shuffled and hopped weakly towards Scootaloo, its growling body desperate for something—anything—that this equine had to offer.  The distance between the two orphans of Cloudsdale dwindled, like the trickling of a river downhill to meet a lake, something so desperately natural.         Scootaloo grinned the entire time.  The closer the rabbit got, the filly's nostrils flared in a sudden heat.  She reached out further for the tiny creature with her right hoof.  All the while, her left hoof hung behind her flank, and in the crook of the brown limb was a hard, jagged rock.         “Being desperate means living each day by allowing another tiny piece of yourself to die forever!  It means being willing to get rid of all the warm parts of you that you once held dear, that you once believed in more than the need to believe itself!”         Scootaloo roared, her voice echoing across the metallic walls of the street.  Beneath her, a shivering Warden tried to scoot away from this sudden monster.  There was no escape, and he flinched at every thundering breath that came out of her.         “When there is nothing left to do but to live at all costs, you reach a point when you're not really alive.  You're a thought running off of the fumes of infernal mechanization, a device far colder and lifeless than this pathetic hunk of scrap you call Petra!  At least the goblins are accomplishing a spiritual objective when they build all of this stuff!  Do you really think it's all full of frostbeams when I plug a bullet into another living thing's head, Warden?!”         Scootaloo's shouting voice was changing in pitch, almost squeaking as a touch of hyperventilation squeezed through her strained vocal cords.         “A pony... a p-pony is never supposed to kill, Wart!  She's never supposed to kill... ever!”         Scootaloo's hoof twitched in time with the rabbit's trembles.  The two creatures came together softly, pliable skin against furry coat.  It was the first warm thing Scootaloo had felt in years.  As the trembling animal shuffled up and nuzzled the filly's forelimb, the pony felt a heartbeat that wasn't hers.  She remembered hugs she had shared, laughing breaths against her ears, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and so many smiles and faces that were about to dissolve forever.         The filly's mouth opened, as if to say something.  Perhaps it would have been a warning.         Nothing came out of her.  The rabbit hopped a step closer.  It was sniffing its way up the length of her forelimb, nuzzling the inside of her joint.  It was deathly ticklish.  Scootaloo suddenly wanted to sob.         Her stomach growled instead.         The rabbit froze instantly.  Scootaloo's eyes twitched.  Something move, something jolted, and suddenly she was flying forward into the white froth of everything.  She felt the rock flinging from her numb hoof.  There was something trembling underneath her, something pathetically tiny and as empty as she was.  Scootaloo hissed and clambered for an even hoofing.  She was smacked in the face with one good foot.  Her world spun.  The rabbit was bounding away in a white streak.         There was a howling noise, but there were no trolls.  Scootaloo had lunged forward and was gripping the rabbit by its waist.  It shrieked, loud and shrill.  Scootaloo never knew rabbits could make noises before.  She had to silence it.  First, it was one hoof, then it was two, then she was exchanging blows, each of them increasingly wetter than the last.  Something white poured from the thing's bloody mouth and sliced across her hoof.  Scootaloo winced, slipped, and the rabbit broke free.         It had barely made one bounce when the last pony flung the whole of her weight on it, shoving down against the quivering mass, prying her entire being into the nape of its neck.  It squirmed and kicked against her.  Scootaloo wanted to scream, but she fought it at the last second.  The result was a demonic snarl, hissing out the blistery lengths of her mouth as she squeezed and squeezed the little thing tighter beneath her, until she felt something snapping, something crackling, and slowly—far too slowly for her to believe—its spasms ended, and it draped like a deflated white balloon against the jagged marble below.         All was silent once more.  It had always been quiet.  The only thunder was between Scootaloo's ears.  The pony stared off into the pit of the wasteland, rising a sudden wave of nausea as she realized that there were no shivers to be had in the meat beneath her.  Gradually, like a deflating flower, she tilted her head down and unfolded her hooves.  Her face melted, pale and waxen, like runoff from the exorcism of all that was good in her life.         The little pegasus bent over, bowing a quivering face against the body of her first victim, as if hoping to breathe life back into that which she had just robbed.         “There was once color in this world, Wart.  And it wasn't all red,” Scootaloo murmured as a paleness washed over her brown features.  Her eyes glistened briefly with the dead wastes of Petra around her.  She took one deep breath, a long blink, and then she dried back to stone.  “I know this because I was born there.  And though my life wasn't entirely full of fun and games before the Cataclysm... it was only after, when I came to terms with what I had to do to be what I am, that the world stopped having colors for me.  Maybe you can't see that Wart.  Maybe you're lucky enough that you'll never tell the difference.  I don't know, and I don't care.  But if I can carry you away from it all before you have a chance to witness it, then that's the one good thing I'm capable of doing for this world.  Everything else is lost, and even all of Equestria's long legacy of flying stewards couldn't do anything to salvage what I alone am a witness to.”         She swallowed hard, let loose a long breath, and extended a hoof towards him.         “I... I'm sorry for yelling.  I... I just need to get back to the Harmony.  Please, Wart.  Come with me.  I can take you far, far away from here.  I can even find you a place to stay with a friend of mine named Spike.  He can... yes, he can watch over you while I... while I come back here to get what I need... when the time is right...”         