From the Ashes

by Keeper of time RD

Chapter 3: The Crusader’s Return

Sweetie Belle had explained many things before Scootaloo had left the Diamond Dog caves the next morning. Mainly that she felt responsible for the dogs now, so when she’d asked if they’d be willing to fight to free her friend they’d made it clear they didn’t want to. So she never ordered them to, and she knew she couldn’t take on a slaver encampment by herself, so she stayed hidden and kept the dogs safe.

In her youth, Scootaloo would have chewed Sweetie Belle out for leaving Apple Bloom to rot in a slaver’s cage for three years. But after her adventures in Las Pegasus, she understood the power of fear. How easily it could cripple ponies into inaction. The slaves of Las Pegasus had outnumbered the slavers ten to one, the trader camp a neighborhood over, that was actually well armed had outnumbered the slavers three to one. Yet fear of the slavers’ cruelty had kept both from acting against the overt evil around them.

Though she understood it, Scootaloo did not respect it. After all, she had seen for herself the fatal flaw in ruling by fear. It only works as long as everypony else bows to fear. It had only taken one brave pony to start a snowball rolling that brought them down.

Or one overly reckless pony who was too depressed to care if she lived or died in this case, but Scoots hadn’t bothered to correct the ponies of Las Pegasus when they called her a courageous hero.

So she understood fear, but would never respect it.

Even now, as she walked toward the Ponyville hospital, she may have felt a touch of fear in her heart, but she would not respect it. Especially since this time she had something better than apathy for her own safety to push her forward. This time she had knowledge, her friend was in there, and she was going to get her out.

Before she’d left, Sweetie Belle had told her that the hospital had become the slavers’ base of operations. Clearly they taken to using it because it was both the largest building in town still standing and because it had somehow escaped the war still taint free. Or somepony had cleansed the taint from it since then, either way it was one of the few places in Ponyville one could stay without suffering from the dark magic poisoning called taint.

The only thing that had changed about Scootaloo since she’d left the quarry was the fact that she’d ditched her saddlebags just before approaching the hospital. Now she wore only her cape, her goggles and a utility belt with a dozen small pouches as she walked into this new den of evil.

The lone mare had actually made it halfway from the last cover to the front door before the dark brown stallion with the red mane sitting by the front door noticed somepony was causally walking right up the path. She clearly wasn’t one of their supply runners, and she wasn’t bringing any slaves in, so that left only two possibilities. And given that she was already looking at him it wouldn’t be hard to figure out witch of options it was.

Standing up he twisted to the side slightly, openly presenting the hunting rifle on his battle saddle.

The mare seemed unfazed by the weapon displayed. Between that and the fact that her goggles were on her forehead, so he could see that the mare’s eyes were calm, focused, serious, there was no way this mare was just some random wanderer and soon to be slave. Whoever this mare was she seemed to know exactly what she was walking toward. So that left the last possibility, new customer.

Then she got close enough for him to realize that her yellow cape wasn’t yellow, it was gold.

That got him to jump up. “State your business!” he demanded.

“I’m looking for somepony!” the orange mare called back, continuing to walk up.

“Well we got plenty of those,” he said as she finally came to a stop now that she was right up next to him. “But you really shouldn’t dress like that lady.” After she glared at him like he was an idiot, he added, “Bad rumors floating around about a pony in a gold cape, you’re lucky I didn’t shoot as soon as I saw it.”

“I’m looking for somepony specific, Apple Bloom.”

“Uh, lady you don’t want her. She’s too feisty, We haven’t broken her yet, so she wouldn’t make a vary good slave.”

She just glared at him and answered, “I want Apple Bloom.”

A shiver ran down the stallion’s spine. Something about this mare’s gaze scared him. A part of him wanted to say she had the same fearless gaze as the boss, but that wasn’t it. There was something more to this mare, she had something he couldn’t understand, something… greater in her eyes, and yet whatever it was it felt both pure and dangerous.

Turning around he pushed the button on the intercom box behind him and said, “Hey boss! I got some lady here, says she wants to buy Apple Bloom.”

“Did you warn her about that one?” a female voice crackled back over the intercom.

“Sure did boss.”

