• Published 4th Oct 2012
  • 2,944 Views, 116 Comments

Short Scraps and Explosions - shortskirtsandexplosions



Colllection of SS&E's Rough Drafts and Incomplete Stories

  • ...
17
 116
 2,944

PreviousChapters Next
End of Ponies - Petra Arc - Kaizo Edition pt 6

The End of Ponies – by short skirts and explosions

Chapter Thirty – The Main Event

Rainbow Dash blamed the whipping winds for her tears. The grin plastered across her face shone like the golden crown upon her head as she soared through the blistering heights of the Central Plains with six members of the Wonderbolts gliding alongside her. Tilting her blue wings at an angle, she spiraled her way through a cloudbank and came bursting out the other side in a victorious, vaporous explosion. The six professional pegasi broke formation, spun several times, and converged on her figure just as she twirled and accelerated with a forward thrust of her wing muscles. The resulting thunder of all seven ponies piercing the same patch of air rocked the troposphere in the shadow of Cloudsdale, and soon the large group of uniformed fliers—Rainbow Dash included—were hovering down to a low hanging cloud, chuckling at the bedlam caused by their audacious aerial maneuvers.

“Whew! That was spectacular!” Soarin' exclaimed, briefly raising his goggles to expose a pair of bright green eyes. “I've never met a weather flier who knew how to perform the Epic Zoom Noise in coordinated flight!”

“That's because I ain't your average weather pony!” Rainbow Dash smirked, her teeth glinting as she adjusted the golden crown atop her head. The Best Young Flier basked in the midday sunlight as the Wonderbolts too settled down on the white patch of clouds. Agile pegasi with gold-embossed bands across their blue uniforms surrounded her, stared at her, listened to her. It took every ounce of strength in her body not to shiver. Instead, she cleared her throat and kneaded her hooves in the white vapor beneath as she exclaimed, “I can do the Epic Zoom Noise in my sleep, in or outside of formation!”

“Somehow, I wouldn't doubt that.” Spitfire raised her goggles and stared at Rainbow Dash with deep brown eyes. The Wonderbolts' captain smiled softly and murmured, “After all, you did the Sonic Rainboom in all of our sleep.”

Several of the celebrity pegasi chuckled merrily, filling the air with bubbling excitement that only tripled the pulse in Rainbow's blood vessels. The prismatic mare blushed, bit her lip, and eventually cracked forth, “Yeah, that's too bad. What I pulled off was pretty awesome. I wish you, Soarin', and Fleetfoot could had seen it.”

“Does it matter?” a uniformed mare with a silver-and-blue mane exclaimed from the far side of the cloud. “You saved our lives! That means we get a chance to see you pull the Sonic Rainboom off another day!”

Rainbow Dash's ruby eyes twitched. She fought the urge to hyperventilate. “You m-mean it?!”

“Hey, why not, girl?” Fleetfoot smirked and pointed. “You didn't win the Best Young Flier crown for being a mailpony, did you?! Keep it up, and you'll be going places!”

“I'd have given my left wing to pull off the stunts you do so easily at your age,” Spitfire added.

“Really?” Rainbow Dash blinked. Her cheeks toasted into a deep, rosy hue. “Eh-heheheheheheh—” She snapped out of it, her pupils dilating at the sound of her own foalish giggles. “Ahem.” She reclined across the edge of the cloud, casually leaning her grinning face against a hoof. “So what if I wanna make clearing weather over Ponyville look like a work of art? I swear, sometimes it's so boring in the skies above that town that I'm half tempted to make a hurricane just to barrel through it!”

“One pegasus single-hoofedly building a hurricane...” Soarin' murmured aloud before smirking at his fellow wingponies. “Now that I'd pay to see!”

“Pfft! Why bother?” Rainbow Dash winked. “I'd give you a free show right here!”

“I... don't think Princess Celestia would approve of a cyclone being manufactured directly beneath Cloudsdale,” Fleetfoot remarked.

Another Wonderbolt exclaimed, “She doesn't have to know! We'll just chalk it up to the prophesied return of Princess Nebula!”

“Hahahaha!”

“Heheheh—Yeah, that would totally go over well,” Spitfire said, rolling her eyes. “So, Rainbow Dash, before my team and I have to head off for Canterlot, do you have more tricks you wanna wow us with?”

“Depends on how brave you slowpokes are!” Rainbow Dash hopped up and hovered in place, grinning devilishly. “Ahem... Can somepony say 'Buccaneer Blitz?'”

“Ooooooh,” Soarin' cooed over the hushed murmur of his uniformed companions. “I think some Weather Flier is in over her head!”

“Better than being a chicken with his head cut off!” Rainbow Dash egged him on by sticking her tongue out. “Is this the same Soarin' who jump-started the power plant in Fillydelphia with the legendary Lightning Lunge?”

“Wuh oh!”

“She's callin' you out, Soarin'!”

“Heheh—The pegasus sure has spunk!”

Soarin' rolled his eyes, smirked, and slid his glinting goggles down. “Buccaneer Blitz, huh? Why the heck not? The day hasn't begun until I've nearly died twice.”

“That's the spirit!” Rainbow Dash flew at level with him as the two ponies made for a broad patch of air parallel to the cloudbank atop which the rest of the Wonderbolts stood, watching. “I apologize in advance for any burns you might get on that snazzy uniform of yours.”

“Yeah yeah. A little confession,” Soarin' said, smirking. “I'm not the biggest fan of the threads, but it could have been worse. Spitfire originally wanted the uniforms to be a whole lot brighter. We only usurped the captain's wishes through majority vote.”

Spitfire grumbled and folded her legs underneath her. “I still think 'platinum' would have made a much better color. That way, we wouldn't blend with the sky in the daytime and there'd be less chance of colliding with random delivery ponies.”

“Yeah!” A random Wonderbolt spoke up. “But then the captain would look like a flying thatch of wheat!”

Another added, “She's so friggin' yellow as it is, we almost mistake her for a Phoenix at practice!”

“Hahahaha!”

“Heheheh!”

Rainbow Dash giggled, hugging herself in midair as Soarin' struggled to contain his own breath. Down below, Spitfire sighed and uttered, “Are you gonna do the Buccaneer Blitz or not? One way or another, Soarin' isn't returning to the lockers without getting burnt. I can assure you of that.”

“Yikes!” Soarin' glanced Rainbow's way. “Better make this count. Maybe we can shock her into another coma so I can make my escape!”

“After you!” Rainbow Dash saluted with a hoof to her golden crown. “The buccaneer won't blitz itself, y'know!”

“The way you perform so many breathtaking stunts without goggles is amazing, by the way.”

“Well, I would have brought some really slick lenses that this cool little filly in Ponyville made for me, but the Competition's friggin' rules had to be a stick-in-the-mud about how a young flier gears herself.” Rainbow Dash's brow briefly furrowed. “But enough chit-chat. Are you ready or aren't you?”

“See me?” Soarin' hovered high up in the air above them all to take position. “This is me getting ready!”

“Heheh...” Rainbow Dash cracked the joints in her neck and limbered up her four legs as she levitated to a higher altitude. “Hold onto your wings, boys and girls, because things are just about to get electric—” She stopped in mid-sentence, her ruby eyes twitching as her expert vision caught the smallest of orange shapes dotting the Equestrian countryside below. Her breath escaped her, but in a different way than in all of the mesmerized gasps she had exchaled in the presence of the Wonderbolts. “H-Hold on a sec...”

Now who's a chicken?” Soarin' exclaimed from above. Several watching pegasi chuckled.

“Seriously, I mean it!” Rainbow Dash stopped flapping her wings and simply fell. She soon landed on a cloud below the rest and leaned over the edge of it, getting a better look at a tiny blue pond glittering in the sunlight beneath the group. A frail young filly was lying unconscious beside the battered shape of a metal tray.

Rainbow Dash blinked, her wings flexing in and out. At first, a look of shock rolled across her features. Then, like a rising sun, a very bright and very proud smirk dominated her lips. A toasty warmth spread through her coat, dwarfing what she thought had been insurmountable joy on that most spectacular of days. The last two hours of hanging with the Wonderbolt briefly faded before the contemplation of what she saw.

“What is it?” Spitfire was suddenly hovering at Rainbow Dash's side. “Is somepony hurt?”

“Is that...?” Another Wonderbolt was fluttering alongside the two, then three more, then four. Soon all six were gathered about the cloud. “Is that a kid?”

“What's she doing?”

“She looks like she's sleeping.”

“Nuh huh, see that thing on wheels? I think she banged into something...”

“Hey... Uh... Guys?” Rainbow Dash glanced up at her celebrity companions, Soarin' especially. “Remember that little filly in Ponyville that I told you made me a pair of goggles?”

“Yeah?” Soarin' hovered down. At the look in Rainbow's eyes, his jaw fell. “Oh no way...”

“Yes way!” Rainbow Dash immediately flew down towards the earth.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Scootaloo's chest slowly rose and fell. Her lower half was drenched in the edge of the pondwater. In her unconsciousness, she fitfully spasmed with random shivers. Moisture clung to the edge of her eyelashes, and several blades of grass were stuck in her mane.

The violet strands of hair in question billowed as soon as a set of blue hooves touched down in front of her. Trotting over, Rainbow Dash bent low and looked at Scootaloo up close. She bit her lip with sudden pensiveness, staring at the filly from multiple close angles. She fidgeted and glanced up just as the six Wonderbolts landed all around the scene.

“Guys, I'm a little...” Rainbow Dash's voice cracked as she fumbled for words. “This is...”

“Here, allow me,” Fleetfoot exclaimed as she touched down and marched over to the little filly. Gently, she pulled Scootaloo's body out of the pond water and pressed her ear to the little pegasus' chest. “I'm a registered nurse. I'll see what's up with her.”

“Yeah, Spitfire inducted her because Mercury's always slamming into sky marble during practice.”

“Tchhh—Shut up, Rapidfire!”

“Hahahaha!”

“I don't see why you're not working your way up to become a doctor, Fleetfoot.”

“Yeah, it makes a heck of a lot more money than nearly killing yourself in an airshow every week.”

“Like you're one to talk, Quicksilver. You were a librarian before Spitfire found you!”

“Yeah, so? At least when the books caught fire, I could put them out by spinning in circles.”

“Heck, you're still spinning in circles!”

“That's because you're always catching me off balance with those silly parachutes you call wings!”

“Oh go huff a tornado.”

“Shhh!” Fleetfoot frowned, closely examining the filly. “Will you guys can it for a bit!”

“Yeah! The mistress mare of medicare is at work!”

“Ew. Goddess, Soarin', do you ever hear yourself sometimes?”

Rainbow Dash leaned forward through the circle of pegasi. “Is... Is the little squirt okay?”

“And what a tough little squirt at that!” Fleetfoot stood up straight and smirked. “She's got a sprained ankle and a couple of minor contusions. It looks like she took a tumble, the poor thing.”

“H-Here?” Rainbow Dash gazed around the flat, green landscape beneath Cloudsdale. “Scootaloo's a little rough around the edges, but she's usually not that clumsy.”

“I dunno. With a name like that, I'm surprised she gets out of bed without tripping over her own laughter.”

“Quicksilver, knock it off.”

“Heheheh...”

“Actually, she's a little bit parched too,” Fleetfoot exclaimed, running a hoof over the unconscious filly's chapped lips. “If I didn't now better, I'd say she wasn't just out for a regular morning stroll. However she may have hurt herself, I think she went on walking a long distance afterwards, considering how much the leg's swelling.” She gazed up at Rainbow Dash. “You say that you know this kid?”

“Uhh... Yeah!”

“And she's from Ponyville?”

Rainbow Dash opened her mouth to reply, but then paused. Her wings drooped and her eyes curved. “She...” Her voice sounded hurt, but a pony could barely notice from the soft smile blossoming across her features as she leaned her head aside and gazed warmly at the little pegasus. “She came to see me. Scootaloo came all the way here...”

“Dang. Talk about a fan, huh?”

“She traveled from Ponyville? On that metal thing?”

“Great Nebula! That's some trip!”

“Hmmm... You certainly know how to bring out the best in ponies,” Spitfire said to Rainbow Dash, patting the mare on the back with a uniformed hoof. She gestured towards Scootaloo. “I think we should take the kid to Cloudsdale Central Hospital. We'll make sure that she gets patched up just right, Rainbow. Don't you worry.”

“W-Wait!” Rainbow Dash uttered in a squeaking voice that even startled her. She gulped and murmured, “Actually, guys... uhm... instead of that, could we... uh...”

“What, Rainbow Dash?” Spitfire raised an eyebrow.

Rainbow Dash looked at Fleetfoot. “You think it's serious?”

Fleetfoot shrugged and shook her head. “Nothing that a little bit of bandaging and good rest can't solve.”

“And as a registered nurse, you can do that yourself, right?”

“Hehehe... I would imagine so. Why?”

Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. She merely smirked.


Scootaloo stirred. The last veils of sleep peeled off the little filly as her legs uncurled beneath her, only to find themselves brushing up against a fluffy bed of clouds. “Mmmff.” She murmured through orange lips, her violet eyes fluttering open. Through a parting sea of pink hair, she saw a grand blue vista looming before her. The body of Cloudsdale loomed in view, but there was something odd about it. The majestic city was at eye level.

The little pegasus blinked hard. The foggy traces of her rattled memories were slowly piling on top of one another, and the first thing she realized was that the pain in her leg had numbed considerably. She glanced down at her lower half to see a thick bandage plastered over the sprained limb in question.

“What... H-Huh...?” She blinked. Suddenly, the vaporous reality of the cloud beneath her shook the girl's soul. She breathed more and more rapidly, squirming back into what turned out to be a warm body seated behind her. Tilting up, she saw a blue-uniformed mare with silver hair smirking down through glinting goggles.

“Good afternoon, sunshine.”

Scootaloo's lips parted as her eyes quivered. “Fl-Fleetfoot?” The kid exhaled sharply. “Fleetfoot of the Wonderbolts?!”

“Hey!” Two figures show up on either side of the cloud, their wings flapping. “The little shrimp knows you, Footsie!”

Scootaloo gasped, glancing in disbelief at the two hovering stallions. “Soarin'?! Quicksilver?”

“I guess that makes two crazy fangirls in one day,” Spitfire grinned as she and two more pegasi hovered down. Soon Scootaloo was surrounded by smiling, chuckling ponies in uniform. They all formed a happy, warm circle around the bandaged foal. “Maybe you're right, Soarin'. I should be starting a club. Heh.”

“Sp-Sp-Spitfire...?” Scootaloo was shivering harder and harder. Her bright eyes sang volumes of how delightfully overwhelmed she was at that very pulsating moment. “Mercury?! Rapidfire?”

“Wowsers, kid!” Quicksilver chuckled. “Who taught you so much about us?”

“That would be me, thank you very much!” A prismatic sight fluttered into the center of the group, adjusting the golden crown on her head and smirking devilishly as if for a snapshot. “I taught her everything I know—except how to take a fall, apparently. Meh.”

Scootaloo's breath was sucked in as if she had fallen a hundred kilometers in one grinning second. “Rainbow Dash!”

“Oh, well pfft! Now we know who her favorite pony is.”

“As if there was any doubt.”

