“When I first came to this dump of a town, I swore that it wouldn’t be the end of me! No, I said I’d make it straight to the top! Straight to the top!” The Earth pony shook his hoof in the air for emphasis. He was not very tall for a stallion, being roughly the size of an average mare – if not slightly shorter. But this orange-colored individual still looked rather impressive, as he clearly had some muscular bulk to him. He was not what most mares would consider handsome, but there was a certain charisma and attractiveness to how he carried himself. But his eyes, his eyes had that peculiar gleam in them that could only be madness.
This colt, with a golden arrow pointing upward for his cutie mark, was Big-Shot Bigsby.
He continued, “And I did, didn’t I? Against all the odds, against everybody who said I couldn’t do it, I did it! I ended up on top, and they ended up six feet under!”
In front of him were two unicorns, each trying to look enraptured by the same spiel they had heard countless times before. Neither of them dared to look anywhere near as bored and uninterested as they felt. Both remembered what had happened the last time someone had started day-dreaming during one of Big-Shot’s speeches.
They had, after all, been the ones who dug that poor shmuck’s grave.
“When Ma and Pops first dragged me to this Celestia-forsaken town, I thought it would be kaput for the family’s chances of ever building an organization of our own. I mean, Baltimare was where the action really was in those days, but Pops insisted we had to try and branch out. He said there were already too many wise-guys in Baltimare and that we needed someplace to claim for ourselves. But I didn’t see how we were going to do it in a place like Ponyville.”
One of the two, a handsome unicorn with a blond mane and an off-white coat, nodded. “Yeah, we know, Biggy. But then your dad saw what a killing Filthy Rich was making and he decided to take over.”
The colt smiled, expecting perhaps to be rewarded for his ability to remember the intricacies of Big-Shot’s rise to power. However, the only thing he was rewarded with was a blow to the mouth from Big Shot’s fist.
“Who’s telling this story, Hot Shot, you or me?” Big Shot yelled.
“You, of course, boss,” said Hot Shot as he wiped his own hoof against his mouth, checking for blood.
“And another thing, nobody calls me Biggy ’cept my friends!”
“But boss,” said the other unicorn, this one a sharp indigo color. “You don’t have any friends!”
He soon received the same treatment as his partner.
“I don’t need friends. I just need people who do what I tell ’em when I tell ’em!” The boss responded. “I thought you two were that type of people, Double Shot. But if you and Hot Shot ain’t, I can help you get acquainted with a new friend right here!”
Big Shot picked a hand-gun up from the table in between them. Though it was rather clumsy in his hooves – there was a reason why most of Equestria’s shooting homicides were unicorn-related and most of its accidental shootings Earth pony-related – he managed to steady it and point it straight at Double Shot’s chest.
The lug got the point. He also nearly got a hoof-full of lead, as Big-Shot fired the gun at one of his legs. Not to seriously cause injury, but just to be funny.
“Any other smart comments?” Big-Shot asked as he returned the pistol to the table. The two offending colts quickly shook their heads.
“Good! Now, where was I? Oh, yes. You see, Pops wanted to move into the local racket, but he couldn’t. That goon Filthy Rich wouldn’t sell a single property, no matter how much money Pops tried to offer him. Always said he already made more money than whatever we could give. Now, being the young, innocent, impressionable kid like I was, that all seemed unfair to me somehow. So, obviously, it was time to even things up a little.”
Big-Shot smiled with glee as he remembered it all. “And do you know what the best part of it was?” He did not wait for either of the unicorns to answer. “The best part of it was finally shutting up that brat daughter of his! Ooh, how she had that coming!”
Big-Shot allowed himself a moment of laughter at the memory.
“You always were a good boy like that,” said a voice from behind him.
If there was one thing that could make Big-Shot’s eyes light up with even more joy, it was the owner of this voice. He turned his head to see the frail-looking figure of his mother, an old nag with a yellow coat and a nail-file for a cutie mark, approaching him.
“I know, Ma,” he said. “I did you real proud then, didn’t I?”
