> Secret Enemy > by IceFire > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Prolouge > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fear churned inside me as I knelt on the soft soil. My tired wings hung limply beside me after days of flying. My blue coat was dirty and I hadn’t washed in days. My mane, usually a darker version of my coat with lighter streaks, was now brown. The familiar raspy voice rebounded off cave walls as the Master spoke. “Bring me SkyBlue little Pegasus.” Surprise must have shone through my mud, as Master repeated his request. I looked at myself. I had turned from a magnificent blue pony to a dull grey and brown Pegasus. Through the dirt and grime I looked into the darkness my Master lived in and recited in a tired voice. “Sky stars, sky lights, blue sky, sky blue” I lifted myself off the ground and stared directly into the darkness. “I am SkyBlue, Master” with the last word I ducked my head slightly, as was custom. A low and terrifying chuckle echoed off the walls of the cave. “I have known you for your whole life, longer than I have known the other Pegasus, and still you manage to surprise me.” “Surprising you is my job Master.” “A job you are very good at, SkyBlue.” Even as the Master seemed playful, and in a good mood, I knew his temper can change in less time than one could register. In a shaky voice I replied, “Well I need to be, or else I wouldn’t have gotten your trinket.” There was a gleam of red in the darkness and a quiet chuckle. “Don’t you ever take a break girl? Have some fun, go to a party!” while he talked I retrieved the golden heart from my bags and rolled it into the darkness. Master let out a sigh of appreciation that showed that he had received the gleaming gold, but when he spoke again, his tone was cold. “Well done. Now go.” I scrambled out of the cave and into the air. I let out a sigh of relief to be out in the cold air rather than the Master’s hot stuffy cave. I looked around the sky, searching for good clouds I could sleep on. In no time at all, I saw a white fluffy heaven floating about two yards away. Without a thought of danger, I sped right towards it. I was almost there. The cloud was even more inviting than I had thought. I closed my eyes, I could almost taste the cloud, feel it on my hoofs! A scream was torn from my lips. I was spiralling down towards the ground, a black ash mark spread along my back. A bird scraped at my coat in the shape of an X. I opened my eyes and looked at it. It gave a squawk of surprise, and took to the air, digging its claws into my fur as it did. My heavy head thumped against soft earth and I joined the unconscious world. “Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my! What do I do?” The white bunny at her hoofs gave her a mighty kick. “Of course, Angel Bunny! Right away!” The bunny kicked her again. “Oh sorry, what do we do?” The snow bunny scowled at her slow working out, but didn’t kick her again. FlutterShy picked up a straw basket with the sparrow that told her the news. There was soft knocking at the door. “Will you get that Spike?” The purple and green dragon grumbled his consent. “Oh, hi FlutterShy! What are you doing here?” Twilight looked with surprise at FlutterShy and Spike where they were talking. “Is one of your animals sick? Do you need a spell?” Twilight trotted to the door. Spike looked at twilight with concern. “FlutterShy says that birdie says that there is a brown Pegasus deep in the everfreeforest!” Spike said. Twilight gasped “That’s terrible! FlutterShy, you find RainbowDash, we may need help with the lifting, and is it okay if they stay in your house?” “Of course it is Twilight!” “Good. I think I could find a spell…” Twilight to turned around and galloped into the depths of her library. “And what do I do? Twilight? Where did you… I’ll just sit here then” Spike sat down with a thump. “Umm, excuse me? RainbowDash are you... home?” “What?” Came a grouchy voice from inside. “Birdie found a Pegasus in the everfreeforest, and we need your help to find it and bring it home.” Cyan blue and rainbow burst through the cloud door, announcing, “You had me at Pegasus! Let’s go!” colours streaked through the air as Dash sped away, leaving FlutterShy spinning in the air. Dash, realising that FlutterShy was still at her cloud-home, turned