“Hehehehehe—”

“Awwwwww! Look! She's trembling!”

“What's the matter, kid? Not used to being around famous pegasi?”

“She should be!” Rainbow Dash reached in and ruffled the shivering foal's mane. “She only clings to me like peanut butter on velcro! Isn't that right, ya little squirt?”

“You... You...” Scootaloo's violet eyes darted every which way. To keep from rolling back in their sockets, they eventually settled on the golden crown resting atop the weather flier's head. “Rainbow Dash!” she gasped wide, her grin explosive. “You won! You won the Competition,” her voice positively squeaked.

Several of the Wonderbolts chuckled as Rainbow hovered proudly and brandished the glittering article atop her skull. “Dang straight, I did! I'm ashamed of you, squirt! Did you think I was gonna practice all those days in front of you just to come here and lose?”

“N-No! Of course not! I... I...”

“What pony in their right mind would travel all the way to Cloudsdale to not win, huh, kid?” Rainbow Dash said. She smiled and winked.

Scootaloo did a double-take. A warmth spread through her cheeks as she buried half of her face and murmured into the clouds below. “I knew you could do it, Rainbow Dash. I just knew...”

“Pfft! Stop being sappy! This is my party, not yours!” the pegasus barked in a gruff voice before upturning her nose. “Rapidfire? Where were we?”

“I was about to smoke you in a race!” The stallion in question took off.

“In your dreams, slowpoke!” Rainbow Dash flung her wings back. She tossed a thunderous explosion of compressed air and rocketed north towards the body of Cloudsdale. Rapidfire was swift to match her speed, and soon the two were neck-in-neck as they spun their way over and around billowing columns of white vapor. The air rang with the cheers and hollering voices of the spectating Wonderbolts.

Scootaloo stared, her mouth agape and twitching with each resonating heartbeat that pulsed through her. She nervously trembled atop the cloud, as if afraid that any random whim of gravity might pull her through the bed and send her falling to her death—or worse—wake her from the best dream her mind had ever blessed her with.

“Hey there,” Fleetfoot's voice cooed as she stretched a wing over the foal's shaking body. “Chillax. You're safe up here.”

“It's not th-that...” Scootaloo murmured, gulped, and gazed with wide eyes as Rapidfire and Rainbow Dash spun winged streaks through the bright, blue air. “It's... It's... She's...”

Fleetfoot smiled under her reflective goggles. “Rainbow Dash sure is something else, isn't she?”

Scootaloo exhaled long and hard, leaning her grinning chin on two forelimbs. “She's so amazing...” Her nostrils flared as the rays of the sun toasted her coat to a glittering sheen.

“Heeheehee. She saved our lives, y'know.”

The filly jerked, glancing up at Fleetfoot. “She d-did?”

“Well, some of us. Heh. Spitfire, Soarin', and I were knocked unconscious as we tried to save a falling Young Flier contestant. Rainbow Dash flew down fast as lightning and saved all three of us—including the contestant. Everypony was dazzled, Princess Celestia too. You'll never guess how she did it—”

“The Sonic Rainboom.”

Two of the Wonderbolts glanced over at Scootaloo upon hearing that.

Fleetfoot blinked under her goggles, then smiled. “How'd you guess, kid?”

“She's Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo said, her shivers finally coming to a stop as she drank in the mesmerizing blur of the prismatic figure from a distant. “There's nothing she can't do.”

“Hmmm...” Spitfire smirked over her shoulder at the filly in their company. “A rather infectious tenacity, if I must say so, Miss Wheels.” The Wonderbolt Captain waved a bent tray that she had been holding in her grasp the entire time.

Scootaloo blushed furiously. Just then, a huge blast of air nearly knocked her into Fleetfoot's flank.

Rainbow Dash and a visibly breathless Rapidfire had just soared up to the cluster of clouds. “Come on, guys! You can dish out better than this!” Ponyville's chief weather flier caught Scootaloo's gaze but pretended that she hadn't. She barked at the group of uniformed pegasi, “I can take four of you on at once if I wanted to!”

“You're on, ruby-eyes!” Quicksilver shouted with a grin. Together, along with Mercury and Soarin', he dove clear off the cloud and bulleted northward with a gust of hot air. Rainbow Dash was already joining them while a wheezing Rapidfire gasped and goofily flapped his wings to catch up.

Scootaloo tried to stand, but immediately winced at the painful reminder of her bandaged leg. Gently urged back to her haunches by Fleetfoot, the filly sat on the cloud and watched in awe as four blue streaks competed with a rainbow-colored one. The skies above Equestria roared with multiple sonic booms and vaporous shockwaves as the speeding pegasi criss-crossed paths, slicing any and all errant clouds into misty madness.

The air crackled with so much excitement; Scootaloo felt as though lightning bolts would dart between the athletes' wings at any second. Throughout her young life, Scootaloo had been frightened, starving, ecstatic, and even agonized. All of those multiplicitous moments of adrenaline—legendary experiences of shock and awe in their own right—couldn't possibly scale to the blood-pulsing wonder that she was enduring at this very moment, even with the magnitude of all those righteous memories slapped ridiculously together. The beating of her heart dissolved into a dull vibration that sang outward from the center of her body and tingled at the ends of her hooves. Her wings quivered, the feathers fluttering in the wind, as if itching to carry the filly to a higher altitude that might safely chill her heart-throbbing ecstasy. With each breath that coursed through Scootaloo's numb body, she felt that she might die: a good death, a handsome death, a death that was worth offering this sacrificial smile that burned across her orange features and refused to go away.

All of the pain and suffering of the foolish trip taken to get there had dissolved in an instant. Scootaloo hardly remembered the empty loft of a decrepit barn waiting for her back in Ponyville. She stopped thinking about earning bits or food. She suddenly didn't care that life was a lonely string of accidents that all-too-often ended with her stomach being empty or her eyes being dry. Right then and there, as the breaths that came out of her turned into pitiable little squeaks, Scootaloo even forgot the shape of two bodies lying paralyzed in a bed somewhere under a cold, golden morning. She was there to witness Rainbow Dash's moment of shining. There was so much color, so much warmth. If she suddenly went blind, she wouldn't mourn the monochromatic shades of yesterday. She had witnessed an explosion of prismatic awesomeness, and it was bursting before her again with each second that burned by, engraving joyous hues into the quivering surface of the filly's retinae, forming a permanent memory that would forever be the firmest anchor her life could ever need.

“Dang, she really is fast,” Spitfire exclaimed, flapping her wings and taking off to do a few loopty-loops of her own. “I think we got ourselves some competition, Footsie.”

“What was your first clue, Captain?” The other mare chuckled just as the four soaring Wonderbolts and the Best Young Flier rocketed back from their blistering race. “Hey, Rainbow Dash, what's your secret for going so dang fast?”

“I like to think that it's not so much that I'm moving quickly,” Rainbow Dash wiped a curtain of sweat from her colored bangs. She settled down to a hover alongside the Wonderbolts whom she was brazenly slapping high-hooves with. “But I'm scaring the earth into spinning away beneath me.”

“Heheheheh!”

“Hahaha—Hey, I'd believe it!”

“You're a regular bolt of lightning, girl!”

“Mmmhmmm,” Rainbow Dash folded her forelimbs and smirked in the glistening sunlight. “I am what I am!”

“Well, kid?” Fleetfoot nudged the little foal in the center of the group. “What do you think? Is this an awesome party or what?” She giggled to join the chuckling cadence of the other Wonderbolts around them.

“It... It...” The little filly gazed up, her body frozen and her eyes trembling.

The heavens spun around her. Spitfire was performing dazzling flips. Soarin' and Rapidfire blazed by, firing jets of lightning-brimming smoke behind them. Quicksilver and Mercury were flying coordinated spirals while Rainbow Dash's bright body hovered in the epicenter of it all.

“It's...” Scootaloo's voice squeaked. A tear streaked down her face. It was too late to stop what was being released from her lips. “It's my foalday.” It wasn't true, and yet it was. Her heart had never felt so on fire.

Fleetfoot gasped. She raised her goggles up and stared with bright blue eyes. “It is?!” A thick cluster of gasping, grinning Wonderbolts closed in all around the child.

“Wow!”

“Well if that don't beat all!”

“Awwww...”

“Heheheh—What a surprise!”

“This day just keeps getting better and better!”

Scootaloo smiled nervously. She ran a hoof across her cheek, drying it as she curled tighter into herself atop the cloud. The Wonderbolts merely chuckled all the more.

“Awwww... She's so shy!”

“Don't sweat it, kid!”

“Just how old are you anyways?”

“Oh... Uhm... Uhhh...” Scootaloo bit her lip and kneaded her hooves into the cloud. She actually had to think about it. “Eight winters...” She even doubted that was true too. “But... B-But you don't have to—”

“Have to what? Sing? Thought you'd never ask!” Soarin' turned towards the crowd. “Ready, guys?”

“Oh come on, Soarin', really?”

“Hahahaha!”

“Really! A one—two—three!”

Happy Foalday to you! Happy Foalday to you! Happy Foalday...”

The Wonderbolts exchanged glances briefly. The young filly bit her lip.

A blue pegasus cleared her throat. “Scootaloo,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Happy Foalday, dear Scootaloo. Happy Foalday to you!”

“Can we pinch her for a year to grow on without those dinky wings falling off?”

“Cut it out, Rapidfire.”

“What?! Just saying! Them things are twigs! Wait until you're twelve winters, kiddo, and I'll race you!”

“Eh heh heh... I... Uhm... Th-Thanks, all of you...” Scootaloo rambled, hiding behind a mat of violet hair like a certain animal tamer that the young foal never expected herself to emulate. Gazing across the cloud bed, she couldn't help but stare nervously at Rainbow Dash, as if expecting the pegasus' expression to cast some judgment on this entire scenario.

Rainbow Dash was merely smirking. Suddenly, she motioned to Spitfire. Spitfire hovered closer for the blue pegasus to murmur a few things between the two of them. The Captain of the Wonderbolts slowly smiled, then leaned over to whisper into Quicksilver's ear. The stallion nodded and blurred off in a blue streak towards Cloudsdale.

“Well then!” Spitfire's clapping hooves stole Scootaloo's attention. “Since it's now a triply awesome occasion, I think it's only fitting that the foalday girl choose what cool move the Wonderbolts pull off next!”

Scootaloo's tail flicked excitedly. “R-Really?”

“Yup! Tell us—What have you've always wanted to see, Scootaloo?” Spitfire grinned warmly, leaning over towards the filly. “Consider this like a free ticket to an airshow!”

“I... I...” Scootaloo squirmed nervously for a few seconds. Her eyes darted up towards Rainbow Dash. She bit her lip to contain a cheek-splitting smile. “C-Could Rainbow Dash lead the formation?”

“Oh! I see how it is!” The Captain tossed her hooves in mid-hover. “Everypony's trying to get me out of a job!”

“Hahahaha!”

“Heeheehee!”

“Maybe she'd let you lead if we had less goofy looking uniforms, Spitfire.”

“Shut up, Soarin'.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Ahem. Seriously, though,” Spitfire said with a wink in Rainbow's Direction. “I think you're more than capable.”

“I'm more than a lot of things.” Rainbow Dash cracked her joints and fluttered over towards the head of the group. “So, what'll it be, squirt?”

Scootaloo's ears twitched excitedly as she sat up with a grin. “The Half-Dozen Death Dash!”

Soarin' whistled.

Rapidfire and Mercury exchanged wagging eyebrows.

“Oh yowsers!” Fleetfoot stood up, flapped her wings, and joined Rainbow Dash's side. “I can't sit this one out. Stay on the cloud, kid.”

“S-Sure thing,” Scootaloo said.

“You know how to do this one, Sonic Rainboomer?” Rapidfire flew up.

“Heh. How could I not do something with my namesake in it?” Rainbow Dash glanced down and winked on the filly on the cloud. “I've certainly had a lot of help practicing for it.”

Scootaloo smiled warmly back at her. She sighed long and hard and hugged a clump of white fluffiness beneath her as she sat there and watched...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts performed the Half-Dozen Death Dash, but they didn't stop there. As the afternoon wove its way from a golden glow into a copper shine, the dazzling pegasi jumped from one magnificent flight stunt to another. They did the Cyclonic Star Burst, the Spiraling Speed Strut, the Thunder Plunge, and many more. Everytime, Rainbow Dash was allowed a chance to lead formation, and on that afternoon she took Spitfire up on each and every offer.

The Captain of the team smiled in pride. Scootaloo could see the awe in the lead flier's face, and she wondered if Rainbow Dash saw it too. The eyes of the filly's prismatic idol were darting everywhere at all times. It was as though Rainbow Dash knew she only had one day in her life that she could call “the best day ever,” and she was doing her best to drink it all in from all angles as she soared and spiraled through the air alongside her heroes beneath Cloudsdale.

Quicksilver came back in the middle of the stunt maneuvers, and he wasn't empty-hoofed. He carried with him a large chocolate cake from a Cloudsdalian bakery. Eight candles were lit as the foalday treat was carried over to Scootaloo under a cadence of cheers, chuckles, giggles, and coos. There was no limit to the foal's blushing. She expelled all traces of guilt and restraint with a heavy breath, blowing the candles out before sharing them with each and every pony.

The sugar rush that followed only added to the blessed joy of the moment. Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts took turns daring each other into doing crazier and crazier midair tricks. Quicksilver told jokes and a few pegasi laughed. Soarin' told serious anecdotes, and even more pegasi laughed. Spitfire stole swigs from a flask hidden beneath her uniform and smiled rosier and rosier while Fleetfoot rolled her eyes. Rapidfire and Mercury engaged in a hoof-wrestling competition while the rest of the ponies cheered them on.

By the time evening fell, and the blue figures of the iconic stunt fliers blended with the soft curtain of night, Scootaloo watched with a heavy heart as the many pegasi strapped their goggles back over their eyes and prepared for the long trip home.

“Where's everypony going?” Scootaloo briefly murmured as she stood on the edge of a cloud.

A thoroughly wind-blown Rainbow Dash hovered down beside her under the last rays of the sun. “It's almost nighttime, kiddo. Spitfire and her wingponies have to fly back to Canterlot to join the rest of the Wonderbolts before their next big gig.”

“C-Canterlot?” The filly blinked.

“Heheh... The best things in life hardly last forever.” Rainbow Dash playfully nudged Scootaloo in the cheek with a mock, slow motion punch. “Besides, the moment I actually join the Wonderbolts is a thing I gotta earn with more than freakish feats of legend.”

“You mean...” Scootaloo gazed up at Rainbow Dash with a gaping jaw. “Y-You only had so few hours to spend with the Wonderbolts, hours that you could have had them all to yourself...” She bit her lip and squeaked forth, “And instead you chose to spend them with me?”

Rainbow Dash didn't reply to that. She merely smirked, a very flippant thing. She marched past Scootaloo and spoke to Spitfire. “Hey! Captain, my Captain!”

“Yes—hic—Rainbow Dash? Whew... Excuse me.”

“Heheh. Ahem. You're heading southeast to Canterlot, right?”

“That's the plan. Why, you know a better route, Best Young Flier?”