Ma Bigsby smiled. “Indeed, you did. I just wish the same could be said for your father.”
Big-Shot nodded and then turned back to the colts, ready to explain this and not caring that they needed no explanation. “You see, boys, Pops didn’t like what I went and did to Filthy Rich and his brat and all the other people. You see, he was an old-fashioned type of guy, my Pops, and he insisted on doing business the old-fashioned way. He said that when you whack a guy, you gotta be civilized about it. He said blowing up a whole town-block is just not how things are done.”
Big-Shot picked up the gun again and smiled wickedly. “Now, I was steamed, you can be sure. Here, I went through all that work for the old colt’s benefit and here he didn’t appreciate it at all. But I was ‘civilized’ about it, and soon Pops didn’t complain anymore!”
He turned back to his mother. “You been to see Pops lately?”
Ma shook her head. “Nope. They built a road over him soon after we dropped him off, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Big-Shot said. “A shame, that. But it stopped people asking questions. Now, you probably wonder why I told you all this.”
Double-Shot nodded nervously while Hot-Shot just remained silent.
Big-Shot took up his pistol once more and began to wave it menacingly at his hencecolts. “I told you this because I wanted you to remember that I’m the toughest stallion this side’a Canterlot and I don’t take screw-ups from anybody! Now, this job we got going on, this one’s more important than anything we’ve done before. So if anybody lets me down, they’ll be getting comfy in the ground. Got it?”
The two could only nod their heads in fearful understanding.
“But, boss,” Hot-Shot said as he got up his nerve. “You haven’t even told us what the job’s about yet!”
Big-Shot waved to the back of the room. There stood another colt, standing by himself. He now approached. A tall, but rather lean stallion, he was all brown in color and his face seemed soft from carrying the burden of many years. Still, there was enough roughness in his eyes to tell you that this was not the sort of pony you would ever want to encounter if you could in any way avoid it. He came over and, without speaking, threw a large envelope onto the table.
“Go ahead, open it,” Big-Shot commanded his followers.
Hot-Shot lifted the envelope into the air, opened it, and pulled out a package from inside. It was a small, clear package, filled as fully as possible with a white powder.
Double-Shot tilted his head in confusion. “You going to bake a cake or something, boss?”
Big-Shot smiled wickedly. “Yeah, something like that. After all, we got ourselves a Baker lined up that’ll pay good money if we can get more of this into Ponyville.”
“Oh, so you are baking a cake,” Double-Shot responded. Hot-Shot took the opportunity to scoot a little further away from him.
And then the inevitable came. Double-Shot found himself reeling from a sharp blow courtesy of the barrel of Big-Shot’s gun.
“Look here, you,” Big-Shot said. “This ain’t about bakin’ cakes! This is the real stuff right here, and there’s plenty more where this came from. If we play our cards right here, this stuff’ll make us the most powerful outfit in Equestria!”
Hot-Shot helped Double-Shot up as the brown stallion returned the bag to the envelope. Big-Shot continued, “Now, Gadabout here’s going to be bringing the first full shipment of the stuff into Ponyville tonight. I want you guys to pick it up and bring it to the warehouse out behind the club, got it?”
Both Double-Shot and Hot-Shot nodded quickly. Neither of them wanted to give the slightest reason to be knocked about again. Unfortunately for them, neither had noticed that Gadabout had already made his exit.
“Well, what are you two waiting for, then?” Big-Shot shouted. “Get going!”
The sound of his pistol firing toward the ceiling was all the prompting the two goons needed. They were soon out of there with a speed that would have put the Wonderbolts to shame.
Big-Shot next turned toward his mother once they were alone. She smiled at her son so proudly that it would have been touching if this had been a normal family. “I always said you’d make it to the top of the world someday, Biggy,” she said.
He smiled as he put his foreleg around her. “That’s right, and I will, too, ma. Top of the world!”