around and raced back to FlutterShy. “Come on then!” grabbing the yellow Pegasus’s hoof, they sped off again, thus time together. As they neared a corner with a café at the edge, dash snatched a burger from an unsuspecting pony, while shouting at a green Pegasus with a red and white mane “Eight hundred and four ponies!!” The cyan Pegasus called to a nearby pony as they passed a café. The pony nodded his thanks and carried on eating “Eight hundred and four what?” Asked FlutterShy. “Eight hundred and four years ago there was a cyclone that almost killed a town of eight hundred and four ponies. Luckily the WonderBolts were there and stopped it. Ash back there wanted to know the population so he asked me; he wanted to know the population because he wanted to write a book about it.” By the time Dash had said the very last word, they had arrived at the edge of the everfreeforest. Waiting for them was Twilight, her saddlebags full of books. “Ready to go everyone?” Twilight asked. “Yep-a-dokie!” out of nowhere the pink party pony bounced into view. “Pinkie? How did you, when did you…” they all sighed, “right, pinkie sense.” Said Dash, Twilight and 'Shy chorused “Anyway, let’s go!” Dash took to the air, to scout ahead. “I still don’t know why Birdie couldn’t have done this!” Dash muttered as she took off. The rest took on hoof, FlutterShy staying close to Twilight, and Pinkie bouncing along and talking about random things with no relevance what-so-ever. “Urrr…” I prised my eyes open and squinted around, taking in my surroundings. I swallowed, and a scream tore from my lips as I experienced the world’s worst sore throat, but half-way through the scream, my voice ran out. Uh oh. I mouthed. A half-scream echoed through the forest. “This way!” called Dash from above the ponies on the ground picked up the pace, galloping hard out to save a pony they didn’t know. “Did anypony else notice that the scream didn’t finish?” asked FlutterShy, who was flying to keep up. The remark was met with worried faces and fearful eyes. “We’re almost there!” Called Rainbow, a definite tone of relief could be heard in her voice, and the sighs from the others revealed that they too could not go on much further, except, naturally, Pinkie who had bounced the whole way there. Thundering echoed through the forest. So this is it. I thought, laying my heavy head on the soft undergrowth. > Chapter 1-Welcoming > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Six ponies looked down at me hopefully. One white, yellow, purple, cyan blue, pink, orange and a white rabbit eating a carrot on a shelf over a dog bed occupied by a brown and white female thoroughbred with a red collar. Glancing to my left I saw yet more animals, all looking at me.. I wasn’t used to so much attention. I tried to bring my hooves up but I hurt too much. It took me a while until I noticed the ponies were talking to me. “Are you alright?” “Did you get hurt?” “Ah ya aright? “It’s alright darling; we’ll get you cleaned up in no time! I’m sure there is beauty somewhere under that mud…” “Rarity!” “Well her Mane is just a mess, and that can’t be her actual coat colour! Although if it is then I'm sure we can find something to suit it…” “Wow! Another Pegasus! Finally! I can show you all my tricks… and teach you some stuff…” “What about me Dash? Am I not a Pegasus?” This voice was so quiet I could barely hear it. “Of course you are, you just…” “Everyone! Stop! Can’t you see she’s getting scared?” The purple unicorn was right. I was terrified. All the noises where deafening me, I couldn’t make mane nor tail of anything they were saying. I had never heard so much noise in my life. “Do you speak Equestrian?” asked the unicorn who had hushed the others. I pointed to my throat and mouthed yes. “She’s lost her voice!” Exclaimed the completely pink one. I nodded once “Okay, this is going to be harder than I thought.” Said the purple unicorn.“Well, my name is Twilight Sparkle, and this is FlutterShy, RainbowDash, Rarity, AppleJack, and PinkiePie!" The white bunny hopped down from its shelf, carrot forgotten and kicked TwilightSparkle. "Ow! and this rascal is Angel Bunny." The bunny kicked her again, then jerked one ear in the direction of the dog. "....And Winona." *My name is SkyBlue.