“Hah! I'm flattered that'd you ask me that. Actually, I was curious if you would let us fly with you a bit. You don't have to stop for nothing.”

“Hmmm... I don't see why not.” Spitfire spun and smirked at the rest of the group under the collecting starlight. “How about it, team? One last formation with the Sonic Rainboomer?”

“Heck yeah!”

“Heeheehee—Sure!”

“Are you kidding? Any chance to outrace her is welcome in my book!”

“Keep your saddle on, Rapidfire.” Spitfire glanced back and smirked Rainbow's way. “Looks like it's a go. But you better keep up!”

“I was about to say the same to you!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, suddenly clasping Scootaloo from behind.

The bandaged filly gasped as she was raised up into the thick of the air. She clutched the battered tray to her chest and gazed over her shoulder at the weather flier. “Dashie, y-you didn't answer my question.”

“Questions, questions,” Rainbow Dash muttered with a rolling of her eyes. “The world has too many of those. I swear, questions only ruin the surprises in life.” She smirked. “Like this next surprise.”

Scootaloo squinted. “Wh-What surprise?”

“Did you know that it's my foalday too, kiddo?”

Scootaloo smiled wide. “What?! No way! Are you serious?”

Rainbow Dash merely stared at her.

The little filly blinked. Warmly, she smiled and sniffled. “Today was way better than that, wasn't it?”

“Today was the best.” Rainbow Dash took her crown off and dropped the golden thing onto Scootaloo's pink head. “And I could only share it with the best.” She was decidedly winking at Scootaloo—and not the Wonderbolts—as she said that.

The golden crown fell loosely over Scootaloo's face. Her violet eyes blinked cutely on either side of the circlet as she raised the winged thing up by a hoof and smiled up at the mentor holding her.

“Wonderbolts!” Spitfire's voice soared by along with her body. “Take wing!”

A loud grunt of unison echoed from the five pegasi as they surged afterward. Scootaloo gasped, for she and Rainbow Dash were swiftly joining them in formation. She clung to the battered tray in her hooves, a flimsy fossil to the memories of the past. The only reason she didn't drop it was because she suddenly saw that there was beauty to be cherished in awkward things. After all, not once did Rainbow Dash drop her.

The prismatically-maned pegasus grinned devilishly into the cold winds of Equestria as she and the Wonderbolts flew in a majestic glide towards the Canterlotlian mountains in the distance. Scootaloo hung from her grasp, and the golden wings crowning her head whistled against the beating currents of the high altitude air. No matter how frigid the night winds got, she merely nestled deeper into Rainbow Dash's grip and found warmth. She blinked, and the soft memories of the day joined a snapshot of reflective pond-water emblazoned into her mind. Happy, toasty, and alive, Scootaloo raised her head and nuzzled Rainbow's chest from behind. She never before felt so secure, safe, and special.

It would be the blissful first of many last times.


Twenty-five years later, Cloudsdale was gone. In its place stretched the golden stalk of Petra and its thirty-five shimmering platforms. Smoke and steam were being pumped continuously into the air, feeding the darkening shroud of a gigantic stormfront hovering over the desolate Central Plains of former Equestria.

The regular weather phenomenon was in its final phase at this point. Thunder roared and pierced the blackened sky. Bright bolts of lightning converged on the jagged rooftops of the gigantic imp city. In preparation for this scheduled event, several tall stalks of metal had been constructed alongside the smokestacks. Each of these thick needles absorbed the lightning bolts, attracting the surging currents safely away from the cylinders that were pumping steam out into the ruptured air. Bouncing beams of electricity branched across the forest of metal spokes, so that the many platforms full of hustling and bustling goblins below were largely unaffected by the savage nature of the Wasteland climate.

The world rumbled for hours on end as the stormfront raged its war across the twilight-bathed globe. The booming noise was the first thing in days to drown out the grinding ambiance of Petra's collective machine parts. It was only a matter of time before the chaos dwindled and the imps could return by monorail train to their sky marble mines in the western pits. For the time being, the only progress to be made was the brooding kind, as countless imps of all the clans waited anxiously for a storm of a different sort to pass over.

Less than twenty-four hours since the Glass Blood family had launched an attack on Hex Blood, no council meeting had been established, and the entire city hung off the precipice of fear and uncertainty.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Haman of Rust Blood, however, wasn't waiting for anything. The aged imp was preparing to leave somewhere. There was no hiding it; he descended from the steps of his palace in Strut Twenty-One, hobbling after a train of sweating servants who were carrying away heavy trunks and packages all emblazoned with Rust Blood's yellow colors. As the group of laborers transported Haman's belongings towards a freight elevator at the far end of the platform, the clan leader paused and leaned against the transparent gear-globe of his cane with a sigh.

“Look at them. Every goblin is a child.” Haman's amber eyes squinted while his ear-stalks drooped on either side of his yellow, liver-spotted skull. “Each year, there's more and more of them, and they only get younger.” He took a deep breath. “And I know it's not just me. If only imps these days could die with twice as much dignity as they breed, then maybe I wouldn't have to purge so much of my own blood.”

Stepping up alongside him, Fredden waited for a roll of thunder to pass by before adjusting his shades and speaking with a grin, “Cheer up, boss. Soon, you won't have to worry about all of these bleeders. You'll be far away, safe and secure, along with your silver.”

“Stop saying that as if it's something I should be proud of,” Haman slurred, rotating the cane in his grasp. “Survival is a rather anticlimactic thing, Fredden. Being on top of the food chain is only as rewarding as the things left for you to taste and savor.” He breathed raggedly and gazed down the metallic streets of his district as the strobes of distant lightning illuminated the wrinkled extremities of his hunched figure. “Where I'm going, I will undoubtedly have to learn to fast things. That is hardly what I would call a 'reward.'”

Fredden shrugged. “Well, at least you'll be alive, right?” He smirked as lightning glinted off his shades before murmuring under the booming noise that echoed throughout the imp city discs. “How many other imps your age have lived past the Dimming to see such success?”

“If only you knew, Fredden,” Haman muttered in a low voice. “Legends, good business goblins hardly make. Devo of Hex Blood was once a good friend of mine. Look at him now. An entire life of hard work means nothing to the prime Hex-Bleeder now that he's made one stupid, pathetic mistake.”

“You're absolutely right. He crossed you, boss.”

“He crossed business with idealism, is what he did. I can't blame him for the nobility of the notion, but he certainly didn't need me to warn him of his folly. Imps have risen and fallen before, and they were larger than all of the goblins of this city combined, Fredden.” Haman glanced over at his dark-haired bodyguard. “Did you ever hear of the prime Green-Bleeder of the West?”

“Uhm... Can't say that I have, boss.”

“There was this imp I grew up with; he was younger than me.” Haman had a distant look in his pale yellow face as he spoke through the cascading thunder. “We manifested Petra together, worked our way out of the Wasteland. Things were good; we made the most of it. Later on, he had an idea to build an impcity north of the Everfree Briar for mercenaries flying through the Western Heights. That imp's name was Melvin of Green Blood, and the impcity he built was Steamsilver. This was a great imp, a goblin of strength and ingenuity, and there isn't even a plaque or a signpost or a statue of him in that town. Now, for all of his strengths, Melvin was a tad bit too ambitious, and it increased with age. Someone put a steambolt through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn't angry. I said to myself 'This is the business we've chosen.' I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business.”

“If you ask me, boss...” Fredden smirked and marched a few steps ahead. “You're smarter than the likes of either Melvin or Devo. That's why you're gonna live longer than any other imp in the rest of this town.”

“It's not a matter of being smart, Fredden,” Haman muttered and hobbled after him. “I'm just lucky—”

Haman would have said more, but suddenly he couldn't. In the span of a blink, a brown shape had suddenly touched down, grabbed him with four legs from behind, and soared up into the lightning with a flap of blurring wings. Haman's sudden screams were drowned out in the waves of thunder swallowing his streaking figure. All that remained was his cane, twirling vertically for a few revolutions before rattling down to the metal floor of the street.

Fredden slowly turned around. He lowered his shades to the bridge of his nose and blinked a pair of pale eyes at the empty sidewalk. “Uhm... B-Boss?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Aaaaaugh!” Haman screamed. Haman flailed. The golden platforms of Petra were blurring down past him, swiftly replaced by the steam-hissing smokestacks, and finally the electrically brimming needles of the imp city as he was carried up to the very summit of the majestic, goblin superstructure. All around him, the black-on-gray horizons of the world swam with hellish branches of electricity that seemed to be reaching out towards him, laced with the carnivorous roar of hungry thunder. “Nnnghh-Haagh!” He panted, sweated, and twirled until he stared into an even more ghastly sight.

Lightning strobed, illuminating a pair of lifeless copper goggles that framed an equine jaw full of gnashing teeth. The flashing horizon bled over a silhouette of darkly billowing mane hair.

“Aaah!” Haman's amber eyes pulsed.

“Hello, Haman,” Scootaloo hissed. She released her hoof's grip.

“Ooof!” Haman fell hard on his spine. The aged goblin winced hard. He stirred achingly atop a small circular platform of rusted metal standing between tall copper stalks. Lightning and thunder was exploding all around. “Unnngh...”

“You know, we've had our differences, you and I,” Scootaloo murmured as she reached into her saddlebag. An intestinal length of black twine poured out suddenly over the metal floor. The mare's voice droned under the immense thunder of the storm billowing overhead. “We got off on the wrong hoof, so to speak.”

“Nnngh...” Haman struggled to sit his aching, wrinkled body up. He was only residually aware of the cord being wrapped around his twitching right leg. “Huh... Wh-What...?”

“But let's amend that, shall we?” Scootaloo tied the other end of the rope to her saddle and pulled the length of it tight. “How does a little stroll through the neighborhood sound?”

“Wait..” Haman's amber eyes twitched as he reached a clawed hand out.

Scootaloo's brown wings stretched against the lightning-torched sky. Frowning, she broke into a full gallop.

“No! Wait-wait-wait-wait—Aagh!”

Scootaloo leaped off the side of the platform. Haman soared after her, dangling madly on the end of the cord. Before the elder could summon the breath to scream, the last pony was already giving him a reason to yell even louder. She plunged suddenly, diving the two of them straight down into the interwebbing sea of criss-crossing metal lattices that formed the rooftop of Petra. The pegasus darted up and down, left and right, skirting the edges of several swinging mechanisms and hissing vents of red-hot steam. Haman shrieked and dangled after her, his twitching ear-stalks full of thunder and noise as the storm screamed all around the nightmarish flight that he was a helpless appendix to.

Finally, Scootaloo pulled up, and it was a ridiculously steep climb. The blood rushed violently to the back of Haman's skull as he flew like a comet-tail behind her. His amber eyes rolled into the back of his head as his ankle bled from the biting pull of the rope around his leg. Just as he started to taste the bile bubbling at the back of his sore throat, the last pony landed the two of them onto another rusty platform before an array of smokestacks.

Scootaloo came to a safe stop. Haman didn't. “Mmmff—Nnngh—Augh!” He rolled, tumbled, and ultimately slammed into a bouncing copper antenna. He clutched the metal surface of the roof, trembling and hyperventilating. “Nnnngh... Mmmf... Fuuu... Fuu...”

“Hmmmmmmm...” Scootaloo paced past his shivering figure, tilting her flaring nostrils towards the deathly storm as a gust of electrified wind kicked at her bright pink mane. “Do you smell that rich, clean air, Haman?” She inhaled long and hard. All was dead and black. She glared over at him with a glint of her copper goggles and hissed over the drumming thunder. “No? Well, there's a reason for that. It hardly qualifies as air anymore. It's more like dragon's breath. You remember dragons, don't you? You're old enough.”

“You're... Nnngh...” Haman hissed and fought to sit up on wobbly limbs. “You're insane!” He glared at her through one good eye and growled through blood-stained lips. “Do you know who you're messing with, sky stealer?! Do you have any idea who I truly am?”

“Sure do!” she chirped. “You're a rich, entrepreneurial goblin who's long overdue for an inspection of your steam! I think it's the source of why the air doesn't smell good anymore!” She trotted straight towards the edge of the platform. “Here, let me help you get a better look—”

“No, wait! Don't—!” Haman was already desperately grasping at the rooftop as his body slipped off after her. His claws desperately scraped a few desperate chips off the metal surface, and then he was screaming once again, dangling and flailing after her.

Scootaloo soared straight into the sea of smokestacks. Gritting her teeth, she viciously veered left and right.

Haman's ragdolling body was flung like a pendulum into the tall metal stalks. The air sang with metallic reverberations that rivaled the thunder above. His brittle bones knocked against one other upon each subsequent impact. He grunted, gasped, groaned, and let loose a long, undulating shriek as he was dragged—rattling—over a series of horizontal pipes. Seeing stars, he barely noticed when Scootaloo dragged the two of them towards an even rooftop full of billowing steam pipes. A pair of metal needles stood so close to the platform that whenever lightning struck, it bathed the two of them in an aura of pure white madness.

The thunder that ensued was twice as deafening. Haman screamed and reached a pair of hands up to grasp the earlobes he no longer had. Blood was dripping down his chin, face, and shoulders as he gazed up, trembling, to see Scootaloo pacing along the edge of the rooftop and gazing darkly into the thick of the storming Wasteland.

“Do you know what this place used to be? Do you?” Lightning illuminated her slowly moving jaws as she murmured, “This used to be the site of Cloudsdale, the pride of Commander Hurricane, the Refuge of Goddess Nebula. It was a city where pegasi gathered to harness the gifts of nature and spread them generously throughout the warm and wanting world. Snowflakes were built here. Rainbows were farmed and rain was purified. Soldiers were trained here, guardponies of timeless honor and guile. Talented stunt fliers challenged gravity and astronomists studied the stars. When the seasons changed—like they used to—the residents of Clousdale took it upon themselves to be stewards of a beautiful, vibrant, and blessed earth.”

Lightning struck the stalks beside them. Haman flinched. As he did so, the pegasus turned and glared at him. Twin goggles flickered like the portholes to a ghost ship as she marched towards him, snarling beneath the thunder.

“Twenty-five years have passed since I last set hoof in that once beautiful city of harmony and life, and what do I find? Silver-sucking, soulless imps like you have defecated upon it!” She shouted, something that inhaled the thunder and breathed it into his face through a pair of flaring nostrils. Soon, a singing blade joined the chorus as a sharp knife protruded from her metallic horsehoe and carved a tiny, red line across the edge of the shivering elder's liver-spotted cheek. “Epona help me,” she snarled into his face. “I should be gutting you one organ at a time for every single chunk of sacred sky marble the likes of you tomb-raiding, pint-sized abominations have dredged from the graves of my fallen flesh and blood. The only reason I'm not bleeding you of every putrid gut stuffed inside that little quivering bag you call a body is because you're more worth to me alive, because even the richest corpse in Petra wouldn't be able to tell me what I'm chomping at the bit to know right now.”

“Nnngh... Go freeze to death in the Dimming's Blight, you insufferable war mule!” Haman wheezed and spat. “I don't humor the threats of glue sticks!”