“As long as they know what they’re buying I don’t care. Oh and no discounts, if she wants an unruly slave that’s on her.”

With that he sighed and motioned for the mare to follow him in.

Inside there were three more ponies who wore combat equipment in the lobby. Two were unicorns and the last was another earth pony. Of the unicorns the mare of the two got up from behind the reception desk and headed out to take the door guard post. A shotgun wrapped in the unicorn mare’s magic quickly floated to her side on her way out.

While the two remaining slavers at the desk watched her a lot more closely as soon as they noticed her cape, the intercom sitting on the desk made it clear that they’d heard the exchange from a moment ago.

Red Mane, continued to led Scootaloo to the hallways on the left side of the lobby.

In her mind Scoots added up what she knew so far. Four slavers on the ground floor, plus she had spotted the glint of six more guns watching her approach, four on the roof and two from windows on the third floor. So that made at least eleven armed slavers about, as it was a safe bet that the boss wasn’t on guard duty.

Looking around the hallways didn’t reveal much of tactical use. For the most part they were the same old hospital hallways, just with ten years worth of dust and pealing paint, clearly the slavers hadn’t kept this place up to speed in the cleanliness department. The only real change the slavers had made was replacing the normal doors on the patent rooms with iron cage doors that looked like they’d come straight out of a prison.

The slaver hadn’t been lying about having plenty of ‘someponies’ as there was a pony in almost every room turned cage. Most were strangers to her but every now and then they’d pass a cage with a pony Scootaloo was almost sure she recognized. Like the double gray pegasus stallion that she was fairly sure was Rumble all grown up. Or another former classmate, a gray unicorn mare with a blond mane, Dinky Do if she remembered the name correctly.

As they neared the end of the hall, the sound of their approaching hoofsteps was enough to set off the mare in the second to last cell in the row.

“Ah’ll rip ya apart! Ya worthless, son of a-” The rant of the yellow mare with a red mane came to sudden halt when she saw who had walked in front of her cell. “-You!” she breathed in a voice hardly worthy of being called a whisper.

Then she scampered back away from the bars of her door, her amber eyes suddenly filled with fear. Although the fear in her eyes quickly gave way to confusion as she realized that her old friend wasn’t in chains.

“What have we here?” the slaver said with a smirk. “The terror of the pens finally lost her fire?”

Scootaloo simply looked at her old friend and nodded. Although her friend’s signature pink bow was no where to be found and she had countless whipping scars faintly visible through her fur, but there was no doubt about it.

Then she looked back to the slaver stallion and said, “That’s Apple Bloom alright. Open it.”

“Before we get ahead of ourselves, the boss said no discounts. So let’s see, a healthy earth pony, and a young mare in her prime. A Pony like that’s gonna cost you five hundred.”

Something flickered in Apple Bloom’s eyes as she finally grasped what was going on. A part of her wanted to yell out in anger, enraged by the idea that a slaver was going to get rewarded for taking her captive. Yet the part of that wanted to be free again silenced her. If keeping her head down for a few minutes and letting the only friend she had in the world buy her was the only way she was walking out of this hell, so be it.

Scootaloo reached back and opened the snaps on one of her belt pouches. When she pulled her hoof back out she said, “You seem to misunderstand. I’m not here to buy her.”

The mare’s words were the first clue the slaver got that this deal was going wrong, the second was when he realized that the mare had pulled out a puff of cloud. If this mare could hold cloud then that meant… that he’d never noticed that the cape was hiding wings, this mare was a pegasus!

“Oh shi-” was all he managed to say before the mare slammed her hoof into the puff of cloud.

Lightning flashed, thunder filled the halls and the stallion fell to the floor crackling with electricity.

Given that Bloom was already away from the cage door, Scootaloo wasted no time punching a second lightning bolt out of the small cloud. The lock exploded like the magnets of the same polarity repelling each other that the parts had temporarily become.

Then Scoots grabbed the key ring off of the dead slaver’s belt, pulled the cell door open and tossed her shackled friend the keys. While Apple Bloom worked to unlock her bindings, Scootaloo undid the straps of the slaver’s battle saddle. And as soon as she had the fallen slaver’s weapon, she kicked her puff of cloud again, just in time to blast the first slaver to come running.