*I mouthed at them. They seemed to be interested. For a moment. Seeing that the purple uni-TwilightSparkle- seemed to be in charge I asked her for a drink of water. To my surprise she turned to the yellow Pegasus, FlutterShy, and repeated my question. While FlutterShy dealt with that, RainbowDash interrogated me. “Do you like flying?” Nod “Do you like flying fast?” Nod “Tricks?” Nod “Have you ever done a sonic Rainboom?” I tilted my head. “No?” The blue pony beamed down at me. “Ooh we will have so much fun, I can just tell!” Next the Yellow Pegasus stepped up, leaving the cyan mare to rant on about ‘sweet’ moves. “Umm… do you like animals? I love animals!” she asked, in a soft and quiet voice. I mouthed, as best as I could, *I don’t really spend that much time with animals, but, sure.* The mares eyes widened in horror. “Oh you poor thing! As soon as you’re well enough I must show you all my animals! Oh you will love them, there is Acorn a Turtle, and Speedy the snail… ooh, how rude! I haven’t given you your water, oh I am ever so sorry! If there is anything I could make it up to you with then I definitely would!” She offered me the water, elegantly stretching her neck to offer it to me. Mouthing thanks, I gingerly took the cup and gulped it down. *Thank you!* I repeated, gratefull to have water in my body again. “Oh you are ever so welcome! And do you want some soup?" My stomach grumbled its reply before I could. FlutterShy giggled and set off to find some. "So, what happened? Birdie," TwilightSparkle gestured to a brown bird perched on a bar hanging from the roof, the same bird that pecked me not so long ago. "Found you in the forest and told FlutterShy, who told us, so me, FlutterShy and Dash-" "Don't forget me!" Said PinkiePie, bouncing in place. "-And Pinkie- Found you and brought you here, we found you when you screamed, or else we never would've seen you, because of your brown coat!" *My coat is not brown, it is blue!* "Ha! I mean- carry on, sorry that was very unlady-like of me." Rarity dipped her head, suggesting that they should continue. "So what happened?" Asked the heavily accented orange pony, AppleJack. *Well I was just flying over when a stray cloud zapped me, and then fell to the ground.* It sounded lame, but I had to purposefully leave out the Master, as per his instructions to me, years ago. "Yea the weather over EverFree is really wild! Clouds can come out of nowhere at any time!" Announced Dash. I nodded my consent."Hmm... Well, whatever you were doing then, now you need rest." Said Twilight, levitating the covers to my chin. As Twilight turned around, I noticed a mark on her flank. *What is that?* "What? Oh, that is the symbol of Magic! As my special talent, I got a Magic CutieMark. *What's a cutie mark?* I watched as each face turned from mildly interested in the conversation, to horrify faces, and Rarity even magicked a couch to fall on.. *What? Why are you all staring at me?* "You-you mean you don't have one?" Stuttered FlutterShy. *No... Is that bad?* just the look on their faces proved my theory. "Don't worry darling, I know just the ponies to get you your CutieMark!" Rarity smiled at the others, and they smiled back, well apart from me, I just stared wordlessly at the ponies I had known for barely a day and wondered what in Equestria a CutieMark was. > Chapter 2-Recovery > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three bundles of mischief woke me to a dark and rainy day in FlutterShy's Cottage. While I was glad they woke me, I was not glad of how they did it, although they did have my best interests at heart, there was more subtle ways than jumping on me and shouting in my ears. "I assume you are the CutieMarkCrusaders Rarity was talking about?" I mumbled in a pause between the jumps, already in a bad mood. "Ooh! you got your voice back!" Squeaked the mandarin coloured pegasus with a bright purple mane. I let out a squeal of delight and sat up abruptly, accidentally pushing the troublesome three off the bed. The trio let out a jumble of 'oof's' as they met the hard boards on FlutterShy's floor. "Ooh! Thank Master! Say, little ponies, where are we? When I was flying over the forest, Everfree, you call it? Well when I was flying over EverFree I had no idea where I was, I've just always called it the forest, and I knew not to go down there because I've seen bad things down there, crossing over before, and I-" the yellow earth pony with an enormous bow shoved a hoof in my mouth, causing me to stop. "Woah down there Filly! Take a breath!" I did as I was told, automatically matching the accent to Applejack's. "Yea, you're almost as fast as Pinkie when you do that!" Said the white unicorn. "Now, let us introduce ourselves! I'm AppleBloom, this is Scootaloo" the filly politely removed her hoof from my mouth "and this is SweetieBelle." And then, out of nowhere, they broke into song. look here are three little ponies ready to sing for this crowd listen up! 