Just outside of Ponyville is a certain motel, a motel which you will not hear about in any official materials, a motel which takes in anybody and asks few questions. What this motel lacks in cleanliness and service it makes up for in privacy. This is the one place you can go in Ponyville when you want no one to know you are in town. And if you happened to be at the western end of this motel at mid-afternoon of this particular day, you would be witness to the threatening sight of a rifle poking out of one of the windows, perfectly positioned to gun you or anyone else down at a moment’s notice.
If you had been able to work up the courage – or were simply foolish enough – to keep staring back the rifle, you would have seen that it was fidgeting and shaking somewhat. This was because directly on the other end of that rifle was Sweetie Belle, diligently trying to keep it clean.
The young white unicorn was quite preoccupied with wiped down every inch of her instrument, but that did not stop her from looking through the rifle’s scope every few seconds to see if there was anybody she urgently needed to shoot. Every time she looked however, she just saw the same deserted parking lot. And that seemed like all that was ever going to be out there.
On the opposite side of the room, Scootaloo was leaning against the wall, flapping her wings slowly in boredom.
“You sure that the file said there’s something going down here today?” Scootaloo said, having now asked the question for the tenth time.
Apple Bloom, who was sitting at the small coffee-table and playing a card game with herself, answered. “Like Ah told ya before, Scoots, this is where Willow’s papers said Bigsby’s gang was gonna be.”
“How did she even know that, anyway?” Scootaloo asked.
“Informants, Ah guess,” Apple Bloom answered. “Merchants are sneaky like that. ’s why Applejack always used to say never trust ’em.”
“Good advice,” Scootaloo said. “I’m beginning to think this whole thing was a practical joke by Willow Tree. Dangle a chance to clear our names in front of us and then leave us sitting around in the boondocks like buffoons. She’s probably laughing at what suckers we all are.”
Scootaloo once more looked at Sweetie Belle, who was scrubbing the rifle harder than ever. “Do you two need to be alone?” she said.
Sweetie Belle’s green eyes darted upward. “Oh, like you’re any better with that scooter of yours? You even talk to the thing.”
“Don’t refer to her as ‘the thing’!” Scootaloo snapped defensively. Then she slapped her hoof to her face as she realized what had just come out of her mouth. “I still say it’s weird how much you clean that thing. Don’t you think so, AB?”
Apple Bloom did not look up from her cards. “Seein’ as how Ah’m the only one who’s not in a committed relationship with a piece of offensive weaponry, Ah’m gonna stay outta this one.”
“Oh, yeah?” Scootaloo said, approaching her. “What about that bow of yours?”
Apple Bloom now finally looked up at her, the golden eyes communicating everything before she even spoke. “Seriously? Ya sayin’ mah bow’s an offensive weapon?”
“Well….”
“Mah bow’s capable of killin’ somepony, that’s what yer sayin’?”
“Well, maybe in the right hooves….”
“That’s just plain ridiculous, Scoots! That’s got to be the most-ridiculous thing that’s ever come out of yer mouth!”
“What about the time she said we should try for a griffon-hunting cutie mark,” Sweetie Belle volunteered as she once more focused on cleaning the rifle.
Apple Bloom nodded and dutifully corrected herself. “That’s got to be the second most-ridiculous thing that’s ever come out of yer mouth, Scootaloo!”
Scootaloo’s eyes now darted around the room. The tide of the conversation was clearly against her and she needed something to turn the focus away before she managed to embarrass herself anymore. Finally, her eyes came to rest on Apple Bloom’s cards.
“AB, since when can you play solitaire?” she said.
“Ah can’t,” Apple Bloom responded, her attention returning to the game. “This is a one-player version of ‘Go Fish.’”
“And how’s it going?”
“Somehow, Ah’m losin’.”
Scootaloo suddenly felt the need to get out of the room very, very fast. Just to get out, clear her head, smell the country air that she had practically forgotten, and just avoid getting into any more weird conversations.
“Hey, I’m starving!” she said. “How ’bout I go get us a pizza?”
“Scoots, we don’t have time to eat!” Apple Bloom said, throwing down the cards she was holding. She did not usually lose her temper like this, but her teammates’ constant return to the theme of eating was finally getting to her.
“Sounds like somebody’s grumpy from having skipped lunch,” Scootaloo said.
