//------------------------------//
// Wicker 'Loo (Swarm of the Century) 
// Story: Scootaloo Dies a Bunch 
// by alexmagnet 
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	Scootaloo was enjoying a jaunty stroll through the park when she happened to look up and see that the sky was blue. This may not seem like something she would note, but the sky wasn’t blue because that’s how it was normally. The sky was blue because there were hundreds of thousands of ‘things’ covering it. Scootaloo took a moment to appreciate this fact, slowly letting out a sigh, realizing that any minute now all hell was going to break loose, and then she continued on with her walk. 

She counted down from ten in her head. By the time she reached one, ponies were running this way and that, screaming their heads off and flailing their limbs wildly. Scootaloo figured it was only a matter of time until either the town was in shambles, or a particularly large cloud of bugs swept her off her hooves and carried her somewhere far away. She wasn’t too concerned with which happened first. 

Casually strolling along through the debris-strewn streets, and past hordes of screaming ponies, Scootaloo started to notice the bugs were ignoring her. They’d fly up, swarm around her a bit, and then disappear. 

“Huh…” she mused aloud. “Guess I must be lucky or something.” 

Just then, she heard a sound from behind her. She turned around and saw a pink mare headed towards her with a tuba on her back. She spotted Scootaloo spotting her, and waved her hoof, hurrying over to her as quickly as her legs could carry her. 

She skidded to a halt in front of Scootaloo, grinning widely. “Hey! Can you play the tuba?”

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. “Uhh… Why?”

The mare giggled, took the tuba off her back, and shoved it into Scootaloo’s hooves. “Silly goose, why isn’t an answer. Here, just take this and play it. I need you to help me with these parasprites.” 

“Para-what?” said Scootaloo, examining her newly-gained instrument. 

The mare waved her hoof at a passing cloud of bugs. “Those guys,” she said. “We gotta stop them before they eat everything.” 

“And the tuba is useful because?”

She giggled again. “You just gotta trust me on this one, okay?”

Scootaloo frowned. “I’m not sure I do.” 

“Just play the tuba and I’ll take care of everything else.” 

“I don’t know how to play it,” said Scootaloo, looking at the utterly incomprehensible amalgamation of metal in her hooves. It looked like it’d been designed for an entirely different species, and there was no easy way to hold it. 

“Oh, that’s easy,” said the mare. She pointed at a small mouthpiece near the back of the instrument. “You just put your lips on that and blow real hard. It’ll make a funny sound!” 

Scootaloo eyed the mouthpiece suspiciously. “Well, if you say so. Here goes… I guess.” 

Puckering up her lips, Scootaloo put her mouth around the tuba like it was meeting her after school on the playground after it told her it had a crush on her. She sucked in her breath, and started to blow as hard as she could. Well, she would’ve started to blow if sucking in all that air hadn’t also caused her to suck in a swarm of the parasprites that happened to be passing by. 

She dropped the tuba, flailing around as the parasprites filled her mouth and started swarming all over her face. It was hard to tell what she was saying since her mouth was stuffed with bugs, but to the carefully-trained ear, it was clear that she was screaming: “Aaaah! Not the parasprites! Aaaah! They’re all in my eyes! Aaaah!” Which, really, wasn’t all that surprising of a thing to say given the circumstances. 

As the mare watched Scootaloo slowly choking to death on the multi-colored bugs filling her throat, she jumped around on her tip-toes, unable to think of anything to do to help her. So, instead, she just watched in horror as the little filly’s eyes rolled back in her head, her flailing stopped, and then she fell to the ground. Before she could even begin to mourn, the bugs went into a frenzy, and mere seconds later Scootaloo’s body was naught but a pile of bones, laid out like the after-dinner leavings of some giant monster (or a bunch of little ones). 

Looking over Scootaloo’s fallen body, the mare sighed. She bent down, picked up the tuba, and said, “Well, I guess this wasn’t your lucky day. Tu-bad for you!” Giggling, she trotted off into the distance, tuba strapped haphazardly to her back.