The street was silent.  She waited for his response, but gone none.  Staring down, she saw the brightness fleeing from his eyes, giving way to brimming tears as he stared up at her.  Finally, he spoke, and it was a sputtering thing, as if he had just been dashed against rocks.         “You say everything is lost?”  He gulped and stammered, “I would rather be lost than live all my years with you.”         Scootaloo sharply lost a breath she wasn't aware that she had.  She choked on her voice in order to regain it.  “Wart, please.  I... We don't have to be alone...”         “But we are alone, aren't we?”  He murmured, hugging himself as a brown phantom once did the day before.  Slowly, he stood up and stared at her from several growing kilometers away.  “Would it be any different, ever?  Would you at least try to salvage something from what's happened here?  Won't you go back to Devo or talk to Haman or... or...”         “Wart... I can't—”         “I don't want to be alone either, Scootaloo,” Warden murmured.  His face was courageously still as tears rolled down his cheeks.  “But what choice do I have, if I'm the only one who has hope for this present world?  Won't you please... please do something?  You're... you're so awesome, Scootaloo.  At least, I know you can be.  Can't you save us... save the imps... save me?”         Scootaloo's mouth hung open, and she felt as if something was melting against her tongue.  Her eyes twitched, and she stopped breathing long enough to stare into a bloody pocket of her mind.         Scootaloo sat at the edge of her fireplace before her niche, hugging herself.  It had taken three hours to start the flame.  It had taken another hour to so much as look at what she was roasting.  It was an hour wasted; she knew it.  The flesh was charred by now, but it was there.  Scootaloo was there.         Reaching a hoof forward, she grabbed a pike of wood and skewered a chunk of rabbit flesh off of the spit.  She raised it to her lips.  She shook and trembled as though she was diving into a sea of needles.  One last whimper, and her ghost was gone.  In its place, her mouth filled with burnt, bitter, but altogether edible meat.         Scootaloo exhaled long and hard, her ears drooping.  There were no more tears, no more shame.  Just one, all-encompassing sigh that buried her like she had once buried Rainbow Dash.  She finally said to Warden, “I am a scavenger Wart.  There is nothing I can do for this dying world of yours.  I can only steal from it.”  She swallowed hard and hung her head.  “I'm... I-I'm sorry, but anything else would just be impossible.”         Warden gazed at her in disbelief.  He was whimpering, and that whimpering turned into a heavy breathing, and that heavy breathing turned into a deep and furious fuming.  “It's only impossible because you won't bother to do anything about it!”         “Wart, please—” There was hardly any remaining ounce of sincerety in her voice.         “No!  I don't want to hear it!”  He shrieked and clenched his fists at his side.  He yelled at her, but couldn't bare to look at her.  His moist eyes were clenched shut as he howled, “You never cared about this world!  And you never cared for me!  All you can think about—all you freakin' care about is your stupid, dead friend!  Well you can have all your pony bones!  If you're not going to do something about this whole mess, then I will!”  That bravely screamed, the green goblin scampered blindly down the nearest alleyway available to him, once more a no-bleeder.  His branded tattoo flickered in the glow of a flickering lanternlight, and then he was gone, swallowed up into the depths of Petra like another piece of meat.         Scootaloo rode down the settling wave of his echoing footsteps.  When all was silent, she could hear nothing but the tremors in her breaths, and it felt horribly claustrophobic, as if she was still stuck in a pit that she couldn't claw her way out of.  There was a numbness to her spirit, a great black abyss that no soothing violin strings could coax her thoughts out of.  She should have marched her way back to the Harmony, but for some reason she couldn't.         With a lifeless shuffle, she strolled towards the far ends of the platform, her ears pricking to the crackling hiss of an oncoming stormfront, the only thing the last pony had left to measure her life by.         The fireplace had been put out.  All of the meat was gone.         Several paces away from the ruins of her camp, the last pony sat on a mound of rubble.  The stretches of sunken Cloudsdale loomed before her, pale and lifeless under the rays of twilight shimmering down from above.  Scootaloo's stomach was full.  She was nourished and alive, for what it was worth.         The Wasteland was still desolate and horrible.         The shaved pegasus stared limply out into the detritus of yesterday.  Her face hung in a perpetual grimace.  After everything she had done, with all the strength that had been restored to her, she still could not get the horrible aftertaste from her mouth.  If anything, she was five times as awake and healthily cognitive of what she had done to get to where she was.  There was no sleeping on it.  There was no falling unconscious.  Her eyes were still too dry to make themselves of any use.         With a deep breath, Scootaloo glanced down towards where she cradled the one and only treasure she could afford.  Quietly, she unclasped the white container.  Three feathers rested atop the velvet interior.  She could barely tell the difference between them and the perpetual grayness surrounding her.         The box snapped shut just as swiftly as she had opened it.  A stain had appeared across its immaculate exterior.  Glancing closer, she saw with greater clarity that the same juices that blemished her hooves from earlier had spread to the treasure.         Suddenly, the past was merely an idea, something only contained in the flimsy shells of a dead world, just like her brown body.         Scootaloo shivered, shook, then spasmed all over.  With a snarling shriek, she flung the white box off into the desolate nothingness.  