Two shots rang out and stuck the floor and wall near the pegasus crusader, causing her to jump into the open cell for cover.

First she tossed the rifle and its attached saddle to her friend. Then Scootaloo flared her wings kicking her cape up enough to reveal a small bundle on her back. With a shake she sent the cloth bundle falling to the floor along with the weapon. Then with a flap of her wings, she darted out into the hallway in the blink of an eye.

Three shots of gunfire quickly came Scootaloo’s way. Although with her shear speed and elusive path, all of them missed. She returned the favor with three blasts of lightning. The first lightning bolt blew the door the unicorn slaver was using as cover off its hinges. The second scorched the floor with electrical burn marks. The third stuck home and sent the slaver to the ground.

With the reprieve she’d just won, Scootaloo took a moment to remove her cape, and flip it over, so that it’s proper purplish-red side was showing and the gold was just the lining, as it had always been meant to be.

A loud bang from behind made her spin to face the unexpected sound.

When her eyes found only Apple Bloom standing back there, Scoots had to give a quick search of the scene. She figured it out when she noticed the new hole the dead slaver had acquired.

She breathed a disappointed sigh and said, “Apple Bloom, you really shouldn’t waste ammo like that.”

The former farmer spat on the corpse and answered, “You have no idea what he did to me.”

“And yet I know he already paid for his crimes with a death sentence. What you did was waste a perfectly good bullet. A bullet I suspect we’ll need to deal with the jerks still trying to kill us.”

Bloom gave a single dark laugh. “Jerks.” Then she added, “Those monsters made the lives of every honest pony here a living hell for years! And all you can think to call them is jerks?” She added a lighter laugh. “Damn, With the way the world is, I’d have never thought you’d be the one to survive it and still be a saint, Scootaloo.”

The pegasus raised an eyebrow, although she’d already turned back to face where she expected the enemy to come from.

“Besides,” Bloom continued. “With you shooing lightning it’s not like you have an ammo limit.”

“Actually I can usually get about seven shots out of a cloud this small before the strain makes it evaporate.” With a wing she tapped her belt, bringing attention to the six still-filled pockets and one empty one that had supplied her current cloud.

Taking notice of how long it had been Scoots added, “If they aren’t going to rush this hall anymore we should probably get these cells open.”

Apple Bloom nodded in agreement and used the keys she’d been given to unlock every cell with a pony in it.

Well in the lead, Scootaloo built up speed and her walk became a run, her run a full on gallop, her wings buzzing to life added even more speed on top of that. Then she ducked low as she shoot through the doorway into the lobby.

Three shots rang out, a flower vase to her left exploded, and thus informed her of the attacker just to the right of the doorway she’d entered through. Two more blasts sung through the air over her head, and where it would have been if she hadn’t ducked into a slide.

In the blink of and eye, Scootaloo twisted and punched the last two shots out of her first cloud into the slaver who’d blown up the vase. Then she slammed her hooves down, catapulting herself into a jump just in time for a shotgun blast to demolish the tile below her.

Lighting flashed again and the earth pony with the shotgun didn’t get the chance to fire again.

A heartbeat later Scoots gave her wings a powerful flap, altering the course of her jump just in time for a revolver’s bullet to intercept her first trajectory. Two more flashes of lightning brought down the slaver by the reception desk.

The pegasus crusader let herself spin once as she slid to a halt. Then she groaned. The shotgun had been on an earth pony. And that meant that the unicorn with the shotgun she’d seen on the way in was still around.

By now Apple Bloom and her fellow freed slaves joined their rescuer in the lobby and were quick to arm themselves with the guns that had just been relieved of their owners.

With a flick of her tail toward the front door, Scootaloo commanded, “Somepony cover the door, perimeter is still out there.” With a nod toward the other wing of the hospital she added, “I got the stairs. Bloom? Mind clearing out the rest of this floor?”

“With pleasure.”

And with that Dinky, now armed with the revolver, jumped behind the reception desk and used her magic to hold her gun aimed at the front door. Apple Bloom, Rumble as a few more ponies that Scoots didn’t know headed into the other wing of the ground floor.

Scootaloo hadn’t even been in position at the base of the stairs to the second floor for a second before she heard several sets of hoofsteps coming down.

