With Blood and Swords

by FALG

She's late

The next day I went to Sugarcube Corner to meet Fluttershy. I was greeted by Pinkie's high-pitched voice when I arrived.

"Hi Flare! Can I get you anything?" asked the earth pony.

"Not yet, I agreed with Fluttershy to meet here, so if you don't mind, I'll get a table and wait."

"Oh sure, go ahead!"
I sat in a table right next to a wall, and waited for the pegasus to arrive; I couldn't help but let out a smile.

A half hour passed and Fluttershy didn't arrive yet, "she must be late" I thought.

Another half hour passed and she still didn't appear, I was becoming worried. "What if something happened to her?" I began to think "Oh c'mon Flaring, nothing can happen in this place, it's just too peaceful."

Some time after, a cyan pegasus entered the bakery, and asked something to Pinkie, the latter just shrugged and replied while pointing towards me, making the pegasus fly towards me.

"Hey there Rainbow, nice to see you here." I greeted.

"You too Flare, so you're waiting for Fluttershy?" she asked.

"I agreed to meet her here, but she's running very late. Have you seen her?"

"Actually I was looking for her too, she's nowhere to be found."

"Isn't she home either?" I asked.

"Huh, I missed that, she must be there!"

"Let's go both, maybe she forgot about our date."
With that said, we parted off of Sugarcube Corner and went to Fluttershy's cottage.

---

Something was wrong the moment I set my sight upon the cottage, I felt something strange.

"I have a bad feeling about this." I said to Rainbow.

"Huh? Why's that?"

"I can't actually tell, but I think something's not right."
We approached and noticed that the door was ajar. We entered.

The lights were on, but there was no sign of Fluttershy, we called her a few times, but there was no response.

"I'll go upstairs, maybe she's there." she said while dashing upstairs.

"I'll check down here." I told her while she was doing so.
Some furniture was tumbled down, the main carpet in the center of the living room was tousled. What was happening here?

Then I noticed them, some yellow lines were scattered through the floor, I went closer to them and looked carefully.

"Feathers?"

Some minutes later Rainbow came down.

"Everything up there is okay, seems like all the mess is down here." she pointed.

"Hey, look at this." I showed her the feathers.

"Feathers! Something bad happened here."

"How do you know if it's bad? Maybe she left in a hurry." I suggested.

"If she left the house, I should have found her before, don't you think?" she said.

"Oh yeah, I forgot."

"Let me see that." she ordered.
I hoofed her a feather, and she looked at it closely.

"Found something yet?" I asked.

"This feathers didn't fall normally, she didn't molt them; they fell at an early time."

"How do you know?"

"I'm a pegasus too, I know the difference between a molted feather and one that fell early." she said impatiently.

"What does this tell you?"
Rainbow thought for a while.

"Well, if she actually left in a hurry, the furniture wouldn't be in this conditions, and I would have found her before."

"Well, you got that right. Something is definitely wrong here."

"Let's check outside, maybe there's something else we can find."

Looking outside, we noticed that the path leading to the door was marked, dirt was spread around. We looked a bit closer and there was a bit of yellow fur where the dirt was marked.

"Now, this is strange, feathers AND fur?" Rainbow pointed.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Something happened to her! Let's go see Twilight, maybe she knows what to do!" she said.
We then parted to the library.

---

We told Twilight everything we saw in Fluttershy's cottage, the feathers, the fur, the fallen furniture:

"Anything else?" the unicorn asked.

"Well, I actually haven't seen any of her animals either." I remembered.
Twilight brought a hoof to her chin, and started to think.

"And you didn't find her before either, right Rainbow?"
The pegasus nodded.

"Fur and feathers, tumbled furniture, no animals." the unicorn recalled while walking "This is really bad."

"What do you think we should do?" I asked.

"We have to wait for another clue, we can't do nothing right now."

"But we have to find her!" I yelled.

"Do you know where she is?" the unicorn said.

"Well no, but..."

"If you don't have any little clue of her whereabaouts, how will you search? Ponyville and Canterlot are not the only cities in Equestria you know."

"But he's right Twilight!" Rainbow jumped in "We can't just sit around and do nothing."

"What do you suggest we do then?" the unicorn defied the pegasus.

"Search every last corner in Equestria. I can't stay calm if a friend of mine is in danger!"

"Fluttershy is a friend of mine too, but there is nothing we can do!"
Rainbow paid little attention to that last thing, as she already dashed off to the door and left.

"Such an impulsive pony." Twilight said out loud.

"Do you think that waiting is the only thing we can do?" I asked.

"Do you have any other ideas besides searching all Equestria?"
I shuffled my head, denying.

"Then it's the only thing we can do."
I bit my lip at that.

"What do you think happened to her, Twilight?"

"I don't know what to tell you Flare, let's just hope that she is alright."