It clattered off with a single echo, only to be replaced by another thundering noise—her noise.  Scootaloo was screaming.  Two years of pointless hope imploded in an instant, flowing bloodily out her mouth in one gigantic exhalation of supreme madness.  She collapsed to her knees and clutched the ground, falling into dry heaves and tearless sobs that ricocheted off the walls of the place, begging the heights of Cloudsdale to collapse on her.  Every troll in the Wasteland could have heard her cries, and still that didn't stop her.         She figured, if anything, that they would have found a new friend.         Scootaloo was alone in the great emerald plains of Equestria.  She glided north like a burning orange bullet as she pierced the lengths of the rolling landscape between Ponyville and Cloudsdale.  Her speed was a breathtaking thing, for any pony much less a young foal.  With each push her kicking legs gave the earth beneath her, she felt herself get closer and closer to the location of the Best Young Fliers Competition.  She felt herself get closer and closer to Rainbow Dash.         Sweating, the filly smirked to herself in mid-glide.  She tried to imagine the look on the blue pegasus' face when she showed up to watch her blow away the competition.  In a fit of bizarre pride, she almost feared that she might throw Rainbow Dash off her game.  Scootaloo pondered that it might be best to not reveal herself until after Rainbow had taken the prize.  She imagined the pegasus being raised in the hooves of all her colleagues, and then Scootaloo sauntering up to add to the cheers, and then the smile on the mare's face...         Scootaloo's heart skipped a beat.  Once again, all that mattered in the world was making such an awesome, prismatic savior proud of her.  In a life stripped bare of all voices but her own, Rainbow Dash's words sparked an energy into the filly's limbs that made the entire race against time worth it, be it a pursuit of living in the village of Ponyville, or this present dash across the fields of Equestria to reach Cloudsdale in time.         The day was dying.  The crimson bands of the afternoon dulled to a purple glaze as the cold embrace of night fell over the landscape.  Scootaloo didn't care.  If Princess Celestia fell into a coma and the Sun refused to rise for a week, even that wouldn't stop her from rocketing northward like the lightning bolt that she was.  The orphan was in a race against time, and she had no intention of losing.  She kicked against the earth and the world bowed beneath her, obeying the squeaking wheels of her metal tray as she made like a bright bullet for the hazy shape of Cloudsdale.         Scootaloo only slept because she felt like it, and even that was a very difficult thing to do.  Snuggling under the warm folds of her sleeping bag, the little filly munched on the last of half-a-dozen sweets that she had carried with her.  The metal tray was leaning against a tree, one of many in a cluster of vegetation dotting the side of a riverbank where Scootaloo had chosen to rest under the moonlight.         Far beyond the thin branches stretching above her, Scootaloo could make out the pearlescent glow of Cloudsdale.  The city of the pegasi shimmered in the glow of Princess Luna's celestial object.  Scootaloo wondered what Rainbow Dash was up to now, if she was having dinner with Fluttershy and talking about all of the amazing tricks she was going to pull off the morning before next.  Perhaps she was stopping by her old home and visiting her parents.         Scootaloo giggled.         Rainbow Dash's parents: the adult pegasus had never talked about them.  Scootaloo couldn't help but wonder what they were like.  They had to have been an awesome pair of ponies to have raised someone as spectacular as Ponyville's chief weather flier.  She wondered how proud they must have been of her child, and if Scootaloo could someday make ponies like them proud of her too.  Perhaps someday, when Scootaloo could afford a home of her own and a living that earned her infinitely more bits than pity, she would finally tell Rainbow Dash the truth, as she would tell everypony the truth.  Maybe then Rainbow Dash could tell her—could speak for her parents—in judging whether or not Scootaloo had finally done enough in her life to earn the pride of such colorless phantoms.         It was a very bitter thought to fall asleep to, but Scootaloo couldn't help but smile.  She was strong.  She knew that she was strong.  The whole bosom of Equestria—the veritably enormous globe of the world—was a blurring canvas meant for doing nothing but rolling beneath her wheeled tray.  Upon the day that Scootaloo learned to fly, she somehow didn't doubt that she could rocket her own naked body into space if she wanted.         The filly sighed warmly and curled her body inside the sleeping bag.  She shut her eyes to the night, for the darkness was but a prelude to an awesome morning.         After dawn, Scootaloo wasted no time.  Evoking memories of her foalish trip to Ponyville several months ago, the filly broke into an eager pace, blurring over the rolling plains of Equestria.  It was a far more difficult task than the evening previous.  The advent of midday rolled a rippling heat across the grassy landscape.  On top of that, the downhill glides Scootaloo engaged in were hardly rewarding her for the agonizing, uphill climbs the filly endured.         Regardless, she pressed on, her violet eyes straining to keep the image of Cloudsdale in the center of her vision.  With each hilly climb she made, kicking against the earth with foalish desperation, the sight of the pegasus city rising up over the next crest of soil made the whole exercise worth it.  In a joyous breath, she'd kick off from the hilltop, roll into a dip in the plains, and repeat the strenuous process... if only to see the hovering image of her distant goal yet again.         Every now and then, Scootaloo put her wings into it.  Beating the little feathery appendages, she shoved herself further atop the metal tray in order to navigate uneven ground or massively steep gaps in the landscape.  She did this sparingly, of course.  Listening to Rainbow Dash ramble on constantly about the proper ways of athleticism had taught the filly a thing or two about pacing herself.         