//------------------------------// // 5. Cloudy Skies // Story: The Day Dash wasn't Loyal // by Bromad //------------------------------// "Does everypony have food, water, and a map?" Twilight asked, the supplies were doubled for if they found Scootaloo. "When we find Scootaloo." Twilight corrected herself, trying to stay positive. They all nodded, excluding the twelve birds perched on Fluttershy's back. "The search area today is fifteen square miles, we take it slow, we search thoroughly, and then we find Scootaloo." Applebloom and Sweetie Bell jarred their heads in every direction, searching for a faint clue to Scootaloo's location. Their minds were already looking behind every tree and under every stump. "Can we start?" Sweetie Bell asked, looking up to her sister. "Just a moment," Rarity said. "Remember stay within eye sight you two, don't go off where Rarity or me can't see ya." Applebloom was the first to yell "SCOOTALOO!" Followed by Sweetie Bell, "SCOOTALOO!" Their sisters shushed them, "You're gonna lose your voice before we go a mile, the forests do tricky things to swallow up noise." Applejack said, "You can holler loud as you want, but not much will get through the trees. An echo can only go so far before being broken up til it sounds like a whisper." Applejack turned to Fluttershy, "Are you ready?" "Most definitely, these birds were very generous in offering to help search for Scootaloo, They even offered to ask other woodland creatures to help or ask if they've seen her." "Glad to hear it. All right girls, we all know who we're looking for, Fluttershy, do they know what Scootaloo looks like?" She nodded "A small Orange pegasi filly, purple hair." She said, reminding the twelve birds perched on her back. "Then this is where we split up, we know that somewhere in these trees is our friend. We will find her, let's go." Twilight said, with a hopeful glace back towards her friends, she took to the sky, venturing farther in to find traces of Scootaloo. "Where are ya Scootaloo?" Applejack yelled, pursing her lips, she let out a high shrill whistle that made Applebloom wince at the noise. "She musta heard that." Applebloom said optimistically, "We'll know soon enough lil' sis'." Applejack said, glancing over towards her sister. "We're lucky she didn't fly off, or else who knows where she coulda ended up." "Why didn't she come to us?" Applebloom asked. Applejack frowned at the answer she came up with but it was the truth from experience, "When you get down, you get depressed. And when you're depressed, you don't see anything right. Nothin' makes sense, nothin' goes your way, and it takes a lot to snap yerself out of it. Scootaloo probably walked by plenty of ponies that first day and didn't even realize it. The time out here may be scaring the daylights out of her, but it snapped her out of it. She's had time to think, and hopefully we find her before she's had too much time to think. Otherwise, it'll make her angry." Applebloom shifted her head, "Huh?" "When you have time to think, there's a fine line between reasoning and overthinking. She's probably mad at Rainbow Dash, which I'm still a little ruffled myself just thinkin' about it, and is gonna tear her to pieces-even more so than we did. And even if Scootaloo never wants to see her face again, she sure needs to hear what Rainbow Dash has ta say." Applebloom and Applejack trotted along side together for a few minutes in silence, but Applejack's frown stayed firmly attached. "Once we get back, I gotta apologize to her, she didn't deserve all of that. Cause, right now Rainbow is in that room feeling cast out and..." Her head dropped, "Alone." --- "How do we know we're searching the right area?" Sweetie Bell asked, "That's the point of a search grid, Sweetie, if nothing turns up then we move onto the next area, while the girls do so in their regions until we find Scootaloo." Rarity replied, "But what if, while we're searching one part of the grid, and she walks on the far side of the other that we haven't even searched yet, or already searched, and then we miss her!" Rarity heard the anxiety rise in her sister's voice, "Trail markers, Sweetie. Pinkie has been zipping around the forest pointing which way for Scootaloo to follow, should she see them." "But what if she doesn't know what the trail markers are? What if she doesn't know which way to go when she sees them?" "Sweetie, you need to stop focusing on the what ifs and calm down, it wont get you anywhere but into a worrisome mess. Now please, how about you spread out that way a bit so we can expand, hmmm?" Sweetie Bell broke left, biting her lip as she tried to focus on finding Scootaloo. "But it's been almost four days!" Sweetie Bell pleaded. That made Rarity break her strideas she soaked in the hopelessness Sweetie Bell voice held. The thought did cross her mind multiple times that day, but she never let the reality of those words sink in until Sweetie Bell herself said it. Even before breaking apart, she quietly agreed with Twilight that discussing out loud the amount of time Scootaloo had been missing was a subject to