A second later a muzzle poked around the corner and the slaver it belonged to was greeted with a lightning bolt to the face. As he felt lifelessly down the stairs, several profanities were uttered and the sounds of his fellow slavers backing away from the corner could be heard with them.

“Let’s see how she likes this!” one of the voices added. And then a grenade came bouncing into view.

Scootaloo’s wings buzzed to life, but she didn’t move at all. Instead the explosive gift was caught in a powerful gust that sent it back up and around the corner.

More profane shouts came from upstairs, followed by the bang of the grenade going off. And judging from the heavy thud sound, there was one less slaver waiting up there. But she’d made out at least four different voices still waiting for her upstairs.

Then a simple click made her heart freeze.

The sound had come from her left side and had been the sound of the door to the utility stairs. With all her concern about the perimeter and the main stairwell, it had never even crossed her mind that somepony might have been in the basement.

On instinct she looked to the left and found herself staring down the barrel of a rifle. On instinct she gave her wings a hard flap. A bang sounded through her ears and she shut her eyes tight.

A second later Scootaloo was surprised to find herself hovering several feet above her previous location. The hovering wasn’t what surprised her though. The fact that she was still alive enough to hover was, as she could have sworn she’d heard the gunshot at the same instant she’d flapped her wings, so she hadn’t been out of the way yet. But a quick check proved that she hadn’t picked up any holes in vital spots, or at all for that matter.

A heavy thud drew her attention to the utility stairs. The green-coated unicorn slaver had collapsed. And behind the dead slaver was a very familiar white unicorn with an equally familiar cape on her back, holding a small pistol in the glow of her magic.

“Wait! You can fly now!?” Sweetie Belle asked of the friend she’d just saved.

“Of course I can fly. How do you think I got off of Storm Breaker Island? The Wonderbolts would have been perfectly happy to keep me ‘safe’ there for the rest of my life.”

“Oh,” was all Sweetie Belle could think to say. And yet, with that she finished coming up out of the stairs to the basement.

Before Scootaloo could even ask how she got in the basement to begin with, Spot and a larger, brown diamond dog, both clad in their ‘demon dog’ armor, fell in behind the white unicorn. So instead she asked, “I thought you weren’t going to order them to help?”

To that Sweetie smiled. “I didn’t, I stepped down as their leader and left. These two followed me on their own.” Then she added, “Oh and I brought gifts!” With that her magic brought up a dozen firearms from the basement and she started handing them out to any freed slave who didn’t already have a weapon.

Once Apple Bloom had returned with the news that the ground floor was secure, Scootaloo assigned three more ponies to guarding the front door and then she led the charge up the stairs. The second floor went much like the first. They freed the slaves, killed slavers, and every gun from a fallen slaver soon found its way into the hooves of freed slaves. To Scoots it was Las Pegasus all over again.

One thing snowballed into another and before she knew it she was hunkered down behind a metal table that they’d set up as cover just outside the main administrator’s office. Sweetie Belle crawling to join them signaled that her team had taken the roof, and so these were the last of the slavers.

“Anypony got spare rifle ammo?” Apple Bloom asked, as several more shots bounced off their cover.

Rumble just blushed and said, “I’m just here to offer moral support. I ran out of ammo two rooms ago.”

Bloom growled, as she noticed no pony else on this side of the firefight had a rifle. “We need to get in there and end this!” she added in more meaningful growl just before pulling out a combat dagger she’d picked up on the second floor.

“Working on it,” Scootaloo said as she pulled out her last two clouds. One cloud puff she left floating, ready be grabbed and used like a lightning gun. The other she took between her front hooves and started shaping into a tight ball. The one she was working got darker by the second and began to crackle with electricity.

Even her fellow pegasus, Rumble had to ask, “What are you doing?”

“There’s a reason I like clouds this size,” Scoots answered. “Any smaller and you can’t get enough electricity into them to make them dangerous. Any bigger and they’re too stable to do this!”

As she finished speaking, she stood up suddenly and flung the orb of storm cloud into the administrator’s office. “You might want to cover your ears,” she added as she ducked back under cover and did just that.