“It does sound like that,” Sweetie Belle offered.
Scootaloo silently sighed in relief. She had hoped the mention of food would be enough to bring Sweetie Belle back to her side. It looked like it worked.
“Ah’m not grumpy!” Apple Bloom said grumpily. “We got a job to do! We can’t be rushin’ off to eat when a fight could break out any minute!”
“Because the action out there’s just getting so intense,” Scootaloo said, waving her wing toward the still-empty parking-lot outside.
“Come on, Apple Bloom,” Sweetie Belle said, putting her rifle aside for a moment. “We aren’t going to be much good in a fight if we don’t eat something.”
“Ah know,” Apple Bloom said. “But it’s just–”
“Great, so pizza it is!” Scootaloo said, not about to let Apple Bloom raise another objection. “I think there’s a pizza-place just down the street. I’ll run out and get it and you and Sweetie can hold the fort until I get back! What do you say?”
Scootaloo realized that this was probably the only time in her life that she would be thankful that boredom had led her to flip through a phonebook for fun. She knew exactly where she would go, and she also knew Apple Bloom would be warmer to the idea if it meant only one of them had to leave their posts.
“Ah… guess it’s okay,” Apple Bloom said at last.
“Great!” Scootaloo exclaimed as she headed for the door. “So, the usual? Extra hay and daffodils?”
Sweetie Belle voiced her agreement but Apple Bloom only said, “Be careful out there. And don’t let anyone see who y’are. And, no matter what, hurry back.”
Scootaloo grabbed her scooter, threw a dark jacket over her wings, and gave a confident nod to Apple Bloom. A moment later, she was gone.
It was already after nightfall by the time Scootaloo got back to the motel. And what was worse, she was returning with no pizza. She had made it to the pizza parlor alright, and there was no trouble on the way back, but the place itself was another story. Scootaloo had the privilege of being served by what must have been Equestria’s most incompetent batch of would-be dough-twirlers. After they had gotten her order wrong several times only to decide that they did not have the proper ingredients when they finally got it right, Scootaloo had stormed out of the place and made her way back to the motel.
Now she was frustrated, hungry, and more than a little tired. All Scootaloo wished she could do was fall into bed and sleep until morning. She did not even notice much her jacket slipped off of her and into the darkness. As she approached the western span, she saw that no lights were on in the whole section. This did not surprise her – Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were smarter than to leave the Bigsby gang with any tell-tale signs of their presence – but it did serve to make Scootaloo even sleepier than she already was.
She had to stop her scooter in the parking-lot as she had nearly fallen asleep while driving. But then she saw something which immediately woke her up. At first, it just seemed like a flicker in the darkness, and Scootaloo thought her sleepy mind was playing tricks on her. But then, as it moved again, she realized that she was seeing another figure in the darkness. And this figure was moving quickly toward the Crusaders’ room!
Scootaloo immediately punched her scooter to life and sped down the parking lot. With a sharp turn, she pulled the scooter around just in time to block the figure before it could reach the room.
“Alright, stop right there!” Scootaloo ordered. “Any false moves and I’m blasting your face open! So you better stay there and tell me who – Pinkie Pie?”
Sure enough, as the light of the rising moon improved Scootaloo’s vision, she had been able to make out the form of a familiar pink pony standing in front of her.
“What? I’m not Pinkie Pie,” Pinkie Pie said quickly. “What would make you think I’m Pinkie Pie?”
“How about the three balloons on your flank,” Scootaloo said, pointing her hoof toward the telltale yellow and blue cutie-mark on Pinkie’s rear.
Pinkie quickly covered the cutie mark with her hoof. Scootaloo simply tilted her head and body to look at the mark on the other flank. This one Pinkie used her other hoof to cover, so that now she was bent over with only her back legs for support. Scootaloo could not imagine a more uncomfortable stance, and yet Pinkie showed no signs of discomfort at all.
“There, now you can’t see them. Now you don’t have any proof at all that I’m Pinkie Pie.”