“I'm sorry, did we finish inspecting your steam?” Scootaloo reached away from the two of them and pressed her horseshoe to a nearby steam pipe. A hiss of vapor immediately kissed the air from the metallic contact. “Oooh!” She shook her hoof and made a face. “Whew, that's hot! Does that feel hot to you? Here.” She flung his frail weight over her flank and shoved him—cheek first—into the surface of the smoking cylinder. “Why don't you tell me how hot that is!”

“Nnnngh-Gaaaaaaaah!” Haman shrieked long and hard. His eyes rolled back in his head as the skin on his face bubbled under a rising curtain of steam. Four agonizing seconds into the torture, and he was flung like a peace of meat to the ground. The floundering elder flung a pair of claws to the red-hot patches of skin still simmering across his face. “Nnngh—Haucckt!”

He soon had something else to shriek over, for Scootaloo had stomped the brunt of her front left hoof over his ankle. She leaned over him, mercilessly applying her weight as she held the horseshoe blade close enough for him to see the reflection of his twitching, amber eyes.

“You wanna humor me? Huh?” She sneered down at him. “How about I turn you into a joke? Brace yourself, Haman, for you're about to become the first goblin in imp history to survive having his five limbs cut off.”

She immediately flung her blade towards a part of his body that was quite noticeably neither his arms nor his legs. Haman swiftly shot up, spitting blood and wheezing, “Stop! J-Just stop!”

“Why should I?”

“What... What—nnngh—do you want to know?!”

Haman fell on his back again, for Scootaloo was staring him down with both copper goggles in his face. “A small, teenage goblin. Green skin, bright eyes, a horseshoe branding on his lower thigh.” She raised the blade to the nape of his neck and further roared over the thunder, “He was carrying a glass jar of bright green flame, a container of magical energy. He went to see your goons—presumably either Razzar or that moron in the shades. Now I can't find him. I want to know where he is.”

“R-Razzar?” Haman exclaimed with a last-second jerk of hesitance to his lips. “Wh-Who is Razzar?”

“The next time you try playing dumb, consider playing 'eunuch' instead.”

“Sh-She took a train!” Haman hissed and sputtered. “She took him in a train away from a depot in Strut Four!”

“She's on the monorail track?!” Scootaloo's brow furrowed over her goggles. “In the middle of a stormfront?!”

“She didn't kill the boy, that much I know!” Haman continued squealing. “Why she's spared him is beyond me! I can't get into the naga's head! I never could! Sh-She follows her own rules! We've only partnered up because we had to!”

“Why?!” Scootaloo growled in his face. “What is this all about?! She's doing something with the explosives that Franken of Glass Blood built for you, isn't she?!”

“I... I...”

“Are you going to talk, or should I pull your tongue out and see if I can make it confess on its own?!”

“Nnngh—I am sick to death of you atrocious ruffians of the Wasteland!” Haman suddenly spat in a desperate wave of anger. He hissed as blood dripped from his burned cheek. “I've wanted nothing to do with you! You're going to swallow all that's good about Petra! You and the nagas and the ogres and all the other ugly creatures of this damnable world! At least when the sky stealers were running things, an imp could make profit without fear of a knife to the back! Petra may have been m-manifested slowly, but at least an imp c-could keep track of it! Now look at what imps have become! We've built t-too much in too little time, and now everything is going to go to ruin! Everything!—And all because you stupid horses brought the Dimming upon us!”

Scootaloo suddenly let go of him.

“Ooomf!” Haman fell down to the metal roof. Nevertheless, he stared up at her and trembled as she paced towards the edge of the platform.

“For so long, I've heard the same thing. 'Your race is responsible for the Cataclysm.' 'Your race hogged the resources of the world.' 'Your race controlled the Sun and Moon while the rest of the world floundered for sustenance.' And you know what? Maybe there's some truth to that. Who am I to judge? Yes, I'm the only pony, the last pony, but that hardly matters. I lived eight blissful years in a world of light and warmth, and I am forever glad for them. But the rest of my life—the pathetic, freezing majority of my life was spent in that very same Wasteland that you detest, Haman. And the whole messy experience—for all its colorless shades—has taught me something.”

She tilted her gaze towards the strobes of lighting above.

“You can live for silver, but silver can't live for you. The fruits of business is not like another fresh commodity, something worth more than pure water or magical flame in this dead world. It's taken a while, but I've learned to live for hope—something that is innately rewarding, something that would have turned you into an imp who would have helped his fellow kin in their time of need instead of bleeding them out with bullets. But I can't expect you to understand any of that, Haman. You're a coward, a flimsy excuse for a sentient creature whose business if far more important than his blood.”

She turned towards him now, her jaw tight and her wings outstretched like a demon's appendages against the rampaging stormfront.

“You wanna see the Wasteland, prime Rust-Bleeder?!” She stomped towards him, flung her goggles off, and yanked him up by his neck so that he was gasping into the brimming anger of her twin scarlets. “Take a good long look,” she seethed. Briefly, all of the lightning bolts seemed to be dancing away from her in fright. “These are not eyes, Haman. These are the vessels of nightmares, tempered by the deaths of joys, dreams, and colors, and I am prepared to share each and every one of those frosty little deaths with you... unless you tell me everything about this absurd conspiracy of yours and you tell me now!”

He trembled once more, aghast to see the burned face of a frightened goblin in those red pupils. “I... I-I had my hand f-forced by the M-Mountain Ogres!”

Scootaloo squinted at him. “In the Valley of Jewels?!”

Haman nodded nervously, panted, and exclaimed, “They captured Waven, Franken, and myself. They were going to do away with us, but I m-made a business proposition!”

“Why didn't they just tear you to bits right then and there along with your airship?!” Scootaloo frowned. “What was your leverage, Haman?”

He wheezed, as if the next outburst was more pent up inside him than a patch of untapped sky marble. It finally squeaked out of his bleeding lips, “Our servants, our associates, our pilots.” He gulped. “I sold them, all six dozen of them. They became slaves for the war against the Fire Ogres. We three prime bleeders were let go to carry on with our new arrangement.”

Scootaloo closed her eyes, took a deep, fuming breath, and slurred, “And what arrangement was that, Haman?”

“I'd find a way to stall the industry long enough to be joined with a mercenary in the Mountain Ogres' employ! Razzar came, and with her there arrived a supply of fire granite. Together we worked with Franken to construct enough bombs to tear this impcity to the ground!”

“You're going to level all of Petra?!” Scootaloo was not nearly as surprised as she was enraged. “Why destroy your own flesh-and-blood's manifestation?! Who profits, Haman?”

“The M-Mountain Ogres, of course!” Haman exclaimed fitfully. “With the goblins, gremlins, and hobs out of the way, they'll have enough uninterrupted access to the sky marble from the pits! Then they can extract just the right amount of steam for winning the battle for the Valley of Jewels! As for Razzar: she receives a handsome payment from me.”

“And you?”

Haman's lips quivered. “I... I and my closest colleagues get to retire in a place far away from here, a sanctuary built by Mountain Ogres that's closed off from the rest of the Wasteland.” His brow briefly furrowed as he droned in a solid voice for once, “It's all a matter of time, pony. One way or another, the ogres are going to claim this impcity. If I can't quicken it, then what could have been a mercy killing will instead turn into a long and sustained holocaust as the ogres pillage this place for what it's worth over the next decade. I can't stand to witness the suffering of my own flesh-and-blood.”

Scootaloo inhaled deeply. “Well, I have. And you know what? It sucks, but at least I'm stronger for it. Can I say the same about you?”

“I am merely eliminating the middle-man!” Haman hissed, wincing bloodily as the thunder roared around them both. “The goblins of this place have their days numbered! There's no need for delaying the inevitable! All of the blood and silver is being spilled to end it all! Don't you see?! It's just business!”

“And what about hope?!” Scootaloo snarled, her eyes brimming from the lightning. “For once, Devo's sappy idealism makes sense! If you worked as hard as he did to get the goblins to unify, you could be confronting your fears instead of giving into them!” She dropped him to the ground before leering above. “As usual, a friggin' 'glue stick' such as myself is stuck doing the dirty work. Looks like I've got a train to catch...”

“Wh-What?!” Haman sputtered and clutched his throat with a shaking hand. “You can't be serious! You and what army?!”

“My four hooves and a prayer,” Scootaloo grunted. “It's too late for even the Hex-Bleeders to take my side now. I'm on my own, just like we all are in the end.”

“Are you mad?!” Haman exclaimed, his breaths drowned out in the insane thunder all around. “One pony against a naga shape-shifter and a batallion of my greatest bodyguards?!” He was briefly stuck between chiding her and encouraging her towards the same bloody end. “You'll never last a single second! In a matter of hours, Razzar will be sending a steam-train full of granite fire bombs into the stalk of Petra and sending the whole imp city plunging into the oblivion of the Wasteland! Even I couldn't stop the wheels that are turning in motion now! The legacy of goblins is over! To think otherwise is impossible!”

“Haman...” The last pony glared down at him. “I am now officially pissed off to high heaven. Anything is possible.” She leaned over and sneered. “But you? You are pitiful: an ugly yellow stain that this blind city hasn't bothered to clean off the bulkheads.”

“St-Stain?” Haman uttered hoarsely. As if in answer, he was tossed mercilessly off the edge of the metal platform. The elder Rust-Bleeder fell, flailing, screaming. He flew through criss-crossing metal lattices, through seas of rusted smokestacks, and through dancing clouds of hot mist. Fatefully, he plunged towards the bone-shattering streets of Strut Twenty-One. Amber eyes tearing, he winced at the last second.

He didn't hit the ground.

Gasping, he reopened his eyes. He was dangling a mere meter off the floor. After a roll of thunder, he glanced up past his legs to see a wing-flapping Scootaloo holding him by the rope tied to his ankle.

“You're right about one thing, Haman. Every goblin must someday die.” She hissed down at him, “But you're going to live. Live and tell any imp you wish that I'm coming for those foolish enough to guard that train. I don't care what the numbers are. I want their last hours on this earth to be filled with the same horror that's reintroducing you to your fluids.” That uttered, she dropped him into a warm, steaming puddle that the elder goblin hadn't realized he had produced until then. The cord tied to his ankle was snapped, and the pegasus was gone in a brown blur just as Fredden and several other bodyguards rushed in with weapons drawn. They couldn't see where the last pony had flown amidst the chaos of the swirling stormfront above.

“Nnnngh... Rotten glue stick!” Fredden growled, then turned to gaze worriedly at the elder as two other bodyguards helped him to his clawed feet. “Boss, are you okay?—Whoah!” He winced, observing the blood and burn marks across the prime Rust-Bleeder's face.

Haman shuddered, standing on wobbly legs. He stared long and hard into the flickering, thundering smog. “Fredden...” He gulped. “Fredden, my boy, I need you to deliver a message to Razzar.”

“Yes, sir,” Fredden said. Next, he blinked and adjusted his shades with a nervous shuffle. “Uhm... Eheheh... Just what kind of a message, boss?”


Warden's head slowly nodded, then nodded again. He woke slowly, like an infant on the morning after a long night of throwing up. The petite green goblin stirred, murmured, and stretched out his limbs. There was a metallic scraping sound, and the young imp felt his arms tugging on something. Fluttering his aquamarine eyes open, he realized that he was sitting in the middle of a train car, his arms bound behind his back by a series of metal chains that tied him to a steam pipe.

His face scrunched up, briefly fumbling to remember the events that led him to that dire strait. Suddenly, two peculiar smells graced his nose. Flaring his nostrils, he recognized the first smell from a frightening experience in the factory at Strut Eleven. Glancing around him, the teenager brandished a horrified grimace. He was surrounded by dozens upon dozens of large, spherical bombs full of fire granite.

The second smell increased suddenly, along with a dark crimson shadow. Warden glanced up and positively yelped. Hyperventilating, he scrunched away from the sight of a reptilian face with dead, pale skin hanging off the red scales. A pair of eyeslits blinked tiredly at him—one of them twitching.

“Your eyes look positively sweet,” Razzar said with a tongue darting briefly between her razor sharp teeth. A set of claws held the trembling Warden's chin in place as she examined his cranium up close. “Hmmm... Yes yes yesssss. One thing I will never forget is how juicy my broodlings' eyes tasted when they popped in my mouth. It was like honey, a final gift to mommy dearest.” She gulped, her lips quivering as she murmured, “If only all creatures were as forgiving as they are scrumptious.”

“Who... Who... Who...?!” Warden could only stammer.

“A name is like spit in the Wasteland, boomer-lite,” Razzar muttered, standing up and walking over towards a pile of bombs on the far side of the car. “It all dries and freezes the same against the petrified stone, but not like silver.” The train was still; it wasn't moving anywhere. In the distance, Warden could spot yellow-banded Rust-Bleeders rigging the last of several explosives to the bulkheads. “You can build a coffin or a fortress out of silver. Either way, it's all the same. The only thing you live for in life is to protect your body from becoming meat.” She picked something up off the bombs beside her. “When this stormfront ends, all the boomers piled sky-high will realized they've built themselves a sandwich. It's a shame there're no more crows to clean up after them, yes yes yessss.”

“You...” Warden gulped and curled his legs towards his bound self. “Y-You're Miss Ryst! Er... You were... Or you were pretending to be—”

“Show me a Wastelander who isn't pretending, and I'll show you the sunlight. Now, Boomer,” Razzar spun about, holding a large glowing jar of green flame in her claws. “Would you pretend to know what this is and why it would be so valuable to me?”

“I...” Warden suddenly bit his lip and glanced nervously towards the floor of the train car. “Uhm... I-I don't really know...”

“Be mindful, tender one,” Razzar hissed and twirled the fragile jar in her scales. “Your ignorance is not what's keeping you alive. You came to me, offering this, with what you thought was a good business proposition. I took it upon myself to seize it make an even better one.” She paced over towards him and held the glowing jar against his squinting face. “When my contract is done here, something like this could milk more strips from the Wasteland, yes yesssss. But a potential buyer will want to know where to get more, and you, boomer-lite, are the only link.”

Warden gulped, then frowned. “If you want more, I'm not the outbleeder you should be asking.”

“Hmmmm... Sister four legs summons more than jeers and bullets in her life,” Razzar slurred, stood back up, and returned the green flame to a rest atop a pile of bombs. “Somehow, I am not surprised. Still, I imagined her a tiny bit more resourceful than to let something like that go to waste. It must be hard to grab onto one's valuables when you have hooves instead of claws, yes yessss?”

Warden sneered, “Isn't it enough that Haman's paying you strips for whatever you're doing with these bombs?!” He tugged and pulled in futility at the chains binding him to the pipe. Sighing, he muttered, “Can't you just take the flame and leave this city alone? So much death can't be worth such measly profit.”

“There will always be death, boomer-lite,” Razzar murmured as she gnawed on a flake of dead skin hanging off her right knuckles. “Hmmm.. Grand, rolling fields of death. Beaches and bluffs of death. Seas of death. Have you ever seen the ocean, half-ling?”

“I... uh... I-I can't say that I have...”

