Ponyville Dashers

by AimBot

Crusader?

Pipsqueak, Dinky, and yourself all exchange unsure glances. It seems you're the first to give in.

"I guess I'm in..." You groan.

"Me too." Dinky adds in a singsong voice.

Pipsqueak shrugs. "Count me in."

The three current Crusaders trade glances, and smile. Apple Bloom claps her hooves together as a grin splits her face. "Dismissed. Let the initiation.... Begin!"

Sweetie Belle nudges Dinky with her elbow, and the two disappear out the door. Apple Bloom and Pipsqueak follow. You nervously glance at Scootaloo, and she shoots you a cheesy grin. She stands, and dashes towards the door, her speed supplemented by a few flaps of her wings. You rise from your seat and give chase, trotting out the door after her. Stopping just out the door, you see she's waiting a few feet away from the stairs. Feeling a sudden sense of bravado, you take a bounding leap and barely manage to clear the stairs, staggering as you land.

Scootaloo shoots you another grin and nudges you with her elbow. "Nice landing. C'mon," she says, waving towards an open field. "I've already got your initiation set up."

You stare after her for a moment, but soon give chase as she trots towards the field. Across the field, you can see a sparse patch of trees, with one tree in particular seizing your interest. Hanging from one of the branches, you can see a rope swing, ending with a wooden plank. As you near the tree, you notice a depression beside it, directly under the swing-branch. And there's water in it. You cast a suspicious glance at Scootaloo as she stops at the trunk of the tree.

"So, here's your initiation," she says, patting the trunk of the tree.

You arch an eyebrow at her, and glance at the small pond. "What?"

"Here's what I had planned..." Scootaloo begins. She turns away and starts climbing up the trunk of the tree, coming to rest upon a branch directly above you, and parallel to the edge of the pond. "Send the swing up, would you?"

You cast a dubious glance at her, but snatch the swing from its rest at the very edge of the pond anyhow, and send it arcing its way to her. She catches the swing as it nears her, and grins. Without a second thought, she wraps both forelegs around the rope and tosses herself from the branch. Your heart pounds to the point you think its going to thud out of your chest, and you take an unconscious step forward and start to call out.

The shout dies in your throat as she releases the swing and cannonballs into the pond, sending a massive splash rippling through the pool. After a moment she surfaces, gasps for breath, and sloshes up and out of the water. She grins at you from underneath her soaking-wet mane, some of which is stuck to her face. Her grins widens as she shakes herself off, splashing you with a surprisingly large amount of water.

"Hey, cut it out!" you call, taking a step back and wiping yourself off.

Scootaloo, ignoring the large portion of her mane in her face, shrugs. "So, what'd ya think, huh?"

"Very... splashy." You say, shrugging back at her. "But, what does that have to do with my initiation?"

Scootaloo's grin returns, twofold of what it once was. "So, I was thinking.... I could make you do some menial tasks," she begins, attempting to flick her wet mane over her shoulder, "I could essentially make you do whatever I wanted..."

You slowly lift a hoof. "Uh.... if this gets too ridiculous, I could always just.... Not join your club-thing."

Scootaloo rolls her eyes at you and smiles. "I wasn't finished! I could do all that stuff.... But I didn't. Instead, I decided it would be so much more awesome if you did something cool, something..." She paused, and her grin grew. "Exciting. So...." She dragged out, "You're going to do what I just did. Simple, yeah?"

You pause for a moment, and glance between the swing and Scootaloo. "Uh... Exactly what you did?"

Scootaloo nods. "Exactly. But feel free to add on, too! You could do a front-flip, ooh, or a quadruple back-flip with a seven-twenty twist! And..." She glances at you, notices the dubious look on your face, and shrugs. "Or not.... So, what do you say?" She extends a hoof towards you. "Do you want to join the Crusaders?"

You cast one last suspicious glance at the rope-swing, before sighing and nodding, tapping your hoof to hers. "Yeah, alright. I'll do it."

Scootaloo lets out a whoop of joy and tugs on your hoof, dragging you to the trunk of the tree. She pats your shoulder, and nods reassuringly. With a deep breath, you work on climbing the tree. You clamber awkwardly up to the same limb Scootaloo had perched herself on, nearly losing your grip on the trunk of the tree once or twice.

Perched upon the branch, the tree seems a whole lot taller than it did from the ground. You close your eyes and shake your head, taking a deep breath to calm yourself. When you open your eyes, you see Scootaloo, about to send the swing up. As the swing arcs upwards to meet you, you feebly catch the rope.

"Don't worry," Scootaloo calls up, "It seems scary at first, but it's so much fun once you're going!"

You take another deep breath to calm your nerves, and set a hoof on the wooden plank. You tightly wrap both fore-hooves around the rope, and push yourself from the branch. The world lurches forward and the ground rushes up to meet you, but just as you fear you're going to break against the hard ground, the rope snaps taut and you begin the arc.

The only trace of Scootaloo you have is an orange and purple blur at the bottom of the arc, and her cheers of glee. You're not too sure if the pounding in your heart is from the thrill of the swing, Scootaloo's cheering, or a mixture of both.

At the top of the arc, you release the rope and push yourself off the plank. You try to curl yourself up into a ball like Scootaloo had done, but you find you're unable to command your legs. Instead of cannon-balling in, you belly-flop into the water, bringing about an intensely painful stinging sensation around your, well, belly, and other frontal areas.