Scootaloo just stared at her. “Yeah, whatever. Look, Pinkie Pie, what are you–”
“Why do you keep saying that? Why do you keep saying ‘Pinkie Pie’?” Pinkie Pie said, turning her head frantically in order to look all around her. “I don’t see any Pinkie Pies around here! Do you see any Pinkie Pies around here?”
Scootaloo’s eyes narrowed as she pointed her hoof toward Pinkie. “Yeah, I see a Pinkie Pie right in front of me.”
“Not for long, you don’t!”
Before Scootaloo could even process that response, Pinkie Pie became a pink blur that tore down the side of the motel at a speed which – as much as it pained Scootaloo to admit it – would have given Rainbow Dash a good run for her money..
“Oh, no, you don’t, Pinkie….” Scootaloo said. Gritting her teeth, she launched the scooter in pursuit. Pinkie Pie may have been a friend once, but that did not give her the right to snoop around Crusader business without an explanation. And Scootaloo intended to have that explanation, no matter how far and fast she had to go to get it.
But when she turned the corner, she was in for a shock. Despite the fact that Pinkie had only gone down it a second before she herself did, Scootaloo now found that there was absolutely no one there. Scootaloo’s eyes darted all around, but she could not find even a hint of pink in the dark blue night.
With a sigh, Scootaloo resolved herself to the hard fact that it was pointless to keep searching the darkness. She turned her scooter around and began to head back toward the room. Her mind raced over what had just happened. Scootaloo could not figure it out. Why had Pinkie Pie been there? Where had she come from? Where had she gone to? Why would she even be at a motel like this? And why did it seem like she was snooping around?
Scootaloo, like so many before her who had tried to understand the enigma that is Pinkie Pie, found that she did not have the answers. She was ready to just chalk it all up to Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie when she saw the other Crusaders waiting for her outside of their room. Both were armed – Sweetie Belle with her rifle and Apple Bloom with her apple-bombs – and neither looked too pleased with their comrade.
“Scootaloo, what was all that noise?” Apple Bloom said.
“And where’s our pizza?” Sweetie Belle added.
“We thought something had happened to you, and then we heard all the commotion,” Apple Bloom said, a hint of concern creeping into her voice. “What all went on that you scared us like that?”
Scootaloo thought it was a good question. It was certainly one she would have liked the answer to, herself. “Look, I was just coming back when who should I see sneaking around our room… but Pinkie Pie?”
“Pinkie Pie?” the two other Crusaders said together.
“Yeah, Pinkie Pie! But when I confronted her about it, she said she wasn’t Pinkie Pie and then she ran off and I chased after her but then she just vanished into nowhere or something and I was just coming back when you two came out.”
As Scootaloo finished, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle shared knowing looks.
“Scoots,” Sweetie Belle said, reaching a hoof out. “It’s been a long day and we haven’t had much food or sleep in a while. Sure it’s just not getting to you?”
Scootaloo flapped her wings indignantly. “Are you saying I imagined the whole thing?”
“Imagine’s kinda a big word, Scoots,” Apple Bloom said. “We’re just sayin’ ya might have got confused a little, is all.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing! When have either of you two known me to get ‘confused’ about something like that?”
Sweetie Belle began to open her mouth, but Scootaloo threw up a hoof to stop her. “And don’t you dare say Fillydelphia!”
“Shhhhh!” Apple Bloom said suddenly. “Girls, listen!”
All three Crusaders stood silently and listened. They heard voices. Voices coming from the side of the building, just beyond their room.
“So, you got all the goods?”
“Yeah, everything’s here. Now just get it to the boss and we’ll be through.”
Apple Bloom silently nodded her head, signaling the other two to follow her. As they walked, Sweetie Belle put her rifle into position, while Scootaloo, rolling the scooter beside her, made sure that it would be ready to fire if need be.
The three cautiously peeked their heads around the building, and there saw three colts. Two of them, an indigo unicorn and a brown Earth pony, were hitched up to wide wooden wagons, while the third, a white unicorn, was moving large crates from the brown pony’s wagon to that of the indigo one.
