4. Filly Found
4. Filly Found
Apple Bloom pressed her forelegs down and straightened her hind legs as much as possible, wiggling her tail in the air.
“Ready?” Scootaloo called.
“Ready!” she replied.
Sweetie Belle looked from one to the other with a worried expression. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Sure I’m sure.” Apple Bloom straightened a little to lean her head over the edge of the flooring that extended just beyond the clubhouse walls. “Applejack an’ Rainbow Dash do this all the time.”
“From that high up?”
“Uh, sure.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“Helloooo!” Scootaloo waved her forelegs in the air to get their attention. “She’s wearing my spare helmet, isn’t she? It’s fine; she’s safe. We’re burning daylight here.”
“There’s enough to burn,” Sweetie Belle remarked as she picked up the fan she had made from a sheet of folded card and wafted herself. The edge was embossed with silvery writing that the folds obscured, but those who knew Rarity’s logo would have recognised one of her flyers. It was testament to the heat that Sweetie Belle had surrendered and used one of her sister’s adverts to keep herself cool. “How the heck are you two so full of energy on a day like this?”
“We’re powered by dreams of tomorrow!” Scootaloo pumped one hoof in the air. “Yeah!”
“Yeah!” Apple Bloom copied the move. She dropped to her ready stance and wiggled her tail in readiness.
“Three!” Scootaloo intoned.
“Two!” Apple Bloom yelled.
“One!”
“Geronimo!”
She pushed off with her powerful hind legs and leapt into empty space. Below, she caught sight of Sweetie Belle dropping the paper fan to cover her face, but she only had a millisecond before aiming for the empty end of the seesaw took up her whole attention. She brought all four hooves in close under her body as she had seen Applejack do many times. Even though she bent her joints for impact, the landing jolted through her entire body and made every scrap of breath shoot up and out through her mouth and nose. An unsightly bit of spittle shot out, but she barely noticed. She was too taken with the sight of Scootaloo rocketing up and over her head.
“Use your wings! Use your wings!” she shouted.
“I’m trying! I’m trying!” Scootaloo yelped back. Her orange feathers were a blur as she buzzed the same way she did when powering along on her scooter. It was clear before she reached the apex of her jump that this wasn’t going to work.
“Slower!” Apple Bloom called. “Flap slower!”
No dice. Scootaloo just couldn’t help herself. Even as she began her descent, she flapped furiously, but to no avail. She crash landed in the pile of cushions they had dragged outside for the experiment. The flapping did slow her so she didn’t break any bones, but she still rolled end over end and came to rest upside-down against the tree trunk.
“Phoo!” She spat out a mouthful of her own tail and scowled in frustration. “Not even close.”
“I don’t know.” Sweetie Belle trotted over and offered a hoof to help her up. “I think you got higher that time.”
“Higher isn’t any good if it only lasts a few seconds.” Scootaloo brushed herself off and removed her helmet. She stared at it for a moment, as if it held the answers to all her questions. When it refused to give them up – out of spite or a lack of mouth – she tucked it under one foreleg and made her way back to the seesaw. “Thanks anyway, Apple Bloom.”
“We could try again,” Apple Bloom suggested. “This time I could carry sumthin’ real heavy to get you some great lift.”
“The problem isn’t how heavy you are,” said Scootaloo. “It’s me.”
“You could, uh, try flappin’ those wings a mite slower?” Apple Bloom was aware she was an earth pony giving flying advice to a pegasus and the total irony of that. Even so, Scootaloo’s continued inability to fly was her biggest bugbear after not having her cutie mark. Since she lived in Ponyville she didn’t really get on with the other pegasi fillies in Cloudsdale – it was difficult to make play-dates with ponies who thought storm-ball was the best game in the world and laughed at anypony who couldn’t dodge a lightning bolt to sink a basket. The Cutie Mark Crusaders were dedicated to helping each other discover their special talents, so it was only natural they would want to help each other in other things, too.
Scootaloo winced. “You reckon?”
“Might help.”
She flapped experimentally. “Flapping hard always helps me go faster on my scooter.”
“Yeah, but then you’re goin’ sideways.” Apple Bloom moved her hoof in a straight line from left to right. “Horizontal, right? Vertical’s gotta be different.”
“Not to mention diagonal,” added Sweetie Belle. “Once you get into the air you don’t just go up and down or left and right, right?”
“Right,” Scootaloo nodded.
“Rainbow Dash goes all over the place.”