All of this intense commitment to the success of her travels could have been a rewarding thing, but with each sweaty hour that dripped by, the filly was at a loss to receive any substantial payoff.  It occurred to her that with each glance she gave the floating city of Cloudsdale, the hovering metropolis didn't appear to be any closer.  A few fleeting, desperate thoughts entered her head.  Perhaps the city was so big, it looked no different there in the middle of Equestria than it did in the center of Ponyville.  Perhaps the city was actually on the move and was floating away from her.         Scootaloo desperately tried to shake those thoughts away.  She focused instead on the idea of Rainbow Dash devouring the cheers of a stadium full of pegasi, of the many Wonderbolts' jaws dropping, of Princess Celestia herself bearing witness to something so awesome in the sky that it put the Sun to shame.         However, these many thoughts—jubilant as they were in nature—barely soothed the sudden ache in Scootaloo's heaving lungs.  She knew that it would be a good idea to rest.  Before even setting forth on this gliding trip to the pegasus city, she figured that a few moments of pausing along her path would give her the recharge she needed to complete the journey of endurance.         As Scootaloo pushed forward and forward, all of her plans seemed suddenly pathetic, for Cloudsdale was looking no closer by mid-afternoon than it did right after dawn.  She realized that she didn't have time to pause for a break.  Her body would just have to get used to the endless rush.  If she was to make it to Cloudsdale in time for the Young Fliers' Competition the next morning, she would have to be something far more stupendous than an average filly.  She would have to be something super-athletic, super awesome.  She had to be like Rainbow Dash.         Her mane damp from the sweaty effort, Scootaloo gritted her teeth and pushed harder.  The squeaking wheels of her metal tray threatened to rattle right off.  She mentally dared them to stay in place as she kicked and kicked at the earth.  She wasn't about to let time be the boss of her.  After all this effort, she wasn't about to let down Rainbow Dash.         The late afternoon fell like a broken wind instrument.  Scootaloo's lungs were wheezing, and her breath came out in desperate little squeaks that mimicked the wheels beneath her.  For the past hour, the cross-country rush had dwindled into a painful lurch, and yet still she refused to stop even for an instant.  Anytime wasted meant missing the Competition, and Rainbow Dash's moment of glory.         As the horizon to her west burned a deeper and deeper red, Scootaloo feared that her aching body was the least of her concerns.  As she approached a thick cluster of trees directly in front of her path, she urged her limbs to push faster.  She had to make it to the crest of Cloudsdale's shadow by nightfall.  That's what she mentally told herself, and her limbs kicked and kicked at the earth with a greater urgency to see that goal through.         Scootaloo had avoided the dirt paths of Equestria.  She couldn't risk running into other ponies during her cross-country trip.  She had even spotted a few wagon-pulling equines during the journey, but she avoided their gaze by gliding beyond the blind spot of a flanking hilltop.  The filly feared that if any pony in her or his right mind saw her gliding across the valley atop her metal tray, they would take it upon themselves to drag her back to Ponyville “for her own good.”  Such an embarassing fate would risk exposing not only her pitiable desperation but her utter lack of parents to the entirety of the village.  Convinced of this, Scootaloo avoided all contact in order to prevent such a pathetic fate.  She kept her eyes locked on Cloudsdale beyond the immediate line of trees.         Then something distracted her.  In a weak twitch, Scootaloo wrenched her eyes off of the pegasus city ahead just long enough to glance over her shoulder.  She spotted a bright splotch hovering directly overhead.  A hot-pink balloon was flying northward, headed directly towards Clousdale.  The sight of such a thing soaring towards the pegasus city was hardly a surprise, only Scootaloo was caught off guard by the familiarity of the object.         “Say...”  Her violets narrowed as she panted and pushed against the earth.  “Isn't that Pinkie Pie's balloon?”  She blinked, for she saw another shape hovering alongside the object.  From a distance, it looked like a pegasus, only the flying pony's wings were large, webbed, and glittering majestically in the sunlight.  “What in the heck—”  Scootaloo's words dropped out from underneath her, for her entire body was dropping down from underneath her.         In a fitful gasp, Scootaloor realized she was falling.  She hadn't been looking where she was going.  To her horrific discovery, just beyond the bank of trees was a rocky drop in the earth.  She was suddenly plunging more than fifteen meters into a steep pit of tree stumps and scattered rocks.  The metal tray flew out from underneath her hooves as gravity consumed her, flinging her like an orange comet into the jaws of a bone-crunching fate.         Panicked, the little pegasus instinctually flapped her stubby wings.  She was not rewarded with flight.  At best, the last two ear-splitting seconds of her fall took on a diagonal spin as she spiraled from the flimsy lift her fluttering limbs afforded her.  She smacked straight into a tree, bounced off at an awkward angle, flew through one, two, three sets of snapping branches, and fell hard like a bag of rocks onto a mercifully soft patch of earth.  “Ooof!”  What wasn't so merciful was the waves of pain that shot through Scootaloo's body upon the whiplashing end of her collapse.  “Unnngh...”         With comical delay, a metal ringing noise alighted her twitching ears a solid second after she had landed.  Squinting forward, the foal gasped—not at her own anguish—but at the utterly horrific sight of her ruined metal tray lying on the ground ahead of her.  The object's fall had banged it beyond recognition.  