“It's nothing like what it used to be, of course,” Razzar practically whispered as her teeth nibbled across her skin. Her right eye twitched as she gazed through a window looking out onto the dead wastes beyond the monorail tracks west of Petra. “Today, all is black ooze and bobbing corpses. But it used to be warm once. Yes yes yessss... there was sea foam and kelp, vast emerald forests that danced and shimmered beneath the waves. You could swim for days in the gentle embrace of the tide. You only came up to the surface to relish in the sunlight, not sob in the blight.” She tugged at a pale sheet of skin, ripping it from her flesh as her nostrils flared. “Mmm... I had laid my eggs after the Dimming, boomer-lite. My husband was too starving and emaciated to be by my side. There was no part of the sea left unblemished with sludge. The best nesting pond I could find was a cesspool that harpies had once used to recycle their fluids. I dreaded the day that my broodlings would hatch there. Nagas should be born unto sunshine, not filth.” She tugged at her wrist one last time. A patch of dry skin hung from her maw for a brief few seconds before she chewed it up and swallowed the lump of flesh down her crimson throat.

Warden twitched involuntarily. He tried looking away, but Razzar was standing over him once more.

“Silver is the vessel for which I can cross the seas that are forever dead to me, little boomer,” she icily murmured. “The strips from this job alone will take me far from here, far from the ogres, far from the Golden Gang, far from all the spit and filth that creatures use to paint their pretentious lives like hollow barricades of hope. My business in Petra means the death of many things you likely hold dear, but I am not sorry for that. I am only sorry that you didn't grow to earn your silver faster than me.”

“I'm the one who's sorry,” Warden droned, frowning into a far corner of the car. “I'm sorry that I ever once thought Scootaloo was as bad off as you.”

Razzar's face twitched, almost convulsed. “Scoot of loo?”

“The pony,” Warden spat. “She's lost a lot in her life too, y'know? Maybe not kids, but her entire freakin' race!” His arms rattled in his bindings as his young, cracking voice howled up at her. “She may have done a lot of cold and heartless things, but she isn't one to kill off thousands of goblins just to get some... some... stupid profit!”

“Stupid... profit...?” Razzar coldly stepped towards him, leering. “You would spit so? A boomer?”

Warden bit his lip and trembled once more in her shadow.

Razzar hissed slowly, like a venting red machine. “Of course the profit is stupid, boomer-lite. It is tainted with the bloody claws of soul-less little animals like you. It wreaks of murder, and not of mercy. It's coated with the blood of infants and carried along the winds of the Blight.” A series of metal pipes breathed steam against her figure. The naga's eyes lit up as a snarling breath rose hotly from beneath her lungs. “I hate that the only thing I have to carry myself away from this nightmare is the same currency that sold me into it. I hate diamond dogs, I hate goblins, I hate ogres—” Her eye twitched to the bursting point as she flung a wrist to one of her holsters. “And I hate...” She pulled the gun out over a wincing Warden. “I hate...” Spinning, the molting reptile plugged bullet after bullet into the hissing series of pipes, accompanying her howling voice with a thunderous chorus. “I hate steam!

Bullet casings and shredded bits of steambolts showered all over the bombs with a series of dangerous sparks. The many Rust-Bleeders flinched, clung to each other, and cast frightened looks in the mercenary's direction. Warden squeaked and flinched as several burning pieces of shrapnel littered the bulkhead beneath his legs.

The punctured pipes vented a final cloud of mist and were silent. The entire wall of the train simmered briefly from the bullet holes. Razzar fumed and fumed, took a deep breath, and holstered her pistol. “So,” she spoke in the calmest voice imaginable as she turned and gazed down once more at Warden. “Just how does an imp get eyes like that. Hmmm? Sparkly boomer is sparkly, yes yes yessss?”

Warden gazed up at the naga, his eyes wide as his entire body scrunched away from her under a fit of shivers.


High above the many struts of Petra, far away from the thick patrols of gremlin aircraft, obscured by the dark columns of steam billowing out of smokestacks everywhere, Scootaloo sat and stared off into the stormfront, thinking. The creases on her forehead matched the fine lines of lightning shooting across the smoggy ceiling of the dead world. Her rear legs dangled off the edge of a rusted metal platform while her hooves toyed with a blue feather and its matching string in her grasp.

In a matter of hours—minutes, for all Scootaloo knew—this gigantic superstructure—a mountain of engineering that was home to thousands upon thousands of lives—was going to collapse into flame and dust. Imps of all shapes and sizes would die in an instant, and hundreds more would suffer lengthily as their corpses blended with the gray desolation all around. Women and children, seniors and teenagers, workers and traders would all perish in the bloody collapse. Whatever short and desperate lives they had lived over the last quarter of a century would be consumed in a single gasp of horror.

Scootaloo dwelled upon this. She forced herself to, and yet no matter how much she pondered the holocaustal situation, the last pony was at a lost to dredge from her soul any semblance of sympathy for the doomed race of imps. The only possible sensation that quickened her heartbeat was the memory of Warden's voice, and how his angry sobs would be the last thing she would ever hear from him.

The scavenger could have just flown away after interrogating Haman. She should have flown away. Her body was a numb brick in the midst of this destruction-to-be. She had witnessed the extinction of countless sentient things. The Cataclysm alone took more than just ponies: zebras, mountain rams, deer, and gazelles all had met the same grim fate. When Princess Celestia and Luna died, all hoofed creatures blessed by Epona's spirit went with them. The multiple canines, felines, primates, and orcs that mortally followed suit were mere gasps in the Wasteland's breath, crumbling civilizations that were too short-lived to deserve any mourning that mattered in the perpetual desolation to follow.

Goblins were creatures of immense tenacity, engineering prowess, and remarkable zeal. In spite of all that, they were merely the same dust specks blanketing the scorched bosom of Equestria like any other lingering species. Even if the death of the city over Cloudsdale's ruins didn't cripple them, the long stretch of time would eventually whittle them away. Scootaloo may someday restore the Sun and Moon to the world, but she hardly expected goblins to survive. They were even less populous in the days of brightness and warmth; the apocalyptic world beyond the Cataclysm was their brief and blissful chance to tumorously expound upon their gifts and burn out like a tiny candle.

Scootaloo had no reason to fight for the goblins' futile survival. With the exception of Devo's coddling eccentricities, the imps had given nothing to her. More than anything, they had only wounded or insulted her—with as much anger and distaste as any other disgruntled creature in the Wasteland. The imps were ugly, ungrateful, squabbling, bloodletting creatures of ill-repute. When the thirty-five platformed manifestation of Petra collapsed, the dead world would only become a little less ugly. Arguably, letting that place fall would be the best way to beautify the Wasteland just short of restoring the sunlight that the Onyx Eclipse had supposedly sucked from all life.

Still, knowing all of these things, Scootaloo couldn’t fly away. She could hardly budge from where she sat. She was locked in place, risking the act of collapsing with the full weight of the city beneath her at any second. She winced at herself, hissed at herself, cursed herself while at odds to discover the reason for her static behavior. Perhaps it was because she was a pegasus, and the threat to life was appealing to the steward in her. Perhaps it was because she couldn't stop thinking about Warden, and how the death of all his kin spoke of a truly pitiable tragedy. Perhaps it was because as long as the city stayed there in one piece, the scavenger felt as though she could still find goblins willing to employ her for silver in the future.

The truth came to her, however fragmented, upon each successive blinks between the lightning strobes above. She and Rainbow Dash were being reflected off a shiny pond's surface in the middle of Equestria. Suddenly that pond was replaced with a fine mist as the weight of Cloudsdale collapsed to the earth below. She couldn't stop clinging to her prismatic savior. The world was dying, and the pegasi were the first to go.

The winged ponies of Nebula's blessing were the heart of the living, breathing world. When the stewards of Equestria died, the rest of the world perished with them. In a way, the Cataclysm was merely the first salvo of a great tragedy. Scootaloo couldn't help but wonder if so much as a dozen pegasi had survived the apocalypse, the world could have been rebuilt by then.

Now goblins were about to die in droves, and Scootaloo briefly shuddered at the thought, for the goblins were stewards in their own respects. Imps were the sentinels of the Wasteland. They embodied the desolation, and yet they improved upon it—however awkwardly—with an artistic beauty that Scootaloo could not digest, but she certainly could respect. When they died—all as a result of Haman's selfishness, the ogres' envy, and a naga's indifference—something would perish in the Wasteland that would never again shine with any golden brilliance. Scootaloo didn't even want to think of what could be deader than the desolate Equestria stretching around her, but suddenly the last pony felt as though she had to imagine it, for if she did nothing then she was about to become the first-hoof witness to a cataclysm... again.

Scootaloo sighed and ran a hoof through her pink mane. Warden was in trouble. Spike's extra-rare green flame was compromised. Somewhere in the green, burning past, the Observatory of Nebula waited patiently for the orphan of time. However, not even Princess Entropa could help Scootaloo do the impossible. How could she? Could a goddess embodying the essence of time be any more motivated than Scootaloo to get her hooves entangled with such a maddening affair?

The scavenger stared off into the lightning-lit canvas above her. A pair of sad scarlets drank in the regularly-timed stormfront, like a wounded foal waiting for a clock to stop ticking.

The past was immutable. Scootaloo was no more capable of changing history than Goddess Entropa was willing to alter the future. Here she was, however, in the present. She knew what Razzar was equipped to do, and she for once could predict the death of a civilization before it happened. She had every bit of knowledge of the situation, but for once she didn't have Entropan skin to assist her. The last pony was a mortal thirty-three year old mare whose four limbs and teeth were no match for the naga mercenary and all of her well-armed impish guards. If Scootaloo so much as showed her face within one hundred meters of the train full of fire granite explosives, she'd be reduced to a bullet-ridden side of meat.

The last pony sighed long and hard, for Haman had been right. The situation may not have been immutable, but it most certainly was impossible.

A sudden spark ricocheted down her system, brighter than the lighting, forcing her to gasp. The fluttering feather in her hooves felt like a dancing fan of needles. The last pony stifled a whimper, shivering, for she realized that long before she had ever met Spike and his green flame, she had encountered the confounding juxtaposition of immutability and impossibility before, only on that occasion she did not have the cylinder of reverse time or the unknown fate of Warden to egg her on. She only had the blackness of the abyss before her and the faint, ghostly traces of Rainbow Dash's glorious colors. In a surge of centripetal madness the likes of which only an enchanted dragon tooth could provide, she felt herself sailing once again into the onyx ravine, falling, giving in.

There was suddenly a heavy breeze.


Scootaloo gasped. Her scarlet eyes flew open and her wings stretched out instinctually. The last pony's body wobbled, having been shoved back in the middle of her teetering lean by a strong gust of Wasteland air randomly dipping into the Cloudsdalian ruins. Her heart raced, briefly woken from the ennui that had almost pulled her into oblivion. The sensation felt like being carried—by bright blue wings—towards the cold, metal body of a zeppelin and the arcane vaults lying inside.

Something flickered past her shaved neck. Panting, she gazed once more into the abyss, seeing a feather fluttering past her, a last ounce of color. The flimsy strand hovered for an agonizingly long time, audacious in its gravity-defying twirl before slowly, poetically being swallowed up by the black chasm below. In the last fitful blinks affording her sight of the loose feather, she almost imagined the thing was blue, when it was actually brown, a piece of her own, grown, adolescent wings that had torn off in the sudden downdraft of ashen wind.

For a brief moment, Scootaloo could not think of her wounds. She could not think of the rabbit meat. She could not think of the goblins or their tools or their indifference. She could only fight back the tears as she hugged herself upon the precipice of annihilation as she heard words...

Her words...


“Heck, if you ask me, you weren't just show stoppers,” Rainbow Dash said with a bright smirk, “you were the freakin' main event!”

Almost a year after Scootaloo returned to Ponyville, months after the Best Fliers Competition in Cloudsdale, and weeks after stumbling into two blank flank fillies at Diamond Tiara's party, the flightless pony was shuffling away from the lit stage of the Young Ponyville Talent Show. A crowd of adult equines were dissipating along with their foalish children and siblings. Pale moonlight glinted off several dangling medals hanging around the necks of the fillies and colts as they took their prizes—and pride—home for a good night's sleep. An award in the shape of a bright, golden harlequin hat hung jubilantly beneath Scootaloo's chin, but she hardly seemed enthused, nor did Apple Bloom or Sweetie Belle who were quietly trotting away with their respective older sisters across the night-shrouded school yard.

“Did you hear me, kid?” Rainbow Dash smiled as she trotted alongside the orange foal. “Or is there a funeral I don't know about?”

“Hrmmm...” Scootaloo exhaled long and hard, her mane and tail spiked to compliment the dark purple eyeshadow splotching her face. The filly's voice cracked from a full night of singing at the top of her lungs. “We crashed and burned, Dashie. Stop pretending like our act totally didn't stink.”

“Hey! It was cool! There were crashing setpieces and explosions and stuff! It woke me up, if nothing else! Heheheh...”

Scootaloo briefly frowned up at the older pegasus. “Look at me straight in the face and tell me that what we did was a good act.”

The older pegasus stared down at her. Rainbow Dash's ruby eyes blinked, then blinked again. “You... Erm... You certainly have a nifty singing voice, Sc-Sc-Scootaloooooo—Snkkkt—Hahahahahah...”

The foal rolled her violet pupils and sighed.

Rainbow Dash snorted and stopped Scootaloo in her tracks with a hoof to her shoulder. She rode a wave of chuckles, rediscovered her breath, and said with a smile, “Okay, look. Maybe your talent isn't exactly singing—”

“'Maybe?!'” Scootaloo frowned and waved her spotless derriere. “You think I didn't learn that already?”

“Well, uhm, that's the importance of—uh...” Rainbow's eyes searched the back of her skull as she fidgeted, fought for words, and finally produced, “Being persistent! Yeah! You keep trying something and eventually you'll dig up what you're really good at! I still mean it when I say that you three girls were the 'main event.' That act was the best thing I saw all evening!”

“But I don't want a stupid 'Best Comedy Act' medal!” Scootaloo said, looking sadly over her shoulder as Apple Bloom trotted with Applejack, and Sweetie Belle with Rarity. “I only said our talent might be in comedy because the others are suddenly so excited about it. We took so long preparing for this act tonight, Rainbow Dash, and we still haven't earned our cutie marks. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle are so worked up; I don't want to let them down. But sometimes...”

“Sometimes what, squirt?”

Scootaloo sighed and hung her head. “I just feel like giving up.”

“Ugh. Really, now?” Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. Smirking, she sat on her haunches and stared closer to the foal's eye level. “Kid, have your parents ever taught you the term 'beating a dead horse'?”

“Sometimes I envy you, Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo suddely exclaimed. Her purple makeup made her face look like a sad, pastel-colored skull. “You know what it's like to have the best day ever. It's like you've been to the top of the mountain. I wish I knew what that was like. I'd earn a billion cutie marks with what it'd take to catch up with you.”

“Now, just who the heck said that I've had 'my best day ever'?”

“Uhhh... you did.” Scootaloo briefly glared at her. “Like, a hundred frickin' times since you won the Best Fliers Competition months ago, remember?”

“Oh... Uh...” Rainbow Dash briefly went cross-eyed, then frowned. “Never mind that, pipsqueak. Has it ever occurred to that little spiked head of yours that I only say that to remind myself that the most awesome things in life can still be bested?”

“Huh?” Scootaloo blinked confusedly. “What do you mean, Dashie?”