'cause here's our story I'm gonna sing it very loud! when you're a younger pony and you're flank is very bare feels like the sun will never come when your cutie marks not there so the three of us fight the fight there is nothing that we fear we'll have to figure out what we do next till our cutie marks are here we are the cutie mark crusaders on a quest to find out who we are and we will never stop the journey Not until we have our cutie marks "Is she allright?" "She hasn't moved in a while!" "Why does she have that expression on her face" "Well you were a little off key." "Was not!" "Was so!" "Quiet down hooligans!" "Don't call me things I don't know the meaning of!" "STOP IT!" I surprised us all by shouting, and when my eyes finally focused after the heart-stopping experience, I saw the three Ponies, the mark Cutie Crusaders piled on top of one-another. "Do you always fight like this?" Two no's and a yes. Scootaloo and Applebloom both turned on her, and she shrugged. "We do." This is going to take a while, I thought despairingly.I skipped right to the case. "So what do you have to offer?" I immediately got an answer from all three. "Did you not hear our song? Do we need to sing again?" all three took in a deep breath. "No no no, absolotely no need to ever, ever sing that again!" "Oh" they looked so downcast that I immediately had to raise their spirits. "But it was... It had... a lot of potential!" Their big eyes brightened and turned back on me. "Sooo, anyway, what is a cutie mark?" Three gasps, three jaws drop and then three fillies screaming at me. "How could you not know?" "What the hay?!" "In the name of RainbowDash!" While I wondered what RanbowDash had to do with this, they carried on, until SweetieBelle hushed them with a hoof in each face. "A CutieMark is part of who you are, it shows you your special talent." "Yea, where have you been in life, in a cave?" "Yes." My comment was met by silence. "Well... Any way, we are trying to get ours too! So we can help you! Although you might not get it because your cutie mark might be something that we have already tried and if it is then well, we'll just have to tell you and then you will have to do them." The three fillies looked at me hopefully. "I did not understand that at all." I said as my brain kept trying to make some sense from that.. "Basically you have to catch up to us by trying all the things we have already tried." "Yea! We wrote a list!" "We had to leave it by the door though because we couldn't carry it." Yay. I thought sarcastically. All I really wanted to do was get back to Master, but as I was bed-ridden, I decided to humour the ponies. But first moment I get I am going home to Master! I promised myself this. I glanced over to the door and watched as the three fillies dragged in this huge list. On and on they dragged. I wanted to help them to speed up the process but it hurt too much. My jaw dropped as they kept dragging it in. The fillies talked to me as they worked, as ponies so young they were it would be boring otherwise. "So what do you do for fun in this 'cave' you live in miss?" I looked at the pegasus and replied, "I read or practise flying." "Why don't you have your cutie mark?" "I've never even heard of one until today." "Oh." The conversation stopped there. Finally the fillies stood there, panting from the whole process. I picked up one end of the scroll and began to read. I was surprised at the small and tidy handwriting, and commented. "Oh yea, Twi did the writing while we talked." Twi must be a nickname for Twilight. Thank you for reading, but if you don't like it, then please say why because I have been getting a lot of dislikes, and no one is saying why. this is making me sad. :(