Her trusted, beloved mode of transportation—the one thing that had taken her all the way to Ponyville to begin with—was now a mangled chunk of rust, bent at a forty-five degree angle, its wheels crooked and limp.         Already whimpering, the foal broke through a sudden rush of heartbeats.  She jumped to her limbs and made to scamper to the terribly trashed object.         She barely made it past a single hoof-trot.  “Aaaugh!”  She fell to the ground, wincing, clutching her rear left limb and quivering all over.  She squeaked with the waves of agony coursing through her.  Hyperventilating, Scootaloo held her eyes open long enough to see a thick, throbbing whelt forming beneath her orange coat just below the joint of her limb.         She wasn't sure just how bad the injury was.  She knew how bad it felt, granted, but the seriousness of the injury was barely enough to wake her from the blinding horror of her next realization: she was stuck in the middle of Equestria, halfway between Ponyville and Cloudsdale, and not only was her faithful mode of transportation wrecked beyond repair, but her leg was horribly sprained... maybe even worse.         “Oh jeez... Oh jeez... Oh jeez...”  She whimpered and gazed every which way.  She couldn't see the main roads from the rocks and trees surrounding her.  The sky was bleeding away to a dull crimson.  Night would be falling soon, and she barely had the energy to move a single centimeter from where she was presently curled up and suffering.         The pain wasn't what made the first tear fall from her eyes.  Imprisoned by the throbbing lengths of her hysterical breaths, Scootaloo realized that after all of her hard work and perseverance, this pathetic tumble meant that she couldn't see Rainbow Dash in her moment of glory.         “Nnngh... N-No!”  She hissed, a very demonically angry thing.  She pulled herself up with three limbs and limped towards the metal tray.  Every shuffling movement shot icy waves of pain into her body, and yet still she gripped onto the bent object and leaned on it like one of Granny Smith's walkers.  “I can't... I-I just can't stop now...”         She couldn't speak out loud anymore.  Scootaloo's breaths were fitful and jagged enough from all of her heated pain to possibly afford making any vocal sense.  She had three choices. She could turn around and limp back to Ponyville.  She could make her way to the nearest country road and hitchhike a passing wagon to a town that could get her patched up.         She could also do the impossible.  With her leg busted and her metal tray having become a veritable heap of garbage, Cloudsdale looked even further away than she had ever imagined it.  There was no conceivable way that she could make it to the city in time to see the Competition, and even if she did, just how could she see Rainbow Dash... much less let Rainbow Dash see her?         Scootaloo whimpered.  She needed to return home.  She needed to ask Nurse Red Heart to look at her leg.  She needed to make sure that she didn't live the rest of her life with some horrible, permanent injury.         With a groaning sigh, Scootaloo gripped tighter to the weight of the bent tray, and hobbled north, heading in the same direction as her entire trip had taken her, marching painfully towards the hazy image of the pegasus metropolis.         That evening was the worst night of Scootaloo's young life.  The pale blue moonlight illuminated the rolling plains of Equestria before her like sepulcher boneyards, all of which Scootaloo navigated through icy curtains of pain.         The foal refused to sleep, even as the bone-chilling stabs of pain emanated from her sprained leg.  She limped forward, clawing at the earth with her metal tray, pulling her numb body forward by her desperate grip to it.         She seethed through clenched teeth.  Every desperate shuffle was like a climbing up the flat wall of a burning mountain.  The pain was so intense that Scootaloo could barely tell that she was freezing until she realized her wings were shivering.  A brown feather fell beneath her hooves, and they were frozen solid with condensed frost.         A cloud of vapor billowed before her, fogging up the metal surface of her tray as she clawed and dug at the earth with it, pulling her ever achingly forward with the looming shadow of Cloudsdale in sight.  Somewhere up there, Rainbow Dash was getting a good night's sleep for the Competition the next morning.  The adult pegasus would have no idea what Scootaloo had gone through to just to be there for her.         Scootaloo had to make sure that Rainbow Dash wasn't let down.  She had to show the weather flier that she too could do the impossible, that she was worth the confidence that the prismatic pegasus had bestowed upon her.  The blue mare was the most awesome and loyal pony in all of Equestria.  Scootaloo wanted to pay her back with equal loyalty.  She had to pay somepony back.  Her parents were dead, and she learned a long time ago that earning their pride was something that took time and perserverance.  Rainbow Dash may not have realized it, but she helped Scootaloo with that task.  Now she was about to help her with another task, no matter how painful it was.         The orphan filly pressed torturously onward.  She was hungry, drowsy, and breathless.  Rest was the refuge for a weak creature that she refused to acknowledge.  She left that fainting, whimpering foal back in Manehattan.  She could leave the shadow of a similarly helpless soul back in Ponyville as well.  All that mattered was her journey, the heights of Cloudsdale, and whatever length she could cover between then and morning.         Princess Luna's moonlight illuminated her path, and Scootaloo bravely navigated it, urged forward by the chorus of her wincing breaths.         Morning came and Scootaloo wanted to die.         The icy pain in her leg had spread into a throbbing mess.  Every trot that she took, every step that she made, she feared the limb would utterly fall off.  In a way, she hoped that it would.  It was as if she was hauling a dead weight around.  The rest of her body was just too stubborn to shake loose a torturously superfluous appendix that was leeching off of her.         