“Right.” Scootaloo puffed out her chest. As if mentioning her idol’s name was some sort of magic spell, she jammed her helmet back on. “Apple Bloom, what’s the heaviest thing we’ve got in the clubhouse that you can use to weigh yourself down?”
“I’m sorry, Scootaloo.”
“It’s okay.” Scootaloo winced as she tried to put her hoof down. “It’s not your fault.”
“I jumped on the other end of the teeter-totter holdin’ a bag of rocks. That kinda defines ‘my fault’.”
“I asked you to do it.” She tried again. Pain shot up her leg and seemed to burrow into her shoulder. “Owie …”
Sweetie Belle leaned in to sniff experimentally, like she was some kind of doctor instead of a filly who had run around in circles shrieking when Scootaloo cannoned headfirst into a tree and knocked herself out since she had been unconscious when she fell to earth she didn’t know how bad the fall had been, but both Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom assured her it was a nasty one. The gigantic cut on her leg and variously other bruises agreed with them
“Would you like some more bandages?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“Uh, no, I’m good.”
She had bound them so tightly the first time Scootaloo hadn’t been able to bend her leg at all and Sweetie Belle had been forced to unwrap the cut again and rebind it. Apple Bloom probably knew more about first aid from working around heavy machinery on the farm, but Sweetie Belle had produced a pair of scissors and cut their clubhouse curtains into strips to use as bandages, so she was in charge of triage. Unfortunately none of her help was making Scootaloo feel any less rotten.
Apple Bloom tilted her head to one side, scrutinising. “You don’t look good. Not one bit. I reckon we oughta get you checked out by some sorta medical pony.”
“Nice.” Scootaloo’s shoulders sank. “Let’s broadcast my embarrassment to the whole of Ponyville: Scootaloo, the fearless filly who took on a tree and lost.”
“Hey, trees are tough. I should know. Every time I try to buck one that’s too big for me I darn near break my legs.”
The information was cold comfort. Nevertheless, Scootaloo couldn’t deny she still felt woozy. Her helmet had protected her skull from breaking, but hitting it from the inside had left a bump the size of a duck egg on her head.
“Can you walk, Scootaloo?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Sure I can walk.” She tried to prove it, but stumbled after a few steps. “That doesn’t count! The ground’s all bumpy.”
Apple Bloom looked down. “This here ground’s smoother than polished glass.”
“We should definitely get you checked out,” said Sweetie Belle. “C’mon, we’d better head back to town.”
“Uh, question?” Apple Bloom raised her hoof as if she was still in class. “How is Scootaloo supposed to get back to town? She can’t walk with that leg and I wouldn’t trust her to go in a straight line on her scooter.”
“We can hook up the wagon and she can ride in it while we take turns on the scooter,” Sweetie Belle replied, not bothering to ask whether this was okay first.
Scootaloo bristled out of habit. Nopony could touch her scooter but her! Then she grabbed hold of her temper and wrestled in back into place. She had no right to get mad. This wasn’t like at home; she could trust Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom not to wreck her precious scooter for kicks and giggles. She was more than a little protective of it, but reminded herself that they had shared all sorts of things with her since they became friends. Apple Bloom had even shared her brother when they tried to find Cheerilee a sweetheart!
Sweetie Belle Dashed off to fetch the wagon and dragged it back in double-quick time. Her eagerness to try out the scooter was almost palpable. She had never been permitted to ride as more than a passenger before and watching Scootaloo whizz about had obviously cultivated a longing she had never voiced. Scootaloo settled into the wagon alongside Apple Bloom and told herself this eagerness meant Sweetie Belle would be extra specially careful with it.
“Be extra specially careful with it,” she couldn’t help saying anyway.
Sweetie Belle balanced her front hooves on the handlebars and pushed tentatively against the ground with one hind hoof. “I will. Are you both ready?”
“Yup,” Apple Bloom answered.
“Uh, yeah,” Scootaloo replied with less enthusiasm.
Sweetie Belle shoved off. They moved three inches. She shoved again. Five inches this time. “You guys are heavy.”
“Are not!” Apple Bloom protested.
“You’re not doing it right,” said Scootaloo. “You don’t stamp the ground; you push against it so you send the scooter forward. Here, let me –”
“No way!” Apple Bloom pushed her gently back, looking and sounding a lot like her sister in that moment. “You just sit back an’ relax; we’ll do all the hard work. We’ll be back in Ponyville in no time.”
Scootaloo made a noise caught somewhere between agreement and aggression as Sweetie Belle tried twice more and they made little progress. While the scooter and wagon did move, their momentum was sluggish. She was panting before they had even passed the treeline.
