A Biographer for Ponyville

by TMH

Chapter II: The Journey of a Thousand Pains

  With a jolt the carriage landed.

  The two pegasi who had been pulling the cart unhitched themselves and unceremoniously went about the business of unloading.

  A long package.

  A squat package.

  A spherical package.

  A *crash*, ahem, package that totally didn’t have “fragile” marked on it. Seriously, it came off I swear.

  A sleeping stallion. “Hey buddy get up.”

  “Hmm, ugh.”

  “Look pal, I ain’t gots all day. Get your flank outta my carriage before I take it out for ya.”

  The other pegasus looked over to his partner and their passenger. “Come on Frank we gotta be in Cloudsdale before six.”

  “I’m workin on it Pesti, just get the inventory filed with Ms. Doo.” Frank looked back to Struck, “Look, either you get out right now, or I fly up this cart and tilt you out over the river. Capiche?”

  Struck made no sign of hearing the fine upstanding gentleman and instead mumbled something along the line of, “Oh really Ms. Sparkle you already wrote it? How convenient.”

  Frank sighed, “Sweet Celestia. Alright buddy, time for a bath.”

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  Struck had a spark of consciousness. This spark rapidly grew into a raging inferno thanks to the plentiful air provided by his spontaneous descent toward a river.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH-*SPLOOSH*” Assorted bubbles and gurgling broke the surface of the river as Struck furiously swam upwards. He launched through the water gasping for air and looking about wildly, “Wha-wh-w,” he stammered briefly before he drew in a large breath and composed himself, “WHAT IN THE THRICE-DAMNED NAME OF TARTARUS JUST BUCKING HAPPENED!?” Composed being, of course, a relative term.

  Upon realizing that nopony was going to answer him, he decided that he might as well get to shore and figure out why he just got dropped into a river.

  He reached the shore panting due to shock and a less than perfectly fit body, (accounting an athlete did not make). Laying spread-eagle on his back he stared into the sky recalling his last memories.

  It yielded little but anxiety. First, he recalled his saddlebags, which he had to dive back into the water to get. Next, he remembered the I.D., which he spent ten minutes and several dives searching for in the river-bottom before realizing it was still in the saddlebags. Then, he remembered what a fool he had made of himself to Celestia and considered drowning himself to avoid ever having to face her again. He finally decided that he had had enough damn water and would have to find some poisonous plant or something later.

  His contemplation of a self-inflicted mercy kill was interrupted by the sound of a voice, which was odd considering he hadn’t seen any signs of civilisation during his panicked fall to watery hell.

  Three fillies emerged from the foliage arguing over who was more responsible for forgetting a map from what Struck could gather, and he gleefully began trotting toward the group, “It sure is nice to see some frie-” a rock. His face. Those were his last thoughts.

  “Is he okay?” The orange and yellow fillies asked in unison when the white one motioned that she was done examining the stallion.

  “Probably, I hope.” Was all she could say with a bit of a grimace.

  “Scootaloo, why’d ya hafta go and knock him out with a rock for?” The yellow one looked  accusingly to Scootaloo.

  “You saw him Applebloom, he was coming right for us! He might be some crazy serial killer that lives in the woods.”

  “I ain’t never heard about no serial killers around Ponyville, Scootaloo.” Applebloom looked unconvinced and rather nonplussed.

  “Yeah, well, maybe he was just starting.” Scootaloo didn’t seem too convinced in her own story either.

  “Well whoever he is you really got him.” The white one walked back over to the others and joined the conversation.

  “What can I say? Rainbow Dash taught me everything I know.” A balloon would be hard pressed to inflate more than the little pegasus’ chest.

  “Like how to forget a map?” Applebloom deadpanned.

  “I already told you I brought the map!” Applebloom just stared at her. “It just, kinda, fell out or something.” She looked away and scratched the back of her neck with a front hoof.

  “Riiiiiiiiight,” she rolled her eyes, “Anyway, the point is we’re lost, we don’t have a map, and you just clocked the only pony we’ve seen in hours.”

  Scootaloo pawed the ground sheepishly.

  “Oh, how could this day get any worse?”

  “Sweetie!!”
  “Sweetie!!”

  “What?” It started raining. “Heh, heh. Oops?”

  Struck awoke slowly.

  Before he gained control of any of his senses, his subconscious thought it would be funny to give him a quick flashback of the whole day. Needless to say this did not give him high hopes for what he was about to wake up to.

  The first thing he noticed was the smell, burnt juice.

  Wait a second, how can yo-

  “-u burn juice?” Well, hearing is back up.

  “Hey! It’s not burnt! It’s just kinda, um…”

  “Kinda burnt?”

  Touch reformed and informed him that he was laying on grass, and pleasantly less wet than he imagined he would be.