“You really sure this is the whole shipment?” the white unicorn said.
“It’s fifteen crates,” the Earth pony responded gruffly.
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” the white unicorn snapped. “Fifteen crates! Fifteen crates! Well, why not sixteen or twenty crates?”
“You accusing me of holding out on you?”
“Maybe I am.”
“Hot-Shot, Hot-Shot, it’s okay!” the indigo unicorn said, trying to get between the other two and, due to still having a wagon attached to his back, not getting very far. “If it’s alright with the boss, it should be alright with you too!”
“Alright with the boss!” the white unicorn said. “I don’t think the boss even knows what’s alright anymore!”
“Shhhhhhh!” both of the other two colts said immediately.
“Hey, that’s just how you guys treat me!” Scootaloo whispered.
“Shhhhhhh!” both Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle answered.
“You don’t want the boss hearing you saying stuff like that, do you?” the indigo unicorn said to his partner.
“The boss ain’t here, so who cares?” responded the white one.
“You guys think these are Biggy’s gang?” Sweetie Belle whispered.
“Whatever they are, they’re nothing good,” Scootaloo responded.
“Ya girls think we should take ’em out?” Apple Bloom asked.
Scootaloo beamed and readied her scooter. “Let’s do it!”
Apple Bloom nodded. “Okay. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Hot-Shot had nearly finished loading the crates onto Double-Shot’s wagon. He only had one more left to place and then he could get them to the warehouse and call it a night. He was glad for that – being a glorified errand-boy was not really his style. But he had to bear with it, just long enough to get the job done. The job still came first, after all.
This was what was going through Hot-Shot’s mind at the moment he heard the first explosion. By the time an apple connected with Gadabout’s wagon and sparked the second, those thoughts were gone completely. The last crate floating in the air crashed to the ground as Hot-Shot spun around to face his attackers, his full focus now on getting the gun out of the holster hidden under his jacket.
He got it out swiftly. But, just as swiftly, he lost the opportunity to use it when he found himself right in the path of a speeding electric scooter. Hot-Shot quickly dodged out of the way and, with the gun floating beside him, fired several shots at the orange Pegasus on the scooter. He had to admit that it had not been his best shooting, as he had no time to recover and really had just been firing shots randomly. But it seemed to do the trick. The Pegasus went down.
“Scootaloo!” called a voice from nearby. Hot-Shot knew immediately that he should take out whoever said this.
But it was not Hot-Shot’s night. Before he had the chance, he felt something hit him hard in the face. It was something small, but it had the force of a boxer’s fist. With his concentration broken and his gun falling to the ground, Hot-Shot found himself knocked back against the wagon, nearly upsetting some of the crates.
He watched in a daze as a female unicorn, whiter than he, ran past with a rifle floating beside her. Some part of his brain processed the fact that he was just hit by an exceptionally fast pea and it was a relief to know that it had not been a real bullet. But that did nothing to clear up Hot-Shot’s stupor.
Luckily, downing the Pegasus had apparently bought him some time, because saw another pony – a yellow one this time, with a ridiculously large pink bow – run past without so much as looking at him. It was all the time he needed to recover. Not 100% percent, by any means, but enough to function as more than fodder for any further food-based weaponry.
Hot-Shot looked beside him, toward the front of the cart. There he saw Double-Shot, feverishly trying to get free of his harness so that he could take part in the fighting. And he had his idea. Quickly, Hot-Shot lifted up his gun and jumped up onto the bed of the wagon.
“Quit fooling around!” he shouted at Double-Shot. “Get us out of here!”
“But what about Gadabout?”
“Leave him! It’s too late now! They got him already! If we stay around here, they’ll get us too!”
Hot-Shot had no idea if this was true. He had not seen Gadabout since the second explosion had rocked the Earth pony’s wagon. And given his woozy state, Hot-Shot felt like he was in no condition to try and search him out under potentially heavy pea-fire. But Hot-Shot already had the crates, so his job was done. Priority number one was getting out of there with the crates intact.
Actually, priority number one was not being shot again, but getting out with the crates was a very close second.