The battle for dominance over her aching limbs was curtailed by another struggle; Scootaloo fought to squint through the blinding rays of the morning Sun.  Dawn was a hideously bright thing, and only after a solid hour of trudging through the heat of it did the little filly truly realize what distance she had covered over the last twelve hours of darkness.         The majestic, hovering weight of Cloudsdale loomed directly overhead.  She had reached her destination.  She had made it after so much pain and suffering.  Scootaloo could hardly revel in the half-hearted victory, though, for she still had not accomplished the impossible.         She stood, slumped within the shadow of Cloudsdale's immensity.  Her wings twitched and her breaths came out in quivering shudders.  No matter how she looked at it, the situation was hopeless.  Her destination was uncountable fathoms above her, and she was pinned like a dead rock to the ground.         Scootaloo didn't quite know what to expect.  It wasn't like there was going to be a staircase made out of sky marble or a grand golden ladder that could take her to the foundation of the floating city.  In a way, she had secretly hoped that—upon arriving here—she would meet a legion of pegasi, among whom she could easily hail a friendly pony willing to give her a lift to the Cloudsdale Coliseum.         Sitting there in the shadow of the hovering metropolis, Scootaloo indeed saw pegasi.  However, they were fleeting, speeding ponies.  The mere specks of them darted to and fro, soaring at incredibly epic heights that no single filly's voice could ever hope to reach.         Regardless, she gave it her best shot.  What came out of her was a pitiable sound, stretched thin by an entire night's worth of pain and exhaustion.         “Somepony!  Anypony!” she screeched into the horrifically bright air of the Equestrian dawn.  “I need to get into Cloudsdale!  Please!  There isn't much time!”         The distant, winged equines soared higher and higher.  Flocks of pegasi gathered blissfully around the bright, white circle of Cloudsdale Coliseum above.  Scootaloo could even hear the combined roar of their cheering voices from down below.  It shot a bolt of panicked electricity through her heart.         “Please!  I-I've got bits!  I'll pay you!  I just need a lift!”  She shrieked and leaned on her bent metal tray at an angle, giving her lungs as much room to exhale loudly.  “For the love of Celestia, the Competition is going to start at any second!  I gotta see Rainbow Dash!  I just gotta!”         The air echoed with her cries.  The cloudy lengths of the world diffused her volume.  The morning bled on in golden indifference.  The orphan was as alone as ever.         “Please...”  She was sobbing at this point.  She knew it.  With a limping shuffle, she strolled over to the edge of a tiny, blue pond directly beneath the shadow of Cloudsdale Coliseum.  “Pl-Please... I just want... I just need to see Rainbow Dash...”         She sniffled as tears rolled down her orange face.  She dropped the metal tray like a useless corpse alongside the banks of the pond and fell to her chest, burrying her nose into the crook of her forelimbs.  She was a long way from home, at least the place that she had long deluded herself into believing was home.  Two days' worth of journeying had been wasted on what could have been the happiest day of her life, because it was bound to be the best day of Rainbow Dash's life and Scootaloo was determined to be there to share it with her.  Now all she could share was her tears—cold and pathetic—absorbed into the soft soil of the even colder earth beneath her, the young filly's one and only anchor.         The last pony sat on the edge of Strut Eighteen, her rear legs dangling off into the golden air of Petra.  Her jaded, scarlet eyes stared into the joining of her front hooves.  A tiny blue feather fluttered in the wind, bending gently under her soft caress.         All her life, Scootaloo struggled to make ponies proud of her.  Ultimately, those equine souls had one thing in common: they were all dead.  Even when the scavenger built the rainbow signal, it was something she secretly knew was made for lifeless eyes.  As she made her green flaming trips into the past, it was to preserve the legacy of a civlization that would never again be alive to relish it.         Now, as Warden's sobbing words bled into the distant rumble of a coming stormfront's thunder, Scootaloo realized that the only creature left in Equestria to make proud was herself, and that too was a very, very dead thing.  To pretend to be otherwise in a world without color would be foolish, and Scootaloo had done enough stupid things in the past few days to learn a lifetime's worth of cold lessons.         There was another rumble.  Scootaloo gazed up from the feather.  The first bright strobes of lightning bled through the smoggy ceiling of pollution that hung over Petra.  Soon, the world would be a mesmerizing spectacle of bright flashes sparkling around the silhouette of the gigantic goblin city.  She had no intention whatsoever to hang around and gawk at it.         With a resounding sigh, the scavenger strung the tethered feather back around her ear, stood up, and marched towards the nearest elevator shaft.  For all she knew, Razzar and Haman would be the death of all goblins soon.  Those were the last creatures Scootaloo had ever planned to make proud of her.  Every second spent inside the depths of that towering city was a pathetic waste of time, even to the orphan of time.  She suddenly wanted nothing more than to be flying the Harmony straight out of there.         What was destined to happen would happen.  It no longer mattered; her business in the impcity was over.  The scavenger could count the corpses of history later.         The devastated camp around Scootaloo's niche in the ruins of Cloudsdale was abandoned.  The decaying halves of a troll hung halfway downhill from where the lonely pegasus had kicked them days ago.  In the corner, beside a dead campfire, a patch of shredded fur and bones rested in a heap.         All was quiet and the very essence of desolate.  Scootaloo was nowhere to be found. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         Lengthy tunnels and subterranean pathways joined the cavernous tombs of Cloudsdale to one another.  The bones and ash of dead pegasi lined the sundered passages like garden flowers.  As a gust of Wasteland wind billowed down from above, tattered banners and shreds of paper briefly rippled, and were still again.         Silence permeated the deathscape forever and ever.  Nothing moved and nothing stirred. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         A halo of twilight forever shone over the glistening rocks piled on top of Rainbow Dash's grave.  The jutting plateau was bathed in falling flakes of snow from the gray world above.  All was silent and frozen.  The very breath of oblivion had no pitch, no tone, no hope for a chorus. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         From across the black chasm, the distant tools of the goblins glittered in the twilight.  The world briefly rumbled as a two-year-old weight of settling Cloudsdalian debris shifted, shook, and was silent once more.  The pits of the world hung in a deathly blight, and everything beneath the jagged cliff-faces was darker than dark, a fathomless abyss that sucked all light that entered.         Scootaloo was here.  She stood before the precipice of nothing.  Staring ahead, her tired scarlet eyes drank from the bleak enormity of the future.  The filly remained still as a statue, with no sign of shivers to be had throughout the length of her shaved mane.  Whatever bitter contemplation was fermenting inside the confines of her clenched jaws, she was hardly willing to spit any of it out.         Slowly, like setting of a dead sun, she let her eyes fall until they had become one with the abyss.  She saw into that great, stabbing darkness, and the last pony found something that she understood.         Scootaloo slowly trotted into the confines of the hangar bay of Strut Fifteen.  Her nostrils flared as she kept her eyes locked to the gritty bulkheads beneath her.  As she came closer to the body of the Harmony, she became nervously aware of something.  There was no purple aura to greet her upon her return.         Blinking, the filly looked up.  She gasped and instantly reached back for her copper rifle.  Extending the weapon, she propped herself against a wall and aimed at the body of her own dirigible.         The manashields had been disabled.  What was more, the aperture entrance to her airship was hanging wide open.  All that time, the vessel was a gaping invitation to any and all creatures of the Wasteland who may have fancied waltzing straight inside.         Nervously, Scootaloo blinked and shuffled her way icily towards the craft.  She balanced the copper rifle over her shoulder until she was stepping onto the metal platform before her entrance.  The runestones were still lining the doorway; they hadn't been stolen, merely diffused.  Gritting her teeth, Scootaloo lunged herself into the bottom level of her gondola, pointing her gun straight in.  There was no invader, no intrusive body to be found.         Carefully, cautiously, Scootaloo strutted inside.  “H'jnor!” she shouted.  The door behind her spiraled shut, cutting off the exit to any hidden intruder as she next made her way up the revolving staircase to the pilot's cabin above, ready to flush out any and all figures she might stumble upon. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~         As soon as Scootaloo ascended to the top of the stairs, she spun about, the copper barrel to her gun flickering in the lanternlight.  The area around her cockpit was empty.  She spun again.  Her hammock was barren and the bright boiler at the rear of the ship was dimly billowing.  Otherwise, there was no errant shadow or hint of a robber or pirate in sight.         Scootaloo exhaled long and hard, riding the crest of her racing heartbeats.  She paused and leaned against her rifle, running a hoof through her violet mane as she desperately pondered the confusing situation.  Just because there was nobody there, she realized, it didn't mean that somebody had already been there.  Her heart pulsed again at the possibility of missing something.         She cocked the rifle and spun to gallop straight down to the lower level for a second inspection, when something bright and sharp caught her attention from the top of the workbench in the middle of the cabin's portside.  Between the Royal Grand Biv outfit and the dangling glint of a goldne lyre, a shred of paper had been pinned to the wooden surface of Scootaloo's work area.  What was more, the paper had been pinned by none other than a single, colorful unicorn horn.         Scootaloo's breath left her in a single burst of realization.  There was one soul in the graveyard of Equestria who had learned a few runic commands besides her, and it wasn't Spike.  “Oh goddess, no...”         She rushed over to the scrap of paper, her scarlets blazing desperately across it.  The scribbling handwriting was messy, desperately written, indicative of a teenage goblin's eight tiny fingers:         Scootaloo,         Something has to be done about Haman, and I think I know what.  I can't ask you to forgive me for what I'm about to do, but I do hope you can understand.  There's more to this world than all that is dead.  If bravery can't save it, then maybe strips can.  I'm sorry, but you left me no choice.                                                                 -Warden of Stock Blood         Halfway through reading the letter, Scootaloo's face was already grimacing.  She hyperventilated and dropped her copper rifle, flinging her front limbs all over the lengths of the workbench and its many cubbyholes.  She panted and panted in the heated desperation of her search.  Everything was where it was supposed to be inside the Harmony, everything but one object.         “Oh dear Celestia, no.”         “It's now or never, the boss says,” Fredden exclaimed.  He stood alongside a cluster of yellow-banded imps who were busy loading wooden packages into the freight car of a steam train parked inside an abandoned depot of Strut Four.  “Devo may be out of the picture, but his laborers sure aren't.  We better finish what we started before any of Hex Blood's sympathizers catch up with us.  