“This is … harder than it … looks,” she said between pushes.
“You want me to try?” offered Apple Bloom.
“Not yet. I can do it.”
Five pushes later she conceded the point and they switched places. Sweetie Belle panted and fanned herself as Apple Bloom’s strong, farm-strengthened legs shoved them forward at a much faster clip. She had more stamina too and quickly figured out how to get the maximum movement from each push.
“This is fun!” she declared. “Lookit how fast I can make us go!”
“Not as fast as me,” Scootaloo muttered.
“What?” Apple Bloom looked over her shoulder. “Did you say sumthin’?”
“Nope.” Scootaloo shook her head. “Just watch out for sticky-uppy tree roots. Last time I went over one of them too fast I had to stick three wheels back on and got covered in oil. I had to take a bath.” She stuck out her tongue. Bathwater and feathers did not get along.
“Will do! Whee!” Apple Bloom gave an especially powerful shove and threw back her head, ribbon fluttering in the breeze. “I can see why you like this thing so much, Scootaloo.”
The speed wasn’t the only reason, but Scootaloo didn’t feel like sharing the others. Some other time she might have told her friends that riding her scooter was like flying close to the ground, or that she loved it especially because Rainbow Dash had given it to her. The other fillies and colts had been picking on her even more than usual, but the blow was softened when they all went to watch a special acrobatics display performed by Rainbow Dash and several handpicked pegasi in the park. The pegasi had bitten down on canisters of coloured gas and made vapour trails in the shape of words and pictures across the sky. It was the single greatest thing Scootaloo had ever seen, eclipsed only when Rainbow Dash herself brought down a cloud and they bucked out synchronised lightning bolts for her to dodge.
Afterwards, Scootaloo had waited in line to get a picture taken with her hero and the other pegasi. She had asked for flying advice and Rainbow Dash herself had answered, citing wing strength and ‘stick-to-it-tive-ness’, which Scootaloo wasn’t sure was even a word, but sounded awesome anyway. From that day forward nothing could have convinced her Rainbow Dash was anything less than awesomeness incarnate and she had saved every bit of pocket money to buy the scooter to help strengthen her wings.
Scootaloo was jolted out of her thoughts by a sudden bump that made her leg hurt. “Hey, watch it!”
“Sorry!” Apple Bloom sounded apologetic, but mostly gleeful. “This is just so much fun!” She shoved again, shaking her head so the cool breeze ran through her sweaty mane.
Sweetie Belle pointed and shrieked, “Look out!”
“What?”
“There! There! Watch out!”
Apple Bloom leaned to compensate for something she hadn’t yet seen herself. It was the worst thing she could have done. Her weight shifted and the scooter tilted. She threw herself back the other way, but that sent it off the path and into the undergrowth. The rabbit they had been avoiding shot off in the other direction.
All three fillies yelled as they shot through low-hanging branches. A rock caught on the wagon’s left back wheel, sending it into the air like a bucking bronco. The uneven ground tore the scooter handle from Apple Bloom’s grasp and she fell off, rolling alongside and then behind her friends as they carried on their madcap rush without her. A ditch finally put an end to their journey, tipping both Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo into the air.
This is getting embarrassing, Scootaloo thought as she picked herself up and tried not to cry out at the fresh pain in her leg and head. Crash landing this badly twice in one day? Thank Celestia nopony was around to see this one.
“Sweetie Belle?”
“Over here.” A white head popped up from a thorn bush, wincing at the barbs caught in her mane. “Are you okay?”
“Okay-ish,” Scootaloo replied. Her leg hurt even more than ever. “How about you?”
“Fine. Apple Bloom?” she raised her voice to call.
“Here!” She came cantering up to stand at the edge of their ditch. “I think I broke my butt when I landed on it, but I ain’t hurt really.” She wrinkled her nose. “Phew-wee, what’s that smell? Did y’all land in a sewage pit or sumthin’? It smells like a manticore’s toilet.”
“Oh, ew!” Sweetie Belle pranced in place. Fluttershy was an expert in animals and had told them manticores were like cats in that they were very clean and made their bathrooms in one spot away from their feeding ground. “I hope it’s not really some animal’s toilet! Rarity will kill me if I come home smelling of that!”
It did smell bad. The heat had called flies to the smell and they were testing out Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo as new targets too. Scootaloo tossed her head and immediately regretted it. She wobbled and tipped sideways with a short groan.
Okay, not doing that again.