As Double-Shot took off toward the road, Hot-Shot faced back around and got his first full view of the results of the ambush. Or he would have, if Gadabout’s overturned wagon was not blocking everything from sight. Still, Hot-Shot knew his adversaries were there, somewhere. So the overturned wagon became his target as he fired repeatedly, wildly, at every inch and corner of it.
The pea-shooting rifle peeked over the edge of the wagon and seemed to be aiming for him. Hot-Shot continued firing in its direction, hoping to teach its owner a lesson. And, maybe it was lesson learned, for – much to Hot-Shot’s great surprise – the rifle ducked back under the wagon without firing a single shot.
Hot-Shot collapsed against the crates in relief as the wagon sped off into the safety of the night.
“Scootaloo!” Sweetie Belle yelled in alarm as she saw her friend and her friend’s scooter go tumbling to the ground. She barely had time to notice that the off-white unicorn who had caused that was now seeking to do something similar to her.
But she needed little time to respond.
“I’ll make you pay for that,” she said under her breath as her pea-shooter fired away, its projectile finding its mark right on the side of the unicorn’s face.
Sweetie Belle prepared to let loose another shot when she felt a gentle hoof on her shoulder.
“Let’s go check on Scootaloo,” Apple Bloom said. Her voice was attempting to be calm and reassuring, but it was not difficult for Sweetie Belle to tell that Apple Bloom was just as worried about their friend as she was.
Sweetie Belle needed no further prompting. The white hoodlum completely forgotten, she rushed toward the wagon that had just been upset by Apple Bloom’s apple bomb. Scootaloo had just been making the turn around it when she had gone down.
Sweetie Belle found Scootaloo sprawled out on the ground.
“Scootaloo!” she called again. The rifle dropped to the ground beside her as she wrapped her hooves around her friend.
“I’m fine, I’m fine!” Scootaloo said, trying to get up. “I’m okay.”
Sweetie Belle quickly helped her into a sitting position, by which time Apple Bloom had caught up with them. She quickly crouched beside her comrades.
“But we saw you… you were hit!” Sweetie Belle said. “We saw you go down!”
“It was nothing,” Scootaloo said. “The bullet just grazed my wing is all. See?”
Scootaloo stretched out her wing a little, just enough to show where the tips of a few feathers had been blasted off.
“But, then why’d ya fall down like ya were dead or somethin’?” Apple Bloom asked.
Scootaloo shook her head and scrunched her mouth. “Bullet came by just as I was making a super-sharp turn. Caused me to lose my balance and go spinning out of control. Pretty soon I was thrown off the scooter completely.”
In a flash, her anger revived. “I can’t wait to make the cheap-shooting chump pay for that!”
As if on cue, the sound of gunfire began anew. The Crusaders were pelted with fragments of wood as several new holes opened up in the wagon bed. The three huddled close together, hoping to avoid the bullets that were furiously bursting through the wood.
The sudden chaos had been enough to make Sweetie Belle forget the rifle lying beside her. But she quickly remembered and even more quickly floated it into position atop the overturned wagon. She was ready to fire, even if getting a clear view of her target would be next to impossible in these conditions.
But, as it was, Apple Bloom dared to look out of one of the bullet-holes in the wagon. She could see little, but she saw enough to know that the other wagon was not sticking around. It was making as quick an escape as it could manage. And Apple Bloom knew that, in their current state, the Crusaders were not prepared to stop it.
She put her hoof once more on her partner’s shoulder.
“Sweets,” she said. “They’re leaving. Let ’em go.”
Sweetie Belle’s eyes seemed to be asking Apple Bloom if she had gone completely crazy, but a few more shots at the wagon were enough to get the idea to sink in. Sweetie Belle pulled the rifle down and huddled with the other two until the gunshots stopped.
It seemed like a full minute before any of them dared to speak. Scootaloo was the first to do so. “I don’t believe it. The bad guys got away! I nearly got my wings clipped for nothing!”