avoid. Four days. A touch more accuracy puts it around three and a half. "Sweetie Bell, you can not think like that..." Her voice quivering, she sucked in a deep breath and shouted Scootaloo's name. "Scootaloo?" Sweetie Bell shouted, Rarity cringed as her heart sank, the way her sister uttered that single word made her look away. Sweetie Bell sounded like she was calling out to a friend that passed away in front of her eyes. Rarity fought back tears, but the emotions welling around her sister grabbed hold of her. Her pace quickened then broke into a dead sprint, Rarity quickly shouted for her to slow down, but Sweetie Bell only shouted Scootaloo's name over and over again, growing more frantic with each cry. Running to her sister, she wrapped her hooves around her neck as she cried into her shoulder. "We should of invited her. We should've known Rainbow wouldn't be able to make it and that Scootaloo wouldn't get her lesson. I should've checked on her the moment we got back, then we would've known that she wasn't there and could of started that night." "Sweetie Bell," Rarity said, shushing her sister. "You can't go beating yourself up for all the things we should have, could of, or would of done in hindsight." Bringing herself eye level with Sweetie Bell, "Yes, we could of done all those things, and we should have invited her along, but what matters is what we are doing right now for her. We are looking for her, it may not make any difference that we did so, but Scootaloo will remember that we are trying to be there for her now. We are looking for her now. Sweetie Bell, we will find her." --- Rainbow Dash inhaled and silently moaned on the exhale. "Pinkie." Pinkie Pie looked left and right, underneath her hooves, off to the side of a tree, and finishing with a double take over each shoulder. "Pinkie!" The pink pony looked up at the cloud floating just a few feet above her. "Rainbow Dash? How did you get that cloud? Shouldn't you be in the hospital? I thought one of your wings were broken. Did it get better? Are you all healed? How did you get here?" "I came here on my good wing, and I came to look." "Well look no further! Actually, you may need to look a lot further because we haven't found Scootaloo yet." "I know, but I need you to tell me where Twilight thinks Scootaloo was. I kinda followed you here and heard most of what Twilight said about figuring out Scootaloo's path. I can track her, I just need to find out where she was, and which way she went and I'll find her before sunset." "Well, I have a map on the route I'm suppose to take, and where Twilight went off in, but I think she would send you back in a heart beat if she found out that you weren't at the hospital. Twilight would probably put her hoof down and say 'What in the hay are ya' doin here Rainbow Dash'-" "That sounds like Applejack." "I know, Twilight and Applejack's responses are really similar. And then you would say 'I wanna help find Scootaloo' and then she would be all like "I'm going to teleport you back!" and then poof! You'd be back in your hospital bed." "I don't think she can teleport someone that far, Pinkie." "Element of Magic." Pinkie playfully said, reminding Rainbow Dash. "Well I'm the element of Loyalty, and no matter what, I'm going to see this one through for sure! I don't care if she does see me, I'm finding Scootaloo. In fact, I want her to see me!" "Good to here! Twilight went that a'way." "Thanks Pinkie," "You're welcome, welcome, welcome Rainbow Dash! Oh, and by the way, Fluttershy has almost all the wildlife searching for her, and they even probably know you're here! Which means that Fluttershy knows, which means she'll tell Twilight!" "What?! All the wildlife?" "Almost! A lot of birds though, look! That one is tweeting what we just said to another! Rainbow moaned, looking at the two birds that darted from their branch. "So she'll know along time before I can even get close to her." "Well it's not like Twilight know's how to speak bird." Pinkie said, rolling her eyes at Rainbow missing out on the obvious logic. "Actually, I can speak bird, as I am currently fluent in turkey, pigeon, eagle, raven, robin, rooster, bluebird, dove, swan, chicken, woodpecker, and hawk. BUUUUT.... I don't really know what I'm saying." Pinkie cawed at Rainbow, "See? I have no idea what I just said." "You mean like bird calls?" "I would never! Bird calls are rudimentary, so random! With speaking bird, it's much more fluent and sing-songy sounding!" Rainbow's mind urged her to refocus on finding Scootaloo, but a part of her wanted to know what Pinkie's explanation would be if she asked "Wouldn't it still be random if you started shouting out in bird speak, but didn't know what you were saying?" "Which way is Twilight, again?" She finally asked. "Thataway!" Pinkie held up an arrow sign flashing with lightspointing to the east. "Thanks." Rainbow Dash flapped her good wing and pushed the cloud bed higher, poking her head down through to scan the ground below. Pinkie finished tying a trail marker ribbon into a bow around a tree. Farther off she heard the shout of Scootaloo's name being called, it sounded like Sweetie Bell. --- "You know all I wanted was some tips on flying! Just some tips! I didn't even need the whole lesson. 