That stupid pony Outbleeder tried raising a ruckus earlier at Twenty-One Strut—”         “I know, smelly boomer,” Miss Ryst hissed as she paced down the line of hard-working goblins who were tossing the crates into the train car.  “I was there.  But unlike both times that you were in the company of four legs, my presence made a difference.  I doubt that she will be of any impediment to Haman's plans from now on.”         “Well, that's certainly good news—”  Fredden said with a smile.  His shades slid down from a pair of quivering bright eyes as he suddenly found himself staring down the barrel of a steam pistol.         “Hmmm... Good news is the only spit I want to hear coming out of your meat-mouth from now on, Boomer,” the shape-shifter hissed, pointing the weapon into his skull.  “Promise me you won't repeat the stupidity of Strut Eleven and I'll promise not to satiate my hunger right now.”         “Y-Yes, Razzar.  I promise—”         “Say my boomer name while I still have the skin to spare,” the mercenary grumbled, twirling her pistol and sliding it back into her holster.  She turned around and gazed at the Rust-Bleeders' labor while gnawing on the back of her knuckles.  “Hmmm... This has taken far, far too long.  Silver strips should be easier to chase down than groundhogs.  Mmmm... Too much ash and not enough groundhogs in this world.  Maybe that's why my skin is shedding so, yes yes yessss...”         Otto suddenly stopped what he was doing and unholstered his steamrifle.  He squinted towards the far end of the metallic depot and cocked his weapon.  “Somebody's here.  Did you hear that?”  All of the imps around him immediately stopped what they were doing.         “Hear?  No.”  Miss Ryst allowed a reptilian tongue to slip out between her chapped lips.  “Hmmm.. But I smell it.  It smells like fresh tears.  I think I'm going to be sick.”         A pair of footsteps clawed up to the platform just beside the dormant train.         Fredden spun and glared from beneath his shades.  “Y-You!”         Warden gulped, shifting nervously under the gaze of all of Haman's thugs.  He held his hands behind his back in a demure gesture.         “Yes yesss...”  Miss Ryst sighed long and hard.  “Positively nauseous...”         “H-Hello, Miss Ryst, representative of Hex Blood.  I'm very sorry to b-bother you.”  Warden's trembles were epic.  Regardless, he bore a gentle smile as he shuffled towards the group.  “I don't know what you're planning, or whatever you think you're going to earn from the creepy stuff you're about to do.  But I've come to make you all an offering.  I promise that there are a lot of strips for you if you just consider my... m-my proposition.”         “By Petra's Blight, enough of this!”  Fredden cocked a pistol of his own and aimed it at the teenager.  “You're long overdue for a booboo that even your mother can't kiss away, kid.”         A red, clawed hand gripped tightly over Fredden's wrist and wrenched the gun from his grip.  The bodyguard winced and glared as Ryst's flesh flesh fluttered back to the tan complexion of a goblin.  “No, this is suddenly the most amusing thing that has happened all day.  Hmmm... Let us hear the little morsel's spit.”  Ryst stared over at the petite goblin with thin, green slits.  “How can you grant us a sea of silver, boomer-lite?”         Warden took a deep breath.  “I'll sell you something so spectacular that it will earn you five times as much profit as what you're doing for Haman here.  Then you can go on your merry way and leave Petra alone.”         “You need to learn a thing or two about pitching a sale, shrimp!”  Otto frowned and folded his burly arms.  “Just show us what it is already!”         Warden gulped and did just that.  A bright emerald glow wafted over the faces of the many gawking imps as he held the translucent cylinder of green flame out towards them.         “Please... Consider what I have to offer you guys,” he said in a trembling voice.  “I just want to do business...”                  Scootaloo stood before the abyss of Clousdsale.  With one last breath, the last pastel shades of her coat bled away.  The eleven-year-old was a brown and lifeless shadow teetering on the brink of forever.  Shuffling her aching muscles, she reached a front hoof out into the blackness that consumed her.         The filly's wings were numb and useless.  Scootaloo couldn't fly.  She knew this.         Closing her eyes, she let gravity take over, and leaned her weight forward into the abyss...         Scootaloo was being serenaded by her sobs.  Exhaustion was just about to take over when suddenly there was an ear-splitting sound from directly above.  Shivering, the little foal dried her face and gazed straight up into the bright heights of Cloudsdale.         A deep gasp escaped her lips.         Plummeting from the circular body of Cloudsdale Colisseum was a quartet of limp bodies: three knocked cold and one reduced to a colorful flailing of limbs.  Surging straight towards them in a blue streak was a sight that sucked all the tears from her violet eyes.         She was hardly prepared for the next sight.  No soul could have been prepared, no matter how young or old.  A cataclysmic explosion rocked the landscape, blinding the tiny filly with a kaleidscope of spectral madness.  Two seconds into attempting to contemplate this maddening spectacle, a horrendous shockwave of noise and fury flew into Scootaloo, knocking her back so that she toppled like a domino and landed, half-submerged in the pondwater rippling beside her, a confusing baptism.         “Nnngh... Mmmf...”  She hissed and sputtered her way through the delicious pain of the shocking moment.  Gazing up, she weakly observed a solid band of rainbow energy soaring directly overhead.  The blue shape at the helm of the prismatic band snatched the four falling ponies up in one swoop before carrying them straight up towards the ivory halo of Cloudsdale Coliseum above.         The unearthly sight was amazing, breath-taking, and undeniably—         “Awesome,” Scootaloo murmured.  Past her pain, past her delirium, she found the energy to do something impossible.  She smiled, squeaking forth the weak semblance of a giggle.         Then she fainted.