“Not for nothing,” Apple Bloom said as she looked over the wagon. Without waiting to explain, she walked cautiously out from behind the wagon. Scootaloo did not need an invitation to follow. The last to leave, Sweetie Belle, sighed and situated her rifle on her back, and then went after them.
The three Crusaders stood around the remains of the crate that had fallen at the start of the shootout. The force of the drop had been enough to shatter it. Now, it was merely several broken planks of wood and a very, very, large pile of a suspicious-looking white powder.
“Is that….” Sweetie Belle began.
Apple Bloom knelt down and scooped up a little of the white powder with her hoof. Then, as she stood up, she brought the hoof to her mouth and licked it.
“Yep,” she said. “Pure cane sugar.”
“I thought that stuff was outlawed,” Sweetie Belle remarked quietly.
“So that’s what they’re into,” Scootaloo said. “They’re smuggling illegal sugar!”
“An’ quite a lot of it by the looks of all them crates on that other wagon,” Apple Bloom said. “This is bad. Y’all know the effect sugar has on ponies. Too much of the pure stuff an’ they’ll all be just like Pinkie Pie.”
“You don’t need to tell Scootaloo,” Sweetie Belle said with a sly smile. “Since she’s the expert on Pinkie Pie.”
Scootaloo just growled in response.
Apple Bloom continued to look at the sugar thoughtfully. “We need to take care a’this right quick before they get it out on the streets.”
“And how are we going to do that since we don’t even know where they’re taking it?” Scootaloo asked. “And for that matter, where’d my scooter disappear to?”
It was then that the sound of groaning became audible from a little ways away. Apple Bloom stuck her muzzle in one of her saddle-bags, reaching for an emergency apple-bomb, while Sweetie Belle began to move her pea-shooter once more into firing position. Scootaloo could do nothing but look at the other two in frustration, since she did not have her scooter on hoof to fight with.
It was not shaping up to be Scootaloo’s night.
But, as the groaning intensified, the Crusaders realized it was not the sound of an enemy ready for a fight. Rather, it was the sound of an enemy beaten – though whether the enemy himself knew he was beaten was a different question. Relaxing their guard, they rushed over to the other side of the overturned wagon, from whence the sounds were emanating. Scootaloo was the first to comment on the scene that awaited them.
“My scooter!” she said in joy.
Indeed, there was Scootaloo’s scooter. And under Scootaloo’s scooter was the brown Earth pony from the sugar deal, lying flat out on his stomach.
“Okay, I’m lost,” Sweetie Belle said. “What just happened here?”
“Well, uh, I didn’t have time to turn the scooter’s engine off before I was thrown from it,” Scootaloo admitted, her hoof scratching the back of her head and her eyes darting away from her friends’ gazes.
“An’ Ah’m guessin’ that our friend here just managed to get out of his harness an’ was tryin’ to get to safer ground,” Apple Bloom said. “That’s when the scooter came by an’ clobbered him.”
Scootaloo grabbed up the scooter and gave it a tight hug. “It’s okay, baby. Momma’s here now.”
She stopped when she saw the look that Apple Bloom was giving her.
“Um, guys….” Sweetie Belle said. “He’s got a gun….”
Indeed, there was a gun lying not too far from where the brown pony lay. He now began to crawl toward it. He was badly hurt and could not move fast, but that did not stop him from trying to reach it. He pushed himself toward it with all the might he could muster. Soon, it was within his hoof’s reach.
And then, a yellow hoof kicked the gun far away. The brown Earth pony turned onto his back to face the yellow Earth pony looking down at him.
“Well, girls, it looks like we got ourselves a lead,” Apple Bloom remarked with a smirk.
The brown pony steadied himself as best he could under the circumstances. “I’m… I’m not going to talk. You won’t make me, no matter what you try.”
“Oh, yeah? We’ll see about that,” Scootaloo said as she approached him.
Then, suddenly, she found a white foreleg blocking her path. As Scootaloo halted, Sweetie Belle drew back her leg and then began to crack her hooves.
“Leave him to me,” Sweetie Belle said.
What did Sweetie Belle have in mind?
Read on.