“Scootaloo?” Concern coated Apple Bloom’s voice like caramel on a red delicious. “Hold on, I’ll be right down there. Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh – I’m so sorry! I never meant to get you hurt more!” She skidded down the side of the ditch and landed in bushes much less spiky than Sweetie Belle’s. Her head came up and she started to come towards them but stopped. Raising her foot to study it, she turned in a small circle and then backed towards them so fast she nearly fell over herself.
“What is it?” Sweetie Belle asked. “What’s wrong?”
Apple Bloom’s face had gone slack with an emotion Scootaloo didn’t recognise. She raised her hoof and pointed to where she had landed, right under the biggest cloud of flies. The tip of her hoof was stained with something sticky that had picked up thorns and bits of dirt.
With a sinking feeling, Scootaloo started forward, brushing off Sweetie Belle’s protest to stay still and rest her leg. She nosed aside the bushes to reveal a mass of tangled yellow hair. She couldn’t tell whether it was mane or tail, since it was attached to a pile that alternated between pale coat, red meat and chalky white bone. Only one intact hoof confirmed that the pile had once been a pony.
Scootaloo’s mouth tasted sour. Her insides twisted. She felt like she was going to throw up, and not just from the awful stink of a dead body left out in the heat of the day.
“What is it?” Sweetie Belle appeared at her shoulder.
“No, don’t look –”
Too late. Sweetie Belle was helplessly squeamish. When she caught sight of the remains, her horrified scream echoed throughout almost the entire the Everfree Forest.
....
Applejack raised her head. “What in tarnation–?”
“That sounded like a scream.” Metronome took off before she could stop him, crashing through the undergrowth at a stumbling canter. “Twinkle! Twinkle, where are you?”
“Hold on there!” Applejack chased after him. “Wait!”
The search party had split into two pairs to canvass the area around Metronome and Glimmer’s house. Spike, of course, had gone with Twilight. The white ponies had a cottage so far on the edge of town it almost wasn’t in Ponyville at all, surrounded on three sides by woodland. The perimeter of Sweet Apple Acres wasn’t far, so she had been surprised to realise she was actually helping her own neighbours. It did, however, mean she could call home and fetch Winona to help in the search. Twilight and Applejack had agreed that sending the distraught parents off together would be counter-productive. Instead, they had each taken one and chosen a direction to scout.
“Gosh darn it,” Applejack grunted as she was forced to leap a fallen tree trunk covered in mushrooms. Her hind hoof caught one, sending up a spray of white chunks. “Metronome, wait!”
The scream came again. Something about it sounded too familiar for comfort. Winona picked up speed, barking frantically. She recognised it as well.
“Twinkle! Twinkle!” Metronome shoved aside a branch that snapped back in Applejack’s face.
“Ow!” She stumbled, glanced off the bark of the trunk and wiggled her face to make sure it wasn’t broken. Her cheek burned where the branch had caught her.
The screaming grew louder. As it got closer, Applejack realised it was not just one voice. The noise finally culminated in three small bodies crashing through the underbrush. They ran blindly towards her. She recognised them, skidded to a halt and stuck out a foreleg in a clothesline manoeuvre to stop them in their tracks.
“Apple Bloom!” she yelled over the screams.
Her little sister looked up at her with a tearstained face. “A-Applejack?”
“What in tarnation is goin’ on?”
“Applejack!” Apple Bloom threw herself at her and sobbed. Behind her, Sweetie Belle also cried. Scootaloo looked wan and shaken, balancing on three legs while holding the bandaged fourth off the ground. Her little orange body shook, tail tucked between her legs. They were all terrified.
“Did somepony hurt you?” Applejack knelt to cradle her sister. Apple Bloom shook her head and buried her face in her shoulder.
“It was horrible,” Sweetie Belle wept. “Just … just lying there … a-and all that … all that …”
Applejack opened her hug to the other two fillies, but only Sweetie Belle rushed to be embraced. Scootaloo stayed where she was, her reaction to whatever had happened more subdued than her friends’.
“Scootaloo,” Applejack tried. “What’s goin’ on?”
“We found … a body,” Scootaloo said haltingly. “Or what was left of one. Apple Bloom walked in it before she realised what it was.”
Applejack’s stomach sank to her hooves. No wonder Apple Bloom was almost hysterical. “What do you mean ‘a body’? Do you mean a rabbit? Or a deer maybe? Did you find a meal some animal left behind?” she asked hopefully.
Scootaloo shook her head, Dashing Applejack’s hopes. “It was a meal, all right, but it wasn’t some animal the way you’re thinking. It was a pony.” She looked nauseous. “There were … teeth marks, like on Winona’s chew toys … on the bones.”