  “Okay, fine, it’s burnt. I just don’t know what went wrong. But at least the apples are fin- OH COME ON!!!”

  Yep, hearing is definitely back. Ouch.

  “Sweetie?”

  “Yeah...Applebloom?”

  “Remind me not to make you the Crusaders’ designated cook, why were you even cooking the apples?”

  His eyes opened slowly and, piece by piece, revealed three foals sitting around a fire. They all had their backs turned to him.

  His first thoughts about them were grateful, they weren’t cannibals. Then he realized how stupid that thought was and instead decided to be grateful that rock hadn’t broken anything important. After that his emotions took a turn for the bitter when he realized a broken skull would have been the perfect excuse to get out of this job.

  He snorted in disdain at his bad luck.

  “Aaaaah!”

  The orange pegasus shrieked and hid behind the log she and her friends were sitting on. The yellow one looked at her agitatedly and the white one looked on curiously.

  “Um, hehe. Sorry.” She walked around the log to her friends as she rubbed her right foreleg.

  The yellow one looked back to Struck. “Hiya there mister! My name’s Applebloom, and this here
  is Sweetie Belle,”

  “Hi!”

  “and Scootaloo.”

  “‘Sup”

  “And we’re…”

  The three collectively inhaled, “THE CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS!!™”       

  Ow, my ears. “It’s nice to meet you?”

  The white one, Sweetie Belle, responded, perhaps too intensely, “It’s nice to meet you too Mister!”

  Struck rose to a sitting position and introduced himself, “My name is Struck Scroll, and I need to reach Ponyville.” Might as well try to sound professional, he thought.

  “Well I’ma mite sorry Mister Scroll, we would be happy ta get ya to Ponyville, but we’re kinda lost.”

  “Yeah, how’d that happen? Heh heh.” Scootaloo swallowed dryly.

  Applebloom looked away from her orange friend and back to Struck, “So as I was sayin Mister, we’d love to help but we were kinda hoping you knew where we are. Do ya?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I was dumped into that river in some kind of flight mishap; I was actually just dragging myself out when,” he broke out into a panic, “Oh no. My saddlebags, my saddlebags, please tell me you have my saddlebags.”

  “Sorry, we could barely drag ya as you are, we had ta leave yer bags behind.”

  Just as Struck was beginning to contemplate running off into the woods and living the remainder of his life as a hermit, Sweetie Belle spoke up, “Buuuuuuuut, I did bring some of the papers with me,” she fetched them from her own saddlebags, “here you go.”

  His I.D. and his Royal Orders. No money. “Alright, well, now that I’m up I can just follow the drag marks and get the res-” That's when he noticed it was raining quit intensely and there were no tracks to be found in the mud.

  “It couldn’t have been far, how long was I out?”

  “Hehehe, about, um, seven hours.” Applebloom looked at the unicorn apparently having a mental breakdown worriedly.

  “Seven hours? Seven hours?” Struck looked desperately at Applebloom, who backed up slowly and nodded her head wordlessly.

  At this confirmation he stood on his hind legs, hugged himself, and spun around in circles before he fell onto his back and gave a short choked laugh. “Well, at least I’m lost and poor.”

    Applejack was starting to get worried. That in itself wasn’t especially unusual considering she both ran a huge apple farm and raised her little sister, but unusual or not when Applejack was worried she took action.

  She’d been waiting for Applebloom to come home for almost an hour, and the annoyance she had felt when her sister was ten minutes late became mild worry at thirty minutes and put her into action at sixty. Big Mac was just closing up the barn for the night and Applejack decided that when Big Mac came in it was far too late for Applebloom to be out.

  Resolving on a plan of action she galloped out to meet her brother as he was heading toward the farmhouse. He took notice of her and stopped his trot when she got closer.

  “Big Mac, Applebloom’s been out a mighty long time, you ain’t seen her up at their treehouse have ya?”

  He thought for a moment, “Nnnope.”

  “Ya seen Sweetie Belle or Scootaloo?”

  He was silent for a few moments, his eyes stared at the emerging night sky in that way one does when one thinks and does not see, “Nnno-well, actually I seem to recall seeing Scootaloo running out of their tree house this morning with some kind of scroll, no, it was a map.”

  Applejack thought for a moment, her mind not at all liking what the absence of her sister and the Crusaders having a map likely meant. “I swear I’ll tan that girl’s behind until it shines like a Red Delicious if she’s done done what I think she did. I’m gonna go round up the girls and go a lookin for ‘em, I’ll be back by midnight to get the whole town if we can’t find ‘em.” And with that she galloped off down the road towards Ponyville proper, the fading pink of dusk both complimenting and opposing her anger, and fear.