“Heheheh... It's simple, kiddo.” Rainbow Dash stuck her tongue out and licked the end of her hoof. While speaking, she reached over and wiped the eyeshadow off of Scootaloo's scrunching face, one lid at a time, revealing the immaculate orange filly underneath. “Life is full of best-days-ever. What happened in Cloudsdale was friggin' awesome. You should know; you were there. Well, you were there for the party afterwards. Heheheh. Still, do you think I would have done the amazing things I did that day or earned that golden crown by giving up during all those afternoons I practiced in front of you? Rolling over and calling it quits is hardly a way to seize the day. Most uncool, if you ask me.”

Blinking her eyes open, Scootaloo looked forlornly in Rainbow's direction. “But what is there left for you to do, Rainbow Dash? You stole the show in front of Princess Celestia and the Wonderbolts! Do you really think anypony could top what you've done? It's impossible!”

“The Sonic Rainboom was impossible, wasn't it?” Rainbow Dash smirked. “And yet I did that, didn't I?”

“Yeah... but, I heard Applejack and Pinkie Pie talking,” Scootaloo nervously muttered. “You'd done the Sonic Rainboom before.”

“Exactly. That's the funny thing about life. Sometime lightning strikes more than once, but for all the right reasons. I think that's why I get a kick out of hanging with you, ya little squirt.” She placed a pair of blue hooves on the filly's shoulders and stole her gaze as she spoke, “I want to be there when you do the impossible. I want to see you buck the world in the face and show it who's boss. Maybe it'll earn your cutie mark, maybe it won't. The fact is, there're plenty of best-days-ever waiting for you, and I can't wait for you to earn your first one. Because...” She smiled warmly and sat back, running a smoothe hoof through her prismatic bangs. “Because it'll remind me that I was there once, and that as far as I've come now, I still have so many more wickedly awesome places to go.”

Scootaloo bit her lip. With the makeup cleaned off her face, the rosiness to her cheeks was undeniable in the moonlight. “Twilight's right about you. You really are the loyalest of ponies.”

“Heheheh...” Rainbow Dash's wings flapped briefly in the wind and retracted. “Yeah, well, I guess it goes to show: once you get sap on you, it's really friggin' hard to get off.” She paused, for she saw Scootaloo's gaze lowering to the ground. Glancing down, she saw that a blue feather had fallen loose and littered the blades of grass below. Gracefully, the pegasus picked the feather up and stroked its fibers straight in the starlight. “I'll tell you a secret, kiddo,” Rainbow Dash quietly murmured.

Scootaloo blinked. “What's that, Dashie?”

“The key to being loyal...” Rainbow Dash said while leaning forward. She stuck the blue feather behind Scootaloo's ear before ruffling the foal's spiked mane. “...is being loyal to yourself first. All of the other stuff—being a good friend, a dependable pony, and a responsible pegasus: it all happens naturally once you truly know just how righteously cool you are. So long as you've got that straight, the rest of the world won't know what hit it the day you too pull off the impossible. There really isn't much difference between flying or pulling off the sonic rainboom. So long as you don't give up on hope, the spotlight is all yours.” She grinned. A devilish glint in her teeth outshone the moon. “Don't you see, kiddo? Life's always needing a main event. Not even the sky's the limit.”


Scootaloo's nostrils flared. The gray ruins of Cloudsdale were no longer ominous bowers of steep marble. It was all mere junk, useless and stupid. She was the only living, breathing soul in the Wasteland, in the earth, in the universe. Everything around her melted in reverance. For once, her eyes—wet and scarlet things—were red-hot phantoms of fury, and not the color-drained victims that she had long imagined they were. For over two years she had suffered and starved in the pits of that desolate abyss. Suddenly, the only excuse she had for it was that she still hadn't woken up from her first fitful night of sobs under a screaming stormfront above.

She looked once more into the black depths of the chasm. In the darkness, there was suddenly color, peaking through the slits in the bars of the arcane vault, then smiling, winking, and flying away. The time had at last come to follow her.

With a deep breath, Scootaloo...


...stood up from the edge of the metal platform and lowered her copper goggles over her eyes. The thunder was dwindling. The lightning was darting away. The lengths of Petra bowed below her. Imps were clever but foolish creatures; they knew nothing of the last pony, they knew nothing of the hoofed queen of the Wasteland. It was time that they all learned a lesson, a truth tempered by the wounds of Ages, years that belonged to Scootaloo and Scootaloo alone.

Spitting into the face of gravity, Scootaloo dove off the edge of the imp city's roof and surged down the glittering golden height of Petra. Soon, she was soaring towards the Harmony. Once landing at the zeppelin's entrance, she...


...scrambled up the ladder to the upper loft of the barn, carrying her bent metal tray behind her. It was the Monday after the Best Young Flier's Competition in Cloudsdale. That morning, Rainbow Dash had dropped the little filly off in the middle of Ponyville and gone to Sugarcube Corner to celebrate with her five closest friends. In the warm rays of a glittering afternoon, the white bandage shone along the filly's rear leg.

Unaffected by her pained limb, the foal scurried over towards a suitcase full of tools. Still riding a rapid heart-beat of excitement from the previous day's party with the Wonderbolts, Scootaloo grabbed a hammer and prepared to beat the bent surface of her metal platform back into shape. Before she even took so much as one swing, the filly stopped.

She gazed long and hard at the rusted metal contraption in her grasp. That day was just like any other, but she couldn't help but feel as if a part of her had been born again. Suddenly, what was once a pride of the past was merely a shadow of long dead things. The only reason they were dead was because new colors of hope had flown down to replace them.

It wasn't that hard to believe. After all, yesterday was her foalday.

Scootaloo smiled. With each progressive breath, that same grin widened and widened until it morphed into something devilish. With a triumphant grunt, she tossed the bent metal tray away like the useless junk it was. All the colorless memories of pain and regret rattled into obscurity along with it. The filly hoisted a tiny saddlebag over her flank, slid down the steps, and scampered briskly out of the barn, heading towards the landfill on the other side of Ponyville. Piercing through the edge of the forest's treeline, the filly...


...planted her hooves firmly in place atop a hill of granite rubble. The last pony was scarred and bruised in a dozen places. She was lacking sleep and nourishment. She never felt stronger in her entire life.

The wide bowels of Clousdale hung before her. Gray twilight swam in dull bands like runway lights. The snow parted ways, splitting the desolation in two. The spotlight was on her.

Scootaloo took a deep breath. Her wings slowly unfolded. The filly's limbs tightened, the muscles pulling taut like iron cables under angry brown flesh.

It was a sneer and not a smirk that pulled her forward. Her trot turned into a canter and her canter turned into a gallop. Scootaloo pierced the depths of the earth. Life was a comedy act, and she was lucidly aware of the bumps one took in pratfalling across the stage.

Scootaloo leaped high. She soared through pale twilight. She knew what was coming before gravity delivered it. The filly refused to close her eyes.

“Nnngh—Augh!” She slammed into the ground, tumbled, and skidded to a stop on the edge of the plateau. Wincing, she got right back up. She gazed up at the gray overcast above the pit. She then looked at her wings.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Brown feathers caught the air, then billowed as the pegasus' appendages flapped and flapped desperately. It was not enough. She plummeted towards the ground like a brown sack of rocks.

“Unnngh!” She winced and hissed as she slid down a powdery hill of ash. Snarling, she hopped up within a single blink. “Nnngh!” She ran again, she flapped her wings, she jumped into the cold dead thick of the Wasteland.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Scootaloo sailed hard into a wall of sky marble.

“Augh!” She tumbled. She rolled to a stop across a promontory of ivory rock, hissing through clenched teeth.

The filly's wings were twitching. She was bruised in over a dozen places. She bled from the lips and ears and her insides felt like they would hurl her organs out at the next breath. She didn't care.

She was up in the air the longest that time. She had counted the seconds. However, on every occasion, as soon as Scootaloo flapped her wings and struggled for lift, she simply fell.

Scootaloo took a deep breath and stood up on wobbly legs. She sucked saliva into the corner of her mouth, spat a wad of red juices into the rocks below, and gazed up once more into the dead sky.

She was dealing with a problem. She had dealt with problems before; she had even fixed many of them. The air was so cold, the snow positively blistering. It was hard to concentrate the soonest her face hurled into the ashen winds of the Clousdalian pits.

Blinking, the filly gazed over her shoulder. She spotted a mountain of rubble that had become vaguely familiar to the scavenger over the last two years. Twirling about, her hooves grinded over the loose pebbles of sky marble and took her galloping into the crumpled shell of a Cloudsdalian snowflake factory. Once there, she...


...ripped an entire tray full of tools loose from underneath the runeforging table of the Harmony's hangar level. Balancing the tray atop two brown wings, the last pony gathered as many tiny nick-nacks and jars of moondust that she could. With three legs at her disposal, the scavenger hobbled over to the far end of the dark-lit lower section of the gondola.

She poured the many rattling objects all over the bulkheads and proceeded to use the entire floor as her workbench. She squatted down and dragged random objects into the space before her, hammering them together to build the first of many mechanical pieces: a complex grappling hook launcher.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Scootaloo finished spooling over thirty meters of metal cable around a copper spindle. She affixed this to the grappling hook while leaving two separate chambers rune stones. Lowering a dark pair of shades over her head, she whipped out a welding tool, sparked it to life, and started fusing together the disparate pieces of a complex metal rig. The hangar level of the gondola flickered with the torch's bright strobes, illuminating every bright pink hue of the mare's long mane.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hot steam billowed in purple manalight as Scootaloo finished enchanting the last of several new runestones freshly carved out of moonrock. She took one glowing piece and slapped it firmly into a chamber of the grappling hook launcher. Afterwards, she took another runestone—a long and silver cylinder of moonrock—and fastened it to the end of a metal hook.

Once the hook and the cylinder were fused together, she slid the slender end of the conjoined object down the barrel of a copper rifle. She proceeded next to attach a copper-framed sight to the top of the gun, just above the barrel—which had been lengthened at the last second by an expert augmentation.

Laying the weapon on the runeforging table, Scootaloo stood back and gazed at it, then at the grappling hook launcher. Two things were missing. She needed an explosive, and she needed a means by which to carry that explosive along the grappling hook.

Suddenly, the adult pegasus' eyes twitched under her goggles. She glanced aside towards the far end of the hangar level. A glinting metal object was rolling up against a wall in the slow sway of the Harmony's weight. Exhaling away any reluctance, the last pony rushed over and...


...stealthily clung to the undercarriage of the garbage wagon as it rolled through the gates of the Ponyville landfill. Before the pony-drawn cart came to a rattling stop, the little filly hopped down and scampered out of sight of the shuffling workers. She climbed up a mountain of junk like she so sneakly had on many an afternoon previous.

Gazing all around, she brightened upon seeing the remains of a bent and battered bicycle. She slid over to it and gasped with foalish delight to see that the handlebars were still in perfect shape. It took the better part of twenty minutes, but she managed to snap the top piece of the handles loose from the rest of the bike. Shoving them into her petite saddlebag, she scampered off towards another mountain of junk and scavenged for more treasures.

Gradually, as the afternoon bled into a crimson evening, she found such priceless objects. She grabbed a bunch of wheels from a collapsed conveyor belt, a slender pipe from the plumbing of a kitchen sink, dozens upon dozens of metal nuts and screws, and even a little filly's bike helmet.

At last, she found a long metal plank that she judged to be part of a cooking stove's framework. This, she hoisted over the back of her spine and bravely carried out of the landfill just as the cover of night fell to assist her in her escape. Giggling in an excited breath of adventure, she carried her victorious loot of junk into the forest—pausing only once so as not to kill herself with exhaustion.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

That night, Scootaloo had five whole candles lit—the most she'd had ever illuminated the loft of the barn in all the months she had been in Ponyville. It was a dim spotlight at best, but she made the best out of it as the dark hours lurched on, during which she spent sweating, straining, and hammering away at her new purpose.

Licking her lips in concentration, Scootaloo bore a hole in the front end of the metal strut. She slid the slender metal pipe in and fastened it in place. She took the bicycle handles and attached them to either side of the vertical pipe, taking extra time to wield a rusted file and smooth the jagged edges of her hoofwork.

Next, she attached the wheels, tightened the spokes, and greased them up with a half-empty can she had scavenged from the landfil on her way out. She even took time to polish the metal surface until the thing took on a silver shine in the morning sun that was presently rising up over the hilltops.

There was no time to sleep. Scootaloo was too alive. She paced about the length of the loft, her blood vessels bubbling, her hooves brushing past the candles that had melted straight through to the base of their wax holders. Strapping the purple helmet over her head, she stood at a proud distance and gazed, smirking, at...


...the tiny metal scooter which had been rigged to the grappling mechanism. Bending down, the last pony drew the metal cord from the grappler and attached it to the cylinder and hook that had been planted in the barrel of her rifle. She practiced aiming the gun, seeing where the trajectory of the magically propelled hook would drag the length of the cable that was wired into the rigged scooter.

She lowered the weapon and stood in the middle of the Harmony, tapping her hoof in thought as her scarlet eyes swam over the barren length of the childhood transportation. After a space in time, she placed the weapon down and grabbed a hoof-full of explosive mana runes. She knew where she wanted to plant them on the metal contraption, but she suddenly realized she had run out of wire fasteners to accomplish the task with.

The pony's nostrils flared in momentary consternation. She juggled the runes in her grasp, thinking hard. Suddenly, she paused. After a lasting blink, she tilted her head up and gazed towards the pilot's cabin of the gondola.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Scootaloo grabbed the golden lyre off the wall of souvenirs above the worktable. Without a second thought, the last pony raised the musical artifact in her grasp and smashed it against a bulkhead. Shards of priceless metal went flying in the flickering lanternlight. She didn't bother with the shrapnel, instead freeing the harpstrings to her manipulation. She spun these around her hooves before hoisting various other treasures off the wall, one by one.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Using a grinding wheel, Scootaloo reduced half of the brick of Stalliongrad masonry into dust. She briefly lapped a sneeze of the brown powder with her tongue and tasted it. It wasn't exactly ogre fire granite, but the compound was similar enough to make a spectacular compound explosive with. She proceeded to work at the runeforging table, mixing the grounded up bits of the brick with moondust.

After fusing and enchanting the material, she painted it over the explosive manarunes and tied them to the length of the scooter via the harpstrings of Lyra's musical instrument. When she ran out of the metal cords, she went back up to the top level of the gondol and fetched a buffalo headdress. Ripping the feathers and beads off, she tore the article down to its basic fibres and used it to strap the last of the explosive mixtures in place.

She still needed a trigger to rig the explosives. Scootaloo achieved this by smashing Dr. Whooves' tool to bits and using the springs she found to fix the Appleloosan railroad spike to the front of the scooter. Once the last of the runestones was in place, she had finished her dastardly masterpiece. With an anxious breath, Scootaloo...


...held the bottle in her mouth while slicing at the end of it with a rusted saw. Repeating an elementary crafting job, the last pony sat in the upside-down snowflake factory of fallen Cloudsdale and fashioned herself the second of two transparent lenses. Rows of partially shattered bottles and metal snow containers reflected her in a dazzling gray kaleidoscope while she worked.

Hours later, she was framing the circular bits of glass with copper rings salvaged from a guardpony armory. With the aid of a canvas strap, she fixed the twin lenses to a flexible band which she sowed into a loop at the end.