For a moment, the entire world seems to go dark. Then you open your eyes, and see the light of Celestia's sun shining through the water. With all the strength you can muster, you swim towards the surface. After a moment, you find yourself flopping out onto the shore, gasping for breath. In the next moment, you roll onto your back and try to say something. All that emerges from your throat is a raspy groan. You close your eyes and take a deep breath.

The brightness of the sun disappears through your eyelids. Yeah, you think, it's odd, but who cares? I'm alive! You feel what seems like a gust of warm wind across your face. It seems like an almost pleasant breeze. When you feel something brush against your lips, that's when your eyes snap open.

Scootaloo jumps up and back with a sharp gasp. "I thought you were - and I was supposed to - CPR! And, and-!" She takes a small step forward, and cocks her head to the side. There's something about her voice that you can't quite place. "Are.... Are you okay?"

You slowly roll onto your stomach, and rise up to your hooves. You make a show of shaking yourself off. After a moment, you take a deep breath, and look at Scootaloo.

"Yeah.... I'm okay...." You say quietly, rerunning everything - and boy, do you mean everything - through your head. "Maybe... Maybe a bit better than okay..."

Scootaloo shoots you a smile, one you can't exactly place, and nods. "Told you it'd be fun once you were going."

You nod slowly, and run a hoof through your soaked mane. She did tell you. For some reason, you feel somewhat exposed, and draw you legs closer to your body with a shiver. "So, uh..." You hesitate, unsure of what to say, what moment to address. "Um.... What should we do now...?"

There's a long, awkward silence; the kind you're fairly used to. Scootaloo scratches her neck and shrugs. "Well... I think the initiations Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom have planned are going to take a while, so..." She shrugs again. "I dunno."

You scratch at the side of you head and return her shrug. "We should probably..... Dry off, or something, before we do anything else."

Scootaloo nods, and attempts to wring out her mane. "Yeah. So..."

"We could go back to my house," You suggest.

Scootaloo shrugs and lets her mane fall beside her head. "Yeah, sure. Let's go."

---

After the walk into town and to your home, both of you have dried off a little. You stop at the door and listen carefully for Vinyl, or Octavia, or both of them. When you hear music playing lightly in the background, you decide Vinyl's home alone, and open the door. You make an exaggerated motion for Scootaloo to go in first, and close the door behind yourself.

You both stand silently at the door mat for a moment. When nothing happens, though you're not sure why you expected something to happen anyway, you shrug at Scootaloo.

"Vinyl!" You shout, listening more closely to the music coming from upstairs. You wait a moment. "Vinyl!" When nothing happens, you sigh. You cast a glance back at Scootaloo, "Wait here. I'll be back in a sec."

You take slow, cautious steps, trying not to slip on the hardwood floor, and trying just as hard to not leave puddles on the floor. You slowly and surely make your way towards the stairs. At the first step, you look up and scowl.

"Vinyl!" You call.

After a moment, Vinyl - or her head, at least - appears at the top of the stairs. She squints at you and raises an eyebrow. "What is it, squirt? I thought you and your filly-friend were-" she stops, and gasps. "You're soaking! Stay right there!" She disappears for a moment, before reappearing with a bundle of towels. She hurries down the stairs, and begins to roughly dry you off. "What were you doing? It's not raining, is it? No, it isn't! I thought you and your-"

You pull away quickly and hiss at her, jerking your head towards the door. She turns and looks at Scootaloo, and a small smile creeps onto her face. It falls away just as quickly as she notices that Scootaloo is also soaking wet. She scowls at you.

"Oh, come on!" She groans. She takes a few quick steps towards Scootaloo, and tosses her a towel. She shoves a towel at you, and shakes her head. "What did you two do? I mean, come on!"

You and Scootaloo exchange knowing smiles and burst into laughter.

"We went swimming," You insist.

Vinyl eyes you suspiciously. "Swimming, or swimming?"

You blink. "Uh.... We went swimming. In a pond. You know. With water."

Vinyl's suspicious gaze doesn't waver. "Uh-huh.... You and me are gonna have a little talk later on, got that, squirt?"

You snort at her. "I didn't do anything!"

She raises a hoof to silence you. "Shush-up, squirt. No buts. No arguing. Dry yourselves off, then we're going out for lunch." Vinyl leans close and smirks at you. "You can even bring your filly-friend."

You stick your tongue out at her, and get to work on drying yourself off.

Comments

[Flare]

Holy quackemole, was a long time since last update, only one thing to do then, re-read the entire story :)

[Wargame]

Well, after deciding I was going to write an MLP footy story, writing a blog about how it was "Greatest idea I'd ever had", and coming up with a starting eleven for the pony team, I saw this story.

Well then, looks like I can go back to writing my other stories

In all seriousness though I do like your story.

[AimBot]

2742253 If you want to write it, by all means, go ahead. From your blog, I think your story would focus much more on the game itself. I like to think mine focuses less on the game.

Also, thank you for the compliment and being quite polite about it.

[Wargame]

2742335 Haha that comment was a bit more dramatic than I intended. I do intend to write it still, I just need to sort some ideas out.

[Zauber Junge]

I really loved this chapter, it made my day that much brighter

[Gammer14]

Had to re-read the whole thing, but it was worth it... Though it might not be tomorrow when I only get 6 hours of sleep. Good story none the less, hopefully it'll update faster?

[Neon Icy Wings]

I have waited so long for this! I just had to reread the last chapter before this. But I can't wait for more! Even if it does take almost a year again!