A horrendous noise filled the place, most might have thought it to be a train crash if they hadn’t seen what had happened. Lightning arced out of the office for a full second, tearing up floorboards and even blowing up part of the wall beside the doorway. The sent of ionized air filled the hall as the ruble of the sundered wall showered down.

While everypony else was still awestruck by the display of destruction, Scootaloo grabbed her last piece of cloud and rushed in. Three more cracks of thunder sounded, seeming woefully tame compared to what preceded them.

Finally recovering from the light show, Apple Bloom charged in after her friend, inspiring the others to follow soon after.

Inside a half dozen slavers lay dead. The only Scootaloo and a pink mare with a yellow mane were still standing when Apple Bloom and the others entered. ‘Sammy the slaver’ was the name Bloom and the other freed slaves knew this mare by. Although Sammy was a unicorn, her magic wasn’t particularly combat worthy. Or at least Sammy didn’t seem to think so as she was sitting in a chair behind the desk, holding her front hooves up in a show of surrender.

“Please, I surrender! I’ll give you anything! I’ll never bother any of you ever again! I promise! Just let me go!”

With the slaver leader’s gaze fixed on Scootaloo, the orange pegasus responded.

“If I believed you would keep that promise, I would forgive you. But there are two problems with that. I don’t believe you. And more importantly, I don’t think she’s going to forgive you regardless what I think.”

With those words, Sammy’s eyes turned to they yellow mare beside Scootaloo, who’s amber eyes were burning with hatred.

Apple Bloom was more then willing use that moment as an invitation to satisfy her thrust for vengeance. And so she leapt over the desk, giving the best primal yell she could despite the handle in her mouth.

Scootaloo closed her eyes and waited for the sound of stabbing to stop. The mare’s screams stopped after only a second or two, but Scoots lost count of the seconds before she heard Bloom’s hoofsteps finally back away from her quarrel.

When she opened her eyes again, physically she gave only a slight sigh, but the blood splatters on the desk and wall convinced Scoots that she really didn’t want to see what her friend had done to the slaver leader’s corpse.

As for Apple Bloom she staggered over to Sweetie Belle and, exhausted from her needlessly brutal assault, collapsed into her friend’s waiting lap. And although visibly disgusted by the show her earth pony friend had put on, Sweetie received her with gentle understanding, even stroking Bloom’s mane to try and comfort her.

Many of the other freed slaves took that moment to cheer. Cries of ‘It’s over!’ ‘We Won!’ and ‘Freedom!’ abounded.

When the celebrating started to die down, Dinky looked to the caped ponies who and set all of this in motion and asked, “What do we do now?”

Apple Bloom looked up and said, “I don’t know. But we can’t say here.”

Although she didn’t explain why the look not only on Bloom’s face but shared by most of the other recently freed said enough. There were too many bad memories tied to the hospital building now.

Sweetie Belle looked to the Spot and asked, “Too many?”

He nodded and said, “Too many.” And that was enough for her to understand that the quarry wasn’t an option.

At first Scootaloo didn’t feel the need to say anything. But when she turned around she couldn’t help but notice that the eyes of everypony behind her were on her. Looking back she found her friends were also looking expectantly at her.

A raised eyebrow and an uneasy look in Scootaloo’s eye became the first true show of emotion to cross her face that day as she finally asked, “Why is everypony looking at me?”

Apple Bloom gave a scoffing laugh. “Because you’re the hero who saved the day, silly! Why wouldn’t we look to you?”

Even Sweetie Belle looked up to her pegasus friend and said, “They’re right you know, you are the hero of Ponyville now! Rainbow Dash would be proud of you!”

Somewhere in the darkness, a stone fell from a fortress wall and the little filly who’d kicked it free agreed. These ponies needed a hero, so it might as well be her.

For the first time in years a genuine smile appeared on Scootaloo’s face. “If the Cutie Mark Crusaders are going to reclaim Ponyville, Then Sweet Apple Acres is the place to start!”

Apple Bloom shook her head. “Ah hate to break it ya, but ya can’t go ten feet without feeling the creepy feeling that means taint’s around.”

Scootaloo gave a confident grin and said, “Sweetie Belle, didn’t you say you could purge dark magic?”

Sweetie grinned and a look of hope filled the eyes of Bloom and the others.