Wiping a trickle of sweat from her brow, the last pony finished by polishing the lenses and holding them up to her scrutinizing eyes. She took a deep breath.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The fresh new goggles fit snugly over Scootaloo's shaved head. They glinted like twin phantoms in the twilight as she stood once more atop a mound of gray rubble. The filly stared out into the wide, black chasms of the abysmal ruins before her. Her jaw grew tight and her lungs heaved. She took one brave breath, then two...

Her wings flew out to her side.

A gust of cold, ashen wind dipped down as if to scare the foal in her back to the surface. She merely inhaled it, and grew stronger.

Scootaloo moved.

She charged forward. She bulleted ahead like a brown ghost, the last pegasus of Cloudsdale. Princess Nebula left the earth long ago because her work had finished. Scootaloo was about to do the same. Her galloping hooves were lonely gunshots in the frozen wounds of the world. She was tired of festering, tired of bleeding, tired of dying. The last living pony was a pitiable soul, but she was still alive.

The edge of the plateau shot up from underneath her. Scootaloo's eyes flared crimson under the goggles. There was no more knifing snow to blind her beyond that which she allowed. She hissed into it, snarled even, and leaped off the edge of a shout before leaping off the edge of the sky marble cliff in turn.

Scootaloo held her breath. The colorless world lunged around her, and yet Rainbow Dash wouldn't stop winking from beyond the black bars of the vault.

Rainbow Dash was a brazen soul too awesome for death to swallow, no matter how many stones were buried atop her corpse. She tore hurricanes in half. She outraced the Wonderbolts. The wind was not an impediment to her; it was a toy. The skies followed Rainbow Dash's command, because the pegasus knew from the day that she was foaled who was the star of the show. Life was not full of impossibilities, it was merely full of new and more exciting acts before the final curtain fell.

Scootaloo was the last pony. She had her entire life, the entire depths of the moldable universe, with which to make the impossible happen, again and again. She had what Rainbow Dash didn't have, the chance to be the one and final show-stopper. The wind would have no choice but to obey her as well.

And it did. Scootaloo didn't even need to try. So long as she held her wings out, and hoped for the best, she caught the air. She only needed to flap her wings when she felt like it.

When she did, she jolted upwards in a maddening climb. The filly gasped, her eyes bulging under the goggles as she flailed about briefly in midair. Her heart beat a million kilometers per instant. She was panicking, and panicking was most uncool. She blinked one last time, and a pair of cuddling pegasi flickered in a pond's reflection. Her eyes twitched. The depths of Cloudsdale was gliding beneath her. She relaxed her wings. She glided once more. The last pony realized she hadn't started counting the seconds. So she did so, belatedly, and gave up about two minutes into the flight.

She was breathing hard. The distance between Manehattan and Ponyville was shrinking a kilometer-per-heartbeat in her pulsating mind. The gliding trek to Cloudsdale was suddenly a sneeze. She saw a wall of sky marble coming towards her, but could have sworn she was pulling it closer the entire time.

Calmly, with the grace of a sparrow, she flung her limbs up and caught the vertical wall with the bottom of her hooves. She clung to the wall, defying gravity, for what felt like an eternity. She felt the kinetic forces at work, surging through her, deflating before the pull of the earth. She timed her springing legs just right, depending on a natural ballast in her pegasus heart.

“Nnngh!”

Scootaloo kicked off the wall. She flapped her wings—briefly—and flew higher this time. She hyperventilated, not out of fear but out of a sudden fever as her body vibrated from the inside out as if she had been set on fire. Scootaloo suddenly understood what made birds sing, and it wasn't the warmth of spring. The snowy air sliced into her coat with frigid teeth. It merely tickled.

She angled her wings and dipped low. She tilted them the other way and rose in a brief gust. The world no longer had up or down. Rainbow Dash herself could spin loops around the flagpost atop Ponyville's town hall without throwing up. Scootaloo whimpered, for suddenly a tiny slice of the awesomeness was becoming palpable. Pegasi weren't just born with wings; they entered the world full of feathery quills to paint the ceiling of the world with guile and joy. She simultaneously understood Pinkie Pie's envy and Gilda's tears, for she was about to draw a masterpiece of her own.

Scootaloo sucked her breath in and coiled her legs. She flexed her wings once, twice, then shot straight up, falling in reverse, piercing the dead ceiling of an even deader world as she rocketed—screaming—towards the flimsy gray veil of the Wasteland above.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The hanging ruins of Cloudsdale blurred by. The collapsed columns of sky marble became indistinguishable streaks. The dead waterfalls and guardpony corpses and heaps of ashen moonrock spun into a cylinder of collapsing memories as Scootaloo pierced the tunnel of it all—seething—and emerged from the pit like a rising phoenix, parting the gray clouds that hung over the abyss with her earthen wings.

Rising up, she briefly levitated, flipped over, and flapped her wings as she took off horizontally over the surface of the world. In the unfiltered twilight, everything was blinding, bright, and immaculate. The snowy desolation was a blank slate, and the lone pegasus of Cloudsdale was carving her future across it, diving low and ripping up powdery mounds of earth with her furious swoops and winged glides.

Her heart never stopped beating. Her lungs sucked in gails of rapture while spitting out all her fears. Death was merely an encore to the end of something, something she was presently peeling off of her blood-stained coat with each successive wave of g-force that she was hurling herself against. The lenses of her goggles were starting to fog from the joyous tears of the moment. She didn't care. She didn't need her eyes to see the future. All the colors were illuminating her path from the past. Scootaloo was weightless because Rainbow Dash was carrying her, and yet she wasn't. Her smile shone like a lost moon over the deathscape, for even sadness had its own shades of awesome.

Rising high and twirling like a mad falcon over the gaping pit of Cloudsdale, the airborne pony flung her mouth open and howled at the top of her lungs.


“Wooo-Hoooo!”

Scootaloo's tail-hairs billowed in the sunlight at the height her jump. Bracing herself with a smile, she landed the freshly built scooter at the base of the hill, fluttered her tiny wings behind her petite body, and accelerated herself even faster over the countryside.

Grass and flecks of dirt flew every which way from the spinning wheels. The filly gripped the handles in the crook of her hooves, guiding herself forward by the whim of a dashing smirk as warm winds of the morning whistled past the curves of her helmet.

The grand rolling fields of Equestria stretched green beneath her. It may as well have been a river of emerald rapids. Scootaloo roared over them like a skipping stone, fluttering her wings and aiming towards the crest of the next hilltop.

She flew through the air. Counting seconds oozing by, the athletic little filly kicked her lower legs up off the airborne metal platform of the scooter until her lower half hung horizontally. With a flick of her upper limb, she twirled the scooter by its handles beneath her once, twice, and landed her feet down just as the thing struck soil again. There was a brief skidding sound, a spray of dirt, and Scootaloo was soon coasting along at a heart-pounding rate.

She laughed. She drank in the warmth of the world. Rainbow Dash was awesome. The Wonderbolts were awesome. Now, Scootaloo had found her own little slice of coolness. It may not have earned her a cutie mark, but it didn't stop her from eating her helping from the pie of life.

Gritting her teeth, she fluttered her wings hard and pushed herself even faster. When she kicked at the earth, her bandaged limb stung with delicious pain. Life was too short to sob over things that could be fixed. It was, however, long enough to build things that could be celebrated.


Scootaloo's victory dance was a cyclonic flight, inching her closer and closer to the outer ruins of Cloudsdale so that she dipped dangerously low over the collapsed buildings and jagged marble-work of the place. Smiling, she dashed under ivory archways and soared in between granite columns. She found half of Cloudsdale Coliseum lying on its side and zig-zagged her way through the multiple stone support beams holding the last standing curves of the eliptical structure together.

Angling her wings, she pulled herself up high, spun about, and dipped low so that she was gliding over an ash-laden pool of grimy water in the center of collapsed city block. She gazed down and saw a pair of goggled scarlets blinking up at her. It was there that Scootaloo met the scavenger of the future, and the scavenger of the future met the orphan of time. She reached a hoof down in mid-glide, and the rippling waters parted ways, showing her the degree to which she could shape or shatter the colors she had to work with, even if she had to reinvent many of those extinct shades.

The filly's nostrils flared. In a sudden breath of determination, she tossed her smile to the winds, banked off to the side, and dove back into the pits from which she came.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Before a deep cave in the sunken ruins of Clousdale, the goblins' fort stood mostly intact, in spite of the many trollish claw marks that blemished the lengths of the wooden fences. Emaciated, thinning imps huddled in quiet corners, working on the latest worthless projects while Devo of Hex Blood paced about, running a hand through his short white hair as he pondered over the next task to scavenge food and supplies from the horrible abyss within which his entire company of goblins was perpetually stuck.

Every face was pale and lifeless. Every pair of eyes had been drained of hope; every clawed hand twitched and convulsed with the need to manifest Petra.

Squatting low, toying pointlessly with a series of metal trinkets in his grasp, Matthais sighed in the shadows. He reached a hand up and scratched the back of his pale neck. Suddenly, the shadows around him doubled. Blinking, he glanced up, as did all of the goblins around him. Every imp's jaw dropped in amazement.

With a loud clatter, a clump of immaculate goblin tools fell onto the stone plateau before them all. Grappling hooks, spools of rope and twine, and steam pistols—previously unobtainable—were now forming a glorious pile in the middle of the granite space. Soon, two pairs of brown hooves landed on the ground. With a rustle of feathers, a pair of majestic wings folded before the imps' gawking eyes.

Devo of Hex Blood shuffled over while a numb Matthais stumbled up to his feet. The latter goblin in question glanced at the tools, at his clan leader, then at the equine figure in front of them all. “You... Y-You finally got them...”

The last pony raised a pair of goggles. Calm scarlets drank the gathering group of half-lings in. She merely stared and said nothing.

Matthais shivered. A blue hand rested on his shoulder. He glanced back at his superior.

Devo was smiling at him, a very tranquil expression, as if this very moment had been spiritually sewn into the fabric of fate two years ago.

The pale goblin took a deep breath. Weathering a brave smile of his own, he clasped his hands together and leaned forward towards the pony. “How... H-How could we ever repay you?”

Scootaloo pivoted on her hooves. She viciously and quite deliberately bucked the pale imp in the gut.

“Nnngh!” Matthais fell to his knees, clutching his chest and wheezing sharply. His eyes twitched and teared.

“Hmmm...” Scootaloo's lip curved slightly as she ran a hoof over her shaved mane. “Well, getting on your knees is a start.”

Devo blinked. A rise of chuckles blossomed into a sea of laughter as the hysteria of the moment loosened the hopeless limbs of all the imps that were watching. They rushed forward and seized the tools in a single, mad dash, fixing the kinks in them and reveling in their preserved condition.

The prime Hex-Bleeder turned towards Scootaloo, smiling gently. “It never ceases to amaze me. Even in the bleakest of graves, your kind have managed to spark magic in this world. And after all that's happened—”

Scootaloo raised a hoof to silence him. “I've only realized that I'm alive. Now, do me a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Realize it too.” She backtrotted from the fort as the goblins prepared to make an exit plan with the grappling tooks at their disposal. “And make something with it to be proud of. Your legacy will go beyond your lives. That's something I wish I had.”

Devo took a deep breath. He hesitated briefly, as if he wasn't certain if this was the correct moment to make such a brave leap. Ultimately, he chose to say, “I wonder... if I may have something to give you, pony.”

“Nothing that I can't give myself,” she said with a brief glare.

He blinked. It was something meditative, and not disappointed, that made him say, “If you insist.” His last expression was a proud one. Scootaloo did not expect to see him give her another one in that lifetime.

She gave Matthais one last glance.

Still wincing, the pale goblin clutched his chest and looked back up at her.

Scootaloo blinked. She lowered the goggles over her eyes... and smiled.

Matthais ever so weakly, ever so humbly returned one. Two victims of the Wasteland shared the same breath, and then were separated from sheer altitude as Scootaloo took her leave, soaring upward as fast as her wings could take her.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hours later, Scootaloo landed somewhere she hadn't ever ventured on her own. She set her hooves down upon an endless stretch of overcast clouds high above the surface of the desolate earth.

Pulling her goggles to the top of her shaved head, the last pony exhaled a vaporous breath into the dead ceiling of the world. She folded her hooves underneath her and stared up into the perpetual twilight, breathing calmly, getting herself acquainted with eternity.


Her smile was a placid thing, calm and meditative, hardly indicative of a foal her age. Scootaloo's heart was beating rapidly, and still she stood there atop a tree-laden hill, staring out into the green expanse of Equestria, drinking in a world that was once too amazing to deserve her daredevilish speed and awesomeness. Suddenly, overnight, it had become hers to have adventures in. Each day promised a fresh dawn of discovery, a brand new crusade.

As she leaned against the body of her scooter, a sound rustled behind her. Blinking in the glow of the afternoon sun, Scootaloo slowly spun around. She watched as a petite white unicorn stumbled awkwardly out of a row of bushes beside a tree. The snow-white filly blushed, as if ashamed to have been caught staring at her. She appeared familiar somehow, though Scootaloo could hardly draw a picture in her head. The booming voice of Nightmare Moon briefly sounded off in her ears and was gone again.

“I'm sorry,” the unicorn filly said in a melodic voice. “I wasn't spying on you. I just saw you performing all of those really cool tricks on that scooter earlier, and I figured it must have been your super awesome talent.”

“Well, you're sure right about one thing.” Scootaloo smirked proudly. She unhooked the chinstraps of the helmet and took it off, flinging her pink mane free. “I am awesome.”

The unicorn bit her lip, gulped, then pointed. “But... But then I noticed you don't have a cutie mark.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, my name’s Sweetie Belle, and I don't have a cutie mark either,” the little unicorn said, demurely hiding her flank with the length of her tail hairs. “And I always felt bad about it. But if a pony like you could do such cool things without a cutie mark, then maybe I've finally found somepony really magnificent and stupendous to convalesce with! Huh? What do you say?”

Scootaloo stared at her. She blinked. “Pffft!” She then snorted and rolled her eyes with a hideous smirk. “What are you, some kind of friggin' dictionary?!”


Scootaloo unscrewed the cap to her canteen. As the Harmony glided towards a high altitude, she turned around and stared at the augmented scooter full of runestones standing in front of her. In a deep breath, she stood back and raised the drinking container up high in a toast.

“Here's to making the impossible happen. It is ever a labor of love...”

She took a swig, gulped, swallowed, and exhaled.

Smirking, she added. “...and explosions.”

The last pony slapped the cap back onto the canteen with finality.


Fredden's shades fogged over. He stared numbly into the dead horizon of the Wasteland as he rode a gremlin hovercraft along the length of the monorail track. A few final flashes of lightning flickered overhead, then died off. The stormfront had come to a close. Haman's plan was about to go into fruition, only there was suddenly a hitch to it. The dark-haired bodyguard was the one soul cursed with explaining it to a certain shape-shifter.

