Friendship is Not Dead

by Pterry

The Merry Band of Friends

"So are you starting to remember now?"

In truth, Sweetie Belle still couldn't quite remember. She had been able to build pseudo-memories from Scootaloo's stories, in a similar manner to how one can "remember" a story from his or her early childhood based on the tales of parents and other relatives. Sweetie Belle could almost remember the bright green grass, the warmth of a summer day, the laughter of friends, but not quite. All the same, she believed the orange mare. Sweetie Belle's sense of logic had deduced that the only way for Scootaloo to have such a presence in Sweetie's mind is if the two of them had once been close. Short of that, the only thing she remembered was the short flash of memory of using magic in that wooden library.

"No."

"Aw, don't worry, Sweets, it'll come back to ya."

The conversation was cut short by a pounding on the door.

"Sweetie Belle! Sweetie Belle!" bellowed the stallion on the other side.

"Oh no," whispered Sweetie Belle, "you need to hide!"

Scootaloo dashed into the bedroom and closed the door very gently. Sweetie Belle trotted to the front door and opened it. There stood her supervisor from work, whose face went from angry to shocked to sheepish.

"Oh my gosh, Mr. Mond, I'm so sorry I haven't shown up for work yet, it's just-"

"Eh, don't worry about it kid. You look terrible. Get some rest, Belle, and just show up when you're not sick."

The stallion walked away quickly, no doubt fearful at the notion of leaving his post in the hands of some lackey for more than an hour.

Sweetie Belle closed the door. "What? I'm not sick."

Scootaloo poked her out of the bedroom and looked carefully at Sweetie's body for a moment. She giggled and said, "Yeah, but he's right about one thing. You do look terrible."

Sweetie Belle looked down at herself. She had to agree; she did look terrible. Sweetie's hooves were caked with mud, her belly was still swollen, her coat was crusty, and her tail was tangled. Sweetie's eyes were bloodshot and under those were more bags than in a grocery market. It was no wonder; Sweetie Belle had been awake for twenty-four hours, and in those twenty-four hours she had worked, trudged through a muddy Canterlot rainstorm multiple times, given birth, stayed up all night, survived a changeling attack, and had some very stressful visits from a certain public enemy number one. Sweetie Belle, at this point, realized that she was positively exhausted. She yawned loudly.

"I need to go to bed."

"Now hold on there, Sweets. I need to take you somewhere."

"Oh, come on!"

"Yeah, I know, I know, you need your beauty rest, but this is important."

"What's important?"

Scootaaloo cleared her throat and asked, "Are interested to know what I've been doing all this time?" Scootaloo beamed at her friend.

It occurred to Sweetie that she had never asked about that. Was that something friends were supposed to do? Was Sweetie Belle a bad friend?

"Um, sure."

Scootaloo stood on her back hooves and assumed a boxing stance. She gave an enthusiastic, devilish smile and threw a few air punches. With much gusto, she announced, "I've been fighting against Queen Trixie! I've been working with an underground resistance called the Merry Band of Friends! I want you to come see!" Scootaloo wobbled, her bipedal stance quite unsteady. She completely lost her balance, fell flat on her face, and sprang up into a more natural quadrupedal stance, her smile practically wide enough to fill two faces.

"The Merry Band of Friends?"

Scootaloo answered her friend by widening her already obnoxiously large grin.

"I've never heard of it."

Scootaloo's smile became an expression of scorn, "Well, that's because Trixie can't let the word get out, can't let our message resonate with the ponies!" Sweetie Belle answered her friend with a blank stare, and Scootaloo's expression became sheepish. "Well, uh, also we haven't done anything yet." Scootaloo pointed a hoof at Sweetie Belle and proclaimed, "But now you're here! Twilight said she was bringing us together to overthrow the Mare! All we gotta do is find Apple Bloom and we'll blast Trixie with some sort of awesome", Scootaloo's hoof whooshed through the air at this point, "magic like Twilight and her friends used to do!"

Sweetie Belle's blank stare continued, "The Mare?"

Scootaloo groaned and said, "You know! The establishment! The queen! She's keeping us down, sister!" Sweetie Belle's stare, amazingly, became even blanker. Scootaloo groaned once again, "Ugh. Just come on! We gotta get over to HQ!" The pair of mares had taken a few steps when a thought occurred to Scootaloo. "You know, actually, you take a bath first. We'll go later."