'Hey Scootaloo, you need to flap harder. Or you're flapping too hard! Maybe you need to lengthen the amount of time between each wing beat. Hey Scootaloo, try this. It might work better for you. Hey, Scootaloo! Scootaloo! I don't care if you're waiting for me or not, you aren't flying awesomely enough for me!'" She said with her best-loathsome- Rainbow Dash impression Scootaloo stamped her hooves down in the mud, splashing water into her coat. "You can't fly, you can't do this, you can't do that, you've already tried this.' Well, how about this?" Scootaloo took a running leap and coasted forward ten feet. "It's like all of a sudden, you wake up, and forget how to fly! How can a pegasi not remember how to fly? I've got wings for Celestia's sake! I just need a bit more speed!" Scootaloo charged forward, pushing off with her hooves and fluttering for fifteen feet downhill before coming to a stop. "All right, made it. One more time!" The last leap left Scootaloo breathless as she took off from the ground and panicked as the stream went over rocks to a ten foot drop in front of a cave. She screamed as her wings snapped to her side, falling straight to rocks and water. Her legs hit the ground, followed by her head. Scootaloo came up crying as the splash from the small waterfall sprayed droplets through the air. Exhaustion swept over her as pain bored deep into her mind. Scootaloo wanted to blame somepony, anypony, for the mixed feelings of anger and pain, abandonment and resentfulness, but all she could do is cry at her own failed attempt to fly. "I'm tired of being alone." she said, regaining her breath. Shaking off the excess water, she glanced at the stream, the sun now directly overhead, and the cave behind her. Resetting her pace, she ignored the grip of her stomach, the bruises and cuts, and the excited chirp of two birds circling her head. "Yeah! I'm a bad flyer! No need to laugh about it!" She yelled. One bird broke away while the other perched on a branch no more than ten feet from her. "So what makes you so special?" The bird turned its head to Scootaloo, "How do you do it? You flap your wings, I flap my wings, you take off, I don't. Why not?" The bird chirped a response, but anguish got the best of Scootaloo's senses. "I don't speak bird!" She yelled, passing it. "A load of help you are!" She channeled the rising anger into moving faster. The bird was still squawking as she moved further away, but Scootaloo was dead set on finding a way out before something else pushed her over the edge. ---- The bed of moss still had the indentation of where Scootaloo slept, the divot of water she had dug was stagnant and clear. Twilight eyed the two orange feathers clinging to the ground and plucked the dirtier one up with her magic. She opened her mouth to say something but all the words trailed out as she gaped at the feather. Twilight looked at the hoof prints in the ground, some were days old, but the ones that were pressed into the ground from this morning made Twilight sigh. "This is my fault." Twilight turned to see Rainbow Dash on her cloud, their eyes locked and refused to break apart. Instead of the verbal lashing Rainbow expected about disregarding her health and safety, Twilight responded with two words that cut deep. "It is." Twilight said flatly, but that didn't stop her from changing the subject to Rainbow's relief "How did you find me?" she asked, "I saw you flying around, you've been up in the air for two hours." "You came to look?" "Yes." "She left here early this morning, heading off that way." Rainbow looked at the path of filly-sized hoof prints leading through the trees and nodded. "I'll find her." "She's following a stream." "I'll find that," "It's at least mile from here." "I flew all the way out here on a cloud with one good wing, I can make it." "Lead the way." As Rainbow Dash wheeled her cloud around, the sound of Twilight's voice made her wince. "Rainbow," "I know you're sorry, but I'm not the one you should apologize to." Rainbow Dash gulped, looking over her shoulder to Twilight, "And I'm sorry for the way I treated you. I couldn't overcome my own ego to see that you were struggling to be there for everyone." Twilight walked closer to Rainbow's cloud, "For you to fly all the way here on this, broken bones and all, it shows how much you deeply cared and wanted to make this up to Scootaloo." Twilight's wings unfolded, pushing herself off the ground, she rose up to cloud, gently pushing it forward with the help of her Rainbow smiled for a moment, but clenched her teeth at the next thought that came up. "This wont be enough..." She stopped herself from saying "will it?" because she already knew the answer long before they even started this conversation "...and I can't teach her until my wing heals." Twilight sensed what Rainbow was hinting at. "Rainbow, she might jump at the sight of seeing you, she might scream and yell, but finding her is a start." "At least it's something."