The dormant train came into view. A silent steam engine stood still on the tracks, its front end aimed at the distant glowing sight of Petra to the east. Behind the train engine, three whole freight cars rested, their weighted chassis bound together. Fredden knew all about the plan, though he had hoped to be far, far away with Haman when it was executed. In less than an hour, Razzar was to give the order to Otto. The Rust-Bleeders would start the engine and send it careening on a one-way path towards Petra. The second car from the engine was stocked to the brim with fire granite bombs, and once it slammed into the Fourth Platform, the resulting explosion would bring the weight of the top thirty-one struts—including the stalk itself—all falling to an imploding doom. Razzar and her cohorts would detach the third car of the train and watch the destruction from the monorail track. As scheduled, one of Haman's airships would pick them up. Payments would be made, and the business partners would split ways. The pits of skymarble, no longer guarded by goblins and gremlins, would become property of an army of Mountain Ogres already en route.

Everything was perfect, a contract bound by blood, until Haman's very blood was shed. A pegasus wildcard had just been thrown into the mix. Fredden knew more than any other imp just what kind of a problem they were dealing with. For a brief moment, he didn't know who was making his heart beat harder, the naga or the pony.

Sighing, he shook the shivers away and spoke into the communicator wired to his shoulder. “Fredden here. I need to have a word with Miss Ryst.”

“Scrkkk—Hop on board. This had better be good.”

Fredden exhaled long and hard. “Oh, it's positively euphoric,” he droned.

The gremlin hovercraft slowed to a stop. The wide, horizontal door of the first car opened up like a rusted tomb. The vehicle drifted towards it and Fredden hopped on board the train. A masked gremlin's metallic voice chirped through the whipping winds of the elevated monorail track.

“When should you come back to pick me up?” Fredden repeated, glancing over his shoulder. After a breath, he fidgeted. “I'll... get back to you on that.”

The gremlin pilot shrugged and steered the vehicle away. The metal door of the train slid shut behind Fredden, slamming with a loud clang.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Otto led Fredden towards the second car, past several clambering Rust-Bleeders as the imps put the finishing touches on the explosive stockpile. Fredden lingered briefly upon shuffling past the many granite fire bombs. Clearing his voice, he adjusted his goggles and stood in the center of the second car as Otto walked up and tapped the shoulder of the tall mercenary.

Razzar slowly turned around, her scales a blood-red hue. It was the first time Fredden had seen her completely in her natural form. He bit his lip as Otto walked to the far end of the car and Razzar paced over towards him.

“Fredden boomer... Your hair looks grayer this afternoon. Is retirement that delicious already? The ogres will certainly grant you and Haman with sanctuary. I doubt they will give you back your youth, yes yesss?”

The chief bodyguard smiled nervously. “Uhm, yes, well... You see, there's... uhm...” Fredden paused, blinking, for he saw Warden chained to the pipes for the first time. “The heck is he still doing here?”

“Smelling good,” Razzar spat. “Which is the least I can say about you.”

“He's given you that spiffy looking green flame. What do you need him around for?”

“Some boomers, Fredden...” Razzar marched over and towered before the trembling bodyguard. She hissed, “Earn their silver just by existing. If he won't help me find more green flame, then maybe he'll make a good slave to the ogres. Creatures who can crawl into tight spaces and live beyond twenty stormfronts are worth more than your last ten years of salary combined. Now...” She showed her razor-sharp teeth in the reflection of his shades. “...what are you here to spit that Haman himself couldn't appear personally for? Hmmm?”

“It's... It's...” Fredden adjusted his shades, took a deep breath, and simply let forth, “It's the pony, Miss Ryst. She's created a... complication.”

Warden gasped, his aquamarine eyes brightening from where he sat beside the pipes.

Razzar's right eye twitched rapidly. “Hmmmm—What kind of a complication?”

“Haman is asking that we d-delay the execution...” Fredden gulped. “For maybe a day, if need be.”

“Answer one spit at a time, Fredden-boomer.” Razzar's breath fogged his glasses as she leaned over him. “What kind of a complication?”

“Haman... h-has unwittingly compromised the details of this operation to that Dimming spawn of sky stealers!” Fredden exclaimed in a sudden, angry passion. “She squeezed it out of him! You should see Haman. It's horrible. He looks like a mess!”

Warden's vest twitched from the rapidity of his beating heart. He gulped and shivered with excitement as his pointed ears pricked to hear more.

Razzar tilted her head to the side. She brought a hand up and nibbled on one knuckle. “Hmmm... Just how much did Haman tell my darling, demonic sister...?”

“S-Sister...?”

How... much....?”

Fredden winced, his teeth showing. “Uhm... everything...”

“Everything?”

He nodded. “Everything.” He gulped. “She even got him to tell her about the Valley of Jewels and the goblin slaves.” His whole body shuddered. “So far, there's no sign of her having gone to Devo with this information, but Haman described her as a mad horse. There's no knowing what crap she might try to pull! If we're going to blow up this city full of ungrateful clans, we gotta do it when there's not a single pathetic soul to stand in our way, not even a glue stick. Haman asks that you delay for the time being.”

“Where is Haman now?”

“He's recovering up in Strut Twenty-One. He... uh... he's hoping that you'll listen to reason.” Fredden bit his lip. “B-Because he's already canceled his flight to the rendezvous coordinates with the Mountain Ogres, Razzar.”

The naga took a deep breath. Suddenly, her twitching stop. Her right eye became even with her left, and the dark slits within her irises widened, as if birthing the black sludge of a perpetually dead ocean. She paced away from him, her clawed fingers flexing above her pistol holsters.

Fredden wrung his hands together behind her back and exclaimed, “I'm so sorry, Razzar. But it's for the best that we wait a little longer. Haman told me to tell you that he'll increase your share of the profit by fifteen percent. Just one more day. That's all he asks. I... I-I will deal with the glue stick problem myself.”

“You... boomer?” Razzar murmured over her shoulder. “Just like you so expertly protected Haman like a good little bodyguard and prevented all of this unnecessary spit?”

“I... I-I...” Fredden fidgeted. His shaded eyes fell to the explosives beside him. Otto and the other Rust-Bleeders suddenly shuffled away from him. Glancing up, he gasped, for he saw why.

Razzar was standing in front of him, planting her clawed hands on his shoulders in what almost looked like the beginning of an embrace. But then she spoke, “You betrayed me, Fredden.”

“R-Razzar—!”

“You broke my heart.” Her eyeslits flared and her jaw opened wide.

“No! Razzar, wait!” He shrieked, trembling, his shades rattling off his nose to reveal a pair of ghostly wide eyes. “Please—I'll get Haman to double your strips! Just don't—”

His voice was swallowed, just as his face was swallowed. Two lacerated rows of teeth clamped onto his head, twisted and pulled. A huge, quivering chunk of flesh from his eyebrows to his bottom lip was torn free from his cranium. Whatever was left alive in his head sputtered and gargled blood. His meaty body fell under a sea of horrific convulsions.

Warden almost wretched. Otto and the other imps winced visibly.

Razzar yanked her head towards the ceiling of the train, her neck undulating like a vulture's throat as she swallowed Fredden's dismembered face. With a final gulp, the naga let loose a guttural growl and aimed her blood-dripping frown towards the spasming body beneath her. She hissed, “Double the juiciness of your eyes before you ruin a naga's contract.”

Warden whimpered, his legs scuttling away from a fresh pile of Fredden's blood warmly oozing toward him. With a splash, Razzar's sharp feet plodded through it, trailing crimson tracks as she walked over and stood before the twelve, frozen-stiff Rust-Bleeders gawking at her.

“Hmmm... Start the engine,” Razzar murmured, wiping the crimson fluids from her chin with a forearm flaked with dry flesh. “Haman should have followed up what his spit has started. The Mountain Ogres want this city turned to dust, and they're going to get it.”

“But... B-But boss!” Otto stammered, shrugging his stocky arms as he stood before her. “You heard what happened! Haman's not leaving Strut Twenty-One! If we go through with the plan, so does our employer—!”

“Start the engine!” Razzar roared at him, blood dribbling off her gaping jaws as the naga's eyes flared. “There’s no getting off this train we’re on! All that survives in the Wasteland is scavengers. One way or another, Haman's payment is ours, even if we have to dig his filthy silver up out of the rubble!” She growled and nibbled twitchingly on her torn knuckle as she stared into the blood and bombs and beyond. “I'll share the profits with each and everyone of you, yes yes yesss—or else I'll share your livers! It's your choice, boomers. Spit or survive!”

The dozen Rust-Bleeders shared nervous glances. Otto took the lead. The stout goblin marched towards the engine of the train one car down. The rest of the imps took their stations, readying the mechanical releases to the third car. By the time Fredden's meaty corpse finally stopped spasming, a hiss of steam filled the claustrophobic vehicles. The train lurched on the monorail tracks, and with a steady chug it glided east towards Petra, and the resulting holocaust to come.

Warden watched as Razzar paced across the bloodied floor, reaching once more for the jar of green flame. The naga palmed the thing in her grasp, staring at it like a mother would gaze shamefully at a child that had just soiled itself.

“I never thought I would again see the color green without it being boomer flesh,” the naga muttered in a briefly calm voice. “Here it is in my hand, hotter than sea currents, and I too have to squeeze it for silver.” She glared down at the bound teenager. “You must think me a monster. Pray tell, what has the pony herself murdered to get this? Hmmm?”

Warden frowned at her. “I don't care. All I know is that when Scootaloo comes to kill you, it won't be murder. It'll be taking out the trash.”

Razzar's right eye twitched again. She slapped the glowing jar down onto the pile of bombs so hard that Warden was almost afraid the glass would break. She leered bloodily over the tiny imp. “Sister four hooves knows better. If she comes here, all she will kill is her future.”

“She's not your friggin' sister, ya dumb lizard!” Warden spat.

Razzar sneered. “She is more than she will ever be your friend, boomer-lite. So stop hoping.”

Warden blinked at that. His ears suddenly drooped. Before he could manage a single sigh, the door to the first car forward flew open.

“Boss! Boss!” An imp panted and pointed in the direction of the engine. “Come look at this!”

“Nnnngh—What?” Razzar spun and angrily marched out of the compartment full of bombs. “This better be worth such frightened spit.”

“You won't believe what she's doing!” The imp disappeared with the mercenary beyond view.

Left behind, Warden's lips parted. “Sc-Scootaloo...?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The steam engine of the train was a loud, claustrophobic chamber of venting mist and roaring mechanical parts. A gigantic boiler billowed tongues of flame inside a large, round door through which a soot-stained Rust-Bleeder was shoveling flammable chunks of moon powder. As the train sped east towards the golden stalk of Petra, three other Rust-Bleeders crowded around the wide stretch of windows framed above the instrument panels of the chugging machine.

Otto turned and glanced over his shoulder just in time to greet Razzar and the imp leading her inside the compartment.

“She appeared out of nowhere! If she's that fast, it's no wonder she snatched Haman under Fredden's watch so easily!”

“Otto, you never mourned Darper. Don't smell so bad after Fredden's collapse,” Razzar droned as she stood up and squinted out the windows of the engine along with the five other Rust-Bleeders. “What's she doing?”

“I dunno! She's just standing there!” Otto exclaimed. The heat of the nearby boiler formed beads of sweat over the imp thug's balding crown. “We're going to run her over at this rate!”

“By the Blight!” Another goblin shouted. “She's insane!”

“She's lost her mind!”

Razzar squinted, blinked, then cooed, “She's... colorful.”

Otto and the others did a double-take. “H-Huh?” They craned their necks to get a better look as the train sped mercilessly towards the distant equine figure atop the monorail tracks.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Scootaloo frowned, her nostrils flaring. She reached a hoof up and dragged a pair of cracked, ruby shades over her angry scarlets. The last pony stood, wearing the prismatic arcanium weave of the Royal Grand Biv. A scooter rigged with explosives sat on the monorail bridge before her, facing the distant, incoming steam engine.

Clad in the armor of colorful, ramcraft regalia, she cocked a copper rifle in her grasp and squinted through the scope, fearlessly staring down the incoming nose of the thundering train. A cylinder rigged to a grappling hook rested in the barrel of her gun, and the same glinting projectile was attached to the grappling rig of the scooter via a long, copper cord.

As the Wasteland winds kicked at her spectral coattails, she hissed into the purple aura of the gun's glowing runestone. “H'rhnum!”

The cylinder fired from the barrel of the gun. Sailing like a purple comet, the hook flew along the length of the wire, unspooling with a high-pitched whine from the mechanism rigged to the scooter.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The hook shot through the window of the steam engine and impaled a wall on the other side of the compartment. All of the goblins winced and shouted in surprise. A few of them tried desperately to yank the hook and cord out, but to no avail.

Razzar, in the meantime, was standing like a red statue before the shattered windshields. She gazed long and hard at the distant speck of the last pony. Her body slumped in a sad exhale. “Oh sister, beloved sister, where did we go wrong...?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Scootaloo took a deep breath and held the smoking rifle up behind the billowing length of the Royal Grand Biv's cowl.

“Hmmmph,” she afforded herself one last, calm breath. “And so it is the scooter began, and so it is the scooter shall end.” She pressed a hoof down onto the body of the childish transportation, a necessary sacrifice for hope. Leaning her mouth forward, she spoke into the rune built into the grappling hook rig. “H'lmynhr!”

Her bracelet of horns glowed. Magically, the runestone sparked and retracted the spool of copper wiring tying the scooter to the incoming train.

Next, Scootaloo spoke to the explosive trigger fashioned out of the Appleloosan railroad spike. “Y'hnyrr!”

The moondust lining the spring-framed trigger and the multiple explosive compounds glittered with bright purple.

The train was barreling closer. The air began to heat up. The monorail track was vibrating beneath her.

Just as the spinning spool of bundled cable reached the end of its slack, Scootaloo spoke one last time into a pair of conical shaped runestones fastened to the rear of the scooter. “M'wynhrm!”

The moonrock lit up, expeling streams of flame, like rockets. The cable pulled taut, and Scootaloo released her hoof. Gliding along the bound length of the cord, the scooter rolled effortlessly along the monorail track—guided by the burning rune thrusters—so that it murderously met the front of the screaming train engine head-on.

The naga and her multiple imps were already diving for cover, fitfully screaming in horror, as the explosively rigged companion of Scootaloo's childhood sailed straight into the top of the vehicle's chassis. The resulting fireball lit up the Wasteland ike a second stormfront. Chunks of metal and steam pipes flew into the smoggy heavens. The combusting moonrock compound did not halt the speeding train in any respect; Scootaloo didn't expect it to. What she did plan, however, went off perfectly. A gigantic hole had been blown in the pilot's compartment of the train engine. It was wide enough for a pony to fly through, even a phantom like the Royal Grand Biv.

“Nnngh!” Scootaloo hopped straight up, flapped her wings twice, and backflipped. Evening out, she jerked her lower haunches. With a metallic ringing sound, the prismatic cape of arcanium weave stretched forth a fan of knives. Slicing through the air with the rusted armor, Scootaloo glided icily towards the incoming train, her ruby goggles reflecting the panicked expressions of many yellow-banded imps as she held the rifle in one hoof and brandished a horseshoe blade with the other. “Haaaaaaugh!”

Shrieking like a banshee, the last pony flew a righteous rainbow into the heart of the train. A sea of armed goblins met her, and they bled for it.

PreviousChapters Next