“All that blood,” Sweetie Belle whimpered. “It was all over the g-ground.”
“An’ on my hooves,” Apple Bloom added. “I stepped in it, Applejack! I stepped right in it! I didn’t mean to, honest. I didn’t know it was there, an’ I walked right into it –”
A fresh scream rang out. This one was deeper, but the anguish in it was no less heart-wrenching. Winona ran rings around the little group of ponies, barking to protect them from the noise-maker and whatever other unseen evil she sensed. Applejack barely recognised Metronome’s voice, but she could make out the word buried in the shriek: No.
Any hope she might have had that the three fillies had been mistaken vanished, as did any hope of finding Twinkle alive.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” she soothed. “Y’all are safe now. I won’t let nopony hurt you.”
“It wasn’t any pony that did that,” Scootaloo said dully. “Nopony could do that. It was all … ripped to shreds.”
“Regardless, I’m here now an’ I’ll protect you.”
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle pressed tight to her, the way Apple Bloom used to when she was a foal and had a nightmare – before she was too old for cuddles or sneaking into her big sister’s bed to make the night-terrors stay away.
Applejack was unsure what to do: she wanted to stay with the fillies but Metronome’s screams had subsided and she needed to know why. Moreover, she needed to apprise herself of the situation first-hand. She had promised to help find Twinkle but had not anticipated anything like this. Still, she felt duty-bound to see her promise through to its end.
Her quandary was solved when two sets of hoofbeats signalled the arrival of Twilight and Glimmer. Applejack leapt up and spun to face them, planting her body in their path. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle clung to her hind legs.
“We heard screaming,” Twilight said breathlessly. “What happened?”
“It sounded like Metronome,” said Glimmer.
“Uh …” Applejack couldn’t meet Glimmer’s pale eyes. How did you tell a mare something like this? All she could think was that Glimmer could not go and see what no mother ever should.
“Apple Bloom?” Spike spotted her hiding. “Sweetie Belle? Scootaloo? What are you guys doing out here?”
Glimmer peered around Applejack. “Those are Twinkle’s classmates. What happened to them?”
Scootaloo looked up sharply, aghast as several things clicked together in her mind. “That was Twinkle?”
“What was Twinkle?” Glimmer demanded. She took a step towards them but Applejack barred her way. “Move aside. What do they know about my daughter? Do they know where she is? They have to tell me! They have to … to …” She looked Applejack and registered her distress. Her face crumpled. “Oh no. No!”
“I’m sorry –”
“You’re wrong! You’re … she’s not … we have to keep looking! We have to find her! She could be anywhere! She could be … she’s probably hurt, or lost, or … or … out of my way!” With surprising strength, she shouldered Applejack aside, jumped over the crying fillies and ran into the undergrowth, following the trail of broken branches and fronds. “Metronome! Metronome, where are you?”
“Applejack?” Twilight said softly. “Are you sure–?”
“Wait here,” Applejack ordered. “I’m fast enough to catch her. Winona!” Figuring Twilight’s magic was enough protection for herself and the others, Applejack summoned the dog to accompany her.
The ditch wasn’t very far away. Applejack caught up enough to see Glimmer disappear over the edge and to hear her anguished cries. She crested the edge to find Metronome had trampled and kicked aside the greenery to reveal their daughter’s remains. The word ‘body’ didn’t aptly describe the collection of bloody chunks and other things. Applejack’s gorge rose. Beside her, Winona growled at the scent of rotting meat and whatever else her sensitive nose could pick up.
Metronome and Glimmer hugged each other as she watched; unable to do anything except let them cry themselves out.
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The saddest part was at the end seeing it is not done
Interesting premise. I grew up being frightened by tales of tikbalangs. Didn't help that my grandmother's house had a huge balite tree in front of it.
Writing's pretty solid. I like how you portrayed Celestia's fallibility.
That's an angle of Twilight Sparkle's childhood that really piques my interest, I can imagine the insecurity in Twilight's mom when it starts to seem that Celestia is slowly but surely stealing her daughter away.
I'm having a hard time connecting something sticky and sweet with concern. Sentimentality maybe or flirting. There are a few other bizarre similes in the story,
Don't really need that second sentence. That she ran off without taking extra precautions already implies the first part of it. That she called out Winona's name is already indicative of calling the dog to her side.
I am interested in seeing more, but given the time stamps on the previous comments and the chapters, I suspect this fic has died. Still enjoyed what's there, though.