---

Trixie oversaw the project. A team of stallions pulled a very large, wooden crate with ropes. It would have been much easier to use a pallet and forklift, but everypony knew that Trixie didn't trust wheels. Trixie was sure this wasn't right.

"No, no, no, forepony, this is not what I told you to get. What I told you to get is small. This is huge."

A large stallion dropped his rope and stepped over to Trixie to explain, "Er, well, you see, your highness, we, uh, we couldn't get those gems you asked for out of the tree." A drop of nervous sweat dripped into the stallion's eye, causing him to pause and wince. He shook his head and continued, "So we just dug up the whole tree and brought it here."

Apple Bloom, rope still in her mouth, rolled her eyes at her shuddering leader. She reckoned she would have made a much better forepony. Heck, she was the only one on the team who even knew what to look for; she'd seen the gems herself before. Of course, she didn't dare mention that. Personally, Apple Bloom didn't care to be working for the mare who was probably responsible for the disappearance of her sister, but honestly, she had stopped being angry a long time ago. She simply did her job and kept her mouth shut. It was all she could do.

Trixie shook her head in annoyance and said, "Fine then. Just take it to the courtyard and plant it. Right in the center. After that, get out of my sight. I'll need to find some more competent ponies to get the Elements out for me."

The stallion made an unsure salute-like gesture and went back to his rope. Ugh, thought more than one pony, what an idiot.

An aide rushed into the hall where Trixie stood, apparently with alarming news, and cried, "My queen, I have alarming news!"

Trixie casually looked in the aide's direction, "Alarming news? Do tell Queen Trixie: just how alarming is this alarming news?"

The aide glanced around quickly, alarmed at the question regarding the alarming news, exclaimed "I-I-I-It's very alarming news!"

The queen coolly raised a hoof, inspected it, and said, "Oh my. Do tell me the alarming news."

The aide calmed herself down and stated, "Come with me and you'll share my alarm at this highly alarming news!"

The aide scampered off toward the conference room, her queen in calm, slow pursuit. The pair arrived at the door, the aide held it open for Trixie, and the queen stepped inside. "I hear there's some alarming news to be heard here, gentleponies," cooed Queen Trixie.

"Yes, my queen," a buck-toothed stallion agreed frantically, "We have alarming news, and it is truly most alarming news. Watch this." The stallion pressed a button on the telescreen, revealing the sort of news that even the outwardly calm Trixie inwardly found somewhat alarming. The screen revealed Twilight Sparkle and a young, orange mare at the door of the apartment of that same young, white mare Trixie had seen earlier. The two young mares embraced and went inside the apartment, the older mare slipping off to do evils not even Trixie could know of. The stallion pressed a button, and the screen went blank as it switched from the hallway's camera to the apartment's recorder. The stallion pressed some buttons to skip around the hours-long footage to the more important points. Trixie heard of friendship, magic, a fourth confederate in this scheme named "Apple Bloom", and a group of dissenters called the "Merry Band of Friends."

"Hmm," started the queen, "I thought she looked familiar." The group of advisors and officials looked eagerly at Trixie for elaboration. "That mare was a Ponyvillian, a sister to one Rarity, who was a friend to none other than Twilight Sparkle." The assembled advisors and officials gasped quite dramatically, which always amused Trixie. "I believe she was always around that little orange filly and another yellow one, probably the 'Apple Bloom' we heard mentioned." The room looked to its queen for orders. "I want the 'Merry Band of Friends' located and wiped out before 'Sweetie Belle' is finished with her bath. Don't worry about the fourth conspirator; they'll meet together soon enough, and we'll have them all in one fell swoop just in time for the Lula Moon Festival." Trixie smiled. "What a memorable festival it will truly be."

---

"I-I don't understand," sputtered Scootaloo, tears building in her eyes, "How could this have happened? We'd never been found out before!"

Before Sweetie Belle and her distraught friend was what had once been the headquarters of the Merry Band of Friends. The building itself was a charred ruin. The ponies who inside were blackened and hopelessly confused. They wandered about aimlessly, eyes spinning and tongues babbling incoherent statements that no pony could ever hope to understand. One by one, they fell unconscious and were dragged away by the Canterlot Guard.

"Sweetie Belle," cried Scootaloo, "we have to do someth-"

"HALT." shouted a guard, "WHAT'S YOUR BUSINESS HERE?!"

Sweetie Belle's pupils shrank to pinpricks. "Run!," she screamed.

